Yareah Magazine

Isabel del Rio 

Our gardens are full of marvellous trees which have been venerated during centuries.

In Yareah magazine/January, we started to know and see their poetic secrets by analyzing Robert Graves’ famous essay “The White Goddess - a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth” and what he calls “The alphabet of trees” in Celtic Druidic culture (letters were known by the name of a tree which started with its same initial. For example, “duir” -our oak- was also the letter “D” and “saille” –our willow- was the letter “S”).

This month, we are going to speak of the seventh consonant letter or “magical” tree and about its legends.

The seventh tree is the oak, the tree of Zeus, Jupiter, Hercules, Dagda (he was the supreme god in the ancient Ireland), Thor and all of the other gods in relationship with the Thunder.

It is the tree of the victory and protection. Originally, doors were made of oak since it is the most resistant wood and “duir” means “door” in very many European languages: “foris” (Latin), “thura” (Greek) and “Dorus” (German) come from “Dwr” (Sanskrit).

Virgilio said that its roots go from the sky to the deepest earth. Therefore, the Oak rules in the Heaven and in the Hell.

Both brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, were armed with rays but when Aqueous defeated Aeolians, Poseidon left his ray and took a trident.

This seventh holly tree dominated from the 10th of June to the 7th of July. In the middle, we still celebrate Saint Joan Day and at night, people joint around fires. Of course, in old times, these fires were made with branches of oak and according with “The Golden Branch” by Sir James Frazer, old kings died at these stakes to honour the new ones, these ones who had chosen the true queen, the White Goddess, of those matrilineal Neolithic times.

Read more:

http://owenmolloy.multiply.com/reviews/item/206

Bio:

Isabel del Río was born in Madrid (Spain). She has studied in the University of Valladolid and she has a degree in Geography and History. She likes Arts and she has been painting for years. Now, she is teaching in a secondary school in Madrid and investigating about old lost female painters. She has published a novel called “Ariza” (Grupo Editorial Alcalá ISBN 978-84-96806-52-8).

See more:

http://www.isabeldelrio.wordpress.com