![]() ![]() In some areas, it was customary to drive out the spirits of the old year with birch switches, and throughout Europe birch twigs were used for ‘beating the bounds’. In Britain the birch rod was used rather more ferociously to purify the criminal of their misdeeds, and earlier still in an attempt to expel evil spirits from ‘lunatics’. In Scandinavia, switches of birch are used on the body to stimulate the process of purification in the sauna, and can be used in Druid sweathouse rituals too. Again, the birch tree is an appropriate symbol for this process of purification in preparation for new beginnings. Often, before we can give birth to the new, we need to cleanse ourselves of the old. The Ogham can also be used for divination, and when we draw the card, or throw the disc or stave of the birch, we know that this signifies new beginnings for us, and -depending on its relative position in the spread – we know that we must either pioneer a new endeavour or that something is being born in our lives. So it is a tree of birth – an appropriate tree to symbolise the first level of Druid working, when we are born into this new way of seeing and knowing. It is known, for this reason, as the Pioneer Tree, and it can be seen also as the tree which helps birth the forest. This is fitting, for it is the birch that we plant first on virgin land if we want to create a wood or forest. It is the first tree in the Ogham Cipher, and as such represents the number one. The Bardic school or grade is symbolised by the Birch Tree. ![]() ![]() But it was the poet Robert Graves who, following in his grandfather’s footsteps as an Ogham expert, brought this arcane system into public awareness once again, with his publication of The White Goddess in 1948.Īn example of Tree Lore: Beith - The Birch Tree And from Scotland, transcribed from the oral tradition in the seventeenth century, we have The Scholar’s Primer. Amongst our sources of information about its use, we have from Ireland the twelfth century Book of Leinster, the fourteenth century Book of Ballymote, and O’Flaherty’s Ogygia (published in 1793). Its origins are lost in the mists of time, and most of the existing inscriptions have only been dated to the fifth and sixth centuries, but whether originally Celtic or pre-Celtic, we may sense that it carries with it some of the very earliest of Druid wisdom. The Ogham characters were inscribed on stones and probably on staves of wood. It is similar in purpose, but separate in origin from the Nordic runes. It consists of twenty-five simple strokes centred on or branching off a central line. This is known as the Ogham (which means ‘language’ and is pronounced o’um, or och’um). If the exercise works for you, you will have experienced something of what it means to be a Druid – a man or a woman who even today can feel the pulse of life in the earth beneath them and the trees around them.ĭruids today use a particular method for communicating and remembering their wealth of tree-knowledge. It’s important to say it out loud, because the voice has magical properties. I know the secrets of the oak and the wildwood.” Say it several times over, with as little inhibition and as much conviction as you can muster. To get a sense of how it might feel to be a Druid, try saying this: “I am strong – a steadfast seer, a knower of magic and enchantment. Other scholars suggest that Druid is derived from the pre-Indo-European root deru – which means firm, solid, strong or steadfast, combined with the root weid – which means to see, creating a term that could translate as ‘Strong Seer’. The Druid was one with ‘knowledge of the trees’ and was a ‘Forest Sage’. Those who possessed knowledge of the oak possessed knowledge of all the trees. Some modern scholars agree with the classical Roman and Greek authors that the most likely derivation for ‘Druid’ is from the word for oak, combined with the Indo-European root wid – to know, giving their translation of the word Druid as ‘One with knowledge of the oak’ or ‘Wise person of the oak’.
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