Ogham Tuesday: Vine/Muin

Harvesting, Feasting, Celebrating

Vine is the 11^th letter of the ogham alphabet and represents the /m/ sound as we say it in English today. It’s a tricksy ogham to pull meaning from.

Vine/Muin is the 16th letter of the Ogham alphabet.

Traditionally, Vine represents harvest and celebration. It’s the end of the very process that leads to a time of abundance. Thing is, though, grapes weren’t cultivated in Ireland, at least not successfully. Some sources say a plant more like blackberry or some other thorny hedge plant is probably indicated for the Old Irish muin. In any event, common people did not have much experience with grape wines, which was reserved by the Christian priestly classes for Eucharist. As such, there’s a sacred, rarefied gloss on the ogham. We are to understand that it is special.

Ultimately, the Vine ogham for modern divination is a modern construct—as is the use of ogham for divination itself. The popular, common interpretations borrow from other cultures that do have evidence of grapes and wine in the life of the people. We can even deduce the use of intoxicants as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, which is not so very unlike the medieval Irish monks at the altar. Wine that has been consecrated for communion, even in most Christian churches today, has to be drunk, not simply poured down the sink or even into the ground. Any leftovers must be consumed, either by the priest or the congregation. (Same with the bread, but that's not our point.)

Modern pagan scholars and practitioners of ogham as a divination tool do not agree on its meaning. These interpretations range from communication to prophecy to tool-gathering. The meaning I have found most useful and true to my own personal gnosis, is the one around harvest and celebration. It connects to the historicity of grapes’ being a rare, expensive commodity in Ireland, reserved for ritual practice.

How can we not, then, also connect it in our imaginations to the Holy Grail? A quest then, becomes a part of the lore. And all quests end. In Arthurian legends, Galahad’s quest for the Grail ended in success and joy, at least on his part, even if the Camelot experiment itself did not end well. Quests, however, always have the potential of ending happily. So we celebrate the endings of things we have undertaken as sacred tasks and gather the fruits of our labor about us, whatever they are. Perhaps we only celebrate that it is over, but often, it’s a time of celebration and feasting in honor of what our labors have produced.