[This is a simplified primer. Click here for the full article]
nGétal - NG
Charm - Wound
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Keyword: Purge
Key Concepts: change in health, pain, injury, magical charms, battle magic, cleansing, active healing, cure, poison
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Color: green-blue-grey
Tree: broom / reed
Bird: goose
Bríatharoghaim ("Word-Ogham", called kennings in English):
lúth lego - "sustenance of a physician (leech)"
étiud midach - "robe of physicians"
tosach n-écht - "beginning of a slaying"
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nGétal is one of the more complicated letters of Ogham. There isn't an exact translation, and it was created to represent a sound that does not stand alone in Irish (Old or Modern), the NG (ɲ or ñ) sound, which is a consonant mutation. This sound occurs when the letter G goes through a sound change called nasalisation (eclipsis). To simplify a complicated grammatical concept, essentially this occurs to the beginning of words when they follow another word that ends with nasal sounds. It blends the words together, and is one of the features that makes Irish such a musical language.
This means that the value of nGétal is technically not a letter in itself, it is instead standing in for the sound that a nasalised G or C makes. Some scholars theorise that the original value of nGétal was something more like "Gw", in a similar pair that Coll (C) and Cert (Cw or Q) are in. There are no inscriptions from the Primitive Irish era that use the letter nGétal, making any hypothesis as to its original meaning completely conjecture.
So is there any meaning we can glean from the name of the letter? Thankfully, we have three kennings (Bríatharoghaim) that give us hints as to the meaning. The first two, "sustenance of a physician" and "robe of physicians", definitely allude to healing, while the final kenning, "beginning of a slaying", is a possible allusion to wounds themselves.
There are two possible Old Irish words that nGétal gets its name from. The first is a hypothetical spelling of gonid ("wounds"), where the verb would change to gétal to turn it into a verbal noun. Essentially, gonid = "wounds (verb)", while gétal = "act of wounding (noun)". This is a hypothetical word because there are no surviving documents that use this word (only a different grammatical spelling - guin), but the grammatical rule means that it is a potential real word.
This same grammatical rule can be seen in the second possible meaning for nGétal. The noun canid, meaning "sings", uses the verbal noun cétal, meaning "act of singing". This follows the same spelling rule as the potential other meaning, gétal. It is also interesting to note that cétal is the word used for magical charms, singing to cause change in the world, including healing charms.
It's a little less obvious why cétal could be the meaning, unless you consider a strange rule of Old Irish. Typically, when adding "n-" to a word, the consonant it follows is silenced, except in the case of G or C. In Old Irish, when C was nasalised, it often didn't receive a "n-" to the beginning, instead it simply was spelled with a G. So this means that the Old Irish nasalised spelling of cétal actually is gétal. Either of these words are strong contenders for the meaning of nGétal.
So What Does It Represent?
To some extent, finding an essential meaning behind the web of associations behind each Ogham letter is a creative process that requires Personal Gnosis. There is no one "true" answer, as past Oghamists chose to leave Ogham tracts somewhat vague and esoteric. It is up to Gaelic Pagans as a community to develop Shared Personal Gnosis that is backed up by research and personal experience. This is an ongoing process, but one that I am very passionate about continuing, which is why I have written these posts for anyone to read free online. I want more people to begin to study and use Ogham, so they can have their own insights and experiences that can broaden and deepen our shared understanding of Ogham.
When considering the potential meaning of nGétal, I believe it is important not to forget the Gaels' love for wordplay. One of the oldest and most sacred forms of Gaelic poetry is the rosc, which is a highly cryptic verse made up of lists of words, where each word's meaning changes based on the words behind and before it, and all of these meanings add up to a greater whole. I see no reason why the interplay between gétal and cétal couldn't have been an intentional dual meaning for nGétal.
With both the act of wounding and the act of healing, the fundamental effect is a change in health. Regardless of in which direction, nGétal speaks to an outside force affecting someone's body. This has an immediately obvious divinatory message, which could be a warning or comfort.
The healing nGétal refers to is specifically being enacted from the outside. In the ancient world, the process of medicine required a lot of violence. Violence brought about the need for medicine, and medicine was a necessary violence used to prevent death. Techniques used for healing usually require some form of necessary harm, and this was especially true in the past. There was no anesthesia or strong painkillers, and yet it was still sometimes necessary to amputate a limb, lance a boil, or reset a broken or dislocated bone. The herbs used to heal can also be used for poison—it's all down to proper dosage. Most infamously, leeches were used to heal patients, little bloodsucking creatures found in bodies of water. Leeches suck the blood from humans' veins, and it was believed that this could balance the humors and purge negative influences from the blood. The act of wounding a person, drawing their blood, was a cornerstone practice of the medical profession at the time. The path of the physician is full of necessary violence to preserve life.
The idea of healing is continued with the associations given for nGétal. The plant ("tree") for this letter is common broom, a tall flowering bush with straight wood. Unsurprisingly, the straight stems are what give it its name, as broomsticks were commonly made from broom. Broom was used by the ancient world as a disinfectant, and burnt as a fumigate to cleanse the air and energy around a sick person. Broom is also slightly—it is the dosage that keeps healing from becoming violence.
I have summed up nGétal’s complex, dual meaning with the keyword Purge. Purging is removing harmful influences, which can be used in a medical context, or just generally. One can purge the other side of soldiers on a battlefield, just as one can purge a stomach of poison. Purging can have a very negative medical connotation, as well, in the context of eating disorders, while it can have a positive practical context, such as purging water of impurities or purging a device of unwanted files. Interestingly, broom has purgative qualities, being used in medicine as both a diuretic and a cathartic. In addition, to purge is to cleanse or purify, which was another key use of the broom—in fumigation and as a disinfectant. I have chosen "purge" as a keyword for nGétal, not only as it has connotations of both medicine and battle, but also because it encapsulates the combination of the two–a medical cure using necessary violence.
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This is only a primer, intentionally written in simple English and explaining crucial context that I have assumed to be understood in my other article. It doesn't touch on all of the associations we have for nGétal, notably the further plants, such as rushes and bog-myrtle.
I have written a lot more on this Ogham letter. If you are interested, click here to read more.
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