Tag Archives: Birch

Stanza 18: Birch

ᛒ byþ bleda leas. bereþ efne swa ðeah
tanas butan tudder. biþ on telgum wlitig.
heah on helme hrysted fægere.
geloden leafum lyfte getenge ᛬᛫

Translating Beorc

This stanza’s riddle is about a tree. There lives a whole forest of important trees in the Rune Poem; this one is hrysted fægere, beautifully adorned, fair and decorative with… More

How to Eat a Birch Tree

You don’t choose to eat a birch tree, this is not food, but it is food adjacent. A birch tree is close enough to being food that at the end of winter when you are out of everything and… More

The Future

You can’t have a society without a collective understanding of time. You can’t. Show me one. Time is the basis of everything: our idea of shared reality, what we think … More

Rune Casting: Beorc

Your effort won’t bear the fruit you want. It will feed you well, though, and you will see the beauty that comes from your patience. Hold yourself upright (flexibly, remain bendable)… More

ᛒ

Voiced bilabial stop. Send air into your mouth. Now stop it with your lips and release. Put a little sound into it, vibrate those vocal cords.

Carve a line down, straight as a tree. Now… More

Alphybettyformed Verbage
A is always for 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, singing we should twine this poem aound itself and look at it again.

-- Vern Tonkin

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