Berkano; Birch and Beginnings

The Door with Berkano inscribed upon it was covered in white Birch-bark, and when I opened the Door and crossed the threshold into the Otherworld I found myself in a grove of Birch Trees.  My own skin was white and papery like the bark on the trees.  I wandered among them and the conversation was of beginnings, and giving birth. 

I was instructed that my life is about to begin a new book, it is filled with clean white blank pages and my responsibility is to write upon those pages a story of truth, and love, and peace.  I am to create poetry of joy and pleasure and wisdom and healing.  I do not get to decide all of the plot twists, only how I respond to them.  I do not get to know everything about the journey of the story, only how to tell it, and to whom.  It is beginning.  The past exists in other books that I have written, and they inform the story, they are my back-story but, the time has come to start again.

May I tell this story well, and may it create magick that makes my world a better place for small growing things.  So Mote It Be! 

Eihwaz; Trees of Life

I opened the door, stepped into the Otherworld, and looked at my feet. They were covered in bark, my legs and arms in soft green moss. My dress was made of leaves of every color. The path beneath me, a carpet of soft brown pine-needles, cushioned my every step in the dim twilight.  The forest was old-growth, the trees ancient.  All was silence and the whispers of stars.

I followed the wide gently sloping path through the woods, noticing Trees of every species I know.  They were each familiar to me.  The willow next to the house I grew up in, the Maple in the yard of my best friend.  The Pine on the hill behind the cottage at the lake. The Paper Birch in the neighbor’s front yard.  The Apple in the Orchard, the Cherry in the cemetery where the soldier and the baby are buried.  The Sycamore next to the stream.  The Oak in the park where I lived the past 20 years.

I followed the path through the woods until I came to a clearing.  At the center stood a Tree so large the branches were too high for me to see.  I stood upon the roots, close enough to place my hand upon the trunk, and I offered energy through my hands, and then I could feel my ancestors sending energy up through my feet to flow through my hands to the tree.

I could feel the strength of the Tree, holding up the universe, lending support and structure to the flow of Life itself.  Providing a channel for the energy to flow to and from the Underworld, the Upperworld, and all the Otherworlds. 

I gave thanks to the Tree and returned the way I had come.