Tree Flower - Olive

Olive (Olea europea)

The olive is the most important crop tree of the Mediterranean area. It is a cultivar that derives from its wild relative, Olea sylvestris, a smaller bushier tree with spiny stems and smaller leaves and fruits. Olive is a long-lived evergreen tree that grows slowly up to 15m. It has a broad, irregular crown and a short gnarled bole – often consisting of inter-grown, contorted branches and boughs of silver grey, slightly fissured bark. The twigs have four angles and carry opposite, sharply pointed leaves of leathery green grey. The flowers are green-white, fragrant and borne on long, open panicles in July and August. They ripen in the autumn into an oily green fruit taking a year to become mature. The wood is heavy in oil and a rich orange brown. It has distinctive patterning that reflects the contorted growth of the bole. The olive branch has long been the symbol of offered peace and prosperity.

The Essence

Keywords: “Valour”; warmth; solar energy; truthfulness; motivation; passionate clarity.

Olive has an energy that will benefit those who have great passions and strong drives. It gives the ability to be able to direct these strong desires in a creative and life-enhancing direction. Olive enables potentially damaging and self-centred behaviour to be mediated by wisdom and empathy. Energy that is so dynamic is neither inherently positive nor negative. Like fire, it simply exists until the fuel it uses is consumed. Like fire, such energy can be channelled to sustain life or to destroy life. With the help of olive essence the energy can be turned towards practical healing, of the self and of others, and to positive creative expressions.

Olive works on the meridian system in such a way as to encourage acting and living in a wholly truthful manner. The Governing meridian is strengthened and energised by the release of emotional tensions that were originally created by the inability to speak or act in a truthful way. Such situations can arise when one ‘holds one’s tongue’ and ‘knows one’s place’. That is, when constraints are placed upon the individual by the beliefs of others and these are then accepted as ‘proper’ behaviour. Olive tree addresses this constellation of behavioural patterns, particularly when it deals with ideas about service and responsibility to others. It can be used for those who tend to put other’s needs before their own, exhausting their own reserves of energy. Olive helps to balance one’s needs with the needs of others in a more constructive and fair manner. The Triple Warmer meridian can be negatively affected by this suppression of personal desires and can become overwhelmed with underlying resentments and the heaviness of service.

With such a pattern of denial, self-righteous indignation can build up yet be suppressed and ignored. Olive is able to allow a positive flow of emotional energy so that it becomes possible to regain a personal sense of freedom and self-determination. Olive prevents a build-up of pent up emotion by releasing and expressing it truthfully in a natural and easy manner – rather than with explosive anger. Energy moves through the body and releases those knots of controlled passion, indignation and sense of unfairness in such a way that a person can become their own master again without the need to reject the established pattern of relationships with others.

All the chakras are deeply energised, which strengthens the sense of self. Courage and motivation increase and energy is available to develop practical, down to earth solutions.

In the mind, there is an ability to heal issues of self-worth and sense of value. Such issues will very often be interwoven with the same constellation of beliefs to do with serving and helping others. Problems often arise from a false sense of inferiority or an egotistical altruism, both of which unbalance a proper perspective of how and why one acts as one does.

Emotionally, olive can be very good at healing and clearing self-issues in general. Whenever there is doubt about one’s ability to get better, olive brings a positive and soothing energy that can help all forms of illness.

Having energised and supported many different aspects of the self, olive allows a much more immediate and multi-level experience of spiritual states. This is partly because of its activating solar qualities and also because olive is so good at clearing away the limiting vision so that things can be seen much more clearly for their own true nature. Perception is largely a construction of the mind. If the mind is tightly bound by rigid belief systems it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to perceive something that contradicts, or lies outside of, these concepts.

Olive tree presents us with a powerful energy to free ourselves from the enervating presence of false boundaries and judgements, helping us to stand up as a unique individual in our own power and truth.

Signature:

The rich, warm, lubricating oil; the deep orange wood; its slow, steady growth and slow-ripening fruit (control of energy levels)