 Hi, my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today, I am outside in my orchard for a book review on the Healing Power of Trees. The Healing Power of Trees, Spiritual Journeys through the Celtic Tree Calendar by Sherilyn Hidalgo. It's a book I've had sitting on my shelf for a while, but I'm finally getting around to making a video review of it. I thought it would be most appropriate to come out here into our fruit orchard. I am sitting under an apple tree. It seems like the best location to talk about healing power, meditation, and the use of trees in a pagan practice, especially a druid path. As some of you will know, there is a common idea of using trees and the olem throughout a calendar year, associating certain sections of months and seasons to a specific tree. This is a bit like the zodiac in many ways. There are those who feel like historically it's accurate and there are those that think that that's rubbish. But it's still a useful tool and it's used by a lot of pagans today because it does speak to the years that we have and the types of messages and meanings that we need to hear throughout the year. So the book starts out with some introduction information about olem, about using trees in a practice. This might be useful for you, but the bulk of the book is set up with each section of the calendar being split by the tree. And it has a little graphic, a nice little drawing of it. And it talks about what olem is associated with the tree, what ruin is associated with the tree, some astrology and totem information, then goes into talking about myths and historical references, different goddesses, gods that are associated with that tree or that message. Finally, you'll get a guided meditation. Some of these were really awesome, some of them were like meh, to be honest. And then you get a little bit of healing. The healing section I thought was really useful and sometimes had new information, other times just really well distilled from what you might get in other books about herbs or natural healing, less like details about dosage or anything like that, but more general ideas, definitely a really great taste and flavor of how you might use the tree for healing. At the end, the last quarter of the book is appendices. The first dependency are the trees in the olem that didn't quite fit into the calendar. And these include all the information that the other trees did, they just don't have a guided meditation. Then you get a nice little chart where you reference the olem letter, the tree, the meaning and the ruin and the meaning of the ruin. This could be a very useful correspondence sheet if that's something you don't already have. You get information about the holidays, which let's be honest is out there in a million ways, so kind of unnecessary to put in this book I feel. And finally, then there are some resources about calling the directions and different context books, that sort of thing. Overall, I think the book is set up really well. It's organized so that it's easy to get, but also enjoyable to read cover to cover. It is designed with the idea that you might read each tree during that seasonal time of the year, so you could kind of use it as a devotional throughout the year. I think that would be really valuable. Daily devotionals is something I can do for like 30 days. Seasonal devotionals are harder because I already have yearly traditions, so adding one more thing can be tricky to do consistently through a year. So I did read it cover to cover. One of the most interesting things I find about pagan books about trees is that the message and meaning of each olem is slightly different depending on the author that you're talking about. And there's not a ton of information out there, so giving a consensus to aid as you're starting to learn about olem is challenging at times. So if you're in the process of learning olem or you're interested in Celtic trees, I think this would be a really great asset to your studies. Reading about Celtic trees, of course, does not replace actively working with those trees or going outside and connecting with those spirits. So if you are working to learn olem or you're working with trees, I would definitely say that your first stop should be going outside and getting to know them, thus recording the video in the apple orchard. In the comments below, I would love to hear your own book recommendations. I'm getting to a point where I've got a few more books that I'm working on, but could definitely use some great recommendations for what I should tackle this winter. I tend to get a lot more reading done in December and January in those cold months than I do in the summer because in the summer I am outside working on things a lot. So get me all of your book recommendations and I will see what I can finish in this coming winter. And of course, if you don't want to miss any videos about book reviews, permaculture, and of course my own Druidry, please don't forget to subscribe and hit that little bell for notifications, then you'll know exactly when a new video is posted. I am off to go do more home renovations, so I hope you guys have a wonderful week and as always, may you find peace in the sacred grove.