The Magic of Trees: A Guide to Their Sacred Wisdom & Metaphysical Properties - Tess Whitehurst 2017

Carob
The Trees

While native to the Mediterranean region, all throughout my childhood an aged carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) contributed to the cool shade of my grandparent’s California backyard. I’m told that my Italian immigrant great-grandmother (whom my father, uncles, and aunt called “Nona”) regularly ate the tree’s dried, chocolaty carob pods like crackers.

Magical Uses

Healing Dreams

In many ways we work things out in our dreams, and we can magically employ our dreams to gain insight and actual healing in the areas of mind, body, spirit, and emotions. As a tree governed by the planet Neptune, carob can support intentions related to healing dream work. For example:

CAROB POD HEALING DREAM CHARM

To receive guidance and actual healing through the medium of your dreams, visit a carob tree at night when the moon is in Pisces. Offer a full bottle of beer or ale to the tree by pouring it around the roots, and then lovingly gather a single carob pod. Sleep with the pod under your pillow whenever you’d like to experience healing via your dreams.

Honoring Past and Future Generations

There is a Jewish legend about a wise man in Israel who saw an elderly man planting a carob tree and asked him why he would do such a thing. After all, the old man wouldn’t be around in seventy years when the tree finally began to cast shade and bear fruit. The old man responded that he was planting it for his grandchildren to enjoy. The wise man then promptly fell asleep for seventy years, woke up, and observed the man’s grandson not just enjoying the tree his grandfather planted, but also, in turn, planting a new one for his grandchildren to enjoy.

If it’s your intention to leave a positive legacy for future generations—your own grandchildren or other people’s grandchildren—plant a carob tree and tend to her lovingly, knowing that even though you may not be around to benefit from the tree’s nourishing pods and cooling shade, future generations certainly will.

Nourishment

As my Italian great-grandmother apparently knew, carob pods are a nourishing food. An excellent source of vegan calcium and iron, carob has been consumed since ancient times. Manuscripts as ancient as the Bible, Talmud, and even the Epic of Gilgamesh demonstrate the importance of carob as a food source, and carob is featured in the Egyptian hieroglyph that translates to “sweet.” Even today, carob syrup is a popular, healthy sweetener in places throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Magical Correspondences

Element: Earth

Gender: Masculine and feminine

Planet: Neptune