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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in runes

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Ramping Up with More Rune Readings

I'm doing more rune readings now. I've evolved my rune casting techniques over the years, and am now doing them more intuitively than I did before. I have a stronger connection to Odin now than I did before. Also, long time readers may recall that I received a new rune set that I felt was going to help me connect more with female ancestral power when I read the runes. It worked out great and has really made my readings more smoothly intuitive.

For years now, I've taught rune classes, read runes for charity at Pagan Pride Day fundraisers, and did the occasional rune casting for people in my social network, either in person or online. My first rune readings were all in person, and then my first professional rune readings were by phone, but in the internet age I've come to find I really like the format of doing my rune readings via messaging, chat, or email. 

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Vikings, Runes, and a Fern

The Interrupted Fern (Osmunda claytoniana) is a bit unusual as most ferns go. The first time I saw a row of them at the edge of the meadow, from a distance I thought they looked like a line of aliens coming out of the woods. On closer inspection, I saw that they were very weird, indeed.
      As it matures, this fern develops into a vase shape that reaches three to four feet tall and has fertile and sterile fronds. In the early spring, the upright fertile fronds appear first with a section near the top of the plant with brown spore-producing leaflets. After releasing the spores, these leaflets fall away leaving a gap along the stem. The sterile fronds sprout up around the fertile fronds and create the plant’s graceful shape.
      As usual, I wanted to find out more about this plant I’d never seen before. The species name honors Virginia botanist John Clayton (1694 – 1773) — standard stuff — but the genus proved to be far more interesting and a little obscure. Osmunda is in the Osmundaceae botanical family, which is also known as the Royal Fern family. It was so named because the fertile leaflets, which usually appear at the top of the fronds gives the plant the appearance of wearing a crown. Except for the species in my field, which is interrupted and not crowned.
      The origin of the genus name is not certain, but it is said to honor someone called Osmund, Osmundus, or Asmund. One story associated with it comes from Saxon mythology and is about Osmund the Waterman of Loch Fyne on the west coast of Scotland. According to the legend, he hid his wife and daughter on a small island covered with these ferns to keep them safe during a Viking raid. His daughter is said to have named the fern after him.
      Although Saint Osmund of Salisbury and the Swedish archbishop of Skara, Osmundus, are often cited as potential name sources, so too is Åsmund Kåresson. The names Osmund, Osmundus, Asmund or Åsmund have a Norse/Germanic/Icelandic origin and are composed of the word Os or Ás meaning “god” and mund, “protection.” In terms of the runes, these meanings are found in the Younger Futhark symbol As, and the Anglo-Saxon Os, which are versions of the Elder Futhark Ansuz. This brings us full circle back to Åsmund Kåresson who was the earliest known rune carver in the province of Uppland, Sweden. The eleventh-century Ängby Stone is attributed to him.
      Magically, like most ferns the Interrupted Fern is associated with protection, defense, and security. Allied with the runic interpretation of Osmund, it may suggest special protection from deities. This plant’s energy is an aid for runic study and readings. In spending some time with this fern, I concluded that its interrupted feature carries a message. Life will always throw curveballs that knock us off course and there are times when we need to put things on hold. Life interrupted. However, sometimes they can provide a meaningful break, an interlude and chance to reassess things. Don’t be frustrated by an interruption, instead, find out what it means.

 

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Did the Runes Originate With an Act of Gay Sex?

 

James Kirkup's scurrilous, and surprisingly tender, poem “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name,” in which a Roman centurion makes love to (and with) the dead body of the crucified Jesus, has been twisting the nuts of pious Christians since 1977.

Behold, the heathen iteration.

 

If you've been pagan for more than 16 minutes, you will no doubt be familiar with the famous Rúnatál (“Song of the Runes”) from Hávamál, in which Óðinn discovers the runes in a heroic act of literal self-sacrifice, cited here in Carolyne Larrington's 1999 translation:

 

139 I know that I hung

on a windy tree

nine long nights,

wounded with a spear,

dedicated to Óðinn,

myself to myself,

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run.

 

140 No bread they gave me,

or a drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes,

screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.

 

In the standard reading, Allfather hangs himself from World Ash Yggdrasil (“Steed of the Terrible [One]” presumably Óðinn himself), and runs himself through with a spear: the standard manner of human sacrifices offered to Óðinn. It is this terrible sacrifice which enables him to discover, and seize, the Runes, those mystic building-blocks from which what is, is made.

But how if what the Rúnatál describes is no literal hanging, with branch, rope, and swinging corpse?

What if Rúnatál is actually describing (in a very graphic sense) an act of impalement?

What if the destructive-creative act that gave us the Runes was also an act of ergi?

 

In the surviving literature, ergi (noun) and argr (adjective) are terms of abuse, in a semantic field encompassing translations like “shameful”, "unmanly", “effeminate”, and “cowardly.”

As any web-search will show, in our day the terms are not infrequently associated with receptive male-male intercourse, the assumption being that, to those über-butch vikings—as in machismo cultures to this day—it would have been shameful to be (willingly) penetrated.

Whether the Norse-speaking ancestors saw it this way or not has yet to be proven. Still, for the sake of argument, let us grant the premise.

What, then, are the implications that—as anyone conversant in Norse literature knows—Óðinn is himself not infrequently accused of ergi?

Might it be for this that he became known—surely one of his more enigmatic heiti, or by-names—as Jálkr, "eunuch"?

 

Certainly we can say that the Norse found the practice of seiðr by males to be argr: presumably because opening oneself to be a “passive” receptacle is analogous to permitting sexual penetration.

Óðinn, of course, is also said to have (transgressively) practiced seiðr.

 

That the act of receptive intercourse can be an initiatory experience, generating profound, transformative insights, I would be the last to deny.

Did it also—possibly even historically—give us the runes as well?

 

The remaining question here can only be: granted the rest, on whose “tree of life” is Óðinn “hanged”?

(On top, even when he's being receptive. Yep, that would be Óðinn, all right.)

To anyone conversant in the lore, there can really be only one answer: whose else but that of his ettinish oath-brother, whose argr credentials—as himself the mother of Sleipnir—are surely ungainsayable? thus rendering their joint act doubly transgressive.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Rune Stones

Moonstone is reputed to be the most powerful crystal for use in rune stones, the tools used for a specialized form of divination. Runes, or letters from a language used by early Nordic peoples, are carved into the stones and are said to hone and intensify the intuition of the reader divining the future from them. You, too, can use a bag of lustrous and mysterious moonstones to get in touch with your powers of perception.  

While others throw the I Ching or read their horoscopes with their morning coffee, you can pull a rune and contemplate its meaning for your day.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Remember the silly Blank Rune? At least one person on the net does, since someone was recently ranting about Ralph Blum's rune book in my forum. His new way of beating that dead horse was to insist the problem was "cultural appropriation" rather than that the whole idea of a Blank Rune is poppycock.

For those who don't remember those days: Once upon a time, there was hardly anyone on the net and it was not a place to buy books. The only readily publicly available information on modern day Heathenry / Norse / Germanic paganism was in rune magic books in general bookstores. Rune sets were not easily available for purchase. Along came Ralph Blum with a book on rune magic packaged with a rune set. Of course the market gobbled it up. The trouble was, Blum's rune system was mostly bunkum, and the rune sets included the 24 Elder Futhark runes plus an extra Blank Rune.

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  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Yep! Well the 70s and 80s are in fashion right now. Even some electric car makers are jumping on that bandwagon, lol.
  • Victoria
    Victoria says #
    Haha, I remember the days of the blank rune, what a blast from the past.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Magic of the Alphabet

Do you remember learning your letters as a child? When my kids were little we had an alphabet puzzle, very simple, where the letter shapes fit easily into their spaces. Playing with them as an adult I fell back into a sensory reverie—I loved the feel of them. They were fun to manipulate as objects, and the satisfaction of clicking them into place remained with me, bringing me back to a space of childhood sensitivity to the physical world. 

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Archer, It's so cool that you're writing about this. Sometimes I also find myself staring at the letters in a word, just fascinat
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    That's really cool! I'll have to check that book out.

Is the new Sith symbol supposed to look like the Nazi version of Othala with the feet? Because a fellow geek who isn't even a heathen saw it and alerted me to it, so it's not like I'm just seeing Nazis behind every tree. Even a non-specialist noticed it.

If it is a conscious Nazi reference, why the Sith? I mean obviously the Empire is Nazis, that's why their shock troops are called Stormtroopers. But the Sith had a long history before the Empire existed.

When I say the footed Othala is a Nazi symbol, I mean it was used by the German government during World War II. It's also used today by those who admire the Nazis.

Despite the Sith being villains in the Star Wars universe, many fans identify with the Sith, wear their costumes, use their symbols, etc. The Sith are cool. Some fans even see them as the real heroes, since their nemesis the Jedi were revealed in the prequels as a child-stealing cult that props up a massively corrupt government / corporate alliance in the late Republic, which was verging on fascism and setting the stage for the rise of the Empire. Even the fans who recognize the Sith are supposed to be the bad guys still like them and costume as them. Fans are going to wear this symbol. So what does it do, magically?

It's basically the footed Othala, or what heathens call "the wrong Othala," with a circle around it. A circle around a rune doesn't really change the symbol, as the long history of the Peace Sign shows. The Peace Sign is Elhaz-reversed, or an upside-down war rune, with a circle around it.

The regular Othala rune without the feet is a historical letter O in the related alphabets known as futharks. Its magical and religious symbolism is all about the enclosure, the innangarth or "inner yard," meaning one's home or one's village or city. The symbol resembles the wall around a walled city. People are on the inside and wolves are on the outside. Magically, it represents inheritance, either literally, in the form of real estate, the actual physical house, or metaphorically, in the form of talents with which one is born.

The Nazi version of Othala with the feet is a perversion of the Othala symbol, turning the concept of inheritance into a racial symbol of white Aryan heritage. It's disgusting. It's magically and spiritually unclean. Just thinking about it makes me want to flick negative energy away from me. Which I just did, while writing this. That's without even looking at it.

I suggest those who find themselves around this symbol, say at a convention, reinforce their personal psychic shields. They can also cleanse and do whatever they usually do to get rid of bad energy at the end of the day.

You can view the new Sith symbol and learn more on this link:
https://comicbook.com/starwars/news/star-wars-new-sith-symbol-insignia-rise-skywalker/

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Anthony, in many fandoms, a lot of fans don't like change, and Star Wars is no exception. So, maybe I'll be seeing this symbol on
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Aren't there reactionary elements among the fandom that cling to the old Sith symbol and reject the new one as not being authentic

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