PAGAN KNOWLEDGE

I wanted to research more into Pagan Knowledge about communicating with more-than-human beings. I believe that with this knowledge and influence we can come to a greater understanding of our participants in order respectfully collaborate with one another.  Knowledge is the most powerful tool, and Glennie Kindred’s knowledge about intimacy and love of mother earth is knowledge which will directly influence my work. This blog post is centred on communication and more importantly communicating with the more-than-human beings especially trees.

Glennie Kindred is a renowned author who speak about the love of nature, Earth wisdom, Earth cycles and native trees and plants. Her knowledge is incredible. She speaks out of love and understanding of our more-than-human counterparts. In all of her books she includes beautiful drawings and imagery which hold Celtic and pagan influences. She explores our relationship to the more-than-human through ceremony. Her work has informed this methodology so much. I focus more on her book the sacred tree of life where she talks about tree lore, including tree spirits called Dryads. I love the way she wites, it’s so open and understandable. I like how she creates another access for us to be able to understand the world in different ways.

(first page of The Sacred Tree book)

The Sacred Tree

This book has been incredible informative and useful for creating my methodology. Kindred speaks of ancient trees and sacred groves, which were once places that held ceremonies and rituals from village to village. Kindred takes you through 12 ancient trees, tells you about their healing properties, the history of the trees, how to use their wood and wisdom passed down through generations.  For relevance to my practice, I am going to focus on her work of communicating with tree spirits. In a sense it’s a type of ritual in order for you to get acquainted with the trees. Within the first few chapters kindred describes the history and importance of the trees, ending the chapter with a segment by Peter Aziz on communicating with the tree spirits, followed by a meditation. These are the two elements I am going to practice from this book.

Here are some pages that I thought were relevant from the book:

I am going to practice these communication techniques with a tree in camberwell – I will give more detail on this below.

Here is my detailed experience of Peter Aziz’s tree meditation:

This is the tree I wanted to communicate with :

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the tree when I did this exercise but here is one I found online:

Here is a small sonic recording of pre trialing the exercise to give a perception of the space :

Here is the recording of me practicing the exercise:

Here is a recording of after the exercise was complete:

These are some thoughts that came up:

I think I should have given the exercise more time, I think I didn’t do this as there were other people in the park and I maybe felt nervous doing it. This is something that I will trial again. After the exercise was complete a grey and white spotted pigeon appeared and stayed with me for about 5 minuets, then suddenly 15 pigeons gathered around me as I sat by the tree, for this I count this as some sort of sign. I really want to incorporate this exercise within the methodology and especially use it when I next collaborate with a tree as I think it bounds you more with the tree.

Here is the pigeon :

The Tree Ogham

The tree ogham is another of kindred fascinating books. It is another book centred on communicating with trees. In this book Kindred teaches you how to make your own ogham sticks. Ogham sticks are ways to harness some part of the trees spirit -although this might sound like an extractivist thing to do it is not. The dryad is the only one who can release itself onto the stick. Each tree has a tree spirit of dryad, this is like a trees version of a higher consciousness. In order to approach a tree spirit there is a certain ritual to take place. This is what I am going to explore further on in my practice based research.

This is from the first page of the book – I like the way in which Kindred set the tone for the reader. She invites you inter her knowledge but focuses on speaking to the trees and giving appreciation to them.

Here are some relevant pages from the book that speak about tree communication. This is definitely something that I want to explore more in the future. I like imagining her writing in terms of an approach that environmental field recordists can use to thinking about sound and ceremony.