Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, well there you are, step on in join me here today on Destiny. It's good to see you. You know, I mentioned and we've had people on the show talk about the importance of being in nature, walking in nature, decompressing from a busy day and getting out taking a walk in the natural settings,
be it next to your home. Some people that I know can literally step outside of their front door and be in nature, although it's more likely that you've got to get in your car or take your bike and you know, go a mile or two or maybe more to experience nature. And you know, there's all kinds of scientific papers and research that when we connect with
a natural setting, we automatically decompress. Our body takes a sigh, and our metabolism change, our physiology changes, we feel better, and there's nothing, there's nothing but benefits from being in nature if I don't get out at least a couple of times a week. And for me, it's a neighboring hill. I'll tell you. I go to a place called Wildcat Canyon, and Wildcat Canyon is a group of there are a group of hills that make
up the Contra Costa County line that actually overlooks the bay. So if I am hiking on this trail, it takes about I think it's about four and a half miles from the parking lot to the top of the hill. If I do that on a regular basis, I'm feeling fairly fairly good. If I go for a you know, just a couple of days a week, I feel significantly better. I really truly believe that when you get out in nature, you're resetting yourself. I use the same analogy when I'm doing a
meditation. I'll meditate twice a day, try to do it twenty minutes in the morning. After I kind of adjust myself, have a cup of coffee, and I'll do it again in the evening around six or seven, sometimes eight o'clock because the sun doesn't go down right now until about eight thirty. And when I do a meditation, I'm resetting. I actually call that I reset for the evening. And if I don't do a meditation in the afternoon, I go to bed early. So I feel the same thing about getting
out and walking in nature. And as much as we can do it, the better off we're going to be physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, even though we don't think about, you know, spiritual things when unless you're meditating, unless you're sitting by a tree, unless you're taking a moment to pause on your walk, hike, whatever you're doing to consider the spiritual ratifications of your then we don't typically bring in the spiritual aspect. But getting out
in nature is really really a big deal. Now. Today's program is an aspect of getting out in nature, and that is the trees, the trees that you interact with. And from a very young age, I've had a special place in my heart for trees. I think of them as people in some ways, and I have a few of my favorites. When I go on on my hike. There's a place where I used to hike in on this trail when I lived in Oakland. That is it's a world class trail.
It's called Sea View. It's in the Oakland Hills, the ridge that overlooks the bay. And literally when you hike on this trail, you see San Francisco, you see the Golden Gate, you see Marin County, and as you're coming down this trail you see on a clear day you can see the mouth of the bay connecting with Napa Napa Valley, famous for its wines. And then as you keep dropping down on this trust so you start high and you can come down off the hill, you can see Martinez and you
can begin seeing the Delta which leads to Sacramento. These are all northern California areas, and it is so pleasant and so revitalizing that I'm always kind of like, God, this is so amazing. And it's really funny because I'll force myself sometimes to get up, get my tiking shoes on, put a sweater on or a sweatshirt or whatever, and get out there. And if I don't, I really regret it. But I'll tell you after I come
back from feature, I feel amazing. So today we're talking about trees and on each trail that I hi. I have a few favorites now every place in the world, pretty much almost every place, I should say, I'm thinking of the East coast of the United States. I have friends in the Carolinas, in Virginia, New Hampshire, and New York. There's places where you can go and be among groves of trees. And I lived in willets and in the areas really high north of say, Marin County, north of
San Francisco, where the trees are ancient old redwood groves. Some of these trees that have been left to us are you know, two thousand, five hundred years or three thousand years old, and they're still standing today. Today's program talks about the importance of trees, why the ancients venerated trees, and also they were special in many ways. What the tree of life is, what the universal tree is, and how our ancestors communed with trees and the
benefits behind the trees. It's fascinating because there's an intelligence behind trees. Scientists have discovered that trees not only help themselves and their acquaintances. Somebody a tree who could be next to another tree. But it's now known that trees share their food, share their water, and can you believe it, they also share their physiology. These are hormones apparently that trees have that they can share with other trees to keep them strong. And it sounds like a real family
community. We're we're gonna hear about the details of it today. Part of my childhood was incorporated was interacting with my grandparents. My grandfather was a great gardener, and he moved into central California, and he was a huge tree and planted pines and planted different trees in his garden. So by the time I became an adult, many of these trees were already fifty years old. Some of them were a little younger than that, and they had really sprouted
there. You know, there was twenty thirty forty feet tall because of the because of how he cared for them. He was a real tree steward, you know, making sure they have plant food and they were water constantly. You know, it's funny because I have memories he had. His office was in the front part of the house. He built a waiting room, and then there was a receiving room, and then there was the clinic where he
actually saw patients. And he would take I mean when I went down there to visit, take a lunch and meet with me and maybe my brother and his wife, my grandmother, and we'd have lunch together and we talk and he kind of decompressed, but he would walk I think he was He must have taken at least an hour for a lunch break, sometimes more. But we'd have a quick lunch and then he'd go out water trees and waters plants. He had a huge garden. He loved growing flowers, roses, and
she really gave me an appreciation for plant life and most notably trees. And I had a feeling that, you know, when he had to have an arborous the tree surgeon come out and cut one of his trees down. I could see him physically pained at this and I never forget he, you know, watching this tree come down that was right in front of the house, and I could almost sense that he was physically ill at the fact that he had to take this tree down. So I've had I've had a big influence
on me and I love for trees. Now, if you've never been to a forest grove, it's an experience. You need to go and experience and try Southern California. There's an area in northern California called Avenue of the Giants. And these are trees. These are Sequoia redwoods. Are These are some of the largest trees in the world, two hundred feet tall, monstrosities, beautiful and they're all in there, you know, a fifteen hundred to two
thousand year old plus they were saved at God turn of the century. I think John Muir saved this grove as a re minder these beautifully gorgeous trees that once populated most of northern California. They were as far south as Marin County, and in Marin County there's a small grove called mural Woods that you can still see a few of these trees. There's a small couple of acres were
preserved. These big trees were what built San Francisco. They felt, you know, thousands of wood acre trees all through Marin and present day Petaluma, Santa Rosa, well, Mendocino, Humboldt County, which interesting enough, is now the Golden Triangle for cannabis. Some of the best cannabis in the world is grown in this area that was once home and still is home to some of the oldest and largest redwood trees in the world. So just an amazing
place. But if you get a chance to get out and walk into a forest grove, do it. Because there's a certain chemical reaction that humans have when they're in these places that it's extremely beneficial. We don't know quite what the process is. It's likely to be a hormone release of some kind that relaxes us. That makes us mellow. And this is why some people love to sit or lay now down next to trees because of the effects that they have on us. So today's program is all about trees. The book we're
focusing on is has just come out. It's called Under the Sacred Canopy, Making Magic with the Mystical Trees of the World. And my guest is she's a pagan. Her name is J. D. Walker, and she's an herbalist, a gardener. She wrote a book a couple of years ago called
a Witch's Guide to Wildcrafting Uncommon Magic with Common Plants. And so she's really a herbalist, an outdoor person who's very very sensitive to this and I, as you'll quickly learn, she is coming to us from North Carolina and there's a lot of old grove trees that have been around for for for centuries. So really really going to be a fun interview. Uh. But you know,
consider while you're listening to this interview the importance of getting outside. And you know, if you live in a big city, get out, you know, and and connect maybe once a week to the you know, to the local uh nature areas. You know, if you don't have a forest. Maybe you can get outdoors ocean if you can get to the beach. The beach is very healing as well, so lots of healing available to all of us. So all right, So again the program is under the sacred
canopy, making magic with the mystical trees of the world. And my guest is J. D. Walker. I was raised by my grandfather to a degree, and he I would consider a master gardener. Every year we had in his garden. He lived in a place called Oceania, which is in central California, right by the ocean, and he had probably I want to say, a couple of acres, but a good portion of it were roses, and we've got to learn all the different names, and we got to
learn about the plants and so forth. And he had established his home in nineteen I want to say, thirty two and actually planted trees. And he was a big, big proponent of trees. And I had a love for trees from a very very young age. I live here in northern California. We have some monstrous trees. The sequoias are the oldest trees. And my guest today has written a fascinating book on trees called Under the Sacred Canopy, Making Mad with the Mystical Trees of the World. And I had to have
her on the program simply because I appreciate trees. We have ancient trees. We have one tree that's older than Christ. I think it's twenty eight hundred years old, and there's some other ones that are close to three thousand years old. And when you see not only the height and the width of these
trees, they are quite amazing. But today we are talking about sacred trees, the importance of trees down through the ages, how different cultures venerated trees, and also why they're very very important for personal growth, not only from a potential magic point of view, but also for healing. Let me tell you about my guests to name. Her name is J. D. Walker.
She is an avid student of herbalism and guard name. She wrote a book just before this one called a Witch's Guide to Wildcrafting Uncommon Magic with Common Plants. And this is another Llewellyn book. And she's an award winning author, journalist, and magazine editor. And she writes about plants and trees. And I got this book from my assistant who said, clip you're gotta look at this section in here on the Maya and the Aztecs and how they've venerated.
She's not like, yeah, yeah, this is a very good book for Destiny. So hey, JD, welcome to Destiny. Great to see you. Thank you, Clip. I appreciate the author to come on. We had to kind of clarify ahead of our talk here. You are identify as a pagan. What is the interest in your background and why you would
write a book like this if you're a pagan. I think I mentioned this one before we started that my idea of a pagan is somebody who cherishes Guya, the earth, who works with Guya, who recognizes the beauty that, the healing, that the natural elements of guya. But what what was the the desire to write this book, because I mean you're really drilling down pretty deep here and going around the world and and uh, lifting traditions from different
cultures. But talk a little bit about the influence of trees on this book. The I have always had and I think I picked it up a lot from my grandmother, Uh, a sense of trees or something special. And this was before I was old enough to understand what paganism was. But it was a sense that trees have an energy, an s since, a presence of their own. And that's not to say that every tree that you walk up to h is going to be pre beard or some sort of little spirit
in barky leafy form, you know. It's just that there is an energy there and they're around for so much longer frequently than we are. They have a storehouse of knowledge and I think perception of how we should live in the world that we don't have, and willing to share that if you will reach out, if you will go into the woods, if you will connect with the wood, with the trees and things around you. And not not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I didn't. I don't often
see people making that connection. They know trees are important, they know that they're pretty out in front of their house, but they really don't make that connection that trees have an essence or spirit of their own, and it's beneficial to connect with that spirit. So in a large part, I just wanted to remind people how important trees have been to humans throughout life. And I'll have to apologize. Somebody decided that it was time helping your help since I
was talking. I must be talking to her. This is pearl and she'll be up here until she gets pissed off, and she will spit of pearls. Your interview helper's assistance a cat that just jumped up on JD's lap to assist her in this interview. Give give her some support. You write in your book that trees have and humans have had a special relationship for thousands of years. Talk a little bit about this. Is it a great example? You get right into it. And Lebanon, there's sixteen trees that make up
an olive grove that are over five thousand years old. Talk about yourself. I can't believe they're still alive. They've they've must have been planted in an area that has an underground water flow or something that keeps them alive. That's
long. That is something that is amazing to me too. And of course in Christian traditions, this is the grove of olives from which the dove plucks the olive branch to take back to Noah when he sends out the bird to try to find out if it's sake to come off the boat or not. But the thing that is amazing to me is Not only are these things supposed to be close to five thousand years oh, they're still producing. People still get olives off of these things and make olive oil and eat the fruit off
of them. And that's just one of multiple examples, as you mentioned, with the supporias of trees that have been around for a long long time in our storehouses of knowledge, in the tree community, in the arborous community, there is a great concern right now that we don't lose any of our older trees, because not only do you lose this wonderful, stately thing that is
on a property somewhere, you lose the biodiversity that it can provide. It's providing you DNA from a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, or in the case of these, all of several thousand years ago. And this is I think this is another way that people connect to trees to say life is enduring, life can be endured. Think upon those trees have endured over thousands of years, and it gives us hope to endure, it gives us
strength to endure if again we will make that connection with them. Yeah, talk a little bit about another tree in Japan that is two thousand years old. I didn't know Japan has trees that are that old. I keep thinking they're all cut down through the various UH periods that have the Japan Japan has gone through. But what is the name of this tree? And is it like one of those pines that are in the mountains. It's usually one of if I'm not mistaken, and I have to look back in my book,
it is one of the pines UH. And again these uh these are planted at the well. The kadamas are the ones that are the tree spirits in the Japanese tree. Some of them are planted at temples UH and essentially are believed to embody the spirit of that particular temple. These older trees, the tree spirits, the Kadamas in particular, are thought to inhabit the older,
wiser, more mature trees. I don't know if that means that they they are the essence of the wisdom of that tree, or if they're the beneficiary and the conduit that humans connect with to get to the wisdom of that tree. But the sense in that sounds so lovely in Japan is that they recognize these old, mature living specimens are so important. They have to be protected. Uh. These are our national monuments, living monuments, UH, and
something that we have to an extent in the United States. We call them heritage trees or witness trees. You have trees around, for instance, manassas, around major battlefields that we're witnessed to, unfortunately, the carnage and the strife that went on dur the Civil War, and those are special trees because they having experienced that, they embody it. And that's what gives you the
somber feeling when you go through places like this. To understand that there's another tree down in South Carolina your readers or your listeners may be familiar with. I didn't mention it in the book, but it's called the Angel Tree, and people modern people think that, well, it's called an angel tree because of an association with angels that just happens to be the name of the family
that owned the plantation this tree was on. And people have a sense of reverence when they go to it, not just because it's an old, old tree, but unfortunately there's the sadness in the tree because it was the site of many hangings and disciplinary measures for some of the slaves in the area. So it's not just here's this thing that's been around for a long long huh. It was witness to some of the worst and some of the best parts
of what we had growing up in America becoming America. To excuse me a second, make a part of them. That's some caffre or something, I guess. Talk a little bit about witness trees. Are they necessarily trees that are in an existing area? You mentioned the Civil War. We should let our listeners know that you're in North Carolina, which is kind of the epicenter for many of the great battles of the Civil War, the American Civil War.
Were they planted after the fact or were they just trees that were there that were just huge here? Okay, so they would talk about it, talk about that the witness trees. Witness trees are trees that were there at the time. People are familiar in American history with liberty oaks. Some of them are still standing. A lot of them, unfortunately, have passed away,
either through vandalism or storm damage or encroachment by other people. They are there, and they are a tangible connection to a particular point in time of particular history. And again, I think what happens in those situations is the tree becomes an embodiment of that so that you get a certain feeling whenever you're around there. Unfortunately, a lot of our witness trees are identified with some
of the harsher points in our history. There is one, a modern one, an elm tree at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing that took out the Federal Building. A beautiful old elm, which is interesting in and of itself because so many of the American elms have died due to a disease. They live up to about twenty some years and then they become infected and unfortunately dying, And this one has survived. But not only that, this particular
tree, which was a gathering site. When you would be there at work, you come out of the ability to go have you lunch under the tree. It was a pleasant place to be when the bomb went off. When the devastation went off, it took out a lot of surrounding plant material and
structures and whatnot. This tree survived, and this tree has come to embody that sense of survivors surviving going on despite this terrible thing that happened, and it's now a focal point of veneration, both for the memory of those people who were lost to a totally senseless action and to the thought that we can do better, we can endure, we can go on. So there's a
lot of focus on this tree. You can actually go on the website of if you look up the Oklahoma City bombing, there is the museum associated with it, and it's not understanding. You can actually order tree seedlings and plant one of these that's a offspring of this particular fascinating yeah, so that you can actually plant that in your yard, and again it becomes that tangible connection. You go out there and you can lay your hands on that and feel
that connection to that history. When you go to these battlefields again you lay your hands on this and you feel that connection with history, it's more real to you. So would you say that the people who have identified I mean, because this is generational, this can go hundreds of years as a unique tree. Who's which is a witness tree to a battle to an event? Unfortunately, is there any positives that we can say a witness tree is associated
with? Well, here again, in the case of this un tree, it does become that notion that in the harshest part of my life and the deepest part of my despair. There is life, and there is a continuity, There is a going on exactly. It's the sense that this thing has survived despite the presence of all of this negativity around it and sometimes the physical
damage associated with it. It's just that sense that there is hope, and so many times that's what we do need whenever we are struggling to make connections in our lives, struggling to understand what was the purpose of this thing that happened to me that seems so bad. I can survive. I really can
go on. I have I wear and have for about twenty years, a jet bracelet, and a lot of people may know, some may not know that jet is fossilized cold, which is it's a byproduct of a tree that, over a period of time after it fell into a bongy area, was turned into natural cold. But at one point it was a tree, and it's very significant to me. It gives me a sense of the continuity of
life. Life goes on, and I wear it. In the pagan community, jet is usually worn for protection, but again it's that connection not just to one hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago. This is Andaluvian cold from six million years ago. So life goes on, and that is that's that spark that I turned to whenever I'm going to know, what's the bother? Why everything's going to Helen handbag? You know, it's just it's just why are you in trouble yourself? Well, yeah,
life goes on despite whatever happens around us. I have this feeling and I hear from what you're saying and what I read from you that trees are sacred and the longer they've been on the planet, the more energy they have. Talk a little bit about an ancient pagan belief that these trees have cosmological and spiritual truths in them. How how how does that? How do we relate to that? Though? I suppose that how can they have that?
How can something that has survived for so many years not have picked that up? I suppose that's one of the answers that it would just have to be a natural occurrence, that again, having been witnessed to the passage of time over hundreds of thousands of years, that of course it would be natural for it to assume that I know that in the Celtic cultures, tribes would tend
to identify with a particular tree. So some of them would identify with elm trees, some would identify with yew trees, and some of course with oaks, because oaks were frequently considered a very important source in the community. Irmasil was probably a big oak tree at one time for a particular Saxon group of Celtic folks. But the idea was that this tree absorbed the history of the tribe, absorbed the history of the plan with the passing of each plan.
And again remembering back in our history when a lifespan was probably thirty forty years, I mean, you had people who lived older than that, but generally speaking thirty forty years. And you've got an oak tree that's going to live be living for five hundred years, even say two three hundred years. And see how many generations came to maturity under that tree, after celebration after celebration.
And it was that connection, not just amongst the people that you were with right then and there, as you host your seasonal celebration of the harvest or the coming celebration for winter, or the celebration of the renewal of spring. You knew that your ancestors did the same thing, and there was that
sense of community and continuity. That's why it was so important whenever tribes or clans would attack one another to go to the center of that community and cut down that tree, because at that point you cut the life of the tribe. You destroyed the tribe when you destroyed that significant tree that they held their rituals and their ceremonies. And I never heard that that sounds. I mean, that's brutal to cut down an ancient tree that's part of a community.
That's like killing the lifeblood exactly energetically. And that's to be quite honest. That's one of the reasons why you frequently have Christian stories from around usually around I would say six hundred AD, particularly going up to about fourteen D when Christians would move into an area and they were trying to to be honest,
there was a lot of cajoling to bring people into their Christian community. But when they got that right down to it and wanted to force conversion, one of the first things you did was go in there and cut their their tree, their ancestral free down to destroy it and then, of course, on top of that they built a ceremony. Achieving, they built a church usually
on top of it. That's why I think it was very interesting when we speak about some of the Lithuanian and Central European traditions, they were some of the last to be converted to Christianity, and in those cases it was not unusual for the overwhelming Christian force that came in to convert the local population by that time, and at this point we're talking about by the fourteen fifteen, sixteen hundreds, rather than take that drastic measure of cutting that free down,
they would simply go to the tree and carve Christian symbols into it. So, okay, now this is a Christian source of your community spirit, so to speak. And they found that that was an easier way to bring people alone. You didn't destroy their entire history. You assimilated it, and you
reinterpreted the legends to give them more of a Christian spin to them. But importantly, you carve those Christian symbols on the tree, and then you held certain ceremonies under the tree, and that made the religion more accepting, more acceptable to the pagans in those communities. We're gonna come back to some of these ancient traditions, especially in the meso American area, which you highlight beautifully in the book. But I want to talk about tree spirits and the energy
behind that. You get into a whole section where you're talking about the apple tree man and the various Greek and Roman spirits that are within the trees. Talk about the apple tree man and why that's significant. That's a continuation, I think probably of a lot of the traditions that may have come out of the Mediterranean. It was not unusual for those people to see living spirits in the tree, such that when you cut the tree down, it actually bled,
and frequently there was some curse attached to it. When you get to the apple tree man, this is for people who are managing orchards. It is usually found in the oldest tree in the orchard. And again we're usually talking about apples here as opposed to pears or points or something else. But you appeased the apple tree man because he was the guardian spirit of your orchard.
He was he was coordinating the activities in your orchards so that the orchard was healthy and it would be fruitful and you would be especially nice to the apple tree man. You'd leave little gifts of food, certain libations, and things around him, because not only would that keep him encouraged to make sure your orchard was a healthy place to be, but of course because he'd been
around for a long time, he knew where things were buried. Because of course, what did you do back in the day before there were banks available, you buried your wealth. Well, he knew where the guy buried it who had the orchard before you kidding me? And if you were really nice to him, maybe he would tell you where the treasures were buried. Go back to the inception of the apple tree man. How did someone will his physicality to a tree the energy of a human being or how does that work?
This is an interesting idea in in my approach, and when I looked at the book which started I specifically started out talking about trees having a particular energy that is unique to them. They're not leafy people. Again, they are not gray beard. They are spiritual entities in and of themselves that you can feel. I think in time that energy in some cases can evolve into a spirit. Now that's my interpretation. That wouldn't be necessarily anyone else's.
And certainly in the case of the apple tree man, you didn't go to the oldest tree and do some sort of spell or ritual and poof the energy in that tree suddenly becomes the old man. He evolves there and is attached to that tree. In the case of the so are you saying like a sensitive from the group, say the psych the local psychic or pagan or whatever, would come upon this tree and fill an energy and identify it as much much more than one the other in the grove? Is the exactly, This
is the energy keeper, This is the spokesperson for the grove. Is that what you're suggesting? Exactly? It takes someone who would be able to recognize it, or a sensitive would. In today's parlance, we would say a sensitive, not a shaman, not not a druid, not necessarily a religious leader, but a sensitive to go. You know, there's there's more than just the energy of the forest and this particular tree. I have a beech tree on the property here, and there's a lot of beech trees on the
property. They all have wonderful energy to them. This one has feels to me like a special energy, and she's beech trees are usually considered in Celtic traditions to be female. And I say she because the beech tree is one of the oldest trees. They equal age frequently of oak trees in a natural forest, so they're one of the older trees, and we call her queen of the woods, the traditionist conquered crean woods or mother beach in that case.
And in that case, there is a particular root formation under beach trees. And if any of your listeners are familiar with beech trees, you know that they send out these rolling roots that look like boil constrictors. Oak tree will generally have nobby roots that go down into the ground and come off the tree. They go downunder ground. Beech trees can kind of contort their roots
a little bit and really roll over one another. And in this particular tree, it has put together a mass of roots that has two branches or two roots going off this way and two roots coming down this way, so that you can lay on those put your arms and legs over those roots, put your head literally in the lap of the beech tree, and do a meditation and feel perfectly safe with doing this. And it makes it easier by talk in the book about how to do a spiritual journeying, or some people call
it astral travel, by doing a meditation with the tree. And when you lay on this tree, you can just about feel yourself just sinking into it, becoming one with it. You're looking up at the canopy and you see the leaves rustling, or if it happens to be in the wintertime, you just see the branches going up, sinking into the sky the way the roots sink down into the earth. And you can fall into a meditation that is just so wonderful and so relaxing if you will allow yourself to do that.
Now, there are plenty of other beaches on the property, and they all have lovely energies. Some of them have nice root formations so that you could sit down on them, lean back and you have your lunch or read a book or whatever. They don't have the same energy as this particular beach.
And yeah, that's where I think you go from being simply alive and vibrant to having a personality or a character that we can as humans we look at and say, oh, this is the old Man apple, or this is mother Beach, as the case may be, I love your example of laying down and meditating or kind of contemplating where you're at with a tree. What do you think is the compliment between human physiology and tree physiology is there?
We'll get into some some specifics later, but I'm just curious, as we're at this point right now, what would you say makes us so so compatible there? There is a universality to the structure of trees. We see the pattern of trees, peat it over and over again. If you if you are aware of how the vessels, blood vessels go through the body, that's how they branch off of the truth. The blood vessels come out and there's
arteries, and then they go off into their smaller and smaller veins. If you look at a delta, you can see either a root system of river delta. You see a root system, or you see a tree top. You can look at the patterns of crystallization on a window or on a lake and see that veining pattern. It's repeated over and over and over again. I don't know that I necessarily subscribe to the idea, but I actually came across one author who suggested that the human lungs again you have that trunking system,
you have a leaning system branches off. And this author was suggesting that that is a carry over somehow or other and far distant evolution from trees to humans or two mammals, that that same pattern, which was just it's just a perfect way of being, was just a natural to be repeated over and over and over again. Nature uses things that work, she discards or let's go extinct things that don't work, and this is something that works, and
whether we realize it or not. And perhaps ancient people would have been closer to this, because of course they would have been into animals laughter, and probably would have seen quite enough death and carnage in their own lives. They
would have seen the branchings and the lungs and co whoa. You know, they would see, if they could get up high enough, the branching of the rivers and be able to say, here is a tangible representation of this system that we see over and over and over again, even in our own bodies. Yeah, I love that analogy. We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return quickly with my guest today, J D. Walker, discussing her in her new
book Under the Sacred Canopy. We'll be right back. My guest today is Jay Walker, who is a pagan. She has written a new book called Under the Sacred Canopy, Making Magic with the Mystical Trees of the World. This is a look at trees in different aspects of the world, the antiquity of trees and how our ancestors use them as healing modalities and a connection to nature. We mentioned the Apple tree Man. Talk a little bit about the
Native American Grandmother Cedar. I really love that one, and I can imagine a cedar being hundreds of years old, that various generations of Native people, I think the Iroquois. I don't know if that was the Iroquois or not, but they have these oral traditions of these ancient trees in the Americas.
Talk about that. That one was an interesting story of the great God, the the Protector Guard who goes and he creates all of these creatures, and he creates humans, which he calls his two legged creatures, and they don't know very much, they're not very smart. So he goes to Grandmother's cedar and says, will you teach my two legged creatures, you're wisdom, and she agrees to do that. So she teaches them how to use her bark
at her leaves from medicine and for food. She teaches them how to take the inner bark and weave it into hundreds of things, from strapping to baskets, to things help to hold the housing together, making the tree itself, and making boats and one thing and another out of it, so that the tree becomes something that supplies all of all of life. So she shares that wisdom. And you say, well, why would she do that, because if they're hacking on the tree, the tree is going to die. She
does that because the Great Protector ask her to. But she does that to give of herself. And by giving of yourself, you ensure the longevity of the community. And I think that, as much as anything, is one of the things that in the Native America and that particular Native American culture, they were saying, this is how as a community we survive. We give of ourselves so that others can benefit. In the long run, we benefit
too, but the whole community can surve on well. This book, this book has so much in it, we can only scratch the surface exactly what you have. I want to get into the tree of life. And this is a fascinating topic because it really gets into ancient cultures, the Babylonian, the Egyptians, the early American people, Aztec Maya. A lot of the mythology and storytelling is the tree of life, how humans came to be. And let's start with the Babylonians who have the mighty trees and how they relate
to spawning the humanity. Well, you have a number of different stories, and again it gets a little confusion, confusing. A lot of times, these these myths begin to mesh because you start out with Sumerians, and then you go to the Acadians and the Amoroids, and then you get to the Babylonians. So a lot of these myths will will overlap. For instance, there is the beginning of life and Eridu, where Aridu is one of the
first city. It's one of the five first cities in the world where the gods create human beings and all life is supported by the Kishkanu tree with a top that is has turquoise leaves and crystal branches and roots uh and if you take the leaves it provides immortality. Now, in one of the myths h and Anu, who is a principal goddess of that particular region, her tree, the Kishkanu tree, becomes invested. It's invested with serpents. Uh and with all of a sudden her name got away from me. Uh Lilith is
a demon who invests the tree. So she needs to get this out of the tree. So she asks Marduk to get these demons and things out of the tree. And in this myth, he runs the demons off, but and he ends up cutting the tree down and he turns it into a throne for Anna. There's another myth that says that here is this tree of life that provides for the structure of the world and the organization of the world, and then there is a battle between the gods who have become upset with humans,
and in the course of that battle, the tree is destroyed. So once life has been established through one way or another, the tree gets destroyed. It's no longer there, but that's okay. Life is going on at that point. Interestingly enough, Arado still exists. It's not called Arado anymore, but it does still exist in that rent or in that particular area as one of the oldest cities in the entire world. Whether or not you can go there and find some old Kish canoe trees, I don't think you'll be
able to do. That might be interesting to go try. I find it just amazing that these myths really involving trees are really fundamental or foundational for the story of man coming around. Of course, Adam and Eve pulling the apple from the apple tree, and and and and that story you bring up a little bit of that. But in Europe, you you, you, you've talked about the how humans were formed by the logs of trees by Odin and I've never heard that story before, how he was created by tree tree parts.
And this is one of the fun and the frustrating things about mythology. We don't know why. But he and his brother were walking along the beach, and I don't know if they challenged one another or if they just said, hey, let's let's see what we can create here. They have an old ash law, a log from an ash tree. They have a log from an elm tree. They turned the ash tree into a van. They turned the elm tree into a woman. And this is where people come from.
They begin to procreate and they populate the world. Interestingly, you don't see a lot of myths in the Nordic traditions about elm after that point. It's it's mostly focused on the ash tree, and there are a couple of areas that they know. It was never an ash tree, it was an oak tree. But in the Nordic tradition most of us are familiar with the important tree is the ash tree. But again, why sometimes you get a
reason. For instance, in the Mediterranean area when we're talking about the Babylonians or in ill And at that time created humans to serve them. They wanted someone to venerate them. And the first bunch of people that they create are noisy, they're loud, they're obnoxious, so they get destroyed and then you have to have one or two people left over to repopulate the world again. And of course you know in the mess American tradition there are five iterations of
the world where you the gods start out again. They're trying to create someone who will venerate them, So they go through several iterations of worlds trying to create a suitable subject to venerate them as and to worship them, and to supply them with the energy that they need the blood that they need over time, so it's not just one time. Sometimes it takes several times to try to create the world, but the reason being mostly to create someone who will
venerate them. In many of the other myths, the gods are doing it, for instance, and the Celtic it's very hard to nail down. In the English Irish tradition a creation story, one of the ones that you see periodically is that where the ocean and the earth came together, these two forces procreated, and so you end up with the mother goddess who then procreates with the child. In this case you should consider being carnunists. And then from
that you get all of creation and others. When you get those two forces coming together, you get an oak tree, and everything that is that evolves from that point on comes from the oak tree. People come from the acrons that fall from the oak tree, and other parts are used by the gods to create other creatures and other things in the universe. That one's a little bit more hard to nail down, because like the Nordic folks, uh, nobody worth the stuff bail. It was passed down word of mouth, so
we hope we got it right. I want to jump into the Americas now, because you have a wonderful section on the Mesa. American cultures, notably the Maya and the Aztec, talk about the Maya maze god junyan Yi from how he separates the earth from the sky h so that the two domains are separated, Yeah, allowing allowing the humans to exist. It's it's interesting because
there's a correlation actually in Greek mythology. Uh, this is the time of the laying down sky, so that the sky, the sky and the earth are laying on top of one another and they need to be separated before any creation can go on. And again, as you're familiar, this isn't the
only creation myth. There are other Asian myths. In the Aztec world, in particular, it's a matter of taking the monster that's in the middle of the lake in Mexico and ripping it apart and creating it, kind of like Tiamat, but in this case, the maze god has this situation where these two energies are right on top of one another and you can't create a world, so you separate them and to hold them apart, you create the Seba tree, and the Siba tree is the cotton silk tree that provides so much
material for the indigenous populations there and gets so large, has these almost flying buttress type roots that support the tree. Just absolutely huge, a massive. So you set this one tree in the middle to hold the two apart. The top of the tree, the canopy tree becomes the Milky Way points to the north, and then you set up four additional trees on each of the four quadrants north, south, east, and west. Each of them have
deities associated with them. The main tree then becomes the universe tree that the ruler identifies with. He is the embolument of the universe tree and makes that living connection between them. But then you have the creation of the thirteen different layers of heaven above or heavens above, and the believe it's eight below, the various levels of what we would consider the underworld or hell, and this gives structure to the universe. Amazing. I want you to talk a little
bit about and this is fascinating. I'm going to be in Plank in November with our annual tour on the Surcompicus of Lord Pacall, King Pacall Is. The Tree of Life is a lot of people have interpreted that as a spaceship, and he's pointing the way. Of course, that's ancient aliens, Eric Donegan. But actually, as I look at it more closely, it actually is a tree. And how do you interpret Pacall's Is he iscending the tree
into the afterlife? It is my understanding that the ruler is the personification of the tree. He is that living conduit. He is the one who can speak to the gods and the upper levels, and if there were a need to be in the lower levels. Of course, in the Mayan, an Aztec and several of these Central American traditions, I don't know why anybody wanted to go there. But by the same token, I don't know anybody why
anybody would want to go to hall in Eddrasill for that matter. But he is He is the personificatian of the Tree of life and the androgynous deity, primary deity in these Central American traditions. He is that embodiment. He is your living conduit. That's why he is so important to leave rituals and to lead you into battle, because he is your connection to heaven. He is your connection to the after life. His vitality is the vitality of your community.
Yeah, did you see a correlation between the kings of the Maya and the pharaohs of Egypt at all? I'm just trying to think, because I've been the Egypt quite a few times, and I'm thinking there are representations of the pharaoh's ascending earth to the afterlife, But i don't think I remember a tree being involved. But I'm sure there must be symbology that you've discovered that
relate to the pharaoh transitioning physical life into the spiritual life. The pharaoh does transition, and if you read the Egyptian Book of the Dead, that is your game plan for how to get through the afterworld so that you can then ride with raw on the sunboat going through the daily cycles and if you needed to at any point come back to your place of risk where your body was mummified and your spirit could reinhabit that they did not. It's my understanding that
again in the Central American traditions, the king is the embodiment. He does not become. He is not the God. He is the physical conduct. He's the what we would call an avatar. Would of of the deities of the afterlife are the main deity of the afterlife. Here is the embodiment of the universe. Tree. In the Egyptian tradition, you have a tree of life, a concept of a tree of life, and it's usually the palm tree. And again that's a phalic symbol, so of course that would be
the symbol of life in a masculine community. And there are the sycamore trees, the turquoise sycamore trees that you pass through at some point on your journey, and nuts greet you there at the sycamore trees, saying you are welcome. Partake of my milk, take partake of the honey and everything that I can offer you. You are now one with the sycamore tree. And that was just another way of saying you are now immortal and you are allowed passage
into the afterlife. But as far as the favor was certainly the God's representative on earth, but not in the sense at least in my reading of it, that the Uh in the Mayan and the aztect traditions, the the leader, the king of those particular traditions was the literal embodiment of that energy. That primary deity Uh, the Pharaoh is the representative. Now he would become deified like Ramsey's for instance, or in Hope becomes deified over time. But
they are humans with the divine connection. They are avatars of the the of Raw or aman or depends on the period of time Aman Raw on the case may be. And it depends on the dynasty as to what emphasis they put on which deity. But it's a slight difference. I suppose it might be like splitting heres when you get right down to it. But it seems to me that one is an avatar on one is a living embodiment. The books called under the Sacred Canopy, making Magic with the mystical trees or the world.
My guest is J. D. Walker. JD. You talk a great deal of using magic with these trees. Let's talk a little bit about applying personal will, personal energy towards it. Give us some examples of a tree and how it is used magically. Well. One that comes to mind pretty readily is the willow tree. The willow tree in and it has an interesting interpretation depending on the nationality. In the Chinese tradition, it is a
symbol of immortality and eternal. One of the reasons for that if any of your folks who are listening our gardeners, you know that it's very easy to take a stem off of a willow tree, stick it in the wet ground, and get it to root, so it has this wonderful rejuvenating ability to clone itself. So to speak. With the Celts, it was not uncommon to have to take when someone died and plant a willow tree at the grave, and the spirit of that ancestor would be assumed up into the willow tree.
Yeah. Yeah, Now, over time associations in the European traditions, willow trees frequently have a sorrowful association, maybe because you know, you're planning trees on dead people's graves and hoping they migrate into the trees, so you could you know, it's not uncommon that they would make that association. But I like the idea of, particularly in the pagan community, that the willow tree is a symbol of reflection. So she's important. Again, frees get
male and female designations. The willow tree is female. She is important to poets, she's important to writers, she's important to create a people, to dreamers for that matter, So to go and meditate under a willow tree is a good thing I've talked about. I can't remember if it was in this
book or in my first book. You can do if you need to do a little bit of work to get you some inspiration, taking willow leaves and combine them with mug to make an incense to burn while you are just relaxing and trying to get in touch with your interviews so that you can be creative, because again she is very good for helping to inspire people. Beyond that. In the book, I mentioned that it's very appropriate at Beltane. Beltane
is May. It's what most people would be familiar with as May Day, the first of May, and it's that period in the Celtic calendar where the veil is considered thin, So again there's that association with death. You can more easily speak with the spirits at Beltange and at Solon, Solon being the association with Halloween. At those two times the veil is thinness, and that's
the easiest time to be able to speak with spirits beyond the grave. But another thing at Beltane is the reinvigoration of life, so you have Beltane celebrations of fertility. You can braid willow branches because they're very pliable, and create a garland a head crown, and then you can stick flowers in it. And you've got a lovely little declaration that you can use too as you are
going about your festivities. And there is a very practical things as a gardener kind of plays on that notion that we were saying earlier, the Chinese idea that willow trees are in mortal and a connection to eachterm of life. If you take willow leaves, and this is an old gardening trick, take willis willow sticks, put them in a bucket five gallon bucket, build bucket with water, let it set somewhere in the sunlight so that it kind of like
cooks or stews or steeps. And then after that you take the plant material out and use the water to water your new vegetable sets in the garden, or if you've transplanted a tree or a bush or something planting new things in your landscape, or if you are starting new seats, use that willow water to water those plants because it has a compound in it that's similar to an
effect to the routine that you use in the garden. So if you're a gardener, you're familiar with taking a powder called routine and dipping a stem or something in it and then planting it, and that is that encourages root development. You can get the same effect with using this willow tea and again you use that. You can use that in ceremonial activities where you're encouraging new growth.
Where you're encouraging new development. We do something in the pagan community in some traditions where before someone comes into circle or comes into a ritual, you expurge them. You you sprinkle water on them, and frequently it is done with oils, essential oils that are appropriate to the season, well at beltane
or any of the growing seasons. If you wanted to use this willow water again to encourage that creativity, that new growth, that a vigorousness, for lack of a better word, that's a good way to use the willow tree to help bring that magic into your life. Talk a little bit as we conclude JD on how to use trees for healing. In other words, I'm talking about emotional healing. People go to like I go and try to hike or walk in local nature a couple of times a week, just because it's
rejuvenating. I feel a connection to Earth and Gaya. But if somebody is having depression and sadness and they just can't get out of their funk and they go out and they're in an area with trees, what would you suggest to them to connect with gaya? And how do we use trees? Well, there is a something out there that some of your folks may or may not have heard about called four bathing. Uh. It's a there's a Japanese term for it, but it became popular or in the nineties as a concept that
we brought over from Japan. And it wasn't that they invented this. Everybody, not anybody. A lot of people understood that this was a thing. They just didn't have a term for it. So we call it these days, we call it forest bathing. Where this in this situation, ideally you would go to a park. In my case, I've got several little walking trails around the house here. Just to get into a wooded environment begins to lower your levels of stress. It just naturally will do it. There's some
people say it's because the ion exchange. You have a lot of negative ions there, so that helps to kind of calm you down. Some people think it's the earthy smells that you just have to get. You may not be terribly aware of them. Usually we don't notice them until there's a low front coming in and that would see humusy smell that you get. That's because the odors are being held close to the ground, and that way you're more aware
of them. They're always there, but regardless, when you go out into that wooded environment, you inhale those and those smells begin to calm you down, begin to help you to feel more relaxed when you go into these environments.
It's wonderful if you can find a place where you're comfortable sitting down, take a towel with you, take a blanket, if you will have a place where you can set up a permanent place and put a bench or chair out there in a wooded area close to your home where you can sit down
and literally take your shoes off and be in contact with the ground. I have a lot of folks that come to ritual who, regardless at the time of year, how hot or cold it is out there, whether the ground is wet or dry, whatever, they feel like they have to have their shoes off in order to make that connection. And again there is some mundane scientific rationale for the exchange of ions and energy where your feet are touching the
ground. And interestingly, from a nerbology standpoint, if you want to get something into someone's system, quickly do a foot set, because you have more receptors on the bottom of your feet than just about anywhere else except perhaps the palms of your hand, so you can absorb that. And when you get into that environment, you don't. I think some people when you say do a meditation, they immediately tense up and come, I don't know anything about
meditations. You don't have to set down, set on the ground, set on a chair, and just breathe deep breaths in and out. Listen, what are you Here's the wind moving through the trees. Are the birds chirping? Do you hear insects? Is there water running nearby? Is there just something scampering over here? Mouse running through the leaves. You take your mind away from whatever it is that's stressing you, whether it's work or a relationship. You let your mind come away from that. There used to be and
I can't remember now where I first came across it. Someone told me that the best way to solve a problem is to stop thinking about it, push it down, take your mind off of it, let your subconscious work on it and present possible solutions to you. Well, it's hard to do that if you're sitting there going, oh golly, I'm gonna go at this workload. I've got to get this thing done, and then there's this other deadline. I've got to how I'm gonna get it all up. Take your mind
off of it. If nothing else, it gives you a brief spell where you can say, I can do this. It's not going to be pleasant to get through this particular knot of conflicting schedules and people yammering at me from both sides, but I can get through this if I can just have a
few minutes to myself and relax. And when you do that, particularly when you do it on a regular basis, I think that you find that you begin to get an innerst piece and you can take that back to your work environment or home environment with you to tap into as those things begin to crawl right back up on you and start demanding your attention again, Okay, I'm back under the tree that things canna be Okay, you do that on a
regular basis, and that's how you make that connection with Guya if you call her Gaia, or with nature or with the divine, however you interpret it. I love that remedy, JD. Getting No. I mean I always say, get out of nature. Everything else will resolve itself. The big issue though, is to leave your phone in your car. That's my problems. I take my damn iPhone with me because I'm always looking at it.
You're gonna leave that alone because that just makes it a big mess. So yeah, that that's a source of a lot of our anxiety these Days's exactly. The book is Under the Cannaby, Under the Secret a Cannamy. My guest has been j D. Walker. Uh, give us your your website, j D. And anything else that we can use to have people contact you or get a sense of where you're going to be speaking or how how
how they can interact with you. You can reach out to me at roadside magic dot com and that is magic with a K H. Tagan spell Magic mg c K dot com. Uh. You can find me on Facebook at House of Acasto Gso generally speaking, that's the best way to get in touch with me either one of those two ways. And the books are available of course through Llewellyn dot com. Just came out in May, so this book's available. I saw it on Amazon's book and yes, Amazon is another good
place to get it. Please leave me a review if you find that you liked either one of them, right, you would really appreciate that. Are you on YouTube? Are you talking on you should give videos at all? Again, I am a I am a very bad technopagan. I am trying. I am trying to get better at that. If I get to that point, it would be on the roadside magic or at the house of Akasha
Gso okay, J. D. Walker A real pleasure. This is a fascinating book and we could spend a whole day talking about the different aspects that you presented in it. But real fun read. Thank you, Thank you very much. I do appreciate the invitation to come on your podcasts. I was thinking after this interview, it's like we take trees for granted. We really do here in northern California. I mean, I'm a native and I'm
at fault for this too. Not pain enough attention. I really felt the pain last year though, because we had just unprecedented firestorms that burned millions of acres, and you know, it's it's funny because a lot of environment mentalists believe that the trees are our lungs, our planets lungs, and when we lose that many trees, it's devastating. And you know, people on the East coast of the United States have been suffering, especially up around New York
and some of the states that border Canada. And there's been this big, huge Canadian fire that's burned millions of acres of old growth, but the pollution has been terrible, so and it's just really sad that we lose these trees. They you know, one hundred, two hundred and three hundred and older trees. To lose those is a devastations. So I've become more sensitive to
the whole tree, the whole story of trees and their importance. And I think it's fascinating that they are on some levels, they have a consciousness, you know, to be able to share their water, share their food,
pass on hormones and other elements of life to one another. I love that, you know, and I also believe that at some point, and I say this every time some amit kids going to invent a scanning device that can scan the life force, the oric fields, the chakras, the energy feels that are sisters knew about and be able to tell that these trees are are actual living beans. People say that casually, Well, they're living entities, they're living beans. I think they really are. How far are they assentient?
Now, that would be a trip. If you discovered that your trees, your neighboring neighboring trees, were aware of you and could respond in some manner, that would be a trip. That would be just a plaining trip. I mean you would. I mean if I went out and I hung out with my favorite trees and I knew that they were able to respond, and we're taking in the information. Oh, it changes the whole dynamic, you know, it just it just changes the whole dynamic. So get that
book just came out under the Sacred Canopy J. D. Walker. That was fun. Hey, we are coming to the end of summer, but that means that the fall is fast approaching and we have some tours that are coming up. We have our we have our Mexico tour, which is the it's called the Maya of Tabasco and Chiapis. It is a one week tour from November tenth to the seventeenth. We have a few spots left, and
this is going to be led by Ed Barnhardt, who's in Mayanas. He's also an archaeologist, and we're gonna see Polank, Bottom Pack, we're gonna see Leventab, We're gonna see a whole bunch of Mayan sights, and we're gonna see it from the eyes of an of our archaeologist who's excavated many of these places, and that's really really cool. He's even promised to take us to some of the back areas of Plank Is a ruin of the Crown Jewel
rules of the ancient Maya, and I've never been there. I'm looking forward to it. So if you want to come out and join us, we have a few spots left. Go to Earth Ancients dot com, forward slash tours t O U R S and look for the banner for Mexico and November. Click on it and you'll see the entire itinerary. If you have any questions whatsoever on any of our tours, send me an email to Earth Ancients. The number four of the letter U at gmail dot com and I'll get
right back to you as soon as I can. We just announced our Egypt tour. It's going to be April twenty eighth May ninth, two weeks of amazing visuals and details, and that's going to be an amazing tour. It always is. Every year we change it up a little bit. We add some new sites, some new visits, and it is world class. That tour is also to be found on Earth Ancients dot com forward slash Tours and guess what, we have a new tour. I'm gonna mention it quickly because
we have a lot of people that want to come. It's our first annual trip to Ancient Turkey and we all fly into Istanbul just two weeks with Muhammed Embrym, and he's also going to have a couple of other people that we're going to take us to Darren Kuru, the Underground City, Go Beckley Teppi, Carahan Teppi. We're gonna see a number of ancient sites. We're gonna see a ton of stuff. You should see the itinerary. It's not out yet, but if you want to come, send me an email because we're
only going to take a handful of people on this one. It's gonna be August twenty twenty four, and we'll give you more details. If you want to come, send me an email just for you at gmail dot com and I'll get right back to you. It's funny because I already have I think we're already have full We've been talking about Turkey for a couple of years now, and everyone's kind of going, don't tease us, we want to come. Our Earth Ancients tours are world class. All that's all I can say.
They're very inexpensive and you see a ton of stuff and I get to hang out with you too, which is kind of fun. So send me an email if you want to go to Turkey or you want more information Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com. Hey, I love touring. I love hanging out with you guys, and it's a chance to get me out of the studio, into the seat of a plane and into another country. I love it. I love seeing the world. So come out, come
on and join me. All right, that's it for today's program. I want to thank my guest today, J D. Walker, coming from North Carolina. And it's funny because she was reminding me of the landscape there, and I have a really good friend there. So debo Kimsie, if you're listening, I need to come out and visit. I hope you're doing well all right. As always, the team of Ruth Thomas, Mark Foster and
Chris Hazel thank you for your help. You guys rock all right. Take care of you well and we will talk to you next time.