Ogham Tuesday: Gorse/Onn

Gorse is an ogham that sits you down and asks you to be honest about your passion. Sure, sexual passion is a clear correspondence, but it’s so much more on top of that (innuendo unintended). 

Gorse is not a tidy plant – is sprawls across a landscape with prickly leaves and spines and riotous flowers – and it’s not a tidy omen. This is not EASY passion we’re talking about, okay? 

As an evergreen shrub, Gorse thrives in poor soil and in windy, exposed, and “wasted” ground. It can flower just about any time of the year, though most of its sweet-scented blooms appear in April and May. Young gorse plants have trifolate leaves but mature gorse (weirdly enough) has no leaves, just sharp spines that last year-round. On a landscape that might not feature a lot of other plant life, it provides great habitat and shelter for birds and small creatures. 

For me, Gorse brings up questions about risk and reward, desire and drive. It exists in that risky space between cost and coitus. Not sure where all that alliteration came from but it felt good. 

Hawthorn, as another thorny plant, is a boundary we need to be cautious about pushing into. By contrast, I feel like Gorse wants to know what we desire badly enough to dive right in. If there’s a caution in Gorse, maybe it’s in how we handle challenges to our comfort zone while we’re pursuing that deep desire. We are the hedge, I guess, and we need to be thoughtful about what we choose to protect and what we choose to repel in the name of personal passion.

Keywords include: generosity, abundance, embrace, physical, sexuality, flowering, grasping, lust, selfishness, oomph, personal, pleasure, passion, thorns, pursued, embodied, bursting, kindle

Guidance might include:

• Even as you’re growing wildly, take a moment to protect your most vulnerable self. 

• It’s okay not to expend energy on making yourself more approachable. 

• Bloom where and when you’re ready.

Questions or cautions might include:

• What goal do you desire enough to hold tight even if it gets uncomfortable? 

• Are you expecting your survival instincts to be well-behaved before you listen to them?

• How might you be making yourself hard to get close to?

What connections do you see? 

Blessings,

Nicole

~ Nicole (Nikki, sometimes Saffron Hare) is founder and general manager at Nine Fires Press. Her Druidic practice has included solitary, small-group, and congregational worship, with a focus on liturgy and seership. She is studying for her Master Gardener certification, rehabbing an underground home in the Midwestern US, and loves to fall in love with bad ideas.