A site to test WP on HM
It’s the same tree over and over again. All the versions of my Tree as Symbol series have been relevant to the path of my particular journey, but I hope some of them will resonate for you too.
The meaning will be a bit different for everybody. Made long before Covid, truer than ever for me now!
From the Tree as Symbol Series: Happy Little Tree, dancing on one foot.
THE TREE IN A HOLY FOG. What does that mean? Why a holy fog? To you, it can mean whatever you would like it to mean ! I’ll tell you how it came about and some of its meanings to me. This tree is is one of my series, The Tree as Spiritual Symbol, and it has been the most popular one! “The Tree”, in most cases, represents the individual person in their particular world but also sometimes our society in general.
I made this one after a workshop in which people were invited to draw themselves as a tree, in a setting in which they felt they were right now . The results were as interesting as the people themselves! Later, I kept on drawing more versions of my own tree.
Why a holy fog? There are different kinds of fog.
This fog is not a fog which we are able, or not able, to see physically with our eyes.
It stands for not knowing and also the uncertainty in which we always live, but even more acutely so these days.
“Uncertainty” is mostly used about something specific, when we really want to know something exactly and we can’t. Something which we think should be calculable, like how long this pandemic will last, how long will I live etc? It’s a state of limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state, a future outcome, or more than one possible outcome. In science, uncertainty is a useful concept!
“Not Knowing”, is a Zen phrase. According to Suzuki Roshi, “Not-knowing does not mean you don’t know. It doesn’t require us to forget everything we have known or to suspend all interpretations of a situation. Not-knowing means not being limited by what we know, holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for it to be different. Maybe things are this way. But maybe they are not.”
We cannot really ever know Infinite Reality, whether we think of that in religious, or scientific terms, or both, because we ourselves are NOT Infinite. But still we have to act.
In these Covid times, many of us, in our isolation and overwhelmed with decisions to make, find ourselves, off and on, in a our own small local fog of needing to just tune out from the situation, by music, TV, the web, media, reading . . .whatever! And that is good . . . for limited periods. No one can exist in stress forever and these things reduce stress. But we cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by the pandemic.
In this picture, you may notice that the fog immediately around the Tree is lighter than further off. I didn’t design it that way; it just happened! Perhaps that shows that it is possible to keep a circle of “light” around you, even in stormy times. In a real fog, we do see what is immediately around us, even if we can’t see very far!
The fog is a holy one, because, as William Blake, Thomas Merton and others have said, “Everything that lives is holy”. The word “holy” has roots in ancient words meaning “whole, entire, complete, uninjured” and “sacred”, and we are part of a Whole beyond our imagination.
I invite you, too, to take out your pencils, and draw yourself as a tree, in this pandemic, or in any of your situations! Just for yourself. Lots of trees, if you like. It can be fun, even healing. A tree is easy to draw: it just has a trunk, some branches, and, most importantly ROOTS, even tho, as in this picture, the roots are not always visible above ground. But they are there!
Stay rooted!
No comment! This is the Tree being Quiet.
Wych Tree from the Tree as Symbol series
In this series, remember, The Tree may represent both the Individual and /or Society. In this case, it may apply to either, and speaks to the acknowledgement of the Truths of Nature alongside, or even replacing old texts.
BUT on the green side, the texts have not completely disappeared! Nor should they. Our society increasingly acknowledges the need to work with nature instead of against it, and for many individuals, old religious or mythological texts are being reinterpreted in light of today’s understanding. However, we need our old texts to know our past, so we are able to progress; we need our history to understand our present and to help us plan for the future.
We need both . . . you may notice the Y- Y dots on either side!
We all have our stories, the ones we tell ourselves about who we are; the ones we tell other people about who we are. And they are not always quite the same!
The untold story is the one you don’t tell the world but carry around inside yourself, sometimes a painful story . Or perhaps it’s the third story to someones else’s two-sided story, or may be the imagined story you hold onto about someone else.
Maybe it’s “the real story”. Maybe it is not! It’s a good idea to take out old stories sometimes and give them a shake! (Nations as well as people!!)
The Tree sets sail; how absurd is that! Well, perhaps you remember that in this series, The Tree is a symbol for the individual and /or for our society, even our “world”. This is the world of myth, so a tree can sail! Here, the Tree is not adrift; its own branches and leaves are its sails. It has left its safe harbour and is setting out on a voyage into unknown waters.
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The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but of seeing with new eyes. – MARCEL PROUST
Every day is not just another assignment. It is a small but contained voyage of discovery- DAVID DOUBILET
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. We must take the current when it serves, or lose the venture – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Five minutes to midnight refers to the Doomsday Clock. The poor tree here (in this case representing the world and its peoples, of whom we individuals are each a part) has got some kind of blight and has lost its leaves; the trunk has been shored up with bricks. The wheel represents overproduction.
I made this maybe a decade ago, when the Doomsday Clock was “only” at five minutes to midnight; it is a lot closer now. Shockingly close. If you want to see how close, check the URL below.
The Doomsday Clock, in case you don’t remember, represents the danger that scientists feel that the world is in. It started out in 1945 standing for the risk of atomic destruction but now, “The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies.” The good news is that the clock setting has sometimes gone backwards as well as forwards.
(If you want to know more ): https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
Tree of the Heart from The Tree as Symbol Series
I am not only fond of trees, for many reasons; I am also very intrigued by the Branching Pattern, of which trees, and many other plants, are a beautiful example. The branching pattern is found in so many places in Nature, such as in the human body in the circulatory, nervous and respiratory systems.
It shows in geological forms such as the branching of rivers and waterways.
But it is also found in genealogy, in statistical and web pathways and many other ways of organizing information too numerous to mention. Basically, it is about Flow, the flow of physical matter, energy or information, from one place to another.
Here, this Tree is an expression of gratitude to the human heart, both our biological one and the “ heart ” with which we connect with others.