Yew bent bow and brittle iron and giant of the arrow.  Icelandic rune poem,

Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic People by Bruce Dickins

Show Transcript

Episode #119 – Enduring with Eihwaz

I’m Kelley Harrell, author, animist, and creator of The Weekly Rune. Soul Intent Arts is my soul tending practice, and you are listening to What in the Wyrd–my podcast in which I talk about runes, animism, soul tending, and deathwalking, and how all of those are in relationship on my path.

Before we get started I want to let you know about a few things going on in my world. My book From Elder to Ancestor is now roaming across the countryside and is available online and on shelves. YAY!! There will be lots of online events, at least one or two in-person (I promise to give you notice and I’d love to see you there!), and opportunities to talk one on one about it in my Runes for Change membership community. 

Which, speaking of, you can join Runes for Change at Soulintentarts.com/join which will give you the opportunity to register for the monthly runes class, Runevaettir & Landvaettir, in which we explore place-based relationship with the runes no matter where you are in the world. Animism and the runes all the way. With your community membership you can also receive the full weekly runecast, early edits of this podcast, and other benefits and private sessions as you choose. Fifteen bucks a month, loads going on, come join us.

In this episode of working with the runes as verbs, we’re working with Eihwaz, for some folx pronounced yew-waz…

of the galdr Eye, Eyewuh, Yew, Yewuh, Eoh

Eihwaz is the rune that is smack in the middle of the traditional ordering of the Elder Futhark. Eihwaz has historically indicated the yew tree, an evergreen that represents life and death, although most folx emphasize the latter. Yew was planted at the entryways of graveyards to be guardian of the dead, is extremely poisonous, and due to that and its incredible strength and flexibility, it was used to make arrows. Because Yew is attributed these characteristics and uses, it’s thought of as eternal, as defying death.

Eihwaz is a cardinal rune, meaning, it can’t be reversed–assuming that has significance for you. It doesn’t for everyone.  Whatever joy or challenges it brings, they must be faced. There’s no ignoring them. With the cardinal nature of Eihwaz in particular, we’re talking facing the biggest stuff of our existence–life and death. In that light, the significance of Eihwaz is where we put our faith. It reveals where we don’t trust ourselves, and maybe our Allies, Ancestors, community, humanity, Nature, All Things…

Let’s back up a second.  By the time we get to Eihwaz, we’ve done all this self-work to soul-in-form and figure out how things work in the Earth plane–which is largely driven by how we apply our agency in a manner that generates and feeds relationship–these are the lessons of the first aett.  The Aett of Becoming.

The first few runes into the second aett all of that is confronted with deep conflict. Those first runes ask hard questions: How do you handle unexpected change? How do you get out of bed, let alone feed your soul, after disaster? How do you transform your psyche from constantly stressing about dire challenge? How do you lay plans to rebuild your life after devastation? These questions are largely asking how we will hold our own agency and its impact on others, and how we will cope with the impact of others’ agency when life goes batshit. Because it will go batshit. 

The answers to these questions are huge deciding points of the second aett, and I think of the entire Futhark. The second aett is the plot twist of the Elder Futhark, and I think how we respond to Eihwaz is pivotal in deciding where we will go with the remainder of the Futhark.

Jera grounded us after all of that metaphoric icy overwintering.  We’ve come through a process of still growth and realized personal truths around it. We’ve been reminded firsthand where we benefited from harvest and where we didn’t.  And then we get to Eihwaz, which forces us to ask the biggest question of all: how will you cultivate the faith to go on? All of this Midgard conflict, mundane challenge, physical and emotional discomfort that characterizes entry into the second aett, and Eihwaz hits us up with a transpersonal inquiry like the ones from the first aett. 

We had this sweet, childlike joy of being in form in the first aett, then we got the shit knocked out of us beginning the second aett, and now… with Eihwaz… we’re reminded that we’re also more-than-human, and we have to be able to accept the challenges that have befallen us and still remember that fact. Still live out of that fact despite the challenges that will come.

In our modern spiritual paths, we’ve been taught to give it all over to a Higher Power. Even in lesser religious spaces, more spiritual or pagan-leaning paths, we always talk about patronage of a deity, our Spirit Allies, or most recently in Instagram fashion, we give things over to our Ancestors. But what power are we supposed to hold? Humans, souls-in-form, the ones with the thumbs and the most agency in this science-reality… Where do we appeal to and fall back on our sacredness? Where would we have even learned how to do that? Or that it’s an option? In American settler culture we’ve been groomed to use our power for productivity and that’s it–not even to benefit our own needs. We give our power over to corporations, political parties, unconscious bias, a bad day… or a higher being. It’s what we do. We live a duality in which the individual success is the sweetest victory, yet we are not worthy of our own sacredness.

And that duality is a lie. 

It’s a lie on both counts: we aren’t individuals, and we are sacred.

Eihwaz poses the question of faith in the middle of the Futhark to remind us we’re still sacred. For all the Allies and Ancestors, we’re the ones with boots on the ground, and we’re sacred. We’re still one with All Things. Eihwaz challenges us to envision who we are as empowered star stuff between the extremes of life and death. 

I talk a good bit in From Elder to Ancestor about how we bypass our own wisdom, or have internalized that our intuition and knowledge can’t be trusted.

Eihwaz says otherwise.

And to make the rest of the journey through the Futhark–to whole humanhood–Eihwaz demands that we honor our own sacredness.

In the book I talk about the Sacred Self as:

“the part of me that knows the full depth and expansion of my earthly agency and strives to express it all the time with the interagency of All Things at

the fore. To that end, I’m also careful not to say “the Sacred Self,” and say merely “Sacred Self,” to emphasize that fluidity and not tether it with language. Sacred Self is the part of me that is not only sacred but is connected to sacred order. It cannot function any other way. It can’t not support my unique gift to bear.”

Sacred Self. High Self. Big Me. God Me. Transpersonal Self–whatever you want to call it, however you invoke and experience the state of your own sacredness, that is what Eihwaz requires. And not just that we recognize it, but that we commit to living out of it, ever onward. And as clear-cut as that may sound, that choice isn’t any more pleasant than the opening of the second aett. Choosing to live with your sacredness first assumes a lot of responsibility in how you move among. It’s big animisming, and settler culture pushes back on that.

Eihwaz is the rune of life and death, but even more so the rune of epitomizing what lies between them: Now. Be-ing. Now is the synergy point of our sacredness, in flesh and weaving the wyrd of what we do with it. Now is the alchemy of agency, and Eihwaz reminds us that to fully stand in it is a choice.

It has taken me forever to pull this podcast together, not because I was juggling spoons, or birthing a book to the world. I bet I sat down 16 times and wrote notes for this show, and it just wouldn’t cohere. And I realize now that was because I was still choosing. I couldn’t talk about the active aspects of Eihwaz because I was still learning not how to endure conflict or hardship or change…  but how to endure my own sacredness.

To endure my own sacredness.

To defy…. death.

Thank you for listening, especially to the Runes for Change community members who make What in the Wyrd and The Weekly Rune possible with their financial support. You can receive the weekly runecast by subscribing to the community on my website–soulintentarts.com–and click Join in the top menu.

If you have questions or insights about working with the runes, runic calendars, soul tending, or if you just want to drop me a line you can do that at Kelley@ soulintentarts.com, that’s k e l l e y at soulintentarts dot com.

Learn more about me, Runic Book of Days, From Elder to Ancestor, and my work by visiting soulntintentarts.com. I’m most often on Instagram @kelleysoularts. Check out previous episodes, and find detailed notes on this episode on my website, under the menu option Learn… Liveable Runelore. The transcript of this episode can be found there, as well.

I’m Kelley and this has been What in the Wyrd. Thank you for bringing your sacredness to us all.

Gain animistic insight into the runes, learn to elder well with ancient wisdom, and cultivate a strong spiritual path

by joining the Runes for Change community.

S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

Kelley Harrell is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula held by Tuscarora, Woccon, and Sissipihaw land. For the last 30 years, through Soul Intent Arts she’s helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. She hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd, and also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Work with her in the Runes for Change community or in her intensive soul tending training, The Spirited Path.  Full bio.

#beyourcommunity ~ #youareecosystem

elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts