The awen symbol in its familiar form belongs to the modern Druid revival rather than to the ancient Druids, of whom no such emblem is recorded. It was introduced around 1792 by the Welsh poet and antiquarian Edward Williams, known as Iolo Morganwg, who built an elaborate bardic system and first staged his Gorsedd of the Bards, a ceremonial assembly of poets, on Primrose Hill in London before it was absorbed into the Welsh Eisteddfod, the national festival of Welsh literature and music, where a Gorsedd of Bards still meets today.
Much of the framework Iolo presented as ancient tradition, including invented manuscripts and rites, was his own creation, a fact established by later scholarship and now well documented, but the awen itself was taken up widely and outlived the fabrication that introduced it. It has become a standard sign across modern Druid orders, among them the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), founded in the twentieth century and now one of the largest such organisations, where it is used as a mark of membership, a focus in ceremony, and a general emblem of inspiration across the wider contemporary Pagan revival, appearing on order regalia, publications and jewellery in a way Iolo himself, working from a single Welsh hilltop platform, could hardly have anticipated.