Wunjo : The Life That Pulsates There

Wunjo ~ Haindl Rune Oracle + Rune Oracle Book and Cards

The universe drew my rune for me this week. A few days ago I had a powerful and empowering dream and awoke with the rune Wunjo in my awareness. I'm answering that call by taking up Wunjo as my rune of the week. Literal meaning is joy with themes of harmony, hope, wish-fulfillment, community and shared identity running through it. Like many of the other runes it is multi-contextual, its meaning as one weaving in a larger tapestry.

The Runes mostly feel like verbs to me rather than static names or nouns. Ascribing meaning to these sigils is just the beginning, really. The journey is in uncovering layer by layer, context by context, moment by moment, the life that's pulsating there. In this instance the life energy is joyous, is the energy of friendship, of teamwork and the harmony that can come from that. We've seen some of that these past weeks as groups come together united by a common cause, stronger because of each other, hearts glowing with connection in spite of the darker nature of the cause.

Wunjo asks that of us, asks us to look at the strands of joy and pleasure in our lives and be aware of their interconnection. This is a form of wish-fulfillment, acknowledging what's good and wholesome and sustaining. Joy, like generosity, begets itself. In Haindl's depiction of it we see a mandrake root in the form of a weather vane. It turns with the wind both following and displaying nature's laws. It rests at the center of the four winds, indeed one of its names, Wyn, is connected with the word wind. In this way it symbolizes wholeness, a wholeness of elements, of directions and as such, intention. The indirect message here is that only when we come into harmony with the elements surrounding us, our environment, can we experience genuine wonder, delight, bliss.

The joy that Wunjo speaks of is not a solitary joy, it's one of interdependence as Haindl through his depiction is conveying. This feels like a particularly cogent reminder right now as collective joy feels like a distant ship on a far horizon drifting farther and farther away. Jesus, too, spoke to this kind of interdependence with his timeless words, "whatever you did for one of the least of these sisters and brothers of mine, you did for me," and further on in that passage its inverse, "whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."

This is Wunjo for me right now, an awareness that joy is ultimately communal, it is a simultaneity, the ecstatic beating heart that unites us all, regenerating, sending out its flares, its wish-fulfilling gems to become the ineffable fruit of their own congruous return.

Kali Yuga :: Our Own Face

Destruction ~ Kali || Dark Goddess Tarot by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

On my Instagram page I've posting a single card drawn each day from the Dark Goddess Tarot by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. I'm committed to doing so until the next New Moon so as to hear the wisdom of these dark sisters, mothers, daughters during times when that feels so integral to our awakening as a culture, a cosmos. Today's Dark Goddess wisdom comes through Kali, Hindu Goddess of Time, Creation, Destruction and Regeneration through Fire, traditionally entitled The Tower in the RWS Tarot.

I pulled this after reading today's headlines, asking the question what do we need to hear, what wisdom is asking for a voice. Of course Kali seems less about asking and more about announcing, declaring, commanding and there are so many ways her presence today could be interpreted. My own views could shape it one way, opposing views could shape it 180 degrees the other way. I don't think that's the point, our lens is just that, subjective and thus only a partial view. But beyond 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' is another realm, untraveled country for the most part. I see her presence here today as partially lifting the veil on the severity of the confusion we are immersed in. Remember, she says, this is my age, the Kali Yuga, 'the age of vice', the face of each of us. Each. Of. Us. All-inclusive.

Drunk with slaughter, she dances crushing all beneath her furious feet until finally Shiva, Lord of the Dance of Life, throws himself beneath her steps and she awakens, her wild dance slowing. None of us are immune because none of us are willing to give up our cherished illusions easily, generously, wholeheartedly. It's these illusions she dances upon, crushing and destroying them out of necessity. Terrible, horrifying, liberating. I don't imagine for a second that awakening comes easily, softly, gently. The Beloved wants all of us. I'm not ready for that kind of offering. And though she defies the circumscription of words, Kali's presence here today is a reminder of how destructive attachment to and identification with the egoic self is.

It's true that we seem to need less reminder of that these past weeks but beyond notions and experiences of 'other' and 'them', where is my own ego so entrenched that only dissolution's dance can purify it? Sobering questions to hold as I navigate my own small, transient but articulated place within this larger and longer Kaliyuga.

Raidho : You Are The One You've Been Waiting For

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.

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. 

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.

Nauthiz : Of Sufis and Runic Wisdom

Nauthiz ~ Haindl Rune Oracle

As a way to deepen my relationship with the runic mysteries I've taken to drawing a rune for the week and seeing how it flows in and around my days. Last week's was Mannaz and my journeys with it yielded another layer of understanding. This week I drew from my Haindl Rune Oracle the rune, Nauthiz. Another rune connected with the Fire element.

Nauthiz 

The image is of two sticks positioned to be rubbed together to create fire. Quite simply it means need, the principle of necessity. Need as limit, constraint by circumstance, what holds us back. But the friction implied by the two sticks indicates that need also contains within it the antidote to lack, the power to overcome it. The adages, 'necessity is the mother of invention' and 'needs must' come to mind here.

Two sticks rubbed together can create fire...but not without friction. Fire and sacrifice go hand in hand mythically and sacrifice adds another layer to this rune. Fire is also life, heat, what sustains us. One quality is informed by the other leading us into a multi contextual awareness of the energy this rune holds rather than one single meaning. Much like the Tarot cards whose meaning can change according to the surrounding cards, the question and the querent.

In Haindl's depiction we see a beech tree on a hill at dusk. The tree acts as a barrier to what lies in the landscape beyond. As though it has arms two branches extend themselves from the trunk, left pointing up, right pointing down (from our standpoint). He likens this to the arms of a whirling dervish, who receives from the heavens with one hand, palm open, and directs that gift earthwards with the other hand, palm facing downwards.

In the Sema the quality of effacement is the underlying aspiration, the recognition and embodiment of the essential emptiness, the nexus from which the Beloved is continually arising. The Sufi is the one who realizes this in thought, in heart, in body.

I see in this Rune, with its qualities of a need that has the potential to expand rather than contract if there is enough self-awareness, a similar kind of energy. Indeed from the Old English Rune Poem, Nauthiz is described as, Need is a tight band across the chest, but often it can be transformed into a bringer of help if attended to early. That 'if' is key. The place where the two sticks meet, the nexus of potential transformative energy can also be the knot where stasis finds its home and blocks and lack of all kinds ensue from there. For now I'm content to remain with the paradox that seems to characterize Nauthiz. I'm interested in noticing the place where the two sticks meet in my own life and seeing in that friction how easily the potential for change can also be the potential for limit and lack depending on the level of my awareness. As well as looking for areas where restraint is needed, where boundary and limit are necessary.

Fairy Tales with the Queen of Swords

Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg ~ Yuri Shakov

My reading year has begun with fairy tales, magical realism and fantastical beasts. And today that theme continued as I reached for the magical Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg with its intricate and beautiful miniaturist depictions. What tales can you weave for me today, I asked the cards. 

Queen of ⚔️ ~ Three of 📀


Once there wasn't and once there was a Queen who ruled with wisdom and discernment. Beneath her royal finery she wore the ragged robes of loss and grief. She has learned that sorrow begins with a momentous slash but that it heals with the minutiae of a thousand daily strokes.

Sighing she acknowledges what is unfolding in the background of her awareness, that gesture follows what the mind touches, that the present informs the past as much as it does the future.

Beauty is never done articulating itself, she admits, and she finds this epiphany comforting. Following her inner trajectory further we might come to see the profound humanity beneath her dispassion. Her realization that perfection is found inside the seeking of itself as it discovers its way slowly earthwards through heart and hands.

She gathers her sovereignty inwards, breathing slowly with the generosity of a woman who carries a secret available to anyone with the ears to hear it. Vision and incarnation complete each other through humility, the patient attention to detail.

I've not worked with the cards this way before but this deck seemed to ask to be interpreted with a kind of old-style narrative and it stretched me both creatively and from an interpretative standpoint. I was drawn into the story of the characters, into their feelings, their actions in a way that has left me feeling an intimacy with them that doesn't normally occur with the cards. Definitely want to work this way again should the Muse call.

Backbone and Flame

Seven of Wands ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

My card for this month from my year ahead spread is the Seven of Wands. A lone flame shines brightly in the darkness creating a halo of brilliance around it lighting up the sky nearest to it. The flame is the one area of color on the card. It looks human, the flame, with its fiery head and dark body, arm out to the side, shining its light. It stands out, black and manifest, the other Wands just outlines, intimations, retreating from it through the strength of its sheer brilliance. 

As I looked further at it the flame figure began to take on a runic quality to it. I knew I'd seen that runic shape before but the runes in the Elder Furthark alphabet didn't line up. So I pulled out my Haindl Rune Oracle and there it was, top left corner, Kan as he calls it, the sixth rune, more commonly known as Kenaz in the Norse system.

Rune Kan/Kenaz ~ Haindl Rune Oracle

As it turns out Kan/Kenaz is the rune of illumination, strength and power through knowledge. It brings light to us in the darkness. It allows us to see what is really there, what has long been hidden and by seeing transformation can occur. There is an alchemical quality to this rune, a kind of base metals into gold, ignorance to awareness, shadow to light. When I look at this depiction of the Seven of Wands I feel that, the flame rising out of the blackness at the bottom of the card to shine fully on everything that surrounds it. And in the depiction below, too, the figure holding his own against the unknown.

Seven of Wands ~ Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot

Traditionally it is the card of standing one’s ground as we see in this depiction by Pamela Coleman Smith from the Rider-Waite deck but there is more to it than that. It has to do with showing up for your life with conviction and the strength to uphold those convictions when your own inner critic or outer influences try to unseat you. The Seven of Wands says now is not the time for rhetoric or verbal sparring, now is the time to shine without apology, shine without disclaimer. It’s about inner vision and the courage to forge your own path, go against the current from that inner knowing. 

The Thoth deck speaks to this courage calling the card, Valor. Valor, another name for audacity, boldness, strength in the face of adversity. Backbone is another word for valor and I like the somatic quality this brings to the card. Sitting straight I can allow my breath to run up and down my spine, my body a beacon of stillness while my light shines, illuminates every cell, bone, ligament, muscle. If I imagine my breath as a slender torch, brilliant and beautiful, forging a path up and down my central channel I can access more of this Seven of Wands energy, it expands my lungs, creates space, opens and centers at the same time, my backbone as inner wand supporting me.

Seven of Wands - Valor ~ Hermetic Tarot & Thoth Tarot

Since this is the suit of Wands we’re looking at the areas of ambition, creativity, ambition, drive, desire. As an Aries I’ve got loads of that…and also as an Aries it tends to peter out quickly as I get bored and want the challenge of something new. I might look at the Seven of Wands as guidance to stay the course with some of that ambition and drive, to resist the impulse to give in to all the other ideas and creativity brimming over in my psyche and instead stick to one thing only and see it through, bring all my creative power and focus to that. This card is suggesting that I bring the strength of my will into the picture and allow it to work with me, to support me, to defend the part of me that wants a less scattered creative life.

Starchild Tarot ~ Seven of Wands

As this is a seven it also correlates to the major arcana card, The Chariot. It is interesting to note that it's called The Chariot and not The Charioteer. The emphasis is on the vehicle not the personality and when I get this card in a reading I sense I'm being asked to find the place where my will and the divine will are one, the place where they are yoked. Looking at the Seven of Wands there is a similar feeling of finding balance, of knowing what kind of movement and stillness is required to maintain equilibrium  I like the version above. It gives that feeling of partnership, of harnessing strength and instinct with skill and wisdom to move forwards, to shine, to create, to grow and expand. 

Of Nagas and Nuance

Year Ahead Spread with The Wild Unknown Tarot 

This year I decided to do a Year Ahead spread. I've thought a lot about how to view this kind of long range reading. Because the moment is as fluid and mutable as life looking at it predictively doesn't work for me. What does work however is to view the card for each month as a theme to explore and deepen with, to see where and how it lives in me and the ways that livingness moves me into and through my life.

This intentional exploration of themes I might not otherwise examine feels like an act of co-creation with the universe, an act of looking with awareness, with presence. It allows me to bring my unknown self to the table and welcome her with interest, with curiosity, with generosity.

Mother of Wands

I'm happy to see the Mother of Wands as my theme card. Here is she feels protective and nurturing at the same time as she both guards and gestates her eggs. This is my significator astrologically and she is Water of Fire, the fluid aspect of flame. Elementally I think of steam, of hot baths, of a warmth that replenishes and moistens. A year to give myself permission to visit our local Japanese-inspired women's spa perhaps more frequently than I normally would. 

I do love the serpent energy that I'm being offered for this year. Nagas, the Tibetans call this energy. I feel very connected to this creature as totem, as spirit being. There is a particularly beautiful snake who lives up on the ridge where I hike with my pup. I've been graced to see her or him once a year in the heat of the summer and feel very blessed when S/He crosses my path. I make my offerings and spend some time quietly sitting with its presence, soaking up whatever it has to offer. Decades ago I came across a complete shed snakeskin, beautiful, intricate and which felt as holy as the robes of any guru. And of course there have been dream visitations. 

Mother of Wands ~ Seven of Wands

Each month of the year has a theme card and another way I'll be working with this year long spread is to look at the relationship between each month card as it interfaces with the year card. January's card is the Seven of Wands. I'm being asked to step into the year as a series of pithy questions. What are the ways I resist the Mother of Wands' energy? Why do I shrink from her influence? Who do I imagine her to be, the power she holds? How has it been necessary to hold my own against her elemental energy? Does it serve me? How has my resistance contributed to a feeling of division and inner schism? 

The Seven of Wands is an interesting card in that traditionally as there is the suggestion of activity but without any real momentum. The movement is very controlled, as though the real movement is taking place within. Here with the depiction in the Wild Unknown there is a similar kind of tension. The one flaming Wand shining a brilliant light while the other Wands fall to either side. 

And so this is how my New Year has begun Tarot-wise, with the lovely energy of the Mother of Wands as she guides me into question, beyond resolution and into Her fluid, sinuous, ongoing mystery as she glides across the loam and soma of my awareness, silently, with presence, with poetry.

Resident Naga on the ridge