There is an extraordinary artwork carved on a slab-shaped Ogham stone found in county Kerry which I saw a picture of while readying RAS MacAllister's "Corpus INscriptionum Celticarum Insularum".

On one large flat face it depicts a large equal-armed cross inside a circle. Underneath the large round cross is a figure of a person whose body and lower legs are twisted in a manner that vaguely resembles the knot-work lines in the art of Celtic Christian illuminated manuscripts. The figure¹s square outstretched arms repeat the cross shape above him. Eight fleck marks resembling locks of hair or rays of the sun radiate from the figure¹s head. Two small X-shaped crosses appear on either side of the figure¹s head, to the lower left and right of the cross. On the left side of the figure is a swirling, flowing line, and on the right side a jagged line. This also struck me as similar to the carved lines just inside the entrance to Four Knocks cairn in east county Meath‹rounded lines on one side, jagged lines on the other. 

The whole figure on the Ogham stone should be instantly recognisable to anyone who owns a Tarot card deck. It very easy to believe that the round line lines are ³female² and the jagged lines ³male², like the gender polarity of the Boaz and Jachin pillars in the symbolism of Hermetic and Cabbalistic occultism. Similarly it is easy to imagine that the human figure between them is the spiritual seeker who, having attained the ³middle path², the unity of male and female within, is permitted to enter the gateway and reach for the sun, the cross shape above him. Or perhaps the figure is not one of us but is an angelic, Otherworldly being, a messenger or a gate-guardian, addressing us from the other side. The equal-armed cross above the figure speaks of what is on the other side of the gateway: perfect balance and equality of above and below, left and right, north south east and west. On the reverse side of the same stone there is another big equal-armed cross, but without the circle, and two smaller crosses appear again below it in the same place. There is a spiralling line below it with six loops, which to me resembles the watery boundary carved on to the kerb stone in front of the entrance to Newgrange. Although the prominent cross at the top of both sides of the slab is almost certainly Christian, the whole image speaks of continuity between the Christian and the Pagan ideas.

Pictures (scanned from MacAllister's book--with thanks to G.Bone)

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