Hawthorn

It is hard to describe this tree in words that seem fitting, so I have transcribed my own meditation notes below as well as left my recording for you to listen to, should you feel nudged.

Hawthorn might be for you if the following resonate:

Please drop down to my notes below for a fuller description of Hawthorn remedy; it is tricky to abbreviate her message.

• Hawthorn is the tree of our lands: our connection and umbilical cord to Mother Earth.
• Earth wisdom.
• Opening you to a sense of connection to something more across time, space and dimensions.
• Peace, calm, nourishment, safety.
• Heart centred: an opening up of the heart chakra, release of tension from the body, a relaxing across the lungs and freedom in breathing, and quieting of the mind: the body let’s go.
• Nourishment, absorption, assimilation, integration (of food, love, thoughts, concepts, new ways, and healing) – in essence being less ‘allergic’ to life; allowing rather than pushing away.
• Discernment to allow in that which is nurturing and nourishing to us and an ability to leave go and develop boundaries to that which is not beneficial to us in our lives and on our Path.

Hawthorn remedy details:

Made 15-5-2017.
From red flowering hawthorn flowers and young leaves, by sunlight and moonlight. I used quartz crystals found on the grounds of Thirsty Falls farm in the Magaliesberg mountains in South Africa and from my grandparents home in Clareview, Newport, Co. Tipperary, along with a green Kyanite crystal heart that is special to me, and several years of collected crow feathers.

(FYI more about Kyanite here, it may interest you that green kyanite is particularly good for balancing the heart chakra and maintaining heart balance. It is also used to reduce anger with love. I often sleep holding this kyanite in my hand and also have a beautiful blue kyanite pendant. Kyanite is a ‘strong’ stone; chose it when called). 

And regarding the crow, well in my opinion crow is a very symbolic and special bird with strong connections to humans and the other dimensions. Crow see both dimensions and are a bird of protection as well as a bringer of messages. Watch the crows, they are clever, very clever, and you will often see them where there are children for example watching over them at safe cross road crossings. Here is a lovely blogpost that concurs with my feelings about our wonderful crows: BLACKBIRD, CROW & RAVEN: Animal Wisdom ~ Air Animal Totem Meanings).

It took me a while to record and then transcribe my notes for Hawthorn because I wanted to spend some time exploring this remedy, and use it myself in meditations and dream travel so that I could fully grasp the healing message in this tree and also before I did further research about anyone else’s thoughts. This is very important to me because although a plant can have a huge significance to us in mythology, history and folklore; the plants energy is actually also related to our current day and just as we evolve with time and evolution so too does the message held in our plants and lands; the perfect symbiotic journey of plant, land, and man.

I have enjoyed the experience with Hawthorn; I feel a strong sense of a portal through to another side every-time I take it. There are hands waiting for me to trust and hold them and a beckoning for me to travel with my guides and ancestors. And I do in dreams and sleep. We don’t always remember our dreams but that we have a cellular and subconscious memory of them, I have no doubt. So if you use this remedy for dreams and travel and cannot remember ‘where you have been’; don’t panic. On a deeper level you will have gone where you needed to go, seen and done and learnt from this journey and this is what matter. It WILL positively influence you in your waking life. 

I know it sounds daft but it sort of looks like a mixture of this as I see it, a bright white light and with hands extending towards me. 

We ran a loop across the base of Keeper Hill today and into Killoscully. It is the most beautiful 11km route in small lanes and tracks that crosses the base of Ballyhourigan and Doonane and is my favourite running route (despite being tough). The earth under our feet, with Keeper Hill (Ciamalta) the Guardian Mountain always in our sights, is a soul-filled experience. I ran with Garron and then spent a while alone in the cool sun and strong breeze sitting on the fence by the wildflowers looking up at Keeper. I felt the women and children around me there in support (ancestors). I felt a man, perhaps Patrick Sarsfield or some ancestral figure and horseman. He was there close by; not too close, there to nudge my knowing and the unfolding of the land’s history. (I wrote about this route and also the history here in a blog Stunning cycle around foot of Keeper Hill, North Tipperary)

I felt a message that would challenge most to comprehend; given the call to drop fighting and war. We fight wars – around us now and in past times we fight. We seem to be always fighting; within and amongst ourselves, within countries, between nations; and then we have within and between religions, spirituality, differences of opinion. War and fighting is everywhere within our lives and surrounding us, the only thing that differs between each war is the cost of that war.

Why? For what we believe in and for whom we love: our families, our home, our lands. Something in us stirs in times of conflict. We are reminded of what matters and we feel compelled to stand our ground for what is right: the people and the land. (I could also add that for the more ridiculous and current privileged world battles that we fight to preserve our identity and our ego; out of some illogical belief that being wrong or surrendering means we lose a part of ourselves).

BUT, we are all of the land; guardians of this earth on our short passage here and the land is what gives us life. Our mother earth gifts us the energy to thrive, food, nourishment, and the tools to create homes and safety. But she is not ‘ours’, ‘yours’, or ‘anyones’.

We are a complex and beautiful symbiotic relationship: the person, the community from newborn to elder, the population, and our earth. The lands nourish us and Mother earth heals us; she is our life-line, blood-line and our medicine. We are supposed to respect and protect her. Many of us here feel she is as critical to our health and well-being as our beating hearts, and she is.

We beat as one.

War is the reminder about how much this means to us, that in truth we own nothing here, we are gifted this life-time on planet earth and it is all of ours to share – responsibly, sustainably, fairly…..we should be fighting together to preserve our home ‘earth’.; and this will take some leaps in everyone’s consciousness. 

Hawthorn is the tree of our lands: our connection, our umbilical cord to Mother Earth and all the passage of time. Is it any surprise then that in herbal medicine hawthorn is the plant of our cardiovascular system; our beating hearts, the blood in our veins and its whole network bringing nourishment, oxygen and the substance of our being to all the cells in our body. Hawthorn perhaps is the heartbeat of our landscape and a connection between Mother Earth and humankind (for us Celts).

Hawthorn is a tree that deserves much respect in how she is used. She is powerful, she opens doorways much as the ventricles in our hearts allow the passage of blood and hence life. Hawthorn allows us to travel when we are responsible and mature enough to use her respectfully to do so.

Here are my transcribed notes for Hawthorn taken from this recording.

“I have just taken Hawthorn remedy. I think (that) it is the 19th May 2017. It’s a calm feeling tree. The Hawthorn is taken from the hawthorn in our garden; it has red blossoms. I have two birdseed feeders hanging from it. The birds love that tree. To me it symbolises nourishment, safety.

I keep seeing a hand stretching out towards me. It’s almost to say welcome but I feel like it’s pulling me through as well to another side. I’ve seen this in my mind for a few days now, this door almost like an arch through (secret) gardens, from one to the next. I’ve been taking hawthorn the last few nights to connect with her so now I am seeing a hand; it’s an old hand, neither female nor male, but old. There is wisdom (in this hand) as it connects with my hand and pulls me through.

So I’m looking through this arch, and I just see light. It’s like it’s just a place of wisdom, purity, knowing, past and future. There are spirits (there) and they are welcoming me home.

Oh I feel like I can breathe, my heart is expanding and everything around me is white. It’s peaceful, it’s still, it’s calm, it’s comfort and I’m in my heart and not my mind. For some it may feel a little unfamiliar, unknown, uncertain, but it’s actually where everything is certain. Just because there isn’t a million miles of thoughts flying around your head does not mean that you do not know it. That’s the beauty of growth; you learn to be at peace and when you are at peace it doesn’t mean that everything else is falling apart. It just means that you are right here in the now where you are meant to be. You KNOW, and the thoughts will come as they are needed. But they are not going around and around like a race-track of thoughts and worries and backwards and forwards. No one can function with thoughts flying around that fast in their head.

This feels calm 

I feel it over my sternum which is the true seat of the heart chakra. But it seems also to connect to the lungs and breathing. The whole cardiovascular system of nourishment: air in, love in, food in; everything is assimilating (and absorbing) in the body and being transported around through oxygen in the blood. Wisdom (is carried too). There is acceptance; acceptance within the body. It is not a fight. It’s a place of being able to accept new ways, new thoughts, new knowledge and assimilate it (in essence an integration of new ways).

“I am not allergic to the world.
I am not allergic to life.
I’m not allergic to food.
I trust my body to do its job to take in that which is needed, and to push aside that which is not of nourishment.”

It’s almost like a selective detoxification, not letting in that which is not necessary, or wanted or good, and that can apply to so much (in our lives!).  Not only food, but our thoughts; what really matters in life, that is what is left.

It feels like an opening of the heart chakra, like red balloons, they are bubbling open. It is a lovely feeling. And slowly the tension in my body is letting go, the tight muscles are unravelling, and I’m breathing deeper and I feel energy flow through me. It’s a calm feeling, all in the heart; the heart knows.

Out walking today there was many hawthorns in the hedge and it’s funny I always saw them as whitethorn (and the trees in the fields as hawthorn), when whitethorn and hawthorn are one and the same; they are everywhere!

The tree of our lands, our home, our hearts. It is not a fancy tree. But the Irish aren’t fancy people. We are of the earth, we are not happy because the way we are living our lives right now has taken us away from the earth and we are nothing without that connection. We need our feet on the ground, our hands in the earth, our heart beating to wake with the birdsong and to return home with the crows (at night). To be at one with the weather, to feel the wind, to make good of the earth, to grow, to plant, to harvest, to walk, to hike, to explore. It’s in our bones, it’s in our nature; to walk the boundary. We are not happy cooped up in offices or buildings no matter how high-flying it may be; part of our soul is not alive.

 

Hawthorn draws your heart home. Connects you back to the land. You start to see things, notice things; the birds, the flowers; you remember their names. The trees; you recognise them by shape, leaf, by season. You’ll taste the wind, you’ll feel the rain as it draws close by that dip in temperature as it cools into your bones. You’ll connect to that wisdom of old weather patterns, landscapes.

Get back to the earth, take your shoes off, put your feet in the soil, dip your toes in the mountain streams. Drink the water; it’s probably why we battle Irish Water so much because we feel that it is the very blood in our bodies; who has a right to charge us for that? (but sometimes we have to pay for things to be better, for us and our environment). 

Hawthorn – resilient; resilient tree in all the elements.

Stand your ground. Choose your battles.

Become ONE and connect.

Thank you Hawthorn,
Andrea

PS this is a local hawthorn close to Killoscully with my now-passed on best friend Millie.

Does Hawthorn resonate with you?

Hawthorn is a wonderful remedy, and she also is powerful. If you are drawn to take Hawthorn please do contact me to either chat in person or for me to send you some. I am excited to share this one and grateful that she spoke of her healing so clearly.

Some helpful links, resources and ramblings

Hawthorn is a magical tree; here is the card from my”The Green Man Tree Oracle” which is available to buy on Amazon.co.uk

Green Man Wisdom:

Challenge opens the way before us.

Challenge does not always have to be threatening – it can also invite us to explore new territory, to test our strength and abilities to the limits.

 

Wherever fear is present, power is possible: one small change of approach and attitude can transmute fear into power, inability into ability, and uncertainty into daring. Your challenge need be no more than simply admitting to yourself that your life is in a rut, and accepting the possibility of change, of finding a new path and new goals. This card (hawthorn) encourages you to look more closely at your circumstances, to discover where the challenges lie for you, and then to move forward to face them with as much courage and wisdom as you can muster.

The Green man Tree Oracle is a beautiful book and card deck.

This is interesting about old traditions and beliefs associated with hawthorn: Folklore-of-hedgerow-part-five by Tony Locke

And here a link to read more about Hawthorn from thetreegoddess.com. Not all of these interpretations resonate with me; and this is just as it should be. We all have a slightly different interpretation and what matter’s is, does Hawthorn call to you. I think that the brief given in OGHAM The Celtic Oracle by Peter Pracownik and Andy Baggott calls to me the loudest along with that of the Green Man Tree oracle. At times our words are strikingly similar and in agreement with my own channelling of the healing gifts of this special tree. Perhaps WHERE the tree is from, what country and what people’s, leads to a distinct tree language 🙂 making the remedies of our own lands important to us and not those from other places unless we are so called (which may be related to our ancestors).

I honor the energy of hawthorn for cleansing and restraint.

I will choose what I place within my body, and empty myself of all that violates my personal well-being.

So mote it be

 

Hawthorn is a very useful plant in herbal medicine and in the kitchen. I recommend that you always seek expert advice from a herbalist before using herbal strength hawthorn formulations. (My remedies are ‘energy’ remedies; not herbal formulations).

Hawthorn Berry Benefits

Hawthorn mythology and folklore

Hawthorn Harvest

And just to be sure you know your haw from your sloe: Discover the difference between blackthorn and hawthorn