There was a belief that was common to both the tribes of the Celts and of the American Indians. The details are different, but the idea was similar—that a Sacred, colossal tree united the realms of the Earth. The roots were planted in the physical; then, life evolved on its way up the trunk, culminating in the spiritual, which resided in the branches.

The top of the tree was an over-world, where the Sky People dwelt. They were, variously, the star beings seen in the constellations, the godlike progenitors of human kind, or spirit forms who created and then dropped or threw down The People.

Animals seemed to exist already, and could talk and reason and bargain with the Sky People. Sometimes, a mischievous animal would bring a gift—fire or the wheel, or knowledge of agriculture—which would help humans survive and thrive. Because the Sky People were jealous of their exclusive domain, they would become angry with the offending animal, who would be punished by being marked with some physical characteristic—distinctive coloring, for instance—because of this intervention. The Magpie, Coyote, Rabbit, Spider and Raccoon are examples of this.

There was a middle realm in which humans lived, the physical world of day and work. What happened there was caused by, or a reflection of, the events and conditions of the other two worlds.

Last, or rather first, there was a lower region of sleep and dreams and ancestors. This place was seen as the source of life, and the place where all life returned when physical existence was over, to be reabsorbed by Death. The roots of the tree were in the lower region, recognizing that much of the motivation in our everyday lives and thought was unknowable in the light of day, but more powerful and basic than the wakeful mind.

The cultures holding these traditional beliefs lived in or near the great primeval forests, which were thousands of years old when humans first became unified into cultural groups, and the trees would have been seen as not only alive, but as conscious and aware.

In Europe, and the greater part of North America, these mighty forests blanketed thousands of square miles, only broken up by bodies of water, the highest mountains, or regions of steppe. Many of these old trees had massive trunks, or lifted so high into the air that their tops could not be seen from the ground, so it was a completely plausible idea that trees could touch the heavens. There were no tall buildings, and no air travel, and the largest of the great trees would not have been cut down without fear of terrible retribution from the spirit of the land.

The reverent beliefs of those times appear to be long past, and we, as a species, seem to inhale the forests, describing them as “resources;” buying and selling, in cavalier fashion, what took decades, perhaps hundreds, even thousands of years to become part of Nature’s magnificent design.

I’ve given up believing that angry Gods, Goddesses or invisible spirits would avenge Mother Earth for our abuses of the forests, but I do believe that the changes in planetary temperatures, beginning at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, have reached a point in which climatic backlash is happening in front of our eyes. If we continue much longer to ignore or deny the obvious, the lands retribution for the demise of the great forests will be closer than we think.

© 2025 Laura J Merrill