Standing and breathing more slowly and deeply, under the canopy of the hour glass yew, which stands at the entrance of the Lodge Inclosure (sic) at Alice Holt Forest, is the most powerful way I know to slip out of linear time and into knowing other kinds of time. As I’m writing this, I am somehow nudged towards an understanding that writing about time might be a good way to start talking about the 459 archetypal space, and to start talking about Yew.

Poets and bards have been turning to the trees since story-telling was a thing, and this beautiful pairing, of tree and poetry, has carried its healing to us humans for millenia. Here, without further ado, are seven human needs, seven trees, and seven beautiful poetic gems.

The enneagram 368 personality tritype is a kind of warrior. The Rowan tree offers insights into a healing journey for those living with the challenges of this archetype.

Yggdrasil was the name of and the Norse tree of life, and the job of Yggdrasil was to connect the  nine worlds of the universe. And Yggdrasil was an Ash tree. An ash tree supporting life, and very close to life and to death. This gives Ash a mighty status among trees as a keeper of big and important stories.

‘A is for Apple' are the words and image on the first page of a book teaching us to read in English, and apples themselves are plentiful and resplendently iconic,  this time of harvest and seasonal turning.  Holding both of these thoughts close at heart as I write, apple tree offers its generous life-affirming presence as the first tree in this series. Here enneagram wisdom teachings will meet with our correspondence with the natural world around us, and in particular our personal square miles of home.

This is the second edition of a piece about deep-mapping the flowers in your own square mile and how it might resource your life force!

The 'place' intuitivity reaches towards can be conceived as imaginal, in the way that Cynthia Bourgeault conceives it in 'The Eye of the Heart': a transpersonal space connecting the human with the spiritual, comparable metaphorically to the way inter-tidal zone connects land and sea . A place of spaciousness, of generative energy, and of transformation. Indeed Bourgeault positions humans as having an important role - as witnesses and potential transformers of consciousness.

A SoulCollage neter has come into your deck and its imagery is strange and unfamiliar and unsettling. You don't know why it came or what its witness means. You're not sure you want to either. The instinctual reponse it brings up in you is strong.

This is the second in a series of companion blogs to the book 'Take it to the Trees' by Samantha Taroni and to the ethos of Deep-Mapping at The Soul Shed. It includes a link to the first blog in the series and a free chapter of the book.

Second edition. First ed. published 22nd January 2022.

The second edition of an experiential glimpse of SoulCollage® to resource you over the festive season. First published 18th December, 2021

This is the second edition of the first of a series of companion blogs to the ethos of The Soul-Shed and to the book 'Take it to the trees' by Samantha Taroni (links at the bottom). It was originally published Dec 4th 21. It includes a link to a free chapter of the book.