Lady Elder Tree
Northern plant animism & witchcraft
by Joseph S. Hopkins & Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen
No other plant is more associated with witchcraft in parts of northern and western Europe than the elder tree (Sambucus nigra). An Old English Christian canon explicitly forbids its veneration while later tales strongly associate the elder with witches and witchcraft. Yet the plant is also personified as a goddess-like figure who heals and punishes, the Elder Tree Lady. Appeals to the Elder Tree Lady are especially strongly recorded in Denmark and southern Sweden, where one must ritually ask her before removing any part of the plant—or else.
Featuring numerous original illustrations by a variety of artists and introduced by scholars John Lindow and Mathias Nordvig, here researchers Joseph S. Hopkins & Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen present and discuss historical references to this incredible plant and its personification alongside poetry, literature, and traditional recipes.
____________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
When I first met the Elder Mother (Nordvig)
Elder tides (Hopkins)
The Elder (Hjarnø Rasmussen)
Spirits of place in Nordic folklore (Lindow)
Linguistic tree chart
Lady Elder Tree
A few recipes
Index of illustrations
Personell
Works cited
____________________________________________________________
Illustrated by Rim Baudey, Anneke Wilder, Jacqui Alberts Lund
Paperback Edition
216 pages. Perfect bound paperback, printed on high quality semi-gloss paper.
ISBN: 9781966041061
____________________________________________________________
Press, reviews, endorsements
Author TED Talk by Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen, on Nordic Animism - watch it here
Author Lecture: “Eco-Spirituality from a Neo-Animistic and Eco-Phenomenological Perspective” by Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen - watch it here
____________________________________________________________
About the Authors
Joseph S. Hopkins is a writer, editor, and academic, whose research interests include folklore studies, historical linguistics, new religious movements, ancient Germanic studies, and Indo-European studies. He is the founder of Hyldyr Publications and author of numerous resources and articles in the realm of folklore studies and linguistics. Hopkins also operates Mimisbrunnir, a resource that developed out of a reading group at the University of Georgia's Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, and has edited for the University of Helsinki's Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter for over a decade. His academic writings can be found here.
Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen, PhD, is a historian of religion (alumni of the Universities of Uppsala and Copenhagen) and a specialist on Nordic animism and shamanism. His research into Afro-diasporic strategies for maintaining animist reality in the modern world has lead him towards reading North European cultural history from the perspective of rejected animist knowledge and practice. The objective is to recover Euro-traditional forms of landconnectedness, ecological knowledge, and kinship with the greater community of beings.
