B is for Blackthorn

It's been almost a year since I mentioned the Ogham Tree Alphabet on the blog .

This is what I wrote way back in 2020, when I found Karen Cater's book about it and started taking photos and writing about all the trees mentioned in the book.

The Ogham Alphabet is the only native British writing system devised over 2,000 years ago and carved using notches onto wood or stone.

I had heard of this way of writing from the Sister Fidelma Books by Peter Tremayne -the first few of these I read years ago before they became very repetitive.

It turns out that in the Ogham Alphabet each letter is also a tree and a number and part of the calendar or actually the other way round..........each tree is a letter and number and a month or day of the year.

Over the last 5 years I've written about most of the trees mentioned in the book but not the Blackthorn. I took the photo above way back in the late summer or early autumn, when I noticed how many sloes there were on a tree in a car park. It's been sitting in drafts waiting for after the Autumn equinox because the Blackthorn is the tree that rules the dark half of the year, giving the strength to survive the winter month.

 The tree represents the letter S and the number 14.

Blackthorn wood is dense and strong and the thorns can cause infection. The wood is used for the Irish Shillelagh a walking stick or cudgel. And it was said that if a witch pointed a stick of Blackthorn at a pregnant woman she would miscarry.

 Vast numbers of sloe stones have been found in ancient archaeological sites although now we find them far too sour to eat.

It is thought that the Crown of Thorns that Jesus was crucified with was made from blackthorn and a blackthorn winter is a spell of cold weather just as the blackthorn blossoms during the days of the Ice Saints.

This lovely illustration by Karen Cater shows the whole year of trees for the alphabet.

All the other posts about the Ogham Tree Alphabet are here if you want to look at them.

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