The Soul Shed
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November: 'There was aye the rowan tree'. Tree-types series. Enneagram 368.
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November: 'There was aye the rowan tree'. Tree-types series. Enneagram 368.

Exploring correspondences and openings for an inner journey with this tree's archetypal pattern.

Moon: Frost moon, Beaver moon

Tree:Rowan

Enneagram Archetype: 368 - the Justice Fighter (also 386,683,638,836,863)

Virtues: Veracity, courage, innocence

Holy ideas: Holy hope, holy faith, holy truth.


‘Tho’ the he’rt wad dee in me
At a fitstep on the floor,
There was aye the rowan tree
Wi’ its airm across the door’.

Violet Jacob – The Rowan.

A huge thank you to Tanya and Simon Fraser for their reading of the poem.

Rowan Tree Cottage

While this exploration  may be the first to pair Rowan with enneagram  368, seekers have drawn spiritual sustenance from the  archetypal character of Rowan for millenia. This tree offers  rich imaginal space to explore aspects of our humaning.


Mountain Ash is another name for Rowan, a member of the rose family, because both Ash and Rowan have similar pinate leaves. Another beautiful correlation between Ash and Rowan is that Rowan is the Celtic tree of Life, while Ash is the Norse tree of life, Yggdrasil. (Read last months post about Ash here).

Orange-red berries are another sign that you may be under the boughs of a Rowan tree this time of year. And to spend time with Rowan at this time of year might mean you witness the beautiful contrast of a darkening grey Novembery sky with those bright round berries.

Rowan Berries: Katherine Kromberg at Unsplash

Upholding the archetypal space of 368 are the virtues of veracity (3), courage (6) and innocence (8) respectively, and this human personality  is called variously The Warrior by Joseph Simone, and the Justice Fighter by Katherine Fauvre. I experience this tree as a Champion for Humans, in the  archaic sense of being our heartfelt and active supporter. Rowan trees are often found alone growing on hills and especially in the Scottish highlands, and can be very windswept, with a look of having held on. This is the kind of stoicism and strength that a Rowan tree in its landscape can offer you.

Nurturing those more opened up and coherent places in our selves and in our lives, also means overcoming reactive habits. The journey of 368 includes struggles with vanity, cowardice and a kind of lust that wants to dominate and control. These are very human traits, that often bring us to our knees in our lives and our  relationships. Owning these denser places inside us, and taking them to a tree, is an opportunity walking in forest and landscape offers us. The tree will be stood there, and in the walking intentionally towards it, bringing along your entire human self, there is a third space that opens between you, offering an opportunity to transform or let go of a piece of your human struggle.  This journeying can be supported by your breathing, and by your imagining, and in the weight and gravity of your steps themselves, connecting you to the ground shared by the roots of the tree.

The Rowan by Violet Jacob

This poem by Scots poet, Violet Jacob,  of The Rowan, brings home the felt sense of this tree as something very powerful holding its place in a wintery Scottish landscape, at the threshold of a home, and protecting the humans within, against supernatural forces. Listening to the poem might also connect you more strongly with the specificity of trees….affecting life around them in their particular place. She writes in Scots vernacular, further taking her poetic voice out of abstracted literary space and locating the voice of the poem in that landscape too. Likewise, the invitation of deep-mapping in your square mile, is to come to know the trees experientially, not as ‘species’ but as companions on your path, in your own place of inhabitation.  The dots you join and the meanings you make can overlay those you gather here, like a palimpsest.

Avowing  something further of the empowering traits of Rowan, here is Sharlyn Hildago, author of ‘Walking with Trees’, the book  which inspired the Take it to the Trees project to deepen into its own  roots, back in 2020:

‘This tree teaches us to not give up when obstacles block our growth; we must keep going in the face of adversity, and thrive in spite of a lack or nurturance or acknowledgement. Rowan represents the indomitable life force’.

Is there something in this archetypal 368 Rowan space for you, on your own human journey, whether or not this mirrors your personality entirely? Could your visiting a Rowan tree help you in contemplating a tricky situation beyond any self-deceit and fear, looking towards the authenticity  and courage that the humans running three  and six personality patterns can spend years circling. Could it support you in sensing into an innocence that all adults struggle to hold onto, not only the enneagram eight humans in our lives, those people who we intuitively recognise know so much about being strong at high personal cost.

Now in a time where it seems that we are looking to leaders ill-equipped to supply us with vision for our lives.* there is also a need to lean into our own authenticity (3) support (6) and leadership (8) rather than look too much towards the the authority figures and thought leaders parading their increasinfly shaky certainties externally. Jacob’s poem also reminds us that even the sturdiest of protective trees, has a life span, and at a certain point, anyone we have looked up will die, and it is for each of us to step into our own agency, to show leadership in our own lives. This warrior space of Rowan and 368 is a powerful intitiation to our individuation.

Rowan on mountainside

A journey into three centres of intelligence is embedded in the enneagram teachings, and each of us has a strategy of head and heart and gut that is our lens on the world. If you would like to uncover your own enneagram map  and include it in your own intuitive creative journey, then please be in touch, and we can find it together. Here is a link to set up a call to explore working together online.

Soul retrieval is a part of this, as an organic orientation towards living in place, which recognises  that there are buried treasures and resources to be found within us. In their grandeur and spaciousness, the trees offer us incredibly company as places to learn about ourselves, and to inspire us to grow into all that we can be, at a time where the world needs us to show up fully.

Honouring that this journeying is tender, personal and powerful, I am hoping here that we might continue on this monthly walk through forest together. And if you feel the 368 archetype moving through you strongly you might enjoy this companion piece over at The Soul Shed blog.

I will be back next month with another tree-type . In the meantime,  I hope this Frost moon finds you well.


This post is the third in a series offering enneagram ‘tree-types’, drawing on the archetypal spaces pointed to by enneagram teachers Ichazo (trifix) and Katherine Fauvre (tri-type). I am publishing one of these explorations here each month. 


*’When a clown moves into a palace he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus’ - Turkish Proverb

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The Soul Shed
A place for writing from The Soul Shed project, to inspire you to deepen your experience of your intuitive creativity and your life force, through imagery, enneagram wisdom teachings and your belonging to place.
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