It seems a mystery how I was given the name Hazel. People think it was because of my hazel eyes, though I believe all babies are born with blue and only later develop individual colours. It’s not a family name and there was no friend or film star bearing it. My brother’s name Stephen was similarly ‘chosen’, but his has much less resonance.
I’ve always felt inspired by trees and as a small child would suffer terrible grief if one was cut down. This connection has become much stronger and more focused since I started doing shamanic work. Trees have an energy all their own. Walking beneath them feels like having a spa treatment… a massage for the soul. At times I’ve even felt they were my reason for staying in London. Where else has the variety of beautiful trees that can be found in Kew, on Hampstead Heath and in so many London parks, squares, graveyards and even lining the streets?
Hazel is a small, common tree that can easily be overlooked. But its significance goes far beyond its physical form. It plays a leading role in myth and tree lore. In Ireland nine hazels grew around the well of life. Their nuts fell into the water and were eaten by the salmon, the oldest creature according to Irish and Druid tradition. It was believed that these sacred nuts caused the red spots on the salmon’s skin.
In Yeats’ intriguing poem The Song of Wandering Aengus the hero narrates:
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand…
He attaches a berry and catches a ‘little silver trout’, which turns into a ‘glimmering girl’ who calls out his name before fading away.
Hazel was one of 9 sacred woods used to light the Beltane fires (May Day). A stick of hazel cut before sunrise on May Day protected against fairies, serpents and evil spirits. The wood was used for divining rods and, according to the Book of St Albans, a hazel rod with a green hazel twig inserted gave the power of invisibility. In Discovering the Folklore of Plants Margaret Baker lists beliefs about the protective powers of hazel from all over the world. Cut on Palm Sunday, it protected a house from fire and lightning. Worn in a sailor’s cap, he was safe from drowning. An adder bite could be cured with the use of two hazel twigs laid on the wound in the form of a cross.
Had my parents tapped into some mythic stream or did some guardian, overseeing my birth like my own Lilac Fairy, implant the name in their heads? Even stranger, a few years ago a relative in Australia did the family tree and traced my maternal line, the Thornes, back to a tiny village in Dorset called Hazelbury Bryan. One of the last Dorset Thornes, a rather fierce woman called Martha, lived in Hazel Hall. (Her will left her husband Tom £100 a year on condition he kept the farm and their tenanted properties in good condition. If he became bankrupt he forfeited this.)
I can remember a time when I didn’t like my name because, by some confused reasoning, it was too different and not exotic enough! But now it seems I was given my true name at birth.
I’ve always felt inspired by trees and as a small child would suffer terrible grief if one was cut down. This connection has become much stronger and more focused since I started doing shamanic work. Trees have an energy all their own. Walking beneath them feels like having a spa treatment… a massage for the soul. At times I’ve even felt they were my reason for staying in London. Where else has the variety of beautiful trees that can be found in Kew, on Hampstead Heath and in so many London parks, squares, graveyards and even lining the streets?
Hazel is a small, common tree that can easily be overlooked. But its significance goes far beyond its physical form. It plays a leading role in myth and tree lore. In Ireland nine hazels grew around the well of life. Their nuts fell into the water and were eaten by the salmon, the oldest creature according to Irish and Druid tradition. It was believed that these sacred nuts caused the red spots on the salmon’s skin.
In Yeats’ intriguing poem The Song of Wandering Aengus the hero narrates:
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand…
He attaches a berry and catches a ‘little silver trout’, which turns into a ‘glimmering girl’ who calls out his name before fading away.
Hazel was one of 9 sacred woods used to light the Beltane fires (May Day). A stick of hazel cut before sunrise on May Day protected against fairies, serpents and evil spirits. The wood was used for divining rods and, according to the Book of St Albans, a hazel rod with a green hazel twig inserted gave the power of invisibility. In Discovering the Folklore of Plants Margaret Baker lists beliefs about the protective powers of hazel from all over the world. Cut on Palm Sunday, it protected a house from fire and lightning. Worn in a sailor’s cap, he was safe from drowning. An adder bite could be cured with the use of two hazel twigs laid on the wound in the form of a cross.
Had my parents tapped into some mythic stream or did some guardian, overseeing my birth like my own Lilac Fairy, implant the name in their heads? Even stranger, a few years ago a relative in Australia did the family tree and traced my maternal line, the Thornes, back to a tiny village in Dorset called Hazelbury Bryan. One of the last Dorset Thornes, a rather fierce woman called Martha, lived in Hazel Hall. (Her will left her husband Tom £100 a year on condition he kept the farm and their tenanted properties in good condition. If he became bankrupt he forfeited this.)
I can remember a time when I didn’t like my name because, by some confused reasoning, it was too different and not exotic enough! But now it seems I was given my true name at birth.