The TreeLore Oracle and Magical Compendium of North American Trees

One of the most important things we can do to address the challenges of today’s age is to build authentic, lasting, and meaningful nature-based relationships and spiritual practices that are localized to our own ecosystems. We can build deep connections with our local land and take up our traditional ancestral role intending and honoring nature. Doing this allows us to build reciprocal relationships with nature, which shifts our own viewpoint and practices from those that are anthropocentric (human-centered/dominated) to those that are ecocentric or biocentric (focusing on the equality of all life).

These practices are best if we root them where we live–in our local ecosystems. In AODA we call this practice “Wildcrafting”, which has a focus on developing eco-regional Druid and nature spirituality practices using a variety of resources: folk, ecological, and experiential. The challenges with wildcrafted practices are that learning like this takes a good deal of time and skill to master and thus, as regional communities, we can build these together. Also, for those of us of European ancestry living in colonized lands, we do not have a right to the meanings or stories of indigenous cultures, which means we must explore the magical landscape where we live in different ways that do not appropriate others’ wisdom. In today’s post, I’d like to introduce you to my long-term tree project, the TreeLore Oracle and Magical Compendium of Eastern North American Trees. The TreeLore Oracle serves as one contribution to building wildcrafted and eco-regional knowledge of how to work with the sacred trees found throughout Eastern North America.

Purchase the Treelore Oracle here at my Etsy Shop.

About the TreeLore Oracle

The TreeLore Oracle is a 35-card eco-printed oracle deck that includes trees native to Eastern North America. The deck channels the spirit of the trees through beautiful eco prints, allowing you to have deep communion with nature. Both common magical trees (Apple, Oak, Hawthorn, White Pine) and less common trees (Hickory, Spicebush, Witch Hazel, Maple, Black Locust) are included in this stunning deck. Enter the sacred grove with the TreeLore Oracle and commune deeply with the living earth. The North American TreeLore Oracle Deck and the companion book, The Magical Compendium of Eastern North American Trees: Ecology, History, Lore, Magic, and Divination form a partnership to explore the many magical trees in the Eastern North American landscape and their specific uses for magical and divination purposes. This project was created in collaboration with the living earth—trees that wanted to be included are part of the deck–they are the artists and illustrators. The following is an image of all of the different prints that are included in the deck:

In order to create this deck in collaboration with the living earth, I developed my own process of eco printing.  Starting in 2014, I based my painting on paper from the work of India Flint, who was doing eco printing on fabric in Australia.  It took me about 5 years to figure out the right timing and to get the prints correct and then in the last few years, I refined my printmaking technique with mordants, different papers, and different processing times.  I say years because I discovered that the fall is the best time to do most ecoprints, and the fall leaves are at their peak only for 1-2 weeks.  Thus, if I didn’t get the right print, sometimes I had to wait a whole year to try to print it again (or try printing at a different point in time).  The basic process involved finding plant matter from trees who wanted to be included in the deck, soaking thick papers in water + natural mordants, and then layering them.  I would then steam the entire bundle for a few hours and then wait till the next day when I unveiled the results.  I ended up doing over 500 ecoprints to construct the deck.  All of the ecoprints that did not end up the deck were still put to good use as cards, journals, and more.

Here are a few photos of the ecoprinting process that created the TreeLore Oracle. The entire process was alchemical and magical, and I think that it produced a really unique oracle deck that is unlike anything else out there!

The Book: A Magical Compendium of Eastern North American Trees

One of my major motivations for this project came from a lack of magical lore and knowledge about the trees growing where I lived, the trees that I interacted with daily. Books on magical trees typically focus on European sacred trees, and while there is some overlap with trees like Oak, Apple, or Hawthorn, many of our common trees—like Maple, Hickory, Witch Hazel, or Ironwood—have little to no magical information available! Further, meanings and mythology from the Old World are not always applicable to North America. Thus, I began from scratch, working with each of the 35 trees in this project. I spent time researching each of these trees in-depth: gaining direct life experience with them, understanding their ecological functions, their traditional human uses, and their herbal and healing uses, and applying principles like the doctrine of signatures to understand their magical uses. I knew I needed to work with the trees for food, medicine, shelter, and other basic human needs to understand them. I studied herbalism, bushcraft and ancestral skills, natural building, wild food foraging, and much more to understand these trees. What seemed like a simple start later turned into a 12-year project: I started researching these trees in 2010. As many of my longtime readers know, the initial research for this book was explored through my series “Sacred Trees in the Americas” which has, at this point, dozens of entries (Here are some of them:  Holly, Tulip Poplar, Dogwood, Spruce, Spicebush, Rhododendron, Witch Hazel, Staghorn Sumac, Chestnut, Cherry, Juniper, Birch, Elder, Walnut, Eastern White Cedar, Hemlock, Sugar Maple, Hawthorn, Hickory, Beech, Ash, White Pine, Black Locust, and Oak).

A Magical Compendium of Eastern North American Trees offers an in-depth exploration of 35 trees and includes extensive details about their ecology, human uses, history, lore, traditional magical uses, and divination. Trees include commonly found trees such as Apple, Hawthorn, Oak, and Holly as well as many trees unique to North America such as Hickory, PawPaw, White Pine, Sassafras, and Maple. Through a detailed exploration of all aspects of the tree ecologically, socially, and magically, this book presents a complete North American tree-based divination and magical system. This book serves as the companion book to the TreeLore Oracle but can also be used as a standalone magical reference. For samples of the first few chapters of the book, see: TreeLore Oracle Table of Contents,  the TreeLore_Meanings, and the TreeLore_Sample Entries.

This book is in two sections: the first section offers an introduction (Chapter 1) and key aspects of using North American Sacred trees for divination (Chapter 2) and working with the trees magically (Chapter 3). The second part of the book forms the majority of the text and serves as a magical Materia Medica for 35 sacred trees: presenting full entries with research on their ecology, history, lore, traditional uses, and magical and divination meanings. Part II of this book also provides recipes, magic, rituals, celebrations, and other methods of direct work with each of these sacred trees.

Purchase

You can purchase the TreeLore Oracle exclusively here from my etsy shop!