Nature Spirits of the Trees E-Book

Verena Stael von Holstein

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

'People often ask us about the best way to come close to nature and the beings enchanted within it. One way to do so is through wonder and astonishment, to open our senses fully to nature's beauty and wisdom. And here we can encounter entities that most closely resemble human beings — the trees.' Verena has learned to communicate with elemental and nature beings, and to translate their language into terms we can understand. In her remarkable book Nature Spirits and What They Say, she conversed with a range of beings, including spirits of fire, air, water and stone. In this new volume, we hear from trees, the nature spirits that in many ways are most similar to human beings. Through Verena's remarkable clairvoyant abilities, conversations with different tree species – such as sweet cherry, rowan, elm and common oak – are relayed. These communications reveal compelling insights into the role of trees within the natural world and their relationships with the vegetable, animal, human and spirit kingdoms. Particular emphasis is placed on the characteristics of trees that correspond with qualities of the human soul, such as the oak's connection to individualism. The tree spirits want to speak, and are responsive all kinds of questions, such as their roles in the landscape, their specific shapes, on problems that affect them in particular, and on urgent issues that are relevant to all beings on earth, such as climate change. The interviews disclose beautiful, fascinating and often challenging insights, offering inspiration to help us build more constructive relationships to these wonderful entities.

Leseprobe

VERENA STAËL VON HOLSTEIN was born in Rendsburg in 1959. She studied surveying and hydrography and worked as a computer programmer and in the hydrographic surveying department. She is a homemaker with two children, and lives at a watermill in Lüneburger Heide, a heathland region in Northern Germany. A student of the work of Rudolf Steiner, from childhood onwards she has been able to perceive the etheric and astral realms in human beings and the natural world. She has learnt over many years to train her metaphysical perceptions so that communication with nature spirits takes place almost as a matter of course. She receives answers spiritually in the form of patterns, ideas and sometimes also images, and translates them into human concepts. She is the author of several books, including Nature Spirits and What They Say.

NATURE SPIRITS OF THE TREES

AND WHAT THEY WANT TO TELL US

Messages from the Beings of the Trees

Verena Staël von Holstein

CLAIRVIEW

Clairview Books Ltd.,Russet, Sandy Lane,West Hoathly,W. Sussex RH19 4QQ

www.clairviewbooks.com

Published by Clairview Books 2019

First published in English by Floris Books, Edinburgh, 2009

Originally published in German under the title Gespräche mit Bäumen, 1 by Flensburger Hefte Verlag, Flensburg, 2007

Translated by Matthew Barton Edited by Wolfgang Weirauch Illustrated by Gudrun Hofrichter and Jesús Pérez

© Flensburger Hefte 2007 Translation © Floris Books 2009

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The rights of Verena Staël von Holstein and Wolfgang Weirauch to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 912992 12 6

Cover by Morgan Creative featuring images © Eyetronic & Tomertu Typeset by Floris Books, Edinburgh Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd, Essex

Contents

About the Authors

Foreword

Participating Beings

Theabrox, the Great Timber

The tree in material terms

Human being and tree

Tree spirits, tenders and other elemental beings

Contacting tree beings

The Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

The Sweet Cherry (Prunus avium)

The Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera)

The Black Elder (Sambucus nigra)

The Rowan Tree (Sorbus aucuparia)

The Norway Maple (Acer platanoides)

The Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus)

The Field Maple (Acer campestre)

The Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum)

The Black Alder (Alnus glutinosa)

The Grey Alder (Alnus incana)

The Common Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastum)

The Sweet or Edible Chestnut (Castanea sativa)

The Poplar (Populus)

The Aspen (Populus tremula)

The Grey Poplar (Populus canescens)

Crown, the tree tender

The London Plane (Platanus acerifolia)

The Large-leaved Lime or Linden (Tilia platphyllos)

The Caucasian Lime (Tilla x euchlora)

The Ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

The European Beech (Fagus sylvatica)

The Pendula or Weeping Beech (Fagus sylvatica forma pendula)

The Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica forma purpurea)

The Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)

The Elm (Ulmus)

The Black Locust or False Acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia)

The Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)

The Silver or Weeping Birch (Betula pendula)

The White Willow (Salix alba)

The English or Common Oak (Quercus robur)

The Red Oak (Quercus rubra)

The Pomegranate (Punica granatum)

The Soapberry (Sapindus mukorossi)

The Frankincense (Boswellia sacra)

The Palo Santo or Vera Wood (Bulnesia arborea)

The Olive (Olea europaea)

About the Authors

Verena Staël von Holstein was born in Rendsburg in 1959. She studied surveying and hydrography and worked as a computer programmer and in the hydrographic surveying department. She is a housewife with two children, and lives at a watermill in Lüneburger Heide, a heathland region in Northern Germany. An anthroposophist who sets out to follow Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual indications, from childhood onwards she has been able to perceive the etheric and astral realms in human beings and the natural world. She has learnt over many years to train her supersensory perceptions so that communication with nature spirits takes place almost as a matter of course. She receives answers spiritually in the form of patterns, ideas and sometimes also images, and translates them into our human terms. She has been working continuously with nature elementals since she moved to the Mill in 1995.

Wolfgang Weirauch was born in Flensburg in 1953. He studied politics and German literature, then theology at The Christian Community seminary. He publishes the Flensburg Papers series, and teaches politics at Flensburg Waldorf School. He also gives lectures, and teaches on a distance-learning course for Waldorf education and coaching. He received Verena Staël von Holstein’s first manuscript Nature Spirits and What They Say in 2001, and soon recognized the value of her conversations with nature elementals. After visiting the Mill and, through Verena, holding meetings where he was able to speak with nature spirits himself, he has published further books of these extraordinary conversations.

Foreword

This is a book of conversations with nature spirits and other spirit beings. There is no general name that applies to all these beings, but they have been called, for instance, elementals, nature spirits or nature beings. The decisive thing is their location, the place of their activity, and the particular task they accomplish.

People often ask us about the best way to come close to nature and the beings enchanted within it. One way to do so is through wonder and astonishment, to open our senses fully to nature’s beauty and wisdom. And here we can encounter entities that most closely resemble human beings — the trees. If you give your full attention and interest to trees, approaching them without any kind of egotism, you can learn to love them and, very gradually, perceive the way different trees are related to varying human soul qualities.

As we embarked on this project we wondered, with some trepidation, whether it would prove possible for us to speak with the different tree spirits. But we did. Our efforts were fully rewarded.

Just as nature spirits in previous projects replied to all our questions and spoke to us of supersensible secrets, we were able, through Verena Staël’s channelling, to speak with numerous tree spirits and with several tree group souls. The tree spirits replied to all the questions we asked, for instance about the shape of a tree, its role in the landscape, climate change, the relationship of the tree to nature spirits and other domains of the spiritual world, and also about problems specifically affecting trees.

We placed special emphasis on the role of each tree and the human soul quality corresponding to it. The diversity of the human soul is reflected in the distinctive physical form of individual trees.

So we invite you to join us now in these engaging and enthralling conversations, and learn to know and love trees in an entirely new way.

Participating Beings

Theabrox, the Great Timber — wood being

Tutshily, the black cherry — species tree tender

Vux, the sweet cherry — tree being

Ooma, the cherry plum — tree being

Sonar, elder — tree being

Ebsy, the rowan — tree being

Crissie, the European maple — species tree tender

Ella, the black alder — tree being

Kollii, the One from the Marsh — marsh spirit

Petra, the common horse chestnut — tree being

Gunilla, the poplar — species tree tender

Crown, tree tender

Frank, the London plane — tree being

Linda, the lime — species tree tender

Echevit, the Watery One — water being

Lara, the common ash — tree being

Letra, the beech — species tree tender

Robert, the elm — species tree tender

Clausine, the robinia — tree being

Ina, the honey locust — tree being

Birka, the silver or weeping birch — tree being

Cara, the willow — species tree tender

Oakbeen, the oak — tree being

Zuleika, the pomegranate — tree being

Indira, the soapberry — tree being

Gunda, the boswellia or frankincense — tree being

Miller, the House Spirit

Paolo, palo santo — tree being

Olivia, the olive — tree being

Elemental Beings

Gnomes — elementals of the earth

Undines — elementals of water

Sylphs — elementals of the air

Salamanders — elementals of fire

Theabrox, the Great Timber

Theabrox: Hello, I like the thought of a tree book, and we are pleased to help.

WW: Hello Theabrox. In your view, what is a tree?

Theabrox: A tree is a special type of being. It is an image of the human being, reflected onto the plant realm. That’s the most important thing we experience, initially, with trees. Most people have a certain idea about nymphs, but nymphs are not the same as tree spirits. Tree nymphs live in trees, of course, but they are not tree spirits. They have a close connection with the tree; but if you talk to Oakbeen, for example, this is not a nymph but the self of one of the oaks standing here in front of the house.

WW: And what are nymphs?

Theabrox: Nymphs (tree tenders) are beings closely connected with the tree-self. Somehow they have a feminine character. They look after the tree and care for it, but they are not the tree-self. It is similar to the relationship between you and the elemental being or spirit of your body: you are the self or the I; the elemental spirit of your body dwells in you but is not your self. All trees we have talked to so far are either the respective selves of the trees, or the greater, overarching tree beings. For example, Cordon is not the body elemental of an individual person, but a higher elemental of a particular region. In just the same way there are spirit tree tenders for a certain region, though these are not necessarily the higher ones such as Crown.

The tree in material terms

Like human beings, a tree has various bodies; but the difference is that these are not all present in earthly existence. Some of these tree bodies — and this is hard to express or understand — are situated in parallel earths or worlds, that is, in certain realms of the world of spirit. You call these realms Lower or Higher Devachan but these expressions don’t really come from your own central European culture. When you are embodied, incarnated as human beings, your bodies — from the physical body through to the I — are more or less embodied together; this is not the case with a tree, for while its physical body stands here or there in a wood, its I dwells in the world of spirit.

In physical terms the tree also has various parts, such as the root, the trunk and branches, and the crown with its leaves — to mention just three typical aspects of the tree. If a plant does not have this threefold division, you can’t really call it a tree. If the crown grows directly from the ground you call it a bush, for it doesn’t have a trunk like a tree does. Of course, there are always intermediate types. The tree’s roots usually delve into the ground, but sometimes into water as well. And then there are fascinating trees like the mangroves that grow partly in the water, partly above it, and only connect minimally with the soil. They have a trunk and are quite open above and below.

Generally roots penetrate the earth and sometimes even stone, for a tree has enormous strength in its roots. Every homeowner who has a tree standing too close to his house knows of this problem.

The root region of the tree corresponds to the head in humans. If you people were trees, one would first have to lodge you head-down in the soil. Then comes the trunk, subdivided into bark, phloem, cambium, xylem and core. The first protects the tree, the next transports sugars between roots and leaves: the cambium is the layer of cells which multiply, and in the xylem, minerals and water are carried up from the roots. Then you have the crown with twigs and leaves; and here you find all kinds of shapes, varying greatly from one type of tree to another.

Cross-section through a five-year-old pine trunk

Each crown will have evergreen or deciduous leaves. The leaves themselves have very varied forms — from palm leaves through to birch leaves, from heart-shaped to pinnate, from smooth-edged to serrated, from thick and fleshy through to fine and delicate leaves. Most leaves are green, though some are red or other colours. The leaves are the area of the tree where it enters into contact with the air and atmosphere. What trees exhale through their leaves is what people like to breathe in — that is, oxygen. If trees no longer existed, the lungs of the oceans would still breathe, it is true, but things would be very difficult for the world and human beings.

Human being and tree

WW: You compare trees with people. Where do the parallels really lie here, for instance between the human head and the tree roots?

Theabrox: That’s self-evident. Through its roots the tree engages with the contracted and enclosed mineral world, and absorbs the world’s mineral constituents. Naturally it also absorbs cosmic forces that are connected with these constituents. This corresponds with the area in you in which your physical body enters into a closed form and where minerals are most strongly represented: the domain of the human head. The leafy part of a tree corresponds with human breathing, and the trunk with its branches to the will realm, the human being’s limb system.

Tree spirits, tenders and other elemental beings

WW: What is a tree spirit exactly? What tasks does it perform and, in doing so, what relationship does it have with other elemental beings?

Theabrox: The tree spirit is the self of the tree but does not have its I within it as people do. It only has limited access to the I of the tree, which is located in the world of spirit. The tree spirit is closely linked with its body elemental, and in fact it is this spirit really. Then there is also the tree tender, that is, the nymph. There can be several of these to each tree. The nymph can separate itself from the tree whereas the tree spirit cannot do so.

WW: When and why do nymphs separate themselves from trees?

Theabrox: They also work in the tree’s surroundings and can be elsewhere too, in spatial terms. When I say ‘separate’ I don’t mean that they go away forever, but that they can remove themselves etherically and spatially from the tree because they are active elsewhere. Then they return again. A tree spirit on the other hand must always be connected with a tree. Nymphs do not separate entirely from a tree, for then they would suffer very badly. They work in the tree’s surroundings, usually not very far away.

WW: What relationship does a tree have — or rather the beings within it — to other elemental beings?

Theabrox: They have very close relationships with a great many elementals—with the gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders. Their relationship to the salamanders is not the most intense but does occur in connection with fruit formation. The gnomes work in the root realm, helping to conduct minerals there. There is a great circulation of water in the tree, in which the undines are involved. The undines are very diverse in nature. There are miniscule ones right through to beings the size of Echevit. Echevit is a different and higher being but he too has something of an undine quality. Sylphs on the other hand live and work in the tree crowns, and sometimes they congregate there. This is especially the case when the trees bear blossom. Trees find difficulty only with the direct and manifest form of the salamanders. They naturally collaborate in the weaving of warmth, in fruit formation.

Contacting tree beings

Wolfgang Weirauch: I have sought out a few dozen trees and formulated some questions for them, which I will now ask in sequence. You must then see which of you would like to reply.

Theabrox: First I have a question for you. Would you like to speak directly with the trees themselves, or do you wish to speak to me about them?

WW: I’m surprised that it’s possible for me to speak with individual trees, but if so let’s do it that way. You can always add anything you think is necessary. Decide amongst yourselves what will work best.

Theabrox: By saying this you allow us scope for freedom. It is possible for Verena to make contact with the individual trees through me and the tree tenders. The leaves you have collected come from trees which all grow several hundred kilometres from here. However, we can make contact with each respective tree being. So we can call on each tree, such as Oakbeen, or the oak, which stands right here in front of the house, and which you can touch. We can also invoke the mothers of all tree species: this is an intermediate level which we didn’t have until now. Instead of Oakbeen, the single oak, we could therefore equally speak with the Great Oak. Over and above this there are also the tree-tending beings — for instance myself as timber being, and the tree tenders, which have less to do with the wood itself, and more to do with how individual trees may spread or withdraw. We can contact all these beings; we can also just see how things develop.

WW: That would be best of all. The order in which we speak to them doesn’t matter. I simply collected leaves, pressed them and placed them in a box. Let’s start with the topmost leaf. The first tree is a wild cherry.

Theabrox: That’s fitting, for you are a cherry-tree person, though not a wild cherry person. So I’m not surprised that you chose cherry to begin with.

The Black Cherry

Prunus serotina

Theabrox: This is a cherry tree which grows close to the edge of a wood.

WW: That’s right.

Verena Staël von Holstein: I’m always amazed when these things prove correct.

Theabrox: This wild cherry is widespread with you and is a tree typical of the region.

WW: What can you tell me about it?

Theabrox: Are you clear which this is? There are two main types of wild cherry, the European and the American late-flowering black cherry. The American black cherry found its way here a few hundred years ago and has spread far and wide. For us it is a problematic tree being; it is an imported tree that in many places has more or less driven away the indigenous kind. The leaf you brought with you is not the European but the American kind.

WW: Why do these late-flowering black cherry trees grow so abundantly in hedgerows and parks?

Theabrox: Because they have no European competitors. This is the big problem with plants that come from other countries: they have no corresponding pests. Tree nature is only in equilibrium if the trees have adversaries. Only then can balance arise.

The tree has not yet shaken off its American past

WW: Do you mean tree adversaries, or other creatures?

Theabrox: Both — adversaries in the form of competitor trees, insects, birds and other animals. The late-flowering black cherry does not have adversaries because the spirits of creation did not plan it for the European context. It was dragged in here — something very easy actually, for you only need a cherry stone.

But this wild cherry blossoms very beautifully, and around the end of May it looks magical. When flowering it also has a very pleasant scent. Its blossoms are white. This tree has not yet shaken off its American past. In your way of marking time it will take a few hundred years before it becomes European. That is why it still has a strongly proliferative and unconstrained quality. There are so many of these wild cherry trees! They provide the birds with a good basis for their diet, and spread very abundantly through bird excrement. This wild cherry grows very fast and thus easily suppresses indigenous species. Most people like this tree very much because of its pleasant appearance.

Originally this cherry was exported to bring a touch of beauty to European parks. But then it spread rapidly across great swathes of northern Europe — and now here comes the American black cherry’s overarching being.

Only few can speak to me

WW: Hello.

Tutshily: Hello.

WW: What kind of being are you?

Tutshily: I am the European aspect of the American black cherry, the late-flowering black cherry. I tend the various cherry tree beings, concerning myself with the overall stocks of cherries and sometimes also with individual cherry trees. If I can express this in human terms, I lead the negotiations of my species with the European trees, and try to reach consensus with them.

You people brought me over here to Europe and left me to my own devices. This happened a few hundred years ago and now you are trying to regulate my triumphant spread through Europe. As higher tree being I try to bring this situation into balance. However, this is relatively difficult, as only a few people can speak to me.

The shape of the leaves reveals our character

WW: I would be glad to hear something about the shape of the leaves. Why are they so long and oval, and why do they end in such a sharp point?

Tutshily: The shape of the leaves has a great deal to do with our interaction with sylphs, for the leaves are the organs we breathe with — if we may compare this with you humans. The sun shines on the leaves and the sunlight helps give us the energy to form sugars we need to grow. At the same time this enables us to form chlorophyll and to organize our breathing processes.

The shape of the leaves reveals our character. The shape of the black cherry leaves has something primitive and knife-like. If you observe ancient stone knives, they have a very similar form. This also highlights our capacity to defend ourselves and conquer terrains.

Secondly the narrowness of the leaves shows that we are very good at surviving droughts. The narrower a leaf, the less water evaporates from its surface. We have many narrow leaves. We are able to relinquish some leaves while continuing to work with the others. The shape of the leaf shows also whether trees — in this case we black cherries — can cope well with dryness. We can.

The slight serration on the leaf edge shows that we have a certain aggression. Such serration always has something to do with the capacity to assert yourself.

WW: On the leaf stalk there are meant to be two red glands, though you can’t see them on this leaf. What are they for?

Tutshily: Sap can be exuded there, and nectar is secreted which certain creatures can ingest. But for some creatures this nectar is poisonous. That’s why we are relatively good at defending ourselves against pests.

We are also very fast growing. If you break us, we quickly put out new growth from the broken place.

The strong scent expresses our conquering character

WW: Why do your blossoms have such a strong scent and such a beautiful shape?

Tutshily: Our blossom is almost pure white and the pollen is strongly dispersed. We’re not an ideal tree for people with allergies. If as a tree you emit a strong scent, it attracts many insects, and so many fruits form and, in turn, many new trees grow. We are certainly not reticent in character.

We cope with various different soils, moist as well as dry, sandy soils. We grow both in hedgerows and in damper meadow areas. However we can’t tolerate severe cold, which is why we don’t spread into far northern and high mountainous regions. Our nature is both to be fast growing and to have beautiful flowers, which gives us a seductive character. People like growing us and overlook the fact that we can suppress other plants.

The Native Americans made nectar and medicines from our glands, and these played an important role in North American culture. However, knowledge of these medicines vanished with the demise of these people.

Help for the skin

WW: What medicine did the Indians make from you?

Tutshily: They made a skin cream that helped wounds heal and form good scar tissue. Based on this, research could be done today to give you some benefit from my tree expertise.

WW: Would this medicine help us today?

Tutshily: Yes, for eczema, and for all rupturing skin diseases. We heal the skin and help it to close up again. The fact that we are very strong growers means we quickly seal up our boundaries.

My berries are bitter

WW: Why are your berries so small and bitter?

Tutshily: We aren’t poisonous for people, though our berries don’t taste good to you. And our berries are small so that smaller animals can manage them. Our berries are eaten in great numbers by your European songbirds because they are the right size for them to eat easily. That’s very advantageous for us: the birds provide us with a good means of spreading. The berries are sour or bitter because they contain tannin, but this doesn’t deter the animals.

WW: In late summer we see starlings sitting on high-voltage power lines, and below, the ground is covered in cherry stones. Do they spit out the stones, or do these pass through their digestion?

Tutshily: Normally the whole cherry is swallowed and the stones are excreted. Most creatures, particularly birds, have very strong stomach acids because they often cannot chew. That is why you find scarcely any excrement near the cherry stones, and the stones themselves look chewed up.

WW: Why are the berries first yellow, then red, and finally black?

Tutshily: That’s part of our seduction principle: it’s very attractive to first see yellow, then red, then black berries. Yellow is a warning colour that tells creatures the berries aren’t yet ripe. Many poison-bearing animals also have yellow markings, such as wasps or various snakes. Red is also a warning colour, though not such a definite one. Black is a sign to the birds that the cherries are now sweet.

WW: Why do wild cherries have such a large stone relative to the fruit?

Tutshily: Because we are Americans. Much that grows on the American continent gets very big compared with European conditions. We don’t have the highest mountains there, but we do have the deepest canyon, and people there also tend to keep getting bigger. I cannot tell you why America has the task of making things big — you’d have to ask higher beings.

Be seductive!

WW: What is the difference between you wild cherries and the so-called sweet cherry?

Tutshily: Sweet cherries got big because people intentionally bred them. The normal European wild cherry also has smaller fruits, similar to the American type. People bred the sweet cherry from the European wild cherry, cultivating it for sweetness and richer fruit flesh. The sweet cherry also has a very strong seductive impetus. If a cherry tree grows by a fence, hardly anyone can pass without picking a cherry. One of our life principles, endowed by the spirits of creation, is: be seductive! The seductive tree!

WW: If we were to look for a parallel between the cherry tree and a human soul quality, would that be seduction and persuasiveness?

Tutshily: Yes. If you transpose our qualities to people, you get a relatively innocent power of seduction. Nothing like vampirism. The cherry tree corresponds to a relatively innocent, yet still somewhat sexually seductive principle. Sweet cherries are also often compared with girls’ lips. This is really a youthful seductiveness. All cherries have something delicate, and likewise our leaves are not large and fleshy.

Sweet and sour

WW: The wild cherries include dark-sapped ones from which the sweet cherries derive, and light-sapped varieties. What is the difference between these two kinds?

Tutshily: The dark colour gives more sugariness. When you melt sugar in a pan it goes brown. Every sugar is first brown and is only bleached later. If you want to know why sweetness has a brown colour, you’ll again have to ask another being.

WW: There is also a third kind of cherry, the sour cherries. What kind are they?

Tutshily: The sour cherry is the one you can store: that’s due to the acidity it contains. You can’t really store or freeze sweet cherries, as usually they’ll just turn to pulp. This is because sweet cherries don’t retain formative powers. Acidity — corresponding to pain in humans — gives form. That’s why sour cherries are the ones which you humans can store. People also put sour cherries on cakes and use sweet cherries for sauces.

WW: What can you say about cherry wood?

Tutshily: I myself am more bush-like. Cherry wood from true sweet cherry trees has a different quality. This is a very beautiful and hard wood; it has a fine grain and is suitable for making furniture and musical instruments. Furniture made of cherry wood used to be for the ‘best drawing room.’ People used not to like felling cherry trees, until they grew old and no longer bore so well.

Pushing other cultures away

WW: What relationship do you cherry trees have to people?

Tutshily: We need humans because they spread us. We have the tendency to spread far and wide — a quality that also comes from the continent where we originate. To ensure this, people have to be tempted by us to carry us across the globe. We belong to the American way of life and represent this somewhat as trees: seductive, proliferative, pretty to look at, but also pushing other cultures away. It’s hard to keep us within bounds. We aren’t a tree for jungles far from human habitation, unless people carry us there. We follow civilization. We can’t grow next to great trees that deprive us of light. We need marginal areas, hedges or park-like landscapes. You have many such areas, particularly in Schleswig-Holstein.

WW: What can you tell me about the stripes on the bark of the sweet cherry?

Verena Staël von Holstein: Now Vux, the sweet cherry, is coming. Tutshily no longer feels able to reply to this.

The Sweet Cherry

Prunus avium

Vux: I am a tree that has been bred by humans. I didn’t exist originally, though I’ve been around for a relatively long time now. The sweet cherry is one of the early-blossoming trees, flowering before its leaves appear. The stripes of our bark and the fact that the bark peels off in strips attract insects which are needed for fertilizing our blossoms. The striation on our bark draws fertilizing insects. Every tree has its own way of regulating these processes. For instance, the oak needs no bees to fertilize it, and has a quite different, rather repelling bark.

WW: Sap often oozes from cherry trees.

Vux: This sap attracts the insects and also has a somewhat seductive quality. It’s not just the American cherries that have this, but also the European cherries.

It is interesting that our cherries grow in a quite different shape, for the sweet cherry does not have such large clusters. If the cherries grew in large bunches, they would obstruct each other.

WW: Does the sap from the trunk of the cherry tree also help heal any human illnesses?

Vux: This sap has not yet been used in the proper way. It would prevent skin ulceration processes. Many medicines could be obtained from trees. The sap from the cherry tree also helps against coughs and worms.

The cherry-eating path of self-development

WW: What happens in us when we eat a cherry?

Vux: You have a pronounced sensory experience as you become aware of the cherry’s smoothness. Pleasant sensations come both from the tactile experience of the cherry on the tongue and also the taste of the sweet cherry juice. The consistency of the cherry flesh as you chew is also pleasant. But then comes the shock of the fact that the cherry contains something hard. This shows you have to be careful while chewing; and that something hard surfaces behind the youthful and seductive quality. After youthful seduction something else must arise, for otherwise life would not continue. So biting and chewing a cherry can be a kind of schooling: if you reflect on the cherry fruit you will realize that a stony principle holds sway behind the plump, bright, seductive cherry fruit.

WW: What occurs in soul terms in the mouth and in the whole human being when we eat a sour cherry?

Vux: When you eat a sour cherry you have both things at once: it’s not just sour but sweet too. In fact this corresponds to the human being in the period after puberty, when he realizes that life isn’t just terrible or beautiful but that he also possesses inner forces and is capable of devotion — that life is not only sweet but that humans also grow riper. The stone of the sweet cherry is equally hard however. But underlying this is something spiritual. In the stone a very high spiritual principle is indicated in fact. The harder something is, the higher the spiritual principle.

The freshness of youth could vanish from the world

WW: Is there anything else to say about cherry trees in general that we haven’t mentioned yet?