Freyja
Runes & Seidr -
4
-
first edition March 1999
Imbloc
Ordering of the
FuŽark
There are many
theories as to rune sequencing but what if the order of the Futhark
surprisingly dictates the chronology of the Ages as their events pass.
In so much as there were three ages:-
Age 1: Primeval Age
of Creation
Fehu
: Audhumla cosmic cow
Uruz : Bull-Giant Ymir
Thurs : From his feet, all the giants come into being
Ansuz : the gods are born from the world tree
Raido : A raid is made on Ymir....kill the beast did ODIN VILLE VE
causing a sea of blood?
Kenaz : Ymir is "torched", shedding light on the situation. Some sort
of burning takes place (Lodur-Surt?). Knowledge or wisdom is involved
(Mimir).
Gebo: A sacrifice is made so that something may be given. Could it be
Odin hanging on the tree? Ymir is ground to Give forth the earth. Or
perhaps Heimdall taken human form to teach the races of men??
Wunjo : This brings a false sense of Peace, and a sense of joy. The
world seems to have been set aright.
Age 2: But then, The
Frost War Starts
Hagalaz
: The Fimbulwinter started by Weland. WAR what is it good for?
Nauthiz
: This comes about as a result of the god's Need for gifts or
perhaps their need for Idunn's golden apples?. They also must rely on
all their wits in this Frost War.
Isa
: The whole world is frozen as a result. ICE ICE everywhere. Time
of Ice Begins?
Jera
: The Harvest God is seized by the giants, the seasons go awry,
harvests won't come in. Loki steps in?
Eihwaz : Idunn falls from the Tree into the Wolfdales.
Perthro : Heimdall, Bragi, and Loki visit Wyrd for advice. The Aesir
must take their chances. Mimir seizes Weland.
Algiz : Idunn is brought back to the holy, sacred
temple of Asgard
where she is protected. Weland is burnt.
Suwilo : The sun wins out and shines again. However, its
protector,Balder, is lost. Death of Balder?
Age 3: The World-War
Between the Aesir and Vanir
Tyr : There is a dispute amongst the gods, and they must decide in
council regarding weregilds.
Berkano : Burnt a witch who springs to life again and again like the
birch.Gullveig is reborn thrice...her final form Hella (giantess Leikn)
Ehwaz : Sleipnir is seized by Njord, used to storm Asgard. Odin must
flee on Sleipnir.
Mannaz : The Aesir must pass down to Manaheim. The war spreads to the
world of
men. Very LOTR..Lord of the Rings?
Laguz : There is a "washing" as Loki is flushed out by Njord.Age of
floods?
Inguz : Freyr must travel as Frodi to earth to free the folk.
Othila : The ancient folk-lands are restored. Odin is returned to his
inheritance in Asgard.
Dagaz : Modern days start and the runes get re-invented
Perhaps when Othinn won the runes, he created templates hidden in the
futhark sequencing to figuring out what was going to happen at each
phase or leave a record for us mortals.
Adapted from the creative mythologies of Viktor Rydberg, William Reaves and Carla
O'Harris
Heimdall's Holy Runes
Mimir originally
possessed the sacred knowledge of runes, which Heimdall
taught mankind and
which is so useful for them to know. Mimir, however, did not
intrinsically possess this knowledge, but had gathered it from the
well of wisdom that he guarded under the World-Tree's central root.
Through self-sacrifice in his youth, Othinn, as has already been told,
received a drink from it and nine rune songs, called fimbul-songs that
contain secret beneficial powers.
Among the fimbul-songs,
the following should be noted:
1.
Mind-runes
that aid in
knowledge and wisdom;
2.
Help/Healing-runes
that ease a child's
entry into the world and allay sorrow and worry; and grant curative
power;
3.
Runes that free the limbs from bonds;
4.
Surf-runes that cleanse the air of harmful beings and give
power over wind and wave when sailors need to be rescued at sea and
power over fire when it threatens men's homes;
5.
Runes for protection against witchcraft;
6.
Speech-runes
which return the
power of speech to the mute and the silenced;
7.
Victory-runes
which are sung when
facing an enemy army. Then, the warriors lift their shields level with
their upper lips and sing in low tones, so that their many voices
blend together in a dull roar, like breakers on the shore. If they
hear Othinn's voice join in with their own, then they know that he
will grant them victory. Then "he sings under their shields," and they
become victors on the battlefield;
8.
Runes that take the strength from the love-potions;
9.
Runes that extinguish enmity and hate and produce friendship
and love.
Mind-runes are of
various types and comprise both earthly and spiritual knowledge. Both
men and women, whether highborn or lowborn, strive for them and
likewise for healing-runes, which are inherited within some noble
families. Here is a prayer requesting healing-runes: "Hail to the
Aesir! Hail to the Asynjes! Hail to the beneficent Earth (the
earth-goddess Frigg)! Eloquence and wisdom grant to us, and healing
hands while we live!" The fundamental character of this rune-lore
bears distinctly the stamp of nobility. The runes of eternity united
with those of the earthly life can scarcely have any other reference
than to the heathen doctrines concerning religion and morality. These
were looked upon as being for all time, and of equal importance to the
life hereafter. Together with physical runes with magic power - that
is, runes that gave their possessors power over the hostile forces of
nature - we find runes intended to serve the cause of sympathy and
mercy.
The knowledge of
Holy Runes
-
Odin
spread the
knowledge of runes amongst the Aesir
-
The Elves
Dain and Dvalin (Mimir's
sons) spread the knowledge of runes amongst the elven and dwarf
races
-
Heimdall
in his mortal form
of Rig carried the runes to mankind.
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.
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