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As so many of us are city dwellers now, lots of people may know the graceful Rowan tree, because it is a favourite choice of the municipal authorities to plant along streets and to enhance odd small areas of grass in the town. Such a choice is easy to understand. Its light, feathery leaves allow plenty of light to reach the grass below and the windows of nearby houses. It seldom loses any branches in a storm, will grow in any soil and won’t shed lorry loads full of leaves in the autumn. This means that maintenance is low and complaints of disgruntled house-holders are minimal. Meanwhile Rowan provides an uplifting, joyous presence with its large creamy cymes of blossom in May, its trusses of orange fruit in the late summer and its ruddy golden leaves in the autumn.
Some of the
trees in urban parks and streets are our native Rowan, although many may also be
a fastigiate narrow variety (S. aucuparia 'Fastigiata') or ornamental
Chinese and Japanese varieties. Our elegant native Rowan is perfectly
at home in just about the wildest, most inhospitable places in Europe. And what
is more: It has a reputation as one of the most potent magical trees with a
history that would leave many a larger tree in its shadow. This is the species
that the ancient Celts called Fid nan druad, the wizard’s tree......
This was the tree the mighty Celtic Druids turned to in times of trouble with
incantations and other magic methods. For Rowan would help them to attune to the
universal spirit of life, beauty, creativity and strength.
The Rowan has been known to attain a height of about 60 feet (20 m) a girth of about 2.5 m diameter, although it usually not quite as tall. It can reach an age of about 200 years. The branches reach out like arms to the sky and the smooth grey bark has characteristic short horizontal splits. In old trees the bark becomes rough and wizened.
The
ancient Celtic clans called her affectionately “The Lady of the Mountain”,
for Rowan can grow higher than most deciduous trees, save the odd Juniper on
calcareous ground and dwarf willows on the wet boggy mountain moors.
The outstanding feature of Rowan is that it is the pioneer tree par excellence
on all higher ground, whether it is a dry alkaline rocky outcrop or the very
poor acid soils of the high moors, up to a height of 3200 feet (975m). Rowan can
also be found in hedgerows, along roads, on old walls and buildings (for it was
widely planted as a guardian tree near lonely farmsteads).
The trees are usually found as single specimens, although there are a few pure Rowan woods left in the North of Scotland, for example in the National Nature Reserve at Inverpolly.
Rowan was planted often as a nurse-tree in coppices to shield the new saplings with some moderate shade, only to be outgrown by the little ones she helped to raise and fade away under their lush canopy for want of bright light. Rowan grows throughout Europe, but particularly in the North and in high hill and mountain regions. These tend to be areas with high rainfall and infertile soil. To the highland Celts of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as well as to the people of the Lake District, she was therefore their Tree of Life.They perceived how their Lady of the Mountain wakes up the dormant life-force, locked up in these bleak lonely lands and inspires the landscape with the strength and beauty of her form and spirit.
She
takes the patient groundwork of the heathers and mosses one step further by
rooting firmly in the ground, withstanding the bitter gales, helping to prevent
erosion, managing excess water and preparing the conditions for a wider variety
of life to blossom in the high glens and on the empty hillsides.
And just as Rowan inspired the bare hillsides and the empty edges of the
mountain stream to cloth themselves with new life, so she is said to have given
highlanders the inspiration for the weaving of their famous tartan cloth.
Seeing a Rowan tree in its full glory with its lovely feathery green crown,
softly speckled with patches of red fruits, makes this a most believable story.
The Lady of the Mountain has been honoured with many names: Quicken (because she wakes dormant life), Quick-beam (beam is Angel-Saxon for tree), the Sorb apple, The Witch, The Wichen or Wiggan Tree, Cock-drunks (her fruits were thought to intoxicate birds), Fowler’s Service Tree, Luisiu (old Celtic for ‘flame’), Cares (Cornwall & Devon), many poetic nicknames such as ‘Delight of the Eye’ (Morann Mac Main’s Ogham in the old Irish Book of Ballymote). The Celtic names are: Caorann (Scottish Gaelic), Caorthann (Irish), Cerdinen (Welsh), Kerdhinenn (Cornish), Keirn (Manx).
However, her most common name after ‘Rowan’ is ‘Mountain Ash’. This is because her leaves resemble those of the much larger Ash tree so closely. Both are ‘compound’ leaves, which means that the pairs of small leaflets(plus the single one at the tip) are in fact part of a large leaf. What appears to be the ‘twiglet’ holding them all together, is in reality the midvein of the large leaf. This arrangement allows maximum access of light throughout the crown of the tree and it is an extreme version of lobed leaves, such as we find on the maple or the oak.
Knowing
this, it becomes easy to tell the difference between Ash and Rowan, even if
there are no blossoms or other tell-tale signs. The large Ash compound leaves
occur opposite each other on the branch, whereas the Rowan leaves are attached
singly in a spiral arrangement around the branch. On closer inspection many
other differences can be found. The Rowan tends to have more pairs of ‘leaflets’,
typically about 7, whereas the Ash usually has only about 4 pairs. The Ash
leaflets have a sharper point at their tips, the Rowan leaflets have slightly
sharper ‘teeth’ around their edges, etc. etc.
Inspite of the superficial similarities between Ash- and Rowan leaves, the two
trees belong to entirely different plant families. Rowan belongs to the large
Rose family (Rosaceae) along with many other small trees such as Apple, Pear,
Hawthorn, White Beam and Wild Service Tree. So it may have been more
appropriate to call it Mountain Rose, rather than Mountain Ash. Its scientific
name used to be Pyrus (=Pear) aucuparia, but it has been reclassified as Sorbus
aucuparia. The word ‘Aucuparia comes from the Latin and means ‘fowler’,
i.e. a catcher of fowls.
The orange-red berries (which are really little ‘pommes’) are immensely attractive to birds and were once widely used as bait in bird traps. The fruits can be quite numerous. They form from cymes of flowers, containing up to 200 little five-petalled flowers, each of which has the potential to grow into a pomme. Each of the small fruits bears the magical sign of the pentagram at the opposite end of the stalk.
Nobody knows where the name ‘Rowan’ actually originated, but some suggestions are that the invading Vikings introduced it and that it may be related to the Norse ‘runa’, since the Norsemen preferentially to carved the magical Runic alphabet in Rowan wood. Other say the name may be related to an old Scandinavian word for ‘red’, alluding to the berries.
The
evidence of the magical reputation of Rowan in folklore is impressive. The use
of Rowan by the upland Celts and the Nordic people is equivalent to the Chinese
science of Feng Shui, which aims to bring good fortune by harmonising chaotic
energies. Rowan fulfills this function. It repels negative influences, because
its strength and beauty derive from a complete attunement with the life-force on
its deepest primordial level.
Thus is was widely planted near houses as a protector. A piece of Rowan wood
inscribed with runes or other magic signs over the door of the house, or simply
a Rowan branch nailed over the door was believed to prevent any evil spirits
from entering the house. People often depended for their survival on their
cattle and the milk it gave them. Strathspey farmers drove animals through
Rowan hoops to ensure their health. Rowan wood was also kept in the barns,
around the milk pails and churns. In Norway, bark-shavings were fed in the
winter to the cattle on a regular basis.
If
people had to venture away from home, they would carry a sprig of Rowan on
their person or sew it into their clothes. Sometimes two small sticks tied
together with a red piece of cloth in the form of a cross would serve the same
purpose
People had faith that Rowan would protect them from lightning striking and bad
spells being put upon them. The Vikings and Celtic fishermen carried Rowan wood
talismen in their ships to ensure safe journeys.
The Druids used Rowan extensively in their magic to ensure good fortune for their clans and it was common practice for Rowans to be planted near the ancient Stone Circles, a fact which John Lightfoot notes in his Flora Scotia (1777). People working with horses often kept a Rowan switch, as this was believed to be the ultimate means to control horses suffering from evil enchantment. Rowans were planted in churchyards, especially in Wales, to keep away demons who might disturb the peaceful sleep of the dead. In Ireland it was believed, that a restless spirit of a deceased human, for example after an untimely death, could be spared the fate of being a wandering ghost by staking the corpse with a rowan branch, ideally bearing red berries.
Rowan also had an unequaled reputation as an oracular tree, because it helps to open our ’third eye’. Druids utilised Rowan groves and Rowan wood to attune themselves to the larger reality beyond our ordinary consciousness, where All is One and all can be known.
Northern Europe was not the only place where Rowan was held in high regard.
Greek myth tells a story of the origin of the Rowan tree. Hera and Zeus had a daughter, called Hebe, Goddess of youth. Hebe had the power to make the old young again. Her task on Mount Olympus was to be the cupbearer to the Gods. Every day she filled their cups with sweet nectar, thus ensuring their immortality. One day, when she was inattentive, demons stole the cup of her father, the supreme Zeus. An eagle was send out to retrieve the precious object and this resulted in a terrible battle between the eagle and the demons. A Rowan tree grew where ever a drop of the eagle’s blood and one of its feathers fell. And this is why the Rowan has feathery leaves and red berries, like a drop of blood.
In Scandinavian myth, another thunder God owns his life directly to the Rowan. Thor was swept away in a wild, raging river, but with the help of a Rowan, which leaned over the water,, he managed to struggle back to dry land. Maybe these mythical connections between Rowan and thunder Gods such as Zeus and Thor explain, why the people felt, that Rowan gave protection against lightening.
In Irish legends, which are full of magic and deep hidden meaning, we hear about a magical Rowan Tree, guarded by a dragon, whose berries had the sustaining virtue of nine meals. They also healed the wounded and added a year to a man’s life!
Just
as a Hazel rod was the traditional tool to find underground water, a V-shaped
Rowan branch is the traditional tool for locating metal ores. It may be that the
wood was chosen, because of Rowan’s affinity with rocky places, which is
likely to be the slumbering place of great mineral wealth.
But Rowan’s spirit of attuning to the infinite potential of the life force,
even though it can not as yet be seen by our ordinary eyes, must have played a
role too. It is as well to remind ourselves that we are dealing here with a
science/ technology/ art, which is based on different premises than the
science/technology on which our modern metal detectors are founded! In the
esoteric sciences, metals are seen as the solid manifestations of cosmic
coherent energy, or in plain language: emotional binding power. The strength of
metal is caused by its miraculous property of being a solid with bonds like a
liquid, which makes it immensely strong and versatile. The metals were thought
of as the physical manifestations of the (sexual) bonding instinct within the
life-force, in its various facets. This theory goes well beyond folklore and
superstition and is in fact the product of research, contemplation and insights
by some of the finest human minds in history. Paracelsus, Newton and Jung are
examples of people, who, each in their own time, reached this conclusion.
In
this context we must also mention the tradition of Alchemy, which laid the
foundation for much of our modern chemistry and physics. Over hundreds of years,
Alchemists have been involved in a quest to transmute base metals into gold.
This was not merely a physical ambition, but also a spiritual challenge. It was
a quest to transform the desires and lusts of the flesh (base metals) into the
perfection of unconditional love and harmony (gold). It was a journey of the
Soul’s progress in transmuting ordinary human needs and selfishness into
divine intelligence and compassion.
Our quest here is to catch a glimpse of the spirit of the Rowan tree. It seems
that our upland ancestors perceived the Rowan Tree as a spirit with a special
talent to tune into various metals and also the ability for harmonising their
vibrations. The source of all the fantastic stories about Rowan’s healing
power and its benevolent influence, may have its roots on this deep level.
Rowan has a strong, flexible, yellow-grey wood, which was once widely used for making tool handles, small carved objects, plough-pins, pegs for tethering animals, cartwheels,, poles, hoops for barrels, churn staves, tackle for watermills, rough basketwork, etc. If large enough it provided excellent planks and beams. It was used by the hill people to make long bows, instead of the yew and ash so often used by lowland people for this purpose. Due to its habit of quick growth, the tree makes excellent coppices. Rowan was also used for great variety of magical purposes: wands, magical spears, talisman inscribed with runes and other meaningful patterns, etc. All parts of the tree were used for tanning hides and for dyeing cloth black.
Birds
absolutely love Rowanberries and this has often been their downfall. Many
species such as blackbirds, trushes, bullfinches, waxwings, redwings and
fieldfares have been baited by them. The flowers offer food for a wide range of
pollinating insects: beetles, flies, moths, wasps and bees. Rowan supports only
a few leaf eating insects, but snails and all grazing animals find the tree very
palatable.
Inspite of controversy about its safety for human consumption (most likely
related to the seed, which may contain traces of prussic acid, so avoid eating
the seeds in quantity), the berries have been used extensively as a human food
source. In Northern Europe they were dried and ground up as flour. Their bitter
taste can be improved by an 8-12 hour soak in a weak solution of vinegar, or
they may be boiled and the water thrown away. The berries can be used for
jellies, jams, syrups, soups, ale, cider, perry, wine or liqueur. A
marmalade-like Rowan berry jelly was very popular for eating with fowl or game.
Cultivated sweet-fruited varieties make lovely compotes, syrups and conserves.
The
main dietary contribution of Rowan berries to the Nordic people was the high
vitamin C (ascorbic acid) content of the fruit. For this reason Rowan berry
syrups and jellies were made in many rural homes and Vitamin. C was at one
time also extracted commercially from the fruits.
The pommes contain tartaric acid before and citric and malic acid after
ripening, parasorbinic acid, sugars (esp. sorbose), small amount of pectin, a
carotenoid, Vitamin. C, tannins and a bitter, acrid principle. The seeds contain
22 % of a fixed oil, which may contain prussic acid.
Sorbose has been has been used by doctors to reduce the high pressure in the
eyeball in glaucoma. Sorbose has also been used as a sweetener for diabetics.
The medicinal properties of the berries are: General health-promoting tonic; Mild laxative; Tones tissues and reduces secretions and discharges; Increases secretion and elimination of urine; Stimulates menstrual discharges.
The fresh juice or compote was used as a gargle for hoarseness, sore throat and inflamed tonsils,. It was also used in scurvy, against constipation, to alleviate menstrual pain, as a tonic in rheumatic conditions and as an aid in kidney disorders. A strong infusion of the berries was used for haemorrhoids and also in painful urination. The jam (cook fruit with half as much sugar as berries) was used 1 teaspoon every two hours for mild diarrhoea.
A decoction of the bark can also be used in diarrhoea. The same decoction can also be utilised as a vaginal douche in leucorrhoea.
The dried flowers were used as a tonic herbal tea.
Rowan is the second vowel in the ancient Druidic Beth-Luis-Nion Tree Alphabet, which is L for Luis, meaning Flame, one of her old names, alluding to her fruit and her fiery spirit.
Rowan
owns the second month of the Celtic Tree Calendar (Jan.21 - Feb. 17).
This time of year embodies the essence of Rowan: Inspite of the harshness of the
season, the life-force is quickening. It may still be very cold, it may be
pouring down with rain and sleet, but something is stirring.
The days are slowly beginning to lengthen. Nature is attuning itself for another
burst of life. It is harmonising the chaotic energies, resulting of the decay,
which winter brought. There is an untouched newness in the air, delicate but
with great inward strength. The soft power is stirring, waking everything up.
There are catkins on the trees and the first snowdrops are pushing their leaves
through the old grass.
On the 12th day of the Rowan month (Feb.1st) begins the first of the four Celtic cross-quarter festivals, called Imbolc (The others are Beltane which is the May-feast; Lammas, which is the festival celebrating the maturity of the summer; and Halloween, the festival of the two worlds touching. Together with the winter and summer solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes, these festivals form the eight spokes of the wheel of the Year).
Imbolc
celebrates the life force waking up from its winter slumber. Other names for it
are: The festival of the stirring of the seed, the feast of the waxing light,
Candlemas (Christianised version), Groundhog day (USA), or simply Brigid, after
the Celtic Goddess to whom this feast was dedicated.
Brigid (or Brigantia in England) is the Celtic Goddess of Spring in its widest
sense, as the renewing energy of Nature, which explains the wide range of powers
attributed to her. She was a fire goddess, as well as patroness of wells and
springs. She was the Goddess of Healing, Crafts, Poetry and Divine inspiration.
To the Celts of the hills, the Rowan tree embodied her spirit and it is
appropriate that her festival should fall in the Rowan month
Brigid
was one of the most influential Goddesses of the Celtic world and much beloved
by her people. Whenever a woman, gets married, she becomes ‘the Bride’, the
personification of the Goddess, birthgiver of life. With the event of
Christianity, the reverence for her survived, both as Bride, the mother of St.
Patrick and as St.Brigit, whom Irish legend, believed to be Mary’ s midwife
and Jesus’ wetnurse and as such she was worshipped as ‘Mary, Queen of Heaven’.
A perpetual fire is kept for St. Brigit in Kildare.
Brigid’s festival in the Rowan month celebrates the magic of new fire and the
germinating life force. It nurtures inspiration, creativity and healing.
Traditionally fires or candles are lit at midnight and people attune to the
stirrings deep inside themselves. It is a good time to see visions of yourself
reborn.
Similar
festivals were held at this time all over Europe. The Romans celebrated a
festival in honour of Juno Februata on the 1st of February. She was the Goddess
who engendered the ‘fever’ (febris in Latin) of love and the month was named
after her. This is the origin of Valentine’s day.
Part of the tradition of celebrating the festivals is people’s desire to ‘help’
(our) Nature with a kind of sympathetic magic. The wild Carnivals held on the
continent in February, were meant to aid the ‘cracking of the seed’, so it
can germinate. After this follows a period of lean living or fasting (lent),
which -amongst other things- symbolises the new seedling only living on water
and its own reserves, until its roots and leaves grow large enough to feed on
the soil and the sun.
Shrove Tuesday has a similar meaning. Using up the last riches of the winter
store before the spring-fast, may be seen as a mild version of the wild party
that helps to crack the seed.
The
Rowan tree was closely associated with Dragon energies.
Dragons were always an important part of ancient Celtic culture and even today,
we find the Red Dragon on the National Flag of Wales. The Celts regarded Dragons
as allies, rather than as threatening monsters. This is because the Dragon is a
poetic representation of the primal life-force. Dragons traditionally guard
great treasure, which is our evolutionary and sub-conscious wealth; all the
collective experience of everything that ever has been, as well as endless
further potential. Like the life-force itself, the Dragon is virtually
indestructible. If you cut off its head, it grows seven in its place.. The only
place, where you can wound a Dragon is in its heart, which is never armoured
like the rest of its strong body. This is a poetical way of stating that its
heart is always open and therefore vulnerable. The Dragon is at home in all the
elements, like life itself: It sleeps in the earth, it can fly in the air, it
can live at the bottom of deep waters. Fire does not destroy a Dragon, because
fire is the basis of many of the transformative processes in life, such as
metabolism.
In fact, the Dragon often exhales fire, signifying that the inner core of the
life-force is based on one thing changing into another.
Myths and legends about Gods (e.g. Appollo) or knights killing Dragons or great serpents allude to the great struggle that can occur between our instinctive, sub-conscious life-force and our ‘civilised’ rationally trained mind, the quest to replace the unruly, wild Dragon with orderly ‘rational’ power. However, by wounding and repressing the life-force, we must inevitably wound and repress our own being.
It
is difficult to gain access to the Dragon’s immense treasures, by approaching
it with straight, abstract, rational language, but that does not mean that
communication is impossible. The Dragon talks to us in poetry, music, dance,
meditation, in visions, in our emotions and in so-called alternative states of
consciousness, including dreaming.
Knowing this helps us to understand how our Celtic ancestors could talk in
poetry and legend about such things as the great magic Rowan Tree of Dubhous,
which had fruits that could heal the wounded and was guarded by a mighty Dragon.
Or how they could talk straight-faced about Rowan trees being a balm to the
land, because it heals the wounded Dragons living there. It also helps us to see
how Dragon energy and the Spirit of Rowan were easily interchange-able in the
Celtic mind.
Rowan grows from- and in turn nurtures the great sleeping dragons, which symbolises the life-force of the land. It has a special affinity for the bleak high grounds where it thrives on plenty of air and light and brings birdsong, beauty and inspiration.
In the Scottish highlands, many thousands of native people were forced to leave the land of their birth by the landowners, who had figured out that keeping sheep would be more profitable to their purses than ‘keeping crofters. In this cruel tragedy of the Highland clearings, the introduction of millions of sheep also caused yet another blow to the natural habitat in these great wild lands. Many people perished as a result of the clearings and so did much of the remaining natural tree cover. The sheep are not to blame, for it is the ancient story of the young ambitious knight fighting the Old Dragon again.
It
is a moving experience to enter the awe-some valley of Glencoe and encountering
the odd solitary Rowan tree flourishing on a stony outcrop, where the sheep have
not been able to munch at it. When we behold these trees, we experience the
truth of our ancestor’s observations regarding the nature of the Rowan Spirit.
Solitary these trees may be, but in summer they radiate a strength and a glory
far beyond their slender physical being. They are a tangible beacon of the vast
life-force to which they are so closely attuned.
Rowan has a treasure hoard of secrets to tell to those who will listen with an open heart...
Dragonfire tree, Luis, flame of love, delight of the eye, Rowan tree, we honour thee!
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