The story of the Glastonbury ring is the story of the Ogham Shield. When Samuel Alexander discovers the ring in Bride’s Well, he notices that the ring’s two interlocking bands form a Vesica Piscis – the same symbol carved on the cover of the Chalice Well – with the triangle stone locked in its center. And when the proprietor of Merlin’s Crystal cave sells Samuel a velvet bag – which Samuel needs to carry the ring – he mentions that the bags are usually embroidered with the leaves of trees from the Tree Alphabet. This bag, however, is embroidered with cherry blossoms, and part of an ancient prophecy connected to the Tree Alphabet. Samuel surmises that, somehow, the ring and the Ogham are connected.
In his search to understand the mythology of the ring he draws a tree growing out from the center of the Vesica Piscis. This begins his process of merging imagery; the ring is emblematic of the Vesica Piscis, and the tree represents the wisdom of wood contained in the Tree Alphabet. The Vesica Piscis is a womb, a place of all potentiality. The heart of the tree, its essence, is placed there, and grows out, or manifests, into the two circles which represent our world of space and time.
But since he wants to understand the wisdom contained in that wood, he cuts the trunk open and exposes the rings of the tree. And upon these rings he places, in a north, south, east and west position, the Ogham Shield. Each letter represents a state of consciousness, or wisdom, embodied in a particular tree. And each tree has its own rings.
The Ogham
Shield is a map of The Wisdom of Wood.
Since the double-banded ring, which represents union, was discovered in Bride’s Well, Samuel intuits that the story probably begins with the feminine. Thus, the journey begins with Hazelnut, the tree of immortal wisdom, sacred to the goddess.
