Seer of the Oak Trees: How an Ancient Belief Became the Opening Scene of My Novel

The word Druid means “knower of the oak” or “the one who sees the oak”. When I looked up the word, I learned that the Anglo Saxons also used it, giving it two meanings: tree and truth. It’s a word I contemplate whenever I’m taking a hike or meditatively observing the trees at the nearby park.

Druid — someone who possessed the knowledge and ancestral wisdom locked within trees.

So, what does it mean to know a tree? Not just to study it or admire it, but to listen to it as if it had something to say? That’s what the Celts did, and that was my quest to learn more about their beliefs.

They believed oak trees were conscious beings whose roots reached into the underworld while their branches touched the realm of the gods. In essence, trees were the living bridge between humanity and the mystical.

I like to imagine the Druid priests and priestesses sitting beneath oak trees, listening to the rustling leaves as they waited for messages from the gods. They noticed how the breeze felt on their skin, touched the bark, and slipped into that mysterious, liminal space between realms.

In my research, I read that every tribe in ancient Celtic Britain had a sacred tree at its center. Not a shrine, not a monument, just a living, breathing tree that held the spiritual identity of the people. And to destroy an enemy’s sacred tree meant destroying their soul.

I imagine wars were fought for the rights over trees more than the land itself, that lovers meeting under specific trees signaled some message from the gods.

We really have no written Druidic records. They didn’t write their knowledge down, but instead carried it in their memories and oral traditions. What we know comes mostly from Roman observers like Pliny the Elder and Strabo who mainly focused on the Gaul Celts, but I used their writings in my research.

Pliny described Druids in white robes climbing oaks to cut mistletoe with golden sickles during rites of fertility. Strabo wrote of the Drunemeton, the oak grove sanctuary where councils of three main tribes met annually to discuss politics and other topics impacting the Celts.

When I wrote the opening scene of Union of Immortals: Fire, I wanted my readers to immerse themselves into the Druid world, where nature was alive and fairies lived among them.

The main female character is Ailla, a Celtic priestess and seer. She stands beside a lone oak tree on a cliff above the sea, listening to the wind, the tree, and the ancestors. Unlike historical Celts, Ailla has an orb that aids her in invoking the gods, or so she believes. “Stream of light, fire of old. From the roots gather the souls…My bones know. My blood remembers. My voice carries what cannot die.”

I chose a world where Ailla draws on a ritual that was ancient, even when the Romans landed in Britain. It’s a place where something real dissolves into something mythic. Where the line between what happened when they arrived and what might have happened is a thin line—a boundary where imagination hums beneath the surface.

Ailla felt the oak’s heartbeat under her feet. She doesn’t separate the natural from the supernatural, and I sometimes wonder if we’ve lost something magical in the line of realism. What if trees really are more than what we perceive? What if, as the Celts believed, they held the stories of our ancestors who lived alongside fantastical worlds?

That’s what I love doing, erasing the line between realms. I write from the edge, a line where history and myth breathe together, merging with fated, world-changing romance. Because a story without passion is a cliff without risk.

When I research, I task myself with that job—to erase the line between realms and stand on the edge where history and myth coexist. And of course, I throw in a bit of fated love, because what’s not to love about worlds merging in the midst of passion.