When you’ve admired Avebury village you might go to the extreme eastern side of the great stone circle where, beside the henge and atop a hill, you’ll find the beech trees which I’ve come to call the “Rooty Trees”.
I’ve seen them referred to the “wishing trees”. They often have many colourful ribbons, ‘clouts’ or ‘clouties’ tied to them, as prayers to the tree spirits, or in memory of loved ones. This is an old Pagan tradition, seen not just at the Rooty Trees at Avebury, but all over the British Isles and Ireland, particularly on trees overhanging or near holy wells.
The ribbons may have to be removed every so often, to protect the trees from being strangled or otherwise harmed. Perhaps you could make a big, loose loop of degradable cloth ribbon. Perhaps then the wish will come true.
Thank you.
They are not ‘wishing trees’. This is a recent, made up, new age nonsense and results in all sorts of tatty litter being left to damage the tree and spoil the place for others. This is horrible, egotistical thinking. Anyone who considers themselves even slightly ‘spiritual’ should know better and understand that a connection to nature means respecting nature, not damaging it to join in with the latest trend. Please be less selfish and neither leave or take away from nature.
If people know them as “wishing trees”, in so far as they give what they consider an offering and then make a wish, then subjectively they are “wishing trees”.
It’s true that the wanton tying of many ribbons on branches can theoretically have a negative impact on the health of the tree, and that’s why they’re regularly removed. Having said that, I’ve seen very healthy trees positively festooned with these clouts, so I have my doubts as to the potential for damage.
I think to call it ‘egotistical thinking’ is a somewhat severe and narrow-minded attitude. As to ‘spirituality’, what is it? Is it tying a ribbon to a tree and making a wish (perhaps for a loved one or an ill person), or singing a psalm from an iron age book of myths? That is subjective too. Furthermore, as to ‘nature’, what is that? If it’s what I take it to be, then humans, with all their habits, are undoubtedly part of nature, just as is a tree, a rabbit, a planet or a galaxy. The fact that humans’ behaviour is not to your liking is therefore neither here nor there with regard to “a connection to nature”. If an alligator bites my leg, that’s the alligator’s nature, whether I like it or not. If a human ties a clout to a tree, that’s part of “nature” too. Nature is cruel, nature is kind, nature is everything.
As to being “the latest trend” or a recent ‘new age’ practice, that is plain wrong: it is a very ancient tradition. It’s just that there are so many humans doing it now at such ancient sites, so perhaps it may be overdone.
It seems we haven’t come far from the times of Puritans like Philip Stubbes with his description of a May Day maypole as a “stinking idol“. But these attitudes are thankfully disappearing.
Agree with you <3 Leave nature and leave no mark on it.
Man will always leave a mark on nature. It’s what people generally call “the countryside”. In fact, man may well have planted them in the first place.
It’s amazing and depressing that some people can feel the need to get so angry, pompously arrogant, narrow-minded and virtue-signalling about something as simple as tying a ribbon to a tree.