Celtic Tree Of Life Quotes

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life. And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

An old Celtic proverb boldly places death right at the center of life. ‘Death is the middle of a long life,’ they used to say. Ancient people did things like that; they put death at the center instead of casting it out of sight and leaving such an important subject until the last possible moment. Of course, they lived close to nature and couldn’t help but see how the forest grew from fallen trees and how death seemed to replenish life from fallen members. Only the unwise and the overly fearful think that death is the blind enemy of life.

I want to remind you that the forest is far more than a source of timber. It is our collective medicine cabinet. It is our lungs. It is the regulatory system for our climate and our oceans. It is the mantle of our planet. It is the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren. It is our sacred home. It is our salvation.

the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized their voices the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.

The elders versed in the mores of the Celtic culture instructed me in the meaning of a special word, buíochas. It means, as best I can render it, tender gratitude. The buíochas should be very high in each person, like a glass that is full. Buíochas is also a self-protection. You should carry gratitude in your heart for everything inside and outside your life and all the small things that impinge on your consciousness. The feeling of buíochas is like a medicine of the mind that holds your life together. The old saying buíochas le Dia, thanks be to God, reminded the human family that life itself is the greatest gift and should therefore be treasured in yourself and in all others.

To the Druidic mind, trees are sentient beings. Far from being unique to the Celts, this idea was shared by many of the ancient civilizations that lived in the vast virgin wildwoods of the past. The Celts believed a tree’s presence could be felt more keenly at night or after a heavy rain, and that certain people were more attuned to trees and better able to perceive them. There is a special word for this recognition of sentience, mothaitheacht. It was described as a feeling in the upper chest of some kind of energy or sound passing through you. It’s possible that mothaitheacht is an ancient expression of a concept that is relatively new to science: infrasound or “silent” sound. These are sounds pitched below the range of human hearing, which travel great distances by means of long, loping waves. They are produced by large animals, such as elephants, and by volcanoes. And these waves have been measured as they emanate from large trees.

Trees don't simply maintain the conditions necessary for human and most animal life on earth, trees created these conditions through the community of forests. Trees paved the way for the human family. The debt we owe them is too big to ever repay.

Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.

Scholarship was a hidey hole, a place where I could escape negative feelings. But as I learned more about the world, I realized that a life buried in books quite suited me.

The truth was right there, so simple, a child could grasp it. Trees were responsible for the most basic necessity of life, the air we breathe.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some ... being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.

To our young selves, though, there is no difference between the small questions and the big ones. We follow our curiosity to the edge of our understanding and then ask whoever is around what lies beyond it. I have spent my adult life fighting to keep what I possessed as a child: the ability to see the biggest questions sitting inside the smallest ones and the willingness to try to answer them.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.

I want to remind you that the forest is far more than a source of timber. It is our collective medicine cabinet. It is our lungs. It is the regulatory system for our climate and our oceans. It is the mantle of our planet. It is the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren. It is our sacred home.

In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers, and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those among whom they live.

feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.

There is, of course, a joy to finding confirmation of a suspicion you’ve carried around for half a century. But that satisfaction was tempered by the fact that Matsunaga’s research was sparked by more than just the desire to test an adage. He and his team hoped to explain the mystery behind the widespread collapse of marine ecosystems along the Japanese coast. They showed that clear-cutting on the island nation was what caused the devastation. Cutting so many trees led to a decline in the amount of fulvic acid, created by decomposing leaf fall in the forest, leaching into the groundwater that flows into the sea. This, in turn, reduced the quantity of iron in the island’s coastal waters. The lack of iron stopped the division and multiplication of microscopic marine life, which meant a famine for the sea creatures that depended on that life to survive. Cutting down trees, then, is not exclusively a suicidal act. It is homicidal as well.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life. And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

I have many lovers. Where ever I look, I find them. There is no place devoid of them. They are everywhere: In the enchanting Cottonwood trees, The rivers, the rocky roads, the hills, the mystic trails, The snow capped mountains, The skies, the clouds, the soaring Eagles, The blackness of night, as black as the Raven, The absolute brave Cactus, Listening to me, and the whispers I breathe. Where ever I, look I find them. There is no place devoid of them. My lovers are everywhere. They are everywhere: In the rains, the freezing winds, The sun, the moonlight, The darkness of despair, The days of pain and sorrow, They never leave me, or betray me, Or ever forsake me, Even in my unfaithfulness, They remain mine. Am I blessed, crazy, or blind? However much I dare, Even in those careless moments; they care. Where ever I look, I find them, There is no place devoid of them, My lovers are everywhere. They are everywhere: I close my eye’s, I see them, They appear to me patiently, like some ancient melody, in my waking dreams, they are like wise prophets, twirling in compassionate dances of forgiveness. Allowing me my mistakes of existence, They give me, ‘me’, Reach for my fears, cradle and hold me. They are everywhere. I will regenerate, and shine through their presence. Through their guidance, from their quiet empowerment, I will gather myself, pick up my pride, Understand ‘life’, and remember reality. Finally, when my ‘being’ remains not with me, they will once again redefine, re-collect me, recreate the aura around me, find another place to replant me. They are everywhere. No place is devoid of them. Countless lovers. Their love: Omnipresent. Only if one can ‘see’, These lovers are everywhere .

The Celts were a woodland people, their culture born from the deciduous rainforests that once covered much of the country. But as the English subjugated the Irish, they cut down these ancient woods. They cut them for the lumber needed in their naval yards and the charcoal to fuel industry. They cut them to empty the land of places like Lackavane, where the Irish could hide, regroup, plan and launch counterattacks. And they cut them to sever the most tangible link the Celts had to their culture and language.

mothaitheacht.

My dear, dear pollywog, you do not need to look far for the Tree of Life. You ARE the Tree of Life. Your feet, its roots. Your arms , its limbs. Your mind, its flower. It is why we were able to overcome the giants and the brutes. For we do not have mere brains. We have MINDS that can imagine fancy and we have the strong bodies to make those fancies real. We are what the ancient magi speak of— ‘for so below, so above. So within, so without.’ Your flower and roots are bound in the royal river of majesty. Do you not yet understand, Lad, that everything you need is within you? Nay, you do not need to look far for the Tree of Life, you need to look into the mirrored glass—there you will find the flower and if you study with your heart , the flower shall fall and her fruit shall shine golden.

I had now learned about the English occupation and the loss of the trees, but here at my feet was the first proof. Proof not only that Ireland had once been forested—a confirmation that was amazing enough on its own—but that human beings were the reason the forests were gone. Nature’s changes weren’t limited to the shifting seasons, it seemed, and the landscape of Lisheens wasn’t a fixed one, as I’d taken for granted. Trees and plants, the beings that most fascinated me, could just disappear. And, sickeningly, some people had worked towards exactly that outcome.

The trees kept coming into my dreams at night, too, with their long swags of shadow changing the landscape of the bedroom wall.

Looking out on the field that morning, I didn’t believe we could finish the cut. It was too big a job and I was too small a helper. But because I loved Pat and loved the farm and the Droim, because I loved that crop of barley and couldn’t stand to see it spoiled, I was prepared to try. I took a deep breath and a first step and both eventually led me to the knowledge that I was capable of things bigger than I’d imagined.

The core of the global bioplan is a simple idea. If every person on Earth planted one tree per year for the next six years, we would stop climate change in its tracks. The addition of those wonderful molecular machines, which pull carbon from our atmosphere, fix it in wood and bubble out oxygen in return, would halt the rise in global temperature and return it to a manageable level. Three hundred million years ago, trees took an environment with a toxic load of carbon and turned it into something that could sustain human life. They can do it again.

A personal bioplan can take a form as humble as a pot on the balcony of an urban high-rise. One beneficial plant, a mint for example, releases aerosols that open up your airways. That plant does the same thing for the birds and other small creatures, and for the people you love and keep close. The true goal of the global bioplan is for every person to create and protect the healthiest environment they can for themselves, their families, the birds, insects and wildlife. That personal bioplan then gets stitched to their neighbours’, expanding outward exponentially. If we each start with something as small as an acorn and nurture it into an oak, a master tree that we have grown and protect and are the steward of, if we have that kind of thinking on a mass scale, then the planet is no longer in jeopardy from our greed. We’ve become the guardians of it. It’s a dream of trying to get a better world for every living thing.

Plants contain the sucrose version of serotonin as a working molecule. It is a water-soluble compound in, say, a tree. Serotonin is a neuro-generator. By proving that the tryptophan-tryptamine pathways existed in trees, I proved that trees possess all the same chemicals we have in our brains. Trees have the neural ability to listen and think; they have all the component parts necessary to have a mind or consciousness. That’s what I proved: that forests can think and perhaps even dream. This knowledge was new to science. Such connections were not recognized or known at the time.

Along with the planting of native and rare species, these smaller, precise efforts also meshed together to serve a larger goal, that of extending a welcoming hand to life in all its forms. My gardens would never be a place of sterile beauty, with the intricately beautiful faces of flowers gathered from around the globe looking out at the rest of the world from behind a fence of privilege. Whether it was with me at birth or cultivated in Lisheens, my love was for an active and open beauty, the wonder that exists in the intricate relationships between all living things.

The truth was right there, so simple, a child could grasp it. Trees were responsible for the most basic necessity of life, the air we breathe...cutting down trees was a suicidal act.

...I took a deep breath and a first step, and both eventually led me to the knowledge that I was capable of things bigger than I had imagined. I think every child should have an experience like the field experiment, something that thrusts them down a road they don't think they can ever reach the end of, for love of themselves and other people and the world. When they eventually come to their destination they will realise, as I did, that even the impossible can be accomplished if you're willing to take the first step and give it everything you've got, and then, like me, they will know they can do anything.

Hail Eochaid Ollathair, Father of All! Hail Ruad Ro-fhessa, Lord of Perfect Knowledge! Lord of the Oak Tree, Phallus of the summer saplings, Rough as tree bark is your wisdom, Yet deep as sunken roots. You who can call the seasons with your harp, You are called upon by the common people For your gift of fair weather. You whose club is so great That nine men are required to carry it And even then it plows a great ditch; Whose terrible end slays hundreds at a blow And whose other end can restore them to life; You stake your life on the fertility of the land That others may survive the cold winters. You who build great fortresses, You know what it is to be the sole protection Of those you love, and to go forth In battle to save their lives. —By Cianaodh Óg from Our Pantheon’s Way