Crystal woods — Tüdderner Venn 2
All journal-items with the title ‘Crystal woods’ form a whole and are part of a new project. During 2017 I expanded my research for nature and life-energy to seven woods in a range of 10 km around my living place. The Crystal-woods-journals. The Crystal woods story consists of photographs, maps and paintings. In Crystal woods — Introduction one can find global information about this project.
Lately a friend showed me a photograph of a huge tree in Japan, the only tree in a wide area that had not been cut down…because it was a sacred tree. In Japan large forests are still intact because shintoism considers them as sanctuaries. I experience the seven forests in my vicinity as sacred. Because I feel absorbed there, in the wholeness of the child, open as well as concealed.
Transition hill
December 9 2017 — A chilly wind is blowing from the north-east as I visit the wooded slope nearby Tüddern for the third time. I feel enchantment as I tread on a hill where I notice that there are many holes (I count 25!) It feels as if it is a world on its own that has been untouched for 2000 years. I wonder if all these holes has been served as transitional places in which dead persons were laid down during the Iron age. Next to the hill a deepened path runs in the direction of the fishing ponds — a former Iron age grave field.
From the five leap near the transition hill I follow a path in the direction of the northern rim of the wood. At the left of the path lays a large dig of, at the right I notice a place with more open space in between of some strong oaks, and in the distance the exiting silhouet of a sweet chestnut. I sit down in the bowl in between three trunks and let come over me the touch of the place. I can’t tell what kind of life-energetic place this is, but it belongs to the White-place (of the eastern triangle) that I locate at an oak joint by a rowan that swings its stem around the oak.
New Michaël-place
April 12 2018: Once more I feel the same enchantment as I enter the separate world of the transition hill. The ground is covered with moss all over the place, that lightens up in the sun just like the fresh exposed green. The floodlight accentuates the relief of the holes. Mainly beech trees and rowan grow here. One high birch stands out by its strait, strong trunk: the Black-place (belonging to the eastern triangle), connected with transforming forces of the earth. But I sense another life-energetic quality, much lighter, angelic, intensified by the cheerful light of spring (when I close my eyes I see much pink). Only two weeks later, when I sit at the table with my wife Lidy, the painting of Alteration Hill standing in the background, I realise: the place that I felt on the highest point of the hill is a new Michaël-place (colours: bright lilac violet, pink, soft greyish-green).
On December 9 another place, nearby the transition hill, took my attention because of its serene charisma. The place is more open than the surrounding forest and here much more rowan trees and old birches grow. But today (April 12) as I visit the same location again, it seems as if it has been vanished. I can’t recognise the place at all. With dismay I notice that all old birches and rowan trees has been cut down. Only one group of rowan has been saved. Deep tracks in the ground all over the place. I wonder why only on this very place has been done maintenance, while all around no tree is cut down. While I walk around for a while in confusion I find a Michael-place with the rods, that is part of the eastern triangle.
U-shaped wall
April 14 2018: I still did not localise the Red-place of this eastern triangle. So two days later once more I go searching for the missing third angular point. On ‘Maps’ I already noticed at the northern edge of the forest some treetops that were much larger than the other trees. At first I’m at the wrong place, also with some bigger oaks and an impressive wild cherry next to a u-shaped ditch and wall. Probably a female cult place, or Lunar-place? Similar u-shaped walls I also found in the Schinveld forest and the Alleebusch.
Two hundred meter further on I find the right place. My heart beats faster when I see the thrilling silhouet of a snake-line-oak. Then I see an open place with some monumental oaks, a large birch: the Red-place. And an American oak with three trunks on a Place of balance. At last I can oversee the whole of the two triangles with Maria- and Michael-places. At home I made the grondplan, organize photographs and write this text.
