Yew – Iadadh
by Blayze

Sink your awareness down into the earth. Become aware of your breathing. Enter a trance state (using usual breathing techniques…)You find yourself standing at the foot of a large hill - all around you is darkness pierced only by the brilliant light of the stars… twinkling like jewels embroidered into the velvet cloak of the night sky above you.By the light of the stars you can see that a path winds in a spiral about the hill. You move to the left and begin to walk along the path - ever twisting and spiralling to the left. 

You begin to feel the ground slope beneath your feet as you slowly walk the spiral path. Your awareness shifts with each turn as you sink deeper and deeper into trance.You are aware moonlight growing brighter as you near the summit of the hill and you realise that the moon is rising to hang just above the hill itself. Bathed in the moonlight is a tall, ancient stone that stands in the centre of a flat plateau. 

The spiral path winds ever towards the stone in the centre, one half of which is in shadow, the other illuminated by the silver light of the moon. Gradually you find yourself walking in a ever tightening spiral as you move closer and closer to the stone… always and ever moving to the left. At last you come face to face to with the towering and ancient weathered rock. 

By the light of the moon you see that there is an image carved upon its surface… A straight line runs from an inverted V at the base to the top of the stone. Halfway up the line you see five horizontal lines biscecting the vertical line. This is the Ogham Iadadh - the Yew, carved into the single upthrust spur of living rock.You feel the power awakening in the stone and sigil as the moon continues to rise. The Ogham stave glows and you run your hand along its length. You feel the energy tingle through you from the tips of your fingers to your feet upon the earth. 

Suddenly everything shifts and you find that you have passed through the stone into another realm. Mist envelopes you and you experience a moment of disorientation, but you can now feel the stone standing at your back.

You begin to walk forward and the mist starts to writhe and shred away. You find yourself standing on a path that runs between two large Yew hedges. You walk along the path and as you walk you notice that it begins to twist around to the left. You are walking through a spiral labyrinth with large sweeping curves. 

The dense foliage of the Yews on either side of you have no breaks, they are walls of green on either side. As you walk, memories of each time you have walked the spiral path to the Otherworld form in your mind. Your body knows the spiral pattern now and you feel yourself going deeper within the spiral than ever before.

With each turn of the spiral you feel yourself becoming aware of transformation, of deeper understandings of mystery and change and awareness. The Yew is evergreen and is the oldest and longest living of all the sacred trees. It is also poisonous, the only one of the trees that can harm with all of its parts. Yet the fleshy part of its seed is not baneful. It shows that death is not always final, transformation is all.

You continue walking along the spiral path as the turns become ever tighter. Gradually you come to the core, the centre of the spiral. The end of the spiral is marked by two Yew trees on either side of the path. They have grown together above the path to form an archway, but beyond the archway is mist.

Beyond the arch is the ultimate mystery, the transformation of self, of history, the past, the present and the future. The spiral to centre of yourself. The moment of stillness before the new beginning of the outward spiral.

As you stand beneath the archway, begin to remove your clothing and your possessions. Place your possessions underneath the archway. Now look above you into the arch. Nestled amongst the Yew branches is a beautiful golden and deep red wooden Yew bow. Its curve follows that of the archway. It is already strung. Reach up and take down the bow.

Feel the smooth, tightly grained and polished wood. From such beauty of a single length of wood can come death. But as the bow brings death to those whom it is used to hunt, so it brings sustenance and new life to the bearer.

Sling the bow across your chest and walk forward. The centre of the spiral clearing is still shrouded in mist. The mist swirls for a moment and you see on the ground before you an arrow standing upright with its head buried in the earth. You go to the arrow and pull it from the ground.

As you do so, the mist in the centre of the spiral clears and you see in the centre, standing so very tall, an ancient Yew tree. It has a hollow trunk surrounded by rough bark, with new trunks growing from the earth within the old. It is wide and spreading and evergreen.

You look around the clearing and see many small rocks and stones that lie like rubble upon the ground. You walk between these rocks and stones and move to the mighty Yew tree.

As you look at the tree, the twining branches form faces. These are the faces of your ancestors, your teachers and the spirits of the tree. Your ancestors will help you in this life, they will aid you in accessing the Otherworld. The Yew is the key to contacting them, but they also require a shrine. A place in the Otherworld where you can meet with them. To mark your reverence for them.

You can see a narrow space within the hollow of the trunk where the hole goes straight through the tree and you can see to the other side. 

Take up your bow and your single arrow. With love in your heart, the undying love of the transformational Yew, prepare to shoot the arrow straight through the hole in the Yew tree. You feel your muscles straining as you pull back the  bow string and arrow. All your concentration, the lessons you have learned from the previous trees, comes to this moment. You shoot the arrow through the hole in the tree.

You look through the hole and you see that the arrow has buried itself in the earth on the other side of the tree, but still within the spiral's centre. Leave the bow at the base of the Yew tree and move around it to where your arrow has landed. This is where you will build your shrine to your ancestors.

Begin to gather the rocks and stones and build a cairn around the arrow. Place a stone for every face you saw within the leaves of the tree. Do this with reverence and wisdom. Do this with understanding.

When the Cairn is complete, sit before it and contemplate what your ancestors mean to you. Think about the transformation of death and rebirth.

As you contemplate you see small shoots appear upon the arrow. Needles of Yew grow from the shaft, now a stem. A small, young Yew tree now grows from the Cairn. You also see that around the base of the arrow tree, water is trickling. A small spring has opened below the Cairn. As you watch, moss begins to cover the stones. The Yew atop the spring, the place of power and the wise use of such. Something new that looks old – an awakening of the past to move into the future. Death and transformation, the water, the tears of grief and of joy!

Slowly you stand up once more. You walk back to the large Yew tree. The bow you left there has grown back into the main tree. You walk to the archway. It is no longer an arch of Yew but is now formed of two weeping birch trees.

You stand under them. The new beginning. You take up your clothes and your possessions. All have subtly altered.

You put them on and begin to walk the spiral path once more. This time you walk the outward spiral of experience. 

Finally you return to standing stone. But this time a spiral is carved into its surface. Move to the stone and begin to trace the spiral as it twists to the right. You become aware of mist forming around you once more and again a feeling of disorientation. As the mist begins to clear you find that you are once again standing upon the hillside under the fading light of the setting moon. By the light of the stars you begin to walk the spiral path out from the centre, ever moving to the right. You begin to feel the path sloping downwards as you tread the spiral path around the hill. As you walk you feel yourself becoming heavier and heavier, you begin to be aware of other sounds…. Slowly you reach the bottom of the hill and sit at its base. You become aware of the feel of your body, the shape of your skin and your breath. You feel the blood flowing through your veins . You become aware of the sounds around you… When you are back… open your eyes