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| Raidho/Rit ~ Haindl Rune Oracle |
The rune for this week is Raidho. It is the fifth rune in the Elder Furthark. The Old German version means ‘wagon’ while the Anglo-Saxon version means ‘riding’ or ‘way’. There are themes of movement and cycles in this rune, journey and destination both and implicit in the journey, of course, is the vehicle. Perhaps the buddhist equivalent might be 'right action' which encompasses moral responsibility, initiative, acts of bravery, one's inner compass and the point where dharma and karma intersect.
From the Old English Rune poem Raidho is described:
Riding - to the warrior in the hall - is easy,
But very strenuous for one who sits on top,
Of a powerful horse over long miles.
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| Raidho/Rit ~ Haindl Rune Oracle |
This rune feels particularly relevant this week as we move from the high of the marches that took place around the world into the very real reality of what is the next step in our journey. Raidho acts as the compass that shapes the direction our lives take, a bit like the phrase 'energy flows where attention goes'. A good phrase to hold right now.
In Haindl’s depiction we see a sacred site where rituals are conducted. Partially hidden inside the cave below the runic inscription is something he calls ‘The Stone of the Wise’, green malachite in the form of a sphere. Around the sacred space a natural outcropping of rock serves to protect the area. Day dawns anew. His depiction brings into account the element of ceremony, of sacred rite that is associated with this rune. Ceremony as the collective channelling and transmutation of one energy into another. Clearly this has been happening around the country.
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| Nine of Wands ~ Power ~ Haindl Tarot |
I decided to ask where we might apply the energy of Raidho, where we might need its presence. I drew the Nine of Wands from Haindl's Tarot deck. The keyword he uses for this card is 'Power'.
In it we see nine Wands lined up with a tree in the background. He describes the spears as an image of bursting energy and the tree reflecting both this energy and the power of nature. There is tremendous masculine energy in this card but it is mitigated, albeit obliquely, by the power of nature in the tree. Quite a metaphor for our times!
His Iching correlation is Hexagram 7, The Army or Collective Force. This hexagram focuses on skillful discipline and organization. It calls for delegation and structured behavior in relation to a group, mobilizing power and knowing how to direct it and whether the cause merits it.
This feels very fitting when I reflect on the current political situation and the response shown this past weekend. We're being asked to respond from a place of skill rather than solely from the emotional body. That our journey and vehicle both will be the collective feminine body and its narrative that will need to stand strong, rooted and winged, both.
Raidho asks us to look at the places we put our attention to and take stock of that. Where does our awareness need to be, is that need at odds with our wants? Where do need and want meet? And widening that inquiry, what of the balance between need and want on a local level, national, global?
These kinds of questions are also prayers, meditations that help to enlarge our capacity for altruistic action. Asking the questions and sitting with them also allows space for shadows to arise, the obstacles that may be preventing their resolution.
Seeing the two cards together I'm struck by how both cards have a place of opening, a place that might represent the potential for transformation. In the Rune Oracle it's the cave, in the Tarot it's the shape the tree's trunk makes to the left. The opening isn't obvious, it's not center stage and yet it's key.
Overall this feels very much like a rune of inner autonomy, inner laws and guidance and a focus on how that might be used individually and collectively as we journey together on this vastly spinning planet. The Earth Goddess is present in this rune as the archetypal energy of the labyrinth, one of the oldest forms of sacred travel, pilgrimage. With Raidho we can ask ourselves what is at the center of our own labyrinth. And while the details of the answer are different for all of us the phrase, you are the one you’ve been waiting for, speaks loudly for me here as an overall theme each of us is being asked to rise to.
