Tree Cycle: Alder
Ogham: Fearn
Alder Tree Cycle Dates: December 27 - January 23
Key Words For Alder: Signs, Elements , Feminine Energy, Masculine Energy, Wildishness, The Wilderness, The Desert, Synchronization, Prophecy, Shapeshifting, Transmutation, Development, Balance, Truth, Exposure, Responsiveness, Primitive, Covering, Uncovering.
Lunation: 3rd
Souls Evolution Stage: Elemental Synchronisation
The Council of Trees - Hidden Tree Cycles: Hazel/Apple & Vine
The Council of Trees - Hidden Tree Cycles Date: June 27th - July 23rd
Key Words of the Council of Trees:
Hazel - Litter Picking, Inner & Outer Landscape, Stewardship, Wisdom, Shadows, Divination, Mystic, Insight, Signs, Knowledge, Tools, Conduit.
Apple - Magic, Balance, Mysteries, Protection, Duty, Responsibility, Abundance, Thrive, Community, Prosperity, Seer, Devotion, Recycling, Humus.
Vine - Improvement, Fullness, Fruition, Abundance, Relief, Harvest, Attentiveness, Indulgence, Play, Destiny, Wildness, Beauty, Artistry, Blood, Development, Transformation, Abandon, Ecstasy, Uncovering.
Spiritual Weather: The Desert, Decent, Mergence, Memory Loss.
Celebration: New Solar Year 2023
Reflected Celebration: New Solar Year 2022
Animal Guide: Wolf (Personal Animal Spirit Guides)
Alder Tree Cycle
During Alder season we are passing through Christmas and New Year, This time of year has many highs and lows, and like, during Rowen season we pass through paradoxical energy. We are trying to be grateful for our blessings an embody or express joy yet we also need to honour our losses and those lost. Alder season offers us the underground Wilderness and the underground Desert to be present within.
There always seems to be an air of space around an Alder tree. They seem to exist outside of time and space. They embody life and death simultaneously. And so when we are beside Alder, or invoke Alder energy we step out of our present space. We pass through the void, through liminal space. We may be aware of this energy shift and feel this change as a physical sensation. We can breath clearly and deeply in this space, Our perspectives expand, we can see for miles and understand our place in all that life that includes us within it.
The Alder Tree encourages our spiritual synchronisation and supports us to align with wild elements. When we align with elements in nature we integrate with them. The elemental fibres within us, our flesh and bone, reach for natures elements. Like reacts to like, and we become bonded, flesh to flesh and bone to bone. Some of us are particularly responsive to this time of year. The dark, the cold, the bare trees and stark contrast between life and death, the struggle to survive. Facing elemental exposure flushes the body with warmth and heightens the senses. We no longer live in the open, we are safe in houses. So we experience our survival instincts through a spiritual winter. Within our inner realms. Somewhere through this long winter, through the cold and dark nights, we shapeshift. Spiritually we transform into hairy beasts. Some of us may actually transform into hairy beasts, allowing our natural body hair to be free to grow where it wants. Watching our wildishness skin turn before our eyes. Whether we view our transformation as an inner experience or outer change (or both), we are responding to our instincts.
The Alder tree cycle offers a rare opportunity for us to exist outside of the chaos of our inner and outer experience. To be fully present with all that we embody and all of that otherness that also includes us within it. To be completely free from the trappings of mergence. During Alder season we are the roaming wolf, we are accompanied by our personal animal guides. We survey our wilderness and we see out there all of that encompasses our life yet we are bound by none. Alder season offers the gift of running wild. What this represents for our everyday lives is the blessings of presence of self. To be available to deal with the demands of the season without merging. We are open and responsive to our connections, without the motivation to react impulsively. We are confident in our selves. We feel emotionally mature, emotionally intelligent, and we are free to be vulnerable, express our playfulness and allow our fierceness to accompany us. Our words are tremendously powerful during Alder. People will listen to our words especially when spoken with surety and confidence. Alder inspires truth to be expressed, and not only spoken, but heard. Truth, is not always believed when spoken, but during Alder, a persons inner truth is received fully and understood by the other. Alder season is important for mending bonds and making promises. Promises made have staying power, they are imbued with magical potency, with core nexus power. They have the power to transform connections and support important developments.
Spiritual Weather & The Council of Trees
The spiritual weather during Alder season sweeps in and carries us across the cold deserted landscape, the resting place of our descents. This is the land that holds all of our past losses and death cycles. We are exposed out here. We stand here, unmoved. Stuck in an emotional void. Spiritual weather at this time of year can blind us and wipe our memory. It has the power to fix us to our parts that hold pain. We are at risk of merging with these parts. We can think of the mergence with these parts as The Desert. Not because we carry within us a vast desert where nothing will survive, but because we fix ourselves, to the past, the timescale of our losses and death cycles. This prevents our travel to The Wilderness, stalls our transformation from happening. Dissociates us from our truth in presence. Paradoxically, exposure to The Desert has incredible power. It activates our survival instinct. We just should not stay there too long.
Influence - Hazel & Apple
During the first two weeks of Alder season Hazel and Apple usher in the muses of the mystical. We have the potential to be heightened in our senses and receive illuminated insights. We are affected by the mysteries of our underground Wilderness. Hazel the rod of power strikes us and infuses our being with the magic of Apple's star of elemental integration. Hazel and Apple connect us to our deeper needs and our soul path. Their rhythm moves us deeply, making way for magical ideas.
If we find ourselves in The Desert lands, Hazel and Apple are there with us. They whisper to us that The Desert is also a place of great potential, that this place can be our nexus of power. To bare the harshness of this land is to embrace our scars, to hold them in our highest regard, for they are the parts that fought for us. The parts that bled, won and lost battles. Hazel and Apple support us to reach wholeness. They want us to be fully integrated magical beings. They know that to fully integrate is to first see the bareness of our soul. To see the resting place of our old bones is to make the decent. The Desert is the graveyard of every decent we have ever made, stories of our lives lay there among the ash and soil. Or so it may seem. The Desert and The Wilderness exist together. And in this togetherness we are whole.
Hazel and Apple remind us of our duty to our every day life. To walk the path of a spirit infused life is a devotional journey. A journey of finding and loosing ourselves in unimaginable ways. A calling to walk the path of spirit, it is not something we can give up on. It is something we spend a lot of time and energy contemplating the practice of. We find ways to practice our path in our every day living. Spiralling in and out of depth in practice.
Inspiration - Vine
Vine accompanies us in the second two weeks of the Alder tree cycle. After our time spent within our wilderness, time spent cultivating our crops, and preparing our earth, Vine now offers us the inspiration of fluidity and fulfilment of creativity. Vine speaks to us in a quality of blossoming and blooming, or ripening and swelling. Vine is the explosion of juices and sweetness. We feel very creative during these weeks of reflected Vine energy. We feel a sense of a midwinter harvest time, another paradox. Vine swells within us delicious ideas and we can almost taste their sweetness. We will be creatively driven to manifest during these winter weeks. We will want to work on existing projects or begin new ones. We may even become overwhelmed with having to many options to consider. This is a time to also air on the side of caution. Ecstasy flows wildly through those who abandon, not themselves, but all others, whom they forsake to follow their passions. Intoxication of senses and drunkenness of parts throw caution to the wind. We may feel loose and unguarded.
In the beginning of Alder we were the roaming wolf of the wilderness, during the end of Alder we are the dancing playful wolf. Vine allows us to find relief from tension. We need to be flexible as we walk into a new solar year.
A Blessing For Alder
The time has come, we must turn in,
With a spiralled dance, our decent begins,
Alder join us, take our hand,
Pass with us, through The Desert lands,
Bones of loss remain where they lay,
Our underground body, here it must stay,
Alder join us, take our soul,
Keep us company 'till we are whole,
Shelter us beneath your bower,
Be our guardian on this hour,
Hold sacred our deepest wish,
'Till we reach our souls wilderness.
An Offering to the Council
Hazel, Apple and Vine accompany us during the Alder tree cycle. Alder presents a wilderness to us, Hazel and Apple the elemental power and the conduit of transference, and Vine the wildly ways within us fleshed out with so that we may become the embodiment of our raw spirit.
These three trees create a bridge for us. To cross over, pass through liminal space. We journey from The Desert into The Wilderness and from our losses to our harvest, from our deaths unto living. Hazel, Apple and Vine reflect our decent and sacrifices. Through our spirits immersion, our raw authenticity is regenerated from exposure to The Desert Land. Making an offering to The Council may best be represented by spending a day fully present in our wildly ways. This will mean something different for each of us and depend on whether we are in The Desert or The Wilderness. We can think about how we would like to express our wildly way. This could be spending time in play. Dressing up in our magical clothes in a covering of ourselves experience. Or we may want to have naked hairy time indoors in an uncovering experience. We may want to meditate, walk, dance, sing or create art. Listening to music, listening to the wind, burning incense, smelling the air. Whatever way be decide to be on this day we choose, we fully immerse into the celebration and joy of our magical, wild being.
Yours in the heart of the woodlands
Mags black.
Next Tree Cycle: Willow
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