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OAK (Quercus robur, Quercus petraea)
Key: Manifestation
The two native oaks in Britain can be identified by form and habitat where they haven’t cross-bred many times. The common oak, also called the English oak or pedunculate oak, favours lower land and heavier soils. It sends out large, horizontal branches from a comparatively short, squat trunk. It is the host to the largest number of insects, lichen, birds and animals of any native tree. The long tap root makes it drought resistant.
The sessile oak prefers wetter climates and lighter soils. Its taller trunk and more compact shape is commonly seen in the north, west and other upland regions. The common oak has leaves with no stalks but acorns with stalks, whilst the sessile oak has leaves with long stalks and acorns with none.
Oak flowers as it opens its leaves. The male catkins are yellow green and cluster together soon becoming long like knotted strings. The female flowers are small buds at the branch ends, green with bright red anthers. The English oak can reach 115 ft(35m) and the sessile oak grows to 130 ft (40m).
The energy of the oaks in general has to do with the ability to manifest, to bring forth, maintain and balance reality. Steady growth and drawing out potential from where it is hidden from sight can be accomplished with oak.
The Heart meridian is brought into balance, which relaxes and expands the emotions.
Many of the more subtle energy centres and channels of the body are given a boost of energy. For example, the eleventh chakra above the head is activated. This helps to integrate the personality located in time-space with the transpersonal collective, Higher self or soul group, making it easier to understand and direct the purpose of lifetime activities.
A minor chakra, not located in the physical body but in the aura, is strongly activated. It is located below the feet the same distance as the feet are from the base chakra. This is a dynamic anchor point both for the present moment, and into the Earth’s own patterns. Security, belonging, taking one’s place, stability, practicality, all rely on a firm grounding link that this chakra supplies. Keeping a body well and functioning requires the will to exist on this planet, here and now. Oak provides this motivation.
Oak essence doesn’t specifically act on any one subtle body. It tends to give more energy to all bodies, though it doesn’t realign them.
The spiritual state brought about by oak spirit is profoundly internalised, involuted and dwells at the unmanifest levels of creation. This undefined, non-dimensional area can seem threatening and empty – it is the Void -- because it lacks the characteristic of boundaries, but it is in fact the vessel wherein all manifest creation is held. Once this vision is no longer reinterpreted in terms of its opposite (ie. Form), this Void becomes cognised and directly experienced as the origin of all possibilities, from which limitless expressions of the primal energy can be drawn.
Oak essence aids in the absorption and integration of these very deep, hidden energy levels from the primal sources of being. The oak spirit funnels it through the desire for growth and expansion into physical dimensions of reality, and will encourage delight in expressing the energy of growth in as many ways as possible.
At a practical level oak will give support to all forms of growth and expansion and will give stability where the polarities of existence are a little too apparent in one’s life.
A calming, internalised energy will bring patience, new perspectives and a better grasp of the situation one is in.
Signature: The deep tap-root and the ability to sustain numerous other life-forms without detriment to itself.
The acorn and the cup: the form and void, absolute and relative states of existence.
Comment: The potential of exploration with this spirit is vast. Whilst working with the assessment the following phrases were caught: the void, the black/white hole; the means to manifest one from many; absorption within all possibilities and then revealing new patterns; communication with those hidden sources; to be held free of time, outside the flow; suspension beyond time; manifesting from nothing.
Edward Bach used the female flowers only of the English oak for those who carry on struggling and fighting against illness or adversity without loss of hope or effort.
The bark of oak has a strong astringent effect. It is also tonic and antiseptic. It can be used to reduce haemorrhaging and for diarrhoea and dysentery.
Oak galls, “oak apples”, are created by the larvae of insects secreting a fluid that makes the plant cells develop abnormally. This then becomes the home and food of the insect until it matures and bores its way out. They are used in tanning, dying and making of inks. Galls are a powerful astringent, the most powerful of all vegetable sources, used as an internal tincture for dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. The powder can be used to stop bleeding.