Description
This book explores the 'Wattles and Branches' of the Celtic tree alphabets and the tree-lore of the British Isles. It is a wide-ranging explanation of, and commentary on, Celtic tree traditions, covering the Oghams of Ireland and the Bardic alphabets of Wales. These symbolic systems encapsulate the ancestral spiritual traditions of the British Isles; their teachings express the Druidic world-view and ways of thought that contemporary education has forgotten. Ogham and Coelbren contains the variants of the Irish Ogham tree 'alphabet' - its colours, trees, birds and symbols, cryptic codes and hidden inner meanings that encapsulate a creative energy available to-day. The Welsh Bardic system is also detailed, with rare illustrations from scarce texts. A comprehensive appendix details the meanings, correspondences and cosmology that Ogham and Coelbren contain.
Review
These days many books are appearing on the bookshelves offering themselves as the source of the oracular knowledge of Ogham and of the ancient Bardic alphabets of Cymru. Most of them disappoint, becoming a formulaic rehash of new-age thoughts and ideas, or reworkings of the ideas of Robert Graves in his White Goddess. In this book Nigel Pennick offers us a genuinely scholarly and insightful view of these ancient alphabets, what they meant to those who used them, how they were used and the symbolism behind them. A fascinating book, giving the reader an excellent grounding in the subject.
