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32 A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism Volume 6 Issue 1 SPRING 2013 Then around 1990 I had an experi- ence that at first seemed like I had been hit by lightning. I was struck in the left temple by a burning flash of light and thrown out of my chair. I was with friends who helped me up from the floor and took me home. My entire body smelled like burning electrical wires and my hair began to fall out in large clumps. A short time later my skin turned yellow and I lost a great deal of muscle mass. I became profoundly fatigued and could walk only a few short feet before reaching exhaustion. I Meet the Yew Tree About three years later I was rescued by a friend who brought me to her small cottage southeast of Edinburgh near the sea. She quickly demanded that I seek medical help. The nurse at the nearby hospital began my medical exam by weighing me. She looked closely at the reading four or five times in disbelief and muttered to herself as she bumped the old scale to check that it was working. Nothing conclusive emerged from the tests and after a few months of hospital visits the nurses doctors and infectious disease specialists gave up on me. To this day my condition has not been adequate- ly diagnosed. Then I began to notice that my perception of the space around me was changing. I could no longer determine where the ground was located in relation to my feet and I would feel myself fall into gaps in space that would appear randomly to my side or in front of me. I seemed to be experiencing a sort of du- alistic existence where I was being drawn in two or more directions at once. I suf- fered extreme panic attacks and became convinced that I was dying. It was during the first few weeks living at the cottage that I first met the East Lothian Yew tree and learned how ancient and powerful the Yew tree was. The tree has the appearance of a gigantic evergreen bush whose outer branches swoop to the ground in long and graceful arcs to form a seemingly impenetrable and dense circle of thick growth. On closer inspection a dark and tiny entrance reveals a 40 foot long tun- nel of jagged branches. The narrow tun- nel gradually rises up and finally opens into a large and enclosed central chamber of living wood Through a process called branch-layering the Yew boughs over a period of some thousands of years gradually descend from the main trunk back down into the earth to create what appear to be new treesin fact they are part of the original parent tree. The circular chamber isapproximately 15 feet wide and reaches about 12 feet in height nearest the trunk. It is simply magnifi- cent to behold When I first entered the inner world living chamber of the Yew I knew that I was in the presence of a great and ancient spiritual being. It was as if I had come home but I could not explain this feeling. On my next second visit to the tree I fell into a violent fit not unlike an epileptic seizure. These painful seizures were to continue unabated for 3 years. In Scotland there are three ancient yews. The famous Fortingall Yew isreputed to have been the birthplace of Pontius Pilate and where Jesus himself was supposedly tutored by Druids. Then there is the Ormiston Yew in Midlothian not far from Roslyn Chapel. The third is the East Lothian Yew where I spent nine years living with my friend. It is my belief based on my experiences under the Yew and through extensive research that the three Scottish yews are three of the original Five Sacred Trees of Ireland planted in very ancient times by an an- cestral figure named Fintan who received and planted the five trees of Ireland from a branch bearing three different fruits given to him by a divine being. If this fact is true then these three trees may have a divine origin. Other evidence points to the im- portance of the Yew tree in European history. A myriad of towns and places throughout Europe especially in the British Isles are named after the Yew. Clearly the Yew was once widespread. What happened to these yews The medieval English war machine required the Yew for its deadly longbow. By the 16thcentury the Yew populations across central Europe were exhausted. They have yet to recover. It seems that the three yews in Scotland were deliberately excluded from the destruction possibly because they are thought to have had a divine origin in ancient Celtic lore. There is ample well-researched evidence to suggest that the Yew was the original Tree of Life. The Norse World Tree Yggdrasil was a Yew and Heimdallrwhose name means World Treethe Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge was born of nine mothers who were Yew trees. Beyond the Norse we have the ancient Mesopotamian Mes tree that has recently been traced conclusively to the Yew. It has been proposed that the original Egyptian Tree of Life was a Yew. It has also has been suggested that the original cross of Jesus was a living Yew. Faced with the plethora of published and wellresearched material now avail- able about the Yew and its significance there is little doubt that the Yew was regarded as the original Tree of Life. If so the Yew trees that exist today are the sentient carriers of an unbroken Tree of Life bloodline stretching back to ancient times. The Yew and the Elemental Sulfur Spirit Although my health problems may appear to have been of an entirely de- structive and chaotic nature they were in fact extremely orderly and followed a definite sequence. There are clear links between the function of the Elemen- tal Sulfur Spirit and the Yew. Both are ancient beings that were already in existence when the earth was in a more fluidic and less stable state than it is to- day. I have learned that the deeper func- tion of sulfur is to shift ones being out of the dominant state of consciousness