Speaking with trees

A solstice journey with ancient yews and new sycamore shoots

A summer solstice pilgrimage to the ancient yew grove at Kingley Vale and a forest qigong session that felt like a direct continuation of that work.

A Pilgrimage to Kingley Vale

A planned evening visit to Kingley Vale on Monday 23 June with one companion changed after a late cancellation, and another friend almost immediately got in touch to ask if she could come along. The Universe always answers.

We arrived at Kingley Vale around half past seven on this beautiful evening, me with all my gear in my purple trolley. For those who don't know this ancient sacred place, it's home to some of the oldest yew trees in Europe - some over 2000 years old. Viking warriors were killed in a great battle here, raiding Anglo-Saxons who fought them off. The warriors are buried beneath Bronze Age barrows on the hill above. It's a place of magic and powerful energies where I've held ceremonies before, including working with these wounded warriors back in 2018.

Left 2025 Right 2018

The walk to reach the yew grove is about a mile, and we were both dressed ceremonially. We came off the main path following what we thought was a viable path, greeting the first yew we encountered and asking permission to enter. But soon we found ourselves caught in an overgrown thicket of brambles. We fought our way through a path that became increasingly overgrown until it defeated us completely. We had to turn back.

By the time we reached the cathedral of yews I've worked with many times before, it was getting towards nine o'clock. We found our trees - mine was the semi-hollow yew I've worked with previously, the one I know as the Tree of Hel, the Norse goddess of death. To me, it's a portal to the underworld, where I enter for vision journeys when I need to access those deeper realms.

My companion sat with the grandfather tree a bit further away. Though we couldn't see each other, we knew where we were. I opened the ceremony by reading the final verses of the Völuspá poem from The Poetic Edda—the verses that follow Ragnarök, which describe regeneration. As I read to the trees, I felt the Viking warriors present. Shivers ran through me. It was beautiful.

I'd already prepared my sitting space - a ring of salt around the tree, the deer skull that lives in my car placed in the hollow and decorated with roses, rose petals scattered as offerings. I asked the tree's permission to work with it. Permission was given.

I lit my cigar for a tobacco ceremony, took my coca leaf drops, and began an open-eyed vision journey to travel to the heart of the tree. As I witnessed the light fade with the setting sun and heard the owls begin their hooting, this message came forward from the Yew Tree Hel:

In the roots of the tree, I saw two shamans dancing by a fire. They said: "We will teach you to heal and extract the pain from the heart of others who need healing. Use rose petals, yew leaves, and your hands that belong to the wounded healer. Keep singing to the trees. You are so loved. You have great and powerful healing hands and a healing heart."

The message continued: "You will transmute fear and pain into gold. You will receive the abundance necessary for you to continue your path."

The colour purple was very present with the tree. After receiving this guidance, I drummed, and powerful voices came through, singing to the trees. Then we had the closing ceremony and returned home.

That same day I had discovered that Don Bernardino from the ancient and noble Basque House of Mendoza had been the powerful Spanish ambassador and spy in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, a fanatical champion of the Catholic faith and anti-Protestant who had been expelled from the UK for plotting to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. As newly appointed Ambassador to France, he then worked with the new French king and the noble House of Guise from Picardy, to actively persecute the Huguenot Protestants. My direct ancestors on my mother's side were Huguenot refugees who fled France in the early 1600s and landed in Cornwall. This week I've since miraculously unlocked and stepped through this Huguenot door, finally leaping from Cornwal where the trail had gone cold, over the Channel to France, and tracing my French family back to 1525 in Picardy. I had spent years seeking this information and drawing blanks. Until now. Here we have layers of ancestral healing work - the very persecution my ancestors fled from, the wounds carried through generations, and now the opportunity to heal these ancient traumas through my healing work. More is coming through on this story, and I will write about it in more detail in a future essay.

Forest Qigong

Today brought a beautiful continuation of this tree communion work. I attended a Forest Gong session in the park with my teacher Casper and a small group. We worked with the Earth energies - I channelled rose quartz from the Earth and golden light energy from the sky. I felt pure bliss and strong energies rising from my root chakra all the way through to my crown.

When we worked with a tree - I landed with a sycamore with new shoots and branches growing out of an ancient, decayed stump of its parent trunk (likely

felled in the Great Storm of 1987) - I received another powerful message. This beautiful tree was covered in ivy with tiny snail shells dotting its surface, and it had eyes in its smooth trunk.

This sycamore told me: "Stay rooted and grounded. As the old decays, your roots go deep into this earth and rebirth is taking place. Huge expansion, huge creativity - and this creativity you must continue to give voice to, to bring through in service of others."

The tree and I merged and became one. I felt so blessed and grateful.

This tree also gave me specific guidance: "Keep working with trees."

The question I now carry from that tree communion is this: If you have trees on your land, or land near to you, what is the oldest known tree that you can seek out and work with? How might you develop a relationship with it?

This deep communion with trees has been an intuitive feeling and relationship since I was a child, when I loved to climb trees and sit in their branches. What strikes me now is how this childhood gift has evolved - from that innocent child who loved climbing into their branches to the adult who now sits in ceremony, receiving visions and healing guidance from ancient yews and regenerating sycamores.

I've come full circle, but with the wisdom and spiritual tools to understand and work with what I was naturally drawn to as a child. Those early tree-climbing adventures weren't just play - they were relationship building, learning their energy, feeling their strength and wisdom firsthand.

The shamans in the Kingley yew roots told me to "keep singing to the trees" - they know I've been in conversation with their kind my whole life. This isn't new work for me; it's the flowering of something that was planted in my very earliest years.

If you feel called to work with trees, I invite you to consider: What is the oldest tree you can find near you? How might you approach it with ceremony and respect? What might it have to teach you about staying rooted while embracing transformation?

The trees are waiting. They have so much to share.

With love and gratitude for the ancient wisdom holders,

Serena xxx

What trees call to you? I'd love to hear about your own experiences with tree communion in the comments below.

This poem was from my first ceremony for the Wounded Warrior in 2018

Freya's Song

I am singing to the trees

The trees, they want feeding

The old trees

They are 2000 years and more

The old trees they want feeding

In Kingley Vale they want feeding

There are many spirits

In Kingley Vale,

that want feeding, that want feeding

We thank you for coming

In Kingley Vale

We want feeding

Freya is an old one

The Hornbeams are where you found me

The gateway to the Otherworld

They too want feeding

They like it when you sing to them

In the trees tops,

the Great Ones

They know that you will feed them

Ahyaa ahyaa ah

I await you every time you

Take me to the deep forest

I come from the Hornbeam

You found me

I was waiting

I was waiting

There for you to

Find me and bring me

Back to life again

Back to life again

For I am the source of life

The source of life will take you

To me in the deep place

In the forest

In the forest

The trees want feeding

They want feeding

So you will go and

do your High Seer

We called you in a dreaming

We are with you

We are holding you

You know that we are with you

All your ancestors, we are with you

We are with you, down the centuries

And the centuries and the centuries

Going far, far, far

Back, deep in time

You come from a long line

Of seers who can see us

We are with you in the forest

In the tree where you placed Freya

This is the Freya Song

Of the Hornbeam and the Yew Tree

The Yew Trees of Kingley Vale

Are so ancient and they hold you,

and they hold you.

Great great fylgja,

great great mother

great great blue whale

We are swimming together

Down the centuries, down the centuries

Together we are swimming

Far out to sea on the waves

Oh Freya, Freya, Freya

Oh Freya, oh great one

You see me, you hold me

And Skadi, and Skadi

is my Seer

She gave me the runes

To work with, to work with, to work with

Soon this song will come to an end

Soon this song, this work is sung

The song of Freya,

and the Hornbeam

We will teach you to sing it

In the forest

In the forest

In the forest

In the forest