 Original water color by Ingrid 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?
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 Perhaps you think of the sun as being male, as the Greeks and Roman did. For those of us whose ancestors came from the North, the land of the midnight sun, the land of twilight winters, the sun is female, Sunna, the great mother of warmth and light and growth and I suspect that if we go back far enough we will find that she and the earth and the moon are all sisters.
This morning as I was walking in the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Portland, Oregon I was momentarily blinded by the sun as she rose up out of the earth and appeared between the trunks of several winter-bare trees. I paused in awe, remembering back to a time when my ancestors rose to greet the sun each morning, humble in their relationship, never assuming at night that she would automatically return. Here is the poem I wrote for Sunna which can be found in my rune book (un) familiar: I rise at dawn to greet you Sunna singing your song Sowelo you grant sight you blind the arrogant wolf chased horse drawn you disappear again I rise at dawn to greet you When was the last time you rose a dawn to greet the sun? There are only 3 copies left of the original 33 handmade, limited edition rune books which contain my 33 original poems. Are you called to be a guardian of one of them? I am available for personal readings and spiritual direction either in person or by phone/FaceTime/Skype. Contact me for more information. Ingrid, the Rune Woman Changing Lives With Ancient Wisdom 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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