​I often walk in Lone Fir Cemetery in southeast Portland, Oregon. It is always busy with the restless spirits of the dead. Very few of them are tended, the dead I mean, not the graves. 
No one I know is buried there. I am a visitor. 
The first burial on this piece of land was in 1846. Now there are more than 25,000 graves scattered about under more than 700 specimen trees of 67 different species. Some of the trunks and roots have grown around and swallowed up the headstones. All of the trees are being fed by the bodies of the dead. 
Today the cemetery was filled with the living. They gathered in the sunshine on lawn chairs and chatted. They lounged on blankets, reading. They strolled, they jogged, they roller bladed and parents helped their little one learn to balance on their bikes.
I wonder. Did any of them go there today to be fed by their dead or to tend them? 
Or did they go there to be with their Gods? 
Were all of us being fed unknowingly by the dead through communion with the trees that had consumed them? 
Was it home?
Is it home?
“It is a reliable mark of indigenous cultures that their Gods live on the same land that the people do.” Stephen Jenkinson – Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
What is it that makes a place home? 
Are we at home when we live with our Gods?
Are we at home when we live with our Gods on the same land?
Is it more than that? 
Is it knowing where our people are buried, knowing the ancestral bone yard?
Are we at home when we know the obligation of being bound to the land, to our Gods and to our dead?
The Othila rune is about home. 
About ancestral home. 
About the place of the ancestral bone yard. 
About remembering who we are.
About remembering that our dead feed and sustain us as well as feed and sustain the land?
Is it possible that in light of all this there are many more of us who are homeless than we realize because we are not being fed by our dead?

I walked past this utility pole and then stopped and went back to be with it. I thought, yes, this is the condition of the news we are getting today. It's tattered, sun-faded, rain-soaked, partly torn away, pollution-coated, unreadable, wrinkled, misleading and outdated and often the phone number posted no longer works. So who do you call for more information? And once in a while some new piece of paper is tacked or stapled on top of all that has gone before, is yet to come or may never happen and you only get one chance to read it before the weather changes. 

​I just returned from a lengthy road trip with my daughter and 7-year old grandson. We made a circuit from Portland, Oregon to Glacier National Park in Montana, to the Northern Cascades, to the Olympic Rain Forest in Washington, to the mouth of the Columbia River where it empties into the Pacific Ocean and back home again.
The amazing beauty and diversity of terrain exists because in times past the earth experienced rapid global warming, almost instantaneous freezing, massive earthquakes, erupting volcanos and enormous flooding. All these catastrophes brought destruction and extinction while at the same time creating awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping grandeur.
**Does it not seem likely that what we are currently witnessing has happened before?**
**Woolly mammoths once grazed in green, flower-filled meadows in what is now frozen tundra.**
**Can we be afraid of the future as well as in awe?**
**Can we accept the fact that we may very well not survive what is happening but that the earth will?**
We have reached a tipping point and the earth herself has stepped in and taken over and we are now witnessing things over which we truly have no control. 
She does and will take care of herself in ways we do not and cannot understand.
​I explore this in greater depth in my book Lost Teachings Of The Runes.
​

I recently did a reading where both Cweorth and Ear appeared. The question they asked of the young man sitting with me  was, what do you need to burn in your life this fall and what do you need to bury?
He gave me permission to post the poem he wrote, after our session.
You may wish to explore this question in your own life as well.
When things have come to an end, no longer serve us, no longer bring us joy or satisfaction, they need to be returned so their energies, their essences, their particles can be reused to bring forth something new. This is neither bad nor good. It just is.
Leaves fall from the tree when they're done.
So don't think you need to burn or bury only those things that you consider negative or bad. 
The wisdom is, how to let go of something when it's finished so something new can grow.

Burn or Bury
Fall’s arrival
warmth in the chill
abundant harvests
death and the kill
pile it all up
dig deep and toil
some need ignition
some require soil
Winter demands loss 
life requires Winter
collect all the crops
Bury,
Burn,
and Enter.
Nick Xavier, Freelance Writer, World Traveler 2018

*Photo of burning newspaper by Elijah O'Donnell on Unsplash

​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
Check the home page for upcoming rune classes.