Magic Gardens: Muin, letter M, our Vine

Written by Isabel del Río

Friday, 01 January 2010 00:00

Isabel del Río

In Druidic culture, the culture of the Mother Nature, letters were known by the name of a tree which started with its same initial: for example, “duir” -our oak- was also the letter “D” and “saille” –our willow- was the letter “S”. They have five vowels and thirteen consonants and these last ones had magic meanings (the same as the tree they represent) which explain some roots of our current celebrations and beliefs.

Summarizing the information appeared in previous issues:

“Beth”, letter “B”, is our “birch”… see Yareah/January.
“Luis”, letter “L”, is our “wild ash tree”… see Yareah/February.
“Nion”, letter “N”, is our “ash tree”… see Yareah/March.
“Fearn”, letter “F” is our “alder”… see Yareah/April.
“Saille”, letter “S” is our “willow”… see Yareah/May.
“Utath”, letter “H” is our “hawthorn”… see Yareah/June.
“Duir”, letter “D” is our “oak”… see Yareah/July.
“Tinne”, letter “T” is our “holly tree”… see Yareah/October
“Coll”, letter “C” is our “hazel nut tree”… see Yareah/NovemberThis month of January, we are going to speak of the tenth consonant letter or “magical tree” and of its legends.

It is the tree of the happiness and joy but also the tree of the anger.According with Robert Graves (The White Goddess –A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth-), it is a peculiar tree because around the Mediterranean sea, it was consecrated to Dionysius and to Osiris and therefore, the wine was the main drink in every celebration in Greece and Rome but in Britain, due to the wet weather, the wine only grew up in few valleys and it was replaced by a drink obtain of the blackberry bush.Red and heavy and since it is branches served to make Christ’s crown, its magical meaning changed and in Celtic countries, it is the tree of the fairies and witches and still at the beginning of the 20^th century, when Robert Graves was a child, it was considered a poisoned bush.

This tenth tree dominated from the 2th to the 29th of September including the autumn equinox.

** It is very interesting to know that Druids had a secret system of communicating without words: they used their hands. Every letter was represented in a part of the hand and when they moved a finger were signalling a letter and after some movements… a word… a sentence… a complete message that foreign people cannot understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape

Read about Isabel del Río, arts editor in Yareah magazine:

http://isabeldelrio.wordpress.com

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry