| Woods - Quiet and contemplation. Connection with ancestors and the distant past. Veneration of nature. There is nothing like the deep peace of deep woods. Whether in stillness or filled with birdsong, in every season it is something special. Some people say it's all the extra oxygen, the energy of the trees themselves, the filtered light, or even the smell of moss. Who am I to argue with any of those things? When I wrote the definition of this card it came easily, and yet if you asked me why I made those choices I might say, "they just came to me" but I would be thinking "how could it be anything else?" All of nature has its appeal, but given a choice of a place to go to relax, to be quiet in my soul, to think or to meditate, I would choose woods. There is great peace there, but little loneliness. If it is a healthy, fairly natural wood it will be filled with birds and animals, and very possibly people, too - walking, working, perhaps riding horses. It's usually possible to find a bit of solitude, though. |  |
After the ice age, forests slowly covered much of Europe. This took millennia, but eventually Britain and much of Europe was covered in forest, probably much of it closed canopied and dense. This would have made overland travel difficult and dangerous, and is one reason for concentrated coastal settlements in early Europe. People positioned themselves for the best of both worlds - abundant fishing and abundant firewood and game. They also lived near the best source of travel and trading - the sea. It was only when they made the gradual shift from hunter-gatherers to herders that their relationship to the forest changed.
This changed the forest, too, gradually widening the open areas into pastures, and gradually taking more wood products out as lifestyles changed and populations increased. This new way of living was carried further and further inland. As natural clearings were enlarged for settlements, and growing crops became more important, people began to have a new relationship with the forest. Paths through it connected hamlets and villages and people had more business in the woods. It still remained a place of mystery and possible danger, yet slowly became a place much loved and depended upon, as well.
As Europe moved into the middle ages, the age of kings, things changed again. Laws of the forest were enacted from Russia to England which decreed that the chief products of the forest - wood and game - were the property of the kings. This, too, was a gradual process arising from feudalism, which reached its height in Britain and France under the Norman kings. Yet, unfair as it was to the native peoples of the land, it slowed the clearing process.
Sherwood Forest (artist unknown) Plenty of clearings here.
Out of these various times, different heroes, monsters and lore of the woods developed, and while moorland and coastline can also be wild and mysterious places, the forest retained a hold on the imagination in a unique way. That might be partly because so much remains hidden from view there, but I suspect a kind of ancestral or collective memory also plays a part. Even though our earliest European ancestors may have been loathe to venture into the woods without good reason, we ultimately look back to a time when the all encompassing forest was the norm. As each era sees more felling and clearing, each generation looks back, often with longing, to a time of more trees, of deeper woods. In this way, the forest becomes our past, holding our ancestors under its canopy, decaying and being reabsorbed under its leaf litter and moss.
Trees are a kind of sister race to mankind. We live amongst them, journeying through our lives side by side, yet at such a differing pace. So many of the trees we meet were old when we were born, will live on after we die. We are relative mayflies and gadflies - with our short lives and great mobility, compared to the static, stable and stoic trees. Yet the spirit of the woods is more than the sum of its parts. There is a peace there. It contains the sum of abundant life and abundant passing and decay in an endless circle. A microcosm of our lives, our spiritual yearnings, our fears, our connection to nature and to the past.
I know that many of you are filled with these longings, and the desire for these connections. Go to the woods if you can. Go deep enough that you don't see out into that other normal and mundane world. Sit. Listen. Meditate. Dream. Walk.
Further reading:
British ancient forests were patchy by Sara Coelho - results of a scientific survey, which gives an easy-to-read overview of the long history of British woodland.
Into the Woods: On British Forests, Myth and Now by Ruth Padel - a really wonderful read, looking at the many roles played by woodland and nature in the British psyche, and beyond. Highly recommended!
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