I spent Saturday evening sitting around a fire singing songs to the trees.
Tree Choir hosted by the talented Jack Durtnall
My daughter spends three mornings a week at a local “forest school”-inspired nursery. Once a season or so they host a Tree Choir where we sing songs that were written for the trees by an inspiring organization called Children's Forest. We sang songs to the Apple tree and to the Elder, and they were lovely. But then came the song to the Birch and it felt different.
Something about the birch activated my symbolic sense. I felt a tingling, an effervescence rising in my center. As if an inner antenna perked up and leaned forward. A magnetic hum started to gently invite deeper layers of meaning to reveal themselves. And I was not disappointed.
Our host, Jack, shared that the birch is a "pioneer tree." Its winged seeds came to Britain after the end of the last ice age. As the birch seeds started to take root, they softened the compacted earth. As the birch forests grew their leaves fell and nourished the soil, making the conditions more hospitable for other species. And 11,000 years later, here we are!
I was deeply moved by this image.
It felt like a metaphor for the process of reclaiming my creativity. I suppose I could call the chapter of my life when I faced inhospitable conditions for my creativity my own personal “ice age”. Sending my soul down to hibernate in some subterranean lair. Over time, as I made choice after choice that started slowly thawing the surface, small seeds of creative inspiration from far off lands finally had a chance to land and take root. Years later I now feel like I have a diverse maturing forest and can send out my own winged seeds.
This symbolic image felt deeply satisfying. And yet, my symbolic sense said there was still more to uncover. So when I got home I consulted some of my books about trees.
I was excited to discover that, as it turns out, the birch is basically the tree mascot for creativity.
In the Wisdom of Trees, Max Adams remarks that, “What we learn from the modest birch is that someone has to put the hard work in first before all the glory is reaped. But also that being good at a few small things is just as important as bing the showstopper on the big stage.” Wisdom that is clearly applicable to the creative process where we get sold so many stories of "overnight success" and can easily fall prey to "Picasso pressure".
The birch tree also takes the cake in terms of "alternate uses". A common measure of creativity is called the Alternate Uses Task where people write down as many uses as they can think of for common objects like a brick or a paperclip. Birch wood is tough yet flexible and, as such, has an awe-inspiring range of uses: beautifully crafted canoes, all kinds of furniture, tools, baskets, bowls, spoons, fences and brooms. The Finns use birch branches to beat themselves in the sauna. And sadly sadistic schoolmasters used to use them to punish their students (a process actually called "birching"). In Ancient Rome birch branches were bundled together with an axe blade to form a fasces, a symbol of power (and the source of the word fascism). Birch bark is valuable kindling, burning quick and hot and it can also make a charcoal used for metalworking. The bark has also been shredded to make string and twisted into rope. The Swedes have used birch bark for insulating and waterproofing their houses. Birch tar oil is used for proofing leather. Birch leaves can be used as insect repellant or to make a green dye. And, perhaps most impressive of all, birch sap has evidently saved stranded armies from starvation on multiple occasions (General Garnett's regiment in the US Civil War and Russian soldiers besieging Hamburg in 1814 according to Fiona Stafford in The Long, Long Life of Trees). An impressive, and not nearly exhaustive, list of the creative uses humans have found for the birch tree.
The birch has also been a muse, serving as the source of creative inspiration. Poet John Clare used white birch bark to write on when he found paper prohibitively expensive. Robert Frost wrote a beautiful poem called Birches. Birch trees have inspired architectural achievements like restaurant Tusen at Ramundberget in Sweden and painters like Carl Larsson and Gustav Klimt.
Birch Trees by Carl Larsson (1910)
Birch Forest 1 by Gustav Klimt (1902)
The birch has also served more mystical uses connected to beginnings and boundaries between the worlds (again not unlike creativity itself). The birch tree, one of the first to flower in spring, is the first letter in the Irish Ogham tree alphabet and is associated with Bloddeuwedd, the Welsh goddess of flowers and springtime. Siberian shamans climb the birch to enter the world of the gods and return with divine wisdom. Birch twigs in witches' brooms are used for ritual cleansing, clearing out the old to make way for the new. And I found a beautiful Russian fairy tale called The Wonderful Birch Tree where a Cinderella-esque protagonist's mother is killed by an evil witch. The daughter buries the bones "by the edge of the field in the woods" and "from the bones of her mother a beautiful birch tree grew." I was deeply moved by this story and can still feel it's medicine working in me.
By exploring the meaning of the birch tree I have expanded my symbolic vocabulary. A few days ago I knew nothing about the birch except that it had white bark. Now, the next time I see a birch I have layers of meaning accessible to me. I can relate to the tree in a whole new way. It may serve as a reminder to find strength in flexibility. Or to root into my resourcefulness. Or as an invitation to let myself be inspired by its beauty like the artists. Or as an omen of new beginnings, a threshold between the known and the unknown.
If you feel drawn to strengthen your symbolic sense, the best resource I can recommend is ARAS, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. They have a treasure trove of resources including a helpful curriculum for individuals and groups, a gorgeous reference book I love to leaf through during coffee breaks, insightful in-depth webinars, and videos like this one unpacking the symbolism of "taking a knee" in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. And this recent podcast interview with the head of ARAS gives a good overview.
By sharpening our symbolic sense we can start to build a relationship with symbols and let them lead us into a deeper understanding of ourselves, each other and of life in general. And let us not forget that, at least according to Jung, symbols are the language of the soul.