Hawthorn, Queen of the May Wisdom

Ancient Thorns, Ceremony, Water Blessing, Storytelling and More ...

Tree Wisdom from Hawthorn, Queen of the May

Dear Hearts

Hawthorn is a generous tree. She garlands the lanes and fields with her blossoms and then in Autumn stands bedecked with ruby jewels. Birds fill the branches feasting on fleshly delights. Hawthorn rules the Summer half of the Celtic year while Blackthorn rules the Winter.

This month I have been taking my Hawthorn Tree Spirit Essence every day. Sinking deeper in to that green magic threshold. For Thorn as much as anything is a being of initiation into deep held magic.

The buds look like thousands of miniature snowballs held delicately by the branches just waiting their moment to burst open and reveal all. First come glimpses of green, then tight small dark bunches of green leaves. At last the beautiful round white globes. Oh, for the Queen of the May!

Hawthorn by AC Vesty

For a small tree she is a big presence, in Spring her scent fills the air. At once alluring yet strangely overcoming, honeyed & slightly cloying. She is the glamour that bewitches in the old fashioned sense of the word. Thomas fell asleep beneath her branches and awoke to see the faerie queen. Upon his return from his journey with the queen to Elfland he became a gifted seer who could never tell a lie.

Thomas The Rhymer

Thomas The Rhymer was the first story I ever told. First written down in the middle ages and later turned into a ballad. Like the greatest stories, those which we call fairy tales, it is of course true. Nonsense! I hear you say. “Fairy tales are nothing but the dreams of idlers and dawdlers told to pass the time. They are for children, they are fantasy. Wisps of fancy that fade as dew with the first light”. *

Oh, but that were true perhaps … for fairy tales are often dark and the heroes and heroines have much suffering to undergo. Such is the truth in them, for who among us can say they have never suffered? This is our lot, as humans, to experience both joy and pain. If we did not well … then, we would not be human, would not be the animals of flesh and blood as we are. And Hawthorn for all her powers as a plant does indeed remind us of our fleshly concerns does she not? She entices and enraptures our senses and pulls us out of the sleeping state so many of us are seduced into by the succubus of modernity.

"This Thorn-Tree, as lang as it stands,

Earlstoun sall possess a' her lands."

Wild Spirit Woods

We tend to think of Hawthorn tamed in a close clipped hedge or as a small diminutive tree but here at Wild Spirit Woods, our on-the-ground Forest Heart Community home is blessed with three extraordinary great big ancient Hawthorn beings. Below a photo, I took earlier this year of one of them mirrored.

Hag Maiden by AC Vesty

Two of them are quite easy to spot but the third is more hidden. They are certainly well over two hundred years old. Their presence is very powerful, maybe you will come to meet them sometime.

For our Gathering In The Green this month we celebrated Hawthorn and met them face to face. I sent everyone out on a mission to meet them. We were lucky enough to be gifted some leaves and blossoms for our tea ceremony. Pictures, film of water blessing and more to follow below …

Hawthorn Blossoms

Have you not smelt her blossoms? Can you the smell the life in them? Can you smell the death in them? Yes … death, for there is in them a chemical that mimics perfectly the smell of dying flesh. (Triethylamine is one of the first chemicals produced when a human body starts to decay and is also found in human semen and vaginal secretions.) Not for nothing do you see her bedecked with the carapaced jewels of insects attracted to such things. She shines with light while darkness becomes her.

We are brainwashed in to believing darkness represents evil yet in this instance it means night and death. A death that feeds the earth. The great circle dance of life with death, each feeding the other.

While lovers frolic beneath her Maytime boughs she says, remember, nothing lasts forever. Remember you too will return to the earth.

Blessings and Wild Wishes

Amanda Claire x

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* A charter from 1294 mentions "Thomas de Ercildoun, son and heir of Thomas Rymour de Ercildon"

Meanwhile, more from our gathering last weekend, water ceremony, my artwork and more for you lovely paid members …