The mysterious "13 full moon year" of Robert Graves

An excerpt from the book "Your Celtic Path - a seekers guide"
Another source of inspiration for Graves came from Edward Williams (1747- 1826) aka Iolo Morganwg. In 1792, Iolo Morganwg, (stonemason, freemason and fake Druid), claimed direct unbroken lineage to knowledge of the rites and customs of the ancient Druids. Iolo by the way, was also an opium addict and a forger and the full nature and extent of his invention and deceit is simply incredible. He declared that his Glamorganshire Bards had an unbroken line of Bardic-Druidic tradition going back to the Ancient Druids. His local Masonic Lodge accepted without challenge all of Iolo's claims, but these days they 'neither confirm nor deny' online if Iolo was initiated or ever held membership. Iolo's fraudulent works excited and inspired Robert Graves. Iolo is still presented as being a ‘Druid’ despite the fact that the scholar G. J. Williams has systematically demonstrated the extent of Iolo’s forgeries and fabrications in the 1950's. In Nora Chadwick's book THE DRUIDS published by the University of Wales Press in 1966, the scholar tells us on pg 3: “there is no good historical evidence for the survival of the druids into the historical period in Wales.” By inference she is referencing Iolo's 'bad works of forgery'.

Iolo Morganwg, opium addict and manuscript forger

Graves also relied on Edward Davies (1756-1831) poet, dramatist and collector of manuscripts. He was an inventor of the 'Druidic Revival' along with Iolo Morganwg. Davies work has not been taken seriously by Welsh or Celtic scholars since the 1850’s. Davies suggested that there might be an 'Ogham Tree Calendar'. Graves then devised his calendar based on Davies suggestion by choosing just 13 Ogham consonants out of 15 as proposed by Ó Flaitheartaigh to represent his own creation of a system of 13 moons, constellations and trees.

This was where Graves completely lost the ‘run of himself’ with fantasy. Graves saw 13 months in a calendar year, totally ignoring the fact that most years have only 12 full moon cycles and a 13 full moon year (between successive December solstices) happens only every two and a half years. He also counted 13 star constellations as the belt of the Zodiac. This probably included the 12 well known zodiac constellations plus Ophiuchus, the lost sign of “serpent-bearer” that sits above (and was once connected to) Scorpio.

Robert von Ranke Graves (1895-1985)

Graves simply added his 13 full moon year to his 13 constellations of the Zodiac to the 13 consonants of his favourite version of Ogham - and merged them all together in his mind as proofs for his theories. He decided that the 13 moon cycles aligned with the 13 star constellations that were all connected to his selected 13 consonants to create his preferred version of Ogham! From this, he presented his own ‘ancient Ogham Tree Calendar’ and ‘ancient Ogham Tree Zodiac’. Graves believed that his fantasy was a great discovery and he wrote to the then greatest living authority on Ogham, Professor Robert Macalister of Dublin (1870-1950). Macalister himself had claimed that the Ogham script was created in Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) around 600 BCE. He says that Gaulish Druids used Ogham as a secret system of hand signals. He also said that Ogham was inspired by a ‘Northern Italy’ version of Greek alphabet. However, Macalister’s Ogham source theory is rejected by today’s Ogham scholars because there is no actual evidence for Macalister’s theory that Ogham's language and its system originated in Gaul as is his claim that Ogham emerged from a Greek alphabet.

The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth

On p.117 of ‘The White Goddess’ Graves says; “When recently I wrote on this subject to Dr Macalister, as the best living authority on Oghams, he replied that I must not take O'Flaherty's alphabets seriously: ‘they all seem to me to be late artificialities, or rather pedantries of little more importance than the affectations of Sir Pierce Shafton and his kind.’ I pass on this caution in all fairness, for my argument depends on O'Flaherty's alphabet... I feel justified in supposing that O'Flaherty was recording a genuine tradition at least as old as the thirteenth century AD.” (note AD means Anno Domini, it is Medieval Latin and means "in the year of the Lord", modern terminology uses CE meaning Common Era). Graves reckoned that the Ogham tree alphabet tradition began in the thirteenth century AD, during the era of the Norman invasion of Ireland. Even though Macalister warned Graves about this serious error - Graves nevertheless persisted with his notion that the Ogham tree alphabet was also in use as an Ogham tree calendar in ancient times.

Robert Graves' grandfather Charles Graves (1812-1899) had been President of the Royal Irish Academy and was himself a leading authority on Ogham. The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) was founded in 1785 with a Royal Charter granted in 1786 by King George III who ruled over the British Kingdom, which at that time included Ireland. The RIA today politely facilitates the imperial literary tradition while presenting itself as Ireland’s premier learned body. It still exists as a library, museum, and research facility and it claims to champion Irish academic research, which of course means ‘research in the imperial literary tradition’ to the exclusion of all else.

Charles Graves had already dismissed the 'tree alphabet' of his grandson Robert Graves as entirely spurious. And Macalister cites Charles Graves’s work on Ogham in his own study. It becomes obvious that Robert Graves had a desire for glory that denied reality and that his hunger for glory allowed acceptable forgeries and wrong thinking while at the same time he dismissed all input from his contemporary Ogham ‘scholars’. Robert Graves’s ‘Ogham Tree Calendar’ and ‘Ogham Tree Zodiac’ are fake and not historical in any way except as evidence of a forger continuing the forger’s tradition. Robert Graves inspired Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca who in turn inspired Ross Nichols the founder of Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD). The historical sources relied upon by Robert Graves and his subsequent writings on Ogham have been thoroughly exposed as fake. But many seekers are still being fooled today into following Graves’s writings in the misguided belief that just like Iolo’s opium inspired forgeries, that such fraudulent scams can guide them to 'awareness'.

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