Hi! I'm a new baby green witch (my witchy sideblog is idontspeakhuman). @breelandwalker sent me this way with my question.
I think there may be a few regional guardians or tree spirits or *somethings* reaching out to me. I feel very connected to the earth and called to from a few specific spots. I have no idea how to connect or learn more about who is calling to me.
Thanks in advance :)
Gremlin, I’m always happy to talk about spirit work and making connections, or forming relationships, with our incorporeal neighbors! I can break your question up into two sub-questions which may help you decide what to do in your situation.
How does one learn more about an entity who has initiated contact?
If you think Someone is reaching out to you divination is going to be one of your most useful tools when it comes to learning about them and identifying them. I would recommend something like cartomancy, runes, stichomancy, anything that can give you some details and nuance. You can use something like a pendulum, but it’s probably going to take much longer to get good answers with just “yes” and “no” and you’ll have to be prepared to ask the same basic question multiple times with slight variations.
So take your tarot cards, or whatever you prefer, and start asking questions of the entity. I’m a fan of open ended questions such as “What are you associated with?” “What physical location or feature near me is the most important to you?” “How would you describe yourself?” And who can forget “Why are you interested in me?” “What do you want with me?” It will likely take several communication sessions to answer all of your questions, and then you should probably ask a bunch of those questions again, and again, to make sure the answers, and therefore the entity, stays consistent.
You can also direct your questions at something other than the entity itself. Try asking things like “Who is reaching out to me?” “Who sent [insert specific sign here]?” “How many [type] spirits are around me and open to communication?” Depending on your beliefs you may be asking the divination tool itself, or the universe, or some other type of entity, but it sometimes helps to talk around the entity in question as well as to them.
I always say “spirits are just folks,” treat whatever entity might be reaching out to you like a new acquaintance you’ve met, don’t put all your trust in them right away, but don’t assume they’re out to get you, just get to know them holistically.
How does one connect to nature/land spirits around you? (Aka: how does one initiate contact?)
If you want to initiate contact with this type of spirit, that’s much easier in my opinion. If you want to make friends with a tree spirit, find a tree you like and sit down beneath it and just listen. Just connect with, or meditate on, the plant itself as much as you can, and as often as you can, and you will most likely find the spirit through that. Observe the tree as it passes through the seasons, what animals make their home in or around said tree, and what roll it plays in the overall environment around it. If you’re an animist like me you’ll learn something about the spirit of tree by learning about the physical organism. If you aren’t an animist this method will probably still work for you, but you may find that not every tree has a spirit - maybe you believe only particularly old trees have spirits, or particular species - you can make this approach work with whatever paradigm you ascribe to.
If you want to pull out your divination tool of choice and start up a more deliberate conversation, go for it, but you might not always need to. The same can be said of making offerings, you may find it helps ingratiate you to the entity in question, but you can still build a relationship without making offerings.
You can do the same thing with any individual natural feature - trees, rocks, streams or rivers, caves, etc., but also with whole areas. Depending on your paradigm you may draw a distinction between the spirit of a discrete feature vs the spirit of an area or environment. I’ve personally found that there can be a spirit of the land (ie the area, region, neighborhood, etc.) and then everything on that land can have its own individual spirit. When I come to a new place I try to start connecting with the spirit of the land first, and then narrow my focus to spirits of individual tree, rocks, or other features.
Whichever of these applies more to you I find keeping a record to be very important. Take notes, however you want to, in whatever format. It will help you track the responses you get from your divination, and the progress of your relationship with any entity you are connecting with. I favor a “field notes” style of note taking where I describe each encounter or communication session, building on my previous notes as I go.
