An Interview with the Green Wizard

The Tarot

Coreopsis Journal: Hi David, thank you for the interview.

David Springhorn: Hello!

Coreopsis:  Hello! The theme of this issue of Coreopsis is “The Moon in a Sacred Tree: The Symbology of Tarot and Alchemy.” I know you believe in the sacredness of trees, and that you are familiar with the tarot. What do you think of the cards I suggested to portray you? Are there others that would resonate better?

Springhorn: I, of course, start with The Fool, always.

Coreopsis: Yeah.

Springhorn: Because that’s the beginning of the new universe and the new enlightenment. That’s the person basically taking the leap of faith. Like a large number of my people, that is the basic card, and I have reinforced it by sitting a lot of Zazen—I’m sure you all know what that is—but it’s, you know, sitting on a pillow and trying to get to where the Buddha was when he gained his enlightenment, which is basically nowhere.

Coreopsis: (chuckles)

Springhorn: You start from zero. And forget who you were and don’t worry about who you’re going to be. And investigate what you are now and what’s in your environment. And try not to judge it or try to understand it. Just try to live within it and become… you can be a leaf on the water, you can be a stone on the side of the flow, you can be a stone trying to stop the flow, but better to be the flow. And that’s all just happenin’ now.

Coreopsis: I like that.  I’m going to go a little off script too, because you were talking about being in the present moment and maybe not worried so much about the past or the future and it occurs to me that the sort of typical three-card spread I am most familiar with in Tarot does exactly that; it talks a little bit about where you’ve come from and where you are going, in addition to where you are right now. What do you make of that?

Springhorn: It’s a way to read the Tarot. The Tarot is subject to interpretation by everyone who does it. You’ve got to make it your own. I do that just because it’s the easiest way to read for people and you get an enormous amount of information, finding out where they came from, where they are, and where they might be going. But really, if we were going to have it really work, we would do one card, and that’s it. And just go into a trance and read that card and see how it affects their environment, whether it brings to mind influences by gods and magic and…. I’ve never had the guts to do that. In fact, that’s funny, I was sitting here going “I never thought of that before.” So, because of what you brought up, I would like to try that, actually, and see what happens. But to do that you have to really have both of you in a very receptive place. I wouldn’t do it for money. I’d just do it and see what happens.

Sacred Trees

Coreopsis: Let’s talk about sacred trees.  I know you believe that trees are sacred. Are there any trees that you feel are especially sacred, either as a species or as individuals?

Springhorn: Well, having grown up, if I ever did, at the Renaissance Faire, I am particularly drawn to oaks. Because there are a lot of oaks at the old Agoura faire site. And I started glomming onto them and becoming serious about it—I guess I was about twenty years old, something like that. As time has gone on, I’ve found out that I love the wood I am working with. I walk down the street with equal respect for whatever the trees are. But then again, I feel the same way about everything from lawns to weeds. I have a particular relationship, longstanding, with this odd azalea bush that was the only frigging piece of landscape at this nondescript apartment building.

Every living thing, and everything that we do not perceive as living, is equally alive. It just doesn’t exist in the same manner we do. Human beings are amazing because they went from being tree lemurs to these incredibly complex thinking machines. Evolving, if you want to call it that, in groups… A human being, by itself, is a naked, ridiculous thing. But you put them together and they can come up with all kinds of hijinks.

Coreopsis: (laughing) Yeah, mischief was the word that came to my mind.

Springhorn: Yeah. I don’t think human beings were ready for this insane escalation of evolution. I think we’re still thinking like we live in isolated villages and make war with sticks and stones. And it’s bigger than that.  But I want to go back from that to realize that that is why I try to communicate with trees and shrubs and rocks and crystals and things like that—because it’s simple. I’m not wired for big thought. I’m not a big picture kind of guy.

Coreopsis: Yeah, more heart than head.

Springhorn: Indeed.

Coreopsis: And that’s maybe one of the things I love about you, because I’m kind of more head than heart, and I learn from you to temper that.

Springhorn: Well, between the two of us we make one really great wizard.

Coreopsis: (laughing) That’s kind of you to say.

Springhorn: You have to have the practical. You have to have the balance of the practical and the expansive. If the expansive person doesn’t listen to the practical person they will not be nearly as useful to the world as they would if they were just going around being lighter than air. If you understand what I am saying.

Tree song

Coreopsis: Oh, yeah. We’ve known a few who are lighter than air. Hey, tell me about the kind of communion you feel when you hold a tree closely.

Springhorn: The way I commune with trees these days is I open myself to what I call tree song. I think it just might be the song of the conscious universe. It’s this interconnection of joyous celebration of existence in the moment now. If you can give yourself over to it and try not to interpret what it’s saying… because if you try to put words to the tree song, that’s human beings trying to turn trees into human beings. Trees are above us—literally. I’ve always thought of them as kind of like radio towers: conscious, in the moment, not burdened with any concept of the past or the future, but they seem to radiate this love. It’s a small word to say what I feel when I am walking down the street… I live in a very lucky community because it’s Pasadena in southern California. (teasingly) I know by now my brethren in the north are going “oh he lives in southern California.”

Pasadena has always been obsessed with trees. So, you walk down the street and they are all over the place… My favorite time is early in the morning before humans wake up, when you can really tune into the song of the universe. It really is, and it comes out through trees. They’re these incredible Zen masters, but they never have to come out of their meditative reverie. Anyone, if you can turn your mind off long enough, you can become part of it. You can become part of the song. You close your eyes, unless you’re walking and crossing streets, of course…

Coreopsis: (laughs)

Springhorn: …and you can just sail on it, dance on it, lose your body and just sort of become part of this beautiful, resonant inspiring song. But the minute you try to put words to it, the minute you try to bring it down to a human level and say, “it’s good, it’s bad,” you lose it. One of my favorite ways, and the easiest way to talk to trees, so to speak—it’s not really talking, it’s communing—is you go take your third eye, put it against the bark of a tree, and then breathe.  What I’ve been working with lately is heart chakra. So, I drop into my heart chakra and—I have a funny feeling being as I put my third eye against the bark that it has a lot to do with that—but it all filters through the heart.  And the reason I like it filtering through the heart is that the heart is kind of as far away from the monkey mind as you can get. I’ve given myself permission to kind of go there and just let the energy come off of the tree and into me. It’s not telling you anything, it’s just feeling. What you do with it is up to you. You can interpret it if you want to but I prefer to just bathe in it. Ride it. You know, I do that when I am walking down the street, unless I get caught up in something, as humans are wont to do. I’m sitting there with all these beautiful trees, mostly camphor trees are my current favorite. I get a lot of camphor wood to make wands out of, so I have become very, very fond of those. It’s just you’re walking down the street and the music is going on whether you pay attention to it or not. So, if you can close your mind down and ride it, it’s just so much more pleasant than thinking about the things a human has to think about just to get through a day.

Forest Bathing

Coreopsis: You used the word “bathe” a minute ago. We’ve done a bit of forest bathing together. That’s kind of a thing now. We did a bit up in Tilden Park not that long ago. Tell me about the connections you made there. I’m thinking about a couple of particularly talkative ravens.

Springhorn: We got some ASTOUNDING ravens and crows. They’re obviously, you know… I think they refuse to get too intelligent because then they’d be responsible for… they would have to work too hard to exist. They’ve got this wonderful culture. They show up at just the right time, and if you “caw” at them, they’ll caw back.

Coreopsis: Oh yeah!

Springhorn: If I had the patience, I would be very happy to cultivate a relationship with them… putting out food regularly, and they know you and they know to come back to you, and they know you don’t mean them any harm. There are people who have gotten trinkets from them. I would love to do that. If it was legal, I would have a raven living at my house.

Coreopsis: A lot of recent scientific work explores the ability of trees to communicate with each other and other life in the woods, through mycorrhizal networks, a “wood-wide web” is the expression some are using. I’m thinking of Suzanne Simard in Finding the Mother Tree or Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees, and others. Are you at all surprised by this, and are you pleased to hear that science is catching up with spirit?

Springhorn: Oh! Science and Spirit, whenever they meet, explain each other beautifully. The only thing that pisses people off [is] if it doesn’t end up being like a fairy tale. It’s all very natural and makes complete sense… no orcs, no trolls, no magic swords, but there is this beautiful connection. I have a hypothesis that’s kind of important to me–

Coreopsis: Okay

Springhorn: …that whereas the trees, by themselves, are sort of unconscious, radiant beings, the fungus that thinks for them is… a whole ‘nother animal. That’s what I feel. I’m waiting for someone to say that it’s right or wrong.

Coreopsis: There’s that whole microcosm/macrocosm thing in our conversations from years and years ago. I don’t remember where we came up with that, but there are alternatives to the idea of a human being as an individual. Another way to think of a human being is as a superorganism of cells that has a coordinator working up here (in the head) but is also a collection of individual cells that are born, live, and die. They become part of that organism for a time. The organism goes on without them, until it doesn’t…

Springhorn: As I said, it’s really a matter of human beings by themselves can’t do much—but a human being in a pack can do anything, pretty much. Unfortunately, there’s some drawbacks to that. But I’m not going to spoil this conversation by getting into it…

The Green Wizard

Coreopsis: I want to ask you about the Green Wizard character. What inspired you to portray a Green Wizard? How did it begin?

Springhorn: A long time ago, I realized that when I was in the moment, and not listening to what people had told me was real, or worrying about what was going to happen, [I was free]. This mostly happened in my life when I was doing theater. I kind of died [when I was] between theatrical jobs, because I wanted that freedom. What happened was I got pretty good at influencing my environment. My last serious girlfriend used me to help her manifest things. We got very good at that. She called me the Blue Wizard. And then we broke up, after a fire that ate up everything I owned in the whole wide world… I moved to Pasadena and, as the trees claimed me, I started calling myself the Green Wizard, because it’s all about trees. All my knowledge comes from the conscious universe as expressed by those beings. It goes in many directions. The interesting thing is, all you got to do is say “this is who I am,” sit down and let it flow. You can end up being the mouthpiece of the universe, if you need to be. You just have to plug yourself in and let the energy go through you. And that’s what I do when I’m doing gigs at the southern Renaissance Faire.  I was going to sell ceramics there because I used to sell ceramics there. But I got an enormous block and kind of went nuts.

The Wands

Springhorn: Funny story, a friend of ours got a job up at Universal Studios, being the wand guy at Ollivander’s. He had to memorize an enormous amount of wand lore. A friend of mine said, “Boy, this stuff makes sense.” He went to the Internet and said, “Hey, this is how you make a magic wand.” What you do is you paste a pointy end on one side and a round end on the other, and wrap it so they can’t see how you pasted it. And that’s a wand! As I started making them, it was easier to talk to the trees, and I realized that every tree… is just a being. I pick up a stick and I look at it and it tells me what stones to put on it, and what embellishments to put on it. I’ve been doing it for about four or five years. And every day that I get into this, it becomes more about being a servant to the wood and the stones and less about making a living.

Coreopsis: That’s cool. You touched on my next question already: What are the parts common to all of your wands?

Springhorn: It comes like this. The energy comes in through your heart, down your right arm, into what is called a “connection stone.” That’s usually a round one. Used to be nothing but crystals, because crystals are natural conductors, they work in radios and stuff like that. But I found out that any stone will work. Any stone at all, be it opaque or clear. It is the passage, the transformer, transistor, whatever it is that takes the energy from your hand into the wood. The interesting thing about the wood is that it was alive not terribly long ago. So, the energy passes very easily through the wood, and becomes, actually, whatever you want it to be. It becomes more concentrated, as does your mind, when you’re doing it, so that by the time that you go through the shaft, or what I like to call the “branch,” you get to the end of it, which is usually a pointy stone, usually white quartz. You can let the energy go out like a laser beam, into your left hand, and up your arm, and back to your heart, so that you’ve got this circuit going. The circuit happens, and that’s the way that you get to know your wand, and know the energy. The circuit becomes so tangible that you disappear, the wand disappears, and there is nothing but energy. And that energy is the essence of every human being. It’s the thing that binds us, and as you were saying, just like the trees are connected by [mycorrhizal fungi], we are connected by this incredible, palpable energy that we have been a part of since the beginning of the universe. I could talk for an hour on that one.

Coreopsis: But we’re running out of time, though I don’t think we’re done here. Can I set up another one of these sometime?

Springhorn: Of course. Of course, of course, of course. It causes me to find out if I really believe in things, so I’m in.

Coreopsis: Awesome.

Springhorn: Did I tell you about my first legitimate wand class?

Coreopsis: We’ll work that in! What happened? What’s the name of that shop?

Springhorn: It’s called the Indigo Collective. What happened was, as I had been working on this for about four years, I was doing a wand circle. What you do is you become one with the wand, as I was telling you, and then you sit in a circle, and each person takes the intention stone of the person they are sitting next to, and hands their intention stone to the person sitting next to them.  So, you get a complete circuit. And what you are really doing is that you are illuminating the body and strengthening the flow of the universe, and letting it become the unbroken energy that it was when we were part of it before the Big Bang. Does that make any sense?

Coreopsis: Hmm.  I’m going to have to take some time to parse it out. (laughs)

Springhorn: The important thing is the reason one uses one of my wands is to experience the pure energy of the universe that we all used to be a seamless part of, before we were parceled out into various beings of various kinds.

Coreopsis: Let’s just put a pin in it, and take this up again sometime.

Springhorn: Sure!

Coreopsis: Alright David, thank you!

Springhorn: Of course! This is fun! Odd fun, as usual.