of the British Isles, also enjoyed in this country, with its
flowers and the dancing with ribbons around a pole
prepared from a tree. It is almost as if by decorating a
barren tree with flowers and dancing around it, the
people are trying to coax the tree to imitate the spring in
their dance and sprout forth its own flowers.
      But there are also summer festivals involving trees
and dancing. There is the Scandinavian Midsummer's
Festival, celebrated with a specially prepared tree. And
there is the Sun Dance. With the Sun Dance it is easiest
to discern what is actually present in all these
festivities: a concern not merely for physical fertility but
also for the regeneration of the imagination and spirit of
the people, both individually and as a whole through the
seeking of visions.
     Here is a dream sent in by a participant in the A.R.E.
Dream Research Project. The dream reflects the
imagery of the tree rites and a concern for the creativity
of ideas:

    ... I am in a class. I can participate at various levels. I
am at the creative writing level. I write a song for a tree.
It is raining cosmic rain, in seed for God's planted ideas.
The ideas are dissolved in water, and growth is the
result...

     The Tree of Life has also functioned as the world axis,
the "center still point" around which the phases of
creation revolve. As a symbol, dancing around the center
may reflect the "dance of life," the constantly
transforming movement and change over time that is
paradoxically the eternally present and unchanging One.
Or the dance may very well be an actual attunement to
the vibration of the creative forces. Here is a dream, also
from a participant in the A.R.E. Dream Research
Project, portraying this process in modern imagery:

     ...there is a bright, stainless steel tubular cylinder,
resting upon a round, stainless steel track much larger in
diameter. A scientist in a white coat helps a man strap
himself into the cylinder. The scientist's theory is that an

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