Huathe is another of the oracular trees, with a special message from the Irish Crone Goddess or from Urd, the eldest Norn. The Norse, always a practical people, saw the past as the special province of the eldest Norn because the oldest would have the greatest knowledge of the past. She speaks about how the actions and events of the past will affect us in the here and now. The future, the Norse felt, was unknowable and so is the province of the veiled Norn about whom nothing is known and who rarely speaks.

The ancient Irish, however, saw the Triple Goddess as three facets of the same persona all of whom know all. The Crone Goddess is the oldest of the three Goddesses and speaks prophetically about the future, often about death. The eldest, the Irish felt, can give us valuable advice about the future from their stores of wisdom and experience. In both cases the persona of the future can also be the personifier of Death. This is logical since death is at the end of all of our futures, however distant. Often the Crone Goddess comes to warriors before battles in Irish legends to help them avoid mistakes and to make the best out of their inevitable end.

Huathe shows us the power of the otherworld and how it interconnects with the mundane world. The three Goddess trees: Beith, Quert, and Huathe are linked and Huathe is paired as well with Straif, the trees which are Whitethorn and Blackthorn. Because it has such a pivotal connection with these trees we must carefully look at the other cards we have drawn and slowly extract the meaning. The advice of the oldest Goddesses, while freely given, is not always easy to understand and can be confusing.

Huathe is not always the voice of doom and foreboding but it is always a warning, both in the upright and the reversed position. The crow is the animal symbol of this ogham. Crows are suspicious and watchful birds, and act as the alarm system of the animal world. They will watch us and report on our whereabouts and actions to the world at large as we walk by them. In mythology, crows are viewed as knowing what is happening all around them and seeing more about the outcomes than the human actors but rarely helping out with advice. People in legends mostly get help from the crows by overhearing them talking about events to the other mythical beings.

Where they grow as a native tree, hawthorn hedges are covered thickly with white blossoms in the spring. This time is known as Hawthorn Winter. Thus the ogham Huathe is paired with Is, the standstill rune of ice. These images give us the tree's meaning: to stop and wait. Huathe signals a period of restraint. Sometimes this can be a sexual restraint, sometimes an adoption of a passive stance or a wait-and-see attitude. When we are deciding on a course of action, we can see Huathe as the mystic Granny with the crow on her shoulder as her familiar. The voice of the old Wisewoman is like the warning cry of the Crow, warning us about the possible bad outcomes of heedless action.