The Trees and I

Since I was a child I feel a very strong affinity with trees and the natural world.
and while walkong trough my Druidical path I was encouraged to creat my own crane bag. What is this? Well, it´s a loooong story.

When I was a child, I used to spend some afternoons with my grandma, and she was quite a druid (but she probably didn´t know it). She used to take me to walk under the trees, collect leaves, draw them, and in many cases she used to teach me how to make teas with it. Very shaman. She also used to carry a leather bag , and inside she had stones, leaves and some “secret things”, I always asked her to show me everything, but she used to say there were things that were only important to her. So she made my own bag, a small blue one.

During many years this small bag was inside my wardrobe, away from me and my memory, until some months ago. (as for my grandma´s bag, it was buried in her garden, along with some other things, under her daisies)

While I was reading a Gwersu on Druidry from OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids), I faced the task of create a CRANE BAG. And by the description given, It was the same bag I have.But now, it was too small. The crane bag...

“It has been many hundreds of years since the cauldron of knowledge was set brewing and everything that you garner, insights and understandings, are placed in this cauldron to brew a wisdom to future ages.” –OBOD-OVATE GRADE

In this bag we put stones, crystals, herbs, feathers and leaves, so when you feel ready and return to your sacred place you are able to study, use or be inspired by it. Just like the native american  medicine bag.

So I made me own new crane bag (in the picture) . As I didn´t want to leave the old one behind, I took a small piece of it and sewed inside the new one, so past, present and future can be together. Just like the trees around us.

And now I´m sure I have plenty of space in my bag :)

The origin of the name CRANE BAG:

In Robert Gaves´ essay “CRANE BAG” he discusses that it was one of the sources for the creation of the OGHAM (the Celtic tree alphabet).
“The Greek mythographers credited a poet of the Trojan war, Palamedes, to have invented such letters (...) his inpiration came from observing a flock of cranes which make letters as they fly”
The suggestion is that the way the lon legs of the crane cross as they fly form shapes similar to those of the Ogham alphabet.

We´ll never know if this is the source of the Ogham but we surelly know the Druids (Ovates) were skilled  in divination from them flight of birds. So today Crane Bag is a term used for the secret knowledge tha the Ovate posesses of the tree alphabet.

There are other sources like the one from Mannanan, the Celtic God of the Sea, that possessed a bag formed from a skin of a sacred crane which contained a number of symbolical objects.

Aline Martins