Hi, my name is Dani and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today I have another book review for you. And this week's book review is OEM, the Celtic Oracle of Trees by Paul Rice Montfort. I will preface this video by saying that I am a beginner in reading OEM, and I can't offer any expertise on the subject at this point. OEM is a form of divination using Celtic ruins, essentially, that are carved into usually sticks of the wood that the symbol represents. This is we or Rowan. It is a symbol for protection, and it's on a piece of Rowan wood, and each OEM is of similar size and shape, just a different collection of vertical lines. This book has three distinct parts. The first goes through the history of OEM and how it's been used, we think, historically. The second section is all about the different symbols, the OEMs themselves. Each OEM 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 story or myth about the meaning of the OEM, 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 OEMs are from it. Each time that I pick up an OEM and 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 OEM and read the interpretation. It gives what I think is very nice, a example after each casting of a particular person's situation and the reading and how they interpreted those OEMs. The casting involved with OEM readings can be seen in two ways. The first is a bit like tarot. There are spreads where the position of the OEM has a direct correlation with the meaning on that OEM view, 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 then in front of you, and the OEM 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. OEMs are not something as trendy, as tarot is in the occult world, so there aren't as many resources around. I appreciated that in OEM, the cultic 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 our thinking OEM 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 OEMs. 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 use some ones that are more local and resonant to where I am now, but until I know more about OEM, I kind of want to just 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 OEM or maybe you are a bit more experienced, I would love some tricks and tips. Have a great week!