Aurochs, Uruz and Domesticated Milk Cows

Life is wild, nature is wild, we are wild. Creativity comes from the place of wildness.  And we don’t have to be in the wilderness in order to be wild.
The rune Uruz carries the very essence of wildness.  When we're always trying to tame the wilderness, civilize the savages, control and manipulate nature, when we lose our connection to the earth, the elements, our bodies and our sexuality we create such an imbalance in life we actually face extinction.  Some of us might even die from boredom or hopelessness.
Being domesticated and civilized often means playing it safe, living life in a way that’s acceptable, predictable, conforming.  I compare it to the life of a milk cow that stands in front of the dairy barn.  She’s safe, she’s fed but she’s being milked to death.  In order to keep producing milk she has to be bred over and over again and as soon as she gives birth her calf is taken away so she won’t bond with it. Perhaps it’s safe and predictable to be a milk cow but there’s a huge price to pay.  
Does your job or career milk you dry?  Does it separate you from your own creativity?  What would it be like to take your chances and be wild and free? 
When Uruz appears in a rune reading it often carries with it the question:  where in your life have you sacrificed your freedom and your wildness in order to feel safe and be accepted?  It asks that you take a long hard look at your life and tell the truth.
Uruz can be identified with the might aurochs, an enormously grand species of wild cattle that once inhabited Europe and the northern reaches of Scotland.  It actually survived into the mid-1600s.  It became extinct because there was no longer any place for its wildness.
Many popular spiritual practices actually discourage wildness, either by implying or stating that spirit is better than flesh, that we must transcend our bodies, and aspire to states of high vibration that take us away from the earth and all its beauty.  There are spiritual practices that teach that there’s something wrong with the earth and being human, that we’re only here to learn lessons and interestingly these lessons seem to come to us only through pain and suffering.  
Do you live somehow disconnected from the earth because you believe you’re from someplace else and you’re always be trying to get back to wherever you think you came from? 
Try instead to come back into harmonious alignment with your wild free creative sexual energy, reconnect with the wisdom of Uruz and avoid the extinction of your amazing glorious human self. 

Uruz rune

(Un) familiar Rune Cards

I drink to you
mighty aurochs
fearless
formidable
Uruz
it takes courage
to honor a foe
I search for you
in the animal
of my own body
tamed and civilized
I face extinction
This poem first appeared in (un) familiar, the limited edition of original rune poems by Ingrid Kincaid 2014

---

You can embark upon a Year Long Journey with the (un) familiar runes, a series of 26 sessions with Ingrid, the Rune Woman, following the phases of the moon.

More Information