Ogham Divination: Yew Rods, Irish Seers and the Modern Reading

Ogham divination is often presented either as a timeless druidic art or as a twentieth-century invention. Neither is quite right. The Irish sources do say that druids divined with ogham, and they say it clearly. What they do not give us is a dictionary of meanings, a set of spreads, or any detailed instruction. The practice is attested; nearly everything about how it is done today is modern.

This article sets out what the sources actually say, places ogham rods among the other forms of divination the early Irish used, and then explains how a modern reading works. For the script itself, its letters and its tree associations, see the companion article on what ogham is.

The druids and the yew rods

The key witness for most English readers is J. A. MacCulloch, whose book The Religion of the Ancient Celts (1911) gathers what the Irish texts and the classical writers say about Celtic religion. On ogham he puts the matter in one sentence: “Ogams were also engraved on rods of yews, and from these Druids divined hidden things.”

The story he points to has a name. In Tochmarc Étaíne, the Wooing of Étaín, Queen Étaín is carried off by Mider of the fairy mounds, and the druid Dalan finds where she is hidden by means of the rods. A similar method, MacCulloch adds, was used to discover the route invaders would take, the answer being thought to depend on divine interposition.

How was it done? MacCulloch is careful: “The method used may have been that of drawing one of the rods by lot and then divining from the marks upon it.” That is, in outline, a draw: several rods, each cut with ogham, one of them taken by lot, and the marks on it read for an answer. It is exactly the shape of a modern ogham reading, in which a single fid is drawn and interpreted.

What the source does not give is a table of meanings. No medieval text tells us what the druids read in Beith or in Straif. Every set of divinatory meanings for the feda in use today is modern writing, drawn from the letter names, the medieval word-oghams and the lore of the trees.

One more detail is worth knowing. Lady Wilde, retelling the same story in her Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland (1887), has the druid carve four oghams on four wands of hazel. The two sources disagree about the wood. There is no need to choose the one that sounds better: yew, long-lived and associated with endurance and death, and hazel, associated in Irish tradition with wisdom, both make sense as woods for seeking hidden knowledge, and the disagreement itself is a useful reminder that the tradition reaches us through retellings.

How the Irish divined

Rods of yew were one method among many. MacCulloch’s chapter on divination gathers the others from the Irish texts and the classical writers. Together they show the world the ogham rods belonged to: a culture in which a trained class of seers used several distinct techniques, most of them involving ritual preparation, poetry or the watching of nature.

Imbas forosnai, “illumination between the hands”. The filé, the poet-seer, chewed raw flesh and offered it to the images of the gods. If nothing came by the next day, he spoke incantations over his palms and laid them on his cheeks before sleeping, and the answer came in a dream.

Teinm laegha. The filé made a verse and repeated it over the person or thing he wanted to know about, or laid his staff on the person’s body. Both this and imbas forosnai began with a sacrifice, and MacCulloch records that St Patrick prohibited both.

Cétnad. An incantation “sung through the fist to discover the track of stolen cattle or of the thief”. If it failed, the seer slept and dreamed the answer.

Birds. “Divination by the voices of birds was used by the Irish Druids.” Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, because, as the Galatian king Deiotarus said, birds never lie.

The crows. The Greek geographer Artemidorus describes a place where two crows settled disputes. Each side set out a heap of sweetmeats; the birds ate one heap and scattered the other, and the one whose heap was scattered won the case.

Smoke and cloud. “Omens were drawn from the direction of the smoke and flames of sacred fires and from the condition of the clouds.”

The stars. “Irish diviners forecast the time to build a house by the stars”, and the date on which St Columba’s education should begin was found the same way.

These are descriptions of what the sources say was done, not instructions. Several of the rites were already forbidden by the Church whose monks wrote them down, and the accounts reach us through Christian authors who had their own reasons for recording, softening or condemning them.

Two things stand out from the list. First, the ogham rods are one of the few methods that works by lot rather than by trance, dream or omen. That makes it the closest ancestor of a modern card or stave draw. Second, the seer was a professional: a poet trained for years in verse, law and lore. Divination was part of a learned discipline, bound up with language. It is fitting that the one method using writing should be the one that survives in practice.

How a modern reading works

Since no ancient rulebook survives, a modern ogham reading borrows its shape from the drawing of lots that MacCulloch describes and its layouts from other reading traditions. The feda are cut or painted on staves, cards or small tiles, mixed, and drawn.

One fid. The simplest reading draws a single fid for the question or for the day. It is the closest to the druid drawing one rod by lot, and it is the best way to learn the letters: one fid, read against one question, considered for a whole day.

Three feda. A three-fid draw can be read as past, present and future, or as situation, action and outcome. The second reading is often more useful for practical questions, because it moves from what is to what can be done.

Five feda. A five-fid spread widens the view: the issue, the obstacle, the advice, the surrounding influences and the likely outcome.

Some readers also read feda drawn upside down as reversed or blocked meanings, a practice borrowed from tarot. It has no basis in the sources and is entirely optional.

There is no ancient rulebook here, so consistency is your friend. Pick a method, keep it, and let the meanings speak against the shape of your question. Knowing the aicmí helps: a fid’s place in its family, its neighbours, and the tree or word behind its name all give a reading more to work with than a single keyword.

Reading with honesty

It is worth holding two things at once. The practice of divining with ogham is genuinely old: the Irish texts attribute it to the druids and give at least one story in which it is used. The meanings used in a reading today are genuinely new: written in the twentieth century or later, from the letter names, the medieval glosses and the lore of the trees.

That does not make a reading empty. A symbolic system does its work by giving your thinking a shape to push against, and ogham, with its trees, its strokes and its long history, is a rich one. The honest reader simply knows which part is inheritance and which part is interpretation, and does not claim a druid’s authority for a modern table.

Sources: J. A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (1911); Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland (1887); Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, Volume 1 (1900); Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948), as a modern reconstruction.