A month of listening to elder
The elder tree by our gate was wounded not long after we moved to the forest, but she healed, and soon after we noticed a scatter of tiny new elders. One, outside my writing room window, filled with berries in early autumn. Elder has accompanied me through November. It’s been a strange month. After years of work increasing — since Covid it’s spiralled — years of working into the night, I thought I would have so much space during this sabbatical… But my body has wanted rest and the days have seemed short.
I’ve written about being diagnosed with a complex autoimmune condition, but it’s taking a lot of time to process how I will reshape showing up in the world without exacerbating this. There are other griefs — some personal some that all of us share for our world — multiple layers of grief.
At such times it is always the elder I need to sit with. She is a tree who traditionally straddles worlds, perhaps because she often grows along boundaries, along the edge of water or between wild and cultivated lands. Elder branches were once left on graves and if they blossomed in spring it was a sign that the deceased was at peace.
She is beautiful in summer, frothy and cheerful, but it is from Samhain/All Hallows, through Winter Solstice to Candlemass that I most feel her complex power. She is a tree of ambiguities of ‘both/and’… I sat with her at the cusp of New Year in 2021, a year of lockdowns, our first year in France, a year with bereavement… I wrapped up warm and perched on the steps by the garden gate beneath her branches and listened to her quiet but insistent message of transformation, change and renewal. I’ve sat with her a great deal this month.
Elder’s leaves and berries are poisonous when eaten raw, but transform into rich nourishment and protection when heated. In folk traditions it was disastrous to burn elder, yet the root of her name in Anglo-Saxon means ‘to kindle’ and her hollow stems can be used to blow air into fire to make it blaze. She has been feared, yet she is often a graveyard tree, protecting the dead.
Associated with ancestors, protection and fairy magic, elder also has strong boundaries and demands respect. The music made through the stems were held to have psychopompic powers, sometimes to bring warnings of death. Yet it was also a herb of life.
When I bring her my sorrow, her wisdom is the comfort of an ancient crone, at ease with both death and protection.
What needs to die in your life?
What needs to be protected your life?
These have always been the questions of elder at cusp moments.
Elder, like yew, is connected with clear sight. The tea from her flowers is a tonic for the eyes. But sight is not only physical. To have vision, sometimes we have to lose ourselves before we can see the way. Recently in a beautiful circle held be Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, Kerri drew a seed card for everyone gathered — vision was the word on my card. I think many of us are looking for this — for vision, for clarity in a sometimes overwhelming, noisy, befuddling world.
What do you need to see most clearly?
This month I’ve sat in the shade of the elder and breathed in the early winter air, the scents of damp and woodsmoke, the sky some days limpid blue and others soft grey.
She is a tree of cycles, the dying away of what no longer nourishes, new beginnings. Any ancient life understands that death and life are a continuum. I hold a single dried berry in the palm of my hand and let it fall — grief falling to the ground. Some of it continues to follow me when I return indoors, but it’s a beginning — laying something down can be a long process. In Poland people traditionally buried their sorrow and sin beneath the elder so that it sank to the underworld.
Despite her associations with death, by Summer Solstice her blossoms will be alive with sun. Life persists. Whatever the craziness, whatever the triumphs and the losses.
I breathe deeply. Slowly. Gradually, I let the sensations of daily life come back into my consciousness. In my pocket, a tiny jar and a spoon. I scrape honey onto the ground at the foot of the elder and thank her.
And then I heard the voice of a harp — sambucus — the voice of pipes calling from another world. The voice of my heart or the voice of the elder? In this moment they are one and the same:
Attend to your heart, this is where you live.
In the kitchen, I make elderflower tea, sit with my journal and begin: Attend to your heart, this is where you live.
This heart herb is full of generosity. She used to be known as ‘Nature’s Apothecary’ or ‘the poor person’s medicine chest’. Nearly every system of the body can be supported by elder.
Elderberries help to control LDL cholesterol levels and their anthocyanins help protect the walls of blood vessels from oxidative stress. The flowers help with fevers, bringing blood to the surface. Both berries and flowers assist in lowering blood glucose levels and the berries are rich in nutrients with high levels of Vitamins C and A , iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and B6. Antispasmodic and astringent, elder protects the gut from infections and irritations and is helpful for heartburn, gastritis, indigestion, diarrhoea, gas, colic and gastroenteritis. The also enhance kidney function, relieve fluid retention and help eliminate toxins, which aids arthritis.
Elder is healing for inflamed skin and an ointment of the leaves will speed wound healing. The berries and flowers can be used to make an eye bath from cooled tea. Or a gargle fo mouth ulcers, bleeding gums or sore throats. She is a powerful immune booster. Antinicrobial and decongestant, assisting with everything from catarrh to gut to respiratory infections. The berries are antiviral and effective for flu and Herpes, asthma, coughs and flu. Elder berries also stabilise collagen making them helpful in connective tissue repair and in reducing swelling in varicose veins and haemorrhoids.
And this witchy crone tree that mothers all works on the psycho-emotional level too. She is calming and soothing, promotes sleep and encourages rest and recuperation.
A river runs through our garden. I listen to her song, to the rustle of the last leaves falling from the apple trees. The young elder is already bare. The mother elder’s leaves curl and fall, soft colours on a grey day. I am still listening to her voice, to my heart. Perhaps they are the same thing. What I know is that I belong to this forest, a place overflowing with heart. It is where I live.