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Fionn’s Window Circle Ceremony

This simple ceremony picks up from the last chapter’s discussion of Fionn’s Window. The ceremony may be used as a meditative and visionary technique or to create a sacred space in which the practitioner is surrounded by a grove of ogham trees and sigils. The sacred space may be used for spellwork, healing, shamanic journeying, or other purposes.

First gather anything you would like to have in your completed circle. This may include your ogham staves, or if you are able, you may hold each sigil in your memory to effectively draw with energy around your space. Calm and centre yourself, drawing in energy from the earth.

When you are ready, turn your attention to the north. Facing that direction, hold the ogham stave for birch or its image in your inner vision. Call upon the assistance of the ogham beith, and place the ogham stave upon the ground in front of you or draw the ogham in the air. As you do this, see in your inner vision that the ogham sigil flashes with power for a moment.

Next, turn your attention to the east and repeat the process with the ogham for hawthorn, huath. Then turn to the south and do the same with the ogham for blackberry, muin. Finally, turn to the west and do the same with pine, ailm. You have now cast the first of the five circles.

You then turn again to the north and do the same with the next ogham, rowan/luis; then oak/duir in the east; ivy/gort in the south and so on until you have gone through the whole ogham and cast the circle with five layers. For the purposes of this ceremony, you may choose to ignore the forfeda or include them in their positions as you are guided or feel. Their inclusion or absence makes subtle changes in the energy of the circle, but they are not essential.

When the five circles are cast, take a moment to breathe and feel into the space. Lie on your back. Using your inner vision, see the oghams surrounding you, spiralling around and forming the walls and roof of a Celtic roundhouse. Beneath you is the sacred earth and the underworld. Far above is the star realm, the heavens. If you are able to have a fire or candle in your sacred space, take a moment to consider this sacred fire as the hearth and gathering point of your space in the middle world. All prayers and acts of magic made here rise past your ogham guardians and allies to interface with the gods above you in the upper world, like smoke rising softly through the roof from your hearth and heart fire. Remember, a roundhouse does not have a smoke hole but rather a central ridgepole that is sometimes used to hold up the thatched roof which spirals around it. You in the centre of your space are in the position of the centre ridgepole, the World Tree, able to ascend and descend to the otherworld at will, guided and accompanied by your ogham spirit allies. Take a moment to reflect on this, building up the image of a roundhouse around you in your inner vision, and be open to any insights that spirit may offer you. What does your inner roundhouse look like? How does it feel?

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Figure 8: Fionn’s Window

You may also like to call upon Fionn at this time to guide you with his insight. He may also be called upon here for protection, should you ever feel it is necessary.

You may create this sacred space to work in, journey in, or meditate in as often as you like or are guided.

Each of the five circles will function slightly differently, together forming more of an energetic spiral than a static circular enclosure. The practitioner should feel this out personally, but loosely speaking they create a sacred space together with protection and access on different levels of the world tree. With regards to this sort of practice, experience is far more valuable than verbal description; it is a matter of using our subtle senses and experience with regards to the many layers of its application.

When closing the circles after use, each ogham cast and invoked should be thanked and removed or “closed” by wiping over with the hand in reverse order. Thus the ceremony always begins and ends with beith, the birch.

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