Secrets of the Spindle Tree
The Spindle Tree (Euonymus europaeus??)
Volume 22 of 31
Bruce Clifton
Spindle Tree ~ Oir
Spindle Tree – Ogham Tree Profile
Bruce Clifton
Group: 5th Aicme ~ Forfeda
Name: Spindle
Ogham: Oir >>> Oy-oh
Letter: OI
Lunar: Universal
Season: Autumn
Element: Earth ~ Fire
Direction: South ~ West ~ North
Moon Phase: Universal
Moon Name: Universal
Influence: Unified
Title: Peasant
Age: 1 Generation + of Human
Aura: Red
Healing: Constipation ~ Digestive Health ~ Nits ~ Oedema ~ Respiratory
Animal Spirit: Butterfly ~ Moth ~ Song Thrush ~ Wren
Totems and Entities:
Gods and Deities:
Secret Harmonies:
Festival: (coming soon)
Cosmos: (coming soon)
Key Words: Earthly ~
Essence of the ?? Tree
Bruce Clifton
Healing Lore of the ?? Tree
Bruce Clifton
B1
Scope & Notice
The information contained herein is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All efforts have been made to present accurate, up-to-date, reliable and complete information; however, no warranties of any kind are stated or implied. Readers should acknowledge that the author is not engaged in the rendering of medical or professional advice. The content herein should not be perceived as a substitute for professional or personal guidance. If in doubt, consult a qualified professional before attempting any techniques outlined.
The appropriate dosage or application of any natural remedy is dependent upon various factors, including age, health status, and individual circumstances. Natural products are not inherently safe, and dosage may be critical. It is best practice to begin with lower amounts and adjust as necessary. Consideration should also be given to timing, as the effectiveness of remedies may vary according to time of day and individual sensitivity.
About the Healing List
This list of ailments is not complete in its entirety; it has been limited to the most popular, with the remedies coming firstly from the tree and then vegetation dependent on the tree. It is worthy of note that there is more than one way to make a cup of tea, and many of the ingredients can be purchased online.
Spindle Tree – Healing Remedies Oracle
We have alphabetised this list of healing qualities of the spindle tree solely for ease of reference; they include but are not limited to:
1) Bronchitis
2) Constipation
3) Digestive Health
4) Nits
5) Oedema
Bronchitis / Spindle Tree
Ingredients:
Spindle bark
Key Properties:
Triterpenoids
Flavonoids
Tannins
Cardenolides
Traditional properties:
Expectorant
Bitter tonic
Purgative
Spindle bark has a recorded place in traditional healing for respiratory and pulmonary complaints, where its expectorant properties were associated with helping to loosen and clear congestion from the chest.
Traditional Actions:
Spindle is traditionally associated with encouraging expectoration and clearing congested airways, helping the body expel accumulated mucus during respiratory illness. Its bitter properties also contributed to its historical reputation as a strengthening tonic during illness.
Preparation:
Traditionally, dried Spindle bark was prepared in water as a decoction, gently heating the bark to extract its active constituents. Historical preparations were used cautiously because of the powerful nature of the plant.
Traditional Use:
Spindle bark was traditionally used for bronchial and respiratory complaints involving chest congestion and difficult expectoration, helping to loosen mucus and encourage its natural clearance from the airways.
Constipation / Spindle Tree
Ingredients:
Spindle bark
Key Properties:
Evonoside
Cardenolides
Triterpenoids
Flavonoids
Tannins
Traditional properties:
Laxative
Purgative
Bitter tonic
Cholagogue
Spindle has a recorded place in traditional herbal medicine for constipation and sluggish bowels, where preparations of the bark were valued particularly for their strong laxative and purgative action.
Traditional Actions:
Spindle is traditionally associated with stimulating bowel activity, encouraging evacuation and supporting sluggish digestion. Its bitter character also gave the bark a traditional association with digestive and biliary stimulation.
Preparation:
Traditionally, dried Spindle bark was prepared in water as a decoction, allowing the constituents of the bark to pass into the liquid. Historical preparations were taken in carefully controlled quantities because of the particularly strong action of the plant.
Traditional Use:
Spindle bark was traditionally used for constipation and sluggish bowels, particularly where a strong purgative action was sought to encourage bowel movement and evacuation.
Digestive Health / Spindle Tree
Ingredients:
Spindle bark
Spindle root bark
Key Properties:
Triterpenoids
Flavonoids
Tannins
Cardenolides
Traditional properties:
Bitter tonic
Digestive stimulant
Cholagogue
Laxative
Spindle has a traditional association with sluggish digestion and digestive discomfort, where preparations of the bark were valued for their bitter qualities and their ability to stimulate digestive and biliary activity.
Traditional Actions:
Spindle is traditionally associated with stimulating digestion, encouraging the flow of bile and supporting sluggish digestive function. Its bitter action was particularly suited to poor digestion, loss of digestive tone and feelings of heaviness after food.
Preparation:
Traditionally, dried Spindle bark or root bark was prepared as a decoction, gently heated in water to extract its bitter constituents. The resulting preparation formed part of historical herbal practice for digestive complaints.
Traditional Use:
Spindle bark was traditionally used for indigestion, sluggish digestion and poor digestive function, encouraging digestive activity and supporting the natural movement of food and waste through the digestive system.
Nits / Spindle Tree
Ingredients:
Spindle fruit
Spindle seeds
Key Properties:
Evonoside
Cardenolides
Triterpenoids
Flavonoids
Traditional properties:
Insecticidal
Antiparasitic
Pediculicidal
Spindle has a particularly strong traditional association with head lice and nits, with the fruit and seeds historically used as an external treatment for infestations. This use contributed to the old folk name “Lousewood.”
Traditional Actions:
Spindle was traditionally used to kill head lice and help clear infestations from the hair and scalp. Preparations made from the fruit or seeds were applied externally, their insecticidal properties making Spindle a recognised folk treatment for lice.
Preparation:
Traditionally, the ripe fruits were baked or dried and ground into a powder. The powdered material was then incorporated into an external preparation and applied to the affected hair and scalp.
Traditional Use:
Spindle preparations were traditionally applied to the hair and scalp for head lice and their nits, helping control the infestation and remove the parasites.
Oedema / Spindle Tree
Ingredients:
Spindle bark
Spindle root bark
Key Properties:
Triterpenoids
Flavonoids
Tannins
Cardenolides
Traditional properties:
Diuretic
Cholagogue
Bitter tonic
Purgative
Spindle has a recorded traditional association with dropsy, now known as oedema, where preparations of the bark were used for the accumulation and retention of excess fluid within the body.
Traditional Actions:
Spindle was traditionally associated with stimulating urination and encouraging the elimination of retained fluid. Its diuretic action was used to support the body’s natural removal of excess water where swelling and fluid retention were present.
Preparation:
Traditionally, dried Spindle bark or root bark was prepared as a decoction, gently heated in water to extract its active constituents. The resulting preparation formed part of historical herbal practice for dropsy and fluid retention.
Traditional Use:
Spindle bark was traditionally used for dropsy, swelling and fluid retention, encouraging increased urinary output and helping the body eliminate accumulated excess fluid.
Celtic Tree Lore of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
Folklore of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
Animal Spirit of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
Spindle Tree – Animal Spirit Oracle
Bruce Clifton
We have alphabetised this list of animal spirit that harmonise with the spindle tree solely for ease of reference; no sense of hierarchy or entitlement is intended or implied:
1) Butterfly
2) Cow
3) Moth
4) Song Thrush
5) Wren
Butterfly / Spindle Tree
There comes a moment towards the end of summer when the Spindle seems to change almost overnight. An ordinary green hedgerow, passed a hundred times without a second glance, begins to glow. Red creeps through the leaves, the fruits blush pink and orange, and beneath the evening sun the whole tree takes on the colours of sunset.
Those who notice such things know the feeling. The empath, the poet, the romantic, the naturalist and perhaps, long ago, the Druid. The Holly Blue Butterfly seems to notice it too.
The days remain warm, but the evenings are growing longer. Twilight lingers and the fierce heat of summer has softened. The harvest is coming in, food is plentiful and there is time to sit outside as daylight slowly fades. Summer has not quite gone, yet autumn has begun to show herself.
It is a time made for romance.
The Holly Blue takes advantage of these last generous days and can produce a second generation within the same year. While the Spindle ripens its fruit and prepares the seed of another generation, the little blue butterfly does much the same. Perhaps, in its own way, it leads the way.
For people also respond to the seasons. A lingering autumn followed by a softer winter and an early spring promises something important: another autumn of abundance nine months later. Fruit, grain and vegetables are plentiful, the harvest is gathered and the land is better able to provide for a mother and her newborn child.
Nine months after those long evenings beneath the Spindle comes the possibility of a human baby boom, with children arriving at the very time of year when nature’s store cupboard is at its fullest.
The farmer understands the rhythm too. Dairy herds can be managed around autumn calving, bringing the birth of the calf together with a renewed period of milk production. Birth, nourishment and abundance become part of the same seasonal circle.
So perhaps our ancestors did not need a calendar to tell them everything. They watched the hedgerows. They noticed the lengthening sunset, the ripening fruit and the behaviour of the creatures around them. They understood warmth, food, birth and survival.
And somewhere among the red and orange leaves of the Spindle, the Holly Blue Butterfly had already led the way.
Cow / Spindle Tree
The Spindle like the cow understands the transformation as summer begins its surrender to autumn. The hedgerow blushes red, pink and orange, the evenings linger, and romance has had its moment. The Cow carries the consequence of that ancient rhythm within her own body. Like a woman, she carries her young for nine months, turning conception into life through patience, nourishment and time.
The farmer understands the rhythm. Autumn calving brings new life as the harvest fills the stores, while the birth of the calf begins another season of milk. The land feeds the Cow, the Cow feeds her young, and her abundance has fed humanity for thousands of years. Nothing is possessed forever. It passes from one life into another.
Look into the eyes of a Cow and there is a stillness that seems to look back into your soul. Across cultures she has come to embody spiritual femininity, motherhood, fertility and nourishment, the quiet feminine power that creates life and then sustains what she has created.
Perhaps this is why the Cow has become sacred in so many places. There is something extraordinary hidden within something wonderfully ordinary. She takes the grass beneath her feet, the rain that fell upon the field and the warmth of the sun, and somehow turns them into nourishment for another life.
The Spindle performs its own quiet miracle beside her. Summer green becomes autumn crimson, flowers have become fruit and hidden within that fruit is another generation waiting to begin. Birds will come and take what the tree offers, carrying its seed beyond the hedgerow. Nothing announces itself. Nothing asks to be admired. Life simply gives to life.
This is the gentle alchemy shared by Cow and Spindle. Grass becomes milk. Fruit becomes seed. Romance becomes conception. Conception becomes birth. Love becomes nourishment.
Moth / Spindle Tree
As evening closes around the Spindle, the brilliant reds and oranges of autumn slowly disappear. The last warmth of sunset leaves the hedgerow and another light begins to fall upon its branches, the softer, silver light of the moon.
From the twilight comes the light of the night attracting the Spindle Ermine Moth, her pure white wings dappled with black dots of the night. She belongs to the Spindle more intimately than most. Her life begins with the romance found in the twilight, she finds her partner here, and here she leaves the beginnings of another generation, entrusting her young to the heart of spindle.
The young hatch before the winter solstice and remain sheltered by the thorns of spindle, sheltered through the darkest months until spring calls them into life. Then together they spin silk, drawing great white veils around the Spindle, until branches can disappear beneath their covering, it’s almost a thank you to the spindle for keeping them safe. To the naturalist it is a nursery. To the druid a remedy. To the romantic eye it might be something more.
Perhaps this is why white has so often belonged to the sacred, and why moonlight belongs so naturally to the feminine. Beneath both, the Spindle stands quietly wrapped in silk, carrying another generation towards spring.
The mother leaves her children with the Spindle. The Spindle carries them through the darkness. And when spring returns, they dress their guardian in white.
Song Thrush / Spindle Tree
Before the Spindle was a tree within an Oracle, its hard, smooth wood was shaped into the spindle that gave the tree its name. Upon it the thread was gathered, drawn together and wound into something that could be carried, woven and sewn.
Perhaps the Song Thrush does much the same with its song.
As summer surrenders to autumn, the Spindle begins to blaze within the hedgerow. Red, pink and orange appear amongst the green, sunset seems to settle upon its branches and the Song Thrush finds a place amongst its fruit. There is no hiding the Spindle now. Like the Thrush at dawn, it has become a herald, announcing that something is changing and something new is coming.
And the Thrush sings.
It sings because it can. It sings for the love of life. It sings after rain and before the storm, at the ending of one season and the beginning of another. Its song gathers the moments together, just as thread once gathered around the spindle.
Perhaps that is its gift to this tree.
The Holly Blue brought romance. The Cow brought motherhood and nourishment. The Spindle Ermine brought moonlight and silk. Now the Song Thrush takes up that silken thread and sews their stories together with song.
Listen to it from the autumn hedgerow and count your blessings before your woes. If the woes outnumber the blessings, count the blessings again. Look at the Spindle ablaze beside you. Fruit hangs amongst leaves of crimson and gold, the harvest is gathering and another year has given everything it had to give.
There is abundance here if we remember how to see it.
The Song Thrush does not mourn the passing summer. It sings into the change, because tomorrow there will be another dawn, another season, another reason to sing.
The Spindle gathers the thread. The Song Thrush gives it a voice. And somewhere between them, the song of life is sewn together.
Wren / Spindle Tree
The Wren is easily overlooked. Small, brown and happiest amongst the tangled places of the hedgerow, it can disappear between leaf and branch almost as quickly as it arrived. Yet when the male Wren sings, there is nothing small about him. From somewhere unseen comes a voice that could bring a new harmony to the “Ave Maria.”
“In the old Irish Dindshenchas tale of Érerus, Aongus Óg, the youthful one of love, desire and poetry, fashioned four of his kisses into four birds.” They came singing from the east, from the direction of the bright sunrise, and travelled westwards until the magic of the Spindle finally brought their song to rest.
Perhaps four kisses are enough for a year. One for spring, when life awakens. One for summer, when love has warmth enough to linger. One for autumn, when the Spindle reveals its glorious colour. And one for winter, when what has been loved must sometimes be allowed to disappear. East to west. Sunrise to sunset. Spring towards autumn. Coming and going, appearing and disappearing, four kisses carried upon the wings of four little birds.
You may never see the Wren that sings from within the Spindle. You needn’t. Some of the most beautiful things in life announce themselves without ever asking to be seen. A song from the hedgerow. A kiss remembered. A sunset lingering a little longer than expected.
Four kisses. Four birds. Four seasons. One little Wren carrying the song of love through them all.
Totems and Entities of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
B1
Spindle Tree – Totems and Entities Oracle
Bruce Clifton
We have alphabetised this list of totems and entities that harmonise with the Spindle tree solely for ease of reference; no sense of hierarchy or entitlement is intended or implied:
1) Clotho
2)
Gods and Deities of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
A1
Spindle Tree – Gods and Deities Oracle
Bruce Clifton
We have alphabetised this list of gods and deities that harmonise with the Spindle tree solely for ease of reference; no sense of hierarchy or entitlement is intended or implied:
1)
2)
Secret Harmonies of the Spindle Tree
Bruce Clifton
B1
Spindle Tree – Secret Harmonies Oracle
Bruce Clifton
We have alphabetised this list of secret harmonies of the Spindle tree solely for ease of reference; no sense of hierarchy or entitlement is intended or implied:
1)
2)