References

The text, ‘A Short Guide to Talking to Trees,’ combines many years of work, retreats, and experiences in meditation, mindful walks through the countryside, and various body techniques, especially massage.

These words are not new; to cite some bibliographic sources, for example Max Dashu in Mysteries of the Feminine, Woman Shaman, wrote:

(translated paraphrase from the Spanish source) As exiles, isolated from the transmission of initiation, dealing with stress, trauma or illness, our best remedy is to return to our roots: to seek inspiration directly from nature, from the earth and the sea, from enchantment and movement, from drums and dreams.

And here I quote Peter Kingsley, in In the Dark Places of Wisdom (DPW):

So many of us today are concerned about the extinction of every species on earth that we fail to pay attention to what matters most: the extinction of our knowledge of what we are. (DPW, p. 9)

Kingsley also says:

This life of the senses can never fulfil us, even though the whole world will tel1 us the opposite. It never was meant to fulfil us. The truth is so simple, so lovingly simple: if we want to grow up, become true men and women, we have to face death before we die. We have to discover what it is to be able to slide behind the scenes and disappear. (DPW, p. 6)

This clear reference to the initiatory path may be very extreme, although it is nonetheless true. I prefer to believe that there is a middle ground in the dialogue with life. A gentler path that allows us to access what we have forgotten with smaller steps that we can incorporate into our daily lives, which can seep in like water from a stream that gradually clears our blindness. A simple practice that helps us open the door to the wisdom of life so that it can seep into our art, from where it can help others.

Today we have many traditions that can help us, but we should always keep in mind these words from PK:

But we belong to the West. The more we find in the East οr anywhere else the more it makes us inwardly divided, homeless in our own land. We become cultural tramps and vagabonds. The solutions we find are never fundamental answers. They only create more problems. (DPW, p. 6)

We can and must draw inspiration from India and America, but without losing sight of the fact that magic “is in all of us”. Knowing that they speak to us in another language that resonates within us because it is a fundamental truth, but one that we must translate.

As an example of these translations, we can read Dhyani Ywahoo (Tsalagi / Cherokee) in Voices of Our Ancestors: Teachings from the Wisdom Fire:

Practice of sacred relationship is practice of good relations with all in the family of life. Thus the Pale One gave seven reminders to the people, that all might recall and honor the unity of the hoop:
What walks, swims, flies, or creeps is in relationship; the mountains, streams, and valleys and all things are related to your thought and action.
What occurs around you and within you reflects your own mind and shows you the dream you are weaving.
Three principles of awakened mind guide enlightened action: will to see the Mystery as it is; intention to manifest one’s purpose for the benefit of all; courage to do what must be done.
Generosity of heart and action brings peace and abundnce for all in the circle.
Respect for elders, clan, land, and nation inspires acts in harmony with the sacred law, good caretaking of the gifts received.
Action to benefit the land and the people unto seven generations shapes the consciousness of the Planetary Caretaker, dreaming those yet unborn, ever mindful of life’s unfolding.
To be in good relation, transforming patterns of separation, pacifying conflicting emotions, is to experience the wisdom within, still lake of Mystery.
Arising from these teachings are the nine precepts in the Code of Right Relationship:
Speak only words of truth.
Speak only of the good qualities of others.
Be a confidant and carry no tales.
Turn aside the veil of anger to release the beauty inherent in all.
Waste not the bounty, and want not.
Honor the light in all. Compare nothing; see all for its suchness.
Respect all life; cut away ignorance from one’s own hart.
Neither kill nor harbor thoughts of angry nature, which destroy peace like an arrow.
Do it now; if you see what needs doing, do it.
The Pale One is a cyclically incarnating being. He comes when the people have forgotten their sacred ways, bringing reminders of the Law, recalling all to right relationship. He is expected soon again, and he may be alive even now. It is good.
(Page 19-21)

Hindu sages from many traditions could be cited as Dhyani Ywahoo.

We do not travel to India or America, we travel inward, into the past. A magical, feminine European past connected to nature. A past that we lost forever in Constantinople with the conversion of the empire to Christianity, when the Sibyls of Delphi ceased to be the oracle of the ancient world. When the priestesses who had guided the world since the beginning of humanity became persecuted witches.

A few more quotes:

But trees warp time, or rather create a variety of times: here dense and abrupt, there calm and sinuous—never plodding, mechanical, inescapably monotonous. … it is almost like leaving land to go into water, another medium, another dimension.

Fowles, John. The Tree.

Evolution has made man a creature who isolates and divides; and in this spirit he tries to impose the grid of his mind on the world around him, forever attempting to classify, to measure, to put order into what seems indistinguishable in the midst of the multitude.

Fowles, John. The Tree, pp. 22–23.

Full bibliography here.