Ogham Question

[jarandhel]

I believe a few of my friends on DW and LJ work with the Ogham. What I don't know is, do you use Grave's Tree Ogham or do you work with the kennings from the Briatharogam? Just curious.

Comments

[dancinglights]

I've worked with a lot of modern sources that draw from Graves, but for my latest round of study, I'm working from the Auraicept's awful translation of the kennings as a primary source, along with whatever other variations of them I can find.

I'm having more luck with some than others; it took me years to figure out the Willow/bees bit beyond "they've lots of flowers" and some of the others still don't make much sense to me.

[jarandhel]

I haven't worked with them at all... the Tree Ogham stuff never really connected with me, and I didn't know about the kennings until recently. Came across some stuff on it while following threads from my rune research. I'm actually very surprised that there's not a lot more crossover, in neopagan circles, between those who study the Ogham and those who study the Runes. Particularly with the Book of Ballymote including the Younger Futhark and describing them as Viking Ogham.

[dancinglights]

As far as I can tell, the lack of crossover is primarily two groups of pagans striving for academic legitimacy by focusing entirely on historical stuff from their own region. Making a footnote of the thousands of years of sometimes violent interaction between the cultures is as much a part of politicking in the religious circles as it is for many folks interested in secular but ethnically based history in those places. And that's the *non*-horribly-racist folks. So I know a couple people loosely connected to CR that have poked at the crossover, but not many, and obviously not as CR practice. I've also known a couple people to poke at the tree ogham from the Asatruar side, possibly including Silvaerina, but also not many, and not as Official Respected Vikings.

Once upon a time, I was very intellectually interested in runes, but made my allegiances elsewhere and they haven't quite worked or had as much of the information stick since. In the past year or so, I've started to get a bit more interested in them again where they cross over with a couple of the trees.

[jarandhel]

I kind of get that, but at the same time I don't really grok the mindset... the surviving material on both Celtic and Norse practice is so thin, and the interaction between the two cultures is known to have been so extensive, I'd think it would be natural to look into practices that may have been mirrored by both cultures under different names or with some differences and use those overall similarities to inform their respective practices. Then again, that's how I approach much of my esoteric study in general... looking for the things that various paths hold in common.

I'm much the same... I've been interested in runes before, picked up a book and some rune-cards, attended some workshops, but never really took them up and as you put it "made my allegiances elsewhere". I still have very little connection with the Norse pantheon, though I'm on vaguely friendly terms with a few of them. I'm not sure what's brought me back to them, yet.