Sound and Matter are the Mother and Father of the Ogham.
The Tuatha Dé Danann came into Ireland as a thousand heroes skilled in every art, so it was said that their victory was assured. Among these heroes there was one that they knew as their Champion. Ogma was his name. This warrior was said to stand in strength above all others and it was he who tested Lugh in this manner when the young king came to Tara. Still for all of his physical prowess, Ogma was also a man of words.
The scholarly arts were his to call upon so much so that it was by his working that Ireland's first written language was formed. A series of straight and diagonal lines joining or crossing a main central line is the form in which this script can be found. Even today, the landscape of Ireland is still covered in stone bearing the marks of this ancient writing, many marking the boundaries of territory, or the grave sights of notable people long since lost to the world of the living.
In an ancient document known as The Ogham Tract we learn the story of the birthing of this language and many of the beginnings of how to explore the power of this script. It is said in the Tract that 'the father of Ogham is Ogma, the mother of Ogham is the hand or knife of Ogma'.
The creation of this script was as a proof of Ogma's own ingenuity and that the knowing of this should be kept for only the most learned to pursue the truths that the Ogham may reveal. The act of crafting ogham is one of capturing the very essence of a sound, which could also be said as the naming of a thing and binding it to a physical form.
The power of this binding to physicality, the essence of a sound may already be apparent but the Tract continues to show us the nature of that power in the crafting of the first symbol. The first thing that was written by Ogham, >-,,,,-,,,- i.e. (the birch) b was written. This was not just an arbitrary choice but a decision based on purpose and necessity. It was crafted to convey a warning to Lug son of Ethliu, in respect to his wife, lest she should be carried away from him into the Otherworld. Seven b’s were carved in one switch of birch with the warning that unless birch guard her, she would be carried off from Lugh seven times into the Otherworld or an other country.
Ogham is a script of simplistic elegance and near unfathomable meaning. Each carving of lines indicating more than just a letter in a alphabet, or a type of tree. Each of these shapes offer us a key to exploring a world of concepts and ideals, and that is before one even gets to the insights of combining these letters into words. It was Ogma himself who defined the birth of this ancient writing saying that Sound and Matter are the Mother and Father of the Ogham.