Where the name of this blog comes from...

Sacred Hoop Magazine, pages 27-29, issue number 63: "Walking With The World Tree."

This is an article on the historic uses of shamans' staffs. It also gives tips on making your own.

Interestingly enough, I have made my own staff, and was doing some of the things suggested in the article instinctively.

The staff I've made is not completely finished, but I know that it will be when the time is right.

My staff is made from the trunk of a snowfall cherry tree that I'd planted in our front yard one Autumn. The young tree didn't survive the late freeze that came the following Spring. It had already budded and was beginning to flower when the freeze hit, a hard freeze. I felt very responsible for the tree being where it was, and so I decided to give it a second life in the only fashion I could.

It is nearly seven feet tall, (a little over two meters) which makes it about two or three inches taller than I am. The staff has a slight bow to it.

I left the bark on the trunk. I also burned the Ogham alphabet in a spiral down the trunk with a magnifying glass in the morning sunshine, and near the top the Wheel of the Year.

Interestingly, as a staff, it wants to be upside down from what it was in its previous life. What was the point where the branches joined the trunk is now the staff's foot, and where the root ball used to join with it, it now reaches for the sky.

For now, the staff's foot is shod in white rubber. It wants to be shod in brass, I can feel. At some point I will find the right part and do so.

The staff also wants a large amethyst crystal atop it, and I have one for it, but I'm being very cautious about how I attach it.

I am very grateful to the tree and the Universe for providing me with such a beautiful shaman's staff.

I have used it many times to pull white healing light from the skies of both day and night, sending the energy into the grounds and plants around our house to nourish them and the soil of the Earth back to health. The soil there had been heavily depleted by farming before homes were built on it.

So there you have it - there really is a cherry staff, my beautiful and grace-full companion upon this journey we live. I haven't yet discovered its name.

One day soon, I'll add a picture here to this blog of the staff.

Dan