What do you see here?

[MonSno_LeeDra]

Originally Posted by feranaja

Still trying to see ths...

This is the tree I'm thinking off. It jumps out at me. Might just be the sun's reflection upon it but it seem's like a young spirit and trying to get your attention.

That is very intriguing to me, and wish I could go back and listen. This is a field Danny and I walked in for a decade and now it's been taken over by a farmer who wants it for his free range cattle. I'm so sorry to not have had one last chance to say goodbye to a place that was so filled with magic and learning for me.

Can you elaborate on the death-gate imagery?

You have basically two types of gateway tree's. There are death gateways and living gateways. Living use the life force of the tree to step along the boundary lines and both journey or world walk. Death gateways do the same but don't always go to the same type places. They also use the decay or death of the tree as the energy that activates it.

Both gateways tend to sing due to the vibrations of the gate as the air passes through and over them but how and when they activate is never certain.

I realize this sounds completely bonkers but it is true from what I've encountered. In my experience death gates seem most prone to activate in crappy weather with heavy fogs or mist. There is also a smell that goes with them. You'd think rot and decay but that was not what I found but it is not a pleasant smell. There was also a sound like a song that was there as well. But it was different between the two different places I found. Yet while the song was different the smell was the same. The smell the closest I can come to describing it was something like the decay of the forest floor after a heavy rain and the smell of the leaves is kicked up. Yet there is a deep rotting smell but not like rotting flesh. Then there is sort of an electrical glow about the tree itself between the tines. Almost a static electricity upon a glass look to it. Have to be honest I pushed my hand through the gate and it distorted my hand but didn't go through as my guides absolutely refused it. Said I died in my youth and crossed that barrier so wasn't to cross it again.

I know you can scrye upon the gate and call the dead to it. But to be honest have no desire to do that nor truthfully the skills to do it.

When not active I have used the gate symbolically. Yet realistically stepping through the juncture of the V of any dead or living tree is to pass through the symbolic womb of life or death. Now that could be from one stage of life into another, from one degree into another or realistically from giving up one trait / obsession and leaving it upon its death upon the altar of death in the death gate like a sacrifice as you pass between.

Then figure the tightness of the V symbolic of the struggle you must pass through in order to change or be reborn / forged into something new. People forget that a dull knife tears and rips vice cleanly cuts. An aged and dead tree snags and grabs / scrapes as you pass through its heart to learn how to be strong yet also bend before the storm less you break and collapse.

This took me a while but I got it. I mentioned on FB, just to the left of the image there is a true faerie grove - oak, ash and hawthorn - I feel this land is filled with very old magic and there is something to this elm in particular...

There is darkness to all the light fae lore. Perhaps the elm is part of the dark lore that sat at the edge of the fae realm. Perhaps while the Trooping fae gathered in the grove some of the non-trooping passed by the elm and stood there to look out over the fields and meadows.

[MonSno_LeeDra]

Should add though that whether it be a death gate or not when the wind is blowing and the tines start to vibrate and the corpse sings it can be an eerie sound. Add a bit of fog / mist or even darkness to the event and your skin can start crawling in no time at all.

[Habilus]

Can you tell us more about the area? history etc?