‘People often ask us about the best way to come close to nature and the beings enchanted within it. One way to do so is through wonder and astonishment, to open our senses fully to nature’s beauty and wisdom. And here we can encounter entities that most closely resemble human beings — the trees.’

Verena has learned to communicate with elemental and nature beings, and to translate their language into terms we can understand. In her remarkable book Nature Spirits and What They Say, she conversed with a range of beings, including spirits of fire, air, water and stone. In this new volume, we hear from trees, the nature spirits that in many ways are most similar to human beings. Through Verena’s remarkable clairvoyant abilities, conversations with different tree species – such as sweet cherry, rowan, elm and common oak – are relayed. These communications reveal compelling insights into the role of trees within the natural world and their relationships with the vegetable, animal, human and spirit kingdoms. Particular emphasis is placed on the characteristics of trees that correspond with qualities of the human soul, such as the oak’s connection to individualism.

The tree spirits want to speak, and are responsive all kinds of questions, such as their roles in the landscape, their specific shapes, on problems that affect them in particular, and on urgent issues that are relevant to all beings on earth, such as climate change. The interviews disclose beautiful, fascinating and often challenging insights, offering inspiration to help us build more constructive relationships to these wonderful entities.

VERENA STAËL VON HOLSTEIN was born in Rendsburg in 1959. She studied surveying and hydrography and worked as a computer programmer and in the hydrographic surveying department. She is a homemaker with two children, and lives at a watermill in Lüneburger Heide, a heathland region in Northern Germany. A student of the work of Rudolf Steiner, from childhood onwards she has been able to perceive the etheric and astral realms in human beings and the natural world. She has learnt over many years to train her metaphysical perceptions so that communication with nature spirits takes place almost as a matter of course. She receives answers spiritually in the form of patterns, ideas and sometimes also images, and translates them into human concepts. She is the author of several books, including Nature Spirits and What They Say.