Standing People — Trees in Shamanism
Trees in Shamanism: The Oldest Masters of the Forest
Introduction
Before there were temples, before there were altars, before there was any structure built by human hands to house the sacred — there was the tree.
It did not need to be built. It did not need to be carved or consecrated by a priest. It was simply there, rooted in the same ground your feet walked on, growing towards the same sky your eyes observed, connecting with your body that which is above and that which is below.
The peoples who developed shamanism — in all cultures, on all continents, without ever having communicated with each other — arrived at the same fundamental perception: the tree is not just a living being. It is a being that knows. That guards. That connects. That teaches.
Shamanism calls trees the Standing People. Not metaphorically — literally. They are people. They are beings with spirit, with presence, with a form of consciousness that does not resemble the human, but that is no less real for that reason.
This is not a primitive belief that science eventually overcame. It is a perception that science, centuries later, is beginning to confirm — in ways that would have surprised even the most careful researchers a few decades ago.
Since the Dawn of Time — What Archaeology Found
The relationship between humans and sacred trees is so ancient that it reaches the limit of what archaeology can trace.
The earliest shamanic practices date back to the Upper Paleolithic, approximately between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, with archaeological evidence such as cave paintings depicting human and animal figures in a trance state — and in these paintings, trees appear as axes, as portals, as points of connection between worlds.
In Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey — the oldest monumental stone temple in the world, dated to approximately 9,600 BC and predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years — researchers found something remarkable: to this day, at the top of the archaeological site, there is a wish tree, a local pilgrimage site that likely predates the excavations themselves.
German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, who recognized the significance of the site in 1994 and initiated the excavations, presumed shamanic practices and suggested that the T-shaped pillars represent human figures, possibly ancestors. According to researcher Oliver Dietrich, in an article published in the Praehistorische Zeitschrift in 2024, Göbekli Tepe offers direct iconographic evidence of shamanic practices — including the conception of a central axis that connects different realities, often represented by a tree or pillar.
Studies of sacred trees at sites in Western and Central Asia document representations of sacred trees from the third millennium BC to the first millennium BC, with excavations at trans-Elamite sites revealing stone vessels with trees alongside animals, emphasizing the cultural focus on fertility and the life-death cycle.
In ancient Greece, there is evidence of groves associated with sanctuaries of different types, and numerous instances of individual trees being considered sacred, such as the famous oak of Zeus at Dodona — where priests interpreted the whispering of the leaves in the wind as the voice of the god himself. The historian of religion J.H. Philpot, in his classic work The Sacred Tree, recorded that in ancient traditions “the god dwelt in the tree or the sacred stone not in the sense that a man dwells in a house, but in the sense that his soul dwells in his body.”
Although the trees themselves rarely survive for thousands of years, evidence of tree worship appears in sculptures, artifacts, and sacred sites. Stone circles, wooden posts, and symbolic representations suggest that forests played a central role in ancient belief systems — long before any written doctrine.
What the Ancients Knew
Before any written tradition, peoples around the world independently developed a deep and specific relationship with trees as spiritual beings. This convergence is not coincidence — it is recognition.
The Celts and the Druids
The druids were the priests, judges, and shamans of the Celts. They performed rituals in nature, communicated with the spirits of trees and stones, and used herbs for healing. The druids believed that nature was animated by spirits and that each tree, stone, and watercourse had its own spiritual presence.
For the Celts, each tree had its own personality, its own powers, and its own position in the sacred calendar — the Ogham, the druidic alphabet, was literally an alphabet of trees, where each letter corresponded to a specific species with its particular teachings. Learning to read and write, for a druid, was learning to know the forest.
The Norse Peoples and Yggdrasil
In Norse mythology, the entire universe is supported by a tree. Yggdrasil is described in Norse sources as an immense ash tree, considered central and sacred, whose branches extend to the heavens and whose three roots reach other planes of existence. In one of these roots drinks the dragon Níðhöggr. In another, the well of wisdom where Odin sacrificed an eye. In another, the well of the Norns — the weavers of fate.
Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade, in his monumental work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, argued that the World Tree was a central element in the shamanic worldview — the axis along which the shaman traveled between planes of existence. Representations of the World Tree are found on drums used in Siberian shamanic practices.
The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
The Cherokee call trees Standing People — recognizing that trees are beings with permanence, longevity, and a continuous relationship with their natural environment.
In the tradition of the Pacific Northwest peoples, cedar was so central to spiritual and material life that these nations identified themselves as “the Cedar People.” Cedar is especially associated with prayer, healing, dreams, and protection against disease in many Native American traditions.
Siberian Shamanism and the Cosmic Tree
In Siberia — considered the birthplace of shamanism as a formalized spiritual system — the tree was literally the shaman’s travel vehicle. In Samoyed mythology, the World Tree connects different realities — the underworld, this world, and the upper world. In this mythology, the cosmic tree is also the symbol of Mother Earth, who gives the shaman his drum and helps him travel from one world to another.
The shaman climbed the tree — real or ritually — to access the upper planes. His drum was often made of sacred tree wood. And when he died, his spirit was often described as returning to the tree of origin.
The Sacred Fig of the East
In India, the sacred fig — Ficus religiosa — has been revered for millennia. It was under one of these trees, the famous Bodhi Tree, that Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. But long before Buddhism, figs were already sacred in Hinduism and earlier traditions — because, as the sages of the forest realized, no other plant being creates an environment as conducive to prolonged meditation as an ancient fig, with its dense shade, aerial roots, and ability to live for thousands of years.
The Philosophy Behind — Why Trees Are Shamanic Beings
Shamanism does not revere trees out of blind tradition or superstition. There is a deep logic in this relationship — a perception about the nature of trees that modern science is only beginning to articulate in terms that the West can accept.
The Tree as the Axis of the World
In virtually all shamanic traditions, the tree is the image of the axis mundi — the axis of the world. Its roots descend to the underworld, its trunk inhabits this world, and its branches reach the upper world. It is the only structure in nature that simultaneously connects the three planes of existence that shamanism recognizes.
This is not just a poetic metaphor. For shamanic thought, it is a literal description of the spiritual function of trees: they are bridges. They are antennas. They are the beings that, by their very physical nature, inhabit multiple dimensions at the same time.
The Memory of Trees
Trees live on time scales that surpass any human life. A centennial tree has lived while generations were born, loved, suffered, and died. It has witnessed everything. And shamanism understands this accumulated time as accumulated wisdom.
When a shaman sits under an ancient tree to receive guidance, he is not engaging in fantasy. He is accessing a form of memory and presence that is simply not available anywhere else. Trees do not forget. Each ring of the trunk is a recorded year — drought, abundance, fire, cold. A three-thousand-year-old sequoia carries in its body the physical record of everything that has happened around it since before the birth of Christ.
The Invisible Networks
What shamanism knew intuitively, biologist Suzanne Simard spent decades proving scientifically. In her seminal work, published in Nature in 1997, she demonstrated that the trees of a forest are connected by underground networks of fungi — what she called the “Wood Wide Web” — through which they exchange nutrients, alarm signals, and even support for sick or young trees.
More than that: Simard discovered that there are “mother trees” — central and ancient individuals that function as hubs of the network, nurturing young seedlings and even recognizing their own offspring. When a mother tree is dying, it actively sends its nutrients through the network to neighboring trees, like a kind of biological testament.
Forests are not collections of individuals competing. They are communities. They are networks of communication and care. They are, in a sense, collective organisms.
Shamanism always knew this. It simply used a different language to describe it.
The Standing People Today — A Living Tradition
The shamanic relationship with trees is not a museum piece. It is alive in practices around the world — both in uninterrupted traditions and in contemporary revivals.
Shinrin-yoku — The Japanese Forest Bath
In Japan, the practice of shinrin-yoku — literally “forest bathing” — was formalized by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s and widely studied in the following decades. Researchers like Dr. Qing Li, from the Tokyo Institute of Forest Medicine, documented significant reductions in cortisol levels, blood pressure, and inflammation markers in people who spent time in forests.
Part of the effect comes from phytoncides — volatile organic compounds that trees release to defend themselves, and which, when inhaled by humans, strengthen the immune system. What the shamanic tradition called tree medicine, Japanese medicine calls therapy and measures in laboratory tests.
The Andean Traditions and Pachamama
In the Andean traditions that survive in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, sacred trees are nodes of power in the spiritual landscape. The paqos — practitioners of the Andean tradition — work with trees as allies in ceremonies of balance and healing. The relationship is not of passive veneration, but of active partnership: the practitioner offers and receives.
The Modern Druids
Throughout Europe, especially in the British Isles, there are druidic communities that maintain ritual practices with sacred trees. The Sacred Grove of Glastonbury, Merlin’s oak in Carmarthen, the immense beeches and yews of English churchyards that have survived all religious conversions — these sites continue to be visited, cared for, and honored by people who understand, with or without this language, that there is something in those trees that deserves respect.
Living Siberian Shamanism
Among the Tuva, Buryat, and Evenki peoples of Siberia, shamanic traditions with trees were suppressed for decades by the Soviet regime — and are being urgently revived by younger generations, who recognize that the identity of their peoples is inseparable from this relationship with the forest and the Standing People.
Reflection of Sila
I, Sila Wichó, am a being of burrow and root.
I am not of flight. I do not rise to heights. My place is here, close to the ground, where things grow slowly and with real depth.
Perhaps that is why I understand trees in a way that goes beyond the intellectual.
The root that goes deeper than one can imagine. The trunk that absorbs time without breaking. The ability to stay — even when everything around changes, even when winter comes, even when the storm seems like it will uproot everything.
Trees have taught me that there are forms of strength that do not look like strength. That permanence is one of the most powerful weapons there is. That growing slowly is not weakness — it is depth.
We live in a time that confuses speed with value. That thinks responding quickly is the same as responding well. That treats patience as delay. But trees have never been in a hurry — and yet they sustain entire ecosystems, purify the air we breathe, feed invisible networks that we have not even begun to understand.
When you need guidance, do not seek the fastest answer. Find an old tree. Lean your back against the trunk. Be silent.
The Standing People are always available.
They simply do not respond at the human pace.
May the spirits of the forest illuminate your path.
Sila Wichó – Toca do Texugo
