SAILLE - WILLOW
Physical Properties
Willow, also called Sallows (broad leaf variants) and Osiers (narrow leaf shrub variant), are members of the Salix genus, Family: Salicaceae. The root of the Celtic name Sallie means "near water" and indeed this is where the willow tree is generally found. It has long, slender branches, tough but pliant wood, and large fibrous roots which readily regrow, making it an excellent candidate for coppicing/pollarding. Their leaves range in color from yellow-green, to red and even bluish tones. They are dioecious – male and female catkins occur on different plants. These catkins also serve as another important source of pollen early in the season for bees.
Willow contains watery bark-sap rich in salicin, which is converted to salicylic acid in the body – a precursor molecule to the active ingredient in aspirin. Willow bark has long been used as a remedy for aches and fevers. Willow has also been used since neolithic times for building and crafting things – most notably the wattle and daub technique to build walls and fences, as well as in baskets, fish traps, and coracles. All techniques that use willow’s pliant but strong features to its advantage. Willow also has uses in bio-filtration – they can filter heavy metals and other impurities from water as well as helping to stabilize stream/river banks, slopes and other areas where soil erosion occurs thanks to their robust and tenacious root systems.
The tree itself from afar looks like a fountain, its multiple trunks, branches and leaves rising up out of the ground, pulling energy up from the earth to spring up and flow outward and back down to the ground, providing a canopy of shade cover, protection, and to sit under one of these beautiful and strong trees confers a feeling of safety and calm. I have found the base of a willow to be the perfect safe space to process my grief and receive messages from my deep inner intuition.
Magical Properties & Lore
Willow is associated with the concept of boundaries. It is also commonly associated with Brigid, particularly in her maiden form. The face of Brigid known as Briga is the patron of warriors – Brigands – who are warrior guardians of boundaries both in the physical realm and between the worlds. Boundaries are so important, and are becoming a topic of regular conversation in mainstream consciousness. Boundary is defined as 'a line that marks the limit of an area' - they help us to know who, what, where, when and how we are and what our limits are - think of this in terms of the ways you will and will not tolerate being treated, for example. We need boundaries to help us distinguish self from not-self, to help us know what is ours and what belongs to someone else. Good boundaries help to keep a person safe, secure and healthy. Boundaries are also part of healing – a good healer knows when to help and when to step out of the way and let nature take its course. This requires that one is in touch with their emotions and their internal experience, so that they can create boundaries and advocate for themselves and what their limits are. Our boundaries can be rigid or permeable, and this is influenced by our life experiences, trauma, patterning, as well as the culture of the society we grow up in.
Saille is also associated with underworld or death goddess forms such as the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Belili, Circe, Persephone, Hecate, Hel, as well as Morgan Le Fay, the Cailleach, and the Morrighan. All of these faces of the goddess are symbols of the darker side of our psyche, which is often misunderstood and avoided. Only by meeting our fears and emotions with recognition and radical acceptance can we understand what these goddess forms can teach us. Willow holds the transformational magickal aspects of the crone aspect of the triple faced goddess. Its focus on tapping into the wisdom of intuition rather than logic. As such Willow is also associated with the emotional self and its expressions; writing, poetry (this ties in again with Brigid in her poet aspect) as well as grief, love and loss.
Personal Experience:
When I first approached Sallie over 10 years ago, she taught me about following my intuition - that I should have followed my initial instinct on where I seated myself at her base, for example. This tree I worked with was beautiful, serene and emanated wisdom. Her long, lithe and graceful branches and leaves swayed like hands upheld to the sky in benediction. She told me I should embrace my femininity - allow these aspects of myself to be seen and accepted rather than shutting them down and denying myself in an attempt to stay safe. She told me it's okay, it’s safe to love myself. She told me to follow my gut instincts more often and trust that I will make the right choice - even when my choices result in suffering or pain. To allow my intuition - my heart - to be my guide. So I did. Over the next decade I slowly and surely, and sometimes painfully, worked on aligning myself and my life with who and how I truly am. This entailed new jobs, new relationships, new living situations, wins, losses, and so much grief for past versions of myself. I felt that I had come to a place of wholeness, safety, and understanding. This peaceful plateau of course led me into my next cycle of lessons. My external reality had become a house of mirrors and lies which forced me to look inward, to my own authority. I had begun working closely with a new therapist to identify my boundaries and find where I was over-giving and under-receiving in my life, and that perspective shift had been profound, but jarring. I didn’t know it at the time but had only just begun to scratch the surface of the precarious position my porous boundaries had led me into.
So it was that over a decade later I sat under the very same willow trees with my partner of 5 years, in hopes that this beautiful tree would impart her serene grace and wisdom to us in our current state of conflict. It was in this moment that she helped me see where my boundaries were being compromised. Where boundaries should have been but were not. At one point in our conversation my partner said “I just don’t feel like I am your priority anymore” … and I felt my soul awaken inside me and say “... of course you aren’t - I am. I am my priority”.
I have heard many times that if speaking a boundary and standing up for oneself results in the other party becoming combative and defensive, that they likely had more access than they should have in the first place. In the coming months I had this concept proven to me over and over again. I returned to this willow many times during this process, shedding my tears, screaming my pain, and allowing myself to feel supported, seen, understood and loved by the trees above and the earth below me. This beautiful tree held my grief and my pain as my heart broke, and reminded me to sway in the wind as my tears fell, to dance with the flow of life, and to witness, validate and be gentle with myself.
Divinatory Meaning
A potential loss or grief. A time to examine one’s boundaries. A call to express grief through creativity. Reminder to tap into the flow intuitive wisdom of emotion.
