But there was also a great evil that knew of runes!

Gullveig’s lnverted Runes

Out of anguish she has made magic to make the world pay for her wounds, and she wants her dividends in gold. Lost child of the sun, born from an incestuous crime, she has returned to the gods who bred her to wreak the havoc that lies in her soul. Serving as a handmaiden, and acting as their friend, she sows the seeds of discord that will prove their undoing, and befriends Freyja, who teaches her the art of joining minds and projecting the soul forth to make magic. With these soul-arts, she proceeds to pervert the holy runes and turn them towards her own ends.

Who is she? She is Hyrrokin, the "Fire-Smoked", Hyndla, the "Bitch", "Mother of Wolves", Gullveig, "Drunk on Gold", "Gold-Digger", Angrboda, "Boder of Anguish", daughter of Hrimnir, sister of Horse-Thief, Heid, bright child of Lodur and his daughter Sol, abandoned in Jotunheim in the beginning of time with her twin brother, handsome, lithe, and mischevious.

Let us see what she does to the holy runes:

Fehu: Money is meant to circulate, but Gullveig turns this to a hoarding power. Instead of the flow of mutual funding in the credit union of the tribe that allows festivity and fertility to be at its full, Gullveig inspires a materialism that becomes “a source of discord among kinsmen; the wolf lives in the forest” according to the Norwegian Rune Poem, and the wolf here referred to is surely her kinsmen bred in the Iron Woods. Freyr and Freya want Fehu to be a source of wealth in the largest sense of the term, but Gullveig brings it to its most narrow and greedy.

Uruz: With this rune inversed, Angrboda emasculates the principle of independence in a person, letting them think they are bold and macho and independent, but actually, she has them wrapped around her fingers.She sells a false sense of independence while fostering actual, manipulative dependence.

Thurs: With this, she multiplies the spirits of hunger that gnaw at the soul, and breeds unnatural vengeance.

Ansuz: The sweetest talker one has ever known, she knows how to use the magic of speech to flatter, charm, seduce, lead ; and, she is also capable of cursing up a storm. Swipdag (Erik) found this out when he challenged her to a flyting in Saxo, Book Five, but since he was Odr (eloquent), he beat her, and gained Brisingamen back for Freya. Gullveig was furious.

Raido: With this inverted rune, Gullveig leads people down false paths, roads that lead nowhere, dead ends.

Kenaz: With this torch, Heid shows her brilliance, searching far and wide for the secrets of the cosmos. She has a deep hunger for knowledge, but not wisdom. Because of her great knowledge, she was sought out by both Odin (Balder’s Dreams) and Freya (Hyndla’s Lay) to discover things past and future. This is an intense intelligence that is able to know things to the end of the universe, but it does not aim at whole-making, but self-aggrandizement.

Gebo: These are gifts with strings attached, strings of guilt, obligation, and dependency. Gullveig doesn’t give to establish a relationship, but an advantage.

Wunjo: Gullveig turns Win-Joy, the joys of mastery and friendship, into Schadenfreude, a ghoulish delight in the destruction and downfall of others. When victory for us does not mean our enrichment but rather the cruel love of someone else getting crushed, Gullveig has turned the magic of Win-Joy into its opposite.

Hagalaz: Here is cursing at its greatest power, a blitzkrieg storm of maleficia blasted at whoever she thinks is her opponent. Woe be to the one in the way of this narcissistic rage! Do you have something she wants, and won’t give it to her? Have you stood in the way of her blind ambition?

Nauthiz: Here necessity becomes the excuse for suspending frith and traditional rights : because there are terrorists, because there are criminals, it is necessary to go to war and give up your rights, etc. Necessity is no longer the mother of invention, but the excuse for tyranny.

Jera: The passing of the year with its seasons and harvests is not a moment for reflection and wonderment, but merely the time for inventory and to assess productivity and profit margins. Gullveig turns and thus drains the celebration of its blood. (Typical, as she is often the inverse of Freyr and Freya, freols-gods.)

Eiwaz: Ronald Reagan put this one best, “If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.” Trees are for lumber, a forest is so many board-feet, and anything else is tree-hugger sentimentality.

Perthro: There is no doubt that Gullveig is skilled in prophecy, but why is it that her imagination is so limited she can only see anguish? This is self-fulfilling prophecy ; the well of wyrd reflects the good faith or bad faith we bring to it, and though bad things happen with the good, our imagination incarnates much of the good or evil we fear. Perthro is also about taking chances, but instead of taking chances for soulful things that enrich ourselves and our kin, Gullveig encourages foolhardy risks for the lowest common denominator. She may also encourage risk that leads to disaster out of her sense of Schadenfreude. She did this when she encouraged Hodur to vow to take Nanna from Balder.

Algiz: The closest thing to a sacred enclosure that Heid knows is a barbed wire fence around Fort Knox, or the kinds of bonds placed around a heart to keep them from feeling any true emotion. A “national park” to Gullveig is a place to drill oil, mine, and harvest forest-products, and any idea of a “sacred grove” seems like so much ridiculous nonsense to her. This inverted rune seems to be in favor with the present administration.

Sowilo: Despite her bright nature, Gullveig has no love for the sun. This is not because she is evil. Gullveig is not evil. She is, however, yfil : she goes too far. Gullveig feels abandoned by the light. Sol’s beams penetrate her and call for emotional growth and healing, and to Gullveig that is weak sentimentality that allows one to be manipulated. She doesn’t want everything in the light. She uses the light to blind, and direct her where she needs to be. And yet she herself is a fallen daughter of Sol, the sad, anguished product of her adolescent womb. Here we may and must have compassion for Gullveig, and we ask that her brightness be reunited with the truthful splendour of her mother.

Tiwaz: Turning flexible thew into rigid legality, or slipping through loopholes, the spirit of the law is lost for the letter, and better that it be a maze that the smart can decipher while spinning the masses into confusion, for the last thing she wants is for people to have honest confrontations that allow them to air out their differences. That kind of law creates forthrightness and the lack of emotional baggage that makes manipulation very difficult. Instead, she turns the legal sphere into a realm of such frustration that no remedies can bring about honest settlements. Alternatively, she takes the heroic fight for justice,and twists the ideals so they are serving baser interests : while claiming to fight for democracy, for example, oil fields are being seized ; while claiming to Christianise the heathen, Odal lands are being privatized and placed in the hands of the Church.

Berkano: She turns this power of renewal into a power to sap, and this rune works in the service of vampirism. While Berkano is naturally about finding one’s ability to renew oneself by going deep to one’s roots, inverted, it never goes to its roots, but parasites upon someone else in order to feel alive. This is the hallmark of the disposable, consumer culture where something new and exotic is needed all the time to make up for the lack of rootlessness, and as Gullveig knows, it makes a lot of money.

Ehwaz: Properly speaking a power of participatory projection in which one identifies with the other, Gullveig penetrates into the other in order to see how to seduce them to their ends. I recently saw an example of this on a website in which “playa’s” were sharing secrets on how to seduce women with boyfriends, by closely observing their psychological habits and weaknesses, and then exploiting them. This is where Gullveig turns Freya’s loving art of seidr, the identification with the fylgia, the wild spirit on the other side that can permeate the spirit of the other and inspire amazing changes, into an upside-down art of spiritual machiavellianism.

Mannaz: As taught by Heimdall, this rune is about the frith of different classes of men working together as one humanity, and the rune allows for a deep understanding of human nature. Scrying with an eye of anguish, she, however, scoops out a philosophy of every man for himself and man versus man, dog eat dog. Any divisions that can be made are divisions that can be used to conquer, and she has a riot using all the various forms of racism, classism, sexism, religious supremacy, etc. to create a class war of all against all, while standing on the sidelines and profiting, in the spirit of an international banker or arms dealer.

Laguz: Properly the layering of habits to build good character or law, this inverted is the layering of unwyrd, bad habits, a process of laying down easily exploited traits, and thus is a process of conditioning that can include flattery and seduction; of course, once these are well laid down, it is very difficult to root them out. One layer of pain and wounding may be healed, only for other deeper layers to come on line. Gullveig would never allow Freya to use her Art to heal all of her layers.

Ingwaz: Perhaps the most blatant example of greed’s inversion of the genetic potential is modern genetically-engineered foods, whose genetic pollution is invading even crops of farmers who want natural organics. Monsanto may have something to teach Gullveig here, that is, if she is not the inspiration behind them, which we may suspect she is! If Ingwaz is about taking good seeds and giving them fertile soil, she takes good seeds and makes sure the ground is barren, while developing bad seeds as far as she can. No wheat but tares!

Dagaz: One day at a time, indeed. Gullveig has great patience when it comes to unfurling her plans, and yet every day is as worthless as the next in terms of inherent worth, and so can only be compensated by ornamentation and status, and thus, no day is really fully enjoyed. Instead it is spent fretting on how to turn the day to the greatest profit (rather than joy).

Othala: One of the greatest threats to Gullveig is strong and free clan-inheritance. As quickly as possible, she privatizes this and subjects it to taxation, fines, and fiduciary structures that subject the once-inalienable land of freeholders to the ravages of the market. She did this in Europe, and when she came to America, made sure that Congress privatized the Native American communal odal as well, certain to break their spirit.

In conclusion

These are just a few examples of how Gullveig inverts the holy power of the runes, and it is evident, unfortunately, that these inverted powers are alive and well in the world today. Let no one mistake this as some stereotyped critique of greedy women; Gullveig takes up residence in any creature who will give her berth, and is one of the most dangerous and difficult spirits to eradicate. After all, the gods tried three times, and after that gave up and just banished her to the Ironwoods. For myself, I would rather choose Freyr and Freya’s joys, yet sometimes when I look at the Statue of Liberty, I wonder whether people are seeing Freya, or Gullveig.