​There is a great dragon-serpent coiled around the roots of the World Tree. Dwelling in the darkness. Gnawing at the roots. Drinking from the wells. She is intimate with death, its beauty and necessity. She imparts to us the wisdom of rot and decay, of composting, of allowing and acceptance.
There is an eagle and a hawk who dwell high in the branches of this great tree. Theirs is a far-seeing vantage point. They are birds of prey. They look for something to kill. They are birds of death.
Nidhogg gnaws the roots to keep the tree alive.
In death, our bodies feed the earth so life can continue.
This is the wisdom of the corpse eater. 
This is the wisdom of the tree.
This is the wisdom of the earth.
Nothing lives unless it feeds on something that was once alive.
Life continues by consuming death.
It's a beautiful cycle, a violent cycle, a gentle cycle, a necessary cycle. It is a cycle of loss feeding gain.
A cycle of endless return.
We come face to face with this cycle and with the corpse eater as the Great Wheel turns and we move into autumn.

Innsaei is a multi-layered Icelandic word meaning the sea within, to see within, to know your self and to see from the inside out. 
There is a thought-provoking documentary on Netflix of the same name, InnSaei. In it, Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir speaks about the noise that surrounds us, this distraction we call entertainment, as blocking our connection with the earth and our connection with each other. The noise of the outer mutes the sound of our internal intuition. ​Not only have we lost silence. We have lost our appreciation of the necessity of silence. We are afraid to be to be alone without noise. Perhaps Innsaei can best be experienced through silence.

There are rune beings closely woven together with earth, air, water, fire. Who is the rune being most closely connected to the blood of women, menstrual blood? It is through this mystery we all come into life. Has the existence of this rune, its shape and form been forgotten or hidden?
Blood moves through all of us.
We have a certain fascination with the blood of warriors, battle, and death.
We are entertained by tales of hungry vampires drinking blood.
But what about the life blood that flows each month from women’s bodies? It is a connection we all share, yet we hide it, ignore it, or pretend it isn't there.
Surely there is a rune for women's blood, a rune that connects us with this potent, primal being, giantess, goddess, that cannot be ignored and does not go away. She is intimately connected to life and death.
The runes are numberless, not limited to the few popular ones we know. What shape and form does the rune of women's blood take?

The forces of nature, of life, are bigger, stronger, older and wiser than we are. They are the Giants. Jotunn, of Norse myths. Primal and raw. They cannot be bound, tamed or controlled. 
And yes, we are powerless. We may play a part, a very small part, in some of what's happening on earth but such things have happened before and will continue in the future and we are powerless.
To truly understand this, all we need to do is place our garbage dumps in the path of a lava flow and in a matter of minutes all they things we have taken from the earth are consumed by fire, recycled and returned, forming new land.
This is the age-old story of the battle between the Gods and the Giants. The Gods want to rule, control, invade and conquer. They do so at our own peril. 
We humans and the Gods are of no concern to the Jotunn. They are not evil, savage, hostile or barbaric. They are neither moral nor immoral. Their concern is only for what must be.
They are not enemies of life. They are part of endless cycles of destruction and creation.
So as the volcanos erupt and the fires burn and the ice melts may we be in awe of the creation as well as the destruction.
If you wish to know more about these raw, primal beings, then go to the Runes and listen. They have much to say.
Ingrid, the Rune Woman
Wise and Irreverent
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