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JULY TREE MAGIC: The Birch

 

 

 

At night, when its silvery bark glimmers in the moonlight, the birch creates a majestic yet ethereal image. The tree’s loose, paper-like bark was held sacred by early man and excavations of Neolithic and Mesolithic grave-mounds reveal that rolls of birch bark were interred alongside the corpse, although their exact significance remains a mystery. The birch is the first tree of the Ogham alphabet and, although it was listed as a ‘tree of high estate’, it was referred to by the Celts as one of the ‘peasant trees’. Birch twigs were often used for the brush part of a witch’s besom, although it was more usual to use the timber as the handle of the broom. Birch twigs were traditionally used to ‘beat the boundaries’, an annual ceremony to mark out territory and later, parish boundaries. All over Europe the birch tree is associated with renewal and the return of summer. Its boughs were used as decoration at pagan festivals and the Maypole, was often made from a birch tree.

 

After the Beltaine festival, the pole would be taken down and kept in the stable or farm yard as a protection for the household and the livestock.

 

 

The birch was esteemed in herbal remedies and during the reign of James I, Sir Hugh Platt tells of a treatment to remove freckles from the hands and face: ‘the sap that issueth out of the birch tree in great abundance, being opened in March with a receiver of glass set under the boring, doth perform most excellent and maketh the skin very clear. This sap will also dissolve pearls — a secret not known to many, it being close concealed from most.

 

 

 

In the Middle Ages, sap from the silver birch was a major source of sugar throughout eastern Europe and was fermented to make wine, spirits and vinegar. Revered by the Celts as a sacred tree, it was believed to drive out evil spirits, hence the ‘birching’ of criminals and the insane. During the Middle Ages, a bundle of birch rods symbolises the authority of the local magistrate.

 

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Mélusine Draco originally trained in the magical arts of traditional British Old Craft with Bob and Mériém Clay-Egerton. She has been a magical and spiritual instructor for over 20 years with Arcanum and the Temple of Khem, and writer of numerous popular books on magic and witchcraft. Her highly individualistic teaching methods and writing draws on ancient sources, supported by academic texts and current archaeological findings.

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