Oghan Study Group - Beith

Beith

Name: Beth, Beith
Pronunciation: beh, be’ yeh
Sound: B
Tree: Birch/Silver birch (Betula alba)
Few: one stroke to the right or down from the stemline
Tree web site: http://www.2020site.org/trees/birch.html

Treelore:
The birch tree was one of the first trees to appear after the glaciers receded so it often represents a new start. It is a common tree that is native to Britain, Ireland, and other countries. It is easily identified year-round because of it’s unique white bark. The Celtic year has 13 lunar months, each one named for a tree. The first month of the Celtic year was named for the Birch tree. This month started immediately after the celebration of all-hallows or Halloween (November 1). A birch branch was often used to “cleanse” criminals (ouch!) and was also used as a teacher’s staff (ouch again!). Birch twigs were used to make brooms. Midwives would use a birch twig to help in difficult births where the birth sac fails to break.

Meaning:
Clearing away the old, cleansing, starting new, simplicity, purification, process, cycles, beginnings

Reversed:
Stagnation, stale, wasting away, holding on too long

Thank you raeanne

I'd like to add a little.

“Of withered trunk, fair haired the birch.”
Word Ogham of Morainn mac Moin; Birch is faded trunk and fair hair.
Word Ogham of Cu Chulainn; Birch equals browed beauty, worthy of pursuit.
Word Ogham of Oengus; Birch is most silver of skin

Birch grows around the edge of forests. As it is often the first tree seen upon entering, and among the first of trees to turn green in the spring, it makes a great beginning for the ogham, and also means beginning. Birch is self-propagating, which was seen as life arising out of life.

Because of its silvery trunk, birch represented an entrance to the Otherworld. In folklore, birch was known as a faery tree, and called Lady of the Woods. It was said that ‘where the birch points, there one must follow‘.

Birch is often still used in love magic, and birch garlands once were given as tokens of love. Because of it’s symbolizing fertility and regeneration, maypoles are often made of birch.

Paul Rhys Mountfort suggests you visualize Beth in this way “The Birth Goddess of Birch is enshrined in the trunk of the birch tree. Her upward-branching arms outstretched.”

Beth is about the cycle of change, it helps purify and clean out the old. There are other ogham that are about the death of the old, but birch represents the birth coming from the old. It suggests we let go of the past, purify and prepare for the new. Although it is likely to represent a joyful beginning, most births are not without pain.

When Beth is reversed, ask yourself if you are stuck in the old, clinging to the past and/or if you fear the new. Transformation or change are often difficult, but made more so by resisting the change.

Those wishing to study the ogham in more depth may wish to read The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne from the Fenian Cycle. Not only does birch appear in the story but the legend itself illustrates the death of the old and beginning of the new.

There is a field on my Mother-in-laws 200 acre farm that is set way back, away from everything, and you get to it by following a long cart road. The birch trees are thick here, and the beech trees grow with them as well. But as the Birch trees end and the forest thickens, everything changes. The air is thicker, and the light airy feeling you get as you walk through the Birch forest just stops. You know something has changed.

Three years ago we were walking through the Birch forest. My two dogs and my daughter. Well, Tucker was up front, and he was just past the edge of the last of the birch trees, and he stopped. He just froze. And then he came running back, past me and stopped again, looking at me alertly over his shoulder.

I felt it too then. We were not invited to come any deeper into the wood. We left and I can tell you, we walked pretty darn quickly back into the protection of the Birch. It was a very strange experience, but it was undeniable. There was an invisible Do Not Enter sign up. And Tucker was not going to let me even try to go past it.

When I was ten my parents built a house in the Beaver Valley area
of Boone County Illinois. My back yard became a four mile square of pure
midwest woodlands. The variety was endless, and way at the far end
of my domain there was a stand of birch trees.

Over the years I realized that this spot was a favourite of the rarest
animals, and if you walked up slowly and quietly they would almost
allow you to be there too. (Still, quiet, hardly breathing.)

But if even a duck took flight, there'd be a rustle and flurry in every direction
~ a sudden blur of creatures splashing, flapping, and whooshing away....

Betula papyrifera - Birch (White or Paper) is a sign of 'new growth' forest as well. It is not shade tolerant and often populates areas that have been clear cut or burnt out. It grows well with other species and is found, however, it is often found in pure stands. There is a beautiful one just behind my house.

Native peoples used the bark for canoes, however, bark stripped from live trees leaves a black scar and should never be done!

Interestingly, I found a note in one of my taxonomy books suggesting that they do not like to grow in isolation. If a stand has been harvested, a lone tree or isolated trees will die.....

B. pendula - European White Birch or Silver Birch is the tree the ancient Celts would have been familiar with, having very similar bark to the N.A. White Birch, along with its light loving and attraction to wood-edges and scrub as well as wet areas (encouraging fungi growth). It was often used as maypoles at Beltaine and to ward off negative spirits.

Birch twigs were the shelter for Diarmid and Grainne and was a symbol for love. Given by a Welsh man to the woman he loved, was a birch garland (Paterson)

Birch also has a number of medicinal uses - from the treatment of eczema, bladder infections, a mild anesthetic, rheumatism, tooth decay and the prevention of kidney stones - essentially a purifier!

Betula pendula (Europena White Birch or Silver Birch) from http://www.botany.ubc.ca/facilities/arboretum/UBC064.HTM :

9 000 yr. old wads of chewed birch resin have been found in the floor of a hut used by Stone-Age hunter gatherers.
In ancient Rome, birch was a symbol or power and authority, and its branches were carried on an ax ahead of Roman processions containing an important person. These were called fasces--hence the modern term fascist. In Scandanavia, birch was considered one of the trees sacred to Thor---a branch before your house protected you from lightening, the evil eye, gout and barrenness. One Christian tradition holds that birch rods were used for the scourging of Jesus--one species of birch was consequently banished to the Arctic and never grows to more than 2 feet.
The durable, yellowish-white wood has been used throughout Europe for skis, clogs, fuel, and cellulose. The sap is used in the Ukraine to make wine, soft drinks, and health tonics. Norwegians shingled roofs with birch bark, and in Lapland it was used to make clothing. Indigenous peoples of the Kamchatka Peninsula (east coast of the USSR) ate the inner bark. In Russia the bark was considered a durable paper for family records. Birch-bark tar was used to glue broken clay pots in Roman Britain.
The birch was an especially crucial tree in the Scottish Highlands. Highlanders made houses, furniture, mills, carts, ploughs, fences, and rope with it; used it as fuel for distilling whiskey; and preferred its spray for smoking ham and herrings. The spray was taken to thatch houses, and was put on bottom of cooking pots for soups and stews to prevent meat from sticking, like a Teflon. The bark was used for tanning leather, and twisted into a rope used instead of candles. Birch was also employed in broom-making and thus sometimes carries an association with witches. In Scotland the first curling brooms were made of birch. The birch is “shaved” to make bristles-- these can even be used in the kitchen as a whisk.
Birch resin contains zylitol, a disinfectant Finns now sell as a natural tooth cleaner. Birch is sometimes called “the nephritic tree” , as a diuretic tea from its leaves cures infections of the urinary tract and dissolves kdney stones. The resin glands are harvested for use in hair lotion.
During the Victorian era the birch evolved into a symbol of meekness, femininity and grace, and it has long been a popular ornamental. However the tree is vulnerable to attack by birch leafminer. It is also very short-lived, and considered old at 60.
Birch rods are very flexible, and in North America the twigs used as switches in schools. A “birching’ is a thrashing.

Bat Chicken said:

Birch twigs were the shelter for Diarmid and Grainne and was a symbol for love. Given by a Welsh man to the woman he loved, was a birch garland (Paterson)

Birch also has a number of medicinal uses - from the treatment of eczema, bladder infections, a mild anesthetic, rheumatism, tooth decay and the prevention of kidney stones - essentially a purifier!

In ancient Rome, birch was a symbol or power and authority, and its branches were carried on an ax ahead of Roman processions containing an important person. These were called fasces--hence the modern term fascist. (I attached a photo of an American dime with an engraving of fasces from Wikipedia.)

Birch was also employed in broom-making and thus sometimes carries an association with witches.

Birch rods are very flexible, and in North America the twigs used as switches in schools. A “birching’ is a thrashing. [/i]

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Hi, Bat Chicken and all ogham lovers! I'd like to add a few tidbits I've gleaned from various books. (Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of which book said what; I'm just going by my notes.)

Whipping with birch twigs "birching" can also be related to purification--done to drive the evil out of the child or offender! And Raven Grimassi says a witch's broom is made of an ash handle with birch twigs for the brush, held together by willow twigs or bark. A new broom sweeps clean!

Also the whiteness immediately lends itself to thoughts of purity. The medicinal uses are a big support to this too!

As a symbol of love, I read somewhere that a gift of a birch twig (wreath?) from a woman to a man meant "you may begin" to court and pursue! Nice link of love and beginning meanings.

A book also reported that a very old ballad gives the impression that the dead were buried with birch bark cone hats, kind of like dunce caps! The ballad is about a woman who had three sons who died, and they came to visit her in a dream still wearing their birch bark cones!

I didn't know the Roman fasces were birch twigs--interesting. Can we fold a "strength in numbers" meaning in here somewhere?!

Thanks for all the information. Let's keep it going!

For those in North America looking to make staves, Birch is available in most eastern and northern locations.

If out west - John Michael Greer (Druid) makes the suggestion of the Indian plum (Osmaronia cerasiformis) for those in the north west coastal region. The water or red birch is another possibility for those not on the coast and further south than traditional white birch areas (Betula occidentalis). The Red birch shares habitat with other plants that populate quickly and can also be found in pure stands.

If you don't have a birch in your area, Caitlin Matthews suggests, in her Celtic Wisdom Tarot, using the following attributes to select an appropriate tree:
• the first tree to leaf after the winter
• trees associated with cleansing

I would have associated Indian Plum with the Blackthorn as they are both sloe plums.

einhverfr said:

I would have associated Indian Plum with the Blackthorn as they are both sloe plums.

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Hmmm.... Don't think so - entirely different genus. Blackthorn is Prunus. They share the family Rosacae so I understand the suggestion, however, so due Alder and Birch.... (share the same family - Betulacae)

So when that happens, it is best to look for traits as Caitlin Matthews suggests....