Where Branch and Bone Remember: A Shamanic Invitation into The Wildwood Tarot

 

Where the Old Memories Stir

There are places where memory lingers long after the storytellers have gone—places where branch and bone remember.

The Wildwood Tarot belongs to that realm.

This deck is not simply a collection of illustrated cards. It is a shamanic invitation: a doorway into elemental energy, cyclical wisdom, and the ancient pathways of healing that thread through the living world. Working with it feels like stepping onto soft woodland earth, sensing a pulse beneath your feet—a rhythm older than language, wiser than thought.

Today we’ll explore how the Wildwood Tarot opens these gateways, and how its imagery, cycles, and symbols awaken something deep within: a remembering.

 

The Wildwood as a Shamanic Landscape

Shamanism, in its many global forms—from the animistic traditions of Europe to the Indigenous cosmologies of Asia and the Americas—rests on a simple truth: the world is alive.

Alive with presence.
Alive with memory.
Alive with intelligence.

The Wildwood Tarot embraces this worldview wholeheartedly. It presents the forest not as background imagery but as a living, breathing spirit realm—a sacred landscape that holds wisdom, healing, and guidance.

Where traditional tarot decks focus on archetypal psychology, the Wildwood draws the reader into ecological consciousness—a recognition that we are part of a greater web, woven from elements, seasons, ancestors, and animals.

 

Elemental Energy: The Bones of the Wildwood

At the heart of this deck lies elemental awareness.

Each card pulses with earth, fire, water, or air—not as abstract concepts, but as living forces.

Earth — Root, Bone, Memory

Earth energy in the Wildwood Tarot feels ancient and grounding.
It speaks through stones, roots, and the quiet medicine of moss-covered places. In earth cards, you meet the wisdom of slowness, structure, and embodied presence.

Earth teaches:

• how to anchor into the body

• how to trust natural timing

• how to listen to the memory carried in bone and soil

Modern somatic psychology echoes this: grounding practices, nature-connection, and embodied awareness all regulate the nervous system and foster resilience.

Fire — Spark, Transformation, Sovereignty

Fire in this deck is primal and sovereign. It appears in hunters’ torches, forge fires, and the fierce determination of archetypes like The Archer.

Fire teaches:

• courage

• initiation

• the power to choose a path

It burns away the inessential and lights the road ahead.

Water — Dream, Emotion, Ancestral Flow

Water cards offer their own kind of healing—fluid, reflective, intuitive.
This is the realm of dreams, subconscious messages, and emotional truth.

Across cultures, water is seen as a portal to the spirit world. In the Wildwood Tarot, it guides you into the deeper layers of feeling where true insight forms.

Air — Thought, Clarity, Guidance

Air energy moves through the deck like wind through branches—swift, clear, revealing.
It helps you see the patterns, the story beneath the story.

Air teaches:

• perspective

• discernment

• the freedom of the wide sky

Together, these elements form the bones of the Wildwood—a structure through which the shamanic journey flows.

 

Cyclical Time: The Wheel Turns, and So Do You

One of the most distinctive features of The Wildwood Tarot is its alignment with the Wheel of the Year, a cyclical calendar used in Celtic and pre-Celtic traditions.

Instead of static linear time, the deck invites you into seasonal consciousness:

• Spring — emergence and possibility

• Summer — action and growth

• Autumn — release and harvest

• Winter — rest and reflection

This cycle is not merely symbolic.

Research in environmental psychology shows that humans thrive when they align with seasonal rhythms. Our sleep, hormones, creativity, and emotional well-being respond to the shifting light and temperature.

The Wildwood Tarot mirrors this natural rhythm.

It teaches that healing is not a straight line. It moves in arcs, spirals, and returns.

You revisit lessons.
You shed what you’ve outgrown.
You rest so you can rise again.

This cyclical approach to tarot helps guide deep personal transformation without forcing progress. It offers a gentler, more natural way of evolving.

 

Portals to Ancient Pathways of Healing and Insight

Every card in the Wildwood Tarot acts as a doorway.

Some lead you into ancestral memory; others into instinct, intuition, or elemental truth. When you work with the deck, you’re not simply interpreting symbols—you’re entering a relationship with the wisdom they hold.

Here are three of the most powerful portals this deck opens.

1. The Ancestor — A Call to Remember

The Ancestor is one of the Wildwood’s most iconic figures: antlered, grounded, timeless.

She stands at the entrance to the forest with a drum that echoes through generations.

Her message is simple and profound:
“You come from people who knew how to live in harmony with the world.”

Across Indigenous and animist cultures, ancestor veneration served as a source of wisdom, identity, and emotional resilience. Modern anthropology supports this: ancestral stories help guide behaviour and foster a sense of belonging.

The Ancestor helps you reconnect with that lineage—whether it’s bloodline, soul lineage, or symbolic heritage.

2. The Shaman — A Guide Through the Inner Wilderness

The Shaman card bridges worlds.

He teaches you to work with imagination, instinct, ritual, and nature as tools for healing.

Shamanic practices often revolve around:

• journeying inward

• connecting with spirit allies

• healing through story, symbol, and intention

Interestingly, research on guided imagery and trance states (including studies from Harvard and Stanford) indicates that these practices can reduce stress, enhance creativity, and strengthen emotional integration.

In the Wildwood Tarot, The Shaman invites you to reclaim these ancient human capacities.

3. The Mirror — The Still Water of Truth

The Mirror is a card of surrender and reflection—still water, moonlit, filled with quiet intelligence.

It calls you into the liminal, the dream-like, the deep.

Here, insight doesn’t come through effort.
It rises naturally, like mist lifting at dawn.

This is mirrored in contemplative neuroscience, which shows that creativity and problem-solving often emerge during states of relaxed attention rather than intense focus.

The Mirror teaches you to loosen your grip and let wisdom find you.

 

A Gentle Ritual: Walking Between Branch and Bone

Here’s a simple shamanic-leaning practice to deepen your connection with the deck.

Step 1 — Sit with the Deck

Hold the cards in your hands.

Imagine you’re sitting at the edge of an ancient forest.

Step 2 — Whisper an Invitation

Say softly:
“Show me what the Wildwood remembers for me.”

Step 3 — Draw One Card

Let your body respond first, not your intellect.

Notice sensations, images, emotions.

Step 4 — Enter the Portal

Ask:

• What element is this card awakening?

• What season or cycle does it reflect?

• What ancient part of me is being called home?

Let the card be a threshold, not an answer.

 

Returning to the Living World Within

The Wildwood Tarot is more than a tool—it’s a companion for those who feel the pulse of the earth beneath modern life.

It reminds you that wisdom isn’t only learned; it’s remembered.

That healing doesn’t happen through force; it unfolds like seasons.

And that insight doesn’t always come from seeking; often it rises from stillness.

When you journey through this deck, you walk a path where branch and bone remember—where the elements speak, the cycles guide, and the ancient pathways open beneath your feet.

The invitation is simple:

• Step into the Wildwood.
• Listen.
• And let yourself be changed.

Best Wishes,

David.

© D. R. Durham, All rights reserved, 2025.

Note: The ‘Wildwood Tarot’ is the creation of Mark Ryan and John Matthews, with illustrations by Will Worthington. All products content rights belong to them.