At a glance

• Letter: S
• Tree: willow
• Place: letter 4 of the 20 original letters, the fourth of Aicme Beithe
• Written with: 4 strokes to one side of the stem line
• Also known as: Sail, Saileog
• Keywords: willow, moon, intuition, flow, water, bees, flexibility, emotional tides, psychic sensitivity

Lore and history

In the medieval Irish texts, Saille is named as the fourth letter of Aicme Beithe, the first of the four aicmi, written as four strokes set to one side of the stem line. The Auraicept na nEces and In Lebor Ogaim both hold willow as its tree, a wood the old Irish knew growing along riverbanks and low wet ground, bending in wind rather than breaking. The old word oghams, the riddling kennings used to teach each letter, link Saille to bees and the vigour they draw from its early blossoms, since willow catkins open before almost any other tree in the Irish spring and give the first forage of the year to a hive. Willow's long, pliant rods were worked into baskets, fences, and the wattle walls of early Irish houses, and poets were said to favour rods of willow for wands, a tree bound up with speech and craft as much as with growing water.

In a reading

In modern ogham practice, Saille is often drawn as a letter of intuition, emotional flow, and the moon. Many of us feel the willow's nature in this draw: a tree that bends instead of resisting, that grows where water moves, and that teaches us to flow with change rather than brace against it. When Saille appears in a casting or a reading, it often points to trusting a feeling before you can explain it, to letting emotions move through you like water instead of damming them up, and to the quieter, tidal rhythm of the moon as a guide for timing and inner knowing. Willow's gift, as many practitioners experience it, is a soft, persistent strength: the kind that survives storms precisely because it does not stand rigid against them.

A little more

Willow catkins open very early in spring, often before most other trees flower, which is likely why the old word ogham kennings linked Saille to bees: the willow is one of the first trees to feed a hive after winter.

Keep exploring

• Before it: Fearn
• After it: Nion
• All 25 ogham letters