The Desire Tree

Once, many thousands of generations ago, a spirit fell to earth. The people discovered it and cared for it, healing its body which was broken from its long fall. The people feared the spirit's strange form and mysterious effulgence, but they also knew that any fragile, damaged being in need of help could not be ignored. When the spirit recovered from its convalescence, it was so grateful to the people that it bestowed upon the people the gift of heavenly will. "Your Will, if chastened by Love," It instructed them, "Can manifest the miraculous." The people became adept at building their own reality, and the world came into balance with their desires. The people protected this great gift the spirit had given, treasuring it, passing it on to their children, and above all, respecting the grave responsibility that came with the heavenly will.

But time and conflict touched the people, and slowly, the heavenly will was lost by long years of slow decay. Will was not chastened by Love, but was goaded by Lust and Avarice. The people lost control of the heavenly will, and their abilities atrophied into a dull sense of lack. The spirit, old and sad, died beneath a giant tree, cradled by its roots.

Some of the people, who mourned the loss of the heavenly will, tended the chosen gravesite of the spirit. To honour the spirit which had loved them and made them wise, these people gladly shouldered the responsibility of the spirit's grave with the fond desire that the world could come back into balance, and so that their children could be happy. These people hung precious things, priceless things, on the boughs of the giant tree. They placed shining stones and the hair of their mothers under the arching roots. The people trusted the spirit to protect these precious things, and the people connected to them. The people burned incense before the bones of the spirit, thanking it for visiting them for the short while that it had.

The other people, though, began to think that great wealth and power was in that tree. They came to the tree and robbed it of all the precious things, even the hair of the mothers, thinking it a substance of shamanistic magic power. One by one they excavated the crumbling, dispersed bones that remained from the body of the spirit, and growling at one another, grappled for the peices and stole them away to the nine corners of the earth.

All that was left was the skull of the spirit, three tattered wings, and its jaw, unhinged. A raven had long ago carried these peices up to its nest high in the branches of the giant tree, to feed its young on the body of the spirit.

So the skull sat, shining with effulgent colours that dimmed under the rain, dropping shining dew on the people who wailed and wept among the desecrated roots.

The raven, seeing only the clutter of old meals, pushed the skull out of its nest, into the soft loam beneath the tree. And the people found it, and the people stopped weeping. The spirit was still with them, even though its effulgence was dim and its jaw unhinged. The sound of humming sometimes still issued from the tattered decaying wings. Its empty eye sockets still stared at them with gratefulness and compassion.

So the people hung the skull and wings and jaw up on the tree's boughs. They brought their precious things and their mothers hair. They brought shining stones and incense. They had not forgotten the gift of the spirit, and though it had been violated, though the heavenly will had all but vanished from their knowledge, they restored their thanks. They made solemn wishes at the foot of the tree, with honesty and smetimes tears. They prayed and gazed at the skull for answers.

Slowly, the tree became filled with precious things once more. It shone with the glow of the sun in glass, with the stars winking on polished stones. Strange flowers came to grow on the boughs of the tree, unfurling slowly in effulgent colours, reaching their airborne roots out to touch the supplicants who brought still more precious things.

And when the flowers died, seed pods appeared. They were soft, round, and were delicate colours, silky to the touch. They decended like spiders on thin, translucent threads, taking weeks and months to lower to the reach of the people. The people were awed, wondering what strange thing would erupt from these silky pods, and they were a little afraid. The people did not touch them, did not grab them or break them, because they knew that the pods would open in their own time.

The first pod finally fell into the hand of a supplicant who was old and near to death. Plop, it broke its thread and dropped directly into her crabbed but praying palm, as though it had been waiting for the moment of her arrival. The instant it touched her soft, papery skin, it popped open with a delicate sound, exhaling effulgent dust in a delicate colour, which encircled her face and touched her with warmth. Smiling, the supplicant knew that at home, her granddaughter's fever of two months had broken, and the prayer she had given to the spirit that long ago had been answered.

One by one, the pods dropped into the very hands of their own supplicants, and the desires of the people were made flesh.

Heavenly will had returned to the people, made manifest through their honest Love and Trust.

Thousands of generations passed with this knowledge under the protection of the people. Many people moved to new places, and the knowledge was dispersed, often lost in time, as time is wont to take precious things from us.

All that remains of the heavenly will is a branch, shreds of wings, and a skull, which has lost all but a scrap of its effulgence.

And what remains are the people, those who still know how to gratefully manifest their Will under the chastening of Love. The spirit ebbs, and strange flowers bloom, and precious things are hung, and pods erupt to the sound of whispered prayer.

There are not many of us left who know the heavenly will. But perhaps if you chasten your Will with honest Love, your prayer to the spirit will be heard, and across the centuries to you will be sent the spirit's ancient manifestation.


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An interactive installation. It is a ritual. The idea is to walk into the arms of the branch, write your deepest desire upon a shred of paper using 'magic ink', and burn it upon the sacred fire along with appropriate incense to expediate your wish.

It is made from one large apple branch roughly 6' long, spanish moss, unspun silk, silkworm cocoons, bottles and vials of various sizes with contents such as gold, lead, dust, and angel essence (coloured and soaked cotton), as well as dried orchid flowers, dried catspaw plants, mica and garnet mediums, wings made of soldered silver wire, dried and stretched liquid latex and metal dusts, and of course a found skull and jawbones coloured softly with chalks. The table is marked with a sigil of Venus from the Seals of Solomon, and holds a fireproof handmade bowl filled with ritual tinder, such as oak, reed, ivy, cedar and wheat. Beside the bowl sit fingerbowls of raw incense: Benzoin for strength and control, Red Sandalwood for love and internal peace, Myrrh for sanctification and healing. It is accompanied by 'magic ink': lemon juice with sugar, which writes invisibly, becomes visible when burning, and has the added bonus of making blue flames when the sugar burns. A pen with a nib in the shape of a pointed finger emphasizes the Will with which you write your wish on the paper.

This is more of a small-scale mockup for something I wish to build on a gigantic scale in the future. I intend to design this into a fully realistic tree with a berth of roughly 40 feet, with a particular low, horizontal design that mimics a cave with branch projections that encircle the participant. Ideal locale for the large scale finished product would be a clearing within a mossy deciduous old growth forest, ideally on a cloudy day, with air smelling of impending thunderstorm. I may have to manufacture this environment within an enclosure to perfect the atmosphere for repeated interaction.

At the moment, though, I know one thing about it. It has worked for everyone that has used it thus far. No word of a lie.