by Searles O'Dubhain
The Ogham script of ancient Ireland is commonly understood as an alphabet carved on standing stones. Searles O'Dubhain — practitioner, scholar, and founder of the Summerlands, the first major online Celtic Pagan community — argues here for a richer understanding: that the Ogham was the foundation of the Druidic memory art, a system of "memory groves" through which the entire Irish cosmological and mythological inheritance could be indexed, retrieved, and used for divination.
This article, posted to alt.religion.druid in October 2007 as a draft for the Wikipedia article on Ogham divination and the Summerlands website, presents O'Dubhain's original synthesis: the three Ogham Mandalas from the Book of Ballymote (the Stream Strand of Ferchertne, Fionn's Window, and the Wheel Ogham of Roigne Roscadach), the Dúile system connecting the nine elements of the human body to the nine elements of the cosmos, and the Briatharogam kennings as the esoteric layer through which Druidic knowledge was stored and recovered. At its heart, he argues, Ogham divination is not fortune-telling but the quest for An Fírinne — inner truth — which alone opens any door to wisdom.
One of the functions of the Druids and the Filidh within Irish society was to preserve the traditions and tales. They did this by perfecting their memories and through a study of the tales in their schools. In the first three years of training in these schools they learned over 150 of these tales. Concurrently with the memorization of the tales, they also learned 150 different Ogham types.
This study of Ogham involved learning many different forms of Ogham (92 are provided in the Book of Ballymote) along with a large number of Ogham associations and lists. The Ogham were linked to birds, animals, fortresses, schools, people, colors and just about anything else that one would encounter in life. Along with these lists of items, the Ogham were also associated with trees in a tree list. In addition to the tree list, the Ogham were an alphabet of the Primitive Irish language, being said to consist of sound and matter. Ogham was both a spoken and a written form of the earliest Irish language.
Memory is a gift that some have more than others. Perfected memory occurs when natural gifts are enhanced with known memory techniques such as the use of lists, mnemonics, images, impact, association, linkages, numerical ordering, and even a systematic creation of places and spaces for memory linkage, known as memory theaters. The highest level of memory systems is a virtual simulation of a world of associated facts that are carefully stored in uniquely linked locations. These worlds can be formed as storage cabinets, cupboards, theaters, and even entire towns and cities of memories.
The perfected memory can visit these memory places to retrieve the concepts and facts that are stored in each space as easily as we can visit a home or store in our own towns. Once there one can see everything in the inventory since the store itself is also organized as a kind of Memory Theater. Since the Ogham was learned in lists and forms at the same time as the beginning of the memorization of the tales by the Druids and the Filidh, it is not much of a leap of logic to consider that the two studies were allied to one another. The trees and lists of the Ogham were the memory theaters — or better, the memory groves — of these masters of perfected memory.
The Ogham as a kind of index to Druidic memory and the traditional tales became the foundation of the working of the Irish Druids and the Filidh. The most esoteric of the Ogham lists is to be found in the Briatharogam — kennings and images that in themselves contain the theme of a tale or the essence of a concept in values. Using such a list of values and images one could have access to the essential cosmology and framework of the Irish worldview and culture. In the tale The Settling of the Manor of Tara, we are provided with such a partitioning of the world into values and ideals by the Oldest Seanchaí, Fintan, and his Otherworldly counterpart Trefuilngid Tre-Eochair. Ireland itself is assigned values and features by both of these wise beings. It should come as no surprise that the Ogham can be used to sort and associate these values.
The Three Ogham Mandalas
The sorting tools used to evaluate these values and qualities in the Ogham divination system that I teach are the three diagrams of the Ogam Tract in the Book of Ballymote. These diagrams are individually known as The Stream Strand of Ferchertne, Fionn's Window, and the Wheel Ogham or Roigne Roscadach. They each have unique structures associated with them based on the way in which the Ogham that is used to form them is sequenced.
Ferchertne's Stream Strand is a sunwise spiral written with five descending levels that are themselves square. The bottom of this set of levels is a floor upon which the Forfedha are organized upon an "X." Fionn's Window is a clockwise arrangement of the Ogham Aicme in cardinal, radial sets that are arranged from the outside to the inside of a series of five concentric circles. The Forfedha are drawn on this diagram at the second circle in the spaces that exist between the cardinal aicme. On Roigne's Wheel one finds Collogam arranged as inward spirals within four separate divisions of a circle. The upper two divisions have counter-clockwise organization while the lower two divisions are arranged in a clockwise fashion.
I've assigned these three Ogham diagrams the collective name of the Ogham Mandalas. It is my contention that they represent a framework for the three realms of Land (Fionn), Sea (Ferchertne), and Sky (Roigne). These realms also have a microcosmic association with their macrocosmic elements. The body and the cosmos are linked in early Irish belief and tradition. As such, the qualities and elements of each flow from one to another within reality and for each person.
The Dúile: Linking Body to Cosmos
The Land has elements of the Sea within it in the form of lakes, streams and rivers. The body of a person has such reservoirs to be found in the blood within its organs and the vessels that circulate blood from one to another. Food flows in a similar fashion within us as does air. Thought and impulse flow from the head of a person to the various fluid and solid forms of the body in much the same way that air moves the clouds and the winds, rain and evaporation water the Land and recharge the clouds. Lightness and darkness cycle the world in much the same way that periods of wakefulness and sleep order our own lives. Our emotional outlook is synchronized to the cycles of the Sun and the Moon as well as the changes in the Land that are known as the seasons.
The three greater elements of Land, Sea and Sky have also been expanded within the preserved knowledge of the Irish to give us various lists of qualities known collectively as the Dúile. A variety of such lists of qualities in the worlds and within people can be found in Indo-European tradition as well as Irish traditions. Even Pádraig's (St. Patrick's) Breastplate had such a list of elements. In my own system of the Dúile I have standardized these qualities into nine elements. These are the bones, flesh, skin, blood, breath, mind, face, brain, and head for a person. For the cosmos their analogs are stones, earth, trees, seas, winds, Moon, Sun, stars and sky. All of these elements have a "Tree of Life" structure with one another both in the microcosm and the macrocosm. Indeed, as the "trees" of the Ogham and the qualities of the Dúile they have a forest of associations and potential possibilities.
Working the Mandala
All of these parts of existence can be statically modeled using the Ogham Mandalas and the associated meanings of their structures based upon the wisdom of Fintan and Trefuilngid. The individual areas of these diagrams are ordered and influenced by the esoteric knowledge of Ferchertne, Fionn, and Roigne. Dynamic interactions that more closely simulate the changes that can occur for us as beings within this worldview can be emulated using Ogham that are selected from the Briatharogam. This means that the skills of Morann mac Main, Cúchulainn and Mac ind Óic can be used to determine one's fate when cast within these structures in a divination. The interactions of the wisdom of these beings and individuals represents the palette of esoteric and potential outcomes that can occur for a person within life. One uses wisdom from the gods and Otherworldly beings coupled with the skills of the learned to accomplish feats and to delve into mysteries. All of these and more are within the many abilities of the various Ogham gifted to us from the Irish traditions and the preserved knowledge of their Druids and Filidh.
I have developed basic and more complex meanings for the Ogham to be used in divination that reflect the values of Tara along with the structures of Ferchertne, Fionn and Roigne. The basic meanings derive from the Certogam names assigned by Cenn Faeladh in the Ogham Tract. These names (which are also associated with trees) have various meanings that are fundamental to each symbol. Some say that the original meanings are themselves values for each sound rather than exclusively being tree meanings. That may well be true but the ways that these meanings were remembered was through their tree associations in the memory groves of the mind. The sound is the name in the Certogam. The form is the associated tree.
Basic Ogham meanings are based on the sounds of the Ogham characters. These sounds and the words associated with them have extremes or domains of meaning that can occur for them much like a harp string has a range in which it can be usefully tuned. A search through the meanings of similar words and sounds found in the Dictionary of the Irish language was my guide in understanding how each Ogham character and sound could be formed, shaped and understood. As such there are two extremes to the basic Ogham correspondences to be used in divination as well as the "middle path" meaning where balance and harmony are to be found. Students are expected to tune their own harps to get the best melodies in this work, but the suggested tunings are what has worked best for me. My intention is not to limit but to guide. I hope that others with greater skill and knowledge will perfect the meanings beyond the start that I have made in my own work.
More complex meanings and correspondences can be developed for use in Ogham divination by threading and weaving the Briatharogam images with the structure of the Dúile and the colorings of the tales that are associated with both. That is what I have attempted to do in producing a table of Detailed Ogham correspondences for divination. Each correspondence is linked through the changes that their place in the Dúil for that Ogham produce. The anchor points for this weaving of meanings is each individual kenning of the Briatharogam. Ferchertne's are used for the lower three dúl. Cúchulainn's are used for the middle three dúl and Mac ind Óic's are used for the upper three dúl. This is fitting since one individual is associated with coming out of the sea and judgment (Morann); the next with riding and fighting upon the land (Cúchulainn); and the last is associated with the realms of the gods and the Sun (Mac ind Óic). This means that the three of the detailed correspondences are also the meanings of the Briatharogam.
An overall meaning for each Ogham is determined by a consideration of all of the Dúile meanings, the Briatharogam meanings, the harmonies of the sound extremes, the expansion of the associated tales, and the ways in which Ogham have been assigned by the Druids and the Filidh in their surviving works. The Ogham are sound and matter, so these sounds and matters should be considered to completely grasp the meaning of each Ogham in much the same ways that a song, a novel or a performance has an overall effect and lasting theme. What remains is a symbiosis of meanings that meld into a wonder of art and science to become doorways or keys to one's own inner wisdom.
An Fírinne — The Inner Truth
This is how Ogham can be used in performing divinations. It is also how they can call forth associated images and meanings for use in the composition of poetry or prose. Having a tapestry of Ogham meanings and images within one's own memory grove will facilitate creating and understanding within one's self so that composition and derivation through analysis can be more efficiently accomplished. Divination ultimately means connecting with divine knowledge, wisdom and will. Whether that knowledge comes directly to one from the gods or comes indirectly through the symbols of one's Ogham is a matter of destinies, prophecies and magical workings. A further skill in applying the skills and knowledge of Ogham should be developed with each Seer. That skill is the ability to ascertain the difference between Fírinne and one's own psychological needs. Understanding how one's inner makeup and psyche attempt to color the readings is the first work that any Druid or File should undertake before attempting a reading for others.
In every divine working or encounter, one should be able to step aside from the closeted self. This is being "outside the box." It is a quest of spirit to find inner truth. In Ceremonial Magic, this working is termed as being the "Conversation with One's Guardian Angel." In Indian spiritual regimes it is known as either the "Voidness" or the "natural state of the mind." It is a way to enlightenment that has its first steps at breaking the bonds of the world's conditioning and the chains of ego within a person.
An Fírinne is a concept that among the Druids was considered to be the fundamental power behind the universe and everything that can exist in reality. Finding An Fírinne within one's self is the primary work of any Druid, Filidh, Sage or Seer.
The discovery of this inner truth is the most important work of every religious and spiritual person. It is found in Christianity, Native American teachings, Buddhism, the Vedas, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Voodoun, Shamanism, Asatru, Nordic and Germanic Mysteries, Greek and Roman Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Wicca, Witchcraft and every other major religious expression found by humanity. Even the gods must know themselves as they are the purest expressions of the ideals to be found or attempted. Only by clearing the mind, body and spirit of untruth can one find truth. In Druidry and on the Druid Way, truth — An Fírinne — is the ultimate guide. It is a perfection of the memory and the self. It is the power that must be placed within each Ogham used for divination.
The techniques for obtaining one's truth on the Druid way and the ways to use that truth to empower one's working are matters that would be best left to a dialogue between every student and their teachers. That is why courses are offered and taught. That is why schools are formed and continue. That is why authority is acknowledged in learning and wisdom. Such things are not the work of a moment nor are they a gift to the undedicated or undisciplined. Those who cannot know themselves cannot expect to clearly know anyone or anything else. Those who have accomplished this knowing of self and others are those who have the authority to teach others. Only a truth knower can know that truth in others or hear the voice of the divine.
The symbols of the Ogham are keys to knowledge, but it is the truth within one's self that is the power and wisdom which permits any door to wisdom to be opened. Those doors open into the fields of imbas forosnai, which is the knowledge that illuminates. It is at the crossroads of all wisdom and to be found within the center of all centers.
Colophon
Written by Searles O'Dubhain ([email protected]) and posted to alt.religion.druid in October 2007. O'Dubhain described this post as a draft for the Wikipedia article on Ogham Divination and for the Summerlands website. He was a practitioner of Irish Celtic Druidry, founder of the Summerlands (the first major online Celtic Pagan community), author of Opening the Pathways and The Ogham Keys to Wisdom series, and longtime contributor to the Keltrian and ADF traditions.
Original Message-ID: [email protected]
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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