Hagalaz

[Sol Invictus]

Ok, so I've really only started embracing Celtic/Germanic paganism recently and basically doing as much reading as I can on the Runes. I am making a habit of drawing a single rune from my bag each night at around midnight, and carrying it around in my pocket for the entire day until the next midnight, contemplating it's meaning and how it applies, or can be applied to me as a method of learning and understanding their power. I don't want to jump into this too quickly. I want to take it slow and learn as much as I can about each Rune before jumping into any sort of "Casting" or "Magic".

The first day I pulled a rune, out of all the runes I could've pulled out of that bag it was Dagaz - The rune symbolizing an Awakening, an Awareness, and a Paradigm Shift - A New Dawn. The Day overcoming Night, and the power of the Sun to Illuminate that which would otherwise be unseen in Darkness.

The second day, I placed the Rune back in. I mixed it up, and proceeded to draw then next.

Dagaz again.

Ok so I just wanted to share that, but I actually have a question about the Hagalaz rune which I had just minutes ago drawn from the bag.

I understand these are powerful symbols, and they aren't all of them "Happy happy sunshine" type of symbols, and Hagalaz - With it being a Rune of Disruption, I don't know if I feel comfortable carrying this around on it's own. To me, it just brings up some negative vibe.

Any one experienced with the runes, I'd like to know what you have to say about it.

[Rasvalg]

Hagalaz is not all bad. The thing with this rune is that you go through a period of strife and then when that period is done either something is learned or is gained. To get past it though is the challenge.
Remember that a gift begets a gift. This being said although Hagalaz is strife this strife may cause a loss that when actually looked back on later may actually be a gain.
It just depends on your view of the world.

[Psychonaut]

From the Old English Rune Poem:


Hail is the whitest of grains
it comes from high in heaven
showers of wind hurl it
then it turns to water

Transformation is the key to this Rune.

[Lyfing]

I've had a pretty wyrd relationship with the runes..

Today is a perfect example..

I came here and read this thread and thought about them. We were going somewhere and before we left Rachel gave me a Hagalaz rune card that I gave them a couple of years ago just to play with. They are pretty nice..but store bought witchy ones. Really they found them so I gave them to them..they earned them in a way..they did find them like Odin. At first Rachel would sit there and lay some runes out and act like she was really doing it..maybe she was. She had watched me. I thought of a Seeress.

Then we were on our way home and stopped at the store. We sat out there and my Lady Lyfing went in. They wanted to listen to rock and roll and know of “the scary song” witch is Dio's Holy Diver. So here we are listening to it. Zack wanted to listen to some CD he got in a happy meal that was in the Dio case. So we went on a search for a case. Well he wanted a cover. I offered him a mashed up coffee cup. He didn't want that. I kept digging and pulled out a Tyr rune I made that was an index card folded in half with a Tyr rune on it and Tyr wrote underneath it in red. He wanted it for a cover. He sticks it in there and messes with it. He opted for the cover that comes with the cases though. So I stick the Tyr rune in front of Dio..how wyrd is that..all these runes..Tyr with Dio..??

Sometimes my Lady Lyfing talks me into messing with them. We will do it at night before we go to bed. Mostly when things get creepy. It's kind of like praying, but instead of asking for help we see what is going on and what we can do about it. She really had to wonder when she grabbed the same one twice..:wink I have a board with runes on it I cast them on. It's in some picture around here I seen not too long ago. I made it on Yule of '99. The runes are made out of notebook paper folded up to hide what is inside. They are very little.

But, I forget to mention the Wunjo rune card I found laying on the end table a few minutes ago when I went to get my Lady Lyfing something.

Here I had three runes. The Ragnarok. The Victory. The Joyous Frith.

What a day..??

…

The runes can be looked at as archetypes, and, in the way there are mythological stories that go with them all, such is very much so. But, the magic of seeing it all, playing the game, even in life, is a lesson Joseph Campbell called “The Lesson of the Mask”..


The artist eye, as Thomas Mann
has said, 1 has a mythical slant upon life; therefore, the mythological
realm the world of the gods and demons, the carnival of their
masks and the curious game of "as if' in which the festival of the
lived myth abrogates all the laws of time, letting the dead swim
back to life, and the "once upon a time" become the very present
we must approach and first regard with the artist's eye. For,
indeed, in the primitive world, where most of the clues to the
origin of mythology must be sought, the gods and demons are not
conceived in the way of hard and fast, positive realities. A god
can be simultaneously in two or more places like a melody, or
like the form of a traditional mask. And wherever he comes, the
impact of his presence is the same: it is not reduced through
multiplication. Moreover, the mask in a primitive festival is
revered and experienced as a veritable apparition of the mythical
being that it represents even though everyone knows that a man
made the mask and that a man is wearing it. The one wearing it,
furthermore, is identified with the god during the time of the ritual
of which the mask is a part. He does not merely represent the god;
he is the god. The literal fact that the apparition is composed of A,
a mask, B, its reference to a mythical being, and C, a man, is dis-
missed from the mind, and the presentation is allowed to work
without correction upon the sentiments of both the beholder and
the actor. In other words, there has been a shift of view from the
logic of the normal secular sphere, where things are understood to
be distinct from one another, to a theatrical or play sphere, where
they are accepted for what they are experienced as being and the
logic is that of "make believe" "as if."

Primitive Mythology, page 21 (http://www.archive.org/stream/masksofgodprimit008825mbp/masksofgodprimit008825mbp_djvu.txt)

…

I do have a thought on the Hagalaz rune though...

There is both gain and loss with Hagalaz. It is said to be from witch all the other originate. Here, I think of Nerthus and Hel. Kali..Ragnarok and the cannibal ogress..


We all know the fairy tale of the witch who lives in a candy
house that would be nice to eat. Indeed, we have seen already
what a scare she gave to a child who conjured her up in play. She
is kind to children and invites them into her tasty house only be-
cause she wants to eat them. She is a cannibal. (And for some six
hundred thousand years of human experience cannibals, it should
be born in mind and even cannibal mothers were grim and
gruesome, ever-present realities.) Cannibal ogresses appear in the
folklore of peoples, high and low, throughout the world; and on
the mythological level the archetype is even magnified into a
universal symbol in such cannibal-mother goddesses as the Hindu
Kali, the "Black One," who is a personification of "all-consuming
Time"; or in the medieval European figure of the consumer of the
wicked dead, the female mouth and belly of Hel.


Primitive Mythology, page 68 (http://www.archive.org/stream/masksofgodprimit008825mbp/masksofgodprimit008825mbp_djvu.txt)

…

So, they can be some very magical little symbols. With their fire and ice we can create worlds..magical ones...:wink

Later,
-Lyfing