by Kay Broome

Turkish Hazelnut (Corylus colurna) Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, Ontario (photo: Mykola Swarnyk)

Knowledge and wisdom, traits held in high esteem in all human societies, are crucial for our survival. One would be hard pressed to find any culture that did not have a deity presiding over the intellect. The ibis-headed Thoth was Egyptian god of wisdom – both mundane (writing) and spiritual (magic).  In India, the goddess Sarasvati ruled general knowledge, as well as the arts, music and learning.

             Sarasvati, painted by Raja Ravi Varma, 1896 (Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum, Gujarat, India)

In the Roman empire, wisdom was Minerva's purview. She was very closely aligned with Athena, ancient Greek goddess of rationality, spinning and other crafts, as well as the art of strategic warfare. However, it was to  Mnemosyne, an earlier Titan goddess and mother of the Muses, that the process of memory was specifically attributed.

Athena (Minerva) with Aegis, 3rd century fresco from villa at Tusculum, Vatican museum (photo: Jastrow)  

Mimir and the Roots of Wisdom

The Norse god of wisdom, Mimir, also governed memory.  In fact, his name is believed to have originated from the same Indo-European root word as Mnemosyne and memory, smer-, meaning to think or recall. Mimir was beheaded in the war between the Aesir, and the Vanir, the two pantheons of Norse gods. Mimir’s nephew, Odin magically preserved his head, so that it was alive and capable of speech, providing Odin with counsel and secret knowledge. Mimir’s head later resided at Mimisbrunnr, a well or stream located at one of the three mighty roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree. One myth recounts how Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to Mimir, in order to gain even greater wisdom from this insightful god. The Mimisbrunnr held the understanding of past, present & future. It perhaps symbolizes ancestral memory, while Mimir portrays the subconcious mind, able to connect with its common source.

Odin Speaks with Mimir's Head, John Bauer, 1911 (courtesy germanicmythology.com)

The myth of Mimir is very similar to that of Bran, a Welsh oracular god. He too was decapitated and his living head was capable of giving wise counsel and oracular knowledge. The myths say that so long as Bran’s head rests beneath the Tower of London, the British realm will be protected against invasion.

The Stream of Knowledge

The Salmon of Knowledge, 1984,from Irish Literature, Vol. 8, Justin McCarthy

The salmon of knowledge knew all truths and had understanding of all things. It lived in the stream of wisdom which, according to Celtic scholar Frank Delaney, was the source of the River Boyne, sacred to the Irish goddess Boann. This stream was located in a grove of nine magical hazel trees. The salmon would eat of the hazelnuts that fell into the stream. Anyone who ate of the salmon’s flesh would gain its wisdom. Finnegas the druid sought this ancient fish for seven long years and one day, finally catching it, he gave his apprentice, Fionn mac Cumhaill the task of roasting the salmon. At one point, grease from the cooking fish spattered the boy’s thumb. Putting it in his mouth to ease the scalding pain, Fionn gained universal knowledge.

Fionn MacCool tastes the Salmon of Knowledge, Irish Stamp, 2012, Irish Post wesbsite

Are We Less Intelligent Than Our Ancestors?

I believe that people who were born before the 1950s and television were in many ways, smarter and more resourceful than we are today. While it was generally true in earlier times that only upper class males were well-schooled and could attend university, many of them could speak Greek, Latin, French German and other languages, regardless of their field of study. It was not uncommon for the middle classes as well, to have an education that was perhaps more all-encompassing than today's. While admittedly, the poor received little or no official education, yet they were smart and resourceful enough to get by.  Rural people were able to foresee the weather with relative accuracy just from observation of the world around them. They would, frequently and accurately, predict if a coming winter would be mild or severe, or a summer dry or rainy – simply by gauging the fuzziness of caterpillars, the flight behavior of birds or nesting activities of animals; as well as from the flowering and fruiting patterns of trees. We can rightly argue that climate change has now made it impossible for anyone to predict even short-term weather. But, let’s also admit that many of our first warnings of something not quite right with our climate, began with old-timers and rural people.

Students today are corralled into being STEM, arts or sports students, depending primarily on social class, culture and even ethnicity. While frankly, this has been true since the latter half of the 20th century. I think schooling used to be more well-rounded.  When I went to public school (longer ago than I care to admit), I had excellent grammar, spelling and penmanship (what’s that? you ask). And although I did fail high school calculus, I can still do simple arithmetic without the use of a calculator. When I was a child in grade school, we were expected to be able to recite a lengthy poem “off by heart”. After more than half a century, I can yet recall various snippets from Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman, as well all of Walter de la Mare's haunting poem Someone. Memory is forever.

Athena Giustiniani with the wise Acropolis Serpent coiled at her feet, Vatican Museum (photo: Tetraktys)

The coming of computers, iPads and cellphones have rendered us less capable of recall and more dependent on outside factors for information. As a result, we have lost our writing, grammar and spelling skills, along with our potential for prodigious memory. What can we do to alleviate this? We can make a point of getting outdoors for a couple of hours at least, every day and noticing the world around us. We can try to leave our cellphone at home – or at least, shut it off and not answer it during our sojourn in nature. Board games and crosswords also help develop mind skills. Various exercises such as learning poetry or songs by rote; or correctly ordering a divination system such as the Futhark, Talking Forest, even the Tarot deck, all help strengthen recall. Learning a new language is an excellent memory booster and will always serve you in good stead, even if you don’t travel. If you cook, learn new recipes, memorizing measurements and methods of cooking.

Memory is forever – the hazelnuts that the wise salmon eats are lessons from the tree of human history floating in the stream of consciousness. Memorization was essential to oral traditions that lacked the convenience of writing.  Runes may have originated as a tool for knowledge retention. Important ideas were encapsulated via kennings – symbols of the most basic aspects of daily life.  It is thus quite plausible that writing originated via runes.

Hazel – Tree of Wisdom

Coll is the ninth rune in the Ogham runic system and its kenning is hazel tree, making it one of the five Ogham runes that is actually named for a tree. Not surprisingly, Coll stands for wisdom, knowledge and inspiration. Within the Celtic array, the Hazel rune conveys an element of divinatory understanding and the ability to see that which is hidden.

Coll or Hazel, Ninth Ogham Rune

Like the Ogham Coll, the Talking Forest Hazel,  represents wisdom, intellect and knowledge, but includes not only the Corylus hazelnut of the folktales, but also witch hazel, Hamamelis. The former species thrives all across the northern hemisphere in temperate and southern boreal regions, while witch hazel is native to both Asia and eastern North America, but not to Europe.

 Left, Hazel Catkins, early spring (Plant Image Library, Boston)   Right, Witch Hazel flowers (Gilles Ayotte)

Hazel, along with alder, hornbeam and hophornbeam, is in the same family as the birches. Witch-hazel is unrelated, being a close relative of the liquidamber tree and shrubs such as currants and gooseberries. Regardless, the two hazels are so much alike that, save for flowers and fruit, they are very difficult to tell apart. Both are small graceful trees of the understory; both favoring moist soil and frequenting pond and streamside. Both tend to thicket or form many small trunks.  The toothed oval leaves, more deeply veins in hazelnut, in both species turn burnished gold or crimson in fall. It is in their flower and fruit that the two species show their differences. True to Birch family membership, hazelnut has catkin flower, but very unique, weird looking fruit: round, reddish brown nuts enfolded in beak-like husks. No less eccentric, the witch hazel displays flowers composed of bright yellow filaments that bloom in autumn and later ripen into tiny nut-like pods resembling miniature turban squash.  Each of these contain two seeds that, upon fruition, suddenly pop out of the shell as far as 40 feet away!

 Left Hazelnuts in their beaked husks (photo Kay Broome, Toronto)   Right, Witch Hazel Pods (photo Cephas, Laval Univ., PQ) 

Hazel Knowledge

While witch hazel does not boast the copious mythology surrounding hazelnut, the tree was used by first nations to heal wounds and insect bites. For European settlers, a forked branch of witch hazel, or dowser, was deemed equally capable of finding aquifer water as hazelnut had been in the old country. 

George Casely, English Farmer, divining with forked hazel wand in 1942 (courtesy British Agriculture Dept.)

The feral witch hazel half of the Talking Forest rune refers to native wit and street smarts, every bit as necessary to intelligence as a good formal education, which is represented by the domesticated hazelnut.  In my experience, I’ve found that blue collar people are often smarter and less easily fooled than some university educated people. This is partly because, being stereotyped as uneducated, they don’t think they know everything. Moreover they often can't afford extra help, so they have to deal with day to day issues on their own, without outside help. This makes people resourceful. Travellers are also generally very perceptive and open minded, especially those who have experienced different societies and cultures.

Hazel is the third of four compound runes in the Talking Forest array, runes composed of two separate trees. Usually these are closely related – for example fir and spruce make Evergreen (link). In the case of Hazel, the compound rune consists of Hazelnut on the left with its forked diamond, representing the beaked fruit, and Witch Hazel on the right, with three dots representing the seeds bursting from the pod.

Left, Hazelnut with beaked nut, Right, Witch Hazel with sprung seeds (© 2009, Kay Broome)