THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: APPENDIX I

APPENDIX I

The Trees of Avalon: A New Interpretation of the Ogam Alphabet

Much has been made of the ogam tree alphabet. But though there have been those who claim to have deciphered the mystery of the ogam, most scholars believe that either the mystery remains unsolved or that it actually exists only in the imagination of writers such as Robert Graves and those who adhere to his system of thought.

The truth is that an answer to the ogam mystery may further explain the significance of Arthur’s presence in the Otherworld Avalon. A proper interpretation of the ogam may also tell us more about Myrddin, who is himself in ancient Welsh poetry placed at an Otherworld apple tree with the goddess.

What follows is my brief investigation on the ogam and its possible correspondences with the ancient Celtic calendar.

The ogam alphabet is composed of a series of marks representing letters, originally carved on stone and wood and bone. There are 20 such letters, gathered into four groups of five. According to the Irish, Ogma Sun-Face invented the ogam alphabet. Ogma is known on the Continent as Ogmios. This god or culture hero (he is identified in Gaul with Hercules) created the Celtic alphabet by raising four pillars of equal length. He then carved the sacred letters of the pillars.

The proper arrangement of the letters, which run from left to right and from bottom to top, are as follows:

N       Q       R       I

S       C       Z        E

F        T        Ng     U

L        D       G       O

B       H       M       A

The meanings assigned to the letters vary in the earliest extant tradition, and it has been shown that they underwent a considerable evolution of definitions. Many of the letters did not originally represent trees and some had very uncertain, even utterly unknown meanings (see the works of Damian McManus on the subject). At the end of this process, we ended up with the following versions of the ogam alphabet, all found in The Scholar’s Primer:

B – birch

L – rowan or elm

F – alder

S – willow

N – maw of the spear (ash was used to make spears) or nettles

H – test-tree or whitethorn D – oak

T – holly or elderberry C – hazel

Q- holly or quicken tree or aspen M – vine

G – cornfield Ng – broom

Z – willowbrake

R - ?

A - ?

O – furze or ash

U – thorn

E – yew

I – service tree

B – birch

L – quicken tree

F – alder

S – willow

N – ash

H – thorn

D – oak

C – hazel

Q – apple-tree

M – vine

G – ivy

Ng – broom

Z – sloe

E – elderberry

A – fir

O – furze

U – heath

E – aspen

I – yew

B – birch

L – elm (put for quicken tree)

F – elder

S – willow

N – ash

H – no tree listed

D – oak

T – holly

C – hazel

Q– apple-tree

M– no tree listed

G– ivy

Z– sloe

R– elder

A – no tree listed

O – no tree listed

U – heather

E – aspen

Eventually, these different versions coalesced into a single, conventional form of the alphabet. What follows is this conventional form, complete with the three known kennings used for the letters/trees as these last are found in

Briatharogam Morainn mic Moin, Briatharogam Maic ind Oc and Briatharogam Con Culainn, respectively.

B – birch (withered of foot with fine hair, greyest of skin, beauty of the eyebrow)

L – rowan or mountain ash (lustre of the eye, friend of cattle, sustenance of cattle)

F- alder (vanguard of hunting/warrior bands, milk container, protection of the heart)

S – willow (pallor of the lifeless one, sustenance of bees, beginning of honey)

N – ash (establishing of peace, boast of women, boast of beauty)

H – whitethorn (assembly of packs of hounds, blanching of faces, most difficult at night)

D – oak (most exalted tree, handicraft of an artificer, most carved of craftmanship)

T – holly (one of three parts of a wheel, marrow of charcoal, one of three parts of a weapon)

C – hazel (fairest tree, friend of nutshells, sweetest tree) Q – apple (shelter of a lunatic, substance of an insignificant person, dregs of clothing)

M – vine (strongest in exertion, proverb of slaughter, path of the voice)

G – ivy (sweetest grass, suitable place of cows, sating of multitudes)

Ng – broom (sustenance of the leech, raiment of physicians, beginning of slaying)

Z – blackthorn (strongest reddening/dye, increase of secrets, seeking of clouds)

R – elder (most intense blushing, reddening of faces, glow of anger)

A – fir (loudest groan, beginning of an answer, beginning of calling)

O – furze (wounder of horses, smoothest of craftmanship, sustaining equipment of hunting/warrior bands)

U – heath (in cold dwellings, propagation of plants, shroud of a lifeless one)

E – aspen (discerning tree, exchange of friends, brother of birch)

I – yew (oldest tree, fairest of the ancients, energy of an infirm person)

The original meanings of the letter names, as determined by Damian McManus’ linguistic analysis of the letter names themselves, coupled with the analysis of the associated kennings, are as follows:

B – birch (although one theory has this as coming from Latin beta)

L – flame, blaze, radiance or plant, herb, vegetable F – alder

S – willow

N – lofty, forked, a part of a weaver’s loom, or better, a forked branch that establishes peace, i.e. the olive branch, the shaking of which in Irish tradition caused men to cease from fighting. Nin never means ash, which in Irish was onn (see O below). The equation of Nin or ‘N’ with nettles was done simply because nettles in Middle Irish was nenntog, in Early Irish nenaid.

H – fear, horror. Huath is h-uath, the normal early Irish way of writing uath.

D – oak

T – bar, rod of metal, ingot, mass of molten metal C – hazel

Q – tree or bush (cf. Welsh perth, ‘hedge’)

M – upper part of the back, neck or a wile, ruse, trick, i.e. fate, treachery, or love, affection, esteem

G – field (cf. Welsh garth, ‘enclosure, garden’)

Ng – act of wounding

Z – sulphur R – red

A – Unknown, but I think this could be a borrowing of English ‘elm’ (cf. Latin ulmus, Old Norse almr). Another theory derives this simply from Latin alpha (as beithe or ‘birch’ is sometimes seen as a substitute for beta).

O – Onn was the earliest name for the ash tree.

U – earth, clay, soil

E – Originally perhaps either yew (eo) or salmon (eo/e). Edad appears to be an artificial creation, part of the pair Edad and Idad (see below).

I – Old Irish eo, ‘yew’, derives from *iwas, and hence this letter could have been from an earlier form of the word for yew than the later, more normal ibar.

Given the above as the original meanings of the ogam letters, clearly the divinatory method that has been employed in the past – the one based on Robert Graves’ analeptically derived system – must be considerably revised.

In order to bring the letters into better accord with the various trees and plants, I would simplify the original meanings for the ogam letters thusly:

B – birch

L – flame: this is given in The Scholar’s Primer as rowan, quicken tree or elm. But we shall see that rowan actually belongs at E, and elm belongs at A. The quicken or quickbeam /quickenbeam is the rowan tree, and the name quicken was probably first used for an aspen or some tree with quaking or quivering leaves. As the aspen was wrongly associated with E, I take L’s original tree to have been the aspen, ‘brother of birch’, the B letter that immediately proceeds L.

N – olive

S – willow

F – alder

H – horror: the white or blanched face of someone terrified has been here linked with the white flowers of the whitethorn or hawthorn. The tree is also frightening because of its substantial thorns.

D – oak

T – In a Norse myth, the thunder hammer of Thor is replaced by a red-hot, glowing iron bar. This bar is clearly symbolic of the lightning, as is the mistletoe thrown at the god Balder. I would say that a holly spear may have had the same ritual significance.

C – hazel

Q – bush: the crabapple, whch was a shrub-like tree that could form hedges. In the Irish story of the madman Suibhne, we are told that in his Glen Bolcain, where the madmen congregated,

“Tis great folly

for me to come out of Glen Bolcain,

there are many apple-trees in Glen Bolcain…”

M – neck, love: the grapevine hangs from its trellis like one’s arms draped around a lover’s neck. This is rightly the vine.

G – field: a field of grass is ‘ever-green’, and McManus thinks this notion may have been related to ivy, which is evergreen. However, I think it is more likely we are talking about common European Ground Ivy, which frequently invades fields and lawns. In other words, ivy is the plant of the field.

Ng – wound: In addition to broom, the reed, fern/bracken and even the bog myrtle are identified with this letter. Of these plants, the only one that has anything whatsoever to do with wounds is the bog myrtle. It has been traditionally used in poultices to treat wounds. However, reeds are known to have been used for arrows, and the kennings for this letter seem to point to the act of wounding, not to the act of healing a wound. In Northern England, the broom’s twigs and branches were substituted for reeds in making fences of screens. Hence, this is properly the letter of the reed.

Z – sulphur: associated with the blackthorn or sloe, because of the red dye that could be obtained from this tree’s berries. When sulphur’s temperature is raised to a certain level, it takes on a dark red color.

R – red: elder or elderberry, whose berries are red. Here redness is associated with the redness of shame, embarrassment or anger infusing a person’s face.

A- elm

O – ash

U – earth: as earth covers the corpse, so does the heather cover the earth. Hence, heather is like the earth and is, perhaps, the primary plant of the earth. Futhermore, heather grows extremely well on peaty soils. If the kenning ‘in cold dwellings’ is not a poetic reference to the grave, it may be that heather is here being thought of as the ‘marker’ of peat. Peat is ‘earth’, but it can also be brought into cold dwellings and burned to provide heat for the occupants. Heather and peat were both used as fuel for heat and cooking, and huts could be made of heather cemented together with peat mud, with straw and dried grasses added.

E – salmon: one of the alphabet lists in The Scholar’s Primer has ‘service tree’ for I, while two lists there have aspen for E. Aspen makes no sense in the context of the name deriving from salmon. Instead, I take his as a reference to the service tree. The service tree was a type of rowan and had berries. There was a magical well in Ossory that was the mythical fountain-head of the Shannon River. This well was surrounded by rowan trees. The bright red berries of the rowans fell into the water, where they fed the Salmon of Knowledge. Whoever ate the red-spotted salmon became gifted with divine knowledge. The goddess Shannon tried to eat the salmon, despite the injunction against women eating the fish’s flesh. As punishment, she became the river. This story is paralleled by the tale of the hazel-tree well of the Boyne, whose salmon imparted its wisdom to Fionn mac Cumhail. So, this letter belongs properly to the rowan or service tree (see L above).

I – yew

But are these letters, as Robert Graves claims, truly symbolic of months or of special days in the months? The problem with his system is that one is forced to both drop out letters and combine others in order to make things work. The method employed is random and cannot be checked against an independent source. Scholars such as Peter Beresford Ellis have gone so far as to demonstrate convincingly that Graves relied on untrustworthy sources to conjure up his explanation of the ogam calendar.

So must we abandon the notion of an ogam calendar entirely?

No, I do not think we need to go this extreme. Rather, we need to re-examine the ogam and its possible relationship to ancient Celtic calendrics.

The best place for us to start is with the Gaulish calender, found at Coligny, France. Although this calendar is fragmentary, great progress has been made in recent years in reconstructing and deciphering it. Several theories have been put forward to explain how this early calendar worked. The best, although it was initially quite controversial, is that devised by Garret Olmsted. Olmsted was able to prove that the months Samonios and Giamonios, because they marked the start of the waxing year and the start of the waning year, respectively, must represent months of the Winter Solstice and the Summer Solstice. Critics of Olmsted’s theory (chiefly Dival and Pinault) have been forced to abandon the commonly held view that Samonios, because its name corresponds with the modern Samhain, starts on November 1st.

The months of the Coligny Calendar can, therefore, be equated with our modern calendar in the following manner. Note that the months highlighted with an asterisk are my own interpretations of the Gaulish names; the rest belong to Olmsted or to his sources.

Samonios – Summer Month, December-January. Begins on the 21 December/Winter Solstice, the original Samhain, which after roughly 1500 years of operation the Irish calendar had shifted to 1 November. This occurred at the time of the adoption of Christianity and the Julian calendar. In the ancient system, Samhain = Winter Solstice, Imbolc = Spring Equinox, Beltane = Summer Solstice and Lughnasadh = Autumn Equinox. Samonios was thus the beginning of the waxing solar year, i.e. the true summer half-year, when the sun increases in size and strength as it moves steadily north from the winter solstice to the summer solstice.

Dumannos – Dark Month, January-February.

Rivros – Frost Month, February-March.

Anagantios* - Unnatural Month, March-April. Begins with the March 21 Spring Equinox, the original date of Imbolc. Cf. the Gaulish to Old Irish anaicenta, anaigeanta, ‘extraordinary, unusual’, used in terms of natural phenomena, i.e. extreme weather. From Part 64 of the Annals of the Four Masters (815 CE, from Christmas to Shrovetide):

Aighreadh anaigeanta & sneachta mor, ‘unusual ice and great snow’

From Part 392 of the Annals of Ulster (882 CE):

Aigh anaicenta, ‘extraordinary ice’

Year 986 of AFM:

Gaoth mhor anacnata, ‘great and unusual wind’

Part 487 of AU (917 CE):

Sneachta & h-uacht dimhar & aig anaicenta, ‘snow and extreme cold and unnatural ice’

Ogronnios – Growing Month, April-May.

Cutios – Bright Month, May-June. Cutios is from *kwei-tio, ‘bright, white’.

Giamonios – Winter Month, June-July. Begins on the 21 June/Summer Solstice, the original Beltane. Start of the waning solar year, i.e. the beginning of the true winter half-year, when the sun began growing smaller and weaker as it moved steadily south from the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice.

Simiuisonna – Half-summer Month, July-August. Called such because it lies exactly halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, i.e. at the midpoint of the summer season.

Equos – Horse Month, August-September. Time of the summer horse fairs. Gaulish for horse was epo-, e.g. Epona, the ‘Divine Horse’. But Archaic Gaulish used qu for p.

Elembivios – Deer Month, September-October. Begins with the 22 September Autumn Equinox, the original Lughnasadh. Named for the onset of the deer rutting season. The European red deer rut began in September, that of the fallow deer in October. Deer are easily hunted during the mating season.

Edrinios – Fire Month, October-November. Fires are lit as the weather grows colder.

Cantlos – Song Month, November-December. Cf. with the Carmentalia of the Roman month of January, the month of the goddess Carmenta/Carmentis. L. carmen means ‘a tune, song; poem, verse; an oracular response, prophecy; a form of incantation’.

Intercalary months were used in the Coligny calendar to bring the lunar and solar calculations into accordance with each other. The five year calendar begins with Quimonios (before Samonios of Year 1). Quimonios is perhaps ‘The Ordering Month’, in the sense that as an intercalary month it brought into order the solar and lunar calendars, and/or brought order to the five year sequence. However, I think it is more likely the ‘Guardian Month’ (cf. Old Irish coimetaid, ‘guardian’, from coimet, ‘guard’, coim, ‘protection’). Standing as it does in front of the five year sequence, it symbolically fulfills a function similar to that of the Roman Janus as guardian of the beginning of the sacred year. Two and a half years into the five year cycle, we find the second intercalary month Rantaranos/Santaranos (before Giamonios of Year 3). It is unknown whether this month name begins with an r or an s. Rantaranos could be related to Old Irish rand, ranntar, words which mean ‘division’, Santaranos to Proto-Celtic *samtero-, Welsh hanner, ‘half’. So, this is the ‘Dividing or Halving Month’.

The five year cycle itself repeated five times, making for a larger cycle of 25 years.

We have seen above that, discounting the five late forfheda letters (a late invention involving a scribal need to conform to certain demands of the Classical alphabets), there were 20 ogam letters:

N       Q       R       I

S       C       Z        E

F        T        Ng     U

L        D       G       O

B       H       M       A

According to P.W. Joyce, the earliest recorded Irish calendar was composed of Errach or Spring (1 February to 1 May), Samrad or Summer (1 May to 1 August), Fogmar of Autumn (1 August to 1 November) and Gemred or Winter (1 November to 1 February). It will be noted that each season began and ended on one of the four great Celtic festivals, i.e. Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. But we also know that this structure was artificial, and that the original calendar – like that of Coligny – was arranged according to the equinoxes and solstices. Hence the restored ogam calendar would look like this:

         

          Dec 21 –      Mar 21 –     Jun 21 –     Sep 21 – 

          Mar 20        Jun 20       Sep 20        Dec 20

Year 5         N                 Q                 R                 I

Year 4         S                 C                 Z                 E

Year 3         F                 T                 Ng               U

Year 2         L                 D                 G                 O

Year 1         B                 H                 M                A

Professor Damian McManus tells us that the letter Q was originally cert, cognate with Welsh perth, ‘bush, hedge’, and also cognate with Latin quercus, ‘oak’. One of the kennings for the letter Q is ‘sanctuary of the lunatic’, which reminds us of the madman Myrddin, who took refuge in an apple tree. I have already suggested that the cert or ‘bush’ in question is the crabapple, Malus sylvetris, a small, thorny deciduous tree common in oak woods and hedges, and native to the British Isles.

If we take Q to be the crabapple, then it represented the tree that governed the period from March 21-June 20. This is the second half of the Celtic waxing half year, our own

season of Summer. The tree of Avalon is thus the summer-tree. And it is, of course, the tree of Arthur.

We have clear evidence for the magical and divinatory use of the ogam alphabet from the insular literature of medieval Ireland. In the Irish tale Tochmarc Etaine, for example, a Druid named Dalan used a method of ogam divination to find where the God Midir had taken Etain. He cut four wands of yew on which he inscribed three ogams, and used them to find the ‘eochra ecsi’ (‘keys of divination’), which enabled him to discover that the goddess had been taken to the fairy mound of Breg Leith, where Midir dwelt. Other Irish sources refer to the use of four ogam-inscribed yew wands or a single wand with four sides being used in divination. The number four is surely significant, as the ogam were divided into four groups.

The ogam letters, their trees and the matching divinatory meanings can be set out as follows:

B – birch, the promise of transformation from old age to youth, as this occurs when one goes from the middle of Winter to the beginning of Spring; also birth, beginnings

L – aspen, flame/blaze/radiance, passion, both of the heart and spirit; the light of the Divine and of the soul

F – alder, defense, physical and psychic; also, anything that contains nourishment that will bolster or replenish the natural defenses of body or soul

S – willow, life from lifelessness, as the old moon passing to the new moon

N – olive, cessation of hostility, bringing of peace, internally or externally

H – hawthorn, fear/horror, hauntings, nightmares, the dread of being pursued by enemies or hostile forces, anxiety

D  –  oak,  kingship,  pre-eminence  in  any  sphere  of endeavor,  especially  art  and  craftmanship,  durability, strength

T – holly, symbolic of the heavenly lightning, the weapon of the sky and thunder god; over-powering force, that which nothing can withstand, starting a fire (including metaphorically)

C – hazel, the secret knowledge of and pertaining to men and the god, as embodied in Fionn, who ate the Salmon of Wisdom, who in turn had eaten the hazelnuts

Q – crabapple, the Spirit of Summer, the time and place of eternal life, the tree of Arthur, Myrddin, prophecy and poetry; the tree of potentiality and of manifesting one’s destiny

M – vine, love and physical/emotional closeness, sexual power and its expenditure, the power inherent in a lover’s voice

G – ivy, as the plant of fields represents the satisfying of physical hunger or mental/emotional needs

Ng – reed, wounding or being wounded, physically or psychically

Z – blackthorn, matters pertaining to blood, i.e. to blood relatives and ancestors, or to diseases or conditions of the blood; family secrets that are often kept to hide or obscure the truth for good or ill

R – elder, shame, embarrassment, anger, either experienced by oneself or brought about in another

A – elm, physical or emotional pain, often accompanied by a barely audible cry for help, or by a less obvious cry for help, sometimes manifested subconsciously (as someone committing a crime as an indicator of an underlying problem that requires professional help to resolve, or harming oneself as a means of gaining attention)

O – ash, the symbol of warfare and hostility in general. To be viewed as the opposte of N, the olive tree of peace.

U – heather, the providing of shelter and warmth, domestic happiness, prosperity

E – rowan, the secret knowledge of and pertaining to women and the goddess, as embodied in the Irish river-goddess Shannon; this is the counterpart of the male knowledge embodied by Fionn in letter C

I – yew, the opposite of birth; the process of aging, of going from youth to old age, as in going from Fall to Midwinter; also death or an ending

The exact method of divination that was employed was unfortunately not recorded. This precaution was doubtless taken to preserve the magical secret. We do know how the pagan Germanic peoples, whose religion was very similar to that of the Celts, divined with their own runic letters. An account of how this was done can be found in Tacitus’ Germania. He describes how the Germans would:

“… cut off a branch of a nut-bearing tree and slice it into strips; these they mark with different signs and throw them completely at random onto a white cloth. Then the priest of the state, if the consultation is a public one, or the father of the family if it is private, offers a prayer to the gods, and looking up at the sky picks up three strips, one at a time, and reads their meanings from the signs previously scored on them. If the lots forbid the enterprise, there is no deliberation that day on the matter in question; if they allow it, confirmation by the taking of auspices is required.”

One interesting point jumps out at the reader of this passage; it bears an uncanny resemblance to Pliny’s account of the harvesting of mistletoe by the druids:

“Anything growing on those trees [oaks] they regard as sent from heaven and a sign that this tree has been chosen by God himself. It [the mistletoe] is however very rarely found, and when found it is gathered with great ceremony and especially on the sixth day of the moon… They prepare a ritual sacrifice and feast under the tree, and lead up two white bulls whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest attired in a white vestment ascends the tree and with a golden pruning-hook cuts it [the mistletoe] which is caught in a white cloth. Then next they sacrifice the victims praying that God will make his gift propitious to those to whom he has given it.”

The parallels between this passage and that of Tacitus can be listed thusly:

1) We begin with a nut-bearing tree in one, with the acorn-bearing oak in another

2) The strips of the tree and the mistletoe are placed on a white cloth

3) Auspices must be taken with a positive result of rune-reading, and sacrifices are made after the mistletoe is placed on the cloth

I have suggested above that the mistletoe, especially given its association with the oak, a tree often struck by lightning, is itself symbolic of the sky-father’s weapon. Could it be that the forked and many-tined lightning, which could assume many different shapes, was considered the heavenly pattern for both runes and ogam letters? The antlers of the Horned God, that strike with such deadly efficiency and whose sound can be heard for long distances, were perceived as the lightning of the sky-god.

The Norse runes were said to have been obtained by Odin while he hung upon the sky-tree Yggdrasill:

“I know that I hung on a windy tree nine long nights,

wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin, myself to myself,

on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.

No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,

Downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

Then I fell back from there.”

(Sayings of the High One, Stanzas 138-9)

The screaming of the sky-father is poetic language for a thunder-clap, something which attends a lightning-strike. Surely it is not a coincidence that Odin took up the runes the moment thunder screamed from the sky?

Elsewhere Odin is said to have ‘interpreted them [the runes], cut them, thought them out, from the liquid which had leaked from the skull of Heiddraupnir, and from Hoddrofmir’s horn.’ The skull of Heiddraupnir is probably another name for the skull of the primeval giant Ymir, who was slain by Odin and whose skull was made into the sky. As the brains of Ymir were made into the clouds, I take it that the liquid from which the runes were taken are these same clouds. Lightning, of course, comes from the clouds.

If I am right about Pliny’s account of the cutting of the mistletoe from the oak being a Celtic version of the runic divination ritual recorded by Tacitus, and both runes and ogam letters were thought of as symbols for the heavenly lightning, then it is possible both were employed in a similar fashion.

A Method for Ogam Divination

The standard claim that the three Germanic runes drawn in the Tacitus account represent past, present and future, as embodied in the Norse fate goddesses Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, is plainly wrong and must be abandoned. The three runes were drawn to determine whether a future enterprise might prove propitious. Quite probably the hoped-for result would be the drawing of three ‘favourable’ runes, or at the very least two ‘favourable’ runes, with a third neutral or unfavorable rune. If only one unfavorable rune were drawn out of three, this would act as a qualifier of the two favorable runes. Two or more unfavorable runes would indicate that a future proposed action should not be undertaken, or should not be undertaken at the time proposed for such an action. One is reminded of our tradition of coin-tossing, in which heads stands for the affirmative or a course of action, while tails stands for the negative or a second course of action. Often we reach a decision with the coin-toss by resorting to ‘best two-out-of-three’. Two heads means ‘yes’, while two tails means ‘no’, etc.

Ogam divination must have employed the tree-alphabet letters to determine the answer to specific questions. One example has already been cited above, in which the ogam was used to discern the unknown whereabouts of Etain. Interpreting an ogam drawing would also have been a highly intuitive process, embarked upon only by someone who had shown a natural propensity for divination and who, as a novitiate, had received extensive training in the reading of ogam lot drawings by an acknowledged master.

The three ogams Dalan carved on the four yew wands would seem to suggest that Irish ogam lot drawing followed the Germanic practice of taking up three runes. However, we know that there were five tree-letters per ‘wand’, not three. Three times four equals twelve, and this points towards zodiacal and solar year symbolism. The account of Dalan’s divining Etain’s location is thus immediately suspect, and we can detect here the hand of antiquarian creative license.

One other aspect of the Dalan ogam episode should be briefly examined: the use of yew wood for all four wands. The yew was the tree of death and endings, and traditionally yew trees are found in cemeteries. Bri Leith, where Etain was residing, was an ancient sepulcher mound and thus we might well expect for it to be associated with the yew. If based on genuine tradition, Dalan’s choice of yew for his ogam wands points to his knowing in advance that wherever Etain was, she most probably would be found in one of the portals to ‘fairyland’, the Celtic Otherworld and the place of death.

The implication is that ogam wands could be carved of a wood whose tree-alphabet quality predisposed them for use in answering only one question or one type of question. If so, it would be necessary for an ogam-master to have access to all the woods of the tree-alphabet, and to either carve the letters on the appropriate wood each time something was divined, or to possess multiple sets of wands carved from all the various woods.

I myself do not think this is a requirement of ogam lot casting, and it is hardly practical. The power of each tree-letter comes from the ritual meaning of the letter itself, not from the wood it is carved on. My own set of ogam letters are inscribed on sawn sections of a deer’s tibia. Their potency does not derive from the bone itself, but from their symbolic significance. This is true despite my having used the deer bone because of its sacred properties; I dedicated the bone to the horned stag god Belatucadros. Yet I did so with full knowledge of the fact that Belatucadros was not the god who invented the ogam. Instead, I desired an ogam set that was of a more permanent nature than wood, and that was associated with my particular patron deity.

Ogam letters can also not be divorced of their season-year correspondences. In other words, when a drawing is made they must always be assigned to the designated time periods to which they belong. This is not a consideration when reading the Germanic runes, as the latter do not seem to have represented stages in a sacred calendar. Thus the symbolic meaning and application of a drawn ogam letter is restricted to either the present or a future season and year.

Lastly, the ogam system is not a fortune-telling game. You cannot ask of the ogam ‘What will happen six months from now?’ It is not designed to reveal the future to us; the gods quite wisely keep that dangerous and ultimately destructive knowledge from us. Instead, the ogam is a tool meant to assist us in properly preparing ourselves to deal with the future, whatever that may be. What you can ask the ogam is ‘If I take a certain course of action to achieve X, will I obtain favourable results?’ or ‘Should I decide to pursue goal A or goal B?’ or ‘Should I take path A or path B in order to reach my desired destination?’

Taking all of this into account, then, the method for ogam lot casting and drawing is as follows:

One should begin by asking Ogma to guide one’s hand to the right letters, and for the wisdom to read them aright. All the ogam letters as separate pieces are then placed in either a drawstring bag or non-transparent receptacle that has an opening large enough to admit one’s hand. At this point one should empty one’s mind and enter a state of meditative calmness. When the moment seems right, the question may be asked. As soon as a surge of productive energy is felt, three ogam letters may be drawn from the bag and placed on white cloth which itself has been spread atop a flat surface such as a table top.

The three ogam letters represent three potentialities. We know from Norse religion that Odin obtained the runes when he hung upon the ash tree. This is explicitly termed a self-sacrifice. He is also said to have been pierced with a spear and we know from an account of the sacrificial rituals performed at Uppsala in Sweden in the pagan period that hanging was accompanied by drowning. This fact brings us to the famous Lindow Man, a human sacrifice found in a bog in the English Midlands in 1984.

Lindow Man, as a human incarnation of the god Lleu, was subjected to a triple death: he was simultaneously garrotted and stabbed, struck three times in the head (probably with a hammer) and submerged in a sacred pool, i.e. sent to the Otherworld. Anne Ross has very plausibly theorized that the garrotting (cf. hanging) and stabbing was in honor of Esus (who in Gaulish iconography is found in close proximity to the willow tree, and in Classical literature is linked to wicker effigies, doubtless made of willow), the three blows were in honor of Taranis the Thundergod and the drowning was in honor of Teutates. These three gods are, in reality, triple aspects of the same deity.

Ogmios or Ogma, the inventor of the ogam alphabet, was identified with the club-bearing Hercules by Classical authorities. Hercules, both because of his character and his club, was associated with thunder gods. It is permissable, therefore, to implicitly view Ogma as Taranis.

The first ogam drawn is thus sacred to Taranis. It stands for Realization, as when one is suddenly ‘thunder-struck’ with an idea or awareness. Revelation or epiphany is also manifest in this letter. To be equated with the conception of the ogam by Ogma.

The second ogam drawn is sacred to Esus. It stands for Sacrifice, and is that which one must do in order to achieve a purpose or a goal. To be equated with the winning of the ogam through struggle and suffering by Esus.

The third ogam drawn is for Teutates. It stands for Arrival (as the god arrives in the Otherworld after his self-sacrifice), and is the achievement of a purpose or goal, along with the attendant consequences. To be equated with the actual use of the ogam by Teutates.

And as for the rest, well, I leave that up to the intuitive powers of the ogam master and his students.