2006 Rutgers ogham lecture

Ed's Ogham Lecture Notes- Rutgers Pagan Student Association September 12, 2006

1- introduction, why I’m interested in Ogham- because I like mysteries, and I like poetry (the more obscure the system, the better). That’s basically what Ogham is to me- a strange poetic system where the metaphors and similes are taken primarily from the natural world. This is very much my own personal take on the Ogham- and because divination and magickal systems using Ogham vary so widely, this will mostly be about the Ogham in general, rather than the uses of each particular letter. I’ve run off a handout of basic stuff, tho, and the divinations I use, which are based on a bunch of other systems. (pass out handout)

Back in the early 1990s I picked up a this strange wooden box at Pyramid Books in New Brunswick. Liz and Colin Murray’s Celtic Tree Oracle. I thought it looked cool. It had cards in it that corresponded to different trees, some tree lore, some magickal and divinatory stuff, and it was all supposed to be based on an ancient Celtic writing system, sort of like the Norse runes. How cool is that? I played with the Murray’s tree oracle for a while, and I got to like it. Later, I began to discover more about it. I’m going to start you-all out with the stuff that I didn’t know at the time. Ogham basics.

2- pronunciation: In English: ä-gem, o- -gem; In Irish Gaelic: o- -(e)m (o-am, or o-wam). The name might be derived from “Ghuaim”- bardic wisdom; today in Modern Irish “Oghum” = “occult sciences.” It’s the earliest known form of Irish writing.

3-what is ogham? The Ogham alphabet consists of letters made from short tally-marks on a straight line. One mark for B, two marks for L, three for F.... The language of Ogham is something a little different. There are ancient references to the “dark speech” of the Druids. This was possibly a form of Ogham, a system of correspondences.

Ogham inscriptions have come down to us carved on standing stones, mostly, and in a few manuscripts written by christian monks in the 14th century. If you look at the ogham- you’ll see it’s all straight lines. That makes it easy to carve on a stone, or a piece of wood. Most of the standing stones are boundary markers from the 3rd to the 7th century CE. (Handout) The script is read from the left side, going from the bottom up, then across the top, then down the right side. In manuscript, it’s read from left to right, or bottom to top.

Most modern Pagans know of Ogham as "the Celtic tree alphabet" or "the tree calendar" although trees are only one part of this system. In fact, some of the ogham names don’t even refer to trees at all. The one associated with Hawthorn, for instance, actually means “terror.” On the divination handout, the word in brackets under the pronunciation is what the ogham word actually means.

Getting back to the trees- not all of these trees actually grow in the British isles, but they do on the continent, so this system might have had its origin in Gaul, and was transplanted to Britain. However, there are no Ogham stones on the continent, so that suggests in a backhand way that the language of Ogham was in use before the writing system of Ogham was devised.

How does the Ogham work? Basically, almost anything that began with that letter in Ancient Irish could be associated with that tally: Birds, Bodies of Water, Herbs, Stones, Tools, and even Saints. There’s a Saint’s Ogham where each letter corresponds to a Saint’s name. You could come up with a Gods and Goddesses Ogham too, if you were so inclined. Think “A is for Apple, B is for Ball...” how kids today learn the alphabet. In fact, Dr. McManus, the most respected of the current crop of ogham scholars, says that he thinks that these associations were added later, to help kids learn the ogham alphabet. I don’t know if I agree with that. Some of them are just too weird. If he’s right, then we’re creating a divination system out of A is for Apple, B is for Ball. Of course, you could create a system out of that.

(Realize that almost all written letter systems have been used for divination and magick of some sort, even the ABCs. There are many theories why. One of them suggests that people who couldn’t read saw the symbols as magickal, because the people who could read were more powerful and could “intuite” all sorts of knowledge by looking at these arcane symbols. So the illiterate try to use the symbols themselves.)

In The Scholar’s Primer, an old Irish manuscript, these associations are called “kennings.” A way to tell what was an original kenning and those added by modern practitioners is to check to see if that association starts with that letter in ancient Irish. If it doesn’t, it’s modern. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, of course. You can work this system in modern Irish, or even English (although Celtophiles will scoff).

Each tally is called a “few” and each division of five is an “aicme.” The line that they’re written on is called the Druim. The arrow that starts it is the Saighead, or feather. Dots are frequently used between words, spaces between letters. The first aicme is for the Labials, the next for Dental and Aspirant sounds, then the Gutteral sounds, and finally the Vowels.

The last aicme, called the Forfeda, which means, the “Additions” came in later for sounds new to Celtic speech. For instance, Old Irish had a hard ‘c’ but no ‘k.’ You’ll notice the forfeda is quite a bit different from the other aicme. These were not part of the original alphabet, and were added to represent dipthongs new to the language. (There are actually four sets of five extra letters; the set here represents letters that have been found on Ogham stones, so were at least used for writing, if not magick and divination. A lot of people ignore the forfeda. Sometimes I ignore them, sometimes I use them.)

In addition to the Celtic Ogham, there are Pictish Ogham, which have not been deciphered.

There are two popular versions of the alphabet, the BLFSN- which is the most prevalent- and the BLNFS. Most NeoPagans today use the BLF version, the “Beh- Lweesh- Fairn.” The BLF is the one on the standing stones, and that’s also the one in the major source of Ogham lore, the Book of Ballymote. Some scholars, following Robert Graves, say that the BLN version “Beh- Lweesh- Neun” is probably older, but he doesn’t provide any evidence of this other than it fits his magickal system, which I’ll talk about later. I’m going with the version on the standing stones, the BLF. If you see an Ogham inscription, it’s usually not hard to tell which version is being used.

Almost all the inscriptions carved on stone date from the 3rd to the 7th centuries. About 350 stones survive, most in S. Ireland, the rest in Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man. The use of Ogham in manuscripts continues until much later than that, into the Christian period. The filidh, the poets, made sure that the memory of Ogham was still alive until the mid-17th C.

Why did the poets keep it alive? There are all sorts of tantalizing references to Druid secret languages, and what we know about Ogham hints at that. I think that that’s what the kennings are all about.

It is the manuscripts that tell us the most about how ogham was used, and what was associated with each “few” or letter. A lot of our knowledge of Ogham comes from eight pages in the aforementioned Book of Ballymote, in a section called Duil Feda, also called The Ogham Tract. (handout)

This was compiled from a 10th century manuscript called The Scholar's Primer, which was a training book for bards. Other versions of this text are found in the 12th century Book of Leinster, the late 14th century Yellow Book of Lecan. In addition, there are references to the use of Ogham in a number of old Celtic stories.

These meanings are mostly about the actual uses of the trees- as types of firewood, cattle fodder, what can be made from them, what insects of animals might hide in them- or are simple descriptions of the trees. While some of the meanings are quite intriguing, I don’t believe that these lists are specifically related to divination or magick- although they could have been part of a larger system that was. A number of modern Pagans have devised systems loosely based on these meanings. They’re on this handout, on the back of the booklist.

Christians kept Ogham as they converted from Paganism, and there are Christian inscriptions, however the Church’s attitude toward Ogham for divination and magick can be summed up by St. Columba:

“Our fate depends not on sneezing, nor on a bird perched on a twig, I adore not the calls of the birds, nor lots (of tree letters) in this world.”

The Synod of Whitby pretty much did Ogham in, with the Roman church’s victory over the Celtic church. Ogham was still used by the Picts in Scotland after that date, but, again, we haven’t been able to decipher the stones.

4-Where did Ogham come from?

-Once upon a time... there was an Irishman named Fionn MacCumhall- There are a lot of stories about Fionn MacCumhaill. One day the Druid Finegas decides that he wants the Magic Salmon, Fintan, who lives in Connla’s well, caught and cooked up and served to him. Why? Because the first one to taste it gets all the salmon’s knowledge.

So he gets his student, Fionn MacCumhall, to do this for him. Now, Connla’s Well is no ordinary well. The Five Hazel Trees of Wisdom surround the well, and drop their Nuts of Wisdom into the well, where the Salmon munch on them all day. So these are pretty smart salmon, and Fintan is the biggest and smartest salmon. Fionn catches the salmon, spits it and begins to roast it for Finegas. A bubble forms on the top of the salmon and Fionn pops it and burns his thumb which he immediately sticks in his mouth. (If you know the story of Gwion Bach and Cerridwen, you know what happens next.)

Suddenly, Fionn knows everything. Really, actually, Everything. He knows what you had for breakfast yesterday. If you asked him he could tell you how to set up a cold-fusion nuclear reacter. He knows when the universe was born and when it will end. Now he immediately wants to write it all down. All he had was his sword, his spear, his dagger, and his Hazel shield. So, he took his spear, and he carved all that knowledge on his shield. This is his shield and what he carved- all the knowledge in the universe, as expressed through and contained in- the alphabet.

-meanwhile-
-in another part of Eire, Fenius Farsaidh had just gotten back from Nineveh, where he had chanced to be at the Tower of Babel when it fell. Hearing all those crazy new languages, and being a wily Irishman, he decided to collect the best parts of all languages and develop a language that had all the best features. This, of course,today, is known as Irish. Fenius needed a way to write his new language down, and so invented Ogham.

-meanwhile-
In the Ogham Tract, we’re told that “Ogma mac Elathan who is said to have been skilled in speech and poetry... created the system as proof of his intellectual ability and with the intention that it should be the preserve of the learned, to the exclusion of the rustics and fools.” (Well, some things just can’t be helped.)

The story of Ogma could have been a Christian corruption of the story of how the Celtic God Oghma -whose poetic powers were symbolized by golden chains from his tongue to his listeners, who are literally held captive by his speech- invented the Ogham as “signs of secret speech known only to the learned.” Ogma, one of the Tuatha De Danaan (the Tribe of the Goddess Danu, the main class of Irish deities), was called “honey-mouthed” and “sun-faced” (indications of a sort of Apolloian solar-poetry deity) but he was also skilled in strength, and was thought by the Romans and Greeks to be the “Celtic Hercules.”

Lucian, the Greek writer, once asked a Celt about Oghma, or Ogmios. He said:
“We Celts do not agree with you Greeks in thinking that Hermes is Eloquence: we identify Hercules with it, because He is far more powerful than Hermes. And don’t be surprised that he is represented as an old man, for eloquence... is wont to show its full vigour in old age... this being so, if old Hercules here drags men after him who are tethered by the ears to his tongue, don’t be surprised at that either: you know the kinship between ears and tongue.”
(Works, vol.1, AM Harmon)

And- also- the Ogham was supposed to have been invented by someone looking up in the sky at a flock of cranes, and noting how their legs seemed to form letters. Thus, the Ogham is sometimes called the Crane Bag. (There is also another story about the God Manannan and His Crane Bag, but I really don’t connect the two. Although Manannan made Fionn’s shield from the tree that Lugh hung Balor’s head on after Lugh killed Balor, so there’s some sort of Manannan connection there.)

5- HISTORICAL
One story leads to another. We’re talking about a powerful poetic language. Language working magick. So- you wouldn’t have made your grocery list in Ogham. The average Celt in Julius Caesar’s time was using greek letters for mundane writing.

As far as historians can tell, there have been 5 uses for Ogham: an alphabet, mostly for carving into stone boundary markers and memorials (hence- the straight lines); a secret writing- so Druids could communicate without others catching on; for divination; for magikcal purposes; and as a gesture language. The gesture language is neat: there’s a Palm of Hand Ogham, a Nose Ogham, and a Foot (or shin) Ogham (demonstrate).

The Book of Ballymote chronicles the first time that Ogham was used, in typical Irish questionand answer style:
“What are the place, time, person, and cause of the invention of ogham? [sic] (The answer is) Not hard. (This was a ritualized answer).
Its place Hibernia insula quam nos Scoti habitamos. In the time of Bres, son of Elatha king of Ireland was it invented..... The father of ogham is Ogma, the mother of ogham is the hand or knife of Ogma....
This moreover is the first thing that was written by Ogham: i.e., (the birch) b was written, and to convey a warning to Lug son of Ethliu it was written, respecting his wife lest she be carried away from him into faeryland, to wit, seven bs in one switch of birch: Thy wife will be seven times carried away from thee into faeryland... unless birch guard her. On that account, moreover, b, birch, takes precedence, for it is in birch that ogham was first written.”

So- immediately it was used for secret communication and associated with magick.

In The Cattle Raid of Cooley, CuChulainn leaves a hoop carved with Ogham on top of a standing stone to challenge the armies of Connacht. No one but Fergus mac Roich could understand it, but he interpreted it to mean that no one could pass that stone until someone in the Connacht army could duplicate CuChulainn’s feats, other than Fergus. Fergus wouldn’t read it aloud himself, but had Connacht’s Druids decipher it, which they did.

Both of these stories tells us that Ogham wasn’t intended to be understood by everybody. In the Lug story, it’s a warning, and the seven staves of Birch that are to guard his wife are a protective spell. In the CuChulainn story, only Fergus and the Druids know the secret writing.

In another story, when a prince named Corc flees the advances of his stepmother and arrives at the court of neighboring King Ferdach, the King’s poet sees that he has ogham written on his shield. It was also very obvious to the poet that Corc couldn’t read Ogham, because the ogham on Corc’s shield said “behead Corc when he arrives.” The king’s poet questioned Corc, decided he liked him, and didn’t behead him, but here, again, you have a secret language.

No fewer than a hundred different Ogham types -all concerning different people, places and things- are listed in The Scholars Primer and In Lebor Oghaim. Druids must have committed a tremendous amount of information to memory on which kennings were associated with which stave.

Examples: p 41- 42, Skip- Bird Ogham, Agricultural Ogham.

In the Book of Ballymote, there are 122 different Oghams. Handout- this is one page from the book of Ballymote. There’s a reference to “thrice fifty” Ogham sets. A student of Druidry would have had to learn all of them, by heart, along with a 150 verse forms of poetry, and be able to write each verse form in each Ogham, on command.

The Colloquy of Two Sages, is a text about an older Druid testing a younger one for his right to wear a poet’s robe and sit on the Poet’s chair. On the way from his teacher to where he’s going to put on the robe and usurp the chair, the younger Druid, whose name is Nede,comes across a stalk of foxglove. One of his brothers says “hey Nede, you’re so smart, why is this called foxglove?” And Nede says, “shit, I don’t know”, so he returns to his teacher and studies for another month to learn about foxglove. They go out again, and encounter a reed. Same thing happens, and he goes back to study reeds for another month. Happens again a third time, when he doesn’t recognize Sanicle. (I don’t know what “sanicle” is either...) This gives you an idea of how much information the Druids put into each tree, each plant, each part of nature- that it would take a month to learn about foxglove, another month to learn about reeds. And all of this information was connected.

Ogham was also used as a counting system- Ex. Stag Ogham. 1 hart, 2 hart / 1 hind, 2 hind / 1 faun, 2 faun / 1 calf, 2 calf... There are quite a few animal oghams that are used in this way. Some scholars believe that Ogham originated as a counting system.

And, to make matters more confusing, there were Cipher Oghams, in which the letters were deliberately mixed up. Forinstance, there are versions with substitute letters, and where the last letter of the tree name is used instead of the first.

When you start studying modern Ogham systems, you’ll find all sorts of meanings attached to individual tallys, individual trees, and sometimes different trees used in different systems. With all the variations, it’s not hard to see why. And, even the trees themselves are divided up into Chieftain trees, Peasant trees, and Herb trees.
Which brings us to:

6-MODERN SPECULATION ABOUT ogham

Modern “speculation” because that’s really all we can do with ogham.

A small number of antiquarians explored the Ogham before 1940. I’ll mention two: Roderick O’Flaherty’s Ogygia, and RAS Macalister’s “Ogham.” Macalister’s is probably the most important, and the most readable. He was also still around, and quite feisty, when Robert Graves was working on his book on Ogham, The White Goddess, in the 1940s.

Which brings us to Robert Graves. Graves was one of the first modern reconstructionist NeoPagans. His book, The White Goddess, is the source book for much of what passes today for Pagan lore, Goddess worship, wheel of the year, and lunar calendars. If you can get through it you will understand most of modern Wicca, and Paganism as She is generally seen to be practiced by the vast majority of NeoPagans- most of whom have not read this. (This and the abridged version of Fraser’s Golden Bough, and bits by Doreen Valiente, Gerald Gardner, Margaret Murray....)

Which is not to say that Graves got Ogham right. He was trying to figure out a poem of Taliesin’s called the “Cad Goddeu,” “The Battle of the Trees.” Graves tried to use Ogham to make sense of the poem, which is reasonable. Graves was a broadly-educated classicist, however, and he knew more about Greek and Roman religion than about Celtic and Anglo-Saxon religion. While he knew Greek, that didn’t help him when confronted with Old Irish. And he couldn’t help tying damn near everything he knew about western mediterranean religion into this system, including, at one point, somehow using Ogham to get the Battle of the Trees to give him the name of Jehovah as the secret name of Taliesin’s God. He also assigns the tribes of Israel each to an Ogham. When you read this, you’ll probably, at more than one point, say, yes, maybe, but isn’t that stretching things a bit? Ogham is essential to this book, but it’s not a book about Ogham. Graves was an inspired poet, and his main concern was the Goddess as poetic muse. And The White Goddess is one of the best books ever written about inspiration, and what a muse does.

Oddly, Graves’s own grandfather Charles Graves, was president of the Royal Irish Academy and had been a leading authority on Ogham, but Graves was estranged from his father’s family.

Graves based his system on Roderick O’Flaherty’s Ogygia, although he consulted Macalister, who kept writing him back saying “no.. no... no....”

Reasoning from O’Flaherty’s Ogygia, which was incomplete, Graves drops Q and ST from the alphabet, and, seeing that there are now 13 letters, slaps his forehead and says, “Of course! It’s a lunar calendar! The 13 lunar cycles of the lunar year!” Then he later, somehow, works Q and ST back into the system, and changes the order a bit to suit his ideas, and connects it to the first 13 lines of the “Song of Amergin,” which actually may be about a lunar year.

Read it yourself. The thing Celtophiles all stress is that The White Goddess is not a scholarly work. Even Graves says this at one point, saying something like “the scholars will never agree with this, but they won’t be able to disprove it either” or words to that effect. Well, they have disproved it, so- don’t take this as scholarship.
My opinion? Graves’ system is batshit insane, but perfectly in keeping with what the ancient Druids would have been doing with the Ogham alphabet. There is no reason why Graves, (or, if he’s right, Taliessen) shouldn’t use Ogham in this manner. It’s a system of poetic correspondences, and that’s how Graves is using it. As Diodorus Siculus wrote of the Druids “In conversation, their words are brief, enigmatic, proceeding from allusions and implications...” and three centuries later Diogenes Laërce writes “...the druids make their predictions through the means of enigmas and obscure phrases...” Aside from the brief part, this fits what Graves is doing. He’s stuffed a whole lot of folklore and myth into a workable magickal, divinitory and cultural system, one still in use that many Pagans take for granted. Fionn MacCumhail would have been proud of this.

But it is most definitely NOT an ancient Celtic calendar system. It’s a modern invention.

Here is Luna Press’s “Calendar of the Goddess in Her Many Guises,” almost completely based on Graves. It’s a lovely thing, and I highly recommend it. Each month is associated with a tree, there’s a bit about the lore, and poetry and art. They usually include one of Grave’s poems each year.

Which takes us to:

MAGICK:

Macalister writes of an amber bead inscribed with Ogham found in the town of Ennis and owned by the O’Connor family. The bead is used to cure sore eyes and for easing childbirth. The translation reads ATUCMLU, which means nothing in Irish, so the Ogham used must have been a cipher Ogham, or some special magickal Ogham. (It’s interesting that oor, U, the Heather, is in there twice, as that can be used for healing in some of the modern systems, including the one I use.) I recently received an email from someone who saw that bead in the British Museum in a recent exibition of undecipherable inscriptions.

There is also a sheep bone from a 10th century fortress with an Ogham inscription on it. It was quite possibly used for magic. (handout)

Ogham was used to help people as they passed into death. When a warrior died, the mourners would place a slip of Aspen with his or her name in Ogham into the grave. (I use Aspen for unusual communication, but White Poplar and Aspen are interchangeable in most Ogham books -both ed-ath and e´bad can refer to Aspen-, and e´bad is about floating away from your problems.)

There’s probably a lot of magick lore that simply hasn’t survived because the bark Ogham was written on hasn’t survived.

You can use Ogham for Magickal invocation- writing out the name of a deity you think would respond to Ogham in Ogham. When we do our Spring and Fall rituals to Manannan Mac Lir at the Jersey shore, I’ll write His name in Ogham in the sand. I’ll also write GOG for Grove of the Other Gods to remind him who we are.

Name divination and name magick are two other uses for Ogham. When the grove changed its name three years ago, I figured out the Ogham implications for the name Other Gods. (Write out, if time)

(I liked what it came up with- to start, it has 9 letters. This is a good Druid number. It starts with Onn- directing a journey, leadership. Tinne for justice and balance. Huath for tough counseling during difficult times. - Eadhadh for communication, which helps us with Huath’s counseling. Eadhadh also is about friends and teachers. Ruis for the gateway to fairy, entry to magick. Gort for self-knowledge. Onn again, leading a journey. Duir for strength, wisdom, and doorways. Saille, the willow, for dreams and sweetness. Not a bad reading for a grove name.)

You can do this with your own name. There’s even a web site that will give you your name in ogham- it’s on the handout- but it won’t give you the meaning of the name. http://www.oghamdesign.com/Trivia.taf. There’s also an Ogham divination site on the handout.

You can use the Ogham for a specific tree in place of the actual wood of that tree. If you’re working something for strength, you could use the Ogham for Oak, rather than an actual Oak sprig. The actual bit of Oak would probably be preferable, but this could be a substitute or, obviously, you could use both.

And, use Ogham to figure out what different woods are for- which wood might be good for wand-making for a specific purpose, staff-making, that sort of thing. Or for sacred fires, smudging. And don’t forget about all the other Ogham correspondences that could go into the magick.

Here’s a handout of the kennings in the Scholar’s Primer. There’s also a book list on the back.

DIVINATION-

There are very few instances of divination by Ogham in the old lore. Some scholars will tell you that “Ogham was never used for divination,” and then they’ll politely add “but some modern people use it for that, and it seems to work for them.”

However, when Midir abducts Etain, the Druid Dalan discovers where she is by cutting four wands of yew, on which he carved Ogham. He learns from this that Etain is imprisoned in the fortress at Bre Leith. We don’t know how precisely how Dalan did his divination.

So, there is ancedotal evidence that Ogham was used for divination. And, there’s St. Columba’s proscription on “lots” (which most people take as a reference to ogam letters). There’s not much else. Most of the divination the Druids did was based on observations of nature- the flight of birds, the shape of smoke from a fire, releasing a rabbit and observing its movements- that sort of thing. They even divined from the shape of clouds. And there were many methods of trance divination and illumination.

I’ve always heard that the way Druids did Ogham divination was to draw a line on the ground, take some twigs and toss them over theline. See what Ogham characters come up on the line. I’ve tried this. You get a preponderance of the first 3 of each acime, with a lot of M, G and NG, A, O and U. There are probably simple statistical reasons for this. That said, it’s still a useful divination method.

A better way is a method called “Coelbreni.” Sticks with Ogham runes cut on them are tossed on the ground, and divination is obtained from the way they fall. One way you could do this would be to draw three circles on the ground, representing the past, present and future, or the three worlds of land, sea and sky, or the three kindreds of Ancestors, Nature Spirits and Gods. And you can divide those circles into sections, if you wish. Toss the sticks marked with Ogham in the air and see which lands where.

The Roman writer Tacitus reports that Germanic tribe did divination in much the same way- by writing symbols on staves of wood and tossing them on a white cloth and seeing where they landed. They were probably using Norse runes, but they could have been using Ogham. We don’t know.

Two things brought about the growing popularity of Ogham for divination- the popularity of all things Celtic in the last ten years, and the success of Ralph Blum’s ever-diminishing Rune books- publishers started looking for a Celtic divination system that would sell as well as Blum’s rune system. See the handout for blurbs about the various divination books.

When I wanted to make my own Ogham sticks, I went to AC Moore, the craft store, (“craft” with a lowercase “c, that is”) and bought some Basswood, or Linden sticks. Basswood is known as the “bee tree” and it’s a local tree. There’s a bunch on College Avenue, you’ll smell them around the Summer Solstice, they smell sweet and attract bees. It’s also a neutral wood, as far as the Celtic tree Ogham. I burned the Ogham runes onto the sticks, and wrapped them in a cloth. All the sticks look alike from the top, so pulling one is really random. I’ll pull one and pass it around.

If you’re interested in this, I would recommend creating your own set of Ogham. Bless it in the way you feel appropriate to your uses.

Or, if you’d like to buy some, Mace Gill is selling lovely ogham sticks at Gaia’s Gate in Manville, and at local Pagan events. He uses recycled would from furniture-making. I think his are Ash wood.

Also, you can Skip Ellison’s book What Do We Know About Ogham? which is the “just the facts, ma’am” book on Ogham. It’s also the only Ogham book with photos of the 122 different Oghams in the Book of Ballymote and what they represent. Each letter is given with its tree, the pronunciation of the tree, a list of correspondences (not just trees), quotes from old Irish about the tree associated with the tally, some additional correspondences Skip’s come up with, and Skip’s own divinatory meanings, gleaned from his years of practice. It’s comprehensive, and, yet, it’s only 110 pages. And there’s a new edition that looks a lot nicer than the one I’ve got, published by Earth Religions Press. It’s on the book list. After you’ve worked a while with that, and have started to intuit your own meanings from the Ogham, then look at the other Ogham books. That way you’ll go into it with a clear head. Commercial disclaimer: Skip Ellison is also the current ArchDruid of ADF, the Druid organization I belong to.

Most of the other divination books will start with history and historical meanings, but then immediately take off into speculation. Which is fine, but it’s good to ground yourself in the basics first. Most modern systems use cards, and are set up like tarot, complete with different card layouts, pretty pictures, and such. I would much rather people use the information in the books, but get your own Ogham sticks, and throw them or pull them.

TO SUM UP:

Like most things Druid, Ogham is a dense, complicated, infuriating system. Most modern Ogamists stick to the tree connotations of Ogham. But, anything in that letter in Ancient Irish or Modern Irish, (or, now, maybe even Modern English) can be worked into the system. And, anything associated with any of those things. They were called the “Keys of Knowledge” in the Midir and Etain story, because you could access any knowledge by studying them.

For instance- remember the Fionn MacCumhaill story. For C- Coll- the Hazel- because Hazels surround sacred wells, and those hazels drop their nuts of wisdom into the wells, where they’re eaten by salmon- the wells and the salmon have become associated with the tally for Coll, and most divination and magickal system take this into account. Then you can link this to the story of Fionn, the shield of Hazel, from there to the story of Lugh and Balor, and on and on. Layers of meaning.

The fact that Ash was used for spears and weaver’s shafts has put those items into the letter for Ash. And, if you’re Robert Graves, you can stuff the whole of western religious belief from the stone age on into the system.

Think of hyperlinks on the internet. You click on Q- Quert- Apple- and you get all kinds of apples. You get the crabapples and ladyapples of the Celts. You get Avalon, Apple-land, the isles of the Blessed. You could detour into Eris and Her golden apple. Adam and Eve.

When you’re using Ogham for divination, this is both good and bad. Good in the sense that you can really let your intuition guide you- you’re not bound by one “official” meaning, but bad in the sense that there is no one “official” meaning you can turn to. For instance, in most Ogham books, ST, Blackthorn, is really bad. It’s trouble and strife. Blackthorn was used by witches for cursing. Shilleaghlaghs are made of it. I have my great-uncles’ old shillileagh. It’s a nasty thing. But I’ve seen one divination book that reads ST as “Use strong force to obtain your goals.” That’s a perfectly valid interpretation.

My interpretations are based on a mix of things, but mostly the kennings in the scholar’s primer.

But in any divination system, people will have different interpretations. Tarot books will interprete the same card differently.

What you need to do to understand it is to play with it. Let it talk to you. Let the trees talk to you. Let the stones and the birds and the rivers talk to you also. You can even add your own symbols to it, as an addition, or forfeda, of local trees. You could add the maple, or the sycamore.

Questions?