Romancing the Runes

Water has been popping up repeatedly and I just finally noticed it. I have been working with Freya and ancestry work.  It is slow going. Much of that has to do with my closed adoption. I have no information about my biological family and my adopted family was negligent or abusive. Lots of baggage there. I'm not really comfortable working with them. Maybe my grandmother would be open, but not real steady about the rest. I re-read my devotional poem for Freya and noticed the association with water for her. I guess in my mind I made that connection. Not quite sure why personally. Lady with the Cup is one explanation. Connecting her to wyrd, The Norns, and the well of wyrd may be another.  But in my most recent meditation she took me to a sea shore and told me I would be coming back again a few times. I think I need to process something and it might be connected to my ancestor work. Then there was the lucid dreaming I had a few nights ago. Last night my dreams were vivid too...

Today I went to put back the runes out of the box I was using to separate the ones I was reading from the ones I still had to draw. Two stones fell onto the table. Tiwaz and Uruz.  I see this as good health, strength combined with victory and right order.  I need to keep up with my Tae Kwon Do and make sure to drill myself a few times a week when not in class to keep up fitness levels and skill levels.  I had a special class with the Black Belt Club on Saturdays.  Tons of kicking and sliding kicking drills. My hips are so sore. I think my pattern is getting better.  Definitely need to keep it up.

I'll be starting another cycle of runes soon. I'm going to take a break and get back to my research on women's mysteries and the goddesses of old Europe. I have some busy work to get done over the next month but it will be glasswork and spiritual work after that. This next cycle will look at the runes with women in mind specifically.  Currently reading: Sacred Gifts: Reciprocity and the Gods by Kirk S Thomas Freya: The Great Goddess of the North by Britt-Mari Nasstrom The Maiden with the Mead by Maria Kvilhaug Trying to piece together archaeology and lore based practices or beliefs involving women's roles in religion and society.  I'm not looking to recreate or do any kind of SCA type of thing.  But I do intend to try to ground what I am doing in facts.  I do want some connection between the rituals that I'm going to write and create, and what my female ancestors may have actually done. I'm feeling a bit sluggish lately. I don't know if it...

I pulled this rune before Berkano on the last two runes to be worked on in this cycle of the Blog.  I'm in NH at the moment and I can hear drumming. Don't know if that's the start of the masked ball next door or just my imagination. I would have loved to have gone but I am exhausted after peopl-ing all day.   Yeah, it's drums. Dagaz was one of the first runes I sold in glass today. One of my first sales for the day in the first hour.  Witches don't believe in coincidences. I've been hit with some inspiration that I am going to try very hard to live up to. The next cycle of runes will be with Freya Aswynn's work on runes and Northern traditions.  I want to go over each rune and interpret them exclusively from a woman's perspective. I will look at the esoteric meaning of the rune to see how it connects to women's daily lives and a woman's lived experience.  Instead of looking at the runes as having a neutral meaning, or focusing on warriors and...

Berkano was actually the last rune I pulled. I published the entries out of order. Given my cyclical path with the runes it makes sense to end on a rue that is also associated with birth and rites of passage. It seems to point to the work I will be doing in developing a deeper ritual practice.  I'm specifically working on women's rituals, a focus on the divine feminine and an attempt to recover this specific slice of women's history.  There's not much to go on but I will do what I can. There are a lot of great scholars and researchers out there who are already doing the kinds of research I can review and put into practice.  ********************************************************* Translation : Germanic:       Berkano Old Eng:         Beorc Mod Eng:       Birch Phonetic:        B                           ...

Perthro was the next rune I pulled a few days ago. Around that time I had a dream. It is still kind of fuzzy but I ended up in a counseling office.  He told me to sit on his side of the desk and he sat on the patient's side of the desk. We were talking about something superficial but it led to my past and my messed up family history. The counselor was a middle aged man in a blue shirt with white/silver wavy hair.  Very benevolent aura.  I got the impression later in meditations that I need to connect Perthro with this dream I had. I think I might need to investigate how this messed up childhood effects my layers of orlog and my wyrd. I've gone over my rage and resentment, how it effects my behavior now on a psychological level but I've never done pathworking with this information. Especially in a way that I could use to manipulate or heal my wyrd. I remember a workshop I took two summers ago about ancestral karma and healing a family line's karma.  I think this...