 Hi my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today I have another book review for you and this week's book review is Oum, the Celtic Oracle of Trees by Paul Rice Montfort. I will preface this video by saying that I am a beginner in reading Oum and I can't offer any expertise on the subject at this point. Oum is a form of divination using Celtic ruins essentially that are carved into usually sticks of the wood that the symbol represents. This is Louis or Rowan. It is a symbol for protection and it's on a piece of Rowan wood and each Oum is of similar size and shape just a different collection of vertical lines. This book has kind of three distinct parts. The first goes through the history of Oum and how it's been used we think historically. The second section is all about the different symbols the Oums themselves. Each Oum has a whole set of information for its meaning and symbolism. It starts with the name, a little keyword, a visualization or a sentence that just kind of encompasses the whole meaning, a longer page description of the meaning, also a brief description of what it means in reverse. There's a bit about the tree itself although very limited and then a kind of story or myth about the meaning of the Oum and finally a little bit of like folklore or magic to go along with it. The great benefits of this book is it's really easy to learn what Oums are from it. Each time that I pick up an Oum and kind of meditate on it I have really concise and clear information about its meaning. The third section of the book is all about how you cast Oum and read the interpretation. It gives what I think is very nice an example after each casting of a particular person's situation and the reading and how they interpreted those Oums. The casting involved with Oum readings can be seen in two ways. The first is a bit like tarot. There are spreads where the position of the Oum has a direct correlation with the meaning on that Oum few and then they work together to present a whole picture. The second is a little more free flowing and that's where you kind of scatter them in front of you and the Oum views that are closest to you kind of represent the past whereas the ones further away represent the future generally. I love how concise and clear this book is. Oums are not something as trendy as tarot is in the occult world so there aren't as many resources around. I appreciated that in Oum the Celtic oracle of the trees he does take some time to describe the different resources that are available and how their interpretations might differ from his own and why he decided to go with the interpretations he did. It's useful when evaluating resources to kind of get the author's perspective on everyone else. It's nice to have a resource that is very modern and clear and does not take up tons of mental space to read or on my bookshelf. If you are interested in expanding your divination practices or maybe you don't do any divination yet and are thinking Oum might be a good fit for you I highly recommend picking up this book. It will be critical for your beginning lessons so I just kind of wanted to show a little in my own Oums. I bought these off of Etsy. I didn't make my own. To begin learning I kind of wanted something where the wood would be from the original trees in Ireland or England. Some of those tree species are not found commonly in my area. In the future I might make my own set and perhaps you know use some Oums that are more local and resonant to where I am now but until I know more about Oum I kind of wanted to stick with the traditional. So here are generally the size of my own views. They're maybe like three four inches pretty normal and they're very thin. They sound very musical and they each have a small slice with the symbol cut into it. These were finished with a coating to kind of protect the wood and keep them from drying out and splitting. So thanks for watching another book review here on Esoteric Moment and down below I would love to hear if anyone else has gotten started with Oum or maybe you are a bit more experienced. I would love some tricks and tips. Have a great week!