Sacred grove

Ginger can be found in Cleveland, Ohio area, and her music is found at gingerackley.bandcamp.com. Coming up next is another special twofer.

The first one is by a group out of Finland called Marasma, with the song Puhateto, which means Sacred Grove in Finnish, and is played on traditional Finnish tribal instruments.

After that, we'll be hearing an a cappella song with the vocals of Lynn Sanders of Burning Sage, singing Oh Goddess Queen.

Let's listen.

God, my Lord.

radiance so that I may know your power your power your power

That last tufer of songs was by First Marasma, spelled M-A-R-R-A-S-M-A-A, with the song Huha Teto, which means Sacred Grove in Finnish.

And Marasma is the duo Jane Oyala and Juho Pyrto, and they are based in Finland.

And it turns out they have quite a lot.

So this is an episode about sacred groves, about what it has meant across the whole of human history to understand a tree or a gathering of trees as holy.

So let's dive in.

Before there were temples, there were groves.

The instinct to designate certain trees and certain gatherings of trees as sacred appears in every inhabited continent.

In India, the tradition of the Dev Ram, the sacred grove maintained by a village as the home of local deities, has been documented for centuries, and studies suggest there may be 100,000 or more of these groves still maintained across the subcontinent.

In West Africa, sacred groves function as the homes of lineage ancestors and community deities, maintained with specific prohibitions against cutting, hunting, or farming within them.

In Japan, the Chinju no Mori, the sacred forest surrounding a Shinto shrine, is understood as the dwelling place of the kami, and its trees are not to be disturbed.