The awen is an emblem of three rays or lines, often shown descending toward a point and sometimes set beneath three dots, and it is read as the light of divine inspiration. The word awen is Welsh, attested in medieval Welsh writing, and means poetic inspiration or the flowing spirit that moves a bard to song and prophecy; the term's earliest known written appearance is in the Historia Brittonum, a Latin history compiled around 829 to 830 and traditionally associated with the writer Nennius, which names the sixth-century poet Talhaearn as Tad Awen, Father of Awen, evidence the concept was already an established way of describing poetic gift centuries before any modern Druid movement existed.
In its modern symbolic form the three rays are variously glossed as the harmony of opposites reconciled by a third term, or as love, knowledge and truth, or as the three foundations of poetic and spiritual insight, and Druid orders differ on which gloss they prefer, treating the ambiguity itself as part of the symbol's usefulness: it names an experience rather than fixing a doctrine. It is among the most recognisable signs of contemporary Druidry, worn as jewellery, carved on standing stones raised by modern groups, and printed on order literature and ritual robes.