The Weeping Willows Message

Willow branches shade,

beneath the broad canopy,

holds summer's wind song.

.

Light begins to fade.

Falling leaves, cascading tears

float on the river.

.

Life’s brief song burst ends.

Winter comes. Weeping ceases.

Cold snow eases pain.

.

Spring comes. Resurgence.

Willow branches form strong roots.

New life will dull pain.

.

(Story inspired by Rob Angeli https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/a-generic-haiku)

Kat’s journey had taken her into the valley where the willow tree bows over the running stream. Kat sat by the water's edge and watched a muskrat dive. She waited to watch it surface. They can stay under for 15 minutes. She remembered the role of the muskrat in the creation story of the ancient Ojibwe/Anishinaabe peoples. People had strayed from living harmoniously with Nature. There were few places to find rest, and there was little hope. The muskrat conquered odds, but died while playing it's part in recreation.

Kat knew the rules of Nature’s ladies and gentlemen. Without formal education, they know how to connect matter and energy. Scientists can measure forces of gravity or electrostatic coulombic forces, the attractive or repulsive force, between two objects. The coulombic force, generated from Van der Waal, ionic and covalent bonds, and weak interactions, creates self-consistent undulations within the smallest units. Kat was part of the wave. She flowed as part of the non-vanishing, permanent, multipole moments, that expand in harmonics.

A critical mass of the population believed science could continue to direct the path forward. The world’s growing human populations were thriving, thanks to scientific advances. Sadly, man’s primitive understanding of science, is often motivated by greed and ignorance. Scientific interventions often upset the balance of nature. Solving one problem, often generates many other problems.

Kat respected the advances made by science but feared that scientists often lure ghosts, from their hiding places, often in plain view, intending to use or exploit them. The ghosts move out from the void after death and remain part of reality. Untamed souls of the departed divine ghosts move through the fabric of space and time. Each uniquely affects the future. Their reflections, seen in real or imagined thoughts and memories, mirror the past. The ghosts play out their drama on the stage, knowing friction causes torsion, that can make the stage shatter and reshape.

Many ghosts had simultaneously been released. The great flood of information and global international communication systems, with translator programs that allow a common language to be shared, could not remove the threat of the new tower of Babel. Words are symbols that can be translated in many ways. Words do not always hold the same meaning or values in various cultures or contexts. The confusion threatened to destroy the advances mankind had made over the last 60 years.

Kat glanced up, hoping to see a spark of hope. She remembered a story, over 6000 years old, that speaks of a blacksmith who is offered fire by the devil, in return for his soul. The story was retold in the tale of the lawyer Daniel Webster and the devil. Daniel was the cousin of Noah Webster who wrote a dictionary divinely inspired. Tracing the roots of each word leads to discovering it often has opposite meanings. Daniel used words to sway the jury to release the victim from the contract with the devil. Kat knew the devil’s craftiness could often be met with the power of the pen.

She looked at the willow, wondering if it could help the pilgrim soul of humanity be redeemed. The willow’s branches reached out to the wordsmith, who in turn, tried to decipher the message. The word willow holds the suffix ‘ow’, meaning ‘turned towards’, and the namesake ‘Will’, that is associated with 'desiring peace'. The name Will, means 'determined protector, wearer of the helmet of will'. Will often expresses a prophecy, or declares inevitability in the future. Over the eons, many have argued that there is only God’s will. Others say 'Freewill' is what directs a wish, or intentional choice. Freewill is often misdirected towards a misleading or elusive goal that lures an individual into making a deal with the devil. Will power involves resisting immediate temptations to attain long term goals.

W.B. Yeats wrote ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ that expresses the problem with delayed gratification. The Sally gardens, contain the Salix genus of willows. In the Sally Gardens, the young and foolish do not take things slow and easy, as nature, their young, delicate lover requests. Kat was the pilgrim wandering in the Sally Gardens. She was ready to patiently assemble the message of the weeping trees, that reflects how conditions and circumstances, change with the seasons of life.

When spring begins, the kitten-tailed, male Willow catkin flowers move with the wind and find, then fertilize, the greenish hairy female caterpillar flower parts. Both reproductive parts are associated with the prefix ‘cat’ that comes from the Latin, ‘cata’, meaning down, back, or against. Sailors cat an anchor, i.e., pull it up against gravity. In catabolism, food is broken down to release energy. Cats, such as Bastet, were the sacred animal of Egypt. They were respected for their grace and swiftness. They provided protection from pests, and offered the pleasure of companionship. The Romans considered the cat is independent, and free to do what they want, even when in opposite of what is expected. The term cat, kaz or gaz means pure in various languages.

Kat thoughts digressed. The adjective pure, describes consistency, throughout a whole, unmixed substance. Zero and one are pure Boolean counterparts, each cipher has an opposite meaning, but once they were equal. The Chaldeans translate zero as the seed that became All and nothing, and was represented by Zoroaster, then Nimrod, Tammuz and Bacchus. Kat mused that a word like Catalina, purees two words. Cat, meaning freedom, is combined with the name Magdalena, from Mary Magdalene, who some call the whore and others the wife of Christ, two purely opposite essences.

Kat thoughts were flowing in the stream of consciousness. She considered how caterpillars transform through metamorphosis. The larva holds imaginal cells, undifferentiated cells, that hold genetic blueprints for adult structures. Imaginal cells are a threat in the body and are attacked by the caterpillar’s immune system. The moggies, caterpillar larva, strongly resist the emergence of a new system but they do not succeed. The imaginal cells, resonate together, at the same frequency, then pass latent information within the cells, back and forth. At a critical tipping point, the quiescent imaginal cells transform into a chrysalis (pupa).

While in the pupa, the caterpillar eats itself and turns to goop. The caterpillar soup holds onto the past, through the imaginal cells. Studies indicate that the nervous system of the adult butterfly, that has a totally different genome after the transformation, might remember the former life as a caterpillar.

The willow’s catkins and caterpillars are true to their catlike nature, they are independent and free. They are living Foo lions, who protect the material aspects of the world. They act in accordance with the law of dharma, to fulfill a unique purpose and serve others by manifesting the highest vision of the dhamma, cosmic law and order.

The willow forms a large canopy that can be transformed into a thatched roof over a home. Willow is used as a cord that can bind man and beast to a place or to each other. Willow is used to make baskets that hold those roaming in hot air balloons, or those within a casket who are roaming in the dark unknown beyond life. The willow makes the laths of the teifi coracle, a round boat made of reeds, to which men must cling. Kashmir willow stems are used to make cricket bats, that can bend and flex and absorb shock, without splintering. Willow tree flexibility make them more resilient to winds than an oak.

Celts ‘knock on wood’ of the willow for good luck and protection. They consider the sound of the wind in the willow as elves talking. Orpheus played a harp made of willow and carried a willow branch for protection into the underworld. Willow wands became associated with bestowing spells of power. The willow can be used to whittle magic willow wands, that can double as a flute. Mozart wrote the Magic Flute opera. The plot involves Tamino, (meaning the leader), who receives the magic flute from the Queen of the Night. He meets his traveling companion, Papageno, the parrot-like bird catcher, who plays the panpipes, a form of whistle also made of willow. Tamino and Papageno use their instruments as they battle fire, water, air, and earth and eventually find love and experience the power of transcendence to a higher world, through transition and rebirth.

The Willow tree is a pharmakon, that can be used to ease suffering and pain, or act as a poison. Since at least the time of Hippocrates, 400 BC, the willow has been used to ease pain. Zeus’ nurse, Helice, knew how to use the magic of the 'sallow and osiers'. The chemical, salicin, makes acetylsalicylic acid that eases physical pain and inflammation. The willows green branches, with diamond pattern flesh, can be made into the Cat of nine tails, or a willow switch, used to flog individuals and cut into the flesh when corporal punishment is used as a form of discipline to ensure orders are obeyed. For most of mankind’s history, the saying “Don’t spare the rod and spoil the child” has been used to normalize physical abuse.

Spiritually the willow is a symbol that represents an expression of grief, sorrow and mourning for the physical or spiritual death of a love, of a forsaken ideal, or hope. The tree is a symbol of hope and rebirth associated with immortality and the endurance of love despite death.

The willow is an invasive species, hailing from China. It was traded along the silk road. The willow grows rapidly and can be used for various commodities. It has an environmental and economic impact. Conservation and Management Authorities strive to balance how much willow to cut to avoid economic market crashes and reduce environmental damage. Cutting the willow trees decreases shade and causes water temperatures to increase promoting disease. Left uncut, willows increase silt deposition, because of leaf decay. This reduces water levels and leads to water quality deterioration.

The willow is a tree of enchantment. It is easily propagated. The willow, when cut, can re-root and form new trees. In Cornwall, legends by ‘droll tellers’, who wandered the countryside, included stories of giants, the little people, the pixies and fairies and the knocker or bucca also called the leprechaun, King Arthur and his court, Jack the Giant Killer and St. Wyllow, a monk. St. Wyllow was beheaded. As is typical of a cephalophore, he carried his head and ran like a headless turkey to St. Willows bridge, where a church now stands to honour him. However, the willow is not immortal. It is affected by crown gall, a rhizobia bacteria that induces cancerous tumours. The tumours girdle the tree and kill it by strangling it from receiving water or food or creating new shoots.

The willow tree grows alongside rivers in rocky substrates with low nutrient levels. Willows interact with soil microbial rhizosphere and endophyte communities that produce growth hormones and help in nitrogen fixing. Willow endophytes can enhance yield or alternatively instill a defensive response. Endophytes give willows the potential for uptake, assimilation and translocation of various chemicals including selenite and selenate in contaminated sites. Willows hyperaccumulate selenium.

Pollution remediation of contaminated soils and land restoration has unknown costs. It is unknown if the endophytes can enter the food chain and what effect they might have. Selenium, garnered from willows, is a trace mineral that is used as an antioxidant to treat cataracts and thyroid issues, and mercury toxicity. Bacteria alter Selenium, causing a phosphorescence. Selenium is used in photovoltaic cells and ignites in oxygen forming a blue flame.

Kat saw the blue ghost’s dance in the mists of the willow marshes. She wondered if the light of the will-o’-the wisp was caused by selenium sequestered by the willow, and released when leaves fell, transpired and decomposed. The wisps are atmospheric moving 'ignus fatuus', the foolish light. Those who follow the ghost light, that hovers a few feet above the waters, are often lost in the marshes. They are similar to Naga serpents fireballs emitted from phosphine swamp gases in the Mekong River during the full moon of October. The corpse candle appears throughout Europe and the walking fire is thought to be held by a sprite, a puk or hob. The light of the full moon influences mating in species, such as crabs and corals and phosphorescent diatoms, causes the release of bright light lime green, red and blue fireballs. Fireballs come from and return to the earth and the universe through electrostatic phenomenon. St. Elmo’s fire is thought to be the reflection of light from ice crystals. Great balls of fire reported over los Alamos around Roswell are thought to be a result of nuclear fallout. The predictable energy transformations forming the lights are partly explained by science, but the forces that precede them are still incredible.

The muskrat surfaced after 9 minutes, then ran in front of Kat, holding roots that looked like a ball of earth. Muskrats are called march cats and marsh rats. They are at the same time the predator and prey. They eat the willow and clear the waterways, but face mortal danger. They could contact Tyzzer's disease, by ingesting the endosymbiotic bacteria in willow branches and leaves, that hold biotoxins. Like in the indigenous myth of the muskrat, they are driven to self- sacrifice.

Kat was ready to move on and continue her hero's journey. She was simply the messenger, the Nuncio, an ambassador in this foreign court. Her memoirs were dedicated to demonstrating how the world of science, language and myth intertwine. The mystery unfolded as she explored the message of the willow and tale of the muskrat and saw they were part of a timeless greater story. She was beginning to understand the wisdom of the Emerald Tablet by Hermes Trismegistus. What is big becomes small, and what is small becomes big. What is above is as below, and what is past is yet to come.