Pioneering with Birch

March 13, 2024March 13, 20242 Comments

Birch. From the Proto-European bhereg ‘to shine, bright, white.’ Bedwen in Welsh. Beithe in Irish. The first letter in the ogham alphabet. I haven’t been drawn to working with ogham much but the associations between birch and new beginnings have long resonated for birch is a pioneer tree. Always the first to colonise new ground, leading the way for other trees, larger woods.

There’s a particular narrow strip of birch wood I like to visit, on the side of an old tram road, next to what was once a gas works, now a new housing estate. In spite of this the trees seem to dance. It’s a place where unique fungi associated with birch can be found such as birch polypore and fly agaric.

I made a new beginning this year and am prompted for aid to turn to birch. I’m drawn to a forked birch whose twin trunks remind me of the two things I’ve been inspired to bring together this year: flowers and feathers, horticulture and shamanic healing, grounding and soul flight.

I spend some talking and listening with the birch and am shown a vision of the wind blowing birch catkins into the future and told that I must ‘dream on.’

Dream on, dream on… I realise I must dream bigger… that these two aims must serve my larger dream of becoming a nun of Annwn – a guide of souls.

Following a session with my spiritual mentor overnight I’m gifted the idea of soul guidance one-to-ones then, in divination, the butterfly image for it.

On the new moon I make the launch and pray to birch for aid chanting her name. In vision I become one with her, beautiful, strong, ready for the sap to flow.

In this month’s Way of the Buzzard Mystery School journey circle the topic is ‘preparing new ground’ and we are working with birch, rowan or alder. The birch calls to me again and I receive some transfomative insights – ‘a nun of Annwn is a pioneer species’. I must ‘prepare new ground for others’, for ‘a new woodland’, ‘move forward’, ‘root deep’, and ‘not turn back’.

I realise it’s time to step fully into my role as a nun of Annwn. Rather than returning to a secular job and remaining stuck as Lorna Smithers to give myself fully to my calling from the Gods and put everything into becoming Sister Patience. To making the Monastery of Annwn a reality both online and in the physical world.*

Pioneering with birch I have begun using my monastic name for all communications aside from financial and legal. Most of my community know now – there is no turning back.

*This has become possible because my mum has offered to help me out financially if I run out of savings before finishing my shamanic healing course in three years time. I was hoping to find paid work in horticulture but ran into the same barriers for a horticultural project officer job as for conservation due to the limitations with my autism around people management and multitasking. I also realised a physical job in a plant nursery or as a gardener would not last due to my knee problems as I can’t kneel for long and at forty-two am not getting any younger. I was thinking about cleaning again but knew longterm it would have a negative impact on my mental heath. So I asked my mum for help and she agreed rather than see me stressed again. I will be continuing to volunteer in horticulture as a way of giving back to land and community.

Birch’s Armour

January 8, 20196 Comments

birch's armour v

In ‘The Battle of the Trees’ in The Book of Taliesin we find the following lines about birch putting on armour:

Birch, despite his great intention,
was slow to put on armour,
not because of his cowardice,
but rather because of his greatness.

In this poem the magician-god, Gwydion, enchants 34 species of trees, shrubs, and plants to do battle against the ‘herbage and trees’ and monsters of Annwn.

I assumed birch’s armour was born out of poetic play until I found a passage in Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, which suggests these lines contain a deeper truth. Wohlleben speaks of how birches are pioneer trees who have developed various ways of defending themselves.

‘They grow quickly, so their trunks get thick fast, and they put on a massive layer of rough outer bark… Not only do browsers break their teeth on the tough bark, but they are also revolted by the taste of its oil-saturated fibres… The white color is because of the active ingredient betulin, its primary component. White reflects sunlight and protects the trunk from sunscald. It also guards the trunk against heating up in the warming rays of the winter sun, which could cause unprotected trees to burst… Betulin also has antiviral and antibacterial properties and is an ingredient in medicines and in many skin care products. What’s really surprising is how much betulin there is in birch bark. A tree that makes its bark primarily out of defensive compounds is a tree that is constantly on the alert… defensive armouring is being thrown up at a breakneck pace everywhere.’

Online research led me to learn that the betulin content in outer birch bark ranges from 10 – 40%. Birch bark has long been used in folk medicine. Native Americans boiled it and pounded it into an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory paste for use on ulcers, cuts, and wounds. Birch bark tar has long been utilised as an antiseptic and is an ingredient in ointments for eczema and psoriasis.

Betulin was ‘first isolated by sublimation from birch bark by Toviasom Lovitz…. In 1788.’ It has been proved to exhibit ‘antiseptic, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and other properties’ and Betulinic acid inhibits the growth of human melanoma and other cancer cells.

Could the ancient bards who passed on the poems attributed to Taliesin have known of the defensive properties of birch’s armour and how birch bark can be used to heal and protect our skin?

birch's armour iii

SOURCES

Marged Haycock (transl), Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, (CMCS, 2007)
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, (William Collins, 2017)
Robin D. Pasquale, The Medicine of The Birch Tree: Beyond Depurative, Naturopathic Doctor News and Review, (2014)
Svetlana Alekseevna Kuznetsova, ‘Extraction of betulin from birch bark and study of its physico-chemical and pharmacological properties’, Russian Journal of Bioorganic Chemistry, (2014)

Corpse Road

March 27, 2014October 22, 20143 Comments

‘Who’ll walk the corpse road back to me?’
– ‘Revenants’ Andrew O’Riordan

Where spring brings hope to downy birch
And blossoms of stars to blackthorn trees
When the hunt is still as the final frosts
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to drunks of the woods
With the pale potential of anemone
When my court dance in dew where a man lay cold
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to primrose hills
But none to vagrants on city streets
When wills clash like I do with impudent rivals
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to prison gardens
For a watchful moment the condemned walk free
When to solitary confinement comes Annwn’s darkness
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to those who can see it
Yet Victorian cells of asylums scream
When dreams of my kind are derided as madness
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings no hope and death is release
And no fusion of flowers can quench the pain
When souls are lost as my absent queen
Will you walk the corpse road back to me?

* Poem written in the voice of Gwyn ap Nudd, a British King of the dead and the fairies

Birch Wood

July 1, 2013May 23, 20144 Comments

There was a land of ash with no future.
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers
Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds

And singing do you remember, remember
The ice age and peat and lost Vindolanda,
Sentinel cities and burying oaths
Enstyled on bright birch to placate the world?

And singing do you remember, remember
The strange black peal of the blacksmith’s hammer,
Street lights of amber and echoing roads,
Cities estranged by the gathering smoke?

And singing do you remember, remember
How empire fell that fatal November,
Civilized monuments crashing to dust,
Swaying white fields and the soft song of ghosts?

Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers.
Their land was ash, with an unknown future.