Ogham Sketchbook by Karen Cater

This is without a doubt the most beautiful book I have ever read. Karen Cater is the talented artist behind Hedingham Fair, and is a professional illustrator who has been designing pagan & folklore related greeting cards for several years. This book is the story of Karen's personal journey learning the Ogham. She was fascinated by the idea of the Ogham being an alphabet, divination tool, calendar and system of correspondences all at once. Having done some reading around the subject Karen realised that the best way of learning the Ogham was to experience it herself through the trees in her immediate surroundings. Karen is lucky enough to live in a rural area with varied plant life, and walking around her local area managed to find all the ogham trees and (give or take a month or two) visit them all at the time of year they correspond with in the calendar.

This does not convey the real charm of this book, which is mainly due to Karen's beautiful artwork, which is printed in bright and lavish colour on every page. Buying this book is great value for money because I now have a personal, full-colour copy of a lot of Hedingham Fair designs. To me, though, the greatest joy of this book is Karen's honesty, interest and enthusiasm, her personality showing a real human being learning and growing with every step of her journey.

I was lucky enough to meet and chat with Karen at a London Pagan Federation Conference. If you want to buy the book, or find out when you can next see an exhibition of Hedingham Fair products, look at the website http://www.hedinghamfair.co.uk/

Catherine