The White Goddess by Robert Graves, is one of those books which shifts from inspired genius to utter garbage in equal measure. Its not that his speculation about a tree calendar is totally out of order, such a concept is credible given the following evidence presented below, but his ordering of the relevant months is based on little more than guesswork and has been rightly been dismissed by subsequent scholarship; although so called pagan calendars purport to convey his tree months as somehow based on tradition, which it is not.
There is a good deal of scholarly debate concerning Ogam (pronounced owham) as to whether it is totally based on tree names at all, but as there were clearly lost names for trees in Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees, which is a masterpiece of ancient magical lore, the evidence for this is only partial and incomplete, given the meanings of the letters may be glyphs which refer indirectly to the meaning of trees. When Nostradamus made a study of the meaning of the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, it was perhaps not because the meanings of the Egyptian hieroglyphs he gave were always the translation we now give, but more that his was the tripartite levels of meaning of hieroglyphs that Egyptian esoteric tradition bestowed on it. Having said that, scholars do acknowledge that this possible 11th century composition does contain the correct meaning for some of the hieroglyphs, even if they don't fully understand the rest, whether garbled or real.
The study of the exact or probable translation of Cad Goddeu by Marged Haycock into modern Welsh and parts of it in English, reveals some precise wording which reflects some complex cosmology which takes a great deal of effort to work out its precise meaning. 'The head of the column, the head was a woman' made no sense to me at first, until the penny dropped one day that the column is in fact the cosmic axis which is the spine in the human frame and in Fulcanelli's alchemical excursions we are informed that long after he disappeared, he was seen in the Pyrenees in the guise of one of three young ladies. His yang had become yin and a triple goddess to boot, but only those versed in metaphysics could possibly comprehend how this reversal in both age and sex could conceivably have occurred.
But then those who can't conceive the extraordinary mystery which is our Mother Earth, would never attain the eternal youth of the Philosopher's Stone !
So if Robert Graves was working from inadequate translations and even a brilliant scholar such as Marged Haycock cannot translate every single tree name, then we cannot expect his work to be anything other than a partial interpretation with some interesting speculation. Equally, the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces Irish text attempted to equate each Ogam letter with a tree, but the meanings of the names had already been lost, so we have no idea how accurate these ascriptions were.
Graves suggests that each of the 13 consonants relates to a month of the year. He excludes two consonants which he says are late additions, for which he gives no evidence. He puts beth (birch) first at winter solstice; Dec 24 -Jan 20, then Luis (rowan) Jan 21-Feb 17, nion (ash) Feb 18-Mar17 and so on. Whether ash should be third is debatable because he follows Roderick O'Flaherty's Ogygia of the 17th century, whereas earlier texts have willow as third; perhaps reflecting an ancient variant tradition if Ogygia is correct. Ogam was known as the Beth Luis Nin, where nin mean forked branch, so possibly letters. So he may have either followed this in error, or it was an alternative ordering of the letters.
We know that Ogam is based on the Latin alphabet but it is much more complex than that. The Phoenicians compiled the alphabet and passed it on to the Greeks and thence to Rome, but they colonised Carthage and recent evidence is revealing that a Carthaginian port was set up in Poole harbour with a similarity to Motya and other Mediterranean ports (Caitlin Green's blogs including one entitled A Mediterranean Anchor Stock). This would suggest that it was a direct Punic influence of German, Welsh and Irish, which would neatly explain the fact that beth or birch in Gaelic is identical to beth in Hebrew in a virtually identical alphabet to Phoenicia, where both are the first letter of there respective alphabets. Both Mount Batten in Plymouth Sound and Thanet in Kent reveal distinct signs of Carthaginian trade and even of burials on Thanet.
If this is correct, then the Roman influence came long after the Greek and Punic impact on our native alphabet and on Ogam. Turning to Babylonia,there appears to be possible signs that the months of the year were connected with the alphabet but it demands a good deal more research to ascertain how or why this emerged and its influence on Phoenicia. We know that the earliest alphabet was inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics as well as Canaanite, so a Babylonian input should not surprise us, as there was constant interchange between the three cultures.
In Hebrew, aleph meaning bull, is the letter A and Arah Aru in Babylonia, was the month of the bull or Taurus, where Aru as bull, was like aleph, a word beginning with A The letter B is denoted by beth meaning a booth or tent and a temple building. In Irish Ogam, beth is the birch tree which had in prehistory long served as an important building material for tents and Asiatic yurts. If one assumes that the letter A as the bull, relates to Taurus in the spring, then B as a tent would relate to the following month of Gemini because in Babylonia this month Simanu means brick making or in other words building. The Assyrian calendar calls this expressly, the month of building. Gimel the camel is the third Hebrew letter and G is replaced by C in British. It seems remarkable that this reflected in the gimel to camel translation, from G to C. In Ogam this would be the rowan or Irish luis, but in old Welsh rowan is Caerthenn, more appropriate to the letter C. This is the month of Cancer, motherly and caring. In Babylonia it was the month of Dumuzi, known as Tammuz in the Book of Ezekiel.
Camels carry burdens, whether human or baggage and the month of Tammuz was so called, from the fact that it was at this time after the summer solstice, that Tammuz/Dumuzi descended down to the underworld in death, as the Sun descends does in winter, when women would weep for the loss of Tammuz. The month of Cancer at this time, is the sign of the mother who worries for her daughter, as we find in the Greek version where Persephone descends down to the underworld to marry Hades, leaving her mother Demeter, weeping and distraught in search for her. Daleth in Hebrew and Phoenician, means door. In Ogam, D is duir the oak and in Cad Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, oak is the 'valiant doorkeeper'. Doors were often made from oak and studded in iron to prevent a battering an attack, indeed I once lived in an old Shropshire cottage with such a massive studded door taken from a former Norman chapel. Our word door appears to be directly related to Irish duir for oak, as the Battle of the Trees indicates.
As the 4th letter of the alphabet, D as the oak would be the month of Leo the strong lion; which no one could argue is not an adjective similarly applied to the oak. The Babylonian month Abu here means lion. In the nursery rhyme, the Lion and the Unicorn, we have perhaps, an indirect reference to the strength of the summer heat at its strongest in Leo, with the unicorn being Capricorn in winter, when the Sun is at its weakest. The old British tradition of a combat between winter and summer, the holly boys of winter and the oak boys of summer, reinforces this image.
After the letter D, there are problems when comparing our Roman based alphabet with the original Hebrew/Phoenician, which demands further research, but it is evident that there is a logical comparison with the letters of the alphabet and the ancient naming of the months of the zodiac.
If the letter E relates to Virgo as the goddess Ishtar in Babylonia, then this might explain why the mysterious letter E was inscribed over the Temple of Delphi, originally sacred to Mother Earth and the pythia or python, according to Plutarch. It signified the 5th letter of the Greek alphabet and was similar to the original Phoenician version of this letter. Ishtar, as the amorous queen of heaven, was the lover of Tammuz who as the letter C descended to the underworld. like Osiris and the goddess Isis of Egypt.Unfortunately, the meaning of E as eadhadh in Ogam is unknown, although the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces suggests the tree aspen, which may or may not be correct.
The excellent blog www.maysaloon.org/2012/07/syrian-calendar-treasure-trove.html reveals how the Hebrew calendar is based on the Babylonian calendar from the period when the Hebrews were captive in Babylonia. It gives the meanings of each month. It seems likely that the alphabet was already based on this ordering of the months and later incorporated into Ogam. Of course, the climate in Babylonia, was different to that in the British Isles, so sowing and planting times in these ancient months do not equate to our present latitude.
It should be noted that the Babylonian zodiac began with the month of Nisanu, Hebrew Nisan or Aries, so why do the letters begin with the second month Arah Aru or Taurus ?
Well the obvious explanation for this was that the beginning of the year worldwide was originally marked by the setting and rising of the Pleiades above the bull of Taurus. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, every zodiac sign determines our current age, which for the Babylonians was Aries, for Christianity was Pisces, hence the fish as symbol of Christianity and now has become Aquarius, the sign of science and technology, the flooding of the water pourer as we have witnessed so much recently. The age of Taurus was around 4000-3000BC, a period when the Sumerian script and Egyptian hieroglyphs were becoming used. The alphabet was first being used about 1000BC, but had its origins far earlier, linked to Egyptian hieroglyphs first used about 3500BC, in the age of Taurus. It should be noted that animal symbols for the signs of the zodiac are incredibly archaic. Gallo-Roman and Old Irish references to the Taurean Bull with 3 cranes on its back, evidently the Pleiades, are identical to the crane above the bull as depicted at the 9600BC temple of Gobleki Tepe in S. Turkey.
For the original formation of language as associated with the parts of the body, see Conceptual Transfer and the Emergence of the Sign, Dennis Philps, Cognitextes Vol. 2 2009, available online. It is suggested by scholars in this article, that phonemes as the basic sounds in language, developed from the shapes formed by the making of sound in the mouth and linked to the shape of the tools such as prehistoric flints. The word queen as kun relates to genu as knee and jawbone, linked to sexual procreation and childbirth. Thus kun and cunny/cunt for the vagina, is linked to knowing and knowledge. As Taurus rules the neck and jaw and bulls are renowned for their sexual prowess,it becomes evident that there is a common link to the formation of language and the choice of animals for the signs of the zodiac with the incredible fertility and growth of nature in the Taurean spring after the depths of winter. In Britain, the month of Taurus is the most rapid period for growth in flowers and leaves on trees. Taurus was thus fertility and food, while the following month of Gemini construction, was the second most basic human need, which was shelter.
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