Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by JD Walker, author of A Witch’s Guide to Wildcraft and the new Under the Sacred Canopy.
In temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, we have many harbingers of Spring in the forest. Leaves are flushing out; bulbs are in bloom and fruit trees are beginning to set fruit.
One important Spring tree is the hawthorn (Crataegus). As an understory tree in the forest, you might overlook its clusters of white blossoms, but there is no doubt that the hawthorn has been important in many of our oldest traditions. From Greek deities of love and marriage to witches and fairies of all sorts, the hawthorn seems to have been beloved (or sometimes feared) by all.
There are hundreds of hawthorns to be found in the forests of the United States. All hawthorns are small trees, rarely growing over 30 feet tall. A common feature on all hawthorns is a spine that can vary in length from 1-2 inches.
The leaves are elliptical and usually tinged with red when they first appear in Spring. The flowers, which arrive in May or June depending on the region, are five-petaled, white, and held in clusters. As the season progress, the tree makes red to orange pomes that look like berries. Don’t be embarrassed if you have never noticed the fruit. It is a favorite of wildlife and doesn’t last long on the tree.
As I explain in my latest book, Under the Sacred Canopy: Working Magick with the Mystical Trees of the World, given its associations with fairies, you can honor these entities in your landscape by planting a hawthorn. Or, if you live near a forest or natural area, you should be able to locate a specimen somewhere among the forest population.
According to tradition, you should always ask permission before gathering material from a hawthorn. Fairies are thought to live around or sometimes under a hawthorn. Certainly, if you can legally dig up a hawthorn from the wild for your landscape, I would leave a gift behind for the Fae, just in case. Folklore tells us these little spirits can make a world of trouble for those who offend them!
Use the flowers to dress a Spring altar or to make garlands for the hair of your ladylove or young dandy. After your celebration, respectfully return the branches and flowers to the edge of the woods so the material can nurture the local environment as it decomposes. This is a perfect example of what we mean when we say, “What I take, I freely give.”
Our thanks to JD for her guest post! For more from JD Walker, read her article “Simple Rituals to Connect with Sacred Trees.”
