Faces in the Trees
is it really just your imagination?
If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
I love trees. They are beautiful and noble living beings with a consciousness appropriate to their nature. Many Native American tribes understood trees as people, standing people. In my experience, trees are also messengers, allowing their canopies of leaves and branches to act as a writing tablet.
You may be more familiar with this phenomenon in the clouds. How many of us as children sprawled out on the lawn on a warm summer day and watched clouds move across the sky, changing shape and making pictures in the sky? I did that as a child, but not nearly as often as with trees.
But even now, you’ll see a viral post of the Virgin Mary, an angel, a dragon, or something else archetypal and mythic appearing in cloud form. These apparitions are not limited to clouds, either. Over the years, there have been examples in everything from burnt toast to tree bark.
My resonance is much more with earth and terrestrial beings and less so with the sylphs of the Air element, so I suppose it is no surprise that when I am gifted messages in pictures, they arrive in earthbound natural forms like trees.
When I was a working artist painting landscapes on location, one of the things I knew to look for was faces I had inadvertently painted into the foliage of trees. Our hardwired connection to faces often resulted in two eyes, a nose, and a mouth appearing as I tried to create the random and naturalized patterns of tree foliage. The artist rarely sees this; someone else points it out. Once they do, you can’t unsee it and wonder how you could have missed it.
I often, very often, see faces within the foliage of trees. While those with an unrelenting materialist reductionist understanding of reality will say this is nothing more than pareidolia, I have a different point of view.
Pareidolia is a phenomenon wherein people perceive likenesses on random images—such as faces, animals, or objects on clouds and rock formations. It is not a clinical diagnosis nor is it a disorder. The brain has a tendency to assign meaning wherever it can. Seeing a rabbit in the clouds, or an animal (instead of leaves) in the brush is a commonplace experience of pareidolia.
The word derives from the Greek words pará, beside or alongside, and eídos, image or shape. ~ Psychology Today
It’s so odd that the human ability to find, create, and understand meaning is dismissed as unimportant, imaginary, delusional, or worse, some kind of coping mechanism or scam. In reality, I see it as a clue that we can perceive the true nature of reality, which extends far beyond the material world of which we are part.
I often see faces in the trees and understand them as the woodland spirits that live on my property. What do I mean by that? I don’t have a perfectly thought-out theory of everything regarding the nature of reality, but I lean towards a hierarchical understanding of reality. Below the ultimate Source (aka God), or in Kabbalistic terms, the Ain Soph, that which is limitless, sits as the pinnacle of the pyramid. The archetypes were let loose from the Mind of the Limitless One long ago. They provide essential and universal patterns of energy that bring meaning and structure to reality. From the pinnacle on descending levels, all created beings in the spiritual and physical realms exist. These have increasing levels of density, from beings of pure light, like archangels, to you, me, and the squirrels in the trees.
When I see faces in the foliage of trees, I understand them to be a momentary solidification of a nature spirit, a being that inhabits a realm of lesser density, coalescing its energy in a way that allows me to “see” it, using both my physical eyes and my inner eye, the perceptive organ in my body that can tune in to other frequencies. Sometimes, this inner tuning fork is identified as the nous.
Nous, in philosophy, the faculty of intellectual apprehension and of intuitive thought. Used in a narrower sense, it is distinguished from discursive thought and applies to the apprehension of eternal intelligible substances and first principles. It is sometimes identified with the highest or divine intellect. ~ Encyclopaedia Britannica
I consider these encounters very special, and I’m always honored and delighted when I can perceive something even a little bit beyond the ordinary.
Currently, I’m facing a health challenge involving my vision. The first round of examinations yielded no answers, and the appointment with the neuro-opthamaligist for testing is scheduled for December. That’s a long wait when your eyesight is in question, but such is the state of health care in 2024.
Last Sunday, I had just finished a gentle yoga routine, and I was sitting cross-legged on the sunroom floor, looking out the big windows into the trees across the yard. With my body and mind relaxed, I began to see faces in the trees.
Not tree spirits but animals. First, Bear, the guardian and protector of my heart, then Deer and Fox. They have traveled with me on inner journeys and through intuitive art-making. I knew they had appeared, sent by the Benevolent One, to comfort me as I walked a new, unfamiliar path. I do not doubt that they are real. They are not mere projections but are actual spiritual forces, the archetypal patterns of those animals lifted to a level like an angelic force, guiding, protecting, and offering comfort. That is sensible, considering that one of my core archetypes is the Nature Child.
Interestingly, they have also manifested in my recent intuitive collages, something I didn't realize until I was writing this essay, but there they are. Also, how could I have missed the connection with the eye, which also appeared in another recent piece?
Having a process, whether visual, embodied, meditative, creative, or a combination of several, allows deeper layers of your conscious and unconscious to have a voice. This allows us to comprehend better ourselves and the spiritual world of which we are a part. Is there a psychological part to all of this? Of course. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t also powerful spiritual beings and forces at work.
Trust your inner eye, your inner wisdom, your dreams and visions, and your spiritual experiences. If anyone hasn’t reminded you recently, They are Real. You may not always know what they mean and may be unable to call them up at will or control them (yet), but that doesn’t negate them.
The old paradigm of the mechanistic universe is giving way to reclaiming an older understanding and a newer unfolding of the collective way humanity grasps the realities around us.
Are you ready to look beyond the veil? This is a powerful time of year. What faces in the trees have you seen?
Don’t forget that a Tarot reading is an excellent way to bridge the gap between what we see and what is going on but obscured from our sight. Contact me for a special comprehensive reading using the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the Halloween Oracle by Stacey DeMarco, and The Mysterious Spirit of Nature Oracle by Moksha Kusa Marquardt, along with my own Moon Wheel created to help you understand your current situation through the correspondence of moon cycles, natural plant life, and Greco-Roman deities. This comprehensive intuitive + psychological reading works perfectly for a complex question and a general reading of energy for the upcoming season of Samhain. Paid Hedge Mystic subscribers receive a 20% discount on all Tarot readings. Contact me to schedule your reading.
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.
Thank you for reading Hedge Mystic and participating in this vibrant and growing community of creative, spiritual humans. You are always welcome here, appreciated, and loved.
Your expressions of what is, strongly resonate and provide much comfort by affirming a deeply felt visceral, though ephemeral knowing.
I love your artwork. And I'd love your thoughts/opinions about finding your spirit animal or totem. As an animal lover, I connect to them ALL.