by Searles O'Dubhain
The Ogham were said to have been formed by Sound and Form as parents — a script born not of convention but of resonance. In this brief meditation posted to alt.religion.druid in July 2003, Searles O'Dubhain draws on the musicologist Alain Danielou to argue that the Ogham letters are more than an alphabet: they are vibrational keys, nature names whose speaking evokes the things they name. Each Ogham carries a music, an essence, a sphere of awareness — a tool for mantic practice and altered states. The post represents a practitioner's attempt to ground Celtic magical theory in comparative philosophy of sound.
The Ogham were said by some to have been formed by Sound and Form (as its parents). What better child of Sound and Form would there be but Music? It is a theory of Seán Ó Boyle that the Ogham represent the notes of a Celtic harp. My thoughts on Ogham go beyond this musical notation into realms of mantra and mantic states. In this, I do not think I am far from what Alain Danielou proposed when he said in Music and the Power of Sound:
"If we were able to reproduce the exact relations that constitute the natural names, we should recreate beings, things, and phenomena, because this is the very process of creation, explained by the Vedas and also indicated in Genesis, or in the Gospel of John when the 'creative Word' is spoken of. If, however, exact relations cannot be produced, approximate relations have a power, if not of creation, at least of evocation; sound 'works now in man's small magic, just as it first worked in the grand magical display of the World Creator.' 'The natural name of anything is the sound which is produced by the action of the moving forces which constitute it. He therefore, it is said, who mentally or vocally utters with creative force the natural name of anything brings into being the thing which bears that name.' By the artificial construction of harmony we can go beyond the phenomenon of sound vibrations and perceive not sounds but immaterial relations through which can be expressed realities of a spiritual nature. We can thus lift the veil by which matter hides from its all true realities"
It is my experience that the Ogham can be used in such a way to produce altered states of consciousness and to open the doors to levels of reality. In a true language (such as Ogamic Irish) with nature words and names, there is a power to the harmony of sounds and the letters that give them birth/form. Everything has a music that is natural and uniquely characteristic of it alone. The fundamental sounds determine the "Music of the Spheres." Each of these "spheres" can be represented by an Ogham, a note and a sound as well as a quality, an essence and a level of awareness.
Colophon
Written by Searles O'Dubhain and posted to alt.religion.druid on July 28, 2003. O'Dubhain was a prolific Druidic teacher and practitioner, operator of the website The Summerlands, and one of the most active voices in the online Druidic community of the early 2000s. This post draws on Alain Danielou's Music and the Power of Sound (Inner Traditions, 1995) and the musical theory of Seán Ó Boyle to argue for the Ogham as a vibrational and mantic system.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]
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