The Seba library treats Birch in 5 passages, across 3 authors (including Eliade, Mircea, McGilchrist, Iain, Jung, C.G.).
the candidate holds a sword in his hand and, thus armed, climbs the birch that is set inside the yurt, reaches its top, and, emerging through the smoke hole, shouts to invoke the aid of the gods.
Eliade identifies the birch set inside the yurt as the shamanic axis mundi, whose physical ascent enacts the candidate's ritual passage from earth to sky during Buryat initiation.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
they pull up young birches and bring them to the house. The water is boiled and, to purify it, wild thyme, juniper, and pine bark are thrown into the pot... Dipping a broom made of birch twigs into the pot, he touches the apprentice's bare back.
Eliade documents the birch as a double purificatory instrument in Buryat shamanic consecration — both as a gathered sacred plant and as the material of the purifying broom applied directly to the initiate's body.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
the Douglas-fir and paper birch, shared what are called mycorrhizal networks, complex underground networks of fungi that connect individual plants, and are capable of transferring water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. The species were engaged 'in a lively two-way conversation'.
McGilchrist cites the paper birch's participation in mycorrhizal communication networks as empirical evidence for a form of inter-species consciousness and mutual support that challenges reductive materialism.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the Douglas-fir and paper birch, shared what are called mycorrhizal networks, complex underground networks of fungi that connect individual plants, and are capable of transferring water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. The species were engaged 'in a lively two-way conversation'.
A parallel passage in McGilchrist reinforces the birch as a figure of living relational intelligence, embedded in underground networks that embody the kind of participatory, non-reductive knowing he associates with right-hemisphere cognition.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
what has this neapolis got to do with the birch?... Naples, the new city... Regeneration is always associated with the idea of pain.
In Jung's dream seminar, 'Bacchetta' (birch-rod) becomes a symbol connecting the Italian city Naples to the motif of painful regeneration, linking the birch etymologically and symbolically to the via crucis and spiritual renewal.
, Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting