Trees are distinctly mysterious and magical beings. Few people are not moved by the deep presence felt in a forest grove or by the soothing hush of wind in branches. Regardless of religion or culture, humanity has long held trees to be beloved kin. Valuable for a host of practical reasons, they also are held sacred by many ancient peoples as wise elders and homes to spirits and otherworldly beings.
My first experiences of trees as spiritual, magical creatures were when I was a very small child. There was an old apple tree in my grandparents’ garden, and for the first years of my life I remember it as a dear friend: long hours spent by its side, lost in conversations without words, joy bubbling in my heart. Sometimes I would see the “Apple Man,” as I called him, sitting in the branches, his skin green and smooth, his smile broad; at other times I knew him to be the tree itself. These were my earliest days, where reality could shift and blur with ease without rationalising or analysing, just being in easy communion with nature and its spirits, as I believe we are all truly meant to be.
There was also another tree of great significance whom I called the “Wise Old Oak.” The village cricket pitch was surrounded by a small woodland that opened on to a farmer’s fields. To me, those woods were full of faeries and mysterious shadowed dells. Ivy and elder clothed nooks and crannies fit to hide a child from the sunny glare of the open playing field, and they called to my soul in a way I couldn’t explain then. When other children sought to run and shout, I wanted to climb, scramble through the thicket to spin and dance in circles around the trees, and find secret places to sit quietly and listen to the wind sighing in the leaves. Out farther in the wilderness before the farmland stretched on forever was the huge oak tree. It stood proud, marking where the woodland turned to meadows with its broad crown and furrowed trunk, its great roots stretching out like serpents, diving in and out of the soil. It marked a place of change between the dark of the woods and the golden fields beyond.
In the dappled sunlight I once saw a fox dive deep between its roots and vanish as if into another world. This image had a profound effect on me, as if it came in a dream. I remember the air tingling with power, although I couldn’t have described it like that at the time. I was used to seeing spirits and was lucky enough to have a family that accepted my experiences with equanimity as nothing unusual, but this was different. I had come across the veil between the worlds. I knew it in the core of my being. It was also probably a fox den, and I knew it to be that too, but my senses told me it was so much more.
Over the years these trees became deeply formative presences, as I grew seamlessly into the spiritual path I walk to this day. To me, trees have always held great magical and spiritual significance, and I have always considered them our green kin. They have so much to teach us if we could but listen. Training as a witch in my teens and later as a shaman and druid was a natural product of my communion with trees, and they have been my greatest teachers. I believe spiritual life is inseparable from nature, and the spirit world and our own merge and flow in and out of each other with the same ease the fox dives from the earth into the sunlight and back again. Here is where the gods (and indeed a whole host of gods and goddesses) can be found in infinite variation. Priestessing the earth is for me personally the only natural response to the awe and deep love this evokes in me. Learning from and working with the spirits of nature directly is our birthright, as the land is as much our mother as theirs. While we may learn a great deal from each other, especially from the traditional lore that each land holds, it is my belief that to enter into any spiritual relationship with the earth our practice must always stem from this key experience first, must rise up from beneath our feet. For this reason, I find greatest spiritual meaning in the magical and spiritual lore of my own lands—Britain and Ireland—and my ancestors, those elusive people known in popular culture as the Celts.
The Celts venerated certain trees all across Europe, Britain, and Ireland, and although they did not have a written language, a great deal of their knowledge has survived in folklore and common custom, as well as that mysterious set of sigils known as ogham (pronounced oh-am). My work with the ogham goes back well over twenty years. When I first discovered it, I was so thrilled and felt like I was re-remembering something lost and infinitely precious. Here at last was our ancestral magical tree lore preserved, albeit in a highly cryptic and disguised form. Picking the way through it can be much like making your way through the thicket: a step at a time, untangling from briars, and sweeping back the ivy to the core knowledge that lies beneath. Yet through it all, the path remains straight and true like the tree’s trunk or the central “stem” of the ogham script itself. Studying the ogham and working with it both spiritually and magically is a lifelong road, but one I find deeply rewarding. Doing so renews my soul as surely as new leaves emerge in spring. Within its branches climbed one after another, we find the wisdom of the trees. Nothing to me more strongly represents the collected spiritual knowledge of these lands than can be found in the trees’ heartwood—from roots to twig and leaf tip.
This book therefore holds as its primary concern trees from a Celtic perspective as recorded in the Irish ogham alphabet. As such, it provides an in-depth study of the main twenty original and earliest ogham trees, as well as an overview of the forfeda (pronounced for-feya), the later collection of an additional five trees (for completeness).
The Path Through the Trees
Celtic Tree Magic is first and foremost a book about Celtic tree lore and its uses. However, to really develop our understanding of this, we must place it in context. Therefore we will first take a look at the nature of Celtic pagan spirituality via an exploration of their sacred enclosures known as nemetons, and how both trees and related deities were honoured and represented in these spaces. In the next section, “Into the Forest,” we will look at how to make this knowledge relevant to our practice today, how to relate to individual and groups of trees in nature, and how to work with them in sacred and magical ways via developing relations with their spirits and the powers of place within our own landscapes. We will also explore finding our own ogham guides and allies to work with in nature and in the otherworld via seership and inner vision, discovering how to find and work with our own “inner grove” and its resident guardian.
We will then turn our attention to the ogham trees themselves in grea-ter detail. Each tree’s practical and magical uses and healing attributes are included, as well as the spiritual lessons and energies they represent. In this way we can use this traditional lore to develop our own experiences and insights.
Our study of each of the trees is divided into the following sections in addition to its general botanical description.
Lore and legend covers the mythological, textual, and folkloric story of each tree and, by extension, its general energetic properties and significance.
Practical and magical uses discusses the particular trees’ applications in crafts and spellwork, including traditional examples.
Healing covers the trees’ medicinal and healing properties, be they herbal, chemical, or energetic in nature, again with traditional examples where relevant.
Ogham divination meaning is included to give the reader an insight into the meaning and relevance of the ogham sigil or tree in a divination spread or when found in Celtic shamanic journeying or inner vision.
Excerpts from my private magical journals are also included so you can see how I relate and work with these trees in my daily life, hopefully encouraging and inspiring you to seek similar experiences and build your own relationships with our green spirit kin in turn. After that, we will discuss each of the forfeda to add additional insight into the ogham lore. From there we will explore how to make ogham wands and staves based on our connection with the spirits of each tree, and how to perform ogham divination. We’ll also explore how to use the ogham as magical sigils, both individually and in combination with each other for spells and other magical purposes. We will also look at the traditional layout known as Fionn’s Window and its uses not only in divination but in creating sacred spaces with its own distinctive energetic atmosphere. Finally we will look at using ogham trees and plants for spells, charms, and potions, including vibrational essences and tinctures.
The forest teaches that everything is connected, from the smallest bacteria to the greatest of trees, and so it is with knowledge, each of us on our spiritual paths as well as our journeys through life. For this reason, whilst concentrating mainly on Celtic tradition, aspects of tree lore from other cultures around the globe are included where relevant for further elucidation and example. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and to fully understand and work with trees in a magical or spiritual context, we must consider the whole as much as the individual point of focus. The same remains true, in addition, about how we experience trees and tree lore. This is not a purely scholarly book, as we cannot fully comprehend the ogham from a purely intellectual perspective. We must approach the forest not as outside observers but as kin via relationship, interaction, and ultimately communion with the tree spirits themselves.