This rune shows up again and again, in so many readings, in so many conversations. What happens when we really tell the truth? So often I hear people say they can’t be truthful because it would hurt someone's feelings or upset someone or that their partner, family member, friend, work associate just wouldn’t understand. If you believe that, then the place you really need to start is telling the truth to yourself. Loss is always involved in compromise. Strength of convictions always demands a price. This is the story of Tyr and the wolf Fenrir, son of the giantess Angrboda and Loki, brother to the great serpent Jormungand and Hela who dwells in the realm of the dead. The story is most often told from the perspective of Tyr, the god of justice, law and upholding traditional sources of authority. In this version of the story, Tyr is a hero because he keeps chaos at bay and loses his hand to the wolf because of it. But what is also true is that he lost his hand because he lied to the wolf and tricked him into being bound with magical chains made by the dwarves. Why did he do it? Because the high gods told him to? Because he was afraid to go against traditional sources of authority? Because he believed it necessary to keep the peace? No matter the reason, Tyr suffered a loss when he compromised his role as a truth teller. No doubt he would have paid a price as well if he had refused to lie to the wolf but the price would have been different from the loss suffered from compromise. And what about the wolf? Do we ever hear the story from the perspective of the wolf or in support of the wolf? A wolf is a wolf is a wolf. It's his nature. Of course he bit off the hand of Tyr. What else would a wolf have done? Working with the spirit and essence of Teiwaz gives you the opportunity to dig around in your own issues of truth, compromise, integrity and loss. When you reflect on the story you can ask yourself, who am I in the tale? Am I the high gods, the wolf, Tyr? Am I perhaps the hand that got bit off? There is no right answer. There is no wrong answer. Only you can say what is true for you. Here is one of the many things that happen when you don’t speak truth to those around you. First you justify your withholding by saying something to the effect that speaking truthfully would cause upset or anger or conflict. Your withholding creates an energy that is ever so slight but can still be felt by the other person, even if they’re not aware of what they’re feeling. They have an animal sense that something is off and that creates an energy of distrust. They pull back from you and withhold because they sense you can’t be trusted. Once they do that, you feel it, and make the decision that you were right to not speak your truth. And then it just builds from there. All this happens on a very subtle level, in a matters of seconds, or over a long period of time. It’s not so much about what you say but rather what you don’t say. You can call upon Teiwaz to support you in living with integrity and strength of conviction, enjoying relationships based on truth telling and trust. You can ask yourself, where in my life am I compromising myself, my dreams, my health and happiness because I'm afraid to go against the high gods, or have been convinced it’s my duty to keep the order at the expense of my own truth? Teiwaz can support you in building a strong sense of self-worth so you fearlessly live your true nature.
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When was the last time you woke up in the morning early enough to watch the sun rise? There was a time when all the people knew the songs of life, the songs of the seasons, the songs of the earth and moon and sun. How long has it been since you sang the sun up? What song would you sing to bring her back each morning? How do you experience the sun? Is it male? Is it female? Some of the Northern European tribes spoke about the sun as being female. They called her Sunna, the bringer of life and light, warmth and new growth. Only Sunna could melt the ice of winter. She was pulled across the sky each day in a chariot drawn by horses, Alsvith whose name means All Swift and Arvak whose name means Early Waker. She was chased by the wolf Skoll who sometimes came so close he took a bite out of her. In the very far north they knew her through the long summers when the sky never darkened and through the long winters when the sky was never light. Our ancestors in the north had a relationship with the sun that was different from people who came to conquer, a relationship different from the armies of Romans and the monotheistic priests who brought with them a religion born in the desert. Are we perhaps the first culture to fear the sun, to consider her our enemy? We shield ourselves from her in a strange and fanatic way. We smear our faces and bodies with sunscreen and believe we can spend long hours in her presence without being affected by her. We believe we can override our body’s natural warning system and suffer no harm. We don’t really know the damage caused by sunscreen. We shield our eyes from her, filtering her light through dark glass, forgetting that it’s vital to our health and well being for the full spectrum of her light to enter our bodies through our eyes. What parts of sunlight are we missing when we wear sunglasses? We no longer honor the sun. We’ve forgotten her sacred symbols and we’ve forgotten her fair name. We’ve forgotten her rituals and her songs. And few of us remember to welcome her back at winter solstice. There are too many who think only of the birth of a male child who is son to a sky god. What makes us so sure that she will always rise again? Our ancestors were not so smug. How is it that in our search for enlightenment we have forgotten to honor the sun? How is it that in our arrogance we have forgotten that she who gives us light can also blind us? Before the advent of clocks, people knew what time it was by knowing where the sun was in relationship to features of the landscape. You would have to live in a place a long time to learn where the sun would be at a certain time of day at a certain time of year. This is very different from the arbitrary time determined by clocks that doesn't relate to anything. Forming a relationship with Sowelo can strengthen your relationship with the sun and that will shift your relationship with time. Do you ever wonder where she goes at night? What do you see at sunset? Does she disappear into the earth? Does she sink down into the ocean? Who takes care of her and guards her while she's away? Have you ever dared to follow? Have you ever asked her in the morning where she’s been all night? Or why she stays away longer in the winter than she does in the summer? When Sowelo comes to you, what questions might you ask about the sun?
It's said that yew trees grow out of the mouths of the dead buried in the cemetery. Perhaps that is so. It’s common to find very ancient yews growing in church graveyards. Since they live for thousands of years, it seems more likely that the graveyard was formed around the tree. The invading Christians loved to claim for themselves the sacred hills and groves that were revered by the people of the land they were conquering. The ancient yew groves were places where sacred rituals were held, the mysteries of sex, birth and death, places where you could go to be altered by the mildly hallucinogenic, resinous vapors that are released from the tree. No yew tree should ever be considered dead. The remains of rotting trunks can be thousands of years old and then suddenly come to life again. A great deal of energy is held in the branches and that makes it possible for the tree to grow again by sending down an aerial root inside a hollow trunk or by rooting branches in the ground. So the yew tree grows again and again from its own rotted-out corpse. We all grow from the corpse. There are some who say that Odin hung himself on the World Tree Yggdrasil and their argument is that Ygg is one of Odin’s names and drasil is an old Norse/Icelandic word for horse. So perhaps the World Tree that Odin hung in was his horse but we must remember that the World Tree was there in the void from the beginning which is also the middle which is also the end and all of that was there long before Odin came on the scene. So what was the name of the tree before Odin? We might have forgotten but the Jotnir know. Some say the World Tree is an ash tree and some say the World Tree is a yew. And some might even say that the World Tree is every tree and all trees. What would you say? If you know it as the yew then you may know its connection with Eihwaz, often called the rune of life and death. If you know it as the rune of the World Tree you may also know it as the rune that will assist you in traveling to the Nine Worlds that exist in its roots. Eihwaz is the trunk with the branches growing up and the roots growing down and it is the branches growing down to become roots that send up a trunk that becomes new branches. To know this rune is to sit with your back up against a tree trunk and feel the life energy of the tree become mingled with the life energy of your body. Death is born in the middle of life and a relentless desire to say eternally youthful, to pretend we are not aging, is imagining we can avoid the second half of life. Fearing the end we forget to live. Eihwaz is a relentless reminder that no one can stop the turning of the Great Wheel. Eihwaz can be experienced as a rune of initiation. Are you willing to die to yourself so you can become something new? Have you ever worked with the rune in this way? When you come into a close relationship with Eihwaz you will be asked to consider what your beliefs are about concepts of up and down, above and below, upper and lower. Do you believe that the branches are superior to the roots, or that what’s above is good or more important that what’s below? Check and see if there are any vestiges of monotheistic religious teachings tucked away in your beliefs. When we speak about upper, middle and lower realms and the beings and the gods we imagine dwell there, do we as humans place a value judgment on the different locations? What would happen if we turned the tree upside down, turned it just like the Eihwaz rune? Then we could see that there is no difference. Those who dwell above are not somehow better than those who dwell below. The Eihwaz rune reminds us that there is no top or bottom, there is no above or below. There is constant motion. This is the case when we ponder the earth. There is no top or bottom. It just hangs in space, constantly moving. Eihwaz reminds us that there is no seen and unseen. All things are visible. We limit ourselves when we think we can only see with our eyes. Eihwaz will ask us to examine the beliefs we hold regarding the shamanic realms. Is there really a separation? When we decide to place things such as beings, gods, spirits, and creatures in the upper, middle or lower regions do we hold to the belief that they must stay there or that they always reside there? Who are we as humans to determine that? Is there a hierarchy present in who or what we decide to place where? Have you forgotten to live? What songs of renewal can you sing as willing sacrifice?
Perhaps we need to ask Surt what he has in mind at this time as things are heating up again on the earth. What new creations will arise from this global warming? To be sure, we humans have played our part in what’s unfolding but perhaps Surt has now taken over and is fanning the flames. He may even have a special agreement with Kari, the North Wind that we humans aren’t privy to.
This is the power of Cweorth, a fire so hot it burns the flesh away from bone leaving only ash. In the end, which is also the beginning according to the stories, the cyclical destruction of the cosmos will be led by Surt. It was fire in the beginning and it will be fire in the end. Kenaz is the fire inside. Nauthiz is the fire brought forth from necessity. Cweorth is the fire of what must be, destruction and creation occurring at the same time. Do you carry any of Surt’s bloodline? It shows up in interesting places. Laufy knows. She gave birth to Loki who carries the bloodline of his fire-giant father Farbauti. Sometimes it’s quite evident in humans who are glass blowers, fire fighters or blacksmiths. In the end the gods will be consumed. In the end Surt will remain. In the end there will be fire because fire cannot be destroyed. There are some things in life that need to be buried, offered up to the earth where they’re slowly broken down and used. There are some things in life that need to be burned, quickly consumed, smoke rising up, leaving only a pile of ash. When you develop a relationship with Cweoth, as well as the rune Ear, you will learn to know the difference.
We live in a world that isn’t just about us, wasn’t created for us, a world that can and just might continue on without us. It’s a world that’s more-than-human. Everything is unique but nothing is uniquely unique. Everything is individual and we humans don’t hold some special place. There is no line that divides the gods from the humans, or the humans from the rest of the world.
This is our home. We’re not aliens here. We live entirely within the great realm of all things. There’s no place to go and there’s no place we’re from. Such imaginings cause a sense of hierarchy and separation. When people talk about being from the stars or other galaxies, it’s often in that rather hushed tone of specialness. I smile and say, “That’s great! Then we must be related. I’m from the stars too. I’m from earth and in case you haven’t noticed, it hangs right in the middle of the cosmos, surrounded by stars”. We all exist in the void and the void has been there from the beginning and the beginning is also the ending because it’s a cycle, a circle, a repeat. That’s how all the holy races stand connected at the bridge. That’s how Mannaz breathes as one. We come from the great void, Ginnungagap, and the chaos caused by the coming together of Niflheim and Muspelheim. We come from that famed tree Yggdrasil in whose roots exist all Nine Worlds. We come from Audhumla, the reindeer cow who birthed and suckled the giant Ymir. We come from the places that were formed from the parts of his dismembered body. We come from the wood the gods found on the sandy shore when they formed Ask and Embla. We come from Heimdall who fathered the social order of men and who guards the Bifrost Bridge. And we’re all joined together as one. We must face and touch each other just as the two Wunjo runes do when they form Mannaz. This is the doubling of the joy. It has become quite common and popular to write about the runes and discuss them using pretentious New Age jargon. There are several online rune study communities that speak about them in the language of the self-actualized evolved perfected human universal mind Christ consciousness Buddhist enlightenment Sanskrit Akashic records inner transcending Higher Self Enlightened Being. Breathe. The runes stand alone. They’re sentient, independent spirits who don’t need to be constantly compared to other traditions or beings. So much that is written about Mannaz focuses only on the human mind with endless references to our inner Christus, our Higher Self and the need to constantly strive to become an Enlightened. The spirit of Mannaz teaches us about what it means to be a human and humanness isn’t just about the mind and intellect. We cannot separate our minds from our beautiful, perfect human bodies, from the magic and power of our sex and sexuality, from our cravings for food and pleasure, from our connection to the earth. When we try to separate the physical from the spiritual we separate ourselves from the joy. An underlying sense of dissatisfaction, depression and discontent is fed by ideas that there’s always something wrong with being human. That we’re only here to learn some lesson on our way to enlightenment, or ascension, as if there’s someplace to go that’s better or more real. Our physical bodies aren’t sinful and imperfect, corrupt and defective. We don’t need to shed them so we can evolve, ascend or become divinely enlightened. Mannaz connects us to our wholeness as humans, our sexuality, our spirituality, our creativity and our perfection. What do you believe?
We all eventually hang on the barbed arms of Ear and we must all smell death, the dire necessity, the outcome of life, over which we have no choice.
Even those who eat no flesh eventually must come to know that in the end they will be eaten. All things live because of death. Our bodies return to the ground so they can be consumed, broken down into the elements and then be reused to grow the food that feeds all things living. There is no rank in death. We may be remembered for what we’ve done during our lifetime but in the end we are of no importance other than to feed the earth. Ear is connected to Othila who reminds us that the land feeds us the bones of our ancestors. Ear is often referred to as the rune of the grave and the grave doesn't give anything back. It’s the rune of the slow process of breaking down. It’s the rune of the end result, which is also the beginning. Ear speaks to us of Hela, she who is cold and objective, she who is often considered unfair and uncompassionate. Her appearance, her very form which is half alive and half rotting flesh, reminds us that she does not hold with any kind of denial around death. It’s still a common practice in the United States to embalm bodies prior to burial. It's a costly process that uses large quantities of toxic chemicals that eventually leak their way into the ground. Embalming makes the dead body presentable, and odorless and delays the decomposition of the corpse. In some ways it’s a trickery, causing the living to imagine the person is only asleep, thus prolonging the denial of death. This rune may appear to challenge your beliefs and attitudes around the treatment of your physical body once you die. Does denial of the effects of death cause us to be out of harmony with Ear? Does this denial feed our desire to retard or somehow prevent the natural process of rot and decay? Are we afraid to look at the natural face of death? Some things need to be burned. Some things need to be offered up in high places so the birds of prey can peck and tear and eat. Some things need to be buried. Sometimes we lay the body out on the kitchen table so to speak and forget that it's supposed to be buried. Ear will remind us. When was the last time you dug deep down into the earth, below the topsoil to the place of burial? What hangs on the barbed arms of Ear? What have you been forced to offer up to the earth?
I love Stan. It’s solid and closed and reminds me of large rocks and boulders and standing stones. Stan feels like family. I'm related in part to a long, ancestral line of imps who often made their homes in the windswept, rocky landscape of Northern Scotland.
Stan carries me back thousands of years to chambered rock cairns, to Stone Age tombs, to places such as Isbister, Tomb of the Eagles in the Orkneys. In these barren, isolated hills in the north of Scotland human bones and artifacts have been found, secreted away in tombs, piled together with the bones of white-tailed sea eagles, the eagle with the sunlit eye. Stan causes me to wonder what part these giant birds of prey played in the lives of my people? Were they sacred totems or powerful protectors who were interred with the ancestors to guard them in the afterlife? Were they connected somehow to the excarnation process, the tearing away of the flesh from the laid-out bodies? The bones and rocks remember. If we learn up against them, lay our bodies on them, they will open to us and speak. I had an amazing experience in Ireland in the spring of 2014 at Kernanstown Cromlech also known as the Brownshill Dolmen, County Carlow. This burial chamber that dates back almost 6000 years has a capstone still in place that's estimated to weigh 100 metric tons. It's believed to be the heaviest capstone in Europe. The chamber has never been excavated so it still holds all its secrets. I was asked by these enormous stones, pitted with age, covered in lichen and dripping with damp, to lay my body onto them so I could listen and hear. Earlier in the day my friend Ken Edwards and I had spoken about the size of the megaliths we’d already seen on the island and wondered how ancient people had managed to move them over long distances and put them into place. What the stones told me that day was this, ‘you trouble over much and miss the obvious. We are the living offspring of Ymir, who was killed and dismembered by his grandsons. We moved ourselves here to this place as did all the large stones in all the other places. We were sacred to your people. They communed with us and used our energy and power to support their lives. We have chosen to stay here in these forms, as keepers of the memories of all that has happened on this land and to its people. Some of us have grown weary and have fallen away. Some of us have been split apart and damaged and desecrated. We are family to the mountain giant Mimir. He has stood so long guarding his Sacred Well of Memory he has grown as living stone into the mountain just as we have grown into the landscape. We will open to you when you are ready.' What could you learn from Stan by being willing to lay yourself, your body, up against it and listen? Is it a barrier or a guardian? Is it a megalith unmovable or a portal? What relationship do you have with the Jotnar, the elemental beings from the beginning of time?
The runes don’t belong to Odin. They’re not his, nor are they his to give. They existed shimmering and vibrating in the great universal matrix, the mother womb, long before he grabbed a handful of them from the web.
It’s time to take back, from Odin, that handful of runes and return them to the whole. Rather than looking at Odin’s actions as something favorable, why not shift perspective? What if his actions were about entitlement? ‘I’m going to do this great sacrificial thing and then I have the right to take some of the runes and claim them for myself. ‘ Rather than believing Odin did us a favor, why not consider the possibility that the scream came because he tore a hole in the gap when he wrenched the runes from the web? If rune wisdom is universal wisdom that has existed from the beginning isn’t it available to all of us? Why would we need a god to make a sacrifice? Isn’t this just another ‘we should be so grateful-we need to be saved’ story? Always working with the runes in reference to Odin dishonors them and in fact limits our ability to form and develop relationship with them ourselves. The commonly accepted belief is that the Gar rune represents Odin’s spear, the one he used in his sacrificial ordeal. What was the wisdom of Gar before Odin? One of the ways I see Gar is as the beautiful pattern that’s formed when the two runes Gebo and Ingwaz are bound together. I call it the gift of Ing. It’s very sexual in nature, the shape of the Ingwaz rune being the vaginal portal or opening with the Gebo rune laid on top. The slightest pressure on the center causes the four lines of Gebo to fold up toward each other making it possible to pass through to the other side. The offering, the gift, the sacrifice passed through the opening of fertility. Gar is one of the most complex of rune shapes. For some it’s the ending rune, for others the beginning. For the runes, it’s both. All the runes are tattooed on my arms with the exception of Gar. It’s tattooed on the back of my left hand right next to the dragon. Gar asked me one night to be silent and still so it could show me something. What I saw was how the god Ingvi Freyr was brought, long ago, to the British Isles by the Germanic tribes and how they worshiped and honored him each year by pulling him in a wagon around the countryside in a circuit that was formed by the shape of Gar. The rune pattern was superimposed over the entire island in such a way that it mirrored a star pattern that was present in the night sky at a certain time of year. As the wagon and the people followed the circuit they’d stop and perform a ritual at each point where the lines of the Gar rune intersected. These intersections were marked by standing stones that could be likened to needles inserted into acupuncture points. The rituals activated and insured the fertility of the land. What can you see in the silence when the handful of runes are returned to the whole and the tear is mended?
There’s a river that separates the realm of the gods from the land of the giants. Ifing the river is called. Ifing, the River of Doubt. It runs so swiftly that ice never forms on it. It runs so swiftly it’s difficult to cross.
Why does there need to be a separation between the gods and the giants? Why would this separation be called Doubt? And how is it that Thor crosses over so easily? He’s most definitely giant through his mother’s line. She is Jord, giantess of earth and soil, land and crops, and the daughter of Nott, the giantess of Night. Thor most often gets placed in the Aesir pantheon along side Odin but rarely does anyone remember that he is more than half giant. So is Odin for that matter. And they both cross over the river into other realms. Thor is a storm god much loved and honored by the people. He is roaring thunder and flashes of lightning that strike the earth and fertilize the soil. His hammer is used in the blessing rituals of new brides, imparting fertility. His hammer is hung on the plow as it turns the soil in spring thus assuring abundant crops for the coming year. When Thor arrives in the storm, in his chariot drawn by goats, does he use his hammer to impregnate his mother? Is this yet another story of the mother who gives birth to a son who becomes her lover? The frost giants are called Thurs so perhaps Thurisaz is the rune of these giants. If so, they appeared at the very beginning out of the chaos of fire and ice. Does Thurisaz carry with it some of the chaos that exists at the moment of emerging? When it shows itself randomly in your life or in a reading it might do well to ponder. What is my river of doubt? Which side of the river am I on? Where am I the most comfortable? How easy is it for me to cross over? What impregnates me and when I give birth, who claims my firstborn? Do I deny or ignore the parts of me that carry the lineage of the giants of chaos? Do I favor instead only the parts that the high gods approve? |
title Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash
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