Rune of the Week: Eihwaz

This week's rune is Eihwaz. It means "yew" and is generally associated with the world tree.

The poems are:

Yew is on the outside
a rough tree
and hard, firm in the earth,
keeper of the fire,
supported by roots,
[it is a]joy on the estate.

Old Norse rune poem:
Yew is the greenest wood in winter;
there is usually, when it burns, singing.

Old Islandic rune poem:
bow, rainbow - "descendent of Yngvi"
Yew is a strong bow,
and brittle iron,
and Farbauti [a giant] of the arrow.

An interesting explanation of the rune comes to us from Barbelith poster, Cusm:
"The world tree. Motion along the vertical axis. Access to heaven and hel. The inner strength to change the self. Backbone. But change, we know from tarot, is just a nice way to re-label Death.

The Yew tree grows in cemetaries, and is sometimes said to contain the spirits of the dead below its roots. Its wood is made into bows, giving strength to hunt and being death to others. Its bark emits a hallucenigenic gas, a shaman tied to it may venture to the underworld. This rune is death, and every aspect drawn from death.

Consider the bow. In your enemies hands, it is death to you. In yours, the threat of death brings power of banishing and warding. The secret of this rune is in access to the powers of death, and communication through them. It is great strength to those who wield it, a bane to those it happens upon."

Rune of the Week: Jera

Jera, meaning a good year. The plenty of the harvest.

Old Norse Rune Poem
Ar
Plenty is a boon to men;
I say that Frodi was generous.

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Ger
Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven,
suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits
for rich and poor alike.

Icelandic Rune Poem
Plenty
Boon to men
and good summer
and thriving crops.

It's good to be king, if just for awhile. Jera is the good times rolling. Cornacopia. That bountiful plentiness you see in early Southern Literature. You'll also note the presence of Kaunaz in it's design. This is life to Kaunaz's death.

Not a bad rune.

Rune of the Week: Naudiz

First off, the launch of my webcomic has gone really well, and thanks to everyone who has taken a gander, and I hope it was enjoyable. If you still haven't read it, it's called Ophelia, and it's here.

Obviously it's Wednesday, so it's rune day. Today's rune is Naudiz. Naudiz means "need".

The three poems are:

Old Norse Rune Poem
Naudhr
Constraint gives scant choice;
a naked man is chilled by the frost.

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Nyd
Trouble is oppressive to the heart;
yet often it proves a source of help and salvation
to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Constraint
Grief of the bond-maid
and state of oppression
and toilsome work.

The vision of need presented in the poems here is one born out of pain and trouble. It's the lemonade of that damn lemon tree, if the lemon tree fell on your house and made you homeless.

Here's a very lucid explanation from the Barbelith poster cusm:

"Naudhiz is another two edged rune. Need implies lacking, and hardship. Freya Aswynn links this with the future, the norn Skald, Niffleheim (the low underworld of mists), and fears. A need is something inherently connected to the future, as something to be fulfilled or quested for. It inspires action. It is also a signal of distress, should you make your need public. The need fires burn to call for help.

This rune is often used for protection, as a ward against trouble, to call for help, or to aid in meeting a need.

The positive side is in dealing with a need in a timely manner. Should the need be fulfilled early, hardship is avoided and prosperity maintained. It can serve as a warning, of dangers unforseen. Heeded, safety is found. Needs are fulfilled.

The fire burns in the night to ward off cold and preserve life. Fire is a basic essencial need, like food and shelter. "

So maybe this is a week to let your needs be known and see what kind of aid you can get to your cause?

Rune of the Week: Haglaz

This week's rune is Haglaz. It means: "hail".

The three poems are:

Hagall
Hail is the coldest of grain;
Christ created the world of old.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Haegl
Hail is the whitest of grain;
it is whirled from the vault of heaven
and is tossed about by gusts of wind
and then it melts into water.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Hail
Cold grain
and shower of sleet
and sickness of serpents.

This section of eight in the runes are under Heimdall's watch. Heimdal is the guardian at the bridge up into Midgard. The patch of which is a rainbow. Because of this many of the runes in this section are primordial forces of nature. Heglaz is no diffrent. This rune is the embodiment of the cold. The pounding of the hail. But there is a duality here in that it is called a grain. The metaphor here is hail as a prize of the gods whirled down into earth. And its existence here is fleeting as it soon becomes water. Which is nourishing. So it's the violent coldness of the initial bounty dissapates into nourishment for the future.

Today's isolation and catastrophe is the seed of tomorrow's pleathora.

The god's give us hail as a gift, so that we might learn from it, and make our own brilliance of it. The presence of the wind in the distribution of the ice grain would seem to allude to the messenger nature of it's arrival. These seemingly painful nuggets, have in them the keys to unlocking a full and filling future.

Rune of the Week: Wynn

This week's rune is Wynn. It means "joy".

The poem for it is:

Bliss he enjoys who knows not pain,

sorrow nor anxiety, and himself has

prosperity and bliss and a good enough house.

As with most runes there's a darker edge to everything. We see in the poem that because of the perspective of the narrator, the definition of the rune for joy, takes on a jealous tone. It seems to read, bliss is for one who has the good fortune not to have been screwed over too many times.

There's also a strange reference to having a roof over your head in the final line. This rune stands for being free from pain, and enjoying the finer accouterments of what you have. Perhaps asking us to take stock of what we have, put aside our pains, sorrows, and anxieties, and revel in whatever prosperity we have. These are the conditions of to meet joy.

Incidentally, this completes the first set of runes. The first eight runes are Freya's eight.

Which if you are scoring at home:
Freya

"The daughter of NJORD, and the beautiful twin sister of FREYR, she is — to put it in modern vernacular — a bit of a goer. She did marry a God called OD, causing much confusion amongst academics and historians who have confused him with ODIN leading to further confusion by confusing her with FRIGG. (This is why you need Godchecker.) But OD was a bit of a goer himself and nipped out one day for pastures new.

This caused much weeping of golden tears, but as usual FREYA made the best of a bad job and really went off the rails. She ran wild with Gods, mortals, giants and dwarves.

The stories and allegations of how she gained possession of Brisingamen, the golden amber necklace of desire, are scandalous. Especially the one about her bedding four dwarves in turn before they would give it to her. But this sort of thing is just titillation. In any case, the necklace was stolen by LOKI and — although it was rescued by HEIMDALL — we don't think she got it back.

Being a strong-willed warrior maiden, she joined and then led the VALKYRIES — so that she could have first pick of the slain battlefield warriors. Most of the slain go to VALHALLA, but the good-looking heroes go straight to her palace for rest and recuperation.

But FREYA does have a softer side — she loves romantic music and bunches of flowers. Her daughters are the beautiful HNOSS and the equally beautiful GERSEMI."

Rune Letter of the Week: Gyfu

This week's rune is Gyfu. Meaning "gift". Gifts were a huge deal in viking times. Possessions and winnings weren't meant to be kept they were meant to be spread amongst your friends, because true honor was in keeping great company. Those that threw the best parties, and gave out the most of their plunderings, were honored and respected the most. It was not a culture of hording. In fact, the example we have in Beowolf of that is of the demon dragon that kills Beowolf being one who hordes gold and treasure. So yeah, give of yourself freely, life is too short to badger it all away for yourself. If you enrich those around you, you enrich yourself a hundred fold.

The poem for this week's rune:

"Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity;
it furnishes help and subsistence
to all broken men who are devoid of aught else."

There's only one poem, and it's the above. So this is a shorter entry than most. But it is a pretty cool rune. Another attribution to think about here is the crossroads. Hecate, Legba--perhaps this would be a good week to leave a gift for your favorite crossroads deity somewhere.

Rune of the Week: Thurisaz

This week's rune is Thurisaz. It is an especially volatile and dangerous rune to work with. It is at once the rune associated with Thor, and at the same time the rune associated with Giants. It is according to the poems mainly a danger to women. So one might conclude it is somewhat phallic in nature as well. Because it is associated with Thor, it is also associated with Thunder.

Here are the poems:

"Old Norse
Thurs
Giant causes anguish to women;
misfortune makes few men cheerful.

Anglo-Saxon
Thorn
The thorn is exceedingly sharp,
an evil thing for any knight to touch,
uncommonly severe on all who sit among them.

Icelandic Rune Poem
Giant
Torture of women
and cliff-dweller
and husband of a giantess"

Obviously I am a bit concerned with how this rune is going to manifest over the coming week.

Here's an interesting explanation of the rune from the barbelith poster Naked Flame:

"Thresholds. Gates. Points of no return. Synchronicity biting you in the ass. A rune that reminds you of the seriousness of your business."

Bottoms up!

Personal Anecdote #2: Odin, Berzerkers, Spooky Armonicas

I think this is great, it's a glass armonica, with what looks like Ben Franklin playing it:


Thank you Grinding.be.
Berzerkers and Odin as the Patron Saint of Outlaws

"Berserkers (or Berserks) were Norse warriors who wore coats of wolf or bear skin and who were commonly understood to have fought in an uncontrollable rage or trance of fury; the berserkergang."

Here's an interesting paragraph on the use of berzerkers in modern society:

"Of what benefit is the berserkergang in a larger, societal sense? There are two ways this is possible. One is that such practices serve as "release valves" for those born too different to fit into society, who might otherwise employ their energies in a destructive manner. But the other use is the more important one, for it is the very function in society that Odin serves (his function as Lord of Valhalla is actually incidental and only secondary). This is the role of the seidh-man, the warg, the outlaw, a person who deliberately lives outside of society in order to grow along a different path. You see, that which is static is dead. Life needs change to sustain itself. But it is difficult to sustain real change from within, for in the long run society tends to the conservative, to the static. So there is occasionally a need for a real outsider, something which can bring the new, which is in the Utgards, to the Innangards.

An example of such in modern times is Einstein, a self-educated scientist at a time when science was at a standstill, unable to learn anything further. Much of modern scientific and technological development is because he came at things from a unique point of view. The berserkergang is a great torrent of power and inspiration that can be directed and focused in a number of ways. Any pursuit the berserk engages in can be rendered easier and more effective by it, including highly intellectual ones like art and poetry, science and math. But it has its price, and anyone devoted to benefiting from it must also devote his life to coping with it, a thing that is not always easy. I suppose it would be possible to learn the berserkergang without being born a berserk, but it would not in the long run be desirable. Berserks can easily develop strong emotional blocks and inhibitions involving the gangr, and find themselves with a strong mind-body connection that is working against them. All sorts of psychosomatic illnesses can develop as a result which can turn into serious long-term health problems."

There's a lot of interesting things in there, one of which is Einstein as an outlaw, but the other is Odin as God of the Outlaws. This may explain some of my affinity for the old man.

Here's a Barbelith thread on an experience one person had in their evocation of Odin.

Another personal anecdote:
My friend and I spent an evening out in the woods the other week evoking Loki and Odin. Loki, because that god has kind of chosen my friend, and I am interested in working with Odin, because there are a lot of attributes that he has that resonate with me. At any rate, the ritual was set up that we basically sat across from one another over a candle, and traded evokation poems, songs, and stories while drinking screwdrivers and keeping an eye out in the woods. And sure enough, the two of them started to appear on the edges of the forest, and as we continued to talk to them and enchant them closer they both came to within about fifteen feet of both of us. We invited them to drink with us, but they wanted to kind of stand there and observe.

Odin was this tall gaunt figure, semi-obscured by the trees, who wore a white cloak over black clothes and his one eye glowed like the moonlight. Loki was more difficult to pin down. He was constantly peeking out from trees and waving. I think part of what kept them at bay was that we had enlisted my friend's dog as a guardian spirit for our ritual, and I think they were a bit weary of him. He was fascinating to watch, because after we evoked a guardian spirit into him, his whole manner changed, such that for much of the ritual he was literally patrolling the perimeter, and when we ended the ritual, he actually vanished deep in the woods in the direction which Odin and Loki had gone, seemingly to make sure they were gone. It was very interesting.

Anyways. Since that ritual, I've had a much more focused approach to my magic, and I've swung into rune study with a lot of aplomb. I've also picked up a lot of scars, and have become more irritable than normal. But my ideas seem to be flowing much faster now and my understanding of magical systems seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I'm finding a lot of resources now very quickly, and picking out of them the ideas that are most useful very easily. And I think some of that is to do with beginning to work with Odin.

I know the old man has a bit of a reputation, but I think since my friend is working with Loki, that his temper will be pretty good so long as that keeps up, because I think a lot of people have bad experiences with Odin when they deal with him on their own on his own. Odin generally needs Loki around to be in the best of spirits. I also think that you should be prepared for trials when working with any powerful God. You have to earn the respect of that entity. Odin hung on a tree for nine days for his magical knowledge. He's not going to think much of just handing over knowledge without any work. So one has to be prepared for that.

This is the Barbelith thread on Odin.

I really should get an account there.