THE FOREST AS CUSTODIAN,TEACHER AND WITNESS
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toyin adepoju
Sep 10, 2009, 9:26:35 AM9/10/09
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"THE SACRED FOREST"
BY
JUDITH HOCH,PHD
Where are the Forests of Today?
When Ernesto Pichardo, my godfather and friend, asked me to write an essay about the ‘sacred forest’ for the CLBA website, I agreed because one of my greatest passions is the forest and trees near my home in New Zealand. The ancient West African rainforest, with its primeval trees and complex plant environments, was the antecedent and inspiration for many Lucumi/Yoruba beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, the sacred forest that once existed throughout the Yoruba nation lives today only in legends and tales. Lucumi depends for its medicines and spiritual insights on wild, untamed nature. Yet, it is difficult for an olorisha to find a wild, untamed ‘sacred forest’ because mass consumerism and expanding populations have ravaged our natural forest heritage, not only in Nigeria, but also in every corner of the globe.
In my mind’s eye, I see the great Orisha weeping for what this beautiful planet has lost, and for the continual desecration of its remaining wilderness areas. It is important that every olorisha become involved in environmental activism, saving rainforest, planting trees, boycotting rogue timber, joining forest organizations, writing letters to politicians, and perhaps most importantly, educating her/himself about what is happening to our ‘sacred forests.’ I will give you a little background on the condition of Earth’s forests today, and the relationship to Lucumi beliefs, but there is much more you will learn by becoming involved in forest stewardship. The second half of this essay is from a chapter of a book I’ve written about Lucumi philosophy called, Victory Over Strong Enemies, and it talks more about Lucumi and the master teachings that have come to us from trees.
The Lucumi idea that trees have spirits, who can share love and important intuitive wisdoms with us, is, according to the extreme American pro-development and family values perspective, an hysterical, even dangerous mistake. The logical, pro-business, pro-life viewpoint might concede that trees in a landscape or garden are ‘beautiful.’ However, to suggest that trees are ‘sacred’ beings, with as many rights to habitat and life as humans, courts being called a ‘tree hugger,’ or even ‘eco-terrorist.’ This point of view derives from centuries of natural resource exploitation by the West, driven by the disastrous Christian belief that man has a divine right to control and dominate the natural environment.
By contrast, Lucumi belief contains the opposite sentiment. In Lucumi thought, every tree has an eleda, a spiritual counterpart with destiny and purpose. For Lucumi practitioners, the forest is the backdrop to healing and ceremony, a sacred landscape of spirit, filled with plant and animal knowledge, and medicine needed for healing and initiation. Perhaps most importantly, ancient trees in Lucumi tradition are great master teachers. For instance, in the story that I will relate in the second part of this essay, an ancient Nigerian iroko tree sheltered and protected the Orisha, Orunmila, and taught him Ifa divination. According to this pataki, the greatest wisdom of Lucumi is contained in ancient trees. Many indigenous peoples believe that trees are our oldest ancestors who gave birth to the human race. In many ways, this belief is true scientifically.
The forest that coheres with Lucumi is the old growth forest, full of ancient groves, myriad plants, vines, flowers, fruits, nuts, animals, birds, clear flowing creeks and rivers, and scintillating nature magic. A commercially planted forest is of little significance to Lucumi. Such a forest is almost devoid of the herbs, leaves, roots, and most importantly, the spiritual experience of a natural old forest. The iroko, a type of mahogany, is mentioned in many Yoruba stories, and, in the past, iroko trees were often found in sacred groves where ritual took place. Now, the giant iroko is scarce in Nigeria where there is less than one percent of the original native forest left standing. It is hard to contemplate the fact that the country, which gave birth to the profound Lucumi spiritual path, is itself, now almost devoid of the habitat that the Orisha created on earth. It is ironic that in the Nigerian and Cuban homelands of Lucumi, the forest and its animals and birds are as threatened with extinction as they are everywhere else.
It is not hard to figure out why the iroko is disappearing from the wild. I learned from a joinery website that the sacred iroko of Lucumi tradition is an excellent building material. The cholorophora excelsa and regia, the two main species of iroko found all over tropical Africa at one time, attain very large sizes, reaching 45m or more in height and up to 2.7m in diameter. According to the website, Iroko has excellent strength properties, comparing well with teak. It is valuable, they say, for ship and boat-building, light flooring, interior and exterior joinery, window frames, sills, stair treads, fire-proof doors, laboratory benches, furniture, carvings, marine uses such as piling, dock and harbor work, and produces a satisfactory sliced veneer. True to our exploitative, resource consuming, contemporary societies, there is no mention of the spiritual or ecological value of iroko at all.
We live in a time when the Republican Party and multinational corporations hope to convince us that to love trees as we love people is a ridiculous error. Trees from their so-called ‘rational’ point of view are useful to industry and commerce. The fact that timber companies are setting fire to the last stands of old growth forest are irrelevant to business, even when, like today, August 13,2005, the entire port of Singapore is closed because of polluting haze from forest fires in Indonesia. Timber from the last rainforests in Asia is for sale all over the world. Never mind, say the multinationals, we’ll plant more trees. The more trees planted for useful purposes, paper, building materials, furniture making, and the like, the better. These planted trees are ‘tree plantations,’ for example, in America, mono-crops of oak or pine planted for commercial use, and they appear as ‘forests’ in statistical summaries of ‘forested’ land in the USA and other countries.
To the pro-development mindset, a planted forest is equivalent to a natural one, yet nothing could be further from the truth. These sad tree plantations, sprayed and pruned for industrial need, are reminiscent of factory farms for animals. Trees, like animals, do have spirits, which love to live in concert with other wild things, to grow naturally, and to enjoy their lives. A planted forest is a lonely and barren place, but that is what will replace (if anything does) the forests that are now burning in Asia, Siberia, Africa and elsewhere.
Contemporary Forest Mystics
Most of us have not had time to find the last remaining old forests where trees have ancient spiritual knowledge gained over millions of years of evolution on Earth. It is only when we spend time in old forests that we learn the ignorance of the ‘pro-development, resource gobbling’ worldview. Much old forest is in remote, mountainous areas difficult and costly to reach. For that reason, many of us will never have the time and resources to visit old growth forests and learn their mysteries. Even so, we can at least read the comments made by forest mystics, those people who’ve spent time with old trees and learned that they are more than their wood reduced to dollars and cents. Here are a few thoughts from forest mystics from California, New England, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Cuba.
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
~ John Muir
So to the Dagara, there is an understood hierarchy of consciousness. The elements of nature, especially the trees and plants, are the most intelligent beings because they do not need words to communicate. They live closer to the meaning behind language.
~Malidoma Patrice Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa
A region without trees is poor. A city without trees is sickly; land without trees is parched and bears wretched fruit. And when good trees are to be had, we must not be crazed heirs of their great timber, because those who did not amass that wooded treasure do not know when it will run out, and they cast it into the river. All trees which are felled must be replaced, so the heritage may remain forever intact.
~Jose Marti
...I have been privileged to know the peace of the forest. The forest—any forest—is, for me, the most spiritual place...It is my long days, months, and years in the forests of Gombe that help me to keep calm in the midst of chaos, for I carry the peace within me. ~Jane Goodall, A Reason to Hope
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and
melodious thoughts descend upon me?
~Walt Whitman
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
~Henry David Thoreau
The people quoted above, two poets, a primatologist, a naturalist, an African shaman, and the liberator of Cuba, all took time to live in the forest, to initiate there, to study the animals, and to gain spiritual richness. Those of us affiliated with Lucumi, have probably visited remaining forest stands near our homes and communed for a short time with forest spirits, leaving our offering of appreciation. However, finding a truly wild forest that spans any distance is a difficult task for keen hikers, climbers, and campers because most remaining old growth forest stands are in rugged, steep, and mountainous country remote from cities.
What happened to the giant, primeval, and sacred forests that grew in the nations most associated with Lucumi? Primary stands of ancient trees, once covered Cuba, Nigeria, and the United States, but they disappeared during colonial settlement, especially after the start of the industrial revolution in Europe. The colonists desired timber for building houses, factories, sailing and steam ships, making furniture, building bridges, railroads, and stations, and many, many forests burned to make way for European livestock and cash crops. In Nigeria, Cuba, and the United States, countries where many Lucumi and Yoruba practitioners live, less than one percent of indigenous forest survives, and even that one percent is under threat. Although we often read that the percentage of forest cover is much greater than this, for example, we can see figures for these three countries, which vary between 22 and 26 percent in the World Resources Institute website, these figures disguise the fact that most forest stands are fragmented, young, and/or exotic species planted for industrial purposes.
We have lost and are losing what many indigenous peoples rightly called, our earliest ancestors, and with them, our ancestral direction and faith. The old forest was always a place of worship and initiation, as well as the supplier of many human needs, including medicine, food, shelter, and fuel. Most indigenous peoples had sacred forest traditions, whereby large areas of primeval forest were set aside for limited, prescribed use, which included spiritual practice. When population numbers were much smaller, pressure on natural resources was far less, making it easier to maintain sustainability and to practice good conservation of wild spaces. However, it was not simply small population numbers that preserved the ancient forest. It was native peoples’ spiritual values of respect and appreciation, which preserved the forest’s natural condition. Many indigenous peoples have legends of acquiring their spiritual knowledge, especially their divination systems, from trees. When trees teach humans how to live good lives, it is not likely that the humans will destroy them wantonly for sheer monetary gain.
By contrast, Christian colonial attitudes around the forest and all things wild were disrespectful and barbaric, even before the rush to turn all resources into commodities began in the middle of the nineteenth century. Colonial Christianity despised all religions not Christian, and hated and feared ‘pagans’ who worshipped in the wild. Because ancient groves of trees were temples to pagans around the world, Christians were especially brutal in cutting them, often building churches from the sawn timber. Whatever the reason, the great forests of the Caribbean, America, and Africa, as well as pagan Europe, were clear- felled progressively from the beginning of Christian conquest.
Pagan attitudes of worshipful nature reverence went underground in many countries where colonial repression demanded, as it did in Cuba, that everyone be baptized leaving ‘pagan’ ways behind. Today, in America, thanks in part to Ernesto Pichardo, Lucumi is free to express its beliefs and to practice them. There is no doubt in my mind, that a Lucumi olorisha must not only shop in botanicas for herbal and forest ingredients, but must support forest conservation wherever she or he may live. Lucumi is a pagan religion. When the wild and free disappear, Lucumi will be impoverished beyond reclamation. Lucumi olorisha should be at the head of environmental movements in their home states and countries. The forest spirits of trees, plants, animals and birds demand no less.
Ernesto Pichardo always reminds me that Lucumi sees everything in nature as sacred. Natural elements each have their own ashe, neutral creative powers, and their eleda, their spiritual counterparts in a parallel domain. This attitude toward nature, that everything is alive, charged with energy and spiritual purpose, is common among indigenous peoples everywhere. For instance, spirit to native Hawaiians, as to Lucumi olorisha, is manifest in everything in nature: plants, water, rocks, and air. The whole landscape radiates ashe, which the Hawaiians call mana. Both Lucumi olorisha and Hawaiian kahuna call upon this source of power to heal and to bless. Hawaiian medicine, like Lucumi medicine, was forced underground for centuries after contact with the West. Hawaiian practices, like those of Lucumi, became kapu for many generations. Like Lucumi olorisha in Cuba, Hawaiians only taught their religion to other Hawaiians in secret during the repression of western European conquest.
To both the ancient Hawaiians and to Lucumi and Yoruba olorisha, the forest is a key sacred structure in nature. It purifies and replenishes air, holds water in the ground, prevents erosion, nourishes and sustains all animal and plant life including humans, contains a multitude of healing remedies, and is an important ancestor of human beings. An olorisha’s training includes preparing, obtaining, and learning about herbs, trees, fruits and flowers, in order to make herbal baths and waters. In Lucumi practice, because they are sacred, that is, related to all that is divine and full of ashe, plants, trees, animals, and birds have properties that can cure body, mind and soul. To the Lucumi olorisha or the Hawaiian kahuna, human beings are simply one living species in a world of equally important others.
Ernesto Pichardo grows some of the plants he needs in his home garden, and knows over 150 praise songs, which he sings when he gathers and prepares them. Ernesto tells the plant what he is going to do before he cuts it, asks its permission, and does not take more than he needs. There is often an herbal preparation boiling, simmering, or cooling in Ernesto and his olorisha wife, Nydia’s, kitchen. Ernesto buys some of the fruits and other things he needs for Lucumi ceremony and ritual at the supermarket, or at botanicas in Miami, the shops that stock many things needed for Lucumi baths, altars, herbal charms, and initiations. However, Ernesto is also planting trees and plants that he needs in his home garden and tries to avoid commercially acquired plants.
Although there is no traditional, sacred forest in Miami, it is a city with a big canopy of mature trees and lush gardens. Many Yoruba herbs grow there, and Ernesto thinks that is another important reason why Lucumi thrives in Miami. The environment is similar to Nigeria and Cuba; all three places are hot and humid. Trees that abound like the almond and the royal palm are sacred to Lucumi Orisha, and even curbside wild herbs appear in healing rituals. Lucumi in Miami uses the wildness that grows through cracks in the city’s concrete, a memory of the lost and very wild old growth forests that once created and inspired Lucumi spiritual values.
Old Growth Forests
The term, old growth forest, refers to a forest that has been growing and evolving naturally for millions of years. There are very few areas where old growth forest exists today, among them the boreal (northern) forests of Canada and Siberia. However, these too are under threat, especially in Siberia, from rogue timber companies who set fires to the boreal forest even as I write this.
A contemporary definition of old growth forest says it is a forest where there are at least eight or more trees per acre over 150 years old on a site not less than five acres large. Forest fragments such as these are the most common examples of old growth forest today in America. There are few large contiguous stretches left, even though giant trees are keystone resources that protect a large piece of the environment around them. Their ecological services include maintenance of water cycles, climate regulation, soil production, fertility and protection from erosion, nutrient storage and cycling, pollutant breakdown and absorption, and a potential source of genetic material for new drugs and food crops.
The forests that remain still provide an amazing list of products, with some 15,000 species of wild plants and animals used for foods, medicines and other functions. Even in cities, trees perform important ecological services. Just three trees planted around the average size home can lower air conditioning bills by up to 50%, and trees that shield homes against the wind can lower heating bills by up to 30%. An average tree absorbs ten pounds of pollutants from the air each year, including four pounds of ozone and three pounds of particulates. Half of the oxygen on our planet was created by plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants, and the rest by phytoplankton photosynthesis.
The first life on our planet began around 3.5 billion years ago in the form of aquatic bacteria. Blue-green alga was the first earth plant. As recently as 470 million years ago, there were still no plants or trees on the earth’s surface. To move out of water, plants had to develop weight-supporting systems, a system to transport water and nutrients so they wouldn’t dry out, and an insulation system from sun and temperature changes. Obviously, these adaptations take a very long time. Trees first appeared and began to cover the earth some 370 million years ago. These trees helped break up the hard crust of the earth’s surface allowing the evolution of other plant species, more trees, and more diverse mammals. Although plants and trees are young in comparison to the age of the earth, they are very ancient compared to the age of human beings. Even the first rose, so closely connected to human imagination, evolved 66 million years ago. By contrast, homo sapiens’ earliest skeletons are dated from 200,000 years ago, although homo sapien’s ancestors are dated to over five million years ago in Africa.
Today there are over 100,000 known species of trees with perhaps 8,000 species threatened with extinction. Over the past 8,000 years nearly one half of the forests that once covered the Earth have been converted to farms, pastures, and other uses and much of the rest has been fragmented. Improvements in health and technology mean that human populations have grown at a rate unparalleled by any other major land animal species in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. According to UN estimates, one billion people lived on the planet by 1800. Today over 6.3 billion people live on our planet and the relentless use of dwindling resources continues unabated. During the single decade from 1990 to 2000, 2 percent of the world’s forest cover, roughly 10 million hectares was lost, according to FAO, and that rate continues today. Most forests that are left are heavily altered by humans, who have rendered them into a patchwork of small areas. According to a 1997 World Resources Institute assessment, just one fifth of the Earth’s original forest remains in large, relatively natural ecosystems known as ‘frontier forests.’ However, since 1997, more of these forests, especially in Asia, South America, and Siberia have been removed or altered. The degradation of world forests has serious consequences for our planet.
Forests are home to between 50 and 90 percent of the world’s terrestrial species, both plants and animals. Only a tiny fraction of the remaining frontier forest is in temperate zones. Most is in boreal regions. A country-by-country breakdown shows that 76 countries have lost all of their frontier forest. Anther 11 nations are close to losing their last remaining frontier forests, having fewer than 5 percent of these forests left, all of which are threatened. More than three quarters of all frontier forests fall within three large tracts that cover part of seven countries: two blocks of boreal forest (Canada, Alaska, and Russia) and one large tropical forest covering South America’s northwestern Amazon Basin and Guyana Shield. Three countries, Brazil, Canada, and Russia contain nearly seventy percent of all frontier forest that remains on our planet.
Seventy-five percent of this remaining frontier forest is threatened by human activity especially logging for the wood chip industry. Even the great stands of forest in Siberia are under threat from fires. Fires there have increased ten fold in the last twenty years, set by rogue timber companies who gain cheap licenses to clear damaged land and sell the trees to China. In 2003, soot and smoke from these fires reached all the way to Seattle. Climate change and bigger draughts contribute to fire risk too. Wood chips supply the lucrative paper industry, which is growing daily. In America, we use almost 772 pounds of paper per person a year, while consumption worldwide is less than 110 pounds a year. The internet is a great paper alternative as long as we don’t print everything we read!
Ninety percent of Cuba’s forest was destroyed by colonial practices. Despite the socialist government’s tree planting programs involving millions of trees, harsh economic conditions force people to use their declining forest resources. Poor people need wood for fuel and building, and plants and animals for the dinner table. In Nigeria, the picture is similar. Nearly 15 percent of the land is forested, but 95 percent of the indigenous forests were destroyed for timber, and population expansion greatly diminishes the remaining stands. The enormous trade in ‘bush meat,’ in Nigeria and other African countries, is likely to kill the remaining forests because animals are responsible for seed spread and processing. In America, although 24.7 percent of the land is rated ‘forested,’ in fact, less than one percent is old growth forest, and all natural stands are fragmented. Rainforests now cover less than six percent of Earth’s land surface, yet more than half of the world’s plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests. About a quarter of all medicines come from rainforest plants. More than 1400 varieties of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer. Despite these facts, every year at least sixteen million additional hectares of forest fall. The remaining forests need human assistance to survive. Only true frontier, undisturbed forests can continue without help.
All of North Africa, the Middle East and nearly all countries in Europe have lost their frontier forests. Only a few countries in the world have frontier forests large enough to sustain if they follow stewardship principles. Isolated protected forests are often too small to protect traditional populations especially of large mammal species over time. Logging is the most serious threat to all forests with agricultural land clearing next. Logging inevitably opens an area with roads and infrastructure making the forest even more vulnerable. In Asia especially, the forests are under widespread attack from multinational logging companies. A third of Africa’s forest frontier is threatened by the wild meat trade. Frontier forests are home to the world’s last indigenous cultures. These forests are refuges for global biodiversity and they store tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide (at least 433 billion metric tons), maintaining regional and global weather cycles, and soil integrity. These are the Earth’s true, and last remaining sacred forests.
Orunmila and the Sacred Iroko Tree
...Tradition protected sacred forest sanctuaries in nearly every ‘native’ tradition, and respect for sacred groves lasted for millennia until western Europeans spread across the globe after 1500 A.D. Today in Greece, there are a few old trees still associated with Socrates and Plato, while giant trees, all over the pre-Christian world were the teachers and masters of great beings such as Orunmila and the Buddha. Slavic peoples worshipped spirits of nature and the woodlands. In the Caucasus Mountains, each community had its own sacred grove. German tribes had sacred forest sanctuaries, and sacred places defined ancient Roman and Greek landscape including sacred groves and springs. Hindus, Greeks, and ancient Europeans, in common with Lucumi olorisha, associated each god with a different tree. Maori people in New Zealand believe that Tane Mahuta, the tallest tree, gave birth to all forms of life.
In many non-Christian traditions, a sacred tree is found, a pillar standing between heaven and earth, which is a living column of support for the skies. Trees replenish our atmosphere with oxygen so in a literal sense, they are support for the skies. Trees also anchor water resources, create habitat for every type of species, give immense quantities of fruits and nuts for food, and provide material for building and fuel. Many medicines derive from their leaves, bark, and roots. In acknowledgement of their dependence on their ancestral trees, ancient peoples everywhere worshiped in sacred groves. These old growth trees did far more than nourish people who gathered near them to celebrate seasonal rites. These trees conserved natural habitats and inhabitants from sky to earth, maintaining the life affirming connection between people, nature, and spirit. For thousands of years, probably since the time of our primate ancestors, trees were sacred and respected spiritual beings in their own right.
Why did sacred groves everywhere disappear? “Due mainly to the rise of dogmatic religions like Christianity and Islam, which advocated... eradication of ‘pagan’ practices, the tradition of maintaining sacred groves and sacred trees vanished from most countries.” (1) Sacred groves vanished without a trace in Europe, America, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Clerics built churches and mosques where sacred groves once grew. Christian priests branded sacred trees and groves part of the ‘satanic’ and ‘pagan’ practices of indigenous, non-Christian peoples. The ceremonies and worship once carried out in the forest became dangerous and illegal. People’s connection to nature faded as worship and ceremony came inside under the watchful eye of Christian clerics.
During centuries of colonization, Christians took these ideas to nearly every corner of the earth, cutting the forests in their wake, yet they tried to compensate for the sacred grove’s lost magic by imitating it within the church. Christian churches and temples imitated the tall straight trunks of sacred groves in their supporting columns of marble. Stained glass created the colored light of a cool, green forest making the interior of a church shadowed and quiet like a grove. However, before the Greek or Hindu, Christian or Muslim gods had temples, people worshipped in nature among the tallest groves of old trees, by the river, by the sea. Trees united people with nature and gave a feeling of connection to the divine source of life...
In the sacred grove, all species connect during worship. In the out of doors, it is not easy to separate oneself from birds, insects, wind, sky, animals, earth, or rain. Worshipping in a grove puts a human being into the way of everything else alive in nature. Spiritual entities reveal themselves to people looking intently for them in the forest. Many poets, shaman, and other nature mystics have seen beneficent spiritual beings in or around trees. Anyone who thinks a tree doesn’t have anything to say to her or him may not have spent enough time in the forest listening.
Under the Sacred Tree
The Lucumi have a story, which says that a sacred tree taught Orunmila, Odu divination. It is interesting to note that trees also taught the Druids in early Britain an alphabet, which was primarily a system of divination. The giant sacred tree called iroko taught Odu divination to Orunmila, the Orisha most associated with Ifa. Like the Buddha, Orunmila, found enlightenment under a sacred tree. I’ve adapted this story of Orunmila and the sacred tree from Raul Canizares who learned it in Cuba. (2)
Orunmila and the Sacred Iroko
Obatala, the creator of humans, came to earth and projected himself into two people, a female called Yemmu, and a male called Oddudua who lived together. The two people were one, but they were able to act independently, and Yemmu could bear children conceived by herself and Oddudua.
Ogun, one of Yemmu and Oddudua’s sons, was the favorite of his mother. Oddudua, his father, became jealous of the relationship Yemmu had with their son, Ogun. With a lover’s jealous trick, Oddudua discovered Yemmu and Ogun making love to one another. In fury, he cursed Yemmu’s next born son. The cursed son, born to Yemmu and her son Ogun, was Orunmila.
When Orunmila was born, Oddudua ordered Yemmu to bury her baby alive. Mothers find a way to save their children, and Yemmu buried her son Orunmila’s body only up to the neck, at the foot of the sacred Iroko tree. Orunmila was immobile in the earth, but alive, his head above ground, looking at the sacred tree. The cursed son had a unique destiny and this was it, the only way he could fulfill it. Yemmu buried Orunmila in the earth looking only, and forever, at the tree standing over him like a mother, and a master.
The Iroko tree did act as both mother and master to Orunmila. While frozen in the earth, yet thriving and alive, Orunmila learned the secrets of divination, Far from disabling Orunmila, this arduous apprenticeship made him the greatest babalawo, ‘father of secrets,’ and people came from everywhere to have him read their destinies and find remedies for their misfortunes. With the wisdom of Odu, life might be happier. Many people came and sat with the famous diviner buried in the earth and were guided by his revelations.
When Oddudua, the father of Orunmila, heard about his son, the great diviner whom he once cursed, he came to see him. When he saw Orunmila buried in the earth, he was distraught, and ordered the earth to free him. To his surprise, Orunmila did not want to leave the earth or the shadow of the Iroko tree, his true mother.
Oddudua said, “Do not worry, Orula, for Iroko will always be with you.” He pointed to the Iroko tree with a ray of light, and a wooden divination board appeared, which Orula accepted. It is in this tray that Orula and his descendents cast Ifa while sitting on the ground.
Orunmila or the shortened, Orula, child of gods, buried in the earth, knew the state of meditation that ‘passes all understanding.’ The master iroko tree taught Orunmila to understand the entire web of humanity through the insight of Odu. When the iroko finished teaching Orunmila, he was a master of divination sought after by everyone. Only a few special people can undergo such rigorous initiation and survive. In fact, I thought this story was only metaphor, that in fact, no Afro-Cuban or African practice included actual burial in the earth as part of an apprenticeship with an ancient tree, until I read Malidoma Some’s, Of Water and the Spirit. Some’s account of his men’s initiation, in Burkina Faso, describes his burial in the earth and enlightenment at the foot of an old tree, where a beautiful green goddess spirit of the tree appears to Some and reveals the essence of divine love to him. Some’s and Orunmila’ stories, more than any others I’ve read, remind me how we’ve lost the wisdom and strength of nature and our native tree ancestors.
When the Buddha was enlightened, he, like Orunmila, had to leave his wealthy family to seek awakening in the forest. The Buddha waited, sitting quietly in meditation day after day, under the bodhi tree, without moving. This bodhi tree, a member of the ficus family, literally gave enlightenment to Buddha when he could not find it any other way. Buddha had already undergone six years of ascetic withdrawal with no success, until one day, he decided to sit down under the tree until he was enlightened. With the tree’s help, enlightenment came within weeks. One day, with the bodhi tree’s assistance, the Buddha saw that the nature of life, ruled by the mind, is suffering, and he learned several methods for dealing with it. His simple insight under a tree has grown into temples, monks (including the Dalai Lama) and thousands of manuscripts.
Somehow, in all the centuries that followed the Buddha’s awakening, the importance of the bodhi tree’s teaching took second place to Buddha himself as a teacher. We forget that the bodhi tree, not Buddha, was the great teacher who granted enlightenment, and that the tree is oblivious to who sits underneath it. Anyone of us, not only a Buddha, can find the same truths through time spent in contact with an ancient tree, whether it is a bodhi, an iroko, or any other ancient tree.
Orunmila’s insight under the iroko was similar to the Buddha’s insight. Orunmila learned the primary Odu from the sacred iroko tree, and the Odu are lessons in relieving human suffering. While masters, like Orunmila, the Buddha, and African shaman, gain first hand knowledge directly from nature, the rest of us unwisely depend on translation of their insights to ease our suffering. The sacred and wise world tree nurtured many of our sages across the earth, and gave people the gift of divination. The ‘Tree of Life’ contains the wisdom of the Kabala, but long before the development of mystic Judaism, the sacred tree was the container of spiritual knowledge at least 9,000 years ago in pagan European societies. Druids, mystic Jews, Buddhists, Maori people, and Lucumi practitioners, to name only a few religions, owe their sacred wisdom to trees. Each Lucumi practitioner owes a debt to trees for the gift of Odu, herbal remedies, and spirit and ancestral blessings. Each olorisha can find great enlightenment by praying and meditating beneath old trees. No one should depend entirely on babalawos or oriates for inspiration. First hand experiences in nature are very important for olorisha practicing nature centered Lucumi.
Cutting the sacred trees destroyed and changed ancient religions forever. Yoruba people once got from the forest in Nigeria, what their descendents in Miami now buy in botanicas, the shops that sell some ingredients needed for Lucumi ceremonies. ‘Ah, this is convenient,’ we say, forgetting all that is lost when we become consumers of spirit rather than experiencers of spirit. Although people are able to buy dry herbal ingredients, they cannot buy the living magic of the forest, nor do they know or have need of, the large body of cultivated and wild plant knowledge, praise poetry, and personal spiritual practice that people possessed when approaching living sacred forests. Today’s Lucumi practitioner does not have the skills in nature that her ancestors had. Over the whole earth, few indigenous stands of forest remain. However, it is only there, in these scattered remnants of our last ancient groves, that the story of the sacred iroko tree and Orunmila might take place again, or that a living tree master might reveal even greater knowledge to another aspirant.
The story of Orunmila is an archetypal story because it contains characters and situations common to the stories of many other cultures, and has something deep to say about human nature. The Jungian idea, that archetypes enable people to react to universal situations in the same ways their ancestors did, is a fascinating one with intriguing hypotheses. For instance, the destruction of the planet, especially the forests, has occurred since mainly Christian and Islamic peoples dislodged the ancient oracular systems based in nature revelation, like Ifa and the merindilogun, the I Ching, the Druid tree alphabet, Norse runic divination, and others, which guided human behavior. Have we insured the death of the planet because we’ve lost part of the natural information that guides our souls to awareness of our stewardship responsibilities on earth?
Many of our pagan ancestors knew the language of trees and of the earth, and could communicate with them. Sacred groves were protected everywhere by custom in ancient Europe until Christians cut them down. Groves of trees are sacred, living temples, which support the web of life. Every system of enlightenment seems to require confinement, isolation, sensory deprivation, and stillness to receive the treasure of the Tree of Knowledge. Every spiritual path needs a teacher, and the sacred Tree, was perhaps, the greatest of all. We are moving too fast today, to hear what the earth and the trees have to tell us. However, a couple of hours of quiet sitting beneath a tree can yield unexpected and sweet spiritual treasure. During that time, subtle seeds from the tree embed deeply in the soul, to develop and bloom when ready.
Several nights ago, lying on my back half sleeping, I felt myself sinking beneath the earth. My body spread out long and wide like roots everywhere beneath the soil. Giant rainforest trees with straight strong trunks began to grow out of my chest, belly, arms and legs. My heart and ribs felt full, relaxed and proud of the great trees standing inside my body. Suddenly, an old Aboriginal woman, with short hair, and dressed in a wrapped bark cloth, stood above me beside the trees and signaled to me under the earth. "Come," she said, gesturing to me as if I were to enter her world. My fear of death and of suffocation in the earth vanished. I felt comfort, joy, and anticipation...
(Copyright 2005 by Judith Hoch, from her forthcoming book, Victory Over Strong Enemies)
References
(1)“Sacred Groves and Sacred Trees of Uttara Kannada,” by M.D. Subash Chandran Madhav Gadgit, in Lifestyle and Ecology, edited by Baidyanath Saraswati, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, 1998 web publication, p3.
2) Raul Canizares, Cuban Santeria: Walking with the Night, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1999, p.58-9.
From Church of the Lukumi and Judith Hoch, Artist & Anthropologist.
The images are not part of the original essay by Judith Hoch
BY
JUDITH HOCH,PHD
Judith Hoch, Artist & Anthropologist
Where are the Forests of Today?
When Ernesto Pichardo, my godfather and friend, asked me to write an essay about the ‘sacred forest’ for the CLBA website, I agreed because one of my greatest passions is the forest and trees near my home in New Zealand. The ancient West African rainforest, with its primeval trees and complex plant environments, was the antecedent and inspiration for many Lucumi/Yoruba beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, the sacred forest that once existed throughout the Yoruba nation lives today only in legends and tales. Lucumi depends for its medicines and spiritual insights on wild, untamed nature. Yet, it is difficult for an olorisha to find a wild, untamed ‘sacred forest’ because mass consumerism and expanding populations have ravaged our natural forest heritage, not only in Nigeria, but also in every corner of the globe.
In my mind’s eye, I see the great Orisha weeping for what this beautiful planet has lost, and for the continual desecration of its remaining wilderness areas. It is important that every olorisha become involved in environmental activism, saving rainforest, planting trees, boycotting rogue timber, joining forest organizations, writing letters to politicians, and perhaps most importantly, educating her/himself about what is happening to our ‘sacred forests.’ I will give you a little background on the condition of Earth’s forests today, and the relationship to Lucumi beliefs, but there is much more you will learn by becoming involved in forest stewardship. The second half of this essay is from a chapter of a book I’ve written about Lucumi philosophy called, Victory Over Strong Enemies, and it talks more about Lucumi and the master teachings that have come to us from trees.
The Lucumi idea that trees have spirits, who can share love and important intuitive wisdoms with us, is, according to the extreme American pro-development and family values perspective, an hysterical, even dangerous mistake. The logical, pro-business, pro-life viewpoint might concede that trees in a landscape or garden are ‘beautiful.’ However, to suggest that trees are ‘sacred’ beings, with as many rights to habitat and life as humans, courts being called a ‘tree hugger,’ or even ‘eco-terrorist.’ This point of view derives from centuries of natural resource exploitation by the West, driven by the disastrous Christian belief that man has a divine right to control and dominate the natural environment.
By contrast, Lucumi belief contains the opposite sentiment. In Lucumi thought, every tree has an eleda, a spiritual counterpart with destiny and purpose. For Lucumi practitioners, the forest is the backdrop to healing and ceremony, a sacred landscape of spirit, filled with plant and animal knowledge, and medicine needed for healing and initiation. Perhaps most importantly, ancient trees in Lucumi tradition are great master teachers. For instance, in the story that I will relate in the second part of this essay, an ancient Nigerian iroko tree sheltered and protected the Orisha, Orunmila, and taught him Ifa divination. According to this pataki, the greatest wisdom of Lucumi is contained in ancient trees. Many indigenous peoples believe that trees are our oldest ancestors who gave birth to the human race. In many ways, this belief is true scientifically.
The forest that coheres with Lucumi is the old growth forest, full of ancient groves, myriad plants, vines, flowers, fruits, nuts, animals, birds, clear flowing creeks and rivers, and scintillating nature magic. A commercially planted forest is of little significance to Lucumi. Such a forest is almost devoid of the herbs, leaves, roots, and most importantly, the spiritual experience of a natural old forest. The iroko, a type of mahogany, is mentioned in many Yoruba stories, and, in the past, iroko trees were often found in sacred groves where ritual took place. Now, the giant iroko is scarce in Nigeria where there is less than one percent of the original native forest left standing. It is hard to contemplate the fact that the country, which gave birth to the profound Lucumi spiritual path, is itself, now almost devoid of the habitat that the Orisha created on earth. It is ironic that in the Nigerian and Cuban homelands of Lucumi, the forest and its animals and birds are as threatened with extinction as they are everywhere else.
It is not hard to figure out why the iroko is disappearing from the wild. I learned from a joinery website that the sacred iroko of Lucumi tradition is an excellent building material. The cholorophora excelsa and regia, the two main species of iroko found all over tropical Africa at one time, attain very large sizes, reaching 45m or more in height and up to 2.7m in diameter. According to the website, Iroko has excellent strength properties, comparing well with teak. It is valuable, they say, for ship and boat-building, light flooring, interior and exterior joinery, window frames, sills, stair treads, fire-proof doors, laboratory benches, furniture, carvings, marine uses such as piling, dock and harbor work, and produces a satisfactory sliced veneer. True to our exploitative, resource consuming, contemporary societies, there is no mention of the spiritual or ecological value of iroko at all.
We live in a time when the Republican Party and multinational corporations hope to convince us that to love trees as we love people is a ridiculous error. Trees from their so-called ‘rational’ point of view are useful to industry and commerce. The fact that timber companies are setting fire to the last stands of old growth forest are irrelevant to business, even when, like today, August 13,2005, the entire port of Singapore is closed because of polluting haze from forest fires in Indonesia. Timber from the last rainforests in Asia is for sale all over the world. Never mind, say the multinationals, we’ll plant more trees. The more trees planted for useful purposes, paper, building materials, furniture making, and the like, the better. These planted trees are ‘tree plantations,’ for example, in America, mono-crops of oak or pine planted for commercial use, and they appear as ‘forests’ in statistical summaries of ‘forested’ land in the USA and other countries.
To the pro-development mindset, a planted forest is equivalent to a natural one, yet nothing could be further from the truth. These sad tree plantations, sprayed and pruned for industrial need, are reminiscent of factory farms for animals. Trees, like animals, do have spirits, which love to live in concert with other wild things, to grow naturally, and to enjoy their lives. A planted forest is a lonely and barren place, but that is what will replace (if anything does) the forests that are now burning in Asia, Siberia, Africa and elsewhere.
Contemporary Forest Mystics
Most of us have not had time to find the last remaining old forests where trees have ancient spiritual knowledge gained over millions of years of evolution on Earth. It is only when we spend time in old forests that we learn the ignorance of the ‘pro-development, resource gobbling’ worldview. Much old forest is in remote, mountainous areas difficult and costly to reach. For that reason, many of us will never have the time and resources to visit old growth forests and learn their mysteries. Even so, we can at least read the comments made by forest mystics, those people who’ve spent time with old trees and learned that they are more than their wood reduced to dollars and cents. Here are a few thoughts from forest mystics from California, New England, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Cuba.
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
~ John Muir
So to the Dagara, there is an understood hierarchy of consciousness. The elements of nature, especially the trees and plants, are the most intelligent beings because they do not need words to communicate. They live closer to the meaning behind language.
~Malidoma Patrice Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa
A region without trees is poor. A city without trees is sickly; land without trees is parched and bears wretched fruit. And when good trees are to be had, we must not be crazed heirs of their great timber, because those who did not amass that wooded treasure do not know when it will run out, and they cast it into the river. All trees which are felled must be replaced, so the heritage may remain forever intact.
~Jose Marti
...I have been privileged to know the peace of the forest. The forest—any forest—is, for me, the most spiritual place...It is my long days, months, and years in the forests of Gombe that help me to keep calm in the midst of chaos, for I carry the peace within me. ~Jane Goodall, A Reason to Hope
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and
melodious thoughts descend upon me?
~Walt Whitman
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
~Henry David Thoreau
The people quoted above, two poets, a primatologist, a naturalist, an African shaman, and the liberator of Cuba, all took time to live in the forest, to initiate there, to study the animals, and to gain spiritual richness. Those of us affiliated with Lucumi, have probably visited remaining forest stands near our homes and communed for a short time with forest spirits, leaving our offering of appreciation. However, finding a truly wild forest that spans any distance is a difficult task for keen hikers, climbers, and campers because most remaining old growth forest stands are in rugged, steep, and mountainous country remote from cities.
What happened to the giant, primeval, and sacred forests that grew in the nations most associated with Lucumi? Primary stands of ancient trees, once covered Cuba, Nigeria, and the United States, but they disappeared during colonial settlement, especially after the start of the industrial revolution in Europe. The colonists desired timber for building houses, factories, sailing and steam ships, making furniture, building bridges, railroads, and stations, and many, many forests burned to make way for European livestock and cash crops. In Nigeria, Cuba, and the United States, countries where many Lucumi and Yoruba practitioners live, less than one percent of indigenous forest survives, and even that one percent is under threat. Although we often read that the percentage of forest cover is much greater than this, for example, we can see figures for these three countries, which vary between 22 and 26 percent in the World Resources Institute website, these figures disguise the fact that most forest stands are fragmented, young, and/or exotic species planted for industrial purposes.
We have lost and are losing what many indigenous peoples rightly called, our earliest ancestors, and with them, our ancestral direction and faith. The old forest was always a place of worship and initiation, as well as the supplier of many human needs, including medicine, food, shelter, and fuel. Most indigenous peoples had sacred forest traditions, whereby large areas of primeval forest were set aside for limited, prescribed use, which included spiritual practice. When population numbers were much smaller, pressure on natural resources was far less, making it easier to maintain sustainability and to practice good conservation of wild spaces. However, it was not simply small population numbers that preserved the ancient forest. It was native peoples’ spiritual values of respect and appreciation, which preserved the forest’s natural condition. Many indigenous peoples have legends of acquiring their spiritual knowledge, especially their divination systems, from trees. When trees teach humans how to live good lives, it is not likely that the humans will destroy them wantonly for sheer monetary gain.
By contrast, Christian colonial attitudes around the forest and all things wild were disrespectful and barbaric, even before the rush to turn all resources into commodities began in the middle of the nineteenth century. Colonial Christianity despised all religions not Christian, and hated and feared ‘pagans’ who worshipped in the wild. Because ancient groves of trees were temples to pagans around the world, Christians were especially brutal in cutting them, often building churches from the sawn timber. Whatever the reason, the great forests of the Caribbean, America, and Africa, as well as pagan Europe, were clear- felled progressively from the beginning of Christian conquest.
Pagan attitudes of worshipful nature reverence went underground in many countries where colonial repression demanded, as it did in Cuba, that everyone be baptized leaving ‘pagan’ ways behind. Today, in America, thanks in part to Ernesto Pichardo, Lucumi is free to express its beliefs and to practice them. There is no doubt in my mind, that a Lucumi olorisha must not only shop in botanicas for herbal and forest ingredients, but must support forest conservation wherever she or he may live. Lucumi is a pagan religion. When the wild and free disappear, Lucumi will be impoverished beyond reclamation. Lucumi olorisha should be at the head of environmental movements in their home states and countries. The forest spirits of trees, plants, animals and birds demand no less.
Ernesto Pichardo always reminds me that Lucumi sees everything in nature as sacred. Natural elements each have their own ashe, neutral creative powers, and their eleda, their spiritual counterparts in a parallel domain. This attitude toward nature, that everything is alive, charged with energy and spiritual purpose, is common among indigenous peoples everywhere. For instance, spirit to native Hawaiians, as to Lucumi olorisha, is manifest in everything in nature: plants, water, rocks, and air. The whole landscape radiates ashe, which the Hawaiians call mana. Both Lucumi olorisha and Hawaiian kahuna call upon this source of power to heal and to bless. Hawaiian medicine, like Lucumi medicine, was forced underground for centuries after contact with the West. Hawaiian practices, like those of Lucumi, became kapu for many generations. Like Lucumi olorisha in Cuba, Hawaiians only taught their religion to other Hawaiians in secret during the repression of western European conquest.
To both the ancient Hawaiians and to Lucumi and Yoruba olorisha, the forest is a key sacred structure in nature. It purifies and replenishes air, holds water in the ground, prevents erosion, nourishes and sustains all animal and plant life including humans, contains a multitude of healing remedies, and is an important ancestor of human beings. An olorisha’s training includes preparing, obtaining, and learning about herbs, trees, fruits and flowers, in order to make herbal baths and waters. In Lucumi practice, because they are sacred, that is, related to all that is divine and full of ashe, plants, trees, animals, and birds have properties that can cure body, mind and soul. To the Lucumi olorisha or the Hawaiian kahuna, human beings are simply one living species in a world of equally important others.
Ernesto Pichardo grows some of the plants he needs in his home garden, and knows over 150 praise songs, which he sings when he gathers and prepares them. Ernesto tells the plant what he is going to do before he cuts it, asks its permission, and does not take more than he needs. There is often an herbal preparation boiling, simmering, or cooling in Ernesto and his olorisha wife, Nydia’s, kitchen. Ernesto buys some of the fruits and other things he needs for Lucumi ceremony and ritual at the supermarket, or at botanicas in Miami, the shops that stock many things needed for Lucumi baths, altars, herbal charms, and initiations. However, Ernesto is also planting trees and plants that he needs in his home garden and tries to avoid commercially acquired plants.
OKAKAMEGA FOREST
Although there is no traditional, sacred forest in Miami, it is a city with a big canopy of mature trees and lush gardens. Many Yoruba herbs grow there, and Ernesto thinks that is another important reason why Lucumi thrives in Miami. The environment is similar to Nigeria and Cuba; all three places are hot and humid. Trees that abound like the almond and the royal palm are sacred to Lucumi Orisha, and even curbside wild herbs appear in healing rituals. Lucumi in Miami uses the wildness that grows through cracks in the city’s concrete, a memory of the lost and very wild old growth forests that once created and inspired Lucumi spiritual values.
OKAKAMEGA FOREST
Old Growth Forests
The term, old growth forest, refers to a forest that has been growing and evolving naturally for millions of years. There are very few areas where old growth forest exists today, among them the boreal (northern) forests of Canada and Siberia. However, these too are under threat, especially in Siberia, from rogue timber companies who set fires to the boreal forest even as I write this.
A contemporary definition of old growth forest says it is a forest where there are at least eight or more trees per acre over 150 years old on a site not less than five acres large. Forest fragments such as these are the most common examples of old growth forest today in America. There are few large contiguous stretches left, even though giant trees are keystone resources that protect a large piece of the environment around them. Their ecological services include maintenance of water cycles, climate regulation, soil production, fertility and protection from erosion, nutrient storage and cycling, pollutant breakdown and absorption, and a potential source of genetic material for new drugs and food crops.
The forests that remain still provide an amazing list of products, with some 15,000 species of wild plants and animals used for foods, medicines and other functions. Even in cities, trees perform important ecological services. Just three trees planted around the average size home can lower air conditioning bills by up to 50%, and trees that shield homes against the wind can lower heating bills by up to 30%. An average tree absorbs ten pounds of pollutants from the air each year, including four pounds of ozone and three pounds of particulates. Half of the oxygen on our planet was created by plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants, and the rest by phytoplankton photosynthesis.
The first life on our planet began around 3.5 billion years ago in the form of aquatic bacteria. Blue-green alga was the first earth plant. As recently as 470 million years ago, there were still no plants or trees on the earth’s surface. To move out of water, plants had to develop weight-supporting systems, a system to transport water and nutrients so they wouldn’t dry out, and an insulation system from sun and temperature changes. Obviously, these adaptations take a very long time. Trees first appeared and began to cover the earth some 370 million years ago. These trees helped break up the hard crust of the earth’s surface allowing the evolution of other plant species, more trees, and more diverse mammals. Although plants and trees are young in comparison to the age of the earth, they are very ancient compared to the age of human beings. Even the first rose, so closely connected to human imagination, evolved 66 million years ago. By contrast, homo sapiens’ earliest skeletons are dated from 200,000 years ago, although homo sapien’s ancestors are dated to over five million years ago in Africa.
Today there are over 100,000 known species of trees with perhaps 8,000 species threatened with extinction. Over the past 8,000 years nearly one half of the forests that once covered the Earth have been converted to farms, pastures, and other uses and much of the rest has been fragmented. Improvements in health and technology mean that human populations have grown at a rate unparalleled by any other major land animal species in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. According to UN estimates, one billion people lived on the planet by 1800. Today over 6.3 billion people live on our planet and the relentless use of dwindling resources continues unabated. During the single decade from 1990 to 2000, 2 percent of the world’s forest cover, roughly 10 million hectares was lost, according to FAO, and that rate continues today. Most forests that are left are heavily altered by humans, who have rendered them into a patchwork of small areas. According to a 1997 World Resources Institute assessment, just one fifth of the Earth’s original forest remains in large, relatively natural ecosystems known as ‘frontier forests.’ However, since 1997, more of these forests, especially in Asia, South America, and Siberia have been removed or altered. The degradation of world forests has serious consequences for our planet.
Forests are home to between 50 and 90 percent of the world’s terrestrial species, both plants and animals. Only a tiny fraction of the remaining frontier forest is in temperate zones. Most is in boreal regions. A country-by-country breakdown shows that 76 countries have lost all of their frontier forest. Anther 11 nations are close to losing their last remaining frontier forests, having fewer than 5 percent of these forests left, all of which are threatened. More than three quarters of all frontier forests fall within three large tracts that cover part of seven countries: two blocks of boreal forest (Canada, Alaska, and Russia) and one large tropical forest covering South America’s northwestern Amazon Basin and Guyana Shield. Three countries, Brazil, Canada, and Russia contain nearly seventy percent of all frontier forest that remains on our planet.
Seventy-five percent of this remaining frontier forest is threatened by human activity especially logging for the wood chip industry. Even the great stands of forest in Siberia are under threat from fires. Fires there have increased ten fold in the last twenty years, set by rogue timber companies who gain cheap licenses to clear damaged land and sell the trees to China. In 2003, soot and smoke from these fires reached all the way to Seattle. Climate change and bigger draughts contribute to fire risk too. Wood chips supply the lucrative paper industry, which is growing daily. In America, we use almost 772 pounds of paper per person a year, while consumption worldwide is less than 110 pounds a year. The internet is a great paper alternative as long as we don’t print everything we read!
ENCOUNTER IN THE FOREST
Ninety percent of Cuba’s forest was destroyed by colonial practices. Despite the socialist government’s tree planting programs involving millions of trees, harsh economic conditions force people to use their declining forest resources. Poor people need wood for fuel and building, and plants and animals for the dinner table. In Nigeria, the picture is similar. Nearly 15 percent of the land is forested, but 95 percent of the indigenous forests were destroyed for timber, and population expansion greatly diminishes the remaining stands. The enormous trade in ‘bush meat,’ in Nigeria and other African countries, is likely to kill the remaining forests because animals are responsible for seed spread and processing. In America, although 24.7 percent of the land is rated ‘forested,’ in fact, less than one percent is old growth forest, and all natural stands are fragmented. Rainforests now cover less than six percent of Earth’s land surface, yet more than half of the world’s plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests. About a quarter of all medicines come from rainforest plants. More than 1400 varieties of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer. Despite these facts, every year at least sixteen million additional hectares of forest fall. The remaining forests need human assistance to survive. Only true frontier, undisturbed forests can continue without help.
All of North Africa, the Middle East and nearly all countries in Europe have lost their frontier forests. Only a few countries in the world have frontier forests large enough to sustain if they follow stewardship principles. Isolated protected forests are often too small to protect traditional populations especially of large mammal species over time. Logging is the most serious threat to all forests with agricultural land clearing next. Logging inevitably opens an area with roads and infrastructure making the forest even more vulnerable. In Asia especially, the forests are under widespread attack from multinational logging companies. A third of Africa’s forest frontier is threatened by the wild meat trade. Frontier forests are home to the world’s last indigenous cultures. These forests are refuges for global biodiversity and they store tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide (at least 433 billion metric tons), maintaining regional and global weather cycles, and soil integrity. These are the Earth’s true, and last remaining sacred forests.
Orunmila and the Sacred Iroko Tree
...Tradition protected sacred forest sanctuaries in nearly every ‘native’ tradition, and respect for sacred groves lasted for millennia until western Europeans spread across the globe after 1500 A.D. Today in Greece, there are a few old trees still associated with Socrates and Plato, while giant trees, all over the pre-Christian world were the teachers and masters of great beings such as Orunmila and the Buddha. Slavic peoples worshipped spirits of nature and the woodlands. In the Caucasus Mountains, each community had its own sacred grove. German tribes had sacred forest sanctuaries, and sacred places defined ancient Roman and Greek landscape including sacred groves and springs. Hindus, Greeks, and ancient Europeans, in common with Lucumi olorisha, associated each god with a different tree. Maori people in New Zealand believe that Tane Mahuta, the tallest tree, gave birth to all forms of life.
In many non-Christian traditions, a sacred tree is found, a pillar standing between heaven and earth, which is a living column of support for the skies. Trees replenish our atmosphere with oxygen so in a literal sense, they are support for the skies. Trees also anchor water resources, create habitat for every type of species, give immense quantities of fruits and nuts for food, and provide material for building and fuel. Many medicines derive from their leaves, bark, and roots. In acknowledgement of their dependence on their ancestral trees, ancient peoples everywhere worshiped in sacred groves. These old growth trees did far more than nourish people who gathered near them to celebrate seasonal rites. These trees conserved natural habitats and inhabitants from sky to earth, maintaining the life affirming connection between people, nature, and spirit. For thousands of years, probably since the time of our primate ancestors, trees were sacred and respected spiritual beings in their own right.
Why did sacred groves everywhere disappear? “Due mainly to the rise of dogmatic religions like Christianity and Islam, which advocated... eradication of ‘pagan’ practices, the tradition of maintaining sacred groves and sacred trees vanished from most countries.” (1) Sacred groves vanished without a trace in Europe, America, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Clerics built churches and mosques where sacred groves once grew. Christian priests branded sacred trees and groves part of the ‘satanic’ and ‘pagan’ practices of indigenous, non-Christian peoples. The ceremonies and worship once carried out in the forest became dangerous and illegal. People’s connection to nature faded as worship and ceremony came inside under the watchful eye of Christian clerics.
During centuries of colonization, Christians took these ideas to nearly every corner of the earth, cutting the forests in their wake, yet they tried to compensate for the sacred grove’s lost magic by imitating it within the church. Christian churches and temples imitated the tall straight trunks of sacred groves in their supporting columns of marble. Stained glass created the colored light of a cool, green forest making the interior of a church shadowed and quiet like a grove. However, before the Greek or Hindu, Christian or Muslim gods had temples, people worshipped in nature among the tallest groves of old trees, by the river, by the sea. Trees united people with nature and gave a feeling of connection to the divine source of life...
In the sacred grove, all species connect during worship. In the out of doors, it is not easy to separate oneself from birds, insects, wind, sky, animals, earth, or rain. Worshipping in a grove puts a human being into the way of everything else alive in nature. Spiritual entities reveal themselves to people looking intently for them in the forest. Many poets, shaman, and other nature mystics have seen beneficent spiritual beings in or around trees. Anyone who thinks a tree doesn’t have anything to say to her or him may not have spent enough time in the forest listening.
Under the Sacred Tree
The Lucumi have a story, which says that a sacred tree taught Orunmila, Odu divination. It is interesting to note that trees also taught the Druids in early Britain an alphabet, which was primarily a system of divination. The giant sacred tree called iroko taught Odu divination to Orunmila, the Orisha most associated with Ifa. Like the Buddha, Orunmila, found enlightenment under a sacred tree. I’ve adapted this story of Orunmila and the sacred tree from Raul Canizares who learned it in Cuba. (2)
Orunmila and the Sacred Iroko
Obatala, the creator of humans, came to earth and projected himself into two people, a female called Yemmu, and a male called Oddudua who lived together. The two people were one, but they were able to act independently, and Yemmu could bear children conceived by herself and Oddudua.
Ogun, one of Yemmu and Oddudua’s sons, was the favorite of his mother. Oddudua, his father, became jealous of the relationship Yemmu had with their son, Ogun. With a lover’s jealous trick, Oddudua discovered Yemmu and Ogun making love to one another. In fury, he cursed Yemmu’s next born son. The cursed son, born to Yemmu and her son Ogun, was Orunmila.
When Orunmila was born, Oddudua ordered Yemmu to bury her baby alive. Mothers find a way to save their children, and Yemmu buried her son Orunmila’s body only up to the neck, at the foot of the sacred Iroko tree. Orunmila was immobile in the earth, but alive, his head above ground, looking at the sacred tree. The cursed son had a unique destiny and this was it, the only way he could fulfill it. Yemmu buried Orunmila in the earth looking only, and forever, at the tree standing over him like a mother, and a master.
The Iroko tree did act as both mother and master to Orunmila. While frozen in the earth, yet thriving and alive, Orunmila learned the secrets of divination, Far from disabling Orunmila, this arduous apprenticeship made him the greatest babalawo, ‘father of secrets,’ and people came from everywhere to have him read their destinies and find remedies for their misfortunes. With the wisdom of Odu, life might be happier. Many people came and sat with the famous diviner buried in the earth and were guided by his revelations.
When Oddudua, the father of Orunmila, heard about his son, the great diviner whom he once cursed, he came to see him. When he saw Orunmila buried in the earth, he was distraught, and ordered the earth to free him. To his surprise, Orunmila did not want to leave the earth or the shadow of the Iroko tree, his true mother.
Oddudua said, “Do not worry, Orula, for Iroko will always be with you.” He pointed to the Iroko tree with a ray of light, and a wooden divination board appeared, which Orula accepted. It is in this tray that Orula and his descendents cast Ifa while sitting on the ground.
Orunmila or the shortened, Orula, child of gods, buried in the earth, knew the state of meditation that ‘passes all understanding.’ The master iroko tree taught Orunmila to understand the entire web of humanity through the insight of Odu. When the iroko finished teaching Orunmila, he was a master of divination sought after by everyone. Only a few special people can undergo such rigorous initiation and survive. In fact, I thought this story was only metaphor, that in fact, no Afro-Cuban or African practice included actual burial in the earth as part of an apprenticeship with an ancient tree, until I read Malidoma Some’s, Of Water and the Spirit. Some’s account of his men’s initiation, in Burkina Faso, describes his burial in the earth and enlightenment at the foot of an old tree, where a beautiful green goddess spirit of the tree appears to Some and reveals the essence of divine love to him. Some’s and Orunmila’ stories, more than any others I’ve read, remind me how we’ve lost the wisdom and strength of nature and our native tree ancestors.
When the Buddha was enlightened, he, like Orunmila, had to leave his wealthy family to seek awakening in the forest. The Buddha waited, sitting quietly in meditation day after day, under the bodhi tree, without moving. This bodhi tree, a member of the ficus family, literally gave enlightenment to Buddha when he could not find it any other way. Buddha had already undergone six years of ascetic withdrawal with no success, until one day, he decided to sit down under the tree until he was enlightened. With the tree’s help, enlightenment came within weeks. One day, with the bodhi tree’s assistance, the Buddha saw that the nature of life, ruled by the mind, is suffering, and he learned several methods for dealing with it. His simple insight under a tree has grown into temples, monks (including the Dalai Lama) and thousands of manuscripts.
Somehow, in all the centuries that followed the Buddha’s awakening, the importance of the bodhi tree’s teaching took second place to Buddha himself as a teacher. We forget that the bodhi tree, not Buddha, was the great teacher who granted enlightenment, and that the tree is oblivious to who sits underneath it. Anyone of us, not only a Buddha, can find the same truths through time spent in contact with an ancient tree, whether it is a bodhi, an iroko, or any other ancient tree.
Orunmila’s insight under the iroko was similar to the Buddha’s insight. Orunmila learned the primary Odu from the sacred iroko tree, and the Odu are lessons in relieving human suffering. While masters, like Orunmila, the Buddha, and African shaman, gain first hand knowledge directly from nature, the rest of us unwisely depend on translation of their insights to ease our suffering. The sacred and wise world tree nurtured many of our sages across the earth, and gave people the gift of divination. The ‘Tree of Life’ contains the wisdom of the Kabala, but long before the development of mystic Judaism, the sacred tree was the container of spiritual knowledge at least 9,000 years ago in pagan European societies. Druids, mystic Jews, Buddhists, Maori people, and Lucumi practitioners, to name only a few religions, owe their sacred wisdom to trees. Each Lucumi practitioner owes a debt to trees for the gift of Odu, herbal remedies, and spirit and ancestral blessings. Each olorisha can find great enlightenment by praying and meditating beneath old trees. No one should depend entirely on babalawos or oriates for inspiration. First hand experiences in nature are very important for olorisha practicing nature centered Lucumi.
Cutting the sacred trees destroyed and changed ancient religions forever. Yoruba people once got from the forest in Nigeria, what their descendents in Miami now buy in botanicas, the shops that sell some ingredients needed for Lucumi ceremonies. ‘Ah, this is convenient,’ we say, forgetting all that is lost when we become consumers of spirit rather than experiencers of spirit. Although people are able to buy dry herbal ingredients, they cannot buy the living magic of the forest, nor do they know or have need of, the large body of cultivated and wild plant knowledge, praise poetry, and personal spiritual practice that people possessed when approaching living sacred forests. Today’s Lucumi practitioner does not have the skills in nature that her ancestors had. Over the whole earth, few indigenous stands of forest remain. However, it is only there, in these scattered remnants of our last ancient groves, that the story of the sacred iroko tree and Orunmila might take place again, or that a living tree master might reveal even greater knowledge to another aspirant.
The story of Orunmila is an archetypal story because it contains characters and situations common to the stories of many other cultures, and has something deep to say about human nature. The Jungian idea, that archetypes enable people to react to universal situations in the same ways their ancestors did, is a fascinating one with intriguing hypotheses. For instance, the destruction of the planet, especially the forests, has occurred since mainly Christian and Islamic peoples dislodged the ancient oracular systems based in nature revelation, like Ifa and the merindilogun, the I Ching, the Druid tree alphabet, Norse runic divination, and others, which guided human behavior. Have we insured the death of the planet because we’ve lost part of the natural information that guides our souls to awareness of our stewardship responsibilities on earth?
Many of our pagan ancestors knew the language of trees and of the earth, and could communicate with them. Sacred groves were protected everywhere by custom in ancient Europe until Christians cut them down. Groves of trees are sacred, living temples, which support the web of life. Every system of enlightenment seems to require confinement, isolation, sensory deprivation, and stillness to receive the treasure of the Tree of Knowledge. Every spiritual path needs a teacher, and the sacred Tree, was perhaps, the greatest of all. We are moving too fast today, to hear what the earth and the trees have to tell us. However, a couple of hours of quiet sitting beneath a tree can yield unexpected and sweet spiritual treasure. During that time, subtle seeds from the tree embed deeply in the soul, to develop and bloom when ready.
Several nights ago, lying on my back half sleeping, I felt myself sinking beneath the earth. My body spread out long and wide like roots everywhere beneath the soil. Giant rainforest trees with straight strong trunks began to grow out of my chest, belly, arms and legs. My heart and ribs felt full, relaxed and proud of the great trees standing inside my body. Suddenly, an old Aboriginal woman, with short hair, and dressed in a wrapped bark cloth, stood above me beside the trees and signaled to me under the earth. "Come," she said, gesturing to me as if I were to enter her world. My fear of death and of suffocation in the earth vanished. I felt comfort, joy, and anticipation...
(Copyright 2005 by Judith Hoch, from her forthcoming book, Victory Over Strong Enemies)
References
(1)“Sacred Groves and Sacred Trees of Uttara Kannada,” by M.D. Subash Chandran Madhav Gadgit, in Lifestyle and Ecology, edited by Baidyanath Saraswati, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, 1998 web publication, p3.
2) Raul Canizares, Cuban Santeria: Walking with the Night, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1999, p.58-9.
From Church of the Lukumi and Judith Hoch, Artist & Anthropologist.
The images are not part of the original essay by Judith Hoch
To
every group of people in the world, the Tree is of utmost importance.
It sustains our lives by providing air, food, clothing and shelter. The
Tree, is a powerful source of connection to the earth for human beings.
The Tree, no matter how it is shaped, has a variety of meanings both
positive and negative. The Tree, creates life on our earth and should
be regarded by humans as a connection to the sacred continuity of the
spiritual, cosmic and physical worlds.
The photo is one of the great spiritual trees called "BAOBAB TREE" or "Mother Tree." It symbolizes scacred beings and deities. It is associated with prophecy and magic. The Baobab Tree is a living reservoir. It stands solitary and can store up to as many as 4.5 thousand litres of water hence its' capacity to nurture as a mother nurtures with milk. Most Baobab trees live up to 500 years and in some parts of Africa they can live up to 5000 or more years of age. Some trees are considered guardians at the border from life to death. The Baobab tree as well as other mystical trees are believed to be the residences of Spirits and Gods. Africans and the animals of Africa regard the Baobab tree as a special tree. Africans tell that it is an "upside down tree", cast into the ground by angry gods so it landed branches first, its roots reaching for the sky. Some Africans say that spirits live in the baobab's flowers and if you pick a flower you are sure to be eaten by a lion.
Baobab Tree group at Yahoo Groups
which is dedicated to "Guiding people to the roots of their own spirituality; by way of traditional African practices, such as: Obeah, Voodoo, Lukumi, Yoruba, and Palo Moyombe, as well as pagan Wiccan cults. Baobab Tree discussions will center around "TREES," their usages, powers and relationship to human beings, especially females".
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Baobab Tree
The photo is one of the great spiritual trees called "BAOBAB TREE" or "Mother Tree." It symbolizes scacred beings and deities. It is associated with prophecy and magic. The Baobab Tree is a living reservoir. It stands solitary and can store up to as many as 4.5 thousand litres of water hence its' capacity to nurture as a mother nurtures with milk. Most Baobab trees live up to 500 years and in some parts of Africa they can live up to 5000 or more years of age. Some trees are considered guardians at the border from life to death. The Baobab tree as well as other mystical trees are believed to be the residences of Spirits and Gods. Africans and the animals of Africa regard the Baobab tree as a special tree. Africans tell that it is an "upside down tree", cast into the ground by angry gods so it landed branches first, its roots reaching for the sky. Some Africans say that spirits live in the baobab's flowers and if you pick a flower you are sure to be eaten by a lion.
Baobab Tree group at Yahoo Groups
which is dedicated to "Guiding people to the roots of their own spirituality; by way of traditional African practices, such as: Obeah, Voodoo, Lukumi, Yoruba, and Palo Moyombe, as well as pagan Wiccan cults. Baobab Tree discussions will center around "TREES," their usages, powers and relationship to human beings, especially females".
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Baobab Tree
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