Curious Ideas..... that can help you get ahead!

One of the first things I discovered by talking to our tree friends was that, unlike us, they are Group Entities with what appears to be a host of separate bodies.

When we look at a ‘ tree’, we are in fact, only looking at a single tree, in a group of trees, that form the physical body, attached to a ‘ Tree Spirit.’

In this picture, you think you are looking at a lot of Hornbeam Trees, in a wood. But, in truth, we are looking at less than one percent of the huge group of trees that form the touchable body of a ‘Hornbeam Tree Spirit.’

If you touch any one of these trees, all the trees in the group will feel your hand, as they are all one and the same entity.

If, for example, a small boy were to kick a tree as he enters a wood, all the trees in the group would feel the blow and shout "Ouch!" and all the other trees, for about ten miles in any direction, would be saying to it’s neighbour, "Watch that boy, he kicks trees!"
The word can get around, causing consternation, faster that a wasp at a picnic.
So be careful what you do.

On the other hand, if you walk into a wood, with a smile and a word of greeting to the first trees, you’ll find all the other trees will be greeting you with smiles from then on.

A wood may look to be full of trees, but there may only be a comparatively small number of Tree Spirits, with huge groups, living in that same wood.

A bit like ‘ Set Theory’ mathematics, a Tree Group can be as small as one or large as countless thousands.
And the trees within the Tree Group will be of all ages from, this years seedling, up to forest giants, many centuries old.
So counting them is an extremely difficult job.

It is also interesting to note that, the longer a Tree Group resides in an area, the bigger the group becomes.

Many of our local groups have been here for well over fifty thousand years, and are still growing.

More to come….

Labels: Talking to Trees, Tree Groups, Tree Spirits, Tree Truths

Last time we talked about our local forest of Andredsweald.

This time we'd like to tell you about the new words that came about when the Anglo-Saxon invaders divided England up into Counties.

In the process, the 'Weald' became part of three different counties (known in later Saxon times as the 'Holme Counties').

'Kent' was 'Over-the-Hills' to the North and East', with 'Sussex' 'Over-the-Hills' to the South and West and 'Surrey' over in the North West. The actual weald, (already half denuded of its trees) had taken on a rural garden aspect, and became known as 'Holmesdale'.

The hills that form the northern and southern boundaries of the modern Weald are in fact known as the North and South 'Downs'. Their tops or crests are called 'headlands'; their slopes are called 'hills' and the valleys between them are referred to as 'bottoms'. These names sound quite sensible, but where the name 'Downs' came from, there's no oficial answer.

Maybe it is some sort of 'English' joke?

In those days, the people living in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, considered themselves rather sophisticated. That is, apart from the 'Wild Folk' who still lived rough, deep within the forests of Holmesdale.

The remnants of the ancient forest were often referred to as the 'Wild' and their inhabitants as 'Wildmen', Wealdenmen', 'Wildershers' or 'Willocks'.

One of the tribes, the extremely hairy ‘Woodwoses’, are remembered as the ‘Hairy-foot Hobbits’ in Tolkin’s books.

The rest of England was referred to as 'The Shires' and their inhabitants were looked down on as foreigners or 'furriners'.

In fact anybody who wasn't born, on the Chalk, in this rather elite, south-east corner of England was considered a foreigner, for at least the first twenty-five years of his or her residency.

If they spoke any other language, than Anglo-Saxon or Old English, they were called 'Frenchies' irrespective of what country they came from.

Incidentally, the Romeo British and Celtic people who were forced to live in the mountain fastnesses of Wales, as a result of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion; were now referred to a 'Welsh' which means 'Foreigner' in the old tongue of these isles.

Likewise, the 'Walnut' is the Foreign Nut because it was first introduced to England by our Roman Invaders.

The famous British author, Mr J.R.R.Tolkien, (another person with a BackBrain full of memories like us), as woven a lot of his folk memories into his stories about Middle Earth.

Including 'The Shires' and 'Silver Haired Elves' like us.

For further information on Tolkien's stories, just click on this link:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirecthome/practichelpforgo
then put his name in the search box and click 'Go!'

At first, all my conversations with the ancient trees that were so beloved to my father ( Dusty Miller 12th ); were only what you could describe as ‘ small talk’ or ‘ polite conversation’, as after all, I was only a small boy.

After a few years of this, my father felt that I was growing up quick and introduced me to the sophisticated picture language that our tree friends use for ‘ serious instruction’.

This involved the deliberate use of my RightBrain, to mentally project and receive, moving visual images, as an internal teaching aid.

This difficult to explain; it is like having a computer screen in your head. Trees don’t have names like us; but they can tell us who they are, by projecting a picture onto the screen.

For example: One of my tree friends will show me a panoramic view of a local hillside, with all the Yew Trees in sharp relief and all the other trees slightly out of focus.
I will look at the scene, recognise the wood and trees, and know it is the Yew Tree Spirit centred in West Hoath Wood.

So their name is in fact a visual picture, not a sound or word.

I didn’t appreciate it at first, but soon I began to realise that I was now talking to the ‘ Higher Self ' of the ancient tree group, rather than a physical tree itself.

I’d passed my initiation into the Neurosomatic Circuit and my own Higher Self was calling the shots.

As an Hereditary Witch I’d come of age.

So we had a family party to celebrate, and I grew my moustache.
It looked a bit stupid on a thirteen year old, but I liked it.

More to come, soon….

As we ( The Dusty Millers ) are the modern descendants of an extremely ancient tribe of Wealdenfolc (Wild Woodfolk) from the area known today as 'The High Weald of Kent and Sussex'; we thought we'd try and keep alive, some of the words that were common in my father's day, but are sadly getting forgotten from lack of use, in modern English.

We hope that this item will prove to be popular with our readers, as we have so many words that we would like to tell you about, that we could go on for many years.

The 'Weald' of Kent and Sussex, mentioned above, was originally 'Andredsweald, the Home of the Goddess'.

It was the Dwarfish invaders in the so-called 'Bronze Age' who named it after their Earth Mother Goddess, Andred.

We were living there long before they came, but we didn't know about giving places proper names, so we just referred to it as our WildWood Homelands.

Later, in the Iron Age, the Celts, called The Earth Mother Goddess, Tann.
Which is probably where the German word 'Tannenbaum' comes from.

Later still, she was called Saint Anne, when she was converted to Christianity.

The word 'Weald' means a natural self-seeded forest, that is so old it was there long before mankind found it. In this case at least 50,000 years!

Sometimes it is referred to as a The WildWood, GreenWood or TangleWood, due to its thick undergrowth and lack of paths.

In Celtic times it was home to lots of aboriginal tribes like us, who were forced to live out of sight and outside the law, and were considered no better than animals, by the Celtic invaders and their descendants.

Later, when we used to attack travellers (rather like Robin Hood in Sherwood) as our way of getting revenge; the Celts made a lawforbidding travellers from 'leaving the path'.

This sage advice of 'Don't Leave The Path' has been handed downover the centuries and even today, you still find the instruction 'When in the Woods, don't, whatever you do, leave the Path!'

More old words will be featured in future postings on this subject; so stay tuned.