Ogham Tuesday: Ivy/Gort

Ivy is a plant with RANGE. And I’m not just talking about the way it climbs all over everything. Clematis? Love it. Wish I were better at cultivating it. Poison ivy? Hate it. Violently allergic.

While I’m fixated on my hatred of poison ivy, I have to admit it’s a pollinator buffet. Its flowers provide nectar to pollinators like honey bees, butterflies, wasps, and beetles. The berries that follow are a great food source for warblers, vireos, woodpeckers, and many other birds, often later in the season than other berry-producing plants. 

 It’s a love/hate relationship, I guess.

Another correspondence that sticks out most for me, botanically, is the tendency of ivy to grow aerial roots or suckers, that serve both to anchor it to whatever surface it’s climbing and to pull nutrients from the air or its host plant. These plants are determined to survive. So the meaning of Ivy as an ogham is mainly in the work, not the result, if that helps you untangle it in your divination brain. 

This is a plant that defends itself, too! Skin contact with the sap of many ivy varieties will cause skin irritation, even the (allegedly) more civilized and cultivated English Ivy and Virginia Creeper. Once established, they are damnably hard to eradicate and they can do a lot of damage to humans attempting interference.

I am grateful that pulling Ivy as an omen won’t give me a rash. But it DOES remind me to be scrappy, and to invest more in my own survival than the comfort of others around me. As in many things, moderation is the key. 

Keywords include: Persistence, binding, tenacity, restriction, unmoderated, reliance, inhibition, opposition, imposition, constraints, interdependence, overcome, intersection, tangled, vigor, ruthless, clinging

Guidance might be: 

• Look for support you can anchor yourself to, or strength you can draw from your environment.

• Be cautious of doing (unintentional) damage to somebody who can help you. 

• Take care what you bind yourself to. 

Cautions and questions might be:

• Are you relying on others to work harder for your success than you are yourself?

• What habits are you forming that could do damage to yourself or others, once they are full-grown?

• How can you offer gifts back to the ecosystem you’re operating in?

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.

 #ogham #omens #divination #druidry #pagan #9firespress #oghamtuesday