Beth Luis Nion

In Celtic mythology the ash is known as the tree of enchantment and it is said the Welsh magician Gwydion fashioned his wands from ash wood. The Celts believed that they came from the Great Deep or the Undersea land of Tethys. It is this reason that the Ash is associated with the sea.

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. he "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

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.

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.