Carpe Diem #1001 Blackthorn

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

It's my pleasure to bring to you our 1001st regular episode. A few days ago we had a milestone, 1000 regular posts, so now it is going to our next milestone, 1500 regular posts, but that milestone will be in reach next year. So let us do some haiku-ing today.

Today we are going on with our discovery of mysterious nature through the ancient Celtic Ogham. Today our prompt is Blackthorn.

Let us take a closer look at the Blackthorn:

Blackthorn

What do we see? We see the berries of the Blackthorn, the berries you can eat, but they taste best after frost has gone over it. It protects itself through its thorns. If you get wounded through these thorns, an infection will rapidly be there, so be careful. The ancient Celts, the druids, knew this already. Here is what the Ogham says about Blackthorn:

Among the Celts, this sacred tree of the Ogham was considered a portent of challenges ahead, but with the promise of improvement once we push through those challenges.

The Druids recognized portents struggle intuitively in the formation of the blackthorn tree's growth. This tree has some wicked thorns that are ominous looking at best. Indeed, when cut by these thorns the human flesh can turn septic fairly rapidly.

In autumn it turns a sulfurous yellow and when these leaves drop they expose a contorted body. This mangled imagery brought the concept of strife and suffering to the Celtic mind.

These visual observations made the blackthorn a symbol of the other half of life that we often shrink back from. When the blackthorn showed itself in Ogham oracle practices, it could be considered as a portent of war, illness or discouragement. It was a sign to get ready and brace yourself.

Blackthorn

The blackthorn is not all bad. On the contrary, the Celts observed that this tree produced some of the sweetest berries among the sacred tribe of trees. However, these berries were at their most succulent and sweetest after a hard frost. Here again we see symbolism of strife - but in this light we are shown that the blessing comes after the challenge.

In this way the blackthorn shows us that our very best fruits sometimes come after trials, setbacks and tribulations. We would do well to keep this in mind as we are in the midst of our challenges. We will come out on the other side better and sweeter than we were before.

The message of the blackthorn should not be observed as all gloom. Rather, it can be a message of opportunity if we embrace our experiences as an avenue for growth. (source)

revealed path
through pain and misfortune
a new day rises

© Chèvrefeuille

first sign of spring
clothed in fragile lace
nettles disappear

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 23rd at noon (CET). I will publish our new episode, a new Tokubetsudesu, back in time, later on.