Festival of the Runes

Day 1 of 9 informal altar

Official altar, showing offerings of bourbon and sausage.

Making up our own festivals is one of my favorite parts of tradition building. In our tradition, we use runes as our system of symbolism. To honor that great gift, I've created a Festival of the Runes.

I began with the old festival of Walpugisnacht:

"The festival of Walpurgis, a night both of revelry and darkness. The nine nights of April 22 (interestingly enough, the modern festival of Earth Day) to April 30 are venerated as rememberance of the AllFather's self-sacrifice upon the World Tree Yggdrasil. It was on the ninth night (April 30, Walpurgisnacht) that he beheld the Runes, grasped them, and ritually died for an instant. At that moment, all the Light in the 9 worlds is extinguished, and utter Chaos reigns. At the final stroke of midnight, the Light returns in dazzling brilliance, and the bale-fires are lit. On Walpurgisnacht, the dead have full sway upon the earth; it is the ending night of the Wild Hunt. May 1 is the festival of Thrimilci; the beginning of Summer. Thrimilci is a festival of joy and fertility, much like Ostara; however, most of the Northern World is finally escaping from the snow at this time."

When I dug a bit deeper, I found that Walberga (or Walpurga) was a Christian saint canonized in CE 860 who was credited with Christianizing many Germanic tribes. This saint's day was used to create a celebration that coincided with the Pagan Beltane celebrations. A classic move by the medieval church - distract people from their nature-based ancestral faith with pageantry.

For our celebration, I wanted to lose the medieval Christian overtones and keep the timing. Nine days of celebration to honor Odin and his discovery of the runes during the Wild Hunt of spring felt right to me. What we do is light a candle in the window to guide Odin to us. We create an altar honoring Odin and the runes. Each night, we make offerings to Odin, like mead and meat. We sing the song of the runes, then read nine passages from the Havamal.

I really enjoyed it. This is a simple celebration, and I really liked focusing on the wisdom of the Havamal. It's pithy and surprisingly relevant in the modern era. We can all learn to take care of business and be a good member of the community! Hail Odin!

Rune Song

Working with the runes has been a part of my practice since the beginning. But in the last year, my study of them has grown far deeper and richer, thanks in part to my awesome study group (three years of awesomeness and going strong!). We just finished up about eight months of rune study focused on Freya Aswynn's book, Northern Mysteries and Magick: Runes & Feminine Powers. Next year, we will work through Diana Paxson's Taking Up the Runes.

Sidebar: working with a spiritual study group is a powerful practice and one that supports your own journey in beautiful and unexpected ways. If you get a chance, try it!

One thing I have not conquered so far is the ability to recite all the Elder Futhark at once in the traditional order. The ability to do so is important in magical workings. I'm excited to use it for creating sacred space, for example. I'd also like to use it in meditation and in my practice of Yoga.

Taking Up the Runes helpfully contains a song of the Futhark. An ABC song, if you will. As the resident musician in the study group, I was asked to learn it. This suits me as I'd planned to do so anyway. This led to a hilarious few days in which I learned the simple melody and then giggled endlessly about it. It's curiously mournful. In fact, it reminds me of black metal music.

To help others learn the song, I recorded it. Initially, I was just going to share it with my study group. But in one of those synchronicities that reveal our path to us…Facebook will not upload and share an mp3 file. So I had to convert it to video and post it on Youtube. Which made me realize I need to start my own channel. Hurray!

Anyhoo. Back to the rune song. It's firmly stuck in my head, and after just a few days…I can recite all the runes! The act of singing them with a melody was what I needed to get over the hump of memorization. Belatedly, I seem to recall that this is a technique people use. Spoiler alert: it works!

So take a listen and see what you think. Can you hear some power chords and spooky organ music with it? I can. Stay tuned…that might happen!

May this help you on your own rune journey. And please, like, share and subscribe as the Youtubers say!

Kenning the Runes

My story with the runes is an amusing one, though I wager some who read this blog can relate. When I was a wee baby pagan, no more than 13 or so, I learned the runes from Uncle Bucky's big blue book and from Doreen Valiente's Witchcraft for Tomorrow. I began to keep my journal written in runes…in
red ink, of course. By 17, I had made my own set of runes for divination. Around age 18, I started a small business making runes, medieval board games, jewelry and leather crafts. The sets of runes I sold were made of oak, and I wood burned the runes into them. Each came with a leather casting mat and a book that I wrote*, printed and hand-bound (see left for my original set).

Back in those days, I had a rudimentary understanding of the runes. I only knew a few of their magical uses, I didn't understand their pantheon (except perhaps Odin and Thor) and I certainly didn't ken (old word for understand/know/grok) their cultural context. This is understandable, if you think about it. Most introductory witchcraft manuals include the runes. But they also generally include very little information about them, usually in a chapter or section about magical alphabets. It's as if these authors are saying "hey guys, here are some really neat ancient alphabets, use these in your magic! Naw, don't worry, all you need to know is what letter they correspond to - go forth and make some magic, whee!"

This is not at all the case. First of all, the runes encompass more than one culture, more than one time period and more than one set of letters. On top of that, they are complex. Each has many levels of meaning that is inextricably linked to the culture that created it, to the other runes and to the deities that they represent. Babywitch Tanaria didn't know any of this. She didn't even know that she didn't know.

In recent years, I've been working to expand my knowledge of the runes. I've been reading. I attended some classes run by local Heathens that were very helpful. Most helpful of all, I'm blessed to be a part of a wonderful, smart study group. This year we're studying the runes in a systematic, disciplined and in-depth fashion.

One of the recommendations in the books we are studying is to put the runes on some type of food and ritually eat them. In this way, we can take the essence of the runes into our being. We decided to do this at one of our meetings, and I volunteered to make the treats for the first aett**. It seems to me that most people put them on cookies or cakes, as pictured on the right.

But I'm a healer, and I just couldn't wrap my head around eating eight sweet treats in one sitting. It didn't seem like a responsible thing to do. So how else could we get these runes into us without sugar? I thought and thought. At length, inspiration hit. Carrot chips and some type of dip. The carrots would provide a nice flat surface for the runes. But how to do it? I thought about carving them in with a knife. Briefly, I considered heating up my runic leather stamps*** and attempting to burn the design into the carrot.

Then I thought, surely I could make a savory frosting! Frosting is usually a base of some fatty or creamy substance. So far, so good. The body of frosting comes from powdered sugar ordinarily, but there must be some substitute. To the intarwebs! And lo. It has been done. I read through a long post on a forum, saw a lot of different methods and resolved to create my own savory frosting.

Behold! Not pictured is a veggie dip that I created and served with them. Read on for the recipe:


Carrot Rune Chips with Savory Frosting & Herbed Veggie Dip

By Tanaria Lightbearer

For the chips:

1 lb. bag of carrots - pick the fattest ones you can find.

For the savory frosting:

8 oz. cream cheese (or neufchâtel)
3-4 T. butter
3 T. Korean go chee jang sauce (a sweet hot red pepper paste, add to taste)
A lot of red food coloring (it still turned out salmon colored; I might try beet juice next time)


For the dip:

16 oz. sour cream
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1 package Knorr vegetable recipe mix
1 good handful fresh herbs (I used sweet basil, tarragon and oregano)

Method:

1. Set out cream cheese and butter to soften.
2. Peel and slice carrots on the diagonal to create big flat surfaces, using the fattest part of the carrots. A mandolin slicer would be great for this. 
3. Wash and mince fresh herbs. Don't be stingy with these - you generally need more fresh herbs than you would if you were using dried. Pick your favorite combination. This is what I had on hand in the garden and what sounded good to me. It turned out awesome.
4. Mix sour cream, mayonnaise, Knorr vegetable recipe mix and herbs in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate. (make at least two hours in advance to allow the flavors to develop)
5. Using a hand mixer, cream together butter, cream cheese, red pepper paste and food coloring. Taste and adjust flavors and colors as needed.
6. Load frosting into a cake decorating bag with a #2 round tip. 
7. Spread out carrot chips on a paper towel covered cookie tray. This keeps them from moving around. Pat dry with a clean towel if needed.
8. Frost the runes on to the carrot chips carefully while chanting the runes. Note that this frosting doesn't hold its shape as well as buttercream or such. Embrace the wabi sabi imperfection of it all. Drink wine to accomplish this if necessary.

Et voila! Eat them in good health, and may this recipe help you further your own studies of the runes.

XPXPXP****

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*Based on research; I was never THAT naive or arrogant.

**Traditionally, the runes are organized in three sets of eight, aka "aett".

***Tandy Leather makes a complete set of rune leather stamps. They are rad! Sadly, I think they have been discontinued.

****Approximation of Gebo and Wunjo; this is sending you all a gift of knowledge in service to the Gods.