The Beginners Guide To Divination With Oghams

Ogham symbols were found inscribed on standing stones mostly in Ireland and Pembrokeshire on the coast of Wales dating back to the 1st Century AD. It is believed that the Ogham Alphabet originated in the South West of Ireland around the Cork or Kerry areas. Around 400 of these inscriptions have been found and most were personal names so an early form of grafitti perhaps?

The letters are named after various trees and is sometimes known as the Celtic tree alphabet. Ogham refers to the form of the letters but the particular alphabet used is called the Beith-luis-nin after the first letters of the alphabet (alpha , beta etc). The individual characters are called Feda.

The alphabet originally consister of 20 feda in four groups of aicme. 5 additional letters were added later in manuscripts called the forfeda.

The oghams were originally written vertically and carved into stone so read bottom to top. Later on they were written left to right in manuscripts.