What are these 'Tree Cards'? A divinatory device used by the Druids and passed down, unchanged, by a secret lineage of Pagan Witches until I posted them on my website? No. A completely spurious invention constructed by myself or some other modern flim-flam artist that I derived them from? I like to think not that neither. Rather than answer that question straight up, I would like to drool on first about history, extrapolatory anthropology, and personal gnosis.
The actual history of the pre-Xian Irish is scanty in the extreme; the Druids did not write about their beliefs because of their gease for exclusively oral transmission, and the common people were (like the common people world-wide) largely illiterate. Even without direct writings from the Druids, however, some facts about their religious practices and beliefs were reported by outside observers. It is certain that trees were important to Druidism, and that communication with Immanent Nature was vital to their religious expression. Overwhelming evidence shows that they had a system that they called Ogham, and that the traditional symbolic representations of lines and notches carved on a central vertical axis as well as a form of sign language employing the digits and limbs were both used widely. Although the Ogham is referred to as an 'alphabet' it seems likely that each symbol had a host of allusive meanings, associated symbols, and sequential references that streamed off the alpha significance. Much of what remains of pre-Xian teachings in the form of question and answer triads is allusive, symbolic and almost Zen-like in the implied meaning. It does not seem too great a stretch to imagine that the religious symbology had the same allusive network of meaning. So from history we know that there was an Ogham, that the Irish world-view placed an importance on Nature and trees, and that natural objects were known to exist in both the 'real' world and in a spiritual, symbolic world simultaneously and with significance to the observer.
Once the nation was Xianized, folk-lore is still not easily come by. The only literate groups who preserved culture carefully were the monks in the major monasteries. Their first concern was the preservation of the Gospels, but some of the scribes also transcribed tales and histories from the surrounding countryside. These non-Xian documents can be separated into two categories: the 'heroic' tales, and local stories. The heroic sagas (The Tain, the Ulster Cycle, the Three Sad Stories) are important not only for the stories told but also because they show the participants—be they hero or God/dess—acting in accordance with the world-view of the reported time. What happens in the stories is an exemplar of what can and should happen. The local or common-people stories are even more important in typifying the world-view. Because of their importance, wealth, positions, and education the 'heroes' have a freedom of action and a depth of choice that is not available to the common person. Everyman's more circumscribed life reflects more accurately the actual world-view of the time.
I believe that there are two major components to world-view: the fact that human nature is essentially invariable, and the fact that belief changes culture. When we read history, observe cultures ('primitive' or not), or study psychology it seems apparent to me that the range of human nature—what drives people, what is important, how they relate—does not vary over time. Power, emotional bonding, sex, forming family units; what was important thousands of years ago is important today. From this I extrapolate that how I feel correlates to how people have always felt. On the other hand, culture changes perception. The most obvious example of this is the perception of what is food---one culture's delicacy is another's icky bug. Another more telling example is 'mens work' and 'womans work'. Other than nursing infants, there is no trade or skill that has not been designated as one or the other by some culture. In post-technological North America, a woman taking out her garbage or shoveling the driveway is considered poorly served by her menfolk, and a man doing embroidery is looked at oddly but there is nothing inherently sexually determined in their activities. Even very small cultural quirks make a big difference in cultural perception; in an oriental culture a young woman wearing a red dress would be celebratory with overtones of 'bridal' and in western culture the same young woman would be attention-seeking with overtones of 'sexually loose'. Our perceptions colour the 'real world' and make it a different place through our eyes. I believe that my perceptual slant, especially when combined with others' similar perceptual slant, assists in creating reality. To re-state this in more traditional language; Name and Use Magic have Power. From this belief I extrapolate that my ritual actions and how I perceive those actions as affecting Spirit (my religious 'culture') are vital components in the communication between myself and Spirit. The more I acknowledge the Numinous All in my daily life and practices, the more avenues the Numinous All has to contact me through. The fact that I believe Magic is a part of my daily life helps to put it there, and the more my habitual and automatic actions reflect this fundamental belief the more firmly I put Magic into my world-view.
This attitude/belief of mine is, I think, reflected in the backstory or deconstruction of folklore. In both the hero-stories and local tales people are generally represented as frequently entering into interactions with Spirit. The heroes seek out or are sought out by avatars and auguries, and the common people fall into interaction in a haphazard, passive, willy-nilly fashion. Spirit permeates their lives—the hills are hollow, the rings open into elsewhere, the thorn bushes are inhabited, the wells have power. Many of the actions of the people are explained as necessary to propitiate or assuage Spirit. Acknowledgment of the immanence all around them is an integral part of their lives. So, for my part, I am not comfortable in my spiritual practices only following the scanty and austere bits that are attested to in history. I feel that to re-create the attitudes and practices of Pagan Ireland it is more important and better reflects the actuality of the past to be full of belief and interactive direction than to be perfectly in accordance with archaeological dogma.
In all texts written about the Irish by outside observers, from Julius Caesar to the English gentry, they are dismissively viewed as superstition-ridden. In my own family, throwing spilled salt over the left shoulder is as automatic an action as blessing the person who sneezed. Mindlessly superstitious or mindfully aware of the ritual significance of salt? Cuts both ways. More culturally telling is the insistence by people outside the culture that the Irish are unthrifty, heedless grasshoppers who are culturally inferior to the richer, landed ants. From inside the culture the value placed on support of family and welcome of the stranger discourage grasping and hoarding behavior. In my own family we describe this as, “Sharing is like breathing.” Mindset sways how an action or belief is perceived, but all accounts are agreed that the Irish were continually acting in accordance with their perception of imminence and that their connection between mundane and Spirit was absolute and perpetual.
So how are the Ogham connected to trees? Irish culture has unique perceptions of the Stew of Spirit/the collective unconscious/the Other World that can be expressed as aphorisms and can be allusively connected to trees. For example, one variant of 'The Song of Amergin' has the line “I am the shield for every head”. Shields were made of poplar, a light but densely-grained wood. Poplars are called the whispering trees because the distinctive attachment between leaf stem and twig causes the leaves to move and rustle in the least breath of wind. So the ogham Eadha connects to Poplar (or Aspen, according to region) and sends the message, “Fears beset you, but don't be afraid.” This message is in accordance with human nature and Irish thought, Eadha is an ogham, and Poplars grew in Ancient Ireland and whispered then and now. I can see a correspondence between these things through reason as well as through personal gnosis, and I see no reason not to use, amplify, and enjoy the correspondence. Even without any archaeological evidence to support it
I believe that the usefulness of a divinatory device is that the units hold specific meanings that allow the querant to better receive messages from Spirit. Use and Belief Magic add resonance to this use. So by using a schema that is mildly familiar to others and already in some use, I can tap into an already existing pool of spiritual interface. By personalizing the meanings and messages through means of personal gnosis, I make them 'work better' for me. My belief is that Spirit or God/s/dess/desses wants to communicate with humanity, and I believe that She is sending everyone messages all of the time. The problem is not to receive messages but to rightly interpret them. The distinction of a wisewoman, good reader, or spiritual person is not that they alone receive messages but that they can facilitate or interpret messages through skill, openness to Spirit, and study.
I believe that there ARE messages being sent; it is a fundamental part of my religion. I, being either crazy or spiritually sensitive (or both), am a Goddess Personifier. Through long practice in achieving trance state, being chosen by the Goddess I personify, allowing Her to speak through me, and natural delusional tendencies I am able to become, while still remaining myself, an open line of communication between Her and others. She speaks directly to me. Either the messages are for myself (this is how the process began) or they are for others. In all cases, I can choose to ignore the messages and I can decline to pass them on---I am listening to the Goddess, not being ridden by Her. When I am reading Ogham for others, especially people whom I don't know at all, my facility works very well. The question/answer, card/meaning format is immediately accessible to anyone. The querant formulates hir own questions (with some help from me, usually), selects hir answers, and I explain what each ogham s/he has picked means on its own.
Even while I am explaining the individual meanings to the querant I am communicating, on another level, with Spirit. I am a very facile and fluent speaker and, particularly when I am explaining something I am already familiar with, can be thinking about something completely different while I am drooling on and waving my hands about on the superficial level. I look at the pairs of cards that have been selected as the answers, and open myself up to the question, “What is the answer here?”. Sometimes it is immediately apparent, even to the inexperienced querant, what the answer is as soon as I explain the individual meanings of the cards. Sometimes it is completely inapparent even to me, but an answer has never failed to be given to me when I ask. Even more profoundly, when I am done the question/answer reading, I write a short sentence that sums up the entire reading across the top of the page of questions and answers. I almost never actually compose this; I check that the querant has, indeed, understood all of hir answers, move the pen to the top of the page and say, “So.......” and a sentence drops into my mind with the ethereal twang that typifies communication from Spirit.
As a part of this spiritual communication, I also talk to trees, so it is exquisitely meaningful to me personally to have a set of allusive and resonant meanings that I can use to refer to them. The Use Magic of their meanings makes their names and their Name Magic resonate more clearly to me. The fact that I see all of Nature as imminent and numinous assists and is assisted by this usage and understanding both for myself and for the people who delight in asking me, “What is this tree? And what does it say?”
So did I invent the Ogham as trees? Basically, yes.