As I look out into my back garden now, I see three Rowan Trees loaded with red berries. And this reminds me of Rowan, the 2nd letter in the Ogham, the Celtic Tree Alphabet of the ancient Irish Druids: Luis. In the certificated distance learning course system I teach, the Ogham Letters are not only understood in terms of the energy of the tree they each depict. They are also understood as pathways across the Otherworlds of the ancient Celts. And so I teach Rowan as the 5th Journey.
The first four journeys radiate out over four paths from our divine centre in the centre of Middle Earth, but the 5th path, Rowan, is the first of the paths leading to the Celtic Underworld. Rowan is such an utterly beautiful tree with its feathery leaves, its cream-white flowers and red berries, it is rightly seen as entry to the realms of fairie. And so we can use it to find within us Faerie energy, flame, radiance, quickening, delight, psychic, visionary, magical protection, a ward. We can use it as a gateway to Visionary Journeys and creative emotional expression.
Above all Rowan is the principle of PROTECTION. But there is a flip-side to this principle: we do need to recognise what it is within us that might cause us to need Protection. Are we weak in some way? Are we deluded? Working with Rowan teaches us to avoid anything dark or spiritually negative or that detracts from your acting as your true self. We need to examine whether we are prone to seduction and develop protection against that (remember Hawthorne whose blossoms are so seductively pretty we could say it was our favourite tree and ignore the fact that the thorns behind the blossoms are vicious. I fell for that one for years not aware there are people like this!!!)
And on the Rowan pathway down to the Underworld, we may meet its Being: Leanan Sidhe is utterly beautiful. She inspires and challenges. And above all her eyes are like mirrors. Look into her eyes to see the truth or to see how deluded we are!
Travelling across the Otherworlds of the Celts, to get to the Rowan Path we first leave our Divine Centre and walk across Middle Earth along the swampy misty Alder Path of psychic powers to the North East Watchtower of Middle Earth on the shores of the limitless surrounding ocean and then we take the Rowan path that runs down from Middle Earth to the North East watchtower of the Underworld, arriving between Tir fo Thuin, the land of death and Tir na m’Ban the land of women and love. This is Journey 5 of my Ogham course. See: www.earthstarweb.com
