The Hedge Druid

Archive for the ‘News article’ Category

In one sentence…

“The universe sings the song but you provide the song title”

Ok, I can see from the draft posts that Gwas is beginning his 2011 round up and since (see The World is Changing) the new spiral has already begun for me I thought I’d get my update in first!

In complete honesty 2011 has only one word that can describe it, amazing!

Where to begin? Of course this year has been dominated by my Knights Quest. So that is a good a place as  to start as any…

Knights Quest

It all came to the fore at Imbolc festival when, quite innocently, Gwas and I were venturing out to several sites. Our first stop was at a site we, incorrectly, identified as St Helen’s well. At this site I had a vision of that infamous entity Caileach. She directed me on a quest to fulfill the achievement of nine blue keys. Once this was achieved I would be knighted. I know, I still have to laugh when I think of it. But that adventure led me across the Atlantic on an improbable.

Although I tried to follow this questing path with courage and aplomb. It was late this Autumn that I was informed that the quest remained incomplete and that a tighter spiral would have to be journeyed. I am rather disappointed at that but understand now why it has to be thus. See? Sometimes you just need to be told twice!

Some of the more salient points (as determined by me) were:

• Journeying 3,500 miles to the States
• Personal physical healing
• Creating a Knights Code to live by (which I have so far)

Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Quinn, once Ireland’s wealthiest man, is now bankrupt. Some are beginning to speculate as to why this might be – dodgy deals, reckless investments, or bad luck? Well, the bad luck angle is getting some airplay at the moment. Some people put the collapse down to a single decision made in the heyday of the Quinn empire, when Quinn Concrete wanted to expand its quarrying to encompass Aughrim Wedge Tomb – a megalithic site on the Cavan/Fermanagh county border in Northern Ireland.

Sean Quinn before the faeries got him

Of course, the press are blaming “faeries”, and the locals are adding grist to that mill. In my experience, though, there are invisible sentient presences who are charged with the custodianship of sacred sites, and who are sustained energetically by the location and construction of these megalithic monuments. Kal has many tales of times when he has been symbolically or actually “smacked” or nearly had his eye poked out simply because he failed to acknowledge their presence before trampling over their homes. I have also learned from my early mistakes and now I treat these Spirits of Place with a great deal of respect, approaching them as spiritual equals.

The reconstructed Giant's Grave wedge tomb

It is no surprise to me that Mr Quinn has found that forces beyond his control have intervened in this affairs and that his “luck” has taken a turn for the worse. Of course, the two events may be completely unconnected. Without knowing the man and dowsing his circumstances I couldn’t hope to know whether there has actually been any energetic interference in the course of his life and destiny, but I would say this: you would do well to consider this as a possibility, a cautionary tale.

My advice is to consider the needs of the site’s citizens whether visible or not before ploughing ahead with your own needs when it comes to sacred places!

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Gwas.

I have been seeing, hearing and thinking about the dowsing response in relation to the Earth’s Magnetic Field a lot recently. Having spent many years attuning myself to the feel, the movement and the changes of this energy field, it was with some delight that I began to hear some reports from the scientific field that are confirming what I and many others have felt for a long time – we humans can sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Here is a quote from a recent article:

source: blog.gpscompared.co.uk

Humans may have a sixth sense after all, suggests a new study finding that a protein in the human retina, when placed into fruit flies, has the ability to detect magnetic fields.

The researchers caution that the results suggest this human protein has the capability to work as a magnetosensor; however, whether or not humans use it in that way is not known.

“It poses the question, ‘maybe we should rethink about this sixth sense,’” Steven Reppert, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told LiveScience. “It is thought to be very important for how animals migrate. Perhaps this protein is also fulfilling an important function for sensing magnetic fields in humans.” (source: LiveScience)

The article goes on the relate how a test involving the injection of blue-light sensitive cryptochromes into the eyes of fruit flies found that it aided their navigation of a maze whose guidance was achieved in response to the the emmissions from electro-magnetic coils. This takes us a step further in our understanding of the navigational capabilities of our own species, rather than simply those of specific animals such as pigeons. Here is the current Wikipedia definition of cryptochromes, which may now need to be expanded to specifically mention humans:

Cryptochromes (from the Greek κρυπτό χρώμα, hidden colour) are a class of blue light-sensitive flavoproteins found in plants and animals. Cryptochromes are involved in the circadian rhythms of plants and animals, and in the sensing of magnetic fields in a number of species.” (source: Wikipedia)

Ancient Sites and the EMF

I was listening to a talk delivered by Dr.Serena Roney-Dougal who has studied the relationship between the pineal gland and the human response to the EMF. She points out that this gland, located in the centre of the human brain, is “exquisitely sensitive” to changes in intensity, but also to changes in our relationship to the field in space. In other words, we are aware of our location in relation to the magnetic field, and can point to North without requiring any external guidance (once we get beyond puberty and the pineal gland begins to calcify).

She also points out that ancient sacred sites have been designed with two specific function inherent in their design – they either INTENSIFY the EMF (stone circles and standing stones), or they NEGATE the EMF (the layered construction of barrows, caves and dolmens originally had these properties). Of course, many of these sites have been tampered with, denuded or rendered disfunctional these days, but their original function fits these patterns in relation to the Earth’s Magnetic Field.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is with the greatest of joy that I impart the news, if you haven’t heard it already, that the UK Government has decided to NOT go ahead with the plans to sell off the forests that it controls. This is fantastic news for all of us who enjoy and see the benefits of our local woodland.

In the podcast that I released only yesterday I was calling for everyone to keep up the pressure on the powers that be so that we can ensure they do not try to divert or deflect the criticism they have received so far. It would seem that they have realised now how globally unpopular this move was seen as.

Some recent headlines about the campaign victory

The 38Degrees protest site was jubilant at the news:

“Victory! The Guardian, BBC and Independent are reporting that the government is about to scrap plans to sell our forests. Over half a million of us should feel very proud of what we’ve achieved together. Let’s keep watching but also celebrate what we’ve done!” (source: 38Degrees)

The Woodland Trust were slightly more guarded in their response to the news:

“Commenting on the decision, Sue Holden chief executive of the Trust said, “We welcome the opportunity for a more considered approach to the future of our much loved woodlands but our campaign continues. Whilst we welcome the removal of threats to public access,  there is still an acute need for better protection of Ancient Woodland, our equivalent of the rainforests, and restoration of ancient woods planted with conifers.

Even if there are no sales of publicly owned forests, the worst of all worlds would be for there to be no change to the loopholes that have allowed 850 ancient woods to be threatened by built development over the past decade.  Ministers have made strong commitments over the past few weeks to increase protection for ancient woods, and we will be holding them to these commitments.” (source: Woodland Trust)

Thank you to anyone who lifted a finger to assist with this campaign. Your rewards will be to know that your local woodland is safe for now, and that you can continue to enjoy the fresh air, the windbreak and soil management, the biodiversity, and the recreational space that these woodlands provide.

And I thought democracy was dead! Today I feel slightly less cynical. Power to the people!

Gwas.

Things are heating up with the UK woodland sell-off debate. Actually, there is no debate. At least three-quarters of those surveyed did not want this legislation to go ahead. I think this is quite heartening – there is an obvious wave of objection to the idea of putting our woodland areas into the hands of private companies for “management”. For ‘management’ read ‘commercialisation’. And for ‘commericalisation’ understand that this means ‘profit’. How, exactly, does one make a profit from woodland by keeping it unchanged, properly managed and available for locals to wander around in? You don’t! That won’t happen.

Delamere Forest in full autumn splendour

What will happen is that woodland will be subjected to:

1. Being turned into some kind of theme park – by adding ventures such as ape-like climbing facilities, mountain biking trails, gift shops and food stalls.
2. Having ancient trees mown down and sold off, to be replaced by the faster-growing varieties of wood such as conifers, thus reducing the inherent biodiversity of what is left of our native primitive woodland.
3. Accessible public woodland being fenced off in order to protect the commercial investment.

Access to woodland will inevitably become more restricted – it’s just in the nature of people who make investments that they become territorial about land. Just look around you at the bigger detached houses in your area – are they open? Are you allowed to walk across their gardens? Of course not – they’re in private hands and fenced off.

These are just the inevitable consequences of the commercial mindset. There is no profit for commerce in preservation. It’s just not how they work. If the present system of woodland management is cumbersome and overwrought, then reform it. The current government’s answer is to sell the problem off to the highest bidder, and TRUST that they will “do the right thing”. Of course, it’s not the government’s fault if they don’t. Then it’s an issue for the individual citizen to take up directly with the offending corporation. That is called the devolution of responsibility, and it is a shameful act by any government who is supposed to care about our nation’s heritage. Our birthright, I would say.

The statement below is from the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) website, and states quite categorically that 15% of the available woodland has ALREADY been given away BEFORE the consultation. The rest, it says, is open for discussion:

“The Government has already committed to taking 15% of the public forest estate out of state control over the course of this parliament, generating up to £100million of receipts. The consultation paper launched today invites views on a range of ownership and management options for the remaining 85% of the estate.  This will be an open consultation and Government will listen to all responses before publishing its response in the summer.” (source: DEFRA)

38 Degrees protest site

I recently wrote to my MP about the issue (with a helping hand from the ‘38 Degrees‘ protest site), and I received a response that was trying to be palliative and re-assuring, but which in fact just raised a number of deeper concerns for me. I will now be posting this response onto the 38 Degrees site to see just how pre-determined the response was.

Here is a link to the latest news about the swell of opinion about this issue. If this goes ahead I am going to take direct action. I really object to having the course of my life diverted away from my spiritual quest in this way because I normally try to stay out of politics, but this is a truly objectionable piece of legislation that MUST be stopped.

I hereby predict that the current public consultation “exercise” will be nothing short of a scam and a farrago. Nothing will be decided except the existing course of action – the commercialisation of (apparently) 18% of our woodlands.

The Government have today back-tracked in a major way, getting their prettiest speaker to release a statement that included the following stated safeguards. Here they are listed out, and my interpretation of what I think they really mean:-

“There are numerous safeguards in place which will ensure that public benefits provided by our woods and forests are protected if they pass into private ownership.  These safeguards include:

• regulations governing felling and replanting; [the guys with the chainsaws will have to wear hard hats and goggles]
• protection for biodiversity through the Wildlife and Countryside Act and Sites of Special Scientific Interest; [if your local woodland isn't scientifically interesting and unique then it's for the chop]
• incentives to protect ancient woodland; [companies will have to weigh up whether the measly 'incentive' from the Government outweighs the massive cash they will get from chopping it all down]
• guarantees for public access – the majority of the freehold areas of the public forestry estate are protected for access on foot by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act; [areas that are already well-trodden and full of mountain bikes will remain so - quiet woodland paths will be fenced off]
• protection of ancient monuments is overseen by English Heritage; [and what a fine job they've done of places like Silbury Hill - now inaccessible for the last seven years since they allowed its summit to collapse]
• any proposals for development would be subject to the Town and Country Planning process; and [planning applications will be dealt with by the usual 'buddy' system of back-handers on the gold courses and favours for companies that the planning committee have a stake in]
• Biosecurity – the Plant Health Act sets out a legal framework for the control of pests and diseases of forest tress and timber. [if the trees we're selling are no use, it's not our fault - it was sold as seen - just cut it all down and re-plant with conifers] “

Now, I’m not trying to tell you what to think, or how to react, but I am getting vocal and physical about making my own point of view heard and seen on this issue. I ask you to look at how you feel about this too, and then take whatever course of action you feel appropriate and worthy.

No polls. No petitions. No lobbying. Just action. Can you hear my anger? Good.

Gwas The Arborophile.

Trees have always been an indicator of the health of our nation. When we had many varieties, many species and many acres of trees in Victorian times we could say that our nation was at one of its peaks. Similarly in the Elizabethan renaissance times. Yet, whenever we have culled those trees, or they have been otherwise decimated, our nation has suffered the consequences. The reflection is almost immediate. So much so that it is difficult to say which came first – the decline or the cull.
At the moment we are facing more tree deaths. Not, as usual, though new house building, although that is on the increase again. This time it is through another in a chain of terminal diseases affecting our beloved tree population and this time, like the dreaded Dutch Elm disease, it is decimating vast populations of trees.

Is this a natural process? When, in our long history, have we ever recorded such reductions in the population of trees through a virulent diease? Well, Google have kindly accumulated just that data, and here it is:

Tree disease timeline

Source : Google

I think the increase is clear – we are either recording such things more and more, or there is a vast increase in the amount of tree diseases around in modern times.

According to this article in the Telegraph, some 60,000 trees have had to be chopped down or marked for felling due to the disease “sudden oak death”, a disease originating from America which has thankfully spared our beloved ancient oaks. In our country it has been larch and rhododendron that has been affected.
I have seen evidence of this myself on the hillsides around where I live. Rhododendrons have been cleared away from paths to stop the spread of the disease.
Yet oaks have also got problems. They are currently being affected by a blight that is killing them off too.

This is all terribly sad, and I believe it is a reflection of how little we care for trees as a society these days. If we turn our thoughts around to help our beautiful and bountiful neighbours – the trees – then they will surely flourish again and we will see the recovery of our land along with them.

Gwas.

I don’t usually get political but when it comes to trees it’s a different matter. Over the last few months I have become quite passionate about the preservation, conservation and re-planting of trees in the UK. Recently my attention was drawn to the flooding happening in other countries, so I decided to see if there was any link between deforestation rates and the chances of flooding. What I found shouldn’t have astonished me really, but it did. Every country with a high rate of deforestation was being affected every year by devastating and widespread flooding. Surely no coincidence?

Can a connection be made or is the weather system on a global scale too difficult to determine and makes such connections seem pointless, and the flooding is just a coincidence? Here are some statistics on deforestation rates, and some links with recent flooding stories.

Coming to a city near you?

NORTH-EAST AUSTRALIA

I visited Brisbane in 2009. It was a city that made me fall in love with it, but I couldn’t live with the flies pestering all the time. I became accustomed to the “Aussie Wave”, a motion one performs when brushing flies from your face all the time. It’s true – everyone looks like they’re waving all the time. That was its endearing side, but on a more serious note the papers regularly seemed to have articles discussing the degree of deforestation – for and against battling it out in the media for the voters’ attention. Well, perhaps the floods have caught the attention of the people of North East Australia this year?

Here’s an article from 2009 stating that Queensland’s deforestation rate is higher than any other part of Australia: http://www.wwf.org.au/news/queensland-land-clearing/

Here are some figures about the increase in rates of deforestation between 1995 to 1999.

SRI LANKA

I visited Sri Lanka on my honeymoon way back in 1995. I loved the place but was overcome by the degree of poverty that the majority of people lived in. One of the main ways they could try to overcome that poverty seemingly was to cut down their indigenous forest and sell the wood for making furniture that ended up in our stores in the UK and elsewhere. Well, those trees “don’t grow on trees” as it were – they’re not growing back at the same rate that we’re cutting them down.

In the last 20 years Sri Lanka has lost 20% of its rainforest cover, some 490,000 hectares. Here is some of the History and effects of deforestation in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka gets flooded again

Top 5 nations for deforestation in 2005:

Take a look at this chart which shows the Top 5 nations for the amount of deforestation of primary forests in 2005. Now, as an experiement I went online to see if there had been any recent news of flooding in those countries. Well, here you go, these are mostly stories from 2010/11:-

1. Nigeria – http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/09/24/nigeria-floods-dams.html
2. Vietnam – http://www.gmanews.tv/story/203798/41-dead-in-vietnam-floods-19-on-bus-still-missing
3. Cambodia – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39755855/ns/business/
4. Sri Lanka – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/13/sri-lanka-floods-people-flee-homes
5. Malawi (2006) – http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Malawi-floods-displace-thousands-20060102

By another calculation of theannual change in forest cover (1990-2005), here’s another catelogue of destruction, all taken from 2010 only:-

Highest annual change in forest cover 1990-2005

1. Brazil – Flooding affects 97,000 homes in North East Brazil, and the current headlines,
2. Indonesia – Flash floods kill 108 in Indonesia
3. Myanmar – 63 die on flooding in Myanmar

Believe me, the rest of those nations cutting down trees don’t fare well either! Congo had terrible floods last year, and the list goes on and on and on. Just pick ANY of those countries listed in that graph and do a search – flash floods, death tolls, reservoirs and rivers bursting thier banks, people displaced, lives ruined, homes swept away.

WORLD STATISTICS

In total, between 2000-2005 the world lost 3,745,546,000 hectares of forest in the most active 20 countries. We don’t have figures for the rest of the world as well, but we can guess that the figure would only increase substantially.

Pretty Nature

WHAT CAN WE DO?

1. Plant a tree.

Make it your mission this year to plant at least ten trees. I will be doing this – buying rooted young trees and planting them on common land. You could do this too, and you would start to make your own tiny tiny impact upon reversing this figure. To help with that aim I have joined the Landshare scheme (details below).

2. Sponsor a tree-planting charity in one of the nations affected.

Harder, and you can never be sure the money is going to the right place, but if you want to go on holiday to one of those coutnries, then why not take your tree-planting initiative with you? All it takes is to find some seeds whilst you’re there, and plant them in fertile ground.

Here’s a start: Tree Aid

Tree Aid - a way of replenishing the tree population

This is the charity to which I have started regularly donating money this year. If you would prefer a UK-based project, they have one of those too:

UK-based scheme: LandShare, Blackmoor Nursery & Tree Revolution

It may not be affecting you personally, but it’s affecting someone not too far away from you. We’re not immune to the effects of flooding in this country. You can make an impact even in a small way by either fighting to preserve your local woodland, parks and lone trees against inconsiderate felling. You can re-plant trees yourself. Who else is going to do it?

Gwas.

Saving his home one tree at a time.

UPDATE: Talking of getting political, here’s a post on Philip Car–Gomm’s blog which talks about The Conservative Party’s environmental record as it affects trees.