Joshua Tree

yucca brevifolia ~ diverting to progress our lineage

Mar 27, 2024

The Story

I recently visited Joshua Tree, CA for the first time on a short vacation, despite living in Southern California for close to seven years. When I lived in LA, I longed for the lush forests of Northern California and the East Coast because having grown up with the woods as my back yard in Pennsylvania, those kinds of forests make me feel at home. The friend I was vacationing with grew up in a desert environment, and Joshua Tree, in the Mojave desert, feels like home to her. It’s her favorite place, and she loves the Joshua Tree. Since she moved through the Ogham Tree Course with me, we were both curious to tap into the wisdom of the Joshua Tree together. I intentionally approached with curiosity rather than expectation, open to attuning with the Joshua Tree or any other plants that called to me, without feeling entitled or too eager.

As we approached Joshua Tree National Park, my view was similar to the picture above. I opened my awareness and paid attention to the sensations, thoughts, imagery, and words that came to mind as I observed Joshua Trees upon our entry to their park.

Immediately what I sensed and thought was aliens. I saw the trees as antennae that connect us to beings beyond our earth, and that connect them to us. The trees almost felt like implants from another world. I then put that thought aside, not wanting to make too much of it, but storing it for later analysis.

The park was busy that day. We found a trail and walked along. We were a group of four, and only two of us practiced in plant attunement, but I mentioned that we should just notice if any of the Joshua Trees were calling to us. One did, and I held a brief space for us to each connect to the tree in the ways we could easily do in a busy park with people walking by, and we listened and shared our experiences. My preference is always to have time to myself with a plant, to have no pressure on the time or result in any way, but I remained simply curious about what would be present for us now or later.

One person felt the tree as a Grandfather, and two of us commented on the surprising agile sway of the branch we touched, sensing the concept of every direction being a valid option.

After we left that tree, another one caught our attention, but we didn’t get the sense of permission to deeply connect or extract any kind of wisdom. I released the hope of getting any kind of significant information or attunement, and moved on.

I had previously done a little research on the Joshua Tree, so knew a bit about its growth patterns and how that might be present in the transmission. I was aware that most people who tap into the Joshua Tree’s energetic medicine equate it with ancestral healing and healing generational trauma. But I was still quite detached from any kind of outcome and just let it all sit in the back of my mind. Later I received an email from an astrologer about the Venus Mars conjunction on 2/22/24 that brought it all together for me. And I felt this medicine working very clearly during the retreat I hosted beginning that day of the conjunction.

The Joshua Tree we attuned to February 21, 2024.

The Full Transmission

Themes:

•We are our lineage, and our choices affect the lineage which extends forwards, backwards, and outwards as a living entity in our multidimensional world

•The choices we make are either aligned with the lineage or divert from our ancestral patterns

•We are always transmitting information to our lineage, so all of our choices are recorded on a kind of map of the lineage

The Growth Pattern

When a flower blooms on the branch of the Joshua Tree, no more growth will happen there. The energy for growth will move in another direction, creating a new flower and making for the interesting look of Joshua Tree’s branches. This aspect of the Joshua Tree’s medicine tells us that:

It’s okay to change direction. It’s okay to divert your path from its original destination or pattern.
It’s okay to break generational patterns. It’s okay to separate yourself from the pack and change your lineage.
It’s okay to turn away from the past and towards the future. When we feel stuck in an old pattern or path, sometimes the best thing we can do is stop and change direction.

According to The Environmentor, Joshua Trees live ~500 years, but most sources say they live on average about 150 years. There is one Joshua Tree thought to be ~1,000 years old. Joshua Trees grow slowly but for a long time.

The slow, steady growth of the Joshua Tree, with new branches terminating in a single bloom and then changing directions puts a family tree or long lineage in mind.
The form and figure of the plant is a map of the tree’s growth pattern and everywhere there once was a blossom. Our lineage carries that same record, though it may be invisible to us.

According to The National Wildlife Federation, there is a “mutualistic symbiotic relationship” between the Joshua Tree and the Yucca Moth, which transfers pollen between flowers and lays their eggs inside the flowers. When the larvae hatch, they feed on some of the seeds and disperse the others, so new Joshua Trees can grow.

It benefits our lineage when we grow in a new direction, just as we benefit from our lineage’s history and potential. It’s a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. We are the moths, moving the seeds from flower to flower, hatching new growth, gobbling up some of the seeds and spreading the rest around. Our lineage is the tree, growing towards a bloom, blossoming, and then allowing growth in a new direction.

The Name

The Joshua Tree is so named after Brigham Young led a group of Mormons to Utah, pointed to the tree’s outstretched arm-like branches and said “There is Joshua welcoming us to the Promised Land.” In the bible, Joshua is one of the twelve spies (one from each tribe, Joshua from the tribe of Ephraim) sent by Moses to scout the land of Canaan for 40 days to see if it would be a fit home for the Israelites. And after the death of Moses, he led the Israelites to Canaan and allocated the lands.

Joshua’s name was really Hoshea, meaning save/help/deliver but Moses called him Joshua which means God (Yahweh) is salvation. The name Jesus or Yeshua comes from the same roots.

The parts of this that interest me in regards to the Joshua Tree are:

Salvation - as Joshua delivered the Israelites to the promised land, he brought them salvation and brought God’s promise into being. (I’m choosing to focus on the interpretation from the perspective of the Israelites, and not to go into the war and colonization issues of the Bronze age.)
When we are helped by the medicine of the Joshua Tree, we can find our own salvation and bring our greatest potential into being. That is the promise of God that each of us can endeavor to embody.
The Transmitter - Joshua was one who went to Canaan to survey the lands and return the information to Moses. This reminds me of what I first felt when I saw the Joshua Trees - antennae connecting us to beings beyond our earth, and connecting them to us: transmitters of information.
The Joshua Tree’s medicine helps us to be in a transmissive relationship with our lineage, receiving what we need in order to do the healing and transmitting that healing to our lineage multidimensionally.

The Astrological Influences at the Moment of Attunement

I’m going to be referring to this blog post from Astrologer and Teacher Harmony from Divine Harmony, about the Venus-Mars conjunction that happened on 2/22/2024. The blog post is entitled: Venus Conjunct Mars ~ The Emergence of Pure Being for a New Age.

Within Harmony’s blog post, she interprets the Sabian Symbol for this conjunction, which is what I found relevant to this essence I was collecting in the same time frame. I’m quoting her below.

“The Sabian Symbol talks about something new being born- out of the Cosmic Egg a new type of human being who is not born of the ancestors comes through- free from the inertia of mankind’s past.”
“[The Sabian Symbol] states we have to die to limiting frameworks and open up to Universal Truth which bears diversity.”

In the text of the Sabian Symbol, the new child being born is considered a mutant. I believe it’s important for us to allow ourselves to mutate from our lineage in order to essentially progress or ascend the lineage. We will never be separate from our lineage, it will always be the legacy we carry. But we are the living lineage, and the directions we take can effect the lineage forwards and backwards, and the essence of the Joshua Tree helps us do just that.

When the history of our lineage is understandably in the past, and humanity and the earth are moving forward, we must mutate the lineage to bring it along into the new world.

Venus and Mars coming together is the union of the masculine and feminine that creates new life and the continuation of the lineage. This particular conjunction, in Aquarius, the progressive-and-ascended-view, communally-focused era we’re moving into collectively, contained the magic of the mutation of the lineage, and I think that’s just perfect for the current times and for this magical essence collected on that day.

Bringing it all Together

The lineage wants to survive and thrive. In order for that to happen, we have to take it into the new world by healing the distortions of a past age through our current incarnation. The Joshua Tree is a transmitter that helps us connect to our lineage, make those shifts, and feel that energy sent back out to our lineage backwards and forwards.

The Essence

Joshua Tree essence supports our making new choices that may break us away from our expected path or ancestral patterns. An essence for healing generational and ancestral traumas and patterns, Joshua Tree essence helps us to be aware of the transmission happening at all times between us and our lineage. We can break free from the past and bring our lineage into the future with our choices here and now.

I have yet to bottle Joshua Tree Essence, but if you want a bottle when I do, please let me know to set one aside for you.