When walking through a warm and lush forest setting one's thoughts can easily take flights of fancy. It is not difficult to shed the layers of modern life and find one's more subtle or primitive beginnings. Somewhere from deep within the spirit and majesty of each single tree steps forth and at once one can find themselves transported to a world of shadow and shade.

The Celts were a people who had a deep spiritual nature. It is still present with those of us who count the Celts as our ancestors either through blood or belief. They were a people who found the presence of Gods and Goddesses in every blade of grass and every drop of water. All was sacred to the Celts.

The Celts held a love for sacred groves and it was noted by Tacitus, the Roman historian, that the "grove is the center of their whole religion. It is regarded as the cradle of the race and the dwelling place of the supreme god to whom all things are subject and obedient. In fact, some of the Celtic tribes took on trees as clan totems and adopted their names. We see tribes calling themselves, the Men of Oak; the Son of Yew and the Men of Rowan.  Trees were said to have a spirit or Dryad living inside it and these dryads possessed temperaments that were characterized by the tree in which they lived.  For example the Dryad living inside the Alder tree is said to be aggressive and resilient, and indeed the wood of the Alder is noted as being very strong and able to stand up to weathering and water.

 In his now famous work The White Goddess, published in 1961, Robert Graves, launched a theory that has been argued ever since. He suggested that the Celts divided their year into tree months. It was his ascertain that the English Poetic tradition should not begin with the Canterbury Tales but with the Song of Amergin, an ancient Celtic calendar alphabet and Druidic incantation.

Did the Celts have a lunar year cycle as suggested? Now there is little doubt that in fact they did. The Druidic solar year has been referenced in most ancient Celtic myths pertaining to their solar deities. Scholars agree that the Druidic solar year consisted of thirteen months with one intercalary day. It was Graves who correlated the lunar months with trees, and the trees with the thirteen consonants and five vowels of the Celtic alphabet. According to Graves, the thirteen consonants form a calendar of seasonal "tree magic." The five vowels represent the complementary seasonal stations of the year.

Ogygia, the tree alphabet, known as the Beth-Luis Nion tree alphabet, was used both for recording information and divination. Named after the Celtic Deity of Literature, Ogma, it is was traditionally believed by the Celts that it was he who created the letters which were made to represent the different trees and their special characteristics. Later scholars explained that Oghams or Ogams, were fashioned and came into regular use during the first and third centuries and some number as many as twenty or twenty five symbols or letters. Curtis Clark, a modern scholar, has speculated that based upon the plants or trees the alphabet connotes the Ogygia alphabet probably is best associated with the Rhine River, one of the ancestral homes of the early Celts.

 All of the trees representing the months and letters of the Celtic Calendar and alphabet represent a fragment of the Celtic cosmology, their archetypal symbols and their immediate world view.   Each tree also has a corresponding "god" or "deity" as well a symbol and heavenly body associated with it.
 
 
 
 
 

 
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