Three Questions that will show if the rune Eihwaz is calling to you at this time. If you wish to learn deeply about the runes, then join my rune course. Here are the questions:
Q: Is it time to cooperate with a death and rebirth experience in your life?
Q: Do you need to shed your old scripts?
Q: Do you need to chose a focussed direction or to seek ‘surrender’?
The 13th Rune is the Rune of the Yew Tree, Eihwaz.
Eihwaz is the energy of death and rebirth.
The key to really experiencing and really knowing what the rune Eihwaz means, is for you to go to a huge ancient Yew Tree or go to a Yew Grove.
Spend time within the circle of the grove, or spend time inside the energy field of the Yew Tree. You will feel it: the energy is so still and silent and remote.
The scripts and focuses of the everyday world, those that you think is your life, all now feel as if they have been killed stone dead: they have stopped. They are gone!
Yes, Yew is the tree of death. And we all have periods in our life when we have to let die those things in our life or personality that now must die. This is because they are not part of us. They damage us or they hold us back from being the true ‘me’. They blind us to the true identity which is one with our divine purpose, one with our purpose in incarnating this time, in this life-time. They block us to being one with our True Self. We need to raise our level of consciousness so that we can see this is true now.
Yew Trees are of course found around cemeteries all over Europe. They have long been understood as having an energy of death around them.
But there is another part to the understanding of the Yew Tree: Bows. Bows were made from Yew wood. Hence the term Yeoman! The Yew wood is solid and strong, yet flexible. One of the messages of this association is that we can usefully ask ourselves: do we need to focus on chosen priorities in a difficult time, like a bow-man focussing on his target? or is this one of those cases where we might choose to embrace ‘surrender’?
There is an ancient myth surrounding the association of the Yew Tree with bows and arrows. The Old Icelandic Rune Poem for Eihwaz, the Yew Rune runs as follows:
‘Yew is a taut bow
And brittle iron
And the arrow of Farbauti.’
So what’s this poem about? Who was Farbuti?
Well, Farbauti was actually the father of Loki, the trickster fire spirit of the Norse. What happened was this: Farbauti fired one of his fire-arrows at Loki’s mother, whose name was Laufey meaning ‘Tree Island’. Her gentle trees were all burnt up by Farbauti’s fire arrow and from this she gave birth to Loki.
Loki ended up with the Aesir Gods, who were actually the gods of the Invaders of the Northern Lands, ruled by the magnificent warrior magician god, Odin. They were part of the Indo-European migrations all over Europe and into Persia and NW India.
But the Aesir were so into hierarchy and law an order they could not accept the necessity of Loki’s Trickster Spirit, so they banished him and so he turned to the comforts of the foul witch Angrbroda and together in the Iron Wood they spawned two foul children: Fenrir the wolf of Ragnarok and Hel, queen of the realm of the criminal or unworthy dead. The Aesir needed to understand the necessity for the Trickster.
There are other really important stories relating to the uneasy union of the invading Norse with the local indigenous people they conquered: people who in some ways had better consciousness and wisdom than their invadors.
There is the story of Gullveig whom they killed three times, but not kill, who ended up working Magic with Odin.
There is the story of Mimir, the first being, whom Odin slew and thus created the worlds, but in slaying Mimir, Odin slew ‘unity consciousness’: the Aesir laughed at Mimir when he got lost in trances of meditation. They did not realise that slaying him sealed their own fate and was the ruin of their magnificence.
There is the story of the Norse taking up the shamanic practices of the people they found and conquered.
FFOTNOTE: By the way: don’t mix up this rune with others, as some text books do: this rune, No 13 Eihwaz = Yew. Rune No 15 is Algiz = elk sedge. Rune No 19 is Ehwaz = horse.
CONCLUSION: The Runes are so worth working with. They can heal your life. They are transformation magic. They are powerful active wisdom. The Yew Rune alone can bring great heling in your consciousness, in your life.
To find out more about the powerful magic of the Runes, you can enrol on my course: www.rune-path.com. This is worldwide distance learning.
You receive sound-file presentation of the meaning of each rune. You receive a sound-file where you journey to discover how each rune is operating within your life and how you can transform this, and you practise rune-chanting (Gladr) and rune-stance.
I look forward to hearing from you, Michael
Email: michaelconneely@gmail.com
