PM 017: The Power of Druidism & Shamanic Tree Healing

#017 Hi there, my name is Ann Théato and I am here to teach you proven techniques for spiritual and psychic development from the comfort of your own home. I’m also here to investigate the teachings of experts across the globe, to bring you their wisdom, their advice and their spiritual wealth.

Nature is the visible face of spirit, yet we often walk this Earth half asleep, totally disconnected from nature and all the medicinal benefits it may bring us.  Shamanic Practitioner, Healer & Druid, Thomas Marty, is on the show, to generously share his incredible knowledge of the land, our ancestry and the importance of working in harmony with the natural world. Thomas specialises in a spiritual practice known as Ogam Tree Healing:  working with the spirits of the trees and channeling their energy, in order to facilitate self-healing and healing for others. As a Shamanic Practitioner, Thomas teaches that trauma can energetically imprint upon the body and express itself in physical manifestion, leading to illness. By using the shamanic techniques  of power loss, soul loss and spirit release work, it is possible to gain a spiritual toolkit that will serve you for the rest of your life.

DEAF FRIENDLY: If you'd like to get the links & show notes, including a complete transcription, head to: www.anntheato.com

Transcript

Hello everybody!  My name is Ann Theato and welcome to the Psychic Matters podcast – episode number 17.

Nature is the visible face of spirit, yet we often walk this earth half asleep, totally disconnected from nature and all the medicinal benefits it may bring us.  Shamanic Practitioner, Healer & Druid, Thomas Marty, is on the show, to generously share his incredible knowledge of the land, our ancestry wherever you are in the world and the importance of working in harmony with the natural world. Thomas specialises in a spiritual practice known as Ogam Tree Healing:  working with the spirits of the trees and channeling their energy, in order to facilitate self-healing and healing for others. As a Shamanic Practitioner, Thomas teaches that trauma can energetically imprint upon the body and express itself in physical manifestion, leading to illness. By using the shamanic techniques  of power loss, soul loss and spirit release work, it is possible to gain a spiritual toolkit that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Grab a coffee or a glass of water.  This episode is incredibly empowering and you will never walk on this Earth again, without being mindful that everything is alive with spirit. 

Ann

I’m in the Psychic Matters studio today with Thomas Marty, Shamanic Practitioner and Druid. Tom welcome to Psychic Matters.

Thomas

Hello, how are you, you alright?

Ann

Yes, I’m really good thank you, I’ve got some coffee, I’ve got a glass of water.  I just been out for a walk, so yeah, I feel really wonderful.  How are you?

Thomas

I'm great.  I got up this morning and I had to polish off the last 30 wands that I'm making, so I had to give them the final lick of polish.

Ann

Wow, wands.  That’s  incredibly interesting, I want to ask you about your work making wands as well.  Where would you like to start Tom, with all the work that you do?

Thomas

I think it all started, sitting in the front room, aged around 51, thinking where am I going in my life? What am I doing? I'd been or I am a Reiki Master a Reiki Karuna Master, I've done the Federation of Spiritual Healing healing course, I've done so many different courses and healing. I've sat in circles; I've done all those things and there was something still missing.  What was missing in my life?  Now I'm there, I'm married, three lovely children, work’s going fine.  What's still missing?  And it's always, this has always been the thing in my life and it's to do with spirit; what is the communication? Why isn't it sort of, why isn't it working or is it working and there’s times it does work and that's brilliant but there's an emptiness.  What is the emptiness, how can I fill that.  So I sat there and I thought well what's next, Thomas, and the little voice said shamanic healing and I went well that's interesting, coz I sat on, in a circle probably 2 years before, where this very scary lady came decked in silver bracelets, big enormous blonde hair and sort of just silver everywhere.  And she, she was lovely she was big, she is full of energy and just talked about shamanism or shamanism and, and I thought, well that sounds a bit scary, flying all over the universe and can you come back or with spirit world and that, but this thought came into my head and I said well okay let's have a look at it. YouTube, shamanic healing, couple of sites came up and then one saying the Sacred Trust in Dorset and it rang a bell, there was an affinity straight away.   Read the website I thought yep this is it, this is the place for me to go, to train. So, I looked them up and you do an introductory course to check whether you can journey.  Journey is a way of working or navigating the spirit world in a shamanic way or world; they had the upper world the lower world, the middle world.  The middle world is spirit enveloping or interacting with physical reality.  The upper world you're working with spirits that tend to come thru in human form, all wise, all loving, all compassionate and they will be the teachers in many ways.  The lower world you're working more with the power animals that would come through in, as they say, in animal form and work you with protection, help you with your healing aspects of your healing work and so we did that course and again I found wow yeah this works this is brilliant this is so exciting.   And it's something that I've not had in any of the other projects or courses that I'd been involved in, this was like, I'm seeing this, I'm feeling this, this is real to me so I did a couple of courses weekend courses with six dressed up in London and then I applied for the three year Shamanic Practitioner training I was accepted and then started three years of training.   On the very first component, you go there, you dig a grave, you also do a number of rituals and rites which we won't talk about but the grave was fantastic, you dig a grave and I'm quite a big guy so my intended was 5 foot deep, three or four foot wide and you cover it with a small little hole for breath and we spent the night in there and you commune with Mother Earth, with a goddess.  You talk of your life, as much as you can remember, the good, the bad, the ugly, what comes up.   And you're honest.  What a beautiful opportunity to speak from the deepest part of you, to get anything you want to get out.  You can sing, you can move, as much as you can, and everybody would get a different experience.  So, I can only really speak about my experience where I saw wolf at different stages throughout the evening or the night.  It was quite far away, then next time it was closer, than it was closer and then I journeyed on what is the Wolf known as my ancestral clan, so my clan of ancestors is the Wolf or the wolf clan.  And from that, so that you take that into other, you learn about what is illness, where does illness come from and in the physical world and it starts as we know in spirit and it sort of comes and manifests into the physical.  Now when it's in spirit, sort of or at that side of ourselves if you like, it's when we are working with spirit  we are powerful, we are full of spirit, we are full of power and again with your allies, you can have as many allies as you wish or  that wish to work with you.  They can be gods and goddesses, they can be the power animals, they can be expressly for extraction work, when you're pulling energy that shouldn't be in the body or is no need to be in the body any more, you're pulling that out.  For soul retrieval and that's with trauma work.  We all have trauma, from stabbing or toe in the morning or in the middle of the night, through to major life issues, breakups, accidents, illnesses and with the soul retrieval, we would go out into spirit to find those parts of the soul essence that wish to come back at this moment in time to work with your client.   We bring them back, they bring back energies with them, or gifts.  We find out what they are, we also find the reasons why they left as well.  Now spirit tends to speak in metaphor or in symbols, so sometimes the information we get, sort of, and again, it's all done for the client for the clients point of view, it's not me and my journey, I am just doing the journey for the client, so all the messages, everything comes back as a package for the client to read, to understand.  We don't interpret it because that can water it down, that can make it sort of inconsequential in a sense, that sort of how they interpret it, it is very easy to say, oh I don't get it, I don't, I don't want to know what it is and put it in drawers.   Whereas if you look at the work, and as you know with psychic work, give it time, things come out to the conscious level.   We look at psychopomping, or the possession, most people I'm afraid to say are carrying, I will call them energy, but entities, if you want to call them entities, shades all sorts of things and again we go in and work either face to face or I've done a lot of this work distant, as in the distant healing, and remembering that everything is energy everything is vibration and when you break it down on that level and you're working with spirit you're working with the allies who are very powerful, and the idea is that we work as a team.  I’m the physical side of it, spirit is, works in the spirit so together we can work long distance with the client.   We pull things out, we sort of, and then put energy and healing energy in.  Curse removals, things that are consistently happening in families, all the way down the line, sort of oh, this always happens to our family, sort of, why am I cursed? And we laughingly say or use that word, but cursing, especially in today's world, as well, it’s making a comeback, it’s those negative thoughts, it’s that, you know that guy there, well he's a complete  & utter *** and you direct, they are bows and arrows, they are spears.   You walk down a busy High Street, especially if you're in London and the amount of people; all those negative thoughts, all that negativity that's flying around, and we don't do enough protection.  If we are protecting ourselves, and again shamanically we are consistently bringing in allies, different allies for different things but your main 24/7 protection ally, you wear them like a coat, you walk and nothing can touch you.  Stuff rebounds off.  I've had been attacked and sort of psychically or entities trying to get in and they bounce off; they don't get in because you are protected and it's that strong.  So, we pull things out, we put things in, we do a lot of divination work, we teach people how to journey for messages for themselves.  You can get direct revelation from the gods and goddesses or from spirit and then you get lots of, I use the word spinoffs, it's not spin offs as such, but a lot of women shamanic practitioners will do a lot of work especially with the feminine, the divine feminine, and it's really, really positive strong work and we're slowly now starting and getting some shamanic men doing work for male groups and it's all because we've lost our links in this modern world, with all this, with our divinity, with the divine inside, with the sacred spiritual. Religions across the world as sort of are imploding because for years they've just not they got caught up in their own power games in many ways and it's not about the people anymore, it's about institutions, it's about money ,it's it's about power.  We as individuals owe it to ourselves because we create the world around us, so instead of blaming other people, take responsibility and anyone and everyone can do this.

Ann

Wow that's a lot.  That's fascinating because some of the things that you talk about are very different opinions to my own and very different ways that I look at the world, so I'm fascinated to have his conversation with you just to see how we both look at, both being spiritual beings and light workers ,working in very different ways. So, let's go to the grave that you dug can I go back to that part Tom, coz this is very interesting to me.  I know that in Toltec community they would have what they call recapitulation where they would build a box, and they will get inside the box and have a similar experience to you, where they are going back to their childhood, they’re re-living all the traumas, and anything that comes, all of that sort stuff and they spend some time in the box to cleanse and then they burn the box afterwards, so they burned that, so that sounded similar.

Thomas

Yes, so what we also do, around that time, I think the bit I didn't say, was that we also work with the ego of the aspiring shaman.  So, we do that in a certain ritual that takes place where you look, again you create something, which is full of maybe the negative side of yourself, the ego, the things that you sort of, you know, you would like to get rid of, it is a sort a way of cleansing.   You create that, and then there's a whole ritual, which I'm not really, I can't say about it because it's, again, it's a piece of work and it's a secret piece of work to do it with a Sacred Trust.  But with that, you are confronting your ego, you are getting rid of your ego, and it's all done in a very safe way but is a very, very powerful way.   I mean, I remember sitting on the side of the hall thinking, I'm going to get called up in a minute, what can I say? And I was thinking, the very bad part of me, or maybe the ego part of me was saying, I'm well you could say this and that sounds interesting,

and you know sort of yeah, coz then, you know, I’m so interesting to all the other people on the course.   Suddenly Simon looked at me and as soon as he looked at me the energy dropped out of me, or should I say I was suddenly filled with this sort of,  you can’t run mister, you can't hide, this is truth, and I stood up and as I stood up, everything shifted for me and there was this, this and I had to come out and I had to speak from my heart and buckets of tears, buckets of tears, truths being told, recognition and also words of advice, saying this isn't the whole healing, put it in with the burial later.  So, there is yeah, look at the ego, work with the ego get rid of what is not needed but again done in a safe practical way.

Ann

You’re standing there, with your, you know, you've cried and you've gone through this whole experience and you’re stripped back as it were, and so what are you stripped back to?  Your soul self?

Thomas

Yeah, I think so yeah. I mean sort of, at that stage we were not really told what it is, you just having that experience but there's no, there is no hiding and there's no thought of hiding once you're up on that podium, that stage, doing that work, and I would say sort of it's the same when I work as a healer, when I work as a whatever way as a shaman or a druid or whatever, when you power up there's no hiding.  You, there's no falseness there, you are full of spirit power and it's, it's the most powerful thing I've ever experienced.

Ann

Yes, to go back to who you truly are that’s very interesting.  And you also talked about the shaman's believing that there is an upper or lower middle, layer in their world and that reminds me of tribe in Africa called the piraha tribe and they are the most little studied tribe in the world and this missionary went to stay with this tribe and he was trying to convert them to his Christian religion and anyway that's another story, but they very much believed in this upper world and the lower world and that they lived between the two so when they were asleep they were in the other world and when they were awake they were in this world.  It was fascinating, so there's a similarity there.

Thomas

When we are trying to sort of, modern western shamanic teachings come from a guy called Michael Harner who is American anthropologist, that word, where you the study tribes, groups of people shall we say, but he went down to South America and he was studying with this tribe and they kept, this is it in a nutshell, and they kept disappearing into this cave and you thought oh, what are they doing in there, so he went and had a look and realised they were having a mystical experience.  And I can't remember now, and I don’t want to get it wrong, I think the first few times they were doing it they were taking like ayahuasca, that type of drink to help them transcend, or to move into that space but he quickly realised that drumming, you could, you could reach the same state.   It's not a trance, but it is altering the brain waves, so 4-7 beats a second - bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang bang and once you've learnt how to move into what we call, our world we call ordinary reality, the spirit world is non-ordinary reality and then you go to the upper world and the lower world or you can do middle world journeys.  Michael Harner.   So yeah, and he developed this sort of the drumming technique.   My teacher learned with him back in the 70s or 80’s whatever it was, brought it back over here and again it, as with all teaching, it develops, but the basic of four tenants are the same, you work with the drum, once you learn that you can journey upper world, lower world, middle world journey, you are meeting with the spirits of these worlds, it is up to you what you do with that.  So if you go for the proper training, in the sense with the shamanic schools, they will teach you how to, heal, using  you know, the things that I just said, extraction, soul retrieval, psychopomp, depossession, curse removal, taboos but also to how to divine, to work in divination in different ways and whatever else, ancestral, ancestral work, feminine work or masculine work and that's the joy of it, it is evolving.

Ann

Yeah, that is the joy of it.   Tell me about soul retrieval then because that interests me as well.  I have done a weekend of shamanic practitioner work, maybe not shamanic practitioner but shamanic, it was just a shamanic weekend I think, and I found it fascinating, because we went on these soul journeys but tell me a little bit more about retrieving the soul and why do parts of the soul leave and where do they go?

Thomas

Okay, so I've done this now God knows how many times, a million times, the premise is the same.   I do a diagnostic journey for the client.  One of the things that comes up now and again is soul retrieval, they're powerless, they need to reclaim some of their energy.  So, my intention is to journey into the upper world, lower world of spirit to find the soul part for client’s name that wish to come back and work with them at this moment in time.   Now if the person suffered trauma as I said before, they could be, it could be as little as stubbing your toe, something major happening in your life, a little part of your soul lessons too, it's almost like a safety factor, will fly off, because if we keep hold of all the energy and it's all trauma, it could all be too much.  If you look at the animal world, you see when an animal is attacked by an animal another animal, they'll give up, bang.  

Ann

Yes 

Thomas

Now a lot of them will sort of, bits will fly off, and they run away and they will be saved, hooray they live.  And then what they do is they lie on their back, you watch the big cats, things like that, and rub, and that brings a lot of their soul part, they are getting back into the physical world.  So maybe that's something we should remember, after we’ve suffered trauma, not lie on the floor and rub but it's that sort of physical contact.  Go and get a message, rub your back, get back into the physical world, because if you're living in the emotional, mental world, sort of all the trauma that you are then creating or acknowledging, will manifest.   When we do sort of get only emotional issues, problems, mental and that, they do end up coming through into the physical body.   So, just backtracking we go off so, there's, so I use a rattle coz it's easier, I just prefer a rattle, I give my intention, I visually see myself spinning wherever, it could be out in the universe, it could be anywhere behind waterfalls and water, in the mud, behind a tree, doesn't really matter but I'm led to a place and then I will see that person aged whatever.  So, I say ohh Jeffery are you there?  And then a face might appear out of the mud and say yes I'm here and I say how old you then Jeffrey?  And he’ll say well I'm three years old and I'm really peeved off because no one's listening to me they're not feeding me and blah blah blah is all too much so you can get them as young as three, as a baby. I've even heard them coming from soul parts that have come out the womb for specific reasons, all the way through to however old they are  now.  Different soul parts, different ages.   They give me the reason why they left and I say OK fine and you know that you sort of you'd like to come back because Jeffrey could really do with a hand now and he wants to move on; and the soul part says yeah sure fine brilliant and what I want to bring back is … and then it will give me a strength, a gift, another positivity that it wants to bring back and give to the person. 

Ann

Right.

Thomas

So, it gives that list, I then sort of gather them it up in my crystal.  Now we use clear crystals because they work in the upper world and the lower world, so we collect the soul part up; you can do it with your hand if you haven't got crystals.  You come back and you blow it into the clients heart chakra and head chakra.  I then rattle around; I see it moving in and that part is then delivered back to the client.

Ann

So, is there a benefit to parts of the soul leaving do you think? So that later in the, your human life, you can come back and bring a gift with you. Is there a benefit to that do you think>

Thomas

They tend to come back at the right time, these parts, so it's like a bank in one sense that things that do fly off… bits do come back because after a few days of trauma, you start to feel your old self again. Where you said I stand aside, when I feel beside myself, when we start to sort of come back, we sort of feel ourself becoming one again.  And that's because you probably split from the physical or the etheric or the astral body has just shifted out, so you are just bringing it all back in, back in line.

Ann

Interesting, because I think our soul doesn't just reside here in the physical, I think we reside in spirit world as well, and other realms,  I don't feel we are all here in this human self, so I think there's so much more to the soul that we think it's just this one thing.

Thomas

I would agree with you. I think the soul is truly marvellous, beautiful, it works in many different levels and dimensions.  It then links up course with soul group, it links up with others and because it's all part of the earth, the one great divine.   Which again sort of, how much we are trained as a shamanic practitioner, and we call on ourselves shamanic practitioners rather than shaman's because the idea being that it's your community that would call you a shaman.  So we in the West are getting trained, it would be too egotistical of us to sort of say we are shamans, because you know, sort of, I did a course, a three year course and now I'm living this life and my community, well you sort of, you slowly make your community with the people that you work with over the years and they're probably not all from your area, so it's the differences and in today’s world it is very much a virtual community as well.

Ann

Yes, it is, certainly at the moment it is.  And tell me that psychopomp what does that word mean?

Thomas

It’s a Greek word that means, it's just like a mover on of souls.  It's the depossession as well, they sort of come together as one.  So, what we will find or what we found in people will be the human entities that have sort of come back in for whatever reason. Again if we all acknowledge that we are energy, it's that thing of an energy form finding something resonates with your energy and they might pop in. They might see the light around you and want a part of that, it might just feel safe.  It might be a bit worse than that, it might be something that are not very nice and have just come in and it might be something that you picked up outside a real grungy pub you know, and they want to come back and have a drink with you.

Ann

This is where my current thinking is different to yours, and of course I say that because we are always evolving and changing as we learn more and more, so I keep a very open mind about everything, but I'm currently, I find it difficult to accept or believe in something can be attached to me or that there is a negative entity because that's not within my experience, so I'm very interested to hear you talk about that.

Thomas

OK so just to move it a bit further, things, other things that I've ended up pulling out of people will be nature spirits.  Again, sort of picked up as you're walking through nature or through the city or wherever.   Well a nature spirit could be anything that you can know of the fae, and that also goes down some of that are the demons that people talk about, I don't know too much about that and so talking about that side of things will be out of my experience but I've taken a few demons out of people.

Ann

When you say demon, do you mean a black thing with horns on his head or what is…

Thomas

Well however it wants to show itself or however I pick it up. I just pick it up as an energy, you know, so it's an energy form that doesn't need to be in this person, shouldn't be in this person, so let’s, and I'm told that through my guides, they do the work we pull it out.

Ann

That's a good explanation of demon then, an energy form that doesn't need to be in the person.

Thomas

Yes, same as in houses or whatever it, energy is energy and vibration is vibration.  Who are we to that lived upon this earth in this modern world for 1000, 2000, 3000 years the Earth’s history goes back you know 40,000, 400,000 where people have lived on the, things have happened on this land either natural or manmade, so energy is energy and if you disturb stuff it can bring that energy out.

Ann

Fascinating, because I was thinking this morning when I moved into this house which is a rented house in Suffolk.   Something had happened, I could just sense it in the kitchen by the washing machine, I just felt like there'd been an argument or something in the air.  Every time I stood there I felt ooh, somethings gone on here, yeah so that's within a physical space, and you're talking about within the human space, so how would you take something, if you were just going for a walk in the Woods, how do you make sure you don’t take anything home with you?

Thomas

I would say again it’s intention and protection and again if you sort of,  if you're working with your heart, if you sort of like if you're walking around in a loving beautiful way, are going to be protected.

Ann

Yes, but what are these energetic forms and why would they attach themselves to a passing human being?

Thomas

Sometimes it's just have a bit of fun you know.   We can come up with all the nefarious reasons that we like but sometimes it’s from the human point of view, we always say there’s aliens out there looking at us, well there’s aliens in us sometimes as well because they become inter dimensional and so what better way to look at somebody that then from the inside to experience what is going on.

Ann

Well I can understand aspect that from my work Tom because when I'm doing trance mediumship or channelling from the spirit world, then you are inviting spirit people in and you are literally blending with their spirit and asking them to put their face over your face, their hands over your hands, and then you're literally using, they’re using your eyes to look out at the world, so I understand that aspect from my experience.  But I'm finding it hard to look at it from… isn't it weird, why is it so challenging for me?

Tom

I don’t know.  I mean, it is that thing of, I sat there with people and how we would say, well you know, I've been told that there's some psychopomp or de-possession work to do, so you can be drawn to parts of the body but you might also say where does it hurt in your body?  Where is there an itch or scratch or something that isn't quite working and you would take that as a starting point to bring whatever is in there out.

Ann

A demon is an energy form that is unwanted within the physical space rather like an energy that is unwanted within a house space or an environmental space, so I understand that.

Tom

Well you know we build these houses on land, we don't know the history of the land, you know, sort of nature spirits or just spirits in general, sort of inhabit everything.   Everything is alive with spirit it’s how we see it and hence you can communicate with them and ask them to move on or move them on.  And in shamanic training or practitioner, we don't see anything as evil, nasty, horrible, you know sort of they must be damned, very much like church does, damn them to the seventh pit of hell or whatever, that’s bad, that’s nasty, just move it on to where it should be, talk with it, find out why it's there. 

Ann

And what sort of conversations do you have?

Thomas

Well with the nature spirits they can be hysterically funny because they’ll, you can be sitting there talking to this, what comes across as a human entity, who's had a very hard life and died in terrible, tragic circumstances back 100, 200 years ago or just 10 days ago whatever and then you say right around it's time to move on now so let's..  are you ready to move on and he goes, and then it just, and again this is through the clients speaking because you asking the client to take, just move to the side and let the entity speak through them and there's a way that the nature spirits sort of tend to laugh or there's a look that suddenly comes over the persons face and you think ah, this isn't who they say they are.  And the nature spirits will have fun at your expense and you can be there if you wanted to, you could be there for hours negotiating talking about why it should move on and why it's good for everybody and the universal law of sovereignty and blah blah blah and then sometimes you just go, actually we haven’t got the time for this so I'll just bring in one of my big allies, nature allies who just comes in and says and I just say, look who is behind me, do you want to move or you know, move with this fellow and understand the rules, the universal law of sovereignty and it's done, it is completed and sometimes the ally will take them straight away or the entity will agree to be moved.

Ann

And what is the Universal Law of Sovereignty?

Thomas

What is the Universal Law of Sovereignty is that you cannot interfere, move into the energy or takeover the energy or try to get into the other persons energy field.  To consciously knowingly sort of move into it would be wrong.   So sometimes you come across quite tragic cases where babies or older people or whatever have just gone in because they've loved the energy, they felt the love of the person.

Ann

Your clients that come to you Tom, what results are they experiencing, what are they saying after a session with you?

Thomas

Most of them sort of would come back after it and say well I slept I'm never slept well that before or that's first time I've been at peace and that's carried on through into the next day and into the next week.   Physical ailments that have been suffering from for a number of years sometimes are completely cleared, or sort of you might we might go back and have a second session if it is not quite gone to finish, finish the work off. Then generally, because you're cleansing, your cleansing their energy form, so it tends to be a lighter, feeling better and if it's a specific ailment, illness or whatever if is 100% it's 100% positive result.  Sometimes you might need to go back a couple of times with someone to shift it along, other times, you get a good 75% of it working, there might be so much there after a lifetime of living in a certain way, you're not going to get 100% sort of miracle cure.

Ann

Yeah of course, so you are an energy practitioner, would you describe yourself as that?

Thomas.

Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Ann

It fascinates me because I just think there is so much I don't know.  How come I don't know that there are nature spirits and spirits? how come I never really considered it more fully myself?   I know about the fairy world and spirits but I don’t know enough about it.

Thomas

I want to come back into the Ogam tree healing because again that's working with the spirits of the trees. So, Ogam is a word which sort of is really the ancient Irish alphabet.  The god Ogam who was from the god of writing, all to do with the dagdar and Tuatha Dé Danann, and in my druid work, we look at the Ogam trees.  There's 25-26 trees and each tree has a symbol and is the symbol of this alphabet and there's five groups.  Four groups that are made up of the alphabet and five trees in each group, each tree represents a letter. The fifth group is the sounds if you like, the AEIOU that which came in from the Greek alphabet mid 14th century.  So, there are five groups of roughly 5 trees.   Originally used or instead we say for the last 50 years, has been used for divination, so people would work with Ogam cards and you would, you can do readings for people.  For example, let me just pull out Silver Birch, so Silver Birch belongs to letter B in the Ogam alphabet and is associated with Birch tree.  The symbol represents new beginning, change, purity, rebirth.  So, I was sitting underneath my Oak tree in my local reserve, bird reserve, or the sanctuary, as I call it and so sitting there chatting away  with the spirit of the Oak who just turned round and he said right now your work is to explore scientifically and medically each one of these trees, what is it used for in science, in medicine, which means if it has that energy within its makeup can we channel that energy to use in healing work.  So, really on that that session, I spent a year and a half sort of on the computer YouTubing reading books on all the 25 trees and coming up with a great big list for each tree, so for example with Silver Birch, as well as cleansing, depression, diet, foundation, vitality, helps in diets, new beginnings, so if you’ve got a new project, go and sit and channel the Silver Birch symbol.  It protects mothers and their young.  I had also then, it's good for cholesterol levels, detoxing the body, it’s good for high blood pressure, respiratory diseases, digestion, cystitis, kidney and bladder and a host of other things that have all, can be taken from that tree.  If you like in the physical world, so you can use it, you can sit under silver Birch and just sit in this energy.  If you can tune into the spirit so I'm running these workshops where is called The Beginners Book Of Ogam Healing where we learn the 25 symbols.  We create a Grove in our spiritual world if you like, in the astral, where you will go and meet all of these trees, you will meet the Guardian of the Grove you meet the gods and goddesses of each tree and we will learn the to self-heal and heal others.

Ann

It just fascinates me, I just think it's so beautiful, and the book that you’ve written is called, say it again Tom for me, 

Thomas

The Beginners Book a Ogam Healing it’s currently with the editors at the moment so I'm just waiting for that to come back.

Ann

And when are you doing these workshops?

Thomas

Well I'm starting in September, I'm doing a free taster course on the 17th of, Thursday the 17th of September so if anyone is interested please contact me via my shamanic website which is www.martyshamanichealing.com and if you send me an email through that, I can then sort of put you on the list, then the week after from the 24th through to the first week of December, there's five weeks then a week off for half term and then another five weeks.  Costing I think between £250 I think it is if you pay up front or £275 and it will be held on zoom Thursday nights between 7:00 and 9:00 two hours each session work.

Ann

It’s fascinating and this is unique work to you, is that right?

Thomas

Yes, to you now from what I tried to find out if anyone else does Ogam Healing. I think people are aware of you can do certain things with it, that I've not come across that many or if any websites where people do what I do.  So, I'm saying that I will attune you, very much like in Reiki where you attune yourself to the symbols, what I'm saying is that you can attune yourself.  So yes I'm saying come and read the book or come on workshop but basically this is stuff you can do yourself so in the long term it should save you money, rather than doing hundreds and thousands of courses, although saying that, I'm about to start teaching on my advanced course which is like the second level of it, where we are looking at chakras, we're looking at working with the Fae, we’re looking at the elements, bringing the elements into play because the elements are an incredibly rich source of healing and information and whatever.  So, it's really sort of hopefully, opening the whole thing up and saying look let's come and have some fun. And I think with all our work Annie, I've got to say the most important thing is we don't do, well we do do it because we are serious and we want to heal the world and blah blah blah but it's also fun.  As I said about being powerful, there's no other feeling, not even after a breakfast of sausages & eggs or whatever, sorry, its thing of you can't buy this this, this is real, it’s natural.  And anyone and everyone can do it and we can do it to to different degrees.   I mean, I worked my first workshop of ladies and one man and the results they are getting .. and I’m thinking I can't do that! but then sort of, why should they, why should people only do what I can do.   You know we're all, we all have gifts in different ways, and people will find different ways of opening up artistic skills that people have already got, are being completely expanded.

Ann

Yes, and talking of artistic skills Tom you make these beautiful wands.  Talk a little about your work making wands.

Thomas

Well, again it comes from working with the trees.  There I am walking out and again with the druid work and druid work is absolutely fantastic, you learn to breathe with the land you become one with nature, you learn to bring sort of the higher mental down to work with the feminine, making magic, making life real.  It brings you alive, that’s what I want to say.  So  walking through the woods, hey ho, you just keep coming across branches, you keep coming across sort of twigs and things like that and part of the Druid training is you do look at wands at the same point, when you're actually on the druid part of it, course.  And I thought lockdown, I’m sitting at home, yes I'm working, my day job is online I’m Head of Welfare & Well Being in an international arts College in Cambridge but I'm, got a lot of time at home even though I'm going in there to work and I started thinking I can make a wand or two.  I've made 200 since March.  I am one of these people that sort of when I start something that's, that's it, it's madness but this is the freedom of what the Druid work, of the shamanic work of working with spirit, I've had two other books of fantasy stories.  One is called The Way of the world another one is A Little Of What You Fancy they are out there on Amazon and Lulu.   And again, they are sort of spiritual stories or humorous stories should we say, short stories their fine. I've got the Ogam Book that is being written, there's a number of novels that are in process the being written so it's a, it's a non-stop love of life that you sort of think, well who am I, what am I, this is who I am, now let’s explore it, let's really sort of do it and you don't do it for other people, you don't do it for monetary value, you do it because you can do it or you want to try to do it.  William Blake, you know, sort of brilliant artist, man never famous in his life time he just said, I do it for me and I do it for God.  What better, nowadays we say the divine rather than just make it a male sort of thing, but it is that thing of well yeah, you do because you can.  And it doesn't matter how much or how little.  You can do it.

Ann

That's where you find, well that's where I find the most satisfaction in life, when it is just you and the divine.

Thomas

Yea. I mean I go for walks all the time, as much as I can, trying to lose weight it just doesn't work, it’s back to those sausages again, but it's whatever is on your mind you know, if you're trying to process something, go for a walk, walk in nature, walk on grass walk, and if you haven't got that, walk the streets.  Or if you’ve got a plant, talk to the plant.  There's a reasons why all these things have been said and that and I remember the first time a crystal talked to me, back when I was in my 20s, and I had a little quartz crystal that's the one I'm talking about, sitting beside the bed and as I turned, I turned the light off, went down and I heard a little voice say goodnight Tom  and I went, you what?  I thought it was the cat but it wasn't the cat it was the quartz crystal and you know and since then I work with crystals, I work with work with bark you know sort, I use anything I can. I found a beautiful stone came to me in the back garden, literally a week ago, to represent the divine feminine, when I look at it there's a hole in the middle, with the womb, and there's a distorted face at the top, Russian a la carte piece of art if you like and I worked magic with it last night.   These things just come, you use them, fantastic.  Before you take anything, so like with branches, if it's on the floor they’re yours.  If you're going to take anything from the tree, ask the tree.  Don't take anything living, take only stuff that is dead.  What’s his name, Stuart, he does, he’s written loads of, loads of books on the fae and on nature and that, he says he said he puts it beautifully, he says how would you like someone to come along and break off your finger because your finger looks nice and they could  I think do something with it, don’t.

Ann

And I've got some flints for you, that I collected in the field

Thomas

Yes, you do yeah and I look forward to …

Ann

So that you can make some wands, because you made me a beautiful Oak one with symbol of the Ogam symbol of oak.

Thomas

Alder you had, was it Alder?

Ann

No because you gave me two - one for my daughter Joccoaa and that was the Alder and then the Oak one.

Thomas

Oh, Oak is beautiful.

Ann

It is a stunning wand.   Are you selling the 200 that you have? People might be very interested.

Thomas

So what people are doing, they’re saying, I give them the list of the:  Silver Birch, Rowan, Alder, Ash, Willow, Hawthorn oh Hawthorn is lovely, Oak, Holly, Hazel, Apple, Ivy, Beech and Aspen, they are the other ones that I've got so far.  Just drop me a line through my email if you want them, I'll take pictures of what I've got, you tell me, I know there's three price range £25, £20 or £15 pound and then you’d have to pay post and package and posting.  What I do with them is I empower them, and so I empower them with the elements, I empower them with the Ogam symbol, I also empower them with the energies of that tree in the Ogam work, magic work, also the God of Ogam work I empowered that in, so it is a real sort of powerful wand.  And ready to go and then, sorry last thing, I talk with the spirit of the wand and it gives a message of what specific work it wants to work with the person.  So out of all the list of the things that oak like security, protection, opening the door to expand your spirituality or your knowledge or your experience, and a number of other things, it might just say, this wand is to help you in your learning of spiritual development.  So when you're sitting down and you want to meditate you want to explore an idea or theme or read it open up your circle, sit there with your wand and use it, sit there with it, get to know it, feel it. feel the vibration of it.  I mean they can't dance in your hand tonight so powerful they can be and again it's just get to know them and get to know the spirit, it's alive.

Ann

I wonder Tom could you tell us about your work as a druid because I don't know, I mean you've touched on it there with the wands and that beautiful power & energy of the wand and stuff but I don’t think I’ve ever met a druid and I’ve known you for years and years and years but I’ve never met a real live druid before.  Tell us about that, because I see them as being these sort of people you read about in books or look at in film but I don’t really know what they do.  

Thomas

You prod them with sticks and laugh at them!  No, you don't!  My experience of the shamanic work gave me the icing on the cake of life and experience.  Once I started working with OBOD and I thoroughly recommend it OBOD and that's the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, so the first section if you like is the Bard work, your creativity, it will inspire you in whatever work and whatever form you and even if you don't think that you were creative, for you will suddenly become creative and in so many ways.  Druid is full of folklore, okay and folk stories, and it's about history and the history of Druidry and it’s the history of practise, so it's it was handed down by word of mouth.  That’s why there's no records of anything.  All the farty old scientists that say druids killed people and blah blah blah they haven't a clue, no druids weren’t around.   They had the year of the Kings & the Queens, they were philosophers, they were scientists, they were the counsellors, they were the, they work with the people, the healers, the divination, they taught whatever needs to be taught, they were that class of people and there were many types of druids hence the Bards, Ovates and Druids.  So the bards were the beginners and they were very much like the minstrels in some sense, in that they would recount big poems stories or whatever through the lyre, the harp, singing these epic tales or sometimes very short ones and they would have to learn hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them to go up within the bards, there was a scale of bard in those days. And this is from information we have, because you have to look at the Irish the again, we go to Ireland for so much of this information because it was written down, they have records of it.  Wales do to a little degree and Scotland maybe even smaller but nothing exists in England because the Romans just came and wiped everything out, and most of Wales and that. So, you will find it, you will learn about the elements, you would learn about sort of just creating your own groves, creating sort of an access to the spirit world.  The Ovate section, the middle section, is the healing section and again you're learning about astrology, they are great astrologers the druids, it's not, that is not my cup of tea but I sort of got totally involved and that's how I got involved in the Ogam thing, because on that section that's for that's where we started to learn about it and again I can't say too much, because it's these, these are classes set within an organisation and they keep them secret for a reason, but I would say any sense of, if you want to live with the land and the land energy, with life energy, with spirit energy, you cannot do any harm by looking at becoming a druid.  And then when you move over into the druid, it's much more philosophic, it's much and again all the way through this you're, you're encouraged to work with organisations out here out there in the world that are doing good for the planet, for the animals, for the forests, for the seas, for the whatever, it really is working with nature, it's working sort of hand in hand and acknowledging that this, if we want to be around for another 100 you know 200 years, let alone thousands, we gotta start doing something about sort of cleaning our act up.  And it starts with the self, work with the self, cleanse yourself and it is the old bubble or ripple technique, you know, it will go out, and encourage people to go on marches and whatever, or sign those things, are against whatever is going on in the world, yeah, so Druidry.  Yes, so how did I…  so, I joined OBOD and then found in MeetUp which was, I said, ‘druid organisations in Cambridge’ and suddenly there was one there.  My good friend Will, and whilst  there's a number of people that are part of that group, so I just joined the meet, we started to meet officially last year, and again there was just a small number of us that met on this field beside the River Cam underside these Willow trees that had mistletoe and mistletoe again is all here and it's a beautiful plant, beautiful energies, the Willow tree us fantastic in this almost Grove and every six weeks we go, we commune with nature, commune with the earth, commune with each other, with the spirit of love and the spirit of life.  And there is a ritual and which we tend to use the OBOD version of it and we add things that we want to bring into it.  And we come from all walks of life or if you like different types of backgrounds, different types of people, and for that hour and a half or two hours that we are together, I can honestly say it's one of the most enjoyable times, because you are with like-minded people you are bringing this energy in and it's fun, we're back to that word fun again, it’s joyous.

Ann

Joyous gosh it sounds beautiful and men and women?

Thomas

men and women absolutely anything in between is welcome, there’s no one that would not be welcome.

Ann

OBOD – O B O D  can you just spell or say again that third ?

Thomas

Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.  Again, I think, is it a French word or Greek word, not sure, it's all part of the Celtic thing that came from the East.  I think it started originally around Turkey whatever, and spread West through France in to Britain.  And stones again, my god, druids and their stone circles yes go there, explore them, they are full of power, they’re… ooo… they're just so exciting.  And so you might be that weird person in like I was in Cornwall, and I got my wife who's not really into this, but she drove me to this middle of nowhere and I had to go across this complete wasteland of nature and farmland and locate these stones and in the distance I could see someone else walking but on the other side of the stones and I thought are they coming, is he coming?  And then I couldn’t see him for a  bit and we both arrived at the stones at the same time it was one of those, you can travel or you know sort of, from wherever, come to this place that no one ever goes to and meet someone at the same time. So we skirted round, ignored each other for a bit and then you had to, so I said hi my name is Thomas and my name’s George, where you come from? He came from Cambridge and I come from Cambridge.  He was there to research a novel and I was there to do druid thing and then, so we had a nice little chat and then, sort of time slips, when you know that these places are time, you know you're working with spirit time just flies.

Ann

So, going forward in your work then, so you've got your book that's with the editors 

Thomas

Yeah at the moment if you go to my shamanic website there isn't any information on the Ogam, I'm due to meet with the person that’s going to do my website, if you're interested in doing the workshops starting in September on the Ogam Tree Healing, just on my website you can contact me through that email and I will get back to you and then set up sort of on my normal email address .

Ann

And just once again, Tom, your website is …

Thomas

www.martyshamanichealing.com.  Tom I wish you all the very best with getting up your Book of Ogam Healing into print,  it sounds like it's going to be such a resource for people for a start off and secondly your course on the trees sounds fantastic, so I really wish you the very, very best with that and I'm sure you'll get lots of interest as well.  And good luck with everything that you are up to, you’ve really given me a lot of food for thought here about, I mean I take a daily walk here when I stay down here in Suffolk with the dog and I'm gonna be taking that daily walk in a completely different way now, where I'm paying attention to the environment around me.

Thomas

thank you thank you for this opportunity 

Ann

cheers Annie, we will speak soon.

Ann

Well that was Thomas Marty, Shamanic Practitioner, Healer and Druid and a very good friend – I’ve known Thomas over 30 years now and I can honestly say, he is one of the most powerful healers I have ever known.  Do consider taking his incredible workshop on the Ogam Tree Healing and/or think about booking yourself in with Thomas for a healing session – you will not regret it.

All links and resources for this episode can be picked up in the show notes which are available on my website www.anntheato.com

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