The Hazel Moon invites us to listen for the wisdom that’s already trying to reach us and to trust what we hear enough to act on it.
I have to admit that before I started following the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar, I didn’t have much of a relationship with Hazel.
I knew hazelnuts mostly as a coffee flavor and the thing that makes Nutella delicious.
I definitely couldn’t have pointed out a hazel tree in the wild. Maybe you’re the same.
That’s actually one of the things I’ve loved about following the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar. It has introduced me to trees I might otherwise have walked right past and invited me to spend an entire lunar month getting to know them.
Hazel has become one of my favorites because her stories take us straight into one of the things I work with most in my own Life and with my clients: Intuition.
How do we hear our Intuition?
How do we know when it’s actually Intuition and not Fear?
What happens when we feel like we can’t hear it at all?
And maybe most importantly, what do we do with what we know?
What Is the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar?
If you’re new here, I follow a Nature-Time framework commonly called the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar.
Just like how the zodiac tracks the Sun through twelve astrological signs over the course of the year, this calendar tracks the Moon with thirteen trees for thirteen lunar cycles.
We spend a whole lunar cycle getting to know one tree and exploring the particular wisdom or invitation associated with her.
I came to this practice after years of trying to follow Western astrology and realizing that, if I’m being honest, I was both bored and overwhelmed by it.
In Western astrology, the Moon moves into a new zodiac sign every few days, and there were planets and houses and aspects and transits to keep track of. I could appreciate the wisdom in it, but I didn’t feel particularly connected to it.
Then I traveled through the British Isles, the land many of my maternal ancestors came from, and something began shifting for me.
I wanted to orient to the Moon in a way my grandmothers would have. I wanted to know the trees my grandmothers would have known. I wanted something I could touch and smell and sit beneath.
It was on that trip that I learned about the Celtic Lunar Tree calendar for the first time and immediately started following it.
It’s worth saying that the thirteen-month Tree Calendar as we know it today is a modern reconstruction. We can’t historically prove that ancient Celtic people followed this exact calendar.
But many of the individual relationships between particular trees, Irish mythology and folklore, the Ogham alphabet, and seasonal Life on the Land are much older.
I don’t need the modern calendar itself to be ancient for it to be meaningful.
For me, it’s a framework for spending an entire year paying closer attention to Nature and noticing what Nature reflects back about my own True Nature.
[Read my complete guide to the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar →]
When Is the Hazel Moon?
Hazel follows Holly in the thirteen-tree cycle.
Holly invited us into Devotion. She asked us to consider what matters enough to protect and what is actually worthy of our Life force.
Then Hazel arrives and turns our attention toward Intuition, wisdom, and inspiration.
The exact dates of the Hazel Moon move from year to year, because I follow the actual lunar cycle rather than assigning each tree a fixed set of calendar dates.
In 2026, the Hazel Moon begins with the New Moon on September 10 and continues through October 9.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we approach and then cross the Autumn Equinox during the Hazel Moon. Summer begins giving way to Fall, and the growing Season begins turning toward Harvest.
Hazel is producing the nut harvest that made her such a powerful symbol of nourishment and hidden wisdom.
It feels like the right Season to ask ourselves a couple of questions:
What has been growing in me that I now know?
Am I willing to trust that knowing enough to let it change me?
Meet the Hazel Tree
Hazel is a relatively small tree that grows naturally throughout much of Europe, including Ireland and Britain. She often grows along woodland edges or underneath taller trees.
And yes, the hazelnuts we eat actually grow on her.
Hazel has been incredibly useful to humans for a very long time. Her branches are flexible enough to bend and weave, so people have historically used them to make things like baskets, fences, roofing materials, and fishing equipment. Her nuts have obviously been valuable as food, too.
Hazel was significant enough in early Ireland that Coll, the Irish word associated with Hazel, represented the C sound in the Ogham alphabet, an early Irish writing system.
But Hazel wasn’t only useful to our external world, but to our inner world as well.
She was deeply associated with knowledge, poetry, inspiration, and hidden wisdom.
To understand why, we have to visit a magical well.
What Is a Sacred Well?
If you’re new to Celtic mythology and folklore, you might hear the phrase sacred well and wonder what the heck that actually means.
Before you could turn on a faucet and have clean water pour into your kitchen sink, finding a reliable source of fresh water was a very big deal.
A spring is a place where water naturally rises out of the Earth. A well allows us to reach water that exists beneath the Earth’s surface.
Across Ireland, particular wells and springs became more than places where people collected drinking water. People visited them for prayer, healing, blessing, pilgrimage, and connection with the Sacred.
Some of these traditions eventually became associated with Christian saints. Other customs and stories reflect a much older Irish relationship with the Land, water, healing, and the unseen world.
There are sacred wells in Ireland and the British Isles that people still visit today.
So when an old Irish story places Hazel beside a magical well of wisdom, the setting matters.
The wisdom is coming up from beneath the surface.
I can’t think of a more perfect place to begin talking about Intuition.
The Nine Hazels and the Well of Wisdom
One of the old Irish sources that preserves this mythology is the Metrical Dindshenchas, a medieval collection of stories and poems about important places.
In the story of Sinann, who is associated with the River Shannon, we encounter a magical well connected with wisdom and poetic inspiration.
Nine Hazel trees grow around the well.
Their nuts fall into the water, and the salmon living there eat them.
Through eating the hazelnuts, the salmon become associated with the wisdom of the well.
I love the movement in this story.
The wisdom moves from the tree into the nut. The nut falls into the water. The salmon eats the nut and takes its wisdom into its body.
Knowledge isn’t static in this story.
Wisdom moves.
It changes form.
And eventually, in one of Ireland’s most beloved legends, that wisdom finds its way into a young man named Fionn.
Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge
There are different versions of this story, which is exactly what we would expect from a story that has been told and retold for generations.
The basic story goes something like this.
A wise poet named Finegas had spent years trying to catch the legendary Salmon of Knowledge.
The person who ate this salmon would receive extraordinary wisdom.
Eventually, Finegas finally caught it.
He gave the fish to his young student, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and asked him to cook it. He warned Fionn not to eat any of the fish.
Fionn obeyed.
But while he was cooking the salmon, he burned his thumb. Without thinking about it, he put his burned thumb into his mouth.
In that completely ordinary, instinctive moment, the wisdom Finegas had spent years pursuing passed to Fionn.
The Truth in this story is so important.
Finegas had spent years pursuing wisdom.
Fionn simply received it.
He didn’t receive it because he had worked harder, had more credentials, or because he had figured out the perfect spiritual practice.
He was simply there.
He was present enough to notice what was happening and available enough to receive it.
Last year, Hazel taught me that Intuition isn’t chased or achieved. It’s received.
But this year, I find myself wondering if we can take that even further.
What if we’re not actually pursuing Intuition?
What if Intuition has been pursuing us all along?
What If Your Intuition Isn’t Blocked?
Last year I did an oracle card reading for a client that I’ll never forget, even though she asked me a question that I hear in different forms all the time.
“What’s blocking me from being able to hear my Intuition?“
I use my pendulum to discern which deck to pull from, and I was guided to the Power Animals Oracle Deck by Steven Farmer, and I pulled Hawk.
The message was essentially to focus.
Honestly, the answer almost felt too obvious.
Was she prioritizing her relationship with her Intuition?
Was she creating any space in which she could hear it?
Was she present and available?
She laughed because she’d been expecting something deeper. She thought we might uncover some hidden wound or some giant block that she needed to find and heal.
Instead, the answer was basically telling her to pay attention.
It was a simple answer, but definitely not a shallow one.
Sometimes we assume Intuition has disappeared because we aren’t hearing it.
What if it hasn’t?
Maybe there’s just a lot of static.
Our notifications create static. Other people’s opinions create static. Podcasts, social media, the news, our responsibilities, and our own Fear can all create static. Even the seventeen tabs we have open in our brains can create static.
We’re constantly receiving signals.
And somewhere underneath all of that, Intuition is still broadcasting.
You Are the Radio Receiver
This is one of my favorite ways to think about Intuition.
We’re like radio receivers.
The signal doesn’t begin existing when you tune the radio to the right station. The signal was already moving through the air.
Tuning simply allows the radio to receive the signal clearly enough that you can hear the music.
I think Intuition can work like that.
Some of the information we receive may come from our subconscious. Our bodies and brains have noticed, experienced, learned, remembered, and recognized patterns without our conscious minds needing to sort through all of that information.
Have you ever known immediately that something felt off before you could explain why?
Your conscious mind might not have caught up yet, but your body already had information.
I also believe we can receive information from what I think of as the superconscious. You might call that God, Spirit, Love, Higher Self, collective wisdom, ancestors, angels, guides, or quantum entanglement in the energetic field around us. You can use whatever language makes sense within your own spiritual framework.
For me, Intuition lives somewhere in this Mysterious conversation between body, memory, Nature, Spirit, and the Unseen.
I don’t think we need to know exactly where every signal came from before we’re allowed to listen to it.
I think we need to learn how our particular receiver works.
Water, Memory & Wisdom
This brings me back to the Water in the Hazel stories.
Humans have associated water with memory, healing, divination, wisdom, and spiritual communication across cultures for a very long time.
There have even been modern experiments exploring whether water might respond to information or intention. You may have encountered the work of Japanese researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto, who became famous for photographing ice crystals after exposing water samples to different words, music, prayers, and intentions.
His experiments have inspired a lot of curiosity and debate about whether water might somehow hold or respond to information.
I don’t need to solve that Mystery here to find the idea fascinating.
I find it especially fascinating when I remember how much water our own bodies contain and how constantly water moves through the living world.
Water moves through clouds and rain. It moves through rivers and roots. It moves through animals, plants, and our own bodies.
Then I look again at the Hazel story.
The wisdom begins with the tree.
The tree produces the nut.
The nut falls into the water.
The salmon eats the nut.
Fionn touches the salmon.
Eventually, that wisdom becomes part of Fionn himself.
Wisdom isn’t something we’re meant to understand only with our minds.
Wisdom is something we’re meant to metabolize through our bodies.
It enters the body. We experience it. We live with it.
And eventually, if we let it, wisdom changes the way we live.
Hazel, Dowsing & Finding What You Can’t See
Here’s another Hazel connection that I didn’t understand until I started learning more about the actual tree.
Hazel branches have traditionally been used for dowsing, including a practice called water divining.
I knew about dowsing rods and pendulums as intuitive tools, but I didn’t know dowsing was literally about finding a water source.
If you’ve never heard of water divining, here’s how it traditionally works.
Someone takes a forked branch shaped roughly like a Y and holds the two shorter ends in their hands so that the longer end extends in front of them.
Then they walk across the land looking for water hidden underground.
As they walk, they watch the branch. If the branch suddenly dips or twists in their hands, they interpret that movement as a sign that water may be beneath them.
Hazel was one of the traditional woods people used for these rods.
People have been practicing versions of dowsing for centuries.
When I first learned this, I immediately wondered how the stick could know that there was water underground.
There isn’t scientific evidence establishing that Hazel wood itself has some special ability to detect underground water.
But the rods really can move.
One scientific explanation is something called the ideomotor effect. Our bodies can make tiny unconscious movements without us realizing that we’re making them.
It’s similar to what can happen when we use a pendulum.
You hold the pendulum. You ask a question. You aren’t consciously trying to move your hand, and then somehow the pendulum begins swinging.
Your hand is moving, but you aren’t consciously directing the movement.
Personally, that leaves me with a question that I find much more interesting than whether the stick itself is magical.
What does the body know before the conscious mind knows that it knows?
Maybe the Hazel branch isn’t the radio receiver.
Maybe we are.
Maybe we both are. Maybe all of Nature is.
Maybe tools like pendulums, oracle cards, dowsing rods, dreams, meditation, and Time in Nature give us different ways to notice signals that would otherwise be easy to miss.
But when we think of Hazel as the tree of Intuition or Wisdom, how incredibly fitting is it that people held Hazel in their hands while searching for something real that they couldn’t see.
Your Attention Is the Altar
Maybe the question isn’t, “How do I make my Intuition talk to me?”
Maybe the better question is, “How available am I to hear what has already been trying to reach me?”
I think about Intuition a lot like I think about intimacy.
You can’t demand intimacy on command.
You create the conditions for it.
You make Time for the relationship. You put the phone down. You soften. You pay attention. You show up for the date.
Your relationship with your Intuition deserves that kind of tending, too.
You might light a candle and pull an oracle card. You might hold a pendulum or sit beneath a tree. You might take a walk without your headphones, write in your journal, pray, or meditate.
You might ask a question before bed and notice what you dream.
Or you might simply sit quietly for ten minutes and ask:
What does Love want to say to me today?
Then you listen.
You can write down the first thing that comes without immediately interrogating it. You don’t have to demand another sign or decide that the answer wasn’t dramatic enough to count.
You can simply begin creating a relationship.
Your attention is the altar. Your devotion is the offering.
Hazel Doesn’t Only Ask Us to Listen
In the book Nature-Speak, Ted Andrews gives Hazel the keynote:
“Time for transformation: act on inspiration.”
I think that’s the important second half of Intuition.
Eventually, we have to do something with what we know.
We’ve all done it. We pull yet another card. We ask yet another friend. We listen to yet another podcast. We book another reading. We ask for another sign.
Then we ask for another sign after that one.
But sometimes we aren’t actually confused.
Sometimes we already know.
We’re just waiting for enough additional information to make acting on what we know feel less scary.
Hazel reminds me that Intuition isn’t meant to become an endless scavenger hunt for signs.
Wisdom wants to become embodied.
Inspiration becomes transformation when we act on it.
Maybe you know that a relationship needs a boundary.
Maybe you know that you want to make the art.
Maybe you know that you’re exhausted.
Maybe you know that the way you’re working isn’t sustainable anymore.
Maybe you know that you want something you’ve been afraid to admit that you want.
Maybe you know that it’s Time.
You don’t necessarily need your Intuition to get louder.
You may need to trust what you’ve already heard.
A Simple Hazel Practice for Connecting With Your Intuition
For the next week, try giving your Intuition ten intentional minutes each day.
You can choose approximately the same Time each day if that feels supportive, but don’t let rigidity or “consistency” trip up your devotion.
Create whatever environment helps you become receptive. You might make a cup of tea, light a candle, sit at your altar, walk outside, pull out an oracle deck, or open your journal.
Then ask one Loving question.
You might ask:
What does Love want me to know today?
Or you might ask:
What have I already been shown that I’m ready to act on?
Then listen for what comes first.
You might receive a sentence, a word, an image, a feeling in your body, an emotion, a memory, a sudden knowing, a song that inexplicably pops into your head, a card, a dream, or a feeling of expansion or contraction.
Write down what you notice without immediately deciding what it means.
Over time, notice your Patterns.
The goal isn’t to learn how Intuition itself communicates with everyone.
The goal is to learn how your Intuition communicates with you.
Celtic Birth Essence: Hazel, the Knower
There’s another way I love working with the Celtic Tree Calendar. I like noticing which tree may have been growing through the lunar cycle when we were born.
If you were born sometime in August or September, you may have been born beneath a Hazel Moon.
In modern Celtic Tree traditions, Hazel is sometimes called The Knower.
Hazel people are often described as intelligent, perceptive, thoughtful, observant, and Naturally drawn toward knowledge.
You may notice details that other people miss. You may love learning enough about something to really understand it. You may simply have a way of connecting dots that other people don’t see.
There’s often a quieter quality to Hazel people, too.
The Knower doesn’t necessarily need to be the loudest person in the room.
You may be someone who watches, listens, gathers information, connects the dots, and then simply knows.
Like every archetype, Hazel has a shadow side.
A love of knowledge can become overthinking. Attention to detail can become perfectionism. Seeking more information can become a way of postponing action, even when some Deeper Part of you already knows what you need to do.
That brings us right back to Hazel’s invitation.
Wisdom isn’t only about what you know. Wisdom is also about what you’re willing to do with what you know.
If you were born in August or September and think Hazel may be your Celtic Birth Essence, notice what resonates.
If Hazel isn’t your birth tree, Hazel still has something to offer you.
That’s what I love about moving through the whole calendar together. We don’t only work with the tree associated with our birth. We spend Time with all thirteen trees and let each one show us another part of our own True Nature.
Hazel Moon Reflection Questions
As you move through the Hazel Moon, spend some Time with these questions.
- How does my Intuition usually get my attention?
- Where do I feel a yes in my body, and where do I feel a no?
- What creates static that makes my inner knowing harder to hear?
- What practices help me become available to Intuition instead of trying to force an answer?
- Where am I asking for another sign about something I already know?
- What inspiration have I received that is asking me to act?
- What does my body know before my conscious mind knows that it knows?
- What might change if I trusted my Intuition a little more?
You don’t need to answer all of them.
You can simply notice which question catches your attention.
That might be part of the signal, too.
Discover How Your Intuition Speaks
One of the biggest questions I hear from people is, “But how do I know what’s actually my Intuition?”
Part of the answer is that Intuition doesn’t feel or sound the same for everyone.
Some people receive intuitive information through images or visions. Some people hear words or messages. Some people feel information in their bodies. Some people simply know Something without knowing how they know it.
Other people notice that Intuition speaks through Patterns, synchronicities, dreams, Nature, or energy.
Your Human Design can offer another clue by showing you the part of your body that is designed to guide your decisions.
That’s why I created my free Discover Your Spiritual Gifts masterclass.
Inside the class, we’ll explore your Human Design authority, the different intuitive and psychic senses, and the ways your own spiritual gifts may already be communicating with you that you’ve been overlooking.
You don’t need to become intuitive.
You already are.
Maybe Hazel’s invitation is simply to turn down the static, tune the receiver, and notice the wisdom that’s been pursuing you all along.
Then Hazel asks you to take one more step.
Act on the inspiration.
Let it transform you.
Follow the Celtic Lunar Tree Calendar With Me
You don’t need to memorize thirteen trees or figure out where we are in the calendar on your own.
You can simply follow along with me.
Thirteen moons. Thirteen trees. A year of following Nature’s rhythms back to your own True Nature.
As we enter each new lunar month, I’ll send the current tree guide directly to your inbox.
Each guide will help you meet the tree we’re spending Time with and explore her mythology, folklore, relationship with the Season, and invitation for your own Life.
You’ll also receive reflection questions and simple practices that will help you actually live with the tree’s teaching instead of only reading about it.
Then we’ll continue exploring the tree together as the Moon moves from New to Full.
Get the next Celtic Lunar Tree Guide in your inbox as we move through all 13 trees together.
Looking for more personal support? [Explore ways to walk with me.]
