Category Archives: Fate

Life and Death

The Rune Poem stanzas Wealth and Human have so much in common they ought to be a matched set, except they already have their own partners, The Grave, and Need. Here are Wealth and Human… More

X≠Y≠Z: Letter

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. Not a pony what am I going to do with a horse, not chocolate ice cream, it was… More

ᛗ

Send out some air and impede it a bit with your vocal cords, press your lips together and send that air through your nose. Smell that? Mmmmm. Delicious.

Carve the rune for joy and give … More

ᚾ

N, voiced alveolar nasal. Vibrate some air through your vocal cords, stop it at the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Nope. No passage here. Send that air out through your nose.

When… More

You Knew it Beforehand

… More

M is for Mortality

Lord what fools these mortals be
Wondering at our spectrality.
What is our modality?
Are we duality or plurality?
Or some sort of totality?
And where is our locality?
Ignoring their… More

How to Listen Beforehand

You ok? You look a mess. Well, you knew this meltdown was coming. You got all the signals and that was a massive red flag back there, but no. Some people don’t listen. Well, don’t… More

N is for ‘N

… More

How to Hold it Together

You look happy on the outside but I can still see you coming apart. It’s your whole vibe: you’ve got no zip, zero, nada, and look at you. Loved by your family, yes some of them… More

ꝥ

Your hand hurts. Your non-ergonomically correct work station is giving you all kinds of scoliosis. You are low on ink and making more is a whole thing. That stuff doesn’t grow… More

Rune Casting: Mann

Be happy, your people love you, especially when you are happy. Enjoy each other because everybody will die. When will you depart, one from the other? Oh I couldn’t tell you that.… More

Rune Casting: Nyd

Listen up. As if from nowhere you will have nothing, it’s where nothing comes from, did you not know? That pain in your chest will be your heart squeezing down two sizes too small.… More

Fate

Both the Need and Human stanzas say that life is guided and determined by the gods, and they both highlight two different aspects of fate, its changeability and its certainty. Need … More

Translating Nyd

Need and Hail, adjacent Rune Poem stanzas, have plenty in common. Need is sudden like hail, and painful too depending on the size of it. Hail can destroy a crop, smash berries from bushes,… More

Translating Mann

In Old English, a mann is a human being of any gender, translated into modern English as anyone, they, people, a citizen, a human. Mann is not a male person here, so when you see Mann as… More

Stanza 20: Human

In mirth they are loved by their kin

Though each and every one must depart from the other

For the gods will by their judgement,

That wretched body, entrust to the earth.… More

Stanza 10: Need

It is a constraint on the heart

Though for the children of envy it often turns

Into help nevertheless,

If they would listen to omens beforehand.… More

Alphybettyformed Verbage
A is never for anything but apple. B is for a lot of stuff. Ball, bear, boat, banana, so many B things. Very early we learn from the one to the infinite is but a step.

The Old English Rune Poem is an alphabet book. It looks like an alphabet book, but like a modern alphabet book there’s infinitely more to it, if you look close. Every stanza of the poem describes a letter, a rune. In Old English the word rune means secret. The secret is these letters weren’t just for writing. In secret, when nobody was looking, people could carve the runes into bits of wood and cast lots with them. Find out their fates. Answer a few questions. Solve some problems. They could do this because each stanza of the Rune Poem, gives a little bit of wisdom, a little picture of life, sometimes a warning. Always in the form of a riddle. The Rune Poem is a collection of riddles that could divine the future.

This poem has another secret hidden in its folds that fascinates me. There’s a riddle in this collection of alphabet riddles, deep in its structure. Take the letters, cut them apart from each other, carve them into bits of wood if that helps you, and line them up in a row. Now fold your line in half so number 1 is next to 29, 2 next to 28, etc. Make the pairs and read them together. They match each other. They sing duets about light, renewal, a song of home and exile. A song of the water cycle. A beautiful weapon is one thing but a thorn can really hurt you. Some things are dependable. Everything is temporary. The runes sing these things to themselves in the mirror, duet by duet, until you get to the clue, the key to the secret, number 15 in the middle -- Helix, standing alone all twisted, telling us to twine this poem aound itself and look at it again.

-- Vern Tonkin

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