• Celtic symbols and ogham in The White Goddess

  Filed under Ogham
  Oct 6

  The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, is a difficult book to describe, as it is to read. However, it contains a storehouse of knowledge and inspiration about mythology, poetry and, specifically, Celtic tales, which makes it of special interest to this blog.

  Graves wrote this in the 1940s. He is putting forth a very complex argument, though the book is almost like an epic poem. He is trying to prove that the Goddess is the inspiration for all true poetry. He uses ancient Celtic tales, especially the Welsh poem, The Battle of The Trees to decode the symbolism of Ogham (the Celtic Tree Alphabet) and how it relates to ancient gods and goddesses. For people interested in Celtic symbols and Ogham in particular, the material about the meaing of tree names makes it worth reading.

  This book is actually a root source for much of the modern neo-Pagan movement. It has been criticized by scholars as inaccurate. I don’t know if it’s meant to be taken literally, but I don’t think it should be approached in this manner. The difficult style, that jumps from subject to subject and from one culture to another, is all about connections and synchronicities. As best I can understand, Graves is giving an inspired example of how everything at one level is connected through poetry and mythology.

  Although I don’t think he mentions Jung in the book (I haven’t read it in a while -and it really needs more than one reading anyway), but it definitely relates to some of Jung’s ideas about synchronicities and the collective unconscious. I would recommend anyone interested in poetry or mythology to give The White Goddess a try and not try too hard to understand it all.

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  Tagged as: Ogham, Robert Graves, White Goddess
  
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