Alder is one of the oracular trees, and sends us the message that we should pay particular attention to what is happening all around us. Fearn is a tree that, when cut down, will send up new shoots from the old stump. In mystical terms, it is as if the tree is still there even when it is removed, and can return. It is a water-resistant wood, and was used in ancient times for foundations and bridge piers. Alders nowadays rarely become full-grown trees, but are mostly found as small, brushy groups of shrubs in swampy areas. Swamps are one of the in-between things that are in the mundane and the shadow world at once. Dawn, twilight, the tidal zone of the sea, and the marshy edges of bodies of water are all places where the boundary between one thing and the other is inexact.

All around us there exists the collective unconscious of the mind of humankind. We have an understanding of all forms of life inside us on a cellular level in our DNA. We feel the pre-language emotions of animals in our reptile brain. We can, with practice, bring ourselves into communication with the mystical world and see the real and the ideal superimposed one on top of another. Almost everything that we see around us or that happens to us is both itself and more than itself simultaneously. This Ogham reminds us to try to extrapolate a more universal meaning from an immediate happening; to make connections between events and meanings.

The Raven is the bird connected to this tree. Ravens are carriers of prophecy and wisdom in many cultures. Two Ravens, Thought and Memory, sit on Odin's shoulders. Ravens fly with the Morrigan to battlefields. Just as Alder is built into bridges in the real world so Ravens create bridges between the real and the Spirit World. The archetypes of the Great Goddess and the Spiritual Warriors are sending the Raven with messages from the Spirit World to us but those messages also manifest in the mundane world in ordinary people and events, giving things in the mundane world double meanings.

The message of Fearn is that we should look for the message we are already being sent in some more ordinary form. Reversed, it means that we are not paying attention and are missing the point. The Rune connected to Fearn is Mannaz, the rune of all humankind or the archtypical human being. The wisdom of all ages of man and nature will give us oracular guidance if we pay attention to it.