Divination: The Celtic Ogham - Luis

Welcome back to my continuing series about Celtic Ogham divination! Yeah, I know I was supposed to post this last Sunday, but I was ensnared by the last Harry Potter book and was on internet/media blackout all weekend. :)

Today's letter is Luis which stands for the Rowan tree. It's pronounced, depending on what source you're reading, "loosh" or "lweesh".

Rowan, sometimes called Mountain Ash, is a member of the rose family and thrives in poor soils and disturbed areas. It is often found around ancient sites such as stone circles and castle ruins. The red berries, sometimes called serviceberries, were historically used to lure birds into traps; birds are also responsible for dispersing the seeds.

The rowan tree was important to the Druids. Before going into battle, they would say incantations over fires made from rowan wood, so it's not surprising that Luis represents protection and the ability to distinguish good from bad.

Color: Red and or green
Planet: Sun (some sources say Mars)
Element: Fire
Month: December
Bird: Duck
Crystal: tourmaline
Deities: Lugh, Dagda, Brighid, Rhiannon
Meanings: Yang (male) energy, psychic protection, courage in time of strife, empowerment, trusting your instincts.

To see more in this series, click the "celtic divination" tag in the footer of this post.

Slan,
Carolan
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In The Gloaming: Abhainn's Kiss available now for pre-order from Amazon.com.

Mystical Places: Giant's Causeway

Yet another mysterious, magical, mystical place in the U.K. - the amazing volcanic rock formation known as the Giant's Causeway. How cool is this place?

Wikipedia offers the following:

"The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns resulting from a volcanic eruption. It is located on the North East coast about 3 kilometres (2 miles) north of the town of Bushmills in County Antrim, Northern Ireland."

"Legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Finn McCool fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he did not arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over Fionn and pretended he was actually Fionn's baby son (in a variation, Fionn fled after seeing Benandonner's great bulk, and asked his wife to disguise him as the baby.) In both versions, when Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn.

Another variation is that Oonagh painted a rock shaped like a steak and gave it to Benandonner, whilst giving the baby (Fionn) a normal steak. When Benandonner saw that the baby was able to eat it so easily, he ran away, tearing up the causeway.

The "causeway" legend corresponds with geological history in as much as there are similar basalt formations (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at the site of Fingal's Cave on the isle of Staffa in Scotland."

Looking at these weird rock formations, it's easy to believe some strange and magical being had to have a hand in creating them. Yet, we know today, they are instead, the magic of nature.

Until our next adventure,
Bianca D'Arc
Come over to the D'Arc side... http://www.biancadarc.com/

Mystical Places: Standing Stones

Standing stones are one of the great mysteries of the stone age. Wikipedia boils it down to this:

"Standing stones, orthostats, liths or more commonly, megaliths because of their large and cumbersome size, are solitary stones set vertically in the ground and come in many different varieties. Where they appear in groups together, often in a circular formation, they are sometimes called megalithic monuments. Standing stones are found throughout the world with no known or documented history."

I'm very interested in these structures because standing stones feature prominently in my book, Lords of the Were, and in subsequent stories I'm writing in that same setting. You might also notice the best known of these monuments - Stonehenge - is the current banner for this blog.

There's something mysterious and awe inspiring about these stone rings, and puzzling as well. Why are they there? What was their purpose? Are they really as magical as they seem?

In my books, stone circles are the sites of ancient rites and seats of power for those working on the side of light. You might notice the stones in the distance on my cover for Lords of the Were. The artist, Anne Caine did a wonderful job incorporating all the images I wanted on the cover of this novel. Kudos to her! In this book, the circle of stones is used as a ritual place where the werecreatures gather to celebrate the sabbat of Samhain at the beginning of the story, and later, to work powerful magic against those who would do evil.

A great deal of mysticism and myth has built up around megaliths over the centuries. In fact, many gather at Stonehenge and other sites like it on various pagan holidays to celebrate. One clarification - henges are considered to be slightly different. Again, Wikipedia gives us the definition:

"A henge is a prehistoric architectural structure and is nearly circular or oval-shaped flat area over 20 metres (65 feet) in diameter that is enclosed and delimited by a boundary earthwork that usually comprises a ditch with an external bank. The earthwork permits access to the interior by one, two, or four entrances. Internal components may include portal settings, timber circles, post rings, stone circles, four-stone settings, monoliths, standing posts, pits, coves, post alignments, stone alignments, burials, central mounds, and stakeholes (English Heritage definition).

Because of the defensive impracticalities of an enclosure with an external bank and an internal ditch (rather than vice versa), henges are considered to have served a ritual, rather than a defensive, purpose.

[...]

The word henge is a backformation from Stonehenge, the famous monument in Wiltshire. Stonehenge is not a true henge at all as its ditch runs outside its bank, although there is a small extant external bank as well. This is a modern distinction however, we do not know if ditch placement would have been a significant feature or not to the people who built the monuments."

So the "henge" formation indicates a ritual purpose to scholars who are trying to reverse engineer the function of these amazing structures in the modern world. Regardless of what they are, they seem magical to us today. The idea that Stone Age people could not only create such intricate places, but that they would last so many thousands of years is mind boggling. Yes, I believe, there simply must be some kind of magic involved. Don't you? ;-)

Bianca
http://www.biancadarc.com/

Divination Sunday - The Celtic Ogham

Welcome back to the Hogwart's School Annex!

Today we start a series on divination with the Celtic Ogham, also known as the Tree Alphabet. The Ogham is sometimes confused with Runes, but these are two distinct sets of symbols with differing origins. What they have in common is that both are real alphabets that were used for writing in the ancient languages - in Ogham's case, old Irish and Pictish - and both are now used primarily as divination symbols.

Each letter of the Ogham represents a sacred Druidic tree or plant; the Druids themselves were said to secretly communicate with each other with Ogham hand signs. Divinatory meanings for each symbol are credited to Robert Graves and his book The White Goddess.

So, that's a brief history crammed into a very small nutshell! Before I lose your attention, let's get right into the symbols.

I choose to start with the symbol of "Beith", A) because it's considered the first letter of the Ogham, and B) the heroine in my upcoming novella "Wildish Things" is named Beith. :) Being American, Beith herself pronounces her name "beth", but in Irish it shoulds more like "bayh" or "beh-yeh." This is how the hero, Kellan, pronounces it in the throes of passion.

Ahem.

BEITH

Tree: Silver Birch (betula pendula), the most common birch tree in Europe. One of the first trees to populate a clear-cut area, hence it's association with new beginnings. (Could be any kind of native birch, really.)
Color: White
Planet: Venus
Crystal: White or clear quartz
Bird: Pheasant
Deities: Ogma, the creator of the Ogham. Arianrhod and other forms of the White Goddess.
Meanings: New beginnings, origins, purification, spiritual protection, sources, precedence, warning, writing, eloquence, creativity.

Next time we'll move on to the next letter in the Ogham, "Luis" or rowan. Hopefully SJ will be well enough to rejoin us in a couple weeks!

Leave a comment and I'll hold a drawing for a free three-Ogham reading.

Slan,
Carolan

Abhainn's Kiss, available now from SamhainPublishing.com
Wildish Things, coming Nov. 1 from SamhainPublishing.com
Coming soon: Beaudry's Ghost
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