Druid Mysteries

by Philip Carr-Gomm

  EXERCISE

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  As an exercise in relation to this chapter, you might like to visit a stone circle. When you arrive, before entering the circle spend a few moments calming yourself and coming to a sense of centredness before calling to mind the ideas about circles presented in these pages. Every stone circle has its inner or spirit guardian, and it is wise to silently ask this guardian if you might enter their sacred space. Unless you feel an intuition or a message not to proceed, become fully aware of yourself being outside the circle, and then in full awareness step into the circle. Walk respectfully within it, and find a spot to attune to the energy of the place. How does it feel? Does it feel different inside as opposed to outside the ring of stones? What is the quality of energy here? Guided by your intuition, touch the stones, if you like, to feel their power, but remember that some stones (more usually single standing stones) were placed to draw power down into the earth to increase its fertility, and if you touch such a stone for too long you may feel drained of energy, because it was sited to absorb rather than radiate power. Most stones, however, will invigorate you. Finally, give thanks to the guardian of the circle, and in full consciousness, step out of the circle, and notice if you feel different.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DRUID TREE LORE

  Trees in particular were mysterious, and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason, the woods were the place that I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings.

  C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

  AS WE HAVE we have seen from the etymology given in the first chapter, Druids were wise men and women of the trees. One of the world’s largest tree-planting movements is called The Men of the Trees and was started by a Druid, the late Richard St Barbe Baker.53 Probably few of its members realise that he based the name of his movement on one meaning of the word ‘Druids’.

  One of the reasons why the subject of the Druids fascinates us is because there is such a strong association between them and trees. If we close our eyes and imagine a Druid, we will often see them beside a tree, or within a sacred grove of trees. We sense that Druids were at one with nature in a way that we no longer are – and those of us who aspire to become Druids do so because we want to attain that at-one-ness, that union, for ourselves. In a conscious way we recognise the beauty of trees and their value to us, but just below the surface of our consciousness lies the knowledge that trees also possess keys and powers that, if we were to share in them, would enrich our lives immeasurably.

  OGHAM – THE TREE ALPHABET OF THE DRUIDS

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  Druids today use a particular method for communicating and remembering their wealth of tree-knowledge. This is known as the Ogham (which means ‘language’ and is pronounced o’um, or och’um). It consists of twenty-five simple strokes centred on or branching off a central line. It is similar in purpose, but separate in origin, from the Nordic runes. The Ogham characters were inscribed on stones and probably on staves of wood. As a method of writing it is laborious, but as a language of symbolism it is powerful. Its origins are lost in the mists of time, and most of the existing inscriptions have been dated to only 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. Amongst our sources of information about its use are, from Ireland, the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, the fourteenth-century Book of Ballymote and O’Flaherty’s Ogygia, published in 1793. From Scotland, transcribed from the oral tradition in the seventeenth century, we have The Scholar’s Primer. But it was the poet Robert Graves who, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, an Ogham expert, brought this arcane system into public awareness once again with his publication of The White Goddess in 1948.

  Each stroke of the Ogham corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. This letter represents the first letter of the tree allocated to it – so that the sign represents the letter B, and the tree beith, the birch. The sign represents the letter L, and the tree luis, the rowan, and so on.

  Although we know the letters that each stroke represents, and can translate the ancient Ogham inscriptions accordingly, we cannot be so confident when we come to associate the trees with particular months, as suggested by Robert Graves. There has been much controversy as to whether the Ogham really was used, as Graves asserts, as a calendar by the Druids – linking thirteen of the trees and letters of the alphabet to the lunar months. Whilst it is important to be aware that there is controversy, it is also important to understand that Druidry is evolving, and that if Druids didn’t correlate them thousands of years ago, many do now. If it was Robert Graves’ invention, then he was acting as a Druid at the time – he was inspired, in other words. Someone has to invent things, or ‘receive’ them from the Otherworld, and just because he or she does so in AD 1948 rather than 1948 BC is in the final analysis unimportant to those of us who want to use Druidry as a living system, as opposed to those who want to study its origins for a purely academic purpose.

  The essential point about the Druid use of Ogham is this – it provides a system that can be used in the same way as the Tree of Life of the Qabalists. Whereas the Qabalists use one tree, the Druids use a grove, a wood – filled with many trees and woodland plants. By clearly building up this wood in the imaginal world and by then associating each tree or plant with a different number, god or goddess, animal, bird, colour, mineral, star, divine or human principle, the Druid is able to retain mentally far more information than could be learned by rote. This use of an image as a mnemonic (memory aid) is well known as an esoteric discipline through the ages. The ancient Greeks, for example, visualised a theatre – each part of which was associated with an item that needed remembering.

  But to see the Druid use of Ogham simply as a mnemonic for storing data is to fail to recognise its true purpose and value, for, having ‘peopled the forest’ – having learned the associations – the Druid is then able to use this network of data in just the same way that a computer can work on stored data to produce numerous combinations and recombinations. The associations start to interrelate and cross-fertilise of their own accord at an unconscious level.

  The method of free association used in psychoanalysis can provide a glimpse into the secret world of connections and associations that are made in the unconscious, and the particular contribution of esoteric disciplines is in providing a framework that exists partly in the conscious mind, but which, like a tree whose roots are invisible to us, is also immersed in the unconscious – allowing both aspects of the self to feed from it and to nourish it. In other words, if you build a grove of trees in the imagination, or a ‘Tree of Life’ if you are a Qabalist, you create a structure which operates not only in the conscious waking self, but also in the unconscious, attracting to it associations, ideas, images and experiences. In this way it acts as a bridge between these two parts of the self. At a deeper level the creation of such a structure allows the influx of transpersonal energies into the personal or individual psychic system in a way that is safe and structured because the channels for its reception and integration have already been built.

  One of the most extraordinary things to contemplate is that as we think and make associations, our brains actually make connections and grow physically. The more we use our brain, the more dendrites (the ‘arms’ between brain cells) are grown, and the more synaptic connections are made (connections from the end of one dendrite to another). These neural pathways are called dendrites because they look like the branches of a tree, and dendrite is Greek for ‘tree-like’. Photographs of sections of the cerebral cortex look like photos of a thicket of trees in winter. One of the first tasks that we undertake when we begin training in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids is to create an inner sanctuary for meditation – a sacred grove of trees in our imaginations. Once this is well established in our minds, we can develop it over many months to create a network of associations, and as
we do this we are literally building a thicker, richer complex of connections at a physical level in our brains, as well as a structure on a subtler level in the psyche which can connect our conscious self with our unconscious self, and – ultimately – with the Otherworld.

  SACRED TREES AND PLANTS

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  Druids view all trees and plants as sacred, but the Ogham singles out twenty-five trees and plants for our attention. Each of these is linked with a character of the Ogham script, with a letter of the alphabet and with a particular period during the year.

  There is a certain amount of controversy over the association of some of the Ogham characters with certain of the trees, and some authors have chosen different ways of associating them with the times of the year. Those who are interested in following the intricacies of these arguments can do so by studying the relevant literature.54 But it is important to understand that no one list is absolutely and definitely the true or correct list of sacred trees – although about many there is no disagreement. Most of the controversy revolves around the allocation of the trees to the months, and since we have no physical proof of how or whether the early Druids made these connections, it seems important to allow our inner senses to guide us, and to be aware of the fact that writers disagree. The best approach is to establish our own personal relationship with the trees and their spirits. If we fill ourselves with other people’s ideas about which trees are sacred and what properties they possess or symbolise, it tends to block our own intuitive impressions. After we have spent some time working with trees in ways that are outlined in the Ovate work, we can then turn to the different authors and see whether their insights and allocations are helpful or misleading for us.

  Figure 4. The Ogham Alphabet

  Whilst the way that we come to a knowledge of the powers and qualities of the trees cannot be taught in a book, since it involves work outside in contact with living trees, and within one’s own sacred grove, we will look at some of the attributes of three trees and one sacred plant, to give an insight into their value as part of modern day Druidry.55

  BEITH – THE BIRCH TREE

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  The Bardic school or grade is symbolised by the birch tree. It is the first tree in the Ogham cipher, and as such represents the number 1. 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 known, for this reason, as the pioneer tree, and it can be seen also as the tree which helps to birth the forest. 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.

  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. Often, before we can give birth to the new, we need to cleanse ourselves of the old. Again, the birch tree is an appropriate symbol for this process of purification in preparation for new beginnings. 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 sweat-house rituals too. In Britain the birch rod was used rather more ferociously to purify criminals of their misdeeds, and earlier still in an attempt to expel evil spirits from ‘lunatics’. 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’.

  So to prepare for the new, we must free ourselves of the debris of the old, and birch can help us do this, and can point the way forward, for when we are lost in the forest, the shining whiteness of the birch trunk leads us onward – it offers guidance and orientation in the darkness of our journey. The very word ‘birch’ derives from a root meaning ‘bright’ or ‘shining’ in nearly all languages with Indo-European origins.

  Robert Graves allocates this tree to a month stretching from 24 December to 20 January, using a calendar of thirteen months, since both Caesar and Pliny reported that the Druids divided their year into lunar months. He chooses as the first month that which follows the winter solstice – when the year is reborn, and the days begin to lengthen.

  As with much of this work, one finds that other traditions hold many things in common. The shaman of the Siberian Gold Eskimos climbs a birch tree at the high point of an initiation ceremony, circling its trunk nine times. The Buryat and the central Asian Altai shamans carve nine notches in the trunk of a young birch – representing the steps they must take to ascend to heaven. The birch shares with the ash the distinction of being used as a representative of the Cosmic World-Tree – the Axis Mundi. This tree links the Underworld with Middle Earth and Heaven above. The shaman climbing the birch uses it as a sky-ladder to symbolise his ability to visit other worlds.

  In Britain the birch was often used for maypoles — our version of the Axis Mundi around which we turn and turn. And at the same season it was the twigs of birch that were used for kindling the Beltane fire. Birch was also used to make babies’ cradles, for if birch could drive evil from the old year, and from lunatics and criminals, it could ward off ill for the newborn too. And since birch is the tree of birthing the new, what other wood is more fitting for the newly born?

  IOHO – THE YEW TREE

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  As we approach the heart of the Druid mystery, we enter the grove of the Ovates. The tree of the Ovates is the yew.

  We associate the yew tree with death – in Britain they grow in our graveyards, and the dark green spikes of this evergreen are deadly poison. It is likely that the Latin name for this tree, taxus, is the root for the word toxic. This connection with death is significant in the Druid understanding of the yew – for whereas the Bardic grade allowed us to be reborn into a new world of understanding and expression under the sign of the birch, as we enter the Ovate grade we come to an experience of symbolic death.

  But of course death is merely a gateway into greater life, a letting go in order to be reborn to a new level – and this is what is signified in the Ovate work. The yew tree, seen in this way, is the tree of both death and rebirth, and as such becomes the tree of eternity. The yew, certainly for mortal man, appears to be eternal – it can live for over two thousand years, and its guardianship of the graveyard symbolises the eternal life that is always with us, even when we are separated from our transient body. It signifies the mystery of transcendence over time, and whereas in the Bardic grade we worked with the central scheme of Druidry which defined the relationship of time and space within the mandala of the human and earthly cycles, in the Ovate grade we travel beyond and through this frame of reference to approach the heart of timelessness.

  One of the reasons for the longevity of the yew lies in the ability of its branches to grow down into the ground to form new stems which grow to become trunks of separate but linked growth. Although the central trunk becomes old and decays within, a new trunk grows inside this and eventually cannot be distinguished from the original. Because of this extraordinary method of self-renewal, the yew tree symbolises the mystery of self-transformation, renewal and rebirth – the mystery that in age we are youthful, in youth we are age-old, and that the source of our life brings perpetual renewal.

  Robert Graves places the yew on the last day of the year, at the eve of the winter solstice, at the time of the year’s death before being reborn at the solstice time itself. Liz and Colin Murray, in The Celtic Tree Oracle, differ from Graves, placing the yew at the time of Samhuinn. In the Druid ceremony at this time a sprig of yew is distributed to each participant, indicating the yew’s relationship to this time of year, our ability to commune with those who have gone before us, and our need for renewal and connection to the qualities of both release and timelessness. Drawing this card or sign on a disc or Ogham stave in divination can indicate that we, or the issue in question, need to enter a period of death, of letti
ng go in order for renewal to occur.

  DUIR – THE OAK TREE

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  With the oak we come to the central circle of the threefold Druid initiation. The oak represents the Druid not only because the word Druid may well derive from words for the oak, making the Druid the one with ‘knowledge (wid) of the oak (dru)’, but also because the oak represents the tree of tradition in Druidry.

  The associations to the oak are many – it is king or queen of the forest – venerable in both age and form. The oak tree is often struck by lightning – signifying its ability to attract the energy, inspiration and illumination of the sky father or of the thunder-god Taran. He who has knowledge of the oak has knowledge of the power of the elements and is able to attract the lightning-bolt of illumination from on high.

  But the Oak represents also a doorway – the word door itself originates from the Gaelic and Sanskrit duir – meaning solidity and protection as well as oak. This doorway is the entrance to the other realms. Much of Druid symbolism revolves around the concept of the entrance, gateway or door – to such an extent that the megalith builders went to enormous lengths to erect the massive stone door-ways of the trilithons, as at Stonehenge, leading apparently nowhere. But the purpose of the doorway is always hidden from the uninitiated – the gateway between two trees or two stones will for one person be nothing but an empty space, but for the Druid will be the means whereby they can enter another state of consciousness, another realm of being. The secret ‘oaken door’ figures in the poems of Taliesin – and it is through this door that we encounter faerie beings and inner worlds of beauty and power. ‘Knowledge of the oak’, in other words being possessed of a Druid’s knowledge, symbolises not only the ability to receive sudden illumination from above, but also the ability to enter the Otherworld through its doorway.