I know that I hung
on a wind battered tree
nine long nights,
pierced by a spear and given to Óðinn,
myself to myself,
on that tree
whose roots grow in a place
no one has ever seen.No one gave me food,
no one gave me drink.
At the end I peered down,
I took the runes -
screaming, I took them -
and then I fell.- Rúnatal, Hávamál, The Poetic Edda (Cōdex Rēgius)
First, as with most things necessary in this world of judgement and jumping to conclusions, a disclaimer:
This entry deals with a certain level of esoteric beliefs that, for many reasons I fully understand and acknowledge, may be completely irrational.
I acknowledge that, when dealing with the subject of Norse Mythology, there is a modern take on the ancient Vikings and pagan beliefs that has elevated a certain level of mysticism that scholars simply have no reasonable evidence to corroborate on.
This is primarily due to two inescapable truths:
1. Most of the surviving artifacts - items, rune stones, etc, have extremely mundane translations utilizing Elder and Younger Futhark runes. Almost always to denote some sort of factual, boring account: "So-and-so made this" or "Here I bury my son, so-and-so".
2. The manuscripts that would go on to become things like the iconic Poetic Edda , containing all of the lore, originally come from manuscripts like the Cōdex Rēgius, translated hundreds of years after the peak Viking era, and well after those pagan cultures were converted to Christianity. These second-hand accounts are especially confounding in their iconography, such as the popular Vegvísir (Viking Compass), and Ægishjálmur (Helm of Awe) which often appear in several variations, some of which simultaneously invoke the divine powers of Odin, Thor, Jesus, AND Mary... all within the same spell.
The reality of a people, concerned primarily with surviving in a harsh environment with limited resources, does lend itself to a more pragmatic view of their language. Elder futhark rune meanings likely had more mnemonic purposes rather than mystic symbolism. Bindrunes were more of a space-saving or "stylistic" way of combining runes, rather than “magic bindings”, and nearly all staves originate in manuscripts confounded with Christianity iconography which do not trace back to any truly pagan primary sources.
End disclaimer...
Depressing. Well, despite all this very rational understanding – I still find myself in a difficult place trying to reconcile the scholarly views vs two key observations:
1) The idea, that for a set of otherwise "mundane" phonetic runes, the skálds would dedicate an entire section in the Hávamál to the excruciating trouble Odin puts himself through just to obtain them, seems odd to me. Having to sacrifice himself, to himself, at the world tree Yggdrasill and rip them screaming into knowledge gained from the Well of Urd, and add to that, how other sections of the Edda speak to "wise men" knowing how to use the runes for more than just language - how to carve them, how to invoke them for spells, etc., it just seems a bit sus that the remainder of the culture would simply devalue the runes down to phonetic oblvision.
I mean, not even Christianity dedicates anything significant to the discovery of language or letters - language simply exists. seemingly as a product of man..
"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words" - Genesis 11:1
A product that becomes a problem for God. when the people use this common language to try to organize and build a tower to heaven (Genesis 11:4), causing God to put an end to that nonsense quick, fast, and in a hurry:
"Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth." - Genesis 11:7-9
An example of this selective preservation comes at the heals of Christian Scholars transcribing the wine sacraments found in the Greek Dionysian Mysteries, which were the primary influence for the Christian Eucharist. They adopted the motions of consuming a blessed wine, but scrubbed the divine aspects like the role of psychedelics in the preparation, which was crucial to the true divine nature of the original sacrament. What survived, then, was a hollow simulacrum of the original traditions, which leaves me wondering how much of the magic of the runes were similarly scrubbed . (See: Immortality Key and the work of Brian Muraresku)
2) Second, and way more close to home, and the real point of this entire entry, is me trying to reconcile a scholarly perspective of a dead runic language, and a very real and modern inspiration I encountered on a vision quest that led me to this:
Now, this final iteration is obviously stylized – not only in terms of the graphic visuals, but also in the expression of the bindrune comprised of raidō, ansuz, and tīwaz in a repeated arrangement around the central hagalaz rune. The runes initially presented themselves in a singular alignment (more on this soon), so this particular "stave" arrangement came afterwards as reflection on my original vision, and an internal gut feeling to present the concepts as a "many roads lead out of chaos" wheel, admittedly and likely inspired by the likes of Vegvísir, and Ægishjálmur to create a symbolic, stylized representation.
So what happened?
Well, I quite frankly “saw” these runes presented to me in a vision. I won’t sugar coat it. 6 grams of dried psilocybe semilanceata is a sure-fire way to put oneself in an altered state of consciousness where visions like these are entirely possible.
To this end, I’ve had a small number of rare, ego-death level sessions where I’d asked the universe to reveal some level of esoteric truth or meaning to me, to which my subconscious and whatever other entities out there in the ether flooded me with roller-coasters of emotions, feelings, and visions.
Almost always, the visuals are geometric – fractal, too complex to remember, and never really anything religious or otherwise branded and readily identifiable in the real world as sacred geometry or the like.
But this time… this was the first, and only, time I had ever been presented with any sort of concrete iconography I could later recall. I cannot underscore enough how odd this was. I’m not a “rune caster”, or a self-proclaimed pagan. Hel, I’m not even Scandinavian – my lineage is almost entirely Iberian, and as such, my family is almost entirely Catholic as a result. (I managed to escape)
Growing up, I only had the top level, basic understanding of Norse mythology that the average American possesses – of Odin and Loki and Thor and Ragnarök as surface level as any Marvel movie would care to portray. More recently, I did have basic exposure to shows like Vikings, and games like God of War, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, so I was later exposed to a few more characters and stories, like Mímir, Jörmungandr, Hel… and generally exposed to the runes visually on carvings, shields, face paint, and other related visuals pertaining to those games/movies/shows.
Finally, I had recently discovered the "amplified history" music genre, where the likes of Wardruna, Heilung, and Danheim exposed my subconscious to deeper lore (although I had no translatable knowledge of Old Norse, Norwegian or Islandic to guide me).
The only Futhark runes I could easily identify at the time were that of Tiwaz, aka Tyr’s “victory rune”, as one of the runes I looked up because I couldn’t understand why Vikings were obsessed with painting “Up Arrows” on all their war gear, and þurisaz in reference to the "thorn" rune used in one of the early Halloween movies as the mystical mark on Michael Myers.
So one could argue that I was, perhaps, subconsciously primed for what came next, but regardless, there I was, an hour into an ominous trip where I stood face-to-face with a chaotic, turbulent swirling portal of… black sleeting ice, for lack of better identification. (it was a cold, yet burning, black swirl of fluid and hail).
It was
difficult to stare into, but at one point I felt compelled to do so, and I
could see the slanted "H" shape of Hagalaz clearly within it. I recalled the shape, but had no perceived connection to a meaning, yet. The dread, at the time, was a gut feeling that, in order for me to “progress” or “move through”, I had to face this
chaotic turbulence and somehow step through it. But I was scared, not
knowing what was on the other side.
While I totally understood the “victory” concept of Tīwaz, I still didn't understand how to get through the chaos safely or why I was even being presented with the situation to begin with.
It was then that I noticed something else as I peered around the chaos storm. A second, different kind of arrow was just ahead of Tīwazit, also in line with the path leading out from the back of the storm. This arrow was odd, in that both arms of the point were on the same side. This rune was Ansuz, but I had no frame of reference for this rune either. It simply... gave me comfort, and subconscious peace to see this overall arrangement.
The final rune, raidō, didn't actually manifest as a giant "R" in my vision, it simply appeared as a literal path leading from the backside of the freezing chaos portal, passing directly through the two beacon runes in a straight line.
As I mentioned, seeing this road, with the pleasant outcome on the other side, changed my fundamental feeling towards the chaos storm. I was still apprehensive, sure, but no longer afraid to pass through with dignity and honor.
Sadly, I can't tell you how the journey went, though, because the moment I took the step into the portal, I was immediately snapped back to reality, lying in a dark, quiet room.
Later, sober, I immediately took to looking into the runes I was presented, and reflecting on the overall experience. I first had to figure that there were in fact two different runic alphabets, Elder and Younger Futhark. Thankfully, the presence of Ansuz helped, as it is absent from the Younger Futhark.
From there, (Please suspend scholarly skepticism for a moment), I discovered the general consensus among those who ascribe some level of meaning to each of the Elder Futhark runes. In these subsequent studies, the shapes I saw made a whole lot more sense:
- Hagalaz - Hail, calamity, obstacles, chaos, uncertainty, adversity, etc. To me this felt like a fair representation of the amorphous storm portal I was faced with right at the beginning, and why this rune takes it's place front-and-center in the final stave. Chaos, adversity, and uncertainty confront us at every turn in this life. It's unavoidable.
- Raidō - The ride, the journey. This rune, I attributed to the significance of the path from my vision. I initially added it to explicitly represent the significance of the road I was shown. Much later, as I learned about the concept of Bindrunes, I thought perhaps, the "line" of the path was shown without rune imagery as a dual-purpose of binding the ansuz and tīwaz runes together, which visually creates a bit of a "road" naturally. As such, I suppose the raidō rune is therefore optional/redundant within the stave configuration, but I still like having it explicitly called out. Finally, as far as positioning, you will notice the rune starts partially within the Hagalaz circle - this is intentional to signify that there's a road out of chaos and uncertainty.
- Ansuz - "God/Odin", but also wisdom, knowledge, understanding, communication. This later resonated as the "how" portion of overcoming adversity. This clarified my perspective on the original juxtaposition of Hagalaz to Tīwaz. Seeing Tyr's "victory rune" and having the freezing portal initially made it all seem very physical, but it was clear after looking into Ansuz that the vision was existential, metaphorical, and mental. This is is what primarily led me to concluding that it was a metaphor for personal growth - overcoming adversity, working through problems through communication, learning, and understanding.
- Tīwaz - God/Tyr, victory, but also honor, and sacrifice. The deeper study of this rune, also proved to be a bit of a surprise over what I thought I knew about it originally. At first, I thought I was being shown "the payoff" or reward of walking the path; the "why do it". But it's fascinating that this rune can also be interpreted as further extension of the "how" that Ansuz begins - that is, to walk the path in such a way that you conduct yourself with honor, and with the understanding that sometimes it takes great sacrifice as means to some ends, as reflected in the rune poems for Tīwaz that recount Tyr's sacrifice during the Binding of Fenrir. It was this duality of Tiwaz being both "how" and "why" which gave me the final design idea to arrange repeating path bindrunes around the circle, in each of the cardinal and intercardinal directions. A stylistic choice, sure, but also one that represents the idea that there are often several paths of freedom out of uncertainty - but no matter the direction, we should always strive to pick a path that includes knowledge, understanding, justice, and sacrifice to achieve honorable victory.
Nú eru Háva mál
kveðin Háva höllu í,
allþörf ýta sonum,
óþörf jötna sonum;
heill sá, er kvað,
heill sá, er kann,
njóti sá, er nam,
heilir, þeirs hlýddu.
