Fred Hageneder - The Living Wisdom of Trees: A Guide to the Natural History, Symbolism and Healing Power of Trees

About the Author

Fred Hageneder is a leading author in ethnobotany, the cultural and spiritual history and meaning of trees. So far, his work has been translated into ten languages, among them Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Japanese.

He is a founding member of the Ancient Yew Group (AYG), an independent research group working to protect ancient yews in the UK. Since 2014 the AYG has been working closely with the Church in Wales to safeguard its old yew tree population.

Hageneder is a member of SaNaSi, a multidisciplinary international group of scientists who since 2013, with the support of the Open University, have been supporting indigenous guardians around the world to protect their natural refuges from land grabbing and destruction. Furthermore, Hageneder is a member of the Ecocentric Alliance, an international network of university professors, ecologists, conservationists and activists advocating ecocentrism and deep green ethics.

He also plays traditional harps and composes music for various tree species.

Hageneder lives near the Black Mountains in Wales as an author, musician, graphic designer and lecturer.

For more on his work, visit: www.themeaningoftrees.com [URL inactive]

This edition first published in the UK and USA in 2019 by

Watkins, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited

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Design and typography copyright Watkins Media Limited 2020

Text copyright Fred Hageneder 2020

The author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-786783-33-2

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Contents

Introduction

Trees and humankind have always had a symbiotic relationship. Throughout the centuries, trees have offered us shelter from the cold and the heat. They have provided us with a multitude of nutritious fruits, leaves, flowers and roots for food and medicine. They have given us wood with which to make our tools, weapons and toys, not to mention timber for houses, fences, boats and bridges. But perhaps most significant of all, trees have provided fuel for fire, which, once it was tamed hundreds of thousands of years ago, became the engine of civilization. Trees are our strongest allies.

The entire spectrum of human existence is reflected in tree lore through the ages: from birth, death and rebirth to the age-old struggle between good and evil, and the quest for beauty, truth and enlightenment.

Our ancestors recognized that there is a vital balance in life: you take and you give. So they celebrated the forces of nature by offering them gifts, songs, prayers and blessings to revitalize the natural world a world of which they felt themselves to be an intimate part. Many cultures saw (and still see) everything in creation as imbued with spirit, which means that all living things are regarded as sacred.

Whatever our personal beliefs regarding nature spirits, and the question of whether God exists inside creation or only outside it (or at all), one thing is certain: the ability to extend compassion to other life forms, to feel gratitude and give thanks for sharing in the miracle of life, to respect, if not to love, all fellow inhabitants of this planet, makes us better human beings and helps us to triumph over ignorance and greed. The living wisdom of trees shows us that life is worth so much.

The Tree of Life

Native North Americans call trees our standing brothers and sisters. Humans and trees share an upright, vertical orientation. We walk, they stand. We move and change, they remain the quiet centre of being .

According to many of the teachings of ancient wisdom, the universe comprises a spiral or circular movement around a central axis, the axis mundi . And this centre pole has often been depicted as The Tree of Life or World Tree . Essentially, the Tree of Life is an image of the whole universe, or at least of our planet, that embodies the notion that all life is interrelated and sacred. It portrays the universe as much more than a lifeless, clockwork mechanism that blindly follows the laws of physics; rather, it presents our world as a living, evolving organism, imbued with divine spirit.

The Tree of Life is a concept that can be traced back to Neolithic times. From there it developed as part of the philosophy of most ancient cultures, whether it was early civilizations and city-states, such as those of Egypt, Persia and Greece, or tribal societies which remained closer to nature.

During the Bronze and Iron Ages different cultures developed their particular characteristics, their sets of moral and law codes, aesthetics, languages, customs, and so on. And as part of the process, the ancient concept of the Tree of Life also evolved into a multitude of forms for example, the Haoma tree in Zoroastrian Persia, the Tooba Tree at the centre of the Islamic paradise, the World Tree Yggdrasil in Norse myth, Ez Chajim in Judaism and Tsogs-shing , the Assembly Tree of the Gods in Tibetan Buddhism. And it appears elsewhere in world mythology under many more guises.

However, one aspect of tree-related traditions remained the same throughout the largely patriarchal ages which followed the Neolithic: a clear sense of the female side of the divine. The Tree remained linked with the notion of female deities and the ancient Mother Goddess. For example, in the pre-hieroglyphic script of ancient Egypt, the word for giving birth is derived directly from the word for tree. This was no coincidence. The Tree of Life is the great mother of creation: all-encompassing, all-birthing, all-healing. The tree symbolism goes back to a time that coincides with the worldwide worship of predominantly female deities.

The cosmic womb is also all-devouring, but only to transform life and rebirth it. In ancient cosmology, death is not a polar opposite of life, just an important part of its cycle. Most peoples believed in reincarnation or some other form of afterlife. An ancient druid saying that has come down to us from Gaul (modern France) states, Death is nothing but a gate in a long journey.

The living wisdom of trees tells us that we are all travelling together through the cycles of life.

The Tree of Knowledge

In the Germanic languages, most terms for learning, knowledge, wisdom and so on are derived from the words for tree or wood. In Anglo-Saxon we have witan (mind, consciousness) and witiga (wisdom), in English wits, witch and wizard, and in modern German Witz (wits, joke). These words all stem from the ancient Scandinavian root word vid , which means wood (as in forest, not timber).