Wood Thoughts

At the entrance to the dark wood, the archetypal place for being lost, led astray willingly for, after all, who would set foot on the dim path that leads down into the hollow where the dank mud by the stream, shaded for all the months of summer, scents the damp air with a spice of decay, if it were not for some desire for what might be found there?

Willingly, I say, bewildered. In a place of fear and longing hardly daring to know where the path leads .....

..... but knowing deep down - with a desire that overcomes dread - where it may end

A Dream

This from the Archive of the Pagan Movement Ethos Group by Tony Kelly

The wood was vast and there was no sky overhead. The trees were immensely tall and very old, and belonged to the forest. They were separate trees and communicated as trees do, but they were also part of the pulse of the woodland. There was something intense about them, not human, very, very old, and the moisture on them and the tree mosses belonged to the forest. It would be perilous to interfere with them, yet it would be sacrilegious too. You couldn't help loving them because they were magic, but loving them because they were trees and because they belonged to the forest.

The light was darkened as it is in the greenwood and there were paths. But it was very quiet, and peaceful, and strangely menacing, and lovable. It wasn't the sort of place you'd want to be alone in. And it wasn't the sort of place you'd want to leave. It's the sort of place that, if Brirn had appeared with horns and cloven feet and the magic pipes, you wouldn't be too surprised.

 

And there was something alluring, and bewitching, and magic about it. The trees and everything growing in the greenwood was alive and it was aware, but it wasn't human awareness. It was the diffused mind of the woodland, as much one tree as another, and as much all of them, but not divided. A presence. Thinking. Brooding. Aware of the people in its midst. It was vast, but deep and quiet, immensely powerful, but passive. It was green thinks, and it belonged to all that grows in the greenwood, and all the plants that come from her womb. And green thinks are not like red thinks. They're old, and they were old when red thinks were young. Old memories, an aching sadness, and separation, but so long ago. But here in the greenwood, we were in the presence of green thinks, in its own land, on sacred ground, and the faerie mind was more powerful than the human, beckoning, but menacing, threatening, but loving.

So old, so very long ago.....



Illustration of BRIRN from The Waxing Moon published by The Pagan Movement in 1977

Where the Green Things Are

There is a lichen – Lobaria pulmonaria – also known as ‘Tree Lungwort’ – which lives in the depths of the forest. It needs mature trees to establish itself and damp conditions away from drying winds, so small woodlands are of no use to it. It is rare in Britain because the habitat it needs is also rare. She is a faërie thing. Old, mysterious and of a time that is passing. Yet she lingers in the dark woodland whispering her spells when the moonlight filters down through the trees.

Can such things be found in the town, in a cul-de-sac or in the quiet corner of a park? Perhaps, but she would bid you follow her to where greenthinks are the thoughts that matter. To a place where such a lichen or a rare liverwort that needs the rotting trunks of dead trees to live its life, or other such green things can have their existence. Where water trickles through moss and filmy ferns to a moonlit stream. Moonthinks to the green things;  To the old world which is still ever young; To the realm of Faery.