The Spirit of A Tree

Did you ever see the 1995 Disney film Pocahontas? There is a line from the theme song "Colors of the Wind," sung by Vanessa Williams, that says "But I know every rock and tree and creature, has a life, has a spirit, has a name."

This song has been playing in my mind as I have been remembering a photograph I took over ten years ago. It was at a time in my life when I had received an inheritance, which allowed me to take a year off from working and focus on myself. It was my luxurious year of personal transformation. I left my job, separated from my husband, and even moved back home to Washington, D.C. to live with my mother. I read books about personal development and spirituality, and began working with a therapist, hypnotherapist, and later an energy healer. 

At the same time, I was experiencing a childlike desire to experience more “wonder” and had opened to the spiritual idea that there are messages, signs, and meaningful coincidences all around us. Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychologist, described meaningful coincidences as synchronicity, or the idea that our inner thoughts, emotions and dreams can be mirrored in external events. While science relies on causality (cause leads to effect), Jung viewed synchronicity as a parallel principle where the meaning of the coincidence is the link, suggesting a deeper, non-rational connection between the human psyche and the universe. He described having a client who told him about a dream of a golden scarab beetle. At that exact moment, a beetle resembling a scarab tapped on the window beside them. For Jung, this wasn’t just random, and it broke the patient’s "Cartesian rationalism" and sparked a therapeutic breakthrough.

During this time, I had taken up the pastime of walking in the woods behind my mother’s home. I enjoyed searching the woods for meaningful signs, such as the shape of an eye that I found in the ripples of a puddle. I also began photographing the trees, inspired by their grand presence and the sunlight I saw coming through their branches. 

One day, after looking through my photographs, I was amazed to discover the perfect shape of a fox in the leaves and branches of a tree. It astounded me so much that I began photographing trees with the sole purpose of seeing what else was hidden in them. I studied my photographs as I would a Where’s Waldo book or stared at them like a magic eye poster, searching for any unusual images in the overlay of leaves and branches. My imagination did get the better of me sometimes, as I thought I saw faces and creatures. I pretended they were gnomes, elves and fairies.

A few months later, I was introduced to an Irish spiritual teacher in New York City. He had studied with a guru in India, as well as with Buddhist monks in Tibet. His teachings were a mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, and he taught “the paths are many, but the destination is one.” I traveled to Ireland for his annual weeklong retreat, which included three days of teachings and meditation, and two day trips to sacred sites. For one of the trips, we visited a country estate called Powerscourt, which has 47-acres of landscaped gardens. Powerscourt is renowned for its trees, including the tallest tree in Ireland. I had brought my camera and was excited to photograph them. 

As I walked along one of the garden paths, I paused at one particular tree—a redwood or red cedar. I felt compelled to photograph it. It had layers of slender branches growing in every direction, and soft needles instead of leaves. There was nothing particularly interesting about this tree to the eye, but I decided it was important to capture it. As I started clicking the shutter of my camera, I believed in the possibility that something “magical” could come through the photographs. Earlier that week, at another site on our tour, I had photographed a tree that turned out to have the perfect face of a girl with a gnome hat in the shadows of its trunk. I was convinced something similar could come through the photographs of this tree. As I pushed the shutter button over and over, it was as if I was no longer photographing the physical tree in front of me; I was photographing the invisible part of the tree. 

Later, when I got back to my hotel room, I opened my camera and reviewed my photographs. My lens had picked up flare from the sun, which had created lots of shapes of color. I paused on a photograph of the redwood or red cedar tree. It had scatterings of magenta, red, blue and purple, and most unusual, there was a small symbol-like shape of white light in the formation of a double cross. I had never seen anything like it and while the shapes of color in the photograph were effects of lens flare, this shape looked like a man-made symbol. I showed it to a few people and they were equally as puzzled, but all agreed that it did look like a symbol.   

It wasn’t until a few months later that someone who had been at the retreat suggested I look up Druid symbols. She mentioned that Druids had carved symbols on stone monuments throughout Ireland and compared them to the Egyptian hieroglyphics. After some digging on the internet, I discovered the Druid alphabet, or Ogham as it is called. It has 20 letters and each letter is also associated with a tree. The letters of the Ogham are the carvings found on the monuments throughout Ireland. Each letter is drawn with a vertical straight line in its center and different horizontal or diagonal markings across that vertical line. The symbol I had been calling a “double cross” was actually the letter ‘Onn’ from the Druid alphabet, which has two equal horizontal lines across a vertical line. It was also associated with the gorse tree. 

I was elated to identify this symbol and also realize that something unprecedented had 

manifested in my photograph. I wondered both how on earth had this happened, and why had it been a symbol for the gorse tree? 

The gorse is a shrub that blooms golden flowers year round, even in the coldest of winter months. While they flower most intensely in spring, common gorse often flowers from late autumn through winter to avoid seed-eating weevils. Because it thrives in poor soil and harsh conditions, the gorse symbolizes endurance and life force. Its golden flowers are also associated with the Druid sun God Lugh and used for celebration during the Spring Equinox with the return of the spring light.

There is no scientific evidence that consciousness affects matter in the way “manifestation” claims (e.g., creating objects, altering external reality by thought alone), however my photograph proves that there is a creative force in the universe that is beyond scientific explanation. Druids believed everything in nature—trees, rocks, rivers—has a spirit. Fairies and nature spirits were seen as guardians of these natural locations, often inhabiting them. It is as if, when I was photographing the “invisible” part of the tree, I was communicating with its spirit, or the guardians of that spirit. 

Many cultures across the world have traditions that treat trees not just as living organisms, but as beings with spirits, souls, or consciousness. In Shinto belief in Japan, natural objects—including trees—can house kami (spirits or divine essences). These trees are seen as dwellings of gods or ancestral spirits. In Hinduism in India, tree spirits called yakshas or yakshis appear in ancient texts. In West Africa, the Yoruba people consider trees to be the homes of spirits, called orishas, or other entities. In Norse tradition, the cosmic tree Yggdrasil connects all realms of existence. It’s not just a tree—it’s a living cosmic being that sustains reality itself. In indigenous North America, many Native American tribes view trees as being alive in a spiritual sense and as kin. In the Amazon, the Yanomami believe forest beings (including trees) are part of a spirit-filled cosmos, and shamans communicate with these spirits. In Southeast Asia animism, which is widespread in Thailand and Indonesia, trees are believed to be inhabited by spirits or are spirits themselves. In ancient Greece, trees were associated with dryads, or tree nymphs, and a dryad’s life was tied to its tree—if the tree died, so did the spirit.

It is undeniable how prevalent the spirit of trees is in ancient and indigenous cultures across the world. Somewhere in my subconscious, this knowledge was present while I was photographing trees. And, the confirmation that came through my photograph was a symbol from a culture of people who believed what I did.

As a child, I attended a Waldorf school, which incorporate aspects of Celtic mythology, nature-based rituals, and folklore as part of their holistic approach to education. Waldorf education places a heavy emphasis on connecting children with nature, often celebrating seasons through festivals, which can resemble pagan or nature-based celebrations. Children engage with fairy tales, gnome lore, and seasonal nature stories for imaginative and developmental purposes.

In our fast-paced modern lifestyles, we can forget what nature holds. It is so reassuring to know that by stepping into a garden or forest, I can connect to the spirit that all indigenous and ancient cultures across the world believe exists there.

Robert Redford, the prolific American actor and director, recorded a private message to his grandchildren in his last weeks of life. In it, he said, “This world can overwhelm. But if you slow down, and sit under a tree long enough, it’ll tell you everything.”

The Author