What Happened To The Cow, Audhumla? Did a Catholic Monk Write Her Out Of The Creation Story?2/4/2016  My popular class The Runes Revealed is being offered for the first time as an online option. One of the unique aspects of the work I do with the runes is my questioning of the commonly held beliefs about the runes and the misplaced focus on Odin. This male-centric view of the runes and Norse mythology is blatantly evident in the Norse creation story. Are you willing to explore this story, read against the grain so to speak, and view it through a different lens? Here is the introduction to the course, The Runes Revealed - an (un) familiar journey. Register for the class now. Welcome. You are about to embark on a journey with the runes. This online course is divided into 11 sessions. Each session focuses on 3 runes. Traditionally, the runes appear in a sequence. However, if you imagine them to be part of a circle, there is no beginning and no ending and what that means for you is that you can work with the sessions in whatever way you choose. You may face challenges and obstacles along the way. You may get discouraged, overwhelmed or frightened and consider giving it up before you finish. You will be asked to question things you believe about the runes as well as things that are customarily taught about them. You will be asked to question things you believe in general and then question whether these beliefs are truly yours or just an accident of your birth. Some of the information here may feel controversial or confrontational. We need that. We need to step away from the blinding light of higher consciousness in order to see the wisdom that is held in the darkness of the roots and well. There is no right way or wrong way to do the course. Do it at your own pace, fast or slow. Do it when you feel like it. Do it when you don’t feel like it. Take time to answer the questions. Take time to find new questions. If you begin to see rune shapes that you don’t recognize, draw them as best you can and write them down. Don’t ignore or discount them. There are countless numbers of runes, not unlike the stars in the sky. So far, we are familiar with only a few of them. Trust that it is possible that new runes are being revealed to you. When you see them or feel them, make note of when you see them, in what context, and observe what was happening around you. Create altars for the runes as you work with them and come to know them. Look for them. They will begin to show up in your life, in strange as well as familiar places. Cracks in sidewalks. Tree branches. Shapes in clouds. Scratches on the furniture. Ice crystals that form on you windows. Look at them through different eyes. Take off the distorted lenses of patriarchal interpretation, in history, in academia, in archaeology. Read between the lines and go against the grain. Remove them from the grasping clutches of Odin and see what is missing. What were they, where were they, before he came on the scene. The runes were there, long before Odin came forth. Imagine them as multi-faceted crystal shapes that hang suspended in the great void. Draw them. Make madalas with them. Create designs. Try using graph paper. See how they form and inform each other. Don’t limit them by imagining they are a mere alphabet to be used to write your name. See them instead as the signatures of primal, powerful, complex beings that have much to teach about life and creation and death and destruction. Soften your gaze and see them as they were, woven into the Web of Wyrd by the great Nornir. When you have a question or want to learn more, don’t go first to a book. Take the time instead to sit in silence, and perhaps in darkness, with the runes and see what they have to show you, what they have to tell you. You can learn about someone by reading a book but to truly know someone, you must communicate with them yourself. Create altars for the runes as well as for the multitude of beings who exist in relationship with them. Do rituals. If a certain rune is calling to you, consider marking it on your body and living with it for awhile. Or make a piece of jewelry with the rune shape and wear it. Create a set of rune flags, perhaps by painting their shapes on fabric and then hang them over your porch or doorway, or in your window instead of Tibetan prayer flags. Drum with them and the ancestors. Create your own rune song. Look for artists who make art that honors the Northern Traditions and buy from these artists. Become conscious and aware of rune wisdom and look for ways to live in harmony with it in your daily life. Live with them. Live in relationship with them. Invite them in. Let them know they are welcome in you home. Reclaim your heritage. Heal the ancestral grief we all suffer from because we have forgotten the great spiritual traditions of Northern Europe. I am available to work with individuals privately, either by phone or in person. If you’d like to schedule time with me, send an email. I will respond to your request, usually within 48 hours. Ingrid, the Rune Woman Changing Lives With Ancient Wisdom For more information about the class and to Register, click here.
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As the ice is melting, more and more wisdom is being revealed, wisdom that has been safely hidden away in the North, held in the crystals of ice. Like the drips of water from the icicles and the glaciers, this information is on the move. In my Lost Teachings of the North class we open up to explore and share what is being remembered.
After our last discussion, Lara Vesta, artist, teacher, author, was inspired to write this touching piece about the Audhumbla, the Reindeer cow who licked the ice. I was there in the beginning. I watched her meander through the mist, emerging, her antlers hung with velvet. I watched her give birth, her calf dropped to the sacred snowy ground, the sack freezing on contact even though the air had begun to warm. Mist rises, rises from the icefall from the collision seeping beneath the surface of beginning, of begun. She licks the calf, stirring, and slowly he emerges reaching up to her milk warm teats. Life is birth and nourishment both in that hard land. She licks and licks again and I am with her somewhere, sometimes hidden, sometimes in her. Whatever I am emerges too from that land, that catastrophic merging that birthed the death I now am. She licks and eats the food of her own body, she is self-sustaining but he is not. He suckles and grows. Days hum or night too in that place, all whirls from the center that is her. Her gentle action, taking and giving, the pulse of the mother all life. Sometimes I am so near I can smell her salt and hair, wholly mammal. I bury my face in her many layers and sleep a while. Dream I am at the beginning again and again and again. Days hum and then night and he dies. He dies. This is how: a bellow, nothing changes, an urging, this is time. His eyes know: She is not alone, but she is one and together they must be many. They mate, he kneels weary, bends his head and with a breath becomes. From his head, the forests, from his body mountains, from his veins the rivers from his blood the sea. He dies and completes and she swells with life and births again, and again, and again what will be. I would wake screaming from this story, howling with the pain of creation and death. My mother came for me then, not as she is now but young and soft and still so full of sure love. She cradled me, my whole side last, my bare side first. In memory my bones click together, the hearth fire a little higher, my mother sensitive to warmth. And my brother licks me and lays his head in my lap. And my other brother wraps us all, the length and breadth of him bringing us so close. We hold each other and somewhere we know this is our beginning, and all the holding in the world can’t prevent the end. |
title Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash
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Ingrid lives in the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of two rivers, and in sight of two volcanoes.
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