Ginkgo, the Old Crone

‘The Old Crone’

Ginkgo is an ancient species which has survived 270 million years. Famously this tree survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, burnt to a stump and counted among the dead. it surprised everyone when shortly after the blast, it began sprouting new life. A testament to humanities capacity for destruction and nature’s ability to withstand us at our worst. I sat down with Ginkgo for our plant spirit journey together the day after the war in Iran began. so of course, I felt a heavy sadness and fear for the state of the world. It amazes me that after all our innovation we have not outgrown the need for violent wars. Capitalism however requires the war machine to march on. It’s a shame, it’s so rarely the rich old men in power who suffer at the hands of war but women, children and nature who seem to bare the harshest consequences of our leader’s actions.

I must admit that my journey with Ginkgo was a difficult one. I never quite got there, to the alpha-theta brain state which allows one access to the imaginative realm of the subconscious where one can more readily receive visions, dreams and inspiration from beyond. It was quiet, muddy and hard to access. I have a few ideas as to why it was so difficult this time around, one being that I didn’t perform the ritual on the new moon, which is when I usually perform my plant spirit journeys. It was eclipse season and the new moon happened to be a solar eclipse. It is never advised to perform magickal workings on an eclipse as the energies are too erratic. but I needed to get my monthly journey in so I did it 3 days after the new moon, and now I have a better understanding of this rule forbidding magick during eclipses.

Another reason I can find for this unsuccessful spirit journey is that I performed it outdoors, surrounded by distractions and nosey neighbors. Whereas usually I perform these rituals inside at my altar, a safe space where I can forget myself and my surroundings. I felt too self aware and perhaps a bit vulnerable outside beneath the big old Ginkgo tree where I knew I could be seen by the neighbors and possibly interrupted by an intruder at any moment.

I’ve also found trees to be less receptive to plant spirit communication than plants, or perhaps I should say that trees are a little more reserved in their communication style. they tend to be less chatty and less likely to overshare or indulge their secrets right off the bat. Trees seem to require a little more romancing whereas your average leafy plant is quick to tell all. Whatever the reason, I did manage to get a few impressions as I sat beneath the old Ginkgo tree. That of an old wise woman holding many ancient secrets that she didn’t want to tell. A woman whose seen a lot in her time and has the perspective that only time can give, illuminating that all of life unfolds in cycles. What felt like a catastrophe to me, marking the end of time, was just another turn of the cycle, something she’d seen come and go many times. Zooming out to see the big picture, I was reminded of all the times throughout my life when things were hard, when I thought surely I would not make it through and yet I did somehow make it again and again through those hard times. It was grounding and calming which was all this tree had to offer me on this day, but at the end of the day that was exactly the medicine I needed. No big thrills, just a quiet friend to sit with when things felt hard.