Rowan, or mountain ash, is a potent tool for divination. Collect rowan sprigs during the Rowan Moon to use as catalysts during your divination exercises.

The Druids inscribed symbols onto rowan rods. These were scattered about as a question was asked, and the varied patterns created by the fallen sticks determined the answer.

Rowan is associated with the festival for Imbolc. It is a member of the apple family, and if you cut across the berries horizontally, a tiny, pentagram-shaped seed container will be revealed, much like a wee version of the one found inside an apple.

Leafy rowan twigs bound with red ribbon were often placed in stables and biers to protect livestock.

Some Southern and Eastern Europeans believe that Rowan protects again the rising of spirits from grave, i.e., the undead. In ancient graveyards, one will often see planted a Rowan tree.

Some also believed that wearing a rowan necklace or placing a rowan cross on the door protected against witches.

The rowan, however, is actually sacred to witches. Rowan’s qualities are protection, magic, intuition, a protector against enchantment, and as a guard of the sacred gateways into the Otherworld. Some witches them around their necks and used the berries as "worry berries," similar to the way a catholic might use a rosary.

The Rowan deity is Brigid, Celtic Goddess of Fertility and Poetry. Brigid was a major Celtic pastoral deity and one of the great Mother Goddesses of Ireland. Her priestesses numbered nineteen, representing the nineteen-year cycle of the "Celtic Great Year." As a Goddess, Brigid presided over many things...fire, fertility, the hearth, all feminine arts and crafts, as well as healing, agriculture, learning, poetry, love, witchcraft and occult knowledge, to name but a few. Animals connected to the Rowan are the Crane and the Green Dragon.

The Crane - One late Celtic tradition (apparently originated after the arrival of Christianity) stated that Cranes were people paying penance for wrong-doing. The Crane was associated with Lir, the Celtic Sea-God, who made his bag from the skin of this bird. The Crane was also sacred to the Triple Goddess and sometimes known as the "Moon Bird." It symbolized shamanic travel, the learning and keeping of secrets and the search for deeper mysteries and truth.

The Green Dragon - The Dragon symbolized inspiration and imagination. It represented the supernatural forces that guarded the great secrets and treasures of the universe. There are numerous references to serpents or dragons in Celtic mythology. On many occasions, the Fianna fought huge dragons in lakes. One likely center of the Serpent/Dragon was the sacred site of Kildare, under the protection of the Goddess Brigit. Most cultures considered the Dragon as a benevolent dweller of caves, lakes and the Inner Earth. In ancient times, it was a symbol of wealth and associated with the power of the Elements (particularly that of the Earth), but also of the treasure of the subconscious mind. It often appeared in many varieties...as a water serpent or worm-shaped beast, as well as the more well-known winged depiction.