Do trees talk to each other? Well hello Uranus in Taurus: Trees Talk To One Another and scientists say so. I knew it. Their roots communicate with mysterious underground networks, dragon lines, vortex energies, and memories held deep in the earth.
Their leaves transmit and receive messages carried in the breezes; they understand the language of the birds and electricity. Each tree comes from a different genre or family of deities and nature spirits.
Okay, scientists don’t say all that – they talk in terms of networks and pheromones, scent signals and complex responses to stimuli but still, this article will blow your mind. It’s undoubtedly secured my eco-resolve for Uranus in Taurus, now only weeks away. It’s quintessence, literally 5th element, also known as Dark Matter. Scientists are trying to measure it, the shamans and priestesses of old already did.
Two thoughts: This is evocative of all the old stories, of how certain types of fig trees were said to be gates to the underworld or power points where meditation would be extraordinarily fruitful, or grounding and every tree had its dryad. And who cannot recall walking through a forest as a child, sensing the majestic presence those rooted there?
But…this is making me squeamish about the floorboards in my house, my kitchen table with the runes carved into it. Is wood to trees as ‘beef’ is to cows? Or do trees turned into wood or paper somehow live on? Like when you snip a leaf off a still growing plant?
And seriously, if you were never going to harm a tree (or any sentient being) what would the material of choice be? If you were to be eco-theist, is the only right solution to live among the trees? Or is there a super-innovative way around all this?
Thoughts?
Intuitively I absolutely agree but thanks for this.
I have ordered this book!
I love how he’s coloured in the story to make it more engaging to a wider audience. Can’t wait to read….
Ahm, so i did post about this very thing some time ago….cannot recall which post though?!?!….my Grandfather was a forester and he told me like 35 years ago that when there is a fire the trees many kilometers both in in front of the fire front and upwind of it can be heard sending the sap to ground like a rushing water sound. He said his theory was they do communicate via their root systems, as he said the trees upwind of the fire also did it, so he figured that it could not be the CO2 shift in the air or other air bourne chemicals, but that they used their root systems to do it. To protect their neighbours. I thought he was right as in anycase i had always felt that if you listened you could hear them….
that is beautiful!
PF trees turned Aztec-ie pixilated geometrically when to me on true LSD.
Then i tried to eat it. The leaves that is.
Love this as an old tree hugger from before christ.
LIved opposite a park when a child and climbed every tree there, Moreton Bay figs are the best to swing up into.
Next door there is a huge i mean huge-big Queensland Maple who’s energy keep me in residence when years ago i wanted to change houses, just couldn’t give up that tree.
Then it had a BABY on my side of the fence. That baby is now as tall as it’s mother. It is my bliss to sit under them both totally surrounded by green leaves.
Now the possums and lorikeets have discovered it this season 🙂
Off to buy a rake for Autumn…lol.
Re Mystic’s point about harming sentient beings,I the podcast On Being had Krista Tippett, interviewing the wonderful Robyn Wall Kimmerer who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass a while ago. Worth a listen . Kimmerer is an indigenous woman and scientist from upstate. New York who combines scientific and traditional knowledge with such grace. Such grace. Her answer to Mystic’s point would be along the lines of respect and gratitude.
LOL, such pithy humour
hmmm … sounds a bit wooden to me.
You can’t change the rules. We have to eat life to live. It’s a kind of cleaning. Death is life. Life is death. We didn’t make those rules. Certainly there is something to learn from them – so foreign to our morals and so basic to existence.
I have a tree in my backyard now who is competing to be the tallest standing. From the driveway this morning I realized he reached his goal. 🙂 silly but true. The trees here aren’t like the wild ones behind my old house. Those trees were so wise they helped me through hard times. I think of them often.
I had a black locus that had dry rot so I had to cut it down so as not to risk damage to my neighbors house. The man who came to cut it down said “every tree falls eventually.” It blew my mind. I realized I thought without really thinking that trees are immortal. But everything falls.
I’ve been re-reading the epic of Gilgamesh. Did a painting of the cedar forest. Being greedy with trees – or taking more from any environment than what can replenish itself – is the so-called original sin. Humbaba was the first Lorax.
My trees had me stay when i was being monstered by demented Virgo neighbour.
Yes I heard this guy in interviewed a while back. Makes total sense of course.
Like something that we have always known but have chosen to look away.
Some of the info he put across is heart breaking. Like trees that can’t sleep at night because of nearby street lights and become nervous wrecks. How killing the larger trees removes the stored knowledge of the forest and younger trees have no guidance.
Some tree species live for thousands of years, the story’s they could tell us about climate change and the history of the planet.
Will we ever grow up and accept our true purpose in the web of life ? That true purpose is to protect and nurture all life on this amazing blue planet as guardians not destroyers.
There is a wide cross section of a redwood tree displayed in a state park in the Santa Cruz mountains in California dated to have been ‘born’ around the (approximated?) birth date of Jesus. The tree was cut down in the 1940’s but began its life around 0 AD. It’s hard to get your head around….anyway, it’s amazing to be around old growth redwoods and sequoias. Latin name – Sequoia sempervirens —- ‘always living’.
Well, there’s that thing about how wooden runes can only be made from a fallen branch.
There’s also the theory that plants don’t feel pain in the way that animals do, because they don’t have the same kind of central nervous system.
There is also a new movement in logging to do with sustainability, where they harvest selectively and maintain homes for the birds, possums etc. It seems pretty cool.
Ancient peoples have been using wood for a LONG time. I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.
Saw this on a documentary with Judi Dench. It’s fascinating.
When it’s not snowing 2 ft I love spending lunch talking to the plants around the courtyard at work. Loveee Tolkien read it all growing up
I had the opposite experience on acid – the giant redwood trees towered and bowed over me like loving nurturing parents, or Mother Nature, herself, while sunbeams streamed through the branches. I felt held and safely taken care of and very much connected to the universe and the Earth. It was so healing for me…
Their power & aliveness is so evident in that psychoactive state. Suddenly undeniable and insuppressible the Life (& comm!) of all that is verdant!
T R U T H.
I could see the trees souls on xtc…looked Greek Nymphs. It was an amazing experience.
lol
I’ve been watching Blue Planet 2 (hey, it’s Pisces season!) and every time Attenborough made some comment to the effect of how “surprising” it is that we’ve now found out fish are “more intelligent than we thought”, I kind of just rolled my eyes internally and thought “No shit, Sherlock – they’re the smart ones. *We’re* the idiots!” I feel the same way about these new scientific findings re: trees – I just want to go “…..and…?” Like this is some revolutionary new discovery when people who actually spend time out in nature around the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms daily already know this to be true….!
Science can be so unimpressive and unimaginative sometimes – their persistent need for verifiable methodologies and proven results often prevents them from making the intuitive leaps that to many of the rest of us are just common sense. They’re frequently lightyears behind – look at their recent discovery with Pluto, for example. They’ve only now discovered it has a “snakeskin” surface when astrologers have equated this planet with serpent energy for literally decades. Their methods are ponderously slow and so last century, IMO – I say this, BTW, as a double Air sign who values intellect and reason and who is most definitely a Life Sciences enthusiast. But I die a little inside when it takes scientists forever to figure out basic things like the fact that lobsters feel pain when you boil them alive – no fuqing shit; basic empathy could have told you that! If you had just used your heart instead of your mind, you probably could have saved millions of dollars and countless years of your life in research. Get with the times, guys; we’re in the 21st century now – sentience isn’t just for humans anymore.
Hahaha. Probably rightly so!
Seems the only way to be totally “eco-theist” (as I understand your intent there) is to either fully accept your role as a part of the good/bad/ugly whole (think creator/destroyer Kali-type, or snake devouring its own tail), or to cut yourself off from the system (arguably still harming it, or yourself as a part of it). Even the herbivores are strategic hunters (giraffes eating upwind). Even the trees are calling on the wasps to kill off the caterpillars. The struggle seems to be accepting that survival is contingent upon competition in the material realm. To quite the oracle “time to get heaps more competitive, less naïve.” Reverence? Gratitude? Thank you for your dying sacrifice so that I might live on?
Yeah, I am part of a community garden here and someone had recommended that book, Hidden Life of Trees, to me quite awhile back, so I’ve known about this. There’s also underground fungi that communicate with each other and trees.
Uranus in Taurus is going to be great, it’s where I’ve always ‘lived’ already so should be a very aligned time for me.
I lived in a tree house in a redwood grove for five years at one time in my life and I feel the pull to do something similar again..
Ooooo a tree house!!! The redwoods are the best smelling place on earth
Yes! The redwood scent combined with the bay laurel scent is the best! It smells like home to me…. When I got back from living in England and went into the redwood forest it was a true homecoming!
I think we need to consult the elves.
always consult with the elves. <3
When I was a little kid, there was an ancient cedar in my best friend’s backyard, and we called it the Grandfather Tree. We played beneath it, and left it offerings we’d find, like flowers or a fallen bird’s nest. There was something about it that breathed wisdom and protection. We talked to it and sang to it.
I’ve always adored trees. I used to climb ones in my own backyard and sit in the branches reading. The Lorax had a huge influence on me as well, with losing the Truffula Trees. To this day, I still follow the wisdom of Thoreau, a real-life Lorax I suppose, and ‘worship’ nature in my own way. I’ve often thought it comes from having deep Celtic roots in my family that can be traced back hundreds of years on my dad’s side. Definitely a Druid in a former life …
I love The Lorax!
“Breathed wisdom and protection” I love it! So we’ll descibed!
Of course trees communicate. If you ever listened as a child you could hear them whispering to each other.
What I’d like to know why do some people fail to see the beauty in nature and animals?
Why do some people fail to feel connected to Earth/Nature other species?
The disconnect horrifies me.
Agreed! To me it signifies that they’re dead inside and need to reclaim themselves
I pity them because they must feel lost/isolated/disconnected from the world.
the disconnect horrifies me too. and i also don’t know how people cannot fail to see the beauty around them – my grandparents and parents taught me that gardens and wilderness are where amazing things can, and do, happen.
i remember my nana hitching up her old lady skirts and showing me the bowerbird in her garden. it was one of those, WOW, NATURE! moments that set me up for life.
doesn’t quite make sense…bird was not under her skirts :-), rather she wasn’t afraid to get her knees dirty in order to show a small girl the wonders of the world.
lol! bird under the skirt! magical and surreal. 😉
I wonder how the Uranian energy is going to affect those of us who are already very Taurean. I might have to revisit how Uranus affected those with strong Aries.
I was on a trip over the Christmas break that involved many hours of driving. Even though I have regular stops it was getting too much so about three quarters of the way to my destination I had to stop, get out, take off my shoes and feel the earth beneath my feet. I then walked over towards a family of trees put my hands on one that spoke to me and just stood there. I talked to the grove – although there was one that seemed to not want me to go near – and felt the energy just pulse through me. A friendly ibis came to check out what I was doing before I thanked them and left. The rest of the trip was like a breeze.
Michael Luton says that by this time next year you will be a different person spiritually
Tolkein apparently when interviewed liked to stroll outside amongst trees or talk about them a lot, like go on massive rants and talk to the interviewer about not much else
There are patches of a particular tree, in various places around where I live. They aren’t particularly big and I don’t know what they are called but wherever there are a lot of them growing together in dense patches, the atmosphere is tangible. Not exactly creepy but I am always hesitant to walk between them. I feel like I am intruding in a place I don’t belong. Like walking into someone else’s meeting but also feels ancient. If I have to walk through them I say hello.
well this will come as no surprise… I talk to everything, including big rocks and pebbles and streams and cars. For me every ‘inanimate’ object has something. After all it is made up of the same stuff I am. So trees yes, I inhabit a world with them and revere them the same as the deer who appears in our garden. Which I have to shoo away as they are mowing the other shrubs and plants currently. We live in it together. The trees consume the sunlight and the. minerals and the bodies of those that die beneath them. We are all made of the same stuff, we all live and die together. Just male sure the respect is there.
I agree. Some objects have beautiful souls of their own. Some are young and less so but all is connected.
“And seriously, if you were never going to harm a tree (or any sentient being) what would the material of choice be?”
None: you could go the radical way of the Digambara (means Skyclad) sect of the Jain religion and go naked while sweeping the ground in front of you, so that you will not harm any tiny insects or grubs as you walk.
(Though of course you would have to be a monk & not a nun. Nuns wear a thin white cotton robe – as they are not worthy of nakedness and will not reach enlightenment until they reincarnate as a man…..a-hhhha-ha…)
hahahahahaha. hahahahahaha. really. we will not reach enlightenment until we are missing a bit of a chromosome?
How pleased I am that things are a changing and no wonder it is a painfully huge shift as this crap has been hanging about for so long. Thank gods this system is finally breaking down. Then suddenly I am hoping we can all live side by side (that includes the trees) seeing the enlightenment in all of us.
Really LOVE this, Mystic.
Great article.
This stood out as Major Lesson (c/o Uranus/Taurus):
Q: Why do trees share resources and form alliances with trees of other species? Doesn’t the law of natural selection suggest they should be competing?
A: “Actually, it doesn’t make evolutionary sense for trees to behave like resource-grabbing individualists,” she says. “They live longest and reproduce most often in a healthy stable forest. That’s why they’ve evolved to help their neighbors.”
Maybe relationships of some sort will become easier and stronger versus the “this is Sparta” approach of Uranus in Aries.
Looking at the current political landscape of Italy though I can’t see our version of “evolving to help our neighbors” happening very soon. 🙁
True. Maybe this is the last thump of the Pluto-Uranus square (5º orb all of March) and the populist parties & sentiments which arise during these times.
Otherwise if this is a growing trend then Uranus in Taurus (material wealth/assets) is looking like a manic grab for natural resources – which is what happened in the previous 3 Uranus in Taurus eras.
So maybe it’s going to be a combo of amazing “green” innovations on the one hand and a “resources war” on the other.
I have read about several times and never investigated further BUT Darwin did go on to write, after studying it, that cooperation was how survival happens best.
Survival of the fittest works well for a competitive capitalistic model. Survival of the most cooperative, i.e. mutual aid, works for a completely different model.
It’s so interesting that this aspect of Darwin’s work is not given half a breath or even knows by someone writing for a science magazine.
Selfishness & co-operation are two sides of the Darwinian coin – though it seems that selfishness has had a lot more airtime – maybe due to the era that Darwin was around, (Victorian England & height of Imperialism) when competitiveness was almost considered a sacred virtue and therefore extolled. Yet each gene promotes its own selfish welfare by co-operating with the other genes in the gene pool which is that gene’s environment, to build shared bodies.
Darwin knew a thing or two about the interconnectedness of all life. For a start he was an Aquarius with Neptune ON his Sagg Asc in last degree of his 12th H.
It’s a shame his work got so twisted by later botanists calling themselves Darwinists.
Suburban trees must grow up alienated.
of course they communicate – all living things do. we just don’t speak all the lingos….yet
a machinery to get their lingos could be quite the Uranus in Taurus thing too.
I love this. I hope we get more of this kind of news / discoveries: good ole EARTH stuff, but in a never seen light.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we found useful info regarding plants and animal and we could then use it into surgery or medicine to cure people.
I’d say also that naturalistic documentaries are going to be a thing in the movie scenes.
It is said that the Amazon rain forest holds the cures for every disease on the planet. Cures yet to be discovered which it is so important it stays as it is.
canvas tents of varying descriptions? yurt / teepee
stone buildings, plaster, slate roof, thatch
but stone and plaster needs a quarry, canvas is made from flax or hemp or some other fibre du jour, etc
rammed earth? i mean those places are amazing though. 20-inch thick walls, interesting textures, insulating, etcetc
straw-reinforced mud?
polished concrete on the floor?
think of those parquet floors made from solid oak blocks though. these last for hundreds of years. if a tree was going to be cut down, you’d want it to be for something that honoured the material and wasn’t for shipping pallets or some kind of dust collecting junk.
we can’t live on the planet with no footprint. we live within an ecosystem, we need food clothes and shelter. Lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep, is a saying i don’t care much for, but the corollary is that they also don’t care if they take down a gazelle for family dinner. one way we’ll be tree food, so there is that. and also maybe we just need to say ‘thanks, treez’ more
Thanks, treez 🙂 yes.
hiya Pi,..well geez, there sure is some topical stuff/synchro flying around this year..:
i’m living amongst river red gums and making things from those that were ‘cleared’ way back when..so your ‘honour the material’ idea resonated with me as I feel I’m looking back and being reminded of 500 years of history whenever i’m working with the pieces..
so this article is very timely..
heres my IG epitaph to my legend 14yo terrier who had the ticker to make it a few days after luna new year and my birthday..(i haven’t been able to look at photos or vid of her yet)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bft8V6yFLd7/?taken-by=nicko_b_bickford….
huh..and i guess my intuition must be on point with this uranian aether round the place, as I put her right beside our best big fig tree..
i was actually thinking of planting a culinary pepper tree over her so i guess i should look them up given the significance of figs.
Dang, black pepper is in fact from a tropical vine..
Could it perchance climb the tree?
haha.. yeah ..and i spent most of yesterday on the phone working on alliances, to boot : ) Im pulling together a kickstarter project soon.
we’re in a mediterranean climate down here but i could give it a crack..theres a guy who reckons he gets a banana crop down the road ; so who knows with the climate these days…and thank you for you kind thoughts of Pep..its very much a Physical absence feeling.
Also, sorry for your dear friend’s absence.
nice 🙂
the other pepper trees (ornamental ish) are so nice and drapey and shady. and you crush the leaves in your hand and receive lovely invigorating life affirming hit of green, resinous, peppery, spice. you have lots of choices for your puppy dog 🙂
Have you ever stood beneath cotton wood trees when the leaves tremble but there isn’t even a whisper of a breeze? Or felt the urge to walk 100m up a steep hill to a ridge just to touch lone sister/twin blue gums? Yes trees are magical we just need the quietness to notice. My latest fascination is waratahs
I often acknowledge trees when I’m out for a walk – in much the same way I wish a good morning to a sleepy cat on a front porch, a dog inside a fence or a bird flying overhead. I see trees as the great, wise ones – whether in a magestic forest or a local park. Say hello, you’ll be glad you did.
ohhh. so wonderful. There’s another guy who has been recording the sounds that trees make for many years, not creaks as they move but internal sounds. This is mindblowing though – electrical pulses through mycorrhiza. Amazing.
Are you talking about David George Haskell’s Songs of Trees? Wonderful book, very thought provoking. He spoke at the Bendigo Writers Festival last year, great to hear him speak.
No, I hadn’t heard of him but I will look him up now! The one I was thinking of is Bernie Krause, he has been taking sound recordings of lots of different ecosystems for a long time, I heard a radio documentary about his work which was so very moving. Hearing woods and forests falling silent as insect and bird species rapidly decline is horrible : (
Thanks,
I’ll look up Krause.