Spring and the Living Wands of the Druids By Jon Hughes
The arrival of Spring marks the beginning of the Tree Cycle in Druidic lore. A time when it’s impossible to walk in a wood or explore a forest without feeling the burgeoning new life and energy of the season.
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his is the time when our trees are considered to be at their most powerful and influential. The new young trees bursting with vitality and the rising sap in the mature trees renewing their lifecycle and reinvigorating their ancient knowledge and power. Spring is a time when Druids focus upon the energy and verve of the renewed life force that nature provides for us in abundance and one of the most important workings of this season is those involving ‘Living Wands,’ one of the most influential and vital spiritual instruments available to us at this time of the year. To fully understand the importance of the Living Wand we must first focus upon exactly how these powerful devices achieve their purpose. In Druidic lore, the Living Wand has three specific functions: 48
1.It acts as a conduit to channel the intention of the user. 2.It amplifies the intention of the user. 3.It adds its own influences to the intention of the user and enhances its effect. In order to achieve these outcomes, it is imperative that the wand not only maintains the attributes and virtues of the tree from which it is harvested but also that it is used while these virtues of fresh and vibrant. And to do this, the wand must be used while it is still a living entity, even though it has been separated from its host tree. When a branch is newly harvested to be used as a wand, it not only maintains the original attributes of the host tree, but it also retains the vitality or life-energy of the host in its sap and living physical structure.
The first of the functions mentioned above is the wand’s ability to act as a conduit for the intention of the user. (Other traditions may prefer to refer to the intention as the spell or incantation). Like any other conduit, the wand must have a center core that acts as the channeling path together with a barrier that maintains the integrity of what is being channeled. It may help to consider the wand (the conduit) to be similar to an electrical cable, with the central cooper wire carrying the energy while the outer insulating covering prevents it from dispersing or being contaminated by external forces. In the same way, the living heartwood of the wand is the channeling pathway, while the outer bark acts as the insulating encasement that prevents its diffusion or contamination.
