Yewshamanism - Essence of the Five Trees

I did not invent Yewshamanism. I chose the name as a metaphor to convey the communicable elements of a 'shamanic' practice given to me by the sacred yew tree over a period of many years. I often say that yewshamanism is a Druidic practice.  I say this because my visions and perceptual/sensory experiences beneath the tree had very little to do with the shamanic paradigm that is dominant in the west today.  Yewshamanism reveals the essence of the five trees.  The essence of the five trees refers to an ancient and Elemental spiritual intelligence that exists in the generative counter-realms of Nature. The Elemental intelligence creates the possibility of and the necessary conditions for our human incarnation. This knowledge is revealed through initiation. It is an initiation knowledge based on the enhancement of a level of consciousness that precedes genetic expression and the development of a central nervous system - a consciousness that lives and moves inside the power of a primal and perennial state of being where everything is possible and nothing is final or fixed. It is an Incarnational and an embryological consciousness. It is a shape-shifting consciousness. The pre-Celtic Druids mastered this consciousness beneath the vast yew groves that once spanned the lands we know of today as Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and Scandinavia, before a great catastrophe that took place around 9500BC forced the people from their homelands. The initiation knowledge was protected and taken to the east where for thousands of years it informed the ancient spiritual traditions of India, Persia and of the Chaldean - Egyptian - Assyrian - Babylonian Nile culture. The east to west migrations that occurred much later carried the ancestors of these northern peoples back to their original homelands. On their return to Ireland and Scotland they found that many of the ancient yew trees spoken of in legend had survived. The last remaining ancient yew trees are therefore the earthly keepers of an Antediluvian planetary memory. The yew, as the World Tree Yggdrasil, survived the global catastrophe known in the Norse sagas as Ragnarok. The presumed Glacial Age that was introduced as an idea in the late 19^th century has led many botanists to assume that the yew must have made a gradual return to its northern lands between 7800 and 5000 BC as the ice receded. In truth many of the yew trees, although savaged by tsunamis and floods, remained where they were.  There is scant evidence of much glaciation in even north–east Siberia, considered to be the coldest land region on earth. The topography in southern Scotland is the same now as it was before being supposedly covered by thick sheets of ice. From the Shetlands to Ireland and into southern England we see the same picture. The Ice Age is a myth.  Clearly, from this admittedly controversial viewpoint, we must be open to the possibility that the yew tree seen on this website is of an immense age.

The yew tree elides all human expressions of its reification as fixed mythology. Its power must be re-discovered anew by each initiate seeking to learn its truth. Therefore there is no direct transmission of a definitive 'sacred text' from the yew tree. Its 'text' is a process and a living language which changes your consciousness through practice. Yewshamanism offers a perceptual structure for the truth and healing power of the essence of the five trees to be experienced and absorbed. This structure is based on over 9 years of direct experience with a female yew in Scotland. I was very ill when I arrived at the tree.  Over time I was led through and beyond what seemed an inevitable death. Finally my consciousness was changed and I was quite literally transformed into a new being. Yewshamanism is a practice that continues to develop with effort and awareness.  Under the yew I was literally pulled apart and stretched across galaxies and dimensions of sentience whose edges converged as a smear of meaning, or a final glimpse of sanity that vanished into condensed points of emptiness. Under the vast canopy of the tree, I witnessed the rituals of the pre- Celtic peoples who venerated and cared for it, and learned the practices that they were given by the yew tree spirits to embody its power.  I was led to understand that the space within and around the yew tree is a key function of its power - part of an ongoing process of renewal.   Yewshamanism reveals the connections between  the  so-called 'shamanic' initiation and human embryogenesis with the Norse and Irish myths.  These myths are not really myths at all, but keys to ancient practices of healing and rejuvenation.

The remaining ancient yew trees in the British Isles will reveal nothing material from their ancient pasts. This is why it is impossible to determine their age unless a planting date is known. The mystery of the yew tree's immortality was embodied by our ancestors through the culturally specific ritual enactment of core aspects of the yew-tree-goddess archetype involving birth, death, transformation and rebirth myths.  As the World Tree, the yew provided a sacred axial center offering access to the realms of the Underworld and to the spiritual heights of the Kosmos.  Today, the creation mythologies that were given by the sacred yew tree are returning in new forms.  

Since the late 1960's the yew tree that was either simply ignored, destroyed or threatened has been rediscovered and revalued as a cure for cancer.  Wisdom that was known and cherished for thousands of years, that was given from a sacred and immortal being, seems to be finally returning to us. But the dominant form of the return of that wisdom is a partial realization, a compromise and denigration of meaning,  bound to the biotech-pharmaceutical industry as a commodity, and very much at the expense of the continuing existence of many  yew trees - India has lost 90% of its yews since 1992 because of the demand for taxanes, and the increase in yew plantations worldwide may create genetic pollution threatening the genetic diversity of the surviving native yew trees ( Hageneder 2007)   This is in no way meant to downplay the importance of Taxol/Paclitaxel to the many cancer survivors, many of whom have in fact been led to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the tree that has saved them.  However, the deeper message and meaning of the sacred yew tree must be heard and appreciated in a wider context.  It is no accident that many authorities now fully believe that the Yew tree is indeed the World Tree/Yggdrasil. The message of the yew, as given from  the yew itself,  inspires a return to our sacred origins and to the reinterpretation of a knowledge that was guarded and maintained long ago by the yew initiates. The yew reunites us with a sensory language of rejuvenation and health . This is the essence of the Yewshamanism that was known by other names throughout the ancient world, in India, Egypt, Greece,  around the area of the Black Sea, and of course throughout  the British Isles and northern Europe.  The ancient native yew trees of the world must be protected both as sentient beings and as the custodians and gatekeepers to the ever-present forces and mystery of our sacred Antediluvian origins.  Look at many of the place names throughout the British Isles in particular, and you will see that the name of the Yew is that place!  The evidence for the widespread veneration of the yew tree is right in front of our faces.  It's time for us to see it and to reclaim it.

TEN YEARS UNDER THE YEW TREE
by Michael Dunning

The Tree Surgeon
I stood fragile and still inside a darkened and tangled cocoon vault,
gazing into the contracting afternoon liquid light that slid through gaps in
an intricate weave of branches, casting mottled washes of gold, Turner
watercolor fragments against the south western profile of the yew tree. To
this day, I wonder that this perfectly inverted cauldron of branch
contortion could admit any illumination at all. Moody dark for most of the
day, and certainly during nights without a full moon, the great yew
goddess would sip in the last light of each day as her delicacy… a taste
of potency to be gathered and bound only during those dying moments.
But the true light source of the yew came from elsewhere.
The previous night, I had climbed to the top of this sacred goddess,
guided by the light of the moon and a local tree surgeon named Bob who
had dragged me from the village pub after I admitted both ignorance of
yews as a species of tree and that I had never visited the ‘cathedral’ in my
own Scottish back yard. At that time my illness was advanced, so walking
any short distance could exhaust me for days. But there I was, blind
drunk, in the middle of the night, stumbling over broken branches and
jagged bushes to visit a tree I had neither heard of, nor, if truth be told,
was interested in. The effects of the alcohol, the tree surgeon’s animation
and something else, a curious feeling previously unknown yet irritatingly
familiar, had compelled me.
After about ten minutes Bob stopped. “Here we are… you first!”
“What?”
“This is it,” he whispered…
I couldn’t see any tree at all – only a small, dark and circular opening
in what looked like a huge bush. I laughed pathetically. “You’re kidding,
right?”
“In you go!” He waved his hands dramatically, feigning impatience.
I had to bend almost double to get into that black hole. It was cold. I
shuffled forward without lifting my feet off the ground. I realized that this
was a narrow tunnel because each time I tried to raise my head a few
inches, it touched a ceiling of sharp, pointed branches. I encountered the
same spiked barrier on either side as I reached out with my arms. The
ground of the tunnel rose gently and evenly for the first 20 feet, then
began to incline more steeply. I shuffled another 25 feet and began to
make out what looked like a doorway of sorts. I reached forward with my
left hand and touched a cold iron rail, feeling tiny flakes of rust sticking
to my palm. I found the partner rail on the other side and using both hands
hauled myself through an entrance. The ground seemed flat and I raised
my head tentatively – no ceiling this time. I stood up slowly, waving my
arms around in front of me and took a tiny step forward. Repeating this
bizarre sequence, I advanced two or three steps further and then stopped.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and by the light of the moon I could
make out my position at the edge of a large, and enclosed circle perhaps
50 feet across. In the middle of the circle was a huge black mass that I
took to be the trunk of the tree. Moving closer and looking up I followed
the trunk to the buds of its massive branches, but instead of continuing
horizontally into space they swooped back down to the earth in long
graceful arcs forming an inverted basket shape.
As my eyes traveled the underside of one of the branches on its
descending trajectory, I almost fell over backwards. Righting myself, I
walked some 15 feet from the trunk to where one of the huge limbs
reached the ground and, squatting, ran my hand around the area where it
met the soft earth. The bark came away in flakes. I rested my hand there
for a few seconds and my head began to feel heavy. I felt sleepy. At first
it seemed that the branch had actually entered the earth. On closer
inspection, I realized that it turned at a right angle just under the surface
of the earth, and continued half buried along the ground. I rose and
walked another 10 feet or so alongside the slithering shape toward what
appeared to be one of a multitude of smaller trees that made up the
internal circumference of this vast enclosure. I couldn’t see a way in or
out other than the tunnel I had just navigated. The ground seemed a
writhing mass of snakes tripping and snagging at my feet. ‘How could a
tree do this?’ I wondered. I didn’t even hear Bob coming up behind me.
“Bloody amazing, eh? What de ye think?”
“I don’t understand it,” I whispered sharply, “Is this all the same tree?
I mean it can’t be... right? It’s all different trees mixed up!”
“Nope, just the one tree,” he declared proudly, “All 400ft in circumference
of it, biggest in the country and it’s a she.”
“A ‘she’? Come off it!” I rebuked.
“Oh yes, she’s a she a’right. Yews are dioecious which means they are
either male or female. Not only that, but you are in the presence of the
oldest female you are ever likely to meet so you’d better mind yer
manners!”
“How old is it… err, she?” I asked.
“Could be over 1000 years old!” was his reply. (This turned out to be
a modest guess – the yew is considerably older).
I was stunned.
“Anyway, welcome,” Bob said, “to an unknown wonder of the world.”
The next afternoon, sober and alone, I returned. At the threshold
entrance of the yew tree I smiled briefly for the first time in many months.
I felt that I had finally come home. Flexing my body almost in half, I
crossed the threshold and entered into the twisting, cathedral plexus – the
great enclosure of the sacred yew tree. Upon entering the main chamber
for the first time in the partial light I began to weep, and wept uncontrollably
for over an hour. Then I slept, curled up against the tree roots.
The convulsions woke me up violently, my body whipping up into the
thick, musty air above the serpentine roots, my back arching well beyond
its physiological limits as if pushed from below. The space within the
enclosed area had become dense like water and was pushing painfully
against my body, arching me upward and then slamming me back onto the
ground. My head and chest felt compressed, making breathing extremely
difficult, and my left eye was burning as if an acidic solvent was being
applied directly to my retina. I can’t say how long this lasted… I lost all
sense of time, but just as it was passing, I saw flickering lights and sensed
many presences around me. I had no idea then that this was the beginning
of a ten-year journey of pain, transformation, learning and, ultimately,
healing. This is the story of my shamanic initiation in Scotland under the

yew tree.