Rune of the Week: Kenaz

This week's rune is Kenaz. It's one of the more mysterious runes out there. One of the meanings for it is "ulcer", but it's also associated with the flame of inspiration.

Kaun
Ulcer is fatal to children;
death makes a corpse pale.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Cen
The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;
it always burns where princes sit within.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Ulcer
Disease fatal to children
and painful spot
and abode of mortification.

We do see some common threads here though. Note "death makes a corpse pale", "the torch is known to every living man by it's pale, bright flame". It burns "where princes sit within", it burns where naive ambition flowers? It's dangerous to those who aren't serious. It's tied with life and death. The mortal flame?

On Barbelith much of the discussion is around Kenaz as a creative inspiration. But there's something more dire here. When we consider that in order to learn the runes Odin hung himself from a tree with a spear through his foot, just to see the runes, and then gave up his eye to get the meaning of them--we began to see a kind of duality of knowledge. It doesn't come easy. Kenaz is an important life energy, but it can just as easily snuff you out. It's no child's game.

If we borrow slightly from the Sephiroth/Tarot from yesterday, we can actually find some illumination in the Ace of Wands.
Which is the visulazation I get from the these concepts pretty much to a T. Now if we consider the Ace of Wands to be an uncommunicable ideal, the way we can learn more of it's nature is to follow it down the sephirot, focusing specifically in on Tipheret and Malkuth . We do this because the Tipheret or 6, is the balance of the suit, emanating from the ace of wands, and Malkuth is the last point before it breaks apart. Sort of the high or low point of all the energies of the suit, the physical opposite of the spiritual Keter.

At any rate. The cards are 6=Victory, 10=Oppression.

Which kind of gets back to Kenaz perfectly. A balanced state of the flame of kenaz defines that plane of balance which is victory. Victory is triumph. The adult surpassing the childish ways. Avoiding the death the poems warn of. Whereas Oppression, hits at the dualistic nature of Kenaz. Taken too much into it's extreme the heat of it's ideas are no longer triumphant, but are instead oppressive. The weight of them collapses and burns you down. This ties into what we know about worrying giving you an ulcer. The state of worry is if nothing else a state of oppression. So to a large extent what Kenaz is about is balancing between worry, which ends in death, and the burning ideas of life that we have as children. Kenaz is about finding the balance in your life between childish dreams and adult achievement. It's both the light which brings us into the world, as well as the one that snuffs us out.