ISIS INDRIYA: Gratitude everyone from the ancestral homelands of the Nisenan. I'm coming here from Nevada City. My name is Isis Indriya, I will be moderating this amazing webinar today. So with that, I want to say thank you all for taking time to come here at this time. With our panelists here, with Nat and Timo, the three of us really focusing on the beauty and the majesty of the Tree of Life: the mythological, cosmological, and ecological landscape of trees. Here, this is a collaboration with advaya, and imaginal. And with that, please go ahead if you feel called to type into the chat, where you're from, what ancestral homelands you're coming from, and even your lineage, we'd really love to hear what lineages are present here at this time. So just to let everyone know that the agenda for this webinar is we're going to start by just introducing ourselves. And then through that introduction, we're going to present a bit about what this course is about. And then we'll have some time for Q&A at the end. And with that, we'll send some information where you can dive deeper into the course. So with that, we're gonna go ahead and get started.
The real inquiry that has really led us together at this time is, what does the Sacred Tree of Life tell us about us as humans, the cosmos, and really this holy planet Earth? And in that way, what secrets and intelligence of the trees and the tree of life, what are they here to tell us? And how can we learn how to listen to them and let them show and lead the way. So with that, this collaboration of advaya and Imaginal, in this webinar, we're gonna have a moment to just share about what drew us together, in our deep inspiration and desire to support the wisdom and the teachings and the messages of the trees on this holy Planet Earth from many different perspectives. In this way, as we explore the cosmologies and the mythologies and particularly in relationship to how the blessings of the network of trees, their communion, their communities, how connected they are, to help us understand our connection as communities, as a globe, to help us assist in this time of the great turning. So with that, I'd love to begin by inviting our panelists to please introduce themselves and what they're studying, what drew them here, and what they're offering at this time. I'd love to start with you, Nat, please.
NAT KELLEY: Hello, welcome, everybody. Thank you so much Isis for the lovely introduction, and I'm so overjoyed for everybody who was able to make it tonight. This course was something that Isis, Timo, Brooke, and I dreamt into being because of our shared love for the trees and dedication to the trees and advocacy for the trees. And I also want to acknowledge my ancestors today—Quechua ancestors, my biome is the Andes, I also want to acknowledge my European ancestors, from many parts of Europe, Italy and Spain, and want to acknowledge the traditional stewards of the lands that I'm currently on, the Avá-Canoeiro people who, sadly, very few of them remain. Their land is now known as Brasília. And I'm here because I have been supporting the Indigenous women's march, which is happening here right now. Hence, my face paint. I was painted by the Kayapo. Today, the Kayapo are actually one of the tribes or the peoples that we will be talking about in this course. Because they have—they hold, I want to say almost 10,000 year lineage, unbroken lineage of sacred communion with and stewardship of the Amazon rainforest. And so that's really what drew me here today, is my Indigenous ancestry, my advocacy work with Indigenous peoples and the realisation that these peoples, the original peoples of this continent, here in Brazil, but also in Mesoamerica, and in North America as well, hold an alternative blueprint for humanity.
I'm an actress, I'm a storyteller. And I see the way that humanity's story is going. And it's going the way of every other Western civilisation, which is, facing ecological collapse. And in this course, we will also be exploring a historical perspective on our human relationship to trees, by looking at the civilisations of the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans and something that they all have in common, which is, the root cause of these civilisation collapse was ecological collapse due to deforestation. And our civilisation is heading on a similar course. But what Indigenous civilisations have to teach us is that it doesn't have to look like that. We don't have to go down that path. In fact, these indigenous civilisations were able to, for example, in the Amazon, contain tens of millions of people, but their only ecological impact was to make the forest more biodiverse than when they first intervened with their agricultural and agroforestry systems. So this story could have profound impact for humanity and the crossroads we are at now. And so driven by this story, and by the urgent need for us to rewrite our ending right now... As I said, Isis, Brooke, and Timo and I dreamt this course into being. And I'm also looking forward to in addition to the historical piece of the course, I'm also honoured as the storyteller in this group, although we're all storytellers, but it is my actual profession, to be the one sharing the mythological piece of this course, which is exploring how every single—not every single, but—a huge number of ancient cultures around the world have origin myths that center around a sacred tree.
And that could only be because our relationship to these trees was interwoven with our evolution as humans. And somewhere along this history, we lost track of this story. And those stories actually evolved to reflect this separation. The very well known myth or origin story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, reflects one of us being separated from Paradise, from Eden, from the garden. And so we'll be posing the question: How important are these stories in guiding us, these guiding myths, as humans, how important... what kind of influence do these stories have over the decisions that we make as a society, over the values that our culture holds? A culture, a society, or religion that speaks of ostracism and exclusion from the Garden, is going to create values that guide its people very differently to a culture that has an origin myth about care and reverence for their trees.
So I think I've touched on quite a few of the things that we'll be sharing—what I'll particularly be sharing in this course. Oh, one last thing I want to also add is that, in addition to learning about some of these original peoples like the Kayapo, we're so lucky that in... later on, I believe it's week six or week seven of our course that we will be hosting the wonderful Nina Gualinga, Kichwa warrior, woman, activist, storyteller, as well. And she'll be sharing the Kichwa cosmovision of the forest which is the Kawsak Sacha, The Living Forest. And these are the kinds of cosmovisions we need to guide us home, to be stewards of the forest once more, builders of, and stewards of forests once more. So I'm going to happily pass this over to Timo right now and just want to flag that because of the time difference and where I am, I will have to be getting off this call a little earlier than I had hoped, to catch a flight. So my deepest apologies for that. But I'm so looking forward to going on this journey with all of you and thank you again for taking the time to be here today.
ISIS INDRIYA: I'll go ahead and share my lineage and where I'm from. So thank you, Nat, thank you for chiming in from where you are. I just really... it's beautiful to feel what you have been doing today. So thank you. My heart is there with you guys in Brazil. You all. My name is Isis Indriya, born in Mesa, Arizona, raised on the island of Guam, I come on behalf of my Chamorro ancestors, which is a union of Colombian and Peruvian and Spain, Spanish, and Taiwan and Indonesian. And then I also come on behalf of my European ancestors, my Germanic ancestors, Ashkenazi, also Spain, also North Africa, also Egypt. There's a lot in there, and I come on behalf of my ancestors to be here in relation to study and learn with the holy beings, the pillars of this Earth that connect the heaven and the Earth—the trees. My source of study... I grew up on the island of Guam, which still is very much a community of... an Indigenous culture that is doing what it can to stand stand strong, and continue forward with our ways. And so I really value all of the voices of these Indigenous cultures coming forward at this time, like Nina Gualinga, I just want to honour her that way.
And I'm coming on behalf of, too, somebody who has a great love and study for the blueprints of creation, and how the relationships of the cosmos and studying the cosmos, how that's reflected in an a part of the heavenly realms, here on this earthly realm, and also reflective of our bodies. I remember hearing once from one of my elders, she said, the body of the human is the body of the Earth, and the body of the human is the body of the cosmos. And learning about how cosmic blueprints and the holiness of this terrestrial planet, and us as humans are united, and we are made of each other. And so a big part of what I'm going to be doing is really bringing forward some of the interest and the awe and the beauty of the blueprints of creation. And one of my dear sisters, Shira Salcman, who I love learning with her and from her, she's going to be bringing some Kabbalistic teachings today she'll be hopping in from Berlin, to share about her lineage and where she comes from. And in this way, we're going to kind of attune to this way, and a blueprint, in communion with all the other blueprints, of how to attune to the majesty, the intelligence, of the cosmologies of trees, and the mythologies and how Nat was sharing...
So many communities, human and non-human, plant communities, animal beings, insect beings, human beings, winged ones, four-leggeds, two-leggeds, swimming ones, how so many beings are part of the interdependent web, of the wisdom and the intelligence of the trees and how the trees are connected; they're connecting all of these communities together too, and in that way, we'll also be looking at the ecology of trees, which Timo is going to share about, to really help us learn how to learn, learn how to become consciously a part of the ecosystem, in a way where we step into tending more in all relations. In some of the ancient traditions... one thing I love is, this comes from this book by Rosemary Clark, she says, There is an interdependent relationship between the human realm, the natural realm and the divine realm, and the great human accomplishment is to consciously and coherently co-steward and co-shape an awareness of the intelligence of the natural world and the divine realm and how to do that together. So that's something we hope to do, and offer in this course, on behalf of our continual learning on how to live a sacred way of life, in communion with this planet Earth and all the beings that reside and tend to it. So with that Timo, we'd love to hear from you.
TIMO GRANZOTTI: Thank you for having me. Thank you, Isis, thank you very much for your patience, thank you Nat. And yeah, I'm just so humbled and honoured to be part of this amazing, amazing programme, and this webinar series, that has been part of an ongoing conversation, for actually years. I mean, much of my work has been dedicated towards not just ecology, but indigenous, and me myself, being an immigrant of Ethiopian and Italian descent, my mom emigrated here from Ethiopia: so much of my youth, and my stages of initiation of a man have been around ancestry. And with that, we have aspects of culture. And so when I was kind of brought into the world of ecology, it was via lots of the Indigenous practices and skills, and my world was very much in the wilderness. I was born in Alaska, and so I was surrounded by this vast wilderness. And there's a strong presence of the Indigenous peoples in Alaskan cultures, and the region that I grew up in when I was a child was the Chugach range, and so I was surrounded by totem poles.
When I think about some of the things that we're discussing today, I think about those emblematic totem poles, which are made out of cedar. And so some of the things that Nat touched upon, as a goal for this programme, has been to not just kind of rekindle this human relationship with trees and nature, but to also show that the answers to many of the problems that we have, are in plain sight. They're only hidden from us because the relationship is lost, and the awareness to see them is lost. But what we hope to rekindle is that awareness and to remind ourselves that, as one human race, we have a longer human history, of being part of the solution, and as being propagators, pollinators and accelerators of these natural processes, than the kind of current story around being a part of the problem. And so I think, when we discuss the tree of life, we're talking about a connection between cultures, a dialogue between nature, and these cultures, and the cultures between themselves. If we have a strong footing on where we come from, and we have a strong spiritual base, and we have a strong practical application, we can also relate to other peoples that have the same things. And in this exchange of information, in this trade and barter, of baskets, of stories, we find that we are more connected than we actually think.
And in the long span of human history, we see these stories repeat themselves over and over and over again. And some of the oldest stories in written history come from the stories of the Sumerians, of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and we talk about trees in this very, very sacred way, and we talk about the cedar tree. And there's a section in Epic of Gilgamesh where there's this demigod, called Humbaba, and he protects this sacred cedar forest, which is in present day Lebanon. And our hero, Gilgamesh, starts chopping down these trees, and then angers the demigod. And so later on, he has to do some acts of service, to pay homage to the sacred forest. And the thing that I find fascinating is later in the story, they built this raft out of the cedar tree and, he sails down the Euphrates into his city. And I can't help but think of the cedar rafts. And then I think about Western Pacific Northwest cultures, from British Columbia and to Washington and how they have also cedar dugout canoes. And there's a strong parallel here between these things. And so, the beauty of understanding the relationship from one culture to a tree can actually be carried into another. And it can also be carried into another species of tree, whether it's birch or the elm, or the ash tree, or the palm tree. And we see that every tree has been central to a culture. And that's quite fascinating.
And the further we dive into it, the more history we can extract from it. Nat mentioned the the Garden of Eden, and one of the trees from the Garden of Eden is the apple. But the apple is native to Kazakhstan... And in Kazakhstan you see these wild forests of indigenous trees that are apple species and some of the oldest in the world. So why the apple? Why is this in one of the oldest tales? And why is it the story of temptation and sin? And so these are kinds of things that we could dive further into: what's the story around the apple? And if it came from across Kazakhstan, why is it in a storyline that is the Fertile Crescent? And so we can also be archaeologists and dig into these things. And I find that fascinating. And so the story... it's something that we want to rekindle as well. And within that story, we see how the mythology and the cosmology are so intertwined that you can't separate them. If we're talking about the Indigenous peoples harvesting a tree, they're going to be paying attention to the lunar cycle, because we know that on the full moon, the waters are moving faster, and they're pumping and the hydrological cycle is pumping into the tree, and you're gonna want to harvest it in those times. And so they're also paying attention to the stars. And within the stars, we see more myth. And with that myth, we can expand into greater extensions of ourselves as cultural people, as well as having faith and spirituality tied into these practices. And what a better way to carry them on and carry them forward and pass them on to the next generations than to have them part of your social identity. And that's something that I really see as sacred within this course, as well.
ISIS INDRIYA: One thing that's really beautiful, just embedded in this call is there are many different timezones chiming in from all over the world. And I feel like that's very much connected to the course. So Shira will be joining any moment. One thing that I also wanted to acknowledge with this webinar is... it's referencing an initiation, tree of life: an initiation. And I would say, many of us, perhaps, are experiencing initiation at this time, if not, in fact, we're going through as a human species, a grand initiation, a human community. Everything we imagine, think, say, do, our actions, our behaviours, that become the way we live, call forward destinies, and we're at this time where what our choices are, make a big impact on behalf of many generations into the future. And so this is a big reason why we really felt called to do this course at this time, on behalf of this time of transition. And on behalf of this time of our human initiation, and learning how to listen and learning how to be in relationship in a good way, with this holy Earth. So I'm just really feeling the beauty and the magnitude of this time of initiation, and how the teachings, and the medicine, and the intelligence, and spirit of the trees are what is guiding our journey at this moment. So I just wanted to speak to that. And, as Shira is hopping on any moment, now, I would love Nat, if you could reflect some of that also in relationship to what you're experiencing with initiation over there.
NAT KELLEY: Thank you so much. This is a very crucial time for Indigenous people, which means it's a very crucial time for the Earth. And life on Earth, and the future of life on Earth. As many of you tuning in, probably already know, Indigenous people represent such a small percentage of the population—anywhere from two to four. And they're safeguarding 80% of the world's biodiversity. And so today, I literally had to fight back tears as I heard an Indigenous woman tell me how, just in the last year 2000 hectares of of their forest in state of Amazonas, was burnt, by land grabbers, forcing them to leave their ancestral village because of the smoke, because they couldn't live there anymore. In addition to us going through a very crucial initiation as humanity, we're also at the most important turning point, and decision that humans have ever faced. This is so urgent. This is so urgent, that we all attune to the importance of our forests again. And that we've reach people even like the land grabbers, who see... look at this forest and see money and see lumber, and see potential grassland for cows, and see a way out of poverty for themselves.
And it's so important that we all, once we're through this initiation, start to attune again, to how these trees are not resources, but they are our friends. They are family, they are shelter, they are food. Many Indigenous traditions believe that their ancestors, their relatives, and... I'm very, I almost feel not grounded to give you the webinar, because I'm still on such a... my emotions are still so high after hearing the urgency in these women's voices about how close the Amazon is to a tipping point. And as many of you probably well know, that tipping point would mean life over for planet Earth, once that this rainforest turns into a savanna, which we are percentage points away from happening. We will lose one of the most globally important ecosystems with regards to the hydrological cycle, oxygen... And so, yeah, maybe you can hear the urgency in my voice. But I don't think humanity has ever been faced with such an important and crucial initiation, as the one that we are facing right now.
Wow, thank you, Nat, for sharing the importance, the depth and the immensity of this time and moment. And I'll pass this over to Timo here, Timo I see you want to respond, please do share.
TIMO GRANZOTTI: Yes, and thank you Nat, for speaking towards that. I think one of the key things is that we have to understand that trees and plants are living beings, and there's a level of consciousness, and there's a level of understanding that comes along with this. And there's a correspondence that's happening not just between themselves, but it's also trans-special. That means that they're communicating with insects, they're communicating with animals. And whether we understand it or not, they're communicating with us. And there's a level of depth in this understanding of consciousness. Because we get really to examine how connected we all truly are. As the detriment of the trees is also the detriment of humans. We've always been interconnected. The humans have... the human element has always been... we can't extract ourselves from it. The fact of co-evolution is essential. It's not just practical. And so when we discuss the kind of novelties that are coming around, for example, forest bathing, people talking about forest bathing, and what essentially it is is you're walking through the woods, and you're just enjoying the sensation that it gives you and you feel calm. But what's actually happening is the trees are communicating, to you, via pheromones, these chemical hormones being released called phytoncides. They can lower stress levels... as well as being essential in communication with other insects for pollination. And so to disturb one thing in an intricate system means to destroy the entire system. And we have to really understand that. And she also spoke towards the fact that they're considered ancestors and elders, and we really have to see them that way as well.
ISIS INDRIYA: Thank you. Thank you, Timo, for bringing that forward. And, some of my teachers and elders have been reflection to what you both are sharing have talked about how this time of initiation is connected to us are learning about what a sacred way of life could look like, in learning how to listen and pay attention and be in communion. And given that this is a very deep, powerful time in our human experience and what our actions and what we do, how that impacts and influences the survival of our species. Some of my elders have talked a lot about how this is a time of learning how to commune with the Spirit, and how to commune with the cosmos. And so one of the things that... I'm a real student to Qabalah, and I love Qabalah so much. And my dear sister Shira, who popped on here. She's been one of my dear friends and dear relations in studying these ways and I would love you share if you'd be willing to share just a bit about this blueprint of creation and how this may be of service and helpful for us in understanding this time of initiation as humans on this holy planet Earth in relationship to this blueprint of creation. Maybe share a little bit about you and where you come from. And thank you so much for chiming in from Berlin so late night.
SHIRA NETANYA: Sure, yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. And I'm grateful to be here with all of you. And so, a little bit about me is... I am 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. And I grew up with Kabbalah, my whole life, learning the letters, and, my first teacher was my father, he's a scholar, and very wise man. And, this is very much the lineage that lives and breathes my soul and informs pretty much my whole life. And there have been times in my life where I've gone and I've studied and journeyed in other lineages and other traditions. And what I've always found is how deeply interconnected all of the essence and the spiritual teachings, and the currency of.... like the currents of divinity, are the same, everywhere. And so it's very much about... like Kabbalah, in essence, is about unification and about unity. And this is very much seen in the first letter, the first Hebrew letter, which is Aleph, because Aleph is a letter that represents singularity, and also unity, and in order to have—which is the paradox, because, in order to have—unity, that implies duality. And so, amidst singularity is birthed duality and plurality in order to come back into unification. And the whole system of the blueprint of creation, comes back to there, because we are now in the seven days of creation coming up to Rosh Hashanah, which is one of the Hebrew New Years, in the Hebrew calendar. And, the first day of creation is marked by the letter Aleph, that I just spoke to: singularity and unity.
And when we look at the... like, if we're starting from, I would say, the beginning of the tree of life, because here we are, and we're talking about trees and the Earth, and really, it's about the... not just the descension of the roots into the Earth to anchor, but it's also about the ascension up into the heavens, and growing in both directions simultaneously. This is very much how the blueprint of creation works, because, like, from the above, to the below, and vice versa, from below to the above. And, so if we look at the tree in that regard, we're here in this meeting right now, which would represent Malkhut, Malkhut is the tenth Sefirot, the tenth emanation, which could be considered the lowest one, but here we are, and we know that so much of nature are fractals upon fractals, and we can see how how things grow in this spiral. And so, a spiral is going in this direction, it's going up and it's going down and it continues, and so the way that the tree of life is working, the Etz Chaim is that the tenth emanation is the first emanation, and the tenth emanation Malkhut is kingdom, and that's us here in this terrestrial realm, and the earthly realm, where it's matter, and it's physical, and we are we are attaining to be realised in Keter, which is the first one, that's all the way at the top, which is the most ethereal, so going from the dense to the most ethereal and the least dense, and and the whole purpose of Keter, which means crown right? The crown, upon the kingdom, which is the lowest one, is... the whole point of Keter, crown, or Malkhut, is to become realised. And so for the lowest to become realised in the highest.
And this system over years, has become, if we look into, like the full history, I'm not going to go into that right now because we don't have time for that, but Isis and I are gonna have a really awesome Instagram Live chat where we go into the histories of the different Kabbalistic lineages, and I'll speak to that, but it goes from these very much coded esoteric books, esoteric wisdom, it's very difficult to understand. And if you read it, it's like this deep poetry that really, this letter then spoke to this part of creation, which then created this and it's beautiful, and very difficult to understand and, like a lot of ancient wisdoms, they were encoded in a certain way to protect the wisdom and to protect the magic and, to keep it safe, in that way, so that there would be the proper initiations for people, and then, over time, through the lineage of Hebrew Kabbalah, what happened was the frequency of the Earth begins to change, and the frequency of humanity begins to change. And so therefore, the ability to decode a lot of this, is also changing. And the great sages saw that and so, what they started to do is they started to decode it, and today, even reading the Zohar, or the Sefer Yetzirah, some of the fundamental books within Hebrew Kabbalah, they're still very, very esoteric, and that's why we're meant to learn in community, and to study in community, because each one of us has a unique wisdom and a unique perspective that we bring to sharing and interpreting this wisdom. And we start to open it together, as a group. And so over time, the sages and the rabbis started to open it for us, so that we could have a more easy access to it, for the purposes of unification, because they saw that the frequency was changing in a way that, that we are becoming more separated, and not just more separated from each other, but more separated from from the design, and the whole purpose of creation, as we understand it, in the Hebrew lineage of Kabbalah, and in Judaism, is that we are here to help release and raise the sparks of all of creation, so they can live their purpose as divinity within this realm, and within all realms.
So that's a little bit about the Hebrew lineage of Kabbalah. And there's many correspondences between... that I have seen in different Native American lineages, and in Shipibo lineages in Peru, and the different ways that I've studied and encountered, and with Hebrew Kabbalah, with my own lineage that I was raised with, and in the Hermetic lineage of Kabbalah, and also in the Gnostic lineage of Kabbalah. And, Isis and I will speak more to these lineages on our chat and hopefully we can bring in a sister of ours who is of the Gnostic lineage, and we can have the three of us really bring, bring all of that together. And that's where we are today is, is we're we're sharing the knowledge, so that we can unify with each other, and so that we can live the true purpose of creation, that was laid out for us in the blueprint, to uplift and reunite and help to, through ritual and through ceremony and through practice, and through learning, to really help release those sparks of creation, to become realised from their home in the terrestrial realm here in Malkhut, deep in the Earth, anchored deep in the Earth, like the roots of the tree, and they can grow and grow and make their way back to back to source.
And again, thank you so much for having me. And may your journey with this course be beautifully blessed, and these trees... and may we all come together. I used to live high up in a redwood tree 185 feet up, and when the tree would sway, the wind would come and the tree would sway... it's this beautiful experience where that's really where I learned the importance and the power of flexibility in life. That's one thing that the trees really taught me, is that when we are rigid, when the wind comes, or when a storm comes, we snap. But the way that the trees are, when they're healthy, and when they're living and like... this might sound a little bit cheesy, but when the appropriate love is given to the trees and the Earth, and specifically the trees in this way, they become flexible, and they... well, they are already flexible, they stay flexible. And that's really something that, I personally learned from that experience in my life, and the importance of being flexible in life. In the ways that I think, because maybe there's a new way that I can... a new perspective, that is going to help orient me towards a greater path. So thank you so much, and I wish you all the best with with your course.
ISIS INDRIYA: Thank you so much Shira, that was amazing. Thank you so much for really bringing forward such a deep well of wisdom and ancient knowledge in such a succinct way. Thank you so much. And something that you share that I just really treasure and value, and when I think about Standing Ones, and the trees, they're like these pillars, that are reaching up into the heavenly realms, and then their root systems are connected under the Earth, together. And there's so many different kinds of species of trees, and they're all connected in the web underneath. So I just want to say thank you for that. And, there's a lot that will be shared in this course, and for those that are interested, I'm going to put in the chat. how you can attune into this course, right down there, it's advaya.life/courses/tree-of-life. We will be starting October 28th, on Tuesdays weekly from 7–9pm, in the UK, we will be traveling eight different sessions to really dive into once again, the cosmology, the mythology and the ecology of trees. And so with that, I would just love to, before we wrap up, with a few more questions, I want to just call upon you, Timo, in ways of kind of anything you want to share in reflection to what Shira shared. It's really very beautiful because you and Shira, I met the two of you in an ancestral arts container, a gathering where we were learning how to work with our hands and learning how to work with the Earth in ancestral ways. So if there's anything that you would love to share in reflection to what Shira said, and then we'll open it up for a couple of questions.
TIMO GRANZOTTI: So one of the things I really enjoyed that Shira mentioned was around the swaying, and the dance of the trees, and how she related that to love. And it's really interesting that she was talking about conifers in this respect, because lots of these trees actually... that's the mating dance, they use the winds to carry their culms. And so it is a dance of love for them, it is a method of pollination. And they can cast their culms, 100 feet from the main tree. But there's this strong sense of family, especially when we talk about redwoods, and how they grow, there's just this feeling of community and that you're in a family of trees. And that is often the case when it comes to how they're connected via the root systems. And that's something that we'll expound on even more, but there is a strong network, when you're walking through the woods and I think that's something we're reminded of when we're in the woods. There's this feeling of being held. And I really like how you use the aspect of pillars to describe how they connect the heavens to the underground realms, and when we're talking about subsoil, and the life in soil, what we're looking at is this mere reflection of the life that is above ground and the life that is below ground. There are myriad examples of species of mesofauna, microfauna, that exists and occupy similar niches and act in similar habits as each other, and that's an interesting thing... And I think that understanding of that shows us how integrated things are again, and how much of a community this really is, this is a web and to understand trees is to go back to your roots. There's a reason why we use that phrase. And so I really like how Shira brought that back to that space for me, I really think within the trees, there's this feeling of love. There's this feeling of family, there's this feeling of this mating dance, and that's what it really is, we talk about love as well, we're talking about propagation, and we're talking about this reproduction, and that's something that we all play a part in. So, thank you.
ISIS INDRIYA: Thank you, Timo. Thank you, Shira. And we just realised the time and I wanted to be sure to pass a really simple practice that we wanted to offer to everybody, to bring home with you. And that is a really simple practice, ritual gestures, to ground and embody the tree in the body. One of my elders talks a lot about how we are trees too, like we are reflections of the trees. And inside of our body, we are a pillar, the central column is a pillar. And so with that, I'm going to pass this really simple practice, and also with this practice, moving forward, we would love to invite everybody to commune with a particular tree. If there is a tree around you in your home place or in your neighborhood, or it pops up in your consciousness, what kind of tree is that? And where are the origin stories of this tree? And what are the... what's the ecosystem, what beings are living in relationship to this tree, and take time to get to know a particular tree, as your friend and as your relation and as your ally.
So with that, I'm going to share this really simple... Yes, Micaela, look for trees in your area and familiarise yourself with the land. And with that, perhaps even commune with one tree as your friend and get to know that particular tree, I have a particular tree outside of my home that I make offerings to every time we eat, we have a spirit plate of food and we get food to the tree, as part of our offerings to the tree and maybe the deer come eat it or the raccoons or the squirrels, we're not sure, but somehow that food gets received every day. And so that's one of the ways that I commune with the tree. So I want to just offer this really simple practice. It's a grounding practice. [Someone] said I'm making a map of my favourite trees and my friends in London. I love that.
Okay, this is a really simple grounding practice. And it's a practice of strengthening myself as a tree.
So that is a very simple way to strengthen our middle pillar, our core, our pillars inside ourselves, our spine, in communion with the root system and the heavenly realms and bring them together inside the heart, in the body. So with that our offering is to work with that, bring that home with you and then again, to repeat, commune with at least one or a family of trees in your community, your neighborhood, in your homeplace, get to know the tree what kind of tree it is, where it comes from, similar to how Timo was sharing how far reaching the many varieties of cedar trees there are all over the world. And the mythological story of the Epic of Gilgamesh and cedar trees, just like that, getting to know and communing with these trees, and in this way, we really hope to strengthen our relationships with the natural world and learn how to listen in a good way on behalf of being stewards and tenders of this great time of initiation and transformation for our human species. Shira says Creator please bless the Pine Rocklands. So I just want to honour what she says here, in that way. Thank you to each and every one of our ancestors that have called us here in this course today. For those are watching in this in the future. Thank you too the ancestors of Nat Kelly and Timo Granzotti, Brooke Brash, and also for Shira Salcman, and to my ancestors, for calling us in, on behalf of strengthening our voices and to help bring and uplift the voices of the Trees at this time. Thank you so much, blessings, we hope that this has been helpful to each and every one of you.
Okay, well thank you so much. Any final words Timo before we close this?
TIMO GRANZOTTI: I really liked how you wrapped it up. I really liked the exercise that you offered. Another one that I might enjoy throwing in there is when I was first embarking on my relationship with plants in school, one of the things that our teacher made us do was to go outside, and whether it's a tree or a plant, she made us bring a piece of paper. And she would always say, to draw is to see. And when I would sit with these plants, and I had to draw over 100 native species over the course of a semester, and memorise them and really get to know them, but I found that I really understood them more. And that spiritual element, that connection, in drawing them, sitting with them, really launched me further, in the awareness of who they are as beings. And I really would throw that in the piece as well if you can, just to sit with something but also draw it and that that's something really special as well, even if you don't know how to draw.
ISIS INDRIYA: I'm gonna do that with my son, Orion, your nephew, we're going to draw the trees outside together. Thank you. On behalf of future generations, may this course be helpful and useful, and in that way, and offering into the web of life. Thank you all so much. We'll see you very soon. Blessings on this day.
