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ASH (Fraxinus excelsior)
Key: Strength
Ash is a native forest tree that can grow to 130 feet. The leaves are long and made up of nine to thirteen stalked leaflets that give the tree a light, graceful appearance. Male and female flowers appear before the leaves on the same or on different trees, springing like a gush of water from just behind the black buds at the branch-tips. Ash is usually one of the last trees to come into leaf and the earliest to drop in autumn.
The wood is strong, white and flexible – it is said to be able to bear more weight than any other wood. Ash bark has been used as a tonic and astringent, the leaves as a laxative.
Ash brings the strength to stand up for yourself in a way that is in tune with your surroundings. An acknowledgement and exploration of personal status that leads to clear understanding of how one interacts with the world and establishing a harmonious relationship.
The Central meridian, running from the perineum up the front of the body to the lower lip, is strengthened. This stabilises personal energies, vitality and integrity. It ensures the rest of the meridian system is energised.
The base chakra and heart chakra are energised, and this in turn strengthens the sense of reality and the ability to cope with the world, and to feel at home with oneself and the life one is leading.
There is an increase in love and the ability to express feelings in a strong yet compassionate way. There is a steady growth of flexibility and adaptability.
The astral, causal and spiritual subtle bodies are aligned. This balances the Higher Self and its relationship to the collective consciousness of race and planet, encouraging a sense of security and rightness about one’s place in the scheme of things.
At a physical level ash helps to strengthen the bones and increases the general flexibility of the physical system.
Signature: Despite its great size ash doesn’t block light from other plants.
The timber is flexible and easy to work when first cut, becoming much harder as it dries.
Comment: The fact that ash has a silvery grey bark and leaves with between nine and thirteen segments aligns it to lunar aspects of the goddess. (Nine is the magical three- times- three, sacred to the Celtic peoples and their forerunners; thirteen is the number of full moons in a lunar year.)
Ash is often associated with Norse legends of the World Tree, Yggdrassil, though this has been suggested as a misinterpretation of the name for another tree, the yew. Ash was used for the shafts of spears and also for bowmaking. The former use links it directly to the Ancestor Wisdom god of the Norse peoples, Odin, Woden, Wode, Wade . Yggdrassil means “horse of Ygg”, and Ygg is another name for Odin himself. Despite being head of the Aesir Indo-European deities, Odin learnt most of his magical and shamanic powers from earlier cthonic energies like the giants and the goddesses of the Vanir, the older fertility deities of Neolithic times.