Willow Moon
April 15th - May 12th

The fifth Celtic moon, the willow, provides healing and teaches you to release pent-up emotions and experience your grief. Tears are linked to healing as you express difficult and painful feelings, you are able to purge yourself of subconscious fears, which would otherwise prevent you from reaching your dreams. The Willow Moon offers us the opportunity to heal spiritual and physical ills. Like the willow, we can bend much more than we realize, without breaking, and then bounce back again, renewed and ready to go forward.

There are several species of willow native to Ireland. The grey willow or common willow is the commonest Salix species in Northern Ireland and is found as a large shrub in all sorts of damp or wet places. Willows grow 35-50 feet high with a diameter of 6-25 inches around. Rods were called sallies and could be used to make scallops for pinning down the thatch or they could be woven to make baskets. Willow pots were found in Corlea bog in Ireland. Willow twigs and branches were and are still used for thatching and to make baskets and sieves, ropes, beehives, lobster pots, coracle frames, fish traps, hurdles, hatchet and tool handles, shoemaker's cutting boards, fences, wattles and to bind brooms. Even the Romans sat in willow armchairs. Old country chairs were often made from willow sticks and in Victorian England willow furniture became fashionable. Today contemporary designers and makers adapt traditional willow stick and basketwork furniture for modern homes, conservatories and gardens.

The bark has been used as fodder for cattle and sheep as well as for tanning and dyeing. The bark makes a cinnamon red and the roots make a deep purple dye, which is used in France and Sweden for colouring Easter eggs. The wood especially that of the White Willow (Salix alba), is made into paper pulp, besides affording the best charcoal for artists' crayons. The wood of the Crack Willow (Salix fragilis) being durable, light, and pliant, is used for wash-boards to mills, and for the bottoms of carts and barrows, and, though seldom now so employed, was long ago recommended both for house-timbers and for naval purposes.

The Weeping Willow belongs to the group known as Crack Willows, and is characterised by producing their leaves and flowers simultaneously; by their flower-stalks bearing fully-developed leaves; by their catkin-scales being of a uniform, generally pale, colour; by the filaments of their stamens being perfectly free from one another and hairy on the lower part, while the capsules are free from hairs; and by their leaves being "convolute", i.e. rolled together in the bud, like a scroll of paper, with one free edge.

Country folk have been familiar with the healing properties of willow for a long time. They made an infusion from the bitter bark as a remedy for colds and fevers, and to treat inflammatory conditions such as rheumatism, help with internal bleeding, and it is also good for heartburn and stomach problems. The White Willow helps with headaches, minor aches and pains, as well as arthritis. Young willow twigs were chewed to relieve pain. In the early nineteenth century modern science isolated the active ingredient responsible, salicylic acid, which was also found in the meadowsweet plant. From this, the world's first synthetic drug, acetylasylic acid, was developed and marketed as Aspirin. A cup of willow-bark tea helps heal pain and fever. Meditating on willow is thought to bring a sense of deep connection with the Goddess.

In Ireland, harps were predominately made out of Willow because the soul of the Willow tree was thought of as musical. The Willow promotes healing, health, protection, and love. Its planet is the Moon, its element is water. It is best to use Willow for moon magic and wishing magic. It has a feminine gender. Some folk names used for the Willow are the "Tree of Enchantment", "Osier", and "Sough Tree". The Willow, in some traditions, have deities which correspond to it. Some are Artemis, Ceres, Hecate, Persephone, Circe, Hera, Mercury, Belili, and many others. The words, "Witchcraft," and "Wicca," are derived from the word, "Willow" and are associated with an ancient cult which used the natural cycle of creation associated with the goddess. Willow wands are normally used in healing rituals. The branches are used to bind home made brooms. Planting a Willow by a spring or river will protect your home.

One of the main properties of the Willow is fertility, and due to its slender branches and narrow leaves it also became associated with the serpent; the serpent in turn was sacred to the goddess Proserpina. In Athens it was an ancient custom of the priests of Asclepius to place Willow branches in the beds of infertile women, this in the belief that it would draw the mystical serpents from the Underworld and cure them. Asclepius himself was depicted with a serpent wrapped around one arm, and so came the belief that he had power over snakes.

The Willow is the tree most associated with the moon, water, the Goddess and all that is feminine. It is the tree of dreaming, clairvoyance, intuition, enchantment and deep emotions. Symbolically it belongs to the beginning of spring, when all of life is stirring in the depths and begins to shoot outwards once again. It was associated in Celtic legend with poets and with spells of fascination and binding. This is the willow moon energy, which puts us in touch with our feelings and deep emotions, and it is the ability of the willow to help us to express these, let them out, own them and charge them in fantastical leaps of inspired eloquence and understanding. Our deep unconscious thoughts speak to us through our dreams. Like the wand, talismans and charms can be made in the same way, perhaps using the natural shape of the wood to suggest and inspire a carving. Talismans may be worn round the neck or as a brooch, or carried within a pouch and kept close. Runic symbols can be carved on a talisman representative to their uses.

One old tradition concerning the Willow is still celebrated today by Rumanian Gypsies. This is the festival of Green George, which takes place on the 23rd of April. A man wearing a wicker frame made from the Willow represents the character of Green George, which is then covered in greenery and vegetation from the land. This is symbolic of the Willows association with water that fertilizes the land bringing fruitfulness to the fields. On the eve of the festival and in a gay and lively manner, everything is prepared in readiness. A young Willow tree is cut down and re-erected at the place of the festivities, there it is dressed and adorned with garlands. That same night all the pregnant women assemble around the tree, and each places an article of clothing beneath it. The belief being that if a single leaf from the tree falls on a garment over night, its owner will be granted an easy child delivery by the Willows goddess

Willow people are beautiful but full of melancholy, are attractive and very empathic, they like anything beautiful and tasteful and love to travel, they are dreamers and restless, capricious and honest, they are easily influenced but are not easy to live, with being demanding, they have good intuition, but suffer in love and sometimes need to find an anchoring partner

Willow Tree Facts

Scientific name: Salix
Latin name: Salix alba, S. caprea, S. cinerea, S. fragilis, S. viminalis
Common Names: White Willow, European Willow, Sally tree, Great Sallow, Crack Willow, Common Osier
Height: The white willow (Salix alba) can grow 20m tall, while the smallest species of willow grows to only 5cm.
Wood: The wood is tough and has elastic properties, used to make wood pulp and charcoal.
Leaves: The while willow has narrow, long silvery-green leaves, which are pubescent on both surfaces and finely serrated. Flowers and leaves appear at the time from March through June.
Flowers: Catkins, male and female flowers, grown on separate trees
Fruit: Winged seeds.
Habitat and description: Ireland, UK, Scotland, Central and Southern Europe, North America. A large tree with rough grayish bark. The twigs are brittle at the base.

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