Yew Tree: The Tree of Death, and New Life, and Immortality

The Yew is an ancient tree species that has survived since before the Ice Age.  Recently, fossils of the Yew have been found from the Jurassic era, 140,000,000 years ago.  That's a looooooong time ago.  Some English Yews are as much as 4,000 years old.  This is why the Yew is associated with immortality, renewal, regeneration, everlasting life, rebirth, transformation and access to the Otherworld and our ancestors.  Whew.

Because the Yew is a slow-growing tree, it has tight-grained wood, tough and resilient.  In the past the wood was used for spears, spikes, staves, small hunting bows and eventually the famous longbows of the Middle Ages.  The arrow were tipped in poison made from the Yew.  Druids loved to use Yew wood, and they used Yews in sacred groves and to indicate the location of blind springs.

The entire tree is poisonous:  wood, bark, needles, seed and dust.  This is one major reason why it is known as the death tree or the Tree of Death.  Yew has long been part of funerary customs.  They mainly involve carrying sprigs of Yew which are thrown in the grave under the body or of being thrown in on top of the coffin.  The Yew can teach us to see death as a form of transformation and that death is never final.  It can help us overcome our fear of our own death.  Death is a new beginning, hope and future.