Ovates

A Druid Shaman or Witch - for they open the doors of time.
The Ovate as master or mistress of prophecy and to travel within time, to read the land. Ovates were able to conceive of time-travel. The Realm of the Ancestors was not the realm of people dead-and-gone, it was the source of wisdom; the realm in which the Ancestors lived the Summerland’s which the Ovate could turn for guidance and inspiration on behalf of the village.
It is the Ovates particular connection with the Other World, with death, which makes him the officiant in the rite of Samhuinn - the feast for the departed on 31st October. The Ovate is concerned with new life and with regeneration. She knows that to be born she has to die, in the sense to let go and in doing so be transformed and heal the past.
In working with the processes of death and regeneration the Ovates particular study is - fittingly - tree-lore, herbalism and healing. The plant world is a great teacher of the laws of death and rebirth, of sacrifice and transmutation. The tree is the supreme teacher of the mysteries of time with its roots for the most part invisible in the past and the subconscious. Its fruit and leaves likewise mostly hidden from us in the heights of the superconscious and holding the potential of the future in the seeds that will in due time fall.
The art of healing concerns the application of natural law to the human body and psyche. If the heart, mind or body is out of tune with nature we suffer. The application of natural remedies with plants, with the four elements, with solar, lunar and stellar power are studied by the Ovate. Knowing that it is only through death leading us to another state that we achieve a wider life. The Ovate is in this sense also a psychotherapist. The Ovate learns and teaches that it is only by letting go, rather than holding on, that we truly find what we have been seeking.