What it means
Graves called the willow a moon tree, and the sign is read that way. Willow people are said to notice everything and say less than they know, and their hunches about people tend to be right. They learn by watching and remember what they have seen. Feelings run strong under the calm, and like the moon their moods have phases. Give them time and they reach clear, well-founded judgments that the rest of the group arrives at much later.
Strengths
Strong intuition, patience, a long memory, sharp observation of people, and a gentle way of helping others.
Challenges
Moods that come and go in cycles, keeping too much to themselves, holding on to old hurts, and waiting so long that the moment passes.
Willow dates and Ogham letter
Willow runs from April 15 to May 12 (28 days). Its Ogham letter is Saille, the letter for the sound S. The dates come from the tree calendar Robert Graves set out in The White Goddess (1948): thirteen 28-day months named after Ogham letters in his Beth-Luis-Nion order, plus one spare day, December 23. It is a modern system inspired by the Ogham, not a calendar recorded from the ancient Druids, and scholars think only some of the Ogham letter names first meant trees. On the Western calendar, Willow starts in Aries and the Sun moves into Taurus around April 20, so roughly the first 5 days are Aries Suns and the last 23 are Taurus.
The willow in folklore
Willow loves water and bends in a gale rather than snapping, and a cut willow stem pushed into wet ground will often root and grow into a new tree. Its flexible rods were woven into baskets, fish traps and the wattle of wattle-and-daub walls. The Latin name for willow, Salix, gave chemists the word salicylic, after a compound first found in the bark.
How Cosmic Array reads it
Your tree depends only on the day and month you were born, so the year and birth time don't change it. The Architect blueprint shows your Celtic tree next to your Chinese animal, Mayan sign and Egyptian deity, and its written synthesis can set the tree against your Western Sun, Moon and Rising.