Tonight: Meet Blackthorn

Blackthorn is at her most blousy right now. This unassuming shrub-sized tree (never higher that 13ft, according to legend) is erupting in powder puffs of white blossom. Look for her along hedgerow edges, a harbinger of spring, the first note of the blossom before the full orchestra of orchard trees blooms reach their crescendo in May. Not pinky-tinged like her cousin the Hawthorn, Blackthorn has ‘blue white’ flowers, brilliant white petals and red stamens. I find their delicacy surprisingly opposite to her name and long association with witches, violence and cold. 

Tonight I am running an Online Cacao Ceremony 6.45-8.15pm. It is Sunday evening, that weekly time of reflection and preparation. As a child I would return to boarding school on Sundays, and the same looming dread would land in my belly as I prepared for the working week as an adult, often making the pilgrimage from a countryside adventure to my city home, and its association with work, greyness and stress. Sunday-night-itis I called it, and it is an malady still best fought off with group meditation, or other such communal quiet. An online cacao ceremony is just such an event. Everyone snuggled up at home with their favourite witchy brew,  getting together to encounter the unfathomable expansiveness of the universe. 

Tonight is the eve of a full moon (she is peaking at 7am tomorrow) and also a partial lunar eclipse.  It was recently spring equinox, a time to balance in day and night. Tonight is the full moon and a good time to let that be reflected in our experiences, or else to have imbalance intensified -  let any excess baggage be highlighted, in order be deleted, cleanly and quickly. A night for an inner spring clean.  I have had a roughness in my throat for a week as my body uses tree pollen to get itself back in balance. A kind of hayfever, but from the miniature tree flowers we often don’t see. My allergies, like much in my life, appears most in tune with the trees.  

Tonight is the first of 12 weeks of ritual Sunday Nights that I will run until Summer. As well as the seasonal change, this is a time of transition in my home. My ancestors moved here in 1783, and after 8 generations, a new family is moving in. Transitions are a time of upheaval, and it is wise to notice the shift and face it head on. Feel the feels while it is happening, rather than storing up the stress for later, or passing it on to the future generations. It also helps remind us how short a human life is, but the beat of a bee wing in comparison to the life span of a tree, mountain or star. Life is a series of experiences and enlightenment is about the degree of connection we can feel. So let us give ourselves times to do this. 

Tonight I will journey with Blackthorn. You may have seen the blossom without knowing, growing along motorways, a flash of white on the roadside. Blackthorns are old indigenous trees, even linked to the thorn used in Jesus’ crown. Fruits are considered ripe only after the first frost of winter. You might already have tasted the fruit without knowing, from the sloe gin gifted you years ago. My aunts would create it into hedgerow jam - a prickly job to pick, but very plentiful. And only ever cooked in tandem with plenty of other blackberries, haws and hips, and equal weight of (crab) apples and heaps of sugar.  October is called ‘the Blackthorn Moon’  associated with the first frosts and dark nights drawing in. So blackthorn sits at the edge of both sides of winter.

But tonight,  let’s enjoy the white blooms today, push away the bleakness of winter and celebrate the Blackthorn as the demarcation of the season - the thorny hedge we can sit behind, protected and safe to enjoy our magic. This time of equal darkness and light, with the black thorn and the brightness of the full moon. 

As Henry and I walked the dogs in the windy sunlight, he announced, “it should be called Whitethorn”, for its blossom or indeed “Greenthorn”, once the flowers have finished and the oval leaves appear. While we are taught to assume black is bad - in folklore and racism - this is far from the truth. Life is a full spectrum and we want to be comfortable with all colour frequencies - and yes I mean folklore and ethnicity. Dark is a time to heal, so black can be protective. For it is when we close our eyes and step into the darkness that the best, deepest, most powerful message are revealed. Just like we hide our most precious items in our deepest safe, the vault within a vault. 

There is a traditional Irish walking stick, club or cudgels called a shillelagh, named for a forest in Wicklow where they were made. They are blackthorn sticks with a knobble of root on the bottom, in to which was carved heads or runes. These sticks were shaped and then tempered with oil/dung/saltwater and left in the chimney to blacken. The Blackthorn also features in Irish legend, thrown by a hero to create an instant, impenetrable wall or thorns, thwarting the pursuant giants.

Living at the edge of forests, Blackthorn is the perfect plant to start this 12 week plant journey. I look forward to joining together with those who listen live or on repeat, as we close our eyes, settle in and enjoy this last weekend on winter time together. 

Tonight: 

Don’t be afraid the dark.

Don’t be afraid of the violent use to which Blackthorn cudgels (or shillelagh) were put. 

Tonight we sit together and face the dark and unknown, protected by Blackthorn and community. 

Tonight we use this edge of the forest plant to go into the liminal, imaginal, ‘in-between’ space where we sit at the doorway of our inner deepest wisdom, welcoming in a new season, new wisdom, new growth.

Let us close the doors and shut the curtains, leave the noice behind in order to let the revelations happen.

Tomorrow you can go and find the blossom - and mind the prickles!

Tonight, if you have never joined a ceremony like this, please be my guest. I am happy to gift you the first one free - just email me - and if you don’t have cacao, just make your favourite brew, (ideally non caffeinated) and curl up in a comfy, cosy spot, shut your eyes and see what happens. Step into the black of the unknown and see what comes to light your way.

Log on at 6.45 to hear how to cook the cacao, otherwise join at 7 for the ceremony itself.