| These books and articles cover a wide span of divinatory techniques that can be applied to your ogam work. Some approaches may take a little more creativity than others, but when working with any divinatory system, it's useful to apply many techniques rather than just sticking to a single approach.
Pennick, Nigel, Games of the Gods: The Origin of Board Games in Magic and Divination, Samuel Weiser, 1989
I believe this has been much more recently reprinted under a different title. He discusses general ideas of divination and gives examples of many different systems used and created in different cultures and at different times. Some very useful food for thought.
Loader, Rhea, Dreamstones: Magic from the Living Earth, Prism Press, 1990
Rhea is a local author, transplanted from Australia. This describes her personal approach to sorteliege, or divination by casting stones. What the book is really about, though, is designing your own divination system from the ground up. An excellent book about divination in general, the ethics of divination, and approaches to readings, casting, and being a diviner. Highly recommended if you can find a copy.
Fairfield, Gail, Choice Centered Tarot, Choices, 1984
I know this book is out in a much newer edition, as I've seen it for sale recently. This book, particularly chapters 7 and 8, discuss ways to design layouts that apply to any divinatory system, and are excellent aids to critical thinking about ways to understand and create ogam layouts for any situation.
Redgrove, Peter, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Unconscious Senses and Their Uncommon Sense, Grove Press, 1987
An excellent book on how the body and mind sense things that we are normally unaware of in our daily state of consciousness. The information in this book can really help you focus in on using your senses, which is an incredibly important part of divination, particularly through the taking of omens. It can also help immensely when reading for others, to help you tune into them as the reader, and work with them in understanding the meanings behind their questions and the impressions you get when you cast or lay out your ogams or other divinatory tools.
Krippner, Stanley, ed., Dreamtime & Dreamwork: Decoding the Language of the Night, Tarcher, 1990
Dreamwork is an extremely important part of any diviner's repertoire. Dreamwork can be combined with ogam work extremely effectively, particularly when using ogam for magical and spiritual workings. This book collects a number of very useful essays and articles on dreams and their uses and interpretations. This is not a dream dictionary (which are usually utterly useless), but rather it discusses a number of people's approaches to the uses of dream in therapy, psychology, and personal internal transformational work.
Burnett, Charles S. F., Arabic Divinatory Texts and Celtic Folklore: A Comment on the Theory and Practice of Scapulimancy in Western Europe, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, Number 6, Winter 1983
Unfortunately, the page numbers in my photocopy of this article are obliterated, but like most of the other obscure things in my bibliographies, I found it in the University of Washington Suzzallo library. This is a discussion of a form of divination based on the sacrifice of a sheep and the reading of the future from marks on its shoulder blade. This can be seen as similar to the techniques used by the Chinese in the earliest uses of the I Ching, in which the trigrams and hexigrams were read from the burnt shells of tortises. Ogam characters might be similarly found in patterns on burnt bone or shell. Useful information to consider for taking of omens from the shapes found on stones or other objects as well.
Chadwick, N. Kershaw, Poetry and Prophecy, Cambridge University Press, 1952
This is an essential book on divination and the practice of prophecy through vision-seeking, trance states, and inspiration which is frequently expressed through the medium of poetry. While dated in its racist assumptions, it is still an extremely important book that addresses poeto-prophetic traditions in many cultures, including the Celtic. It must be understood that this book was largely written based on lectures delivered in 1936-1938, when racist views were extremely common and acceptable in everyday society, and openly expressed. |
