A while back, I was set some 'homework' to do something with Alder, I got really immersed in it and came up with an essay and kind of presentation thing, but then never got the chance to deliver it, so I kept the information for myself.
However this week I have been reading someone else's blog and they've presented up an amount of information that really made me excited and tingly because I really understood what was going on with the journey of receiving it, so I thought, maybe i should pass that on and put my essay thing up here and share it, I'll see how it works, it was meant to be spoken and have things passed round and not just read, but I'll see how it goes.....
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I have found myself very much inspired to explore what Alder
is about, and I have enjoyed spending time on this. I found myself following
several different strands on this project, and in the end it all linked back
together again, so here is my experience with Alder.
Firstly I looked at the Fire and water aspects of Alder,
this is how we look at Alder today, holding the two opposing elements in
balance within itself. As a timber, Alder has to be used either completely bone
dry or completely immersed in water. Anything in between these two extremes
makes it virtually un-useable and it quickly rots. Immersed in water, it lasts
virtually for ever and becomes like stone so it is used in foundations laid in
water, in bridges, and indeed most of Venice is built upon Alder pilings. In
the Bronze Age, wooden strongholds called Crannochs were built on Scottish
Lochs, and the alder posts of the supporting platforms still remain.
When it is properly dried out, it gives one of the best
firewoods, but it has to be PROPERLY dried out, and it makes the best charcoal,
which because it is very fine, is used to make gunpowder.
At Imbolc, I was left with a tarot card depicting a warrior
queen holding both fire and water. This warrior queen I know very well, it is
She who holds my feminine side and is represented as the tattoo on my back. So,
I was looking for quotes about Alder, at this stage avoiding references to
Bran, and I found this, from Tree Magic by Gillian Kemp –“Alder is a symbol of
strength in battle and shows that you will win in battle. The orange/red sap is
associated with blood and war. Alder is sometimes known as The Goddess Tree and
is also called The Very Battle Witch of Trees”
As I read this, I recognised immediately that the descriptions matched Her very well,
- the Alder is special to Her, as is the
raven and other black birds. Also it is said about Alder that it contains a
door to the fairy realms within its trunk, and if they do not want to be seen,
they come and go un-noticed in the form
of crows and other black birds.
Now, this connection with the Alder struck me, because a
couple of weeks earlier I had made a shrine to her at the place where I have
felt her the strongest, and this just happens to be under an alder tree on the
river Dee and it in in the tree that I made the shrine.
Incidentally she has a roman counterpart in Minerva, who has
a shrine built by the romans , also on the banks of the Dee. Minerva is the
goddess of wisdom and is always depicted in full battle dress, with a coat of
mail, helmet and spear, but she was only worshipped as the goddess or war in
Rome itself. Her sacred plants are the
olive, mulberry and Alder, and lo and behold, her main annual festival was held between March 19 -23, the equinox, which is
also when Alder holds sway.
Which leads us on to Bran – Robert Graves says about the
battle of Achren – “In ancient times, to know the names of the enemies gods was
to be able to summon them and fight a battle of a different kind. In the battle
of Achren, there was a man on one side and a woman on the other, who unless
their names were known, could not be overcome” And he quotes –
Sure hoofed is my steed, Impelled by the spur
The high sprigs of Alder are on thy shield
Bran art thou called, of the glittering branches
Sure hoofed is my steed in the day of battle
The high sprigs of Alder are in thy hand
Bran thou art, by the branch thou bearest
Amatheon, the good, has prevailed.
This battle is taken to be a battle between trees, Bran
representing Alder and the underworld, and Gwydion representing Ash and this
world on the other. As Bran’s name is deduced from the Alder on his shield and
in his hand, he succumbs to the battle and loses, and Ash is victorious. This is
symbolic of the spring equinox, the passing from the dark half of the year to
the light half of the year. All the trees are seemingly bare, but the alder is
in full bloom with its yellow catkins. After the equinox the ash will take over
and with it, life will return to the other trees and the land will become leafy
and fully alive again.
This brings me to Bran, and Alder’s connection to him as
told in the Mabinogion, but before I do that, I want to meander again…
A couple of years ago, I spent time doing some workaround
Bran at Cader Idris, centring around one particular route to the summit, and
more importantly, the relationship of the landscape with the summit.. This
represented six months’ worth of work, so I will have to summarise and hope it
makes sense.
On the northern side of Cader Idris, in the valley, are a
set of standing stones and a lake called Llyn Gwernan. Gwern being the welsh word for Alder. Local
folklore says that this lake was inhabited by a green man who would watch
strangers climbing up the slopes of Cader Idris, and when they got near the
top, he would call in clouds and wind
and make them lose their footing and fall to their death. He would later go and
collect their bones and bring them back to be kept in the lake. Certainly, the
whole of the northern side of Cader Idris is clearly visible from this lake.
The key words that I took from this were ‘strangers’, ‘bones’ and ‘lake’ – so,
treating this ‘lake of alder trees’ as a
sacrificial lake, I spent time getting to know the spirit of the lake,
meditating on its shores, giving offerings of bone and my hair, and asking
permission to work spiritually on Cader Idris.
Now, when I look at the story of Branwen in the Mabinogion,
Branwen had a son called Gwern, he was half Irish and half welsh, representing
the union of the two opposite nations. The story says –
“As soon as they sat down, they made peace, and the boy was
invested with the kingship. When the peace had been concluded, Bran called the
boy over to come to him. From Bran, Gwern went over to Manawydan, and everyone
who saw the boy loved him. Nissyen, son of Eurosswydd called the boy to come
from Manawydan to him, and the boy went willingly. At that, Evnissyen said “Why does my nephew, the son of my sister,
not come to me?” Let him go gladly, said Bran, and Gwern went gladly. “By my
confession to god”, thought Evnissyen, “This outrage I am about to commit is
one the household would never expect”.
He rose and took Gwern by the feet, and at once, before a man in the
house could lay a hand on him, he thrust the boy headfirst into the flames.”
Now – when I looked at Gwern from the Mabinogion, I felt sure that this was representative of
some kind of sacrifice, but I couldn’t quite work it out in my head. Writing
this now, if we consider that Gwern is an Alder tree, Bran represents the land,
Manawydan represents the sea, Nissyen and Evnissyen are brothers – equal but
opposites: Light/dark, day/night, summer/winter, good/bad - we have the makings
of a ritual sacrifice of an Alder - the
joining of two opposing sides, invested with kingship, taken from the land,
immersed in the sea, removed from the sea in daylight (maybe the summer
solstice) and burned as a sacrifice in darkness (maybe the winter solstice) by
which time the timber could have dried out enough.
There was still something missing, so I researched more
-
Kundalini is life energy, most of our understanding of it
now comes from eastern tantric practice, but it is a real force in
everything/everyone that is raised through the chakras. It has a lot of similarity to the druidic
term ‘nwyfre’. At this point, I have
limited understanding of the language around this system, but I know kundalini
experientially.
My basic understanding is that the energy is represented as
a serpent coiled three and a half times around the base chakra at the bottom of
your spine. Within each person is 2 polar opposites… male/female,
light/dark… usually referred as
masculine and feminine and it is the uncoiling and raising of each of these
energies so that they intertwine and connect that raises a huge amount of
energy. It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent,
hence a number of English renderings of the term such as "serpent
power". In reiki this is symbolised
by the glyph with 3 and a half spirals and a cross bar which is pulled
backwards and forwards drawing positive and negative and it is the interplay
between the two polar opposites that creates the energy. This can also be used
between two people, not necessarily a man and a woman as their energies can be
raised sometimes in a sexual type situation, but the interplay is on a
spiritual or divine level to create a divine union or marriage which sparks off
creation. Each of us holds this within ourselves, individually it is a ‘doing’
or ‘action’ force like the adrenaline rush but once raised can be held and
channelled into a project or task.
Going back to Gwern and the ritual in the Mabinogion, what I
can see here is that it says that Branwen is kept prisoner – she is “driven from
her husband’s chamber and made to cook for the court, and not less than three
years passed thus…” So in terms of status, as well as position within the
castle, she has moved from the top, to the bottom - from queen to servant, from
the chamber at the top of the castle, to the kitchens at the bottom, and she is
there for no less than 3 spirals of the solar year. After these
3 years we have the meeting of the polar opposites – opposites contained
within the one. Branwen and Bran are re-united. Brother and sister. Gwern
himself is a union of two opposite sides – Irish and Welsh. He is passed from land to sea (two brothers),
from light to darkness(two brothers), presumably storing up kundalini energy in some way before being
burnt in the hearth fire and the energy released resulted in a battle which
destroyed all the Irish and all the welsh bar 7 people.
How can this work? Well here’s the second part of this
thread…
Looking into the use of alder as
a sacrificial substance, I found some research into Horse skulls and the use of
an ‘Alder-Horse’ as a depositional sacrifice in buildings. Although the focus
of this is in Finland, the custom also took place in elsewhere in Europe
(mainly Southern Scandinavia and the British Isles)
Deposits seem to be made at the borders of a building, and
especially at the openings, such as the door, windows and chimney and in
corners. Other contexts are in walls, under floors, in the roof constructs and
the hearth.
The horse first appears as a building deposit in Northern Europe
in the Bronze Age, but it becomes more common in the beginning of the Iron Age.
During the Iron Age there is seen a trend towards depositing only certain parts
of the horse, namely the skull together with leg bones and perhaps the tail.
Now…The “alder horse”: a folklore example from the 19th
century:
The alder-horse (in Finnish leppähevonen) is known in
folklore both in the eastern and the northern part of the country. This example
is from Kiiminki, and it has been written down in the 19th century and
published in the above-mentioned compilation of Finnish magic practices in 1933
”When a new stable is built a horse is made of alder-wood
and for it a small stable. A blanket for the horse is made from a piece of the
skirt of a woman who has recently given birth, and the eyes are painted on the
horse with the woman’s blood. Barley and quicksilver are placed in a basket and
put in front of the horse. This alder-horse and its stable are put under the
floor of the new stable to give the horses good health and luck.”
(translated by the author) (Rantasalo 1933a, p.9)
The alder-horse is an example of imitative or so-called
homeopathic magic (Frazer 1922, pp.14-43). The actual horse-deposit is replaced
by the image of a horse. One might say that this is definitely a more
economical way to make a horse-deposit than if a real horse was used.
The example is full of magic elements: firstly alder is the
preferred wood in Finnish magic, and the use of the skirt and blood of a woman
who have recently given birth is also very typical.
The folklore example continues:
”If the alder-horse is stolen and put under the thief’s
stable, the horse-luck will follow with it. If the alder-horse is knocked
upside-down, the horses in that stable will die. If the alder-horse is stolen and
the pastures are circled with it and then the alder-horse is buried upside-down
close to an ant-hill on the north-side of the pastures, the horses (of the
stable where the alder-horse was stolen from) die at those pastures and the
horse-luck will not return unless a new stable is built in another place.”
This gives an idea of the ill-willing magic or witch-craft
that people were afraid of. Envy was a really dangerous thing and every
neighbour was a possible witch(Nenonen & Kervinen 1994, p.39ff). It also
shows the believed link between alder-horse and the real horses in the stable.
In Finland the fear
of witchcraft is the main reason given for the deposits in the collected
folklore. There seem to have been a need for protective magic, especially
protecting the borders of a building from outside threats. The feared weakness
of the household’s borders has been noted by both Jari Eilola (2003, p.314), in
his studies of witchcraft and magic in the latter half of the17th century, and
Touko Issakainen (2005, p.272), in his studies of 19th century magic. The
weakest points in a building were the openings, doors, windows, and chimneys.
One interesting reason for depositing is not protection from
witchcraft but actually a malicious act of witchery. When a deposit is secretly
made in another person’s building one is thought to be able to curse the
building or even steal the luck from it.
This fits with Eilola’s (2003, pp.187 and 226) notion that
witchcraft was the act of breaking the borders of a household for example by
introducing an alien object into it.
The meaning of the building deposits as offerings for
supernatural beings has sometimes been suggested as the oldest reason for the
custom (Carlie 2004, p.217ff).This may be true, but even the Finnish folklore from
the 19th century recognizes this meaning. So, it seems that layers of meanings
of different ages have co-existed.
HORSE
SKULLS AND “ALDER HORSE”:THE HORSE AS A DEPOSITIONAL SACRIFICE IN BUILDINGS
-SONJA HUKANTAIVAL
http://www.academia.edu/701476/Horse_Skulls_and_Alder_Horse_The_Horse_as_a_Building_Deposit
Layers of meanings from different ages have existed… but we have here examples of Alder wood being
used as a substitute for animal sacrifice for protection, or as a way of
magically accessing, a building through amongst other locations, the hearth.
And I am bearing in mind that Gwern himself was burnt perhaps as a sacrifice in
the hearth of the castle where the Welsh army had collected. So.. was this Gwern an actual human
sacrifice, or Alder wood imbued with ritually raised life-energy? And for what
reason?
In Hindu mythology there is a basic recurring theme of the creation of the world by the
self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of
"making sacred"—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end,
becomes again God. For example in the Rigveda which was composed in the
north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, roughly between 1700–1100 BC,
Purusha is at once supreme being, the cosmos, and as such he is sacrificed
primordially as the very act of creation. As cosmic being, only one quarter of
purusha is manifest; three-quarters of him are eternally unmanifest.
Self-immolated, his creative act becomes a prototype: all sacrifices henceforth
are repititions, reconstructing victim, altar, and even the consequences of
that primeval sacrifice. In other words the human work, in correspondence with
the divine original, recreates the world with each new sacrifice, producing as
not only all living creatures, celestial bodies, the three worlds, and the gods
themselves.
We do not have a ‘Celtic creation myth’ but I have given
these two examples because they illustrate the point. The Rigveda was written
at a time contemporary with pre-celtic culture, and I assume can be thought to
have been held in belief for a long time before it was written down. And it
crops up again in the later, Norse mythology,
where Ymir is the primeval being from whom the universe is made. In the
poem Grímnismál, the god Odin (disguised as Grímnir) imparts in the young
Agnarr cosmological knowledge. In one stanza, Odin mentions Ymir as he recalls
the fashioning of the world from his body:
"Out of Ymir's
flesh was fashioned the earth,
And the ocean out of his blood;
Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees,
Of his skull the heavens high."
"Mithgarth the gods from his eyebrows made,
And set for the sons of men;
And out of his brain the baleful clouds
They made to move on high."
Coming back to the Mabinogion again, we have a very good
example in the story of Math, son of Mathonwy,
of a human being being made from plants – Blodeuedd, and her story. So
it is possible that in the original story of Gwern, he was a human sacrifice
possibly meant to recreate the destruction of the primal being and re-creation
of the universe. Certainly it seems that the result of this ritual wiped out
the irish, so their nation was re-created, and on return to Wales, it was found
that Bran’s kingdom had gone. (Incidentally, Bran’s head, like the horses
Skulls, was buried in the White Hill in London, and whilst the head was
concealed, no plague came across the sea to this island.)
So it is possible that a human could be fashioned from
plants, from Alder. And this Alder-boy, Gwern can be ritually imbued with life
force to make a living, energetic sacrifice suitable for the purpose… Looking
at the timescale suggested in the story, Gwern is approximately 5 years old, so
rather than imagining a huge alder tree, consider a slender sapling, maybe a
metre or so tall, a staff perhaps, or a wand, or spear? but why Alder?
The internet is full of references that Irish and
Scandinavian creation myths say that the
first man/woman was made from Alder (and the opposite sex from Ash) but I could
not manage to track down one of these myths. However in his study of the
comparative evidence for an origin of mankind from trees in Indo-European
society, Anders Hultgård observes that "myths of the origin of mankind
from trees or wood seem to be particularly connected with ancient Europe and
Indo-Europe and Indo-European-speaking peoples of Asia Minor and Iran. By
contrast the cultures of the Near East show almost exclusively the type of
stories that derive man's origin from clay, earth or blood by means of a divine
creation act".
