A Very Short Introduction to Ogham Practice

Hey, it’s not just about trees, ya know. “Sound and matter” says the Auriacepts na n-Éces (The Scholar’s Primer), a seventh century Irish grammar text, “Is the mother and father of the Ogham,” The authors tell us the mythological foundation of this fascinating writing system: Lugh’s wife, being in terrible danger from being carried off into the Otherworld, is given a protective charm by the Tuatha Dé’s champion, Ogma, comprised of the ogham fid (character) beith, carved into birch wood, linking the alphabet firmly with Otherworldly origins.

The archeological evidence shows that the Ogham was used on boundary and grave markers in Ireland and symbol stones in Pictland, the earliest of which are thought from the Christian Era. To me, though they feel far older, as though they were first carved by our ancestors on wood, not stone, as if these notches little Keys to the Otherworld, otherworldly ‘barcodes’ shining with ladders of meaning.

Unusually for a Church text, the authors of the Primer of the felt no need to gloss the Ogham’s origin story with Christianity. The hand and knife of Ogma created the feda (letters), they tell us. And who are we to argue—in this case—with the venerable scribes of the insular Celtic church? Without a doubt, they knew much more about the topic than poor old Robert Graves, the English poet who popularised the romantic idea that the Ogham is ‘all about the magic trees’. The Ogham was used as a memory device by the Irish filid—ritual poets—to link concepts, ideas, names of birds or animals or plants, into complex systems of meaning and memory. It was far more than ‘just trees’.

At its core Goidelic (Irish or Gaelic) spirituality is all about connection, reciprocity, balance and right relationship. Healthy connection to Goidelic source cultures is to my mind also important. Most neopagans use the Ogham—usually with commercially-bought staves of corresponding woods using Graves’ ‘Celtic Tree’ system. This is also purely my personal perspective, but it may also be wise to acknowledge that we can’t really separate the Ogham out from the cultures it originated in.

Some folks go the other way, and spend huge amounts of money on courses from various spiritual teachers to master the Ogham, the cost of which is beyond the reach of many folks. I firmly believe, as a source-culture Goidelic practitioner, that our native spiritual practices should neither be up for sale or locked behind a paywall—there should be no class or income barrier to authentic, connected spirituality.

So how do we get started on a budget? Five things. Firstly, we need Erynn Rowan Laurie’s 2007 book Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom which retails for about 10 euros for the eBook. This contain great exploration of the core texts for magical and divinatory purposes. This is still, in my view, the best book available on the Ogham, written in the early naughties by a superb Celtic Reconstructionist scholar. Secondly, we need the primary source, the Auriacept text itself, which is out of copyright, available to download for free from Internet Archive. Thirdly, we need an Ogham set we make ourselves if possible—we can even start with flashcards. Fourthly, we also need a mediation practice (which could be journaling, dancing, journeying, guided mediation, colouring, doodling etc where we spend time with the spirit of each fid and consider her meanings. Finally, and (most importantly) we need a cordial relationship with Ogma and/or the Spirit of the Ogham itself.

That can be as simple as greeting Ogma before you work with the Ogham and showing him gratitude when we’re done (if we can use alcohol in our practice, my personal gnosis is that He likes a dram of smokey malt whisky from time to time, with a dry offering of coffee heavy on the cream if this isn’t doable). Manners matter with the Tuatha Dé. If we’re nervous about approaching Him or eschew working with deities altogether, then thanking the Spirit of the Ogham itself is also acceptable.

With these building blocks, a powerful Ogham practice can be achieved.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with using a commercial ogham set, but my recommendation is to make our own if we can, using, slow, methodical practice to anchor the feda in your mind and spirit. Ogham sets made as part of a mediation practice, so my little bardic study group has found, are phenomenally powerful divination and magical tools.

We don’t need to worry about collecting different woods (although we can if this resonates). If using wood, we can make a whole set from Birch, the wood upon which Ogham was first carved according to the lore, and it will work just fine. We can also just as easily use blanks made out of ice lolly sticks, antler bone, sea glass, modelling clay, twigs collected on a walk, or shells. On each blank, we can paint or pyrograph or carve the feda—or unleash the most devastating magical tool of all, the permanent marker. As we mark each feda on our blank, we say or chant the name of each fid. An internet search for Irish language resources should provide a pronunciation guide for the name of each fid.

Some words of caution: if we’re taking shells or pebbles as blanks to make our set, we should make sure that we have a relationship with the land we’re working with—ask permission from the land spirits, pick up litter, and so forth. We should extremely wary of taking anything from an ancient site or a place associated with the Fair Folk or the Ancestors (we might want to give graveyards and Sí mounds a miss, just saying). If our practice is rooted in places with a colonial history, of course, we never take anything from a place of indigenous veneration. We research the sites we plan on working with, this process cannot be rushed.

However, it’s not merely for divination that I use the Ogham. The ability to use the ogham, in my view, is critically important for the practice of filidecht, or ritual poetry, where we use the feda to link concepts and associations. As a Goidelic polytheist the Ogham, and its maker Ogma is central to my spiritual practice. You could even say the Ogham also saved my arse.

Spirit work can be dangerous, and for ritual poets it can often involve perilous brushes with the Otherworld. At Samhain last year, I ended up with an injury—an energetic intrusion from a journey Over There which went terribly wrong. To say I was in the soup is an understatement: the agony was indescribable, the injury prevented me from being able to reach the gods or to journey at all, and getting it out nearly killed me. The process of removing the intrusion was slow, painful, and devastated my internal ‘sacred landscape’. I was so traumatised I couldn’t start my spiritual practice.

That’s when I met Ogma, surfaced and sage, who suggested that I should just go down to the Carrick shore and draw the series of five concentric circles that form Fionn’s Window from the Irish manuscript tradition in the sand. (In my own bardic circles, we call this image ‘Ogma’s Window’ because he gave us the Ogham). It was here, indicated Ogma, that I should start rebuilding my spiritual practice.

Drawing the Window in the sand was all I could do at first. That was my entire mediation pactice. Go to the beach once a week, draw circles and liens in the sand, go home. When I began this practice, (careful to thank Ogma each time), I couldn’t even remember the names of the feda. Draw the circles, make the marks. I’d go to the beach, draw the Window in the sand with the ‘fid of the week’ in the centre, week on week, and slowly I began to heal.

For twenty weeks straight, progressing through the alphabet. At a rate so incremental I barely noticed sat first, the meanings and associations opened up for me. I began to form the sounds along with the ogham feda. I restarted my journeying practice. I found my connection to my guides and gods restored, and my health improved. And each week, the synchronicities connected with the core meanings of the feda would abound in my life. Each week, in the sand as I drew Ogma’s Window, I would find a piece of seaglass in the sand, which, at the end of the 20 weeks of methodical practice, I created a powerful ogham set for divination. The most powerful divinatory tool I own is made of sea glass and glitter markers, and the magic of methodical practice.

This is not a practice for the faint of heart: some of the feda are implacable. Straif week brought sudden change, Ur week brought a family funeral, Ceirt week brought setbacks and obstacles and a metric arsetonne of shadow work, nGetal week forced me to look at an old emotional wound festering. But without this practice my bardic path would be utterly ungrounded, and I would probably not be recovered from the injury that so upended my life. The Ogham has been both a life-saver, and a game-changer. After all, the Ogham is a healer.

Liùsaidh, Bàrd na-hAlba


References:

Og(h)am. About Ogham Access: https://ogham.glasgow.ac.uk

Laurie, E. (2007) Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom, Stafford: Megalithica Books.

Caldwell (1917) The Auraicept na n-Eces, The Scholar’s Primer. Edinburgh: John Grant. Access: https://archive.org/details/auraicept00calduoft

Liùsaidh is an Irish-Scottish Bàrd and Goidelic Polytheist. An award-nominated poet, her work has appeared in many publications. She was the editor Quarterday: The Journal of Classical Poetry from 2015-2017, and is currently the editor of eSpin, the magazine of the Scottish Pagan Federation. She’s a regular columnist for the The Wild Hearth’s blog. She lives with her chosen family on the Carrick Coast.