Kairos commands

When I visited Kairos, the first thing he said was to recall what I had learned from the Horse Chestnut and the Copse Oak a few days earlier.

Then he spoke of the deer and killing. This prompted by the fact that my article on Cabilla has been doing the rounds on LinkedIn, as advocacy for "managing" deer. Not entirely what I intended... and, as it happens, the muntjacs at the Reserve may be "managed" in the not too distant future. Kairos said that killing wasn't the issue, so much as the taking away... or rather, it was about the economy of the woodland. The bodies of deer feed predators, omnivores, and earth of the land from which they sustained nourishment. And those predators etc shit and die, feeding the earth in their turn. He said he's not advocating a closed system, but is opposed to extraction.

I sat and heard and felt how the earth had been revitalised by the recent rain. Life rained down. I listened to breezes pass over the canopy. To acorns fall. A robin singing 100 yards or so away. A woodpecker close by and tits scolding. A wren sang and rustled. The earth chittered with the action of decomposition. And there was presence all around me.

Kairos suggested a journey to the lower world, where I met the older woman.

"Ah!" she said. "You're ready! Finish the wands and give one to him [a person from whom I have been learning], the hazel one; you will need the two oak wands.

"Speak to the trees and the stones. Heed their counsel. Do not ask the birds, for you cannot fly and their life is different. Attend them and respect them. Feel their magic. But do not seek their counsel. The sun at sunset and at sunrise, not in the middle of the day. The moon, always. The hare always. You cannot speak to water and air so do not try.

"You belong to the wood world. Creature of leaf and branch, fruit and nut."

I said, "That makes me sound like a squirrel. Why should I ask the hare not the squirrel?"

"Ask the hare. Feel the presence all around you and know that is what god is."

"God is the world?" I asked.

"Yes. You are always semi-permeable, with the world coming and going."

"Why not totally open?"

"Because there is harm and violence and anger. It is in the world in some ways; and it is in you in some ways. As you must not pollute the world, so the world must not add to the bad in you.

"Alchemy is the process of living through which you transmute the bad within you to good. And in that way you can make the world a little less dangerous for others. This is the task of ageing.

"Largely it is the task of humans, trees, and stones."

"Is this some kind of hierarchy?" I asked.

"No. A division of labour. All beings have their task and all are equally valuable. the thing is that you humans can really only see your task, or conceive of your task, so you fail to acknowledge the critical role of others. But that is part of the mystery you must accept: vital tasks of which you know not.

"Trees, in fact, have many tasks; humans only one - and sadly, you have been dreadful at it."

I asked her about the description "sprung-born" and she said that the reason for having no ancestors is to create the hollow places where you find only what pre-exists the thinking of ancestors. No ancestors quietens the voices of the human world sufficiently to hear the other voices.