Peorth is a source of recreation and amusement to the great, where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall.  Anglo-Saxon rune poem,

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

Show Transcript

Episode #120 – Risking with Perthro

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

Before we dive in–yes, I know it’s been ages. Such is the way with disability and chronic illness: priorities have to be very flexible, sometimes for a really long time. Since the last podcast I’ve had multiple surgeries, a broken bone that still isn’t healing, and have had to take a lot of deep breaths. 

Let’s see–what else.   My book From Elder to Ancestor is out and doing well. I’ve had some wonderful interviews about it, absolutely fantastic conversations, and I’m currently holding space for a monthly book club based on it in my Runes for Change community. We’re on chapter three, where we will discuss Allowing the Emergence of Sacred Self – Processing Shadow and Allowing the Rite of Heartbreak. We’ve had some profound discussions about eldering well on the broken path, and you’re welcome to join us for these and all the other gatherings we get up to at Soulintentarts.com/join This membership will give you access to The Weekly Rune, the 12-month runes class, Runevaettir & Landvaettir on our Discord server, and other classes. Animism and the runes all the way. With your community membership you will also get early releases of this podcast (and the runecast), and other benefits and private sessions as you choose. Fifteen bucks a month, regular spirit work, and loads going on as we feel led–come join us. And I appreciate your support, which allows me to do this work and allows others to benefit from it.

In this episode of working with the runes as verbs, we’re working with Perthro…

of the galdr Pair, Pairth, Per, Perth, Peorth

In this sixth series of the podcast, I’ve been working with the runes as verbs, and Perthro is a tricky one. We don’t really know what Perthro means. In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem we meet it as fun and revelry in the banquet hall. Given that, it’s not totally clear what the emphasis is. So we have to look at the context of the banquet hall and what kind of entertainment happened there: drinking beer, socializing, and playing games. 

Most people immediately leap to gambling with Perthro, though I hesitate to jump on that, only because to do so conjures a charged, shadowy modern context that I’m not sure is applicable to this scene. As an avid board gamer, to just leave it at gambling does a disservice to the fuller cultural context that seems to be fairly cheerful, social, competitive, and important to the community. Without more context, this banquet hall fun carries connotations of belonging, which I don’t feel is captured if we leave the understanding of Perthro simply to ‘gambling.’

I’ve heard Pertho expressed as Law of Attraction, which states that we create our own reality. Okay, I kind of get where that’s going, but no. That’s incomplete. LoA doesn’t take into consideration systemic factors that have a great deal of influence over the patterns of our lives, and the underlying components of Perthro do. Stay with me…

And don’t get me started on luck, which is the other immediate flex people go to with Perthro. When we say luck in American settler culture, it’s usually binary: good or bad. Very simplistic, projected to be straightforward, maybe a little judgey, disregarding flavor like privilege and systemic oppression. It’s just. “Good or bad. Oh well.” 

We also automatically associate luck with the future, and my understanding of Old Norse relationship to timing is they didn’t dwell on a concept of the future, per se. Their worldview was about holding the past with the respect needed to make the best choices in the present, which set them up for the best of what was to come. 

Luck doesn’t begin to describe the layering that Perthro seems to have. If you study Old Norse culture, they had a far more nuanced relationship to the potentials of how dynamics can pan out, through wyrd and orlog. There were cultural influences, lineage influences, ecosystem ones, to say nothing of your own innate skills and choices. So no, luck doesn’t cut it with Perthro in my book. Literally, in Runic Book of Days.

The part about Perthro that has stuck across modern interpretation is the gameplay. That’s the facet of the poem that has maintained traction–specifically the aspect of taking a chance, or a risk. The example that I use in my book, Runic Book of Days is, 

When you roll dice you know what your options are. [You know what’s on each side of a die.] You can’t predict what the outcome will be, though you know the exact parameters for what’s possible. The same logic can be applied to our lives. However coming into the knowledge of what the parameters are requires a great deal of awareness, and usually healing.

How comfortable are you with chance? How comfortable are you with risk?

How comfortable are you with risk?

Because the thing that I get out of Perthro is that risk is required. I verb Perthro as ‘to risk.’ And real risk, Sacred Risk can’t be a side effect or accident from some action taken. It must be intended that in life we take risks, because that is how change happens. That is how we grow, that is how community evolves to meet the collective’s needs over time. We don’t grow by staying still or by hoarding all of our resources to ourselves. We are required to take risk.

Again, in the Old Norse projections of wyrd and orlog, taking risk isn’t willy-nilly. There are factors involved that we can become more educated on, which implies there is an art to risk-taking. There are things we should know intimately so that our risk is informed. If our risk doesn’t potentially further our calling to community, then why would we do it? So there are things we need to know about risk, so that it is sacred.

Just as we’re not totally clear on what Perthro means, we also have fuzzy concepts around wyrd and orlog. This is purely how I have metabolized them, YMMV:  We need to understand that wyrd comprises many things, and that it works both for and against us. It includes lineage deeds–which is to say ancestral trauma, curses, shadow, fortune, privilege, resources, blessings, skills. It includes that of the community we’re situated in, the ecosystem and land relationships, and that of our own actions. The favors and disservices we’ve done ourselves and others are factors in our wyrd. 

With orlog, or primal layers, we are confronted with basic laws of being that we can’t change. They are static, and we have to be in strong relationality with them for our risk to be supported by them. Gravity is what it is. Our limitations of consciousness while in form, are what they are. Orlog could also be our base Self, also which we cannot change. That gift or calling that we are to manifest in our time here. We can’t work against it, we have to work with it. 

And that working with it is what I call wyrdweaving–actively engaging the complex systems upon which we can be effective in evoking change in our lives. Which is to say, we can’t change everything. We can’t make our Ancestors not have done things that they did; rather, we have to realize the impact of their actions and live differently, as well as work to undo the impact of their actions–which again, is a form of wyrdweaving.  Perthro teaches us to focus animistic magickal expression to shift dynamics in accordance with orlog. This wyrdweaving is the deepest alchemy we can imagine.

What I take from Perthro is that we have to engage our community opportunities to practice risk as gameplay among friends, so that we’re educated and ready for Sacred Risk in life. In these intimate collectives is where we learn the ropes of greater risk-taking in life. Take the opportunity to sharpen your wit and skills with kindred–even when our community is tough on us–because to really push yourself to thrive in formed being, you have to take risks out in the world, where it’s not a game, and people aren’t your friends, and the potential impact can be really difficult…. and/or really lovely. 

I want to diverge a moment to mention that when I do runecasts for other people, they outright cringe when runes like Tiwaz, or Hagalaz come up in the cast. And I often talk about how I’m in a good place with Tiwaz. We hang. And I’m pretty good with Hagalaz, too, which I think is a bit odd, given other peoples’ reactions. But if, and that’s a big if, if a rune made me cringe, I think it would be Perthro, because it’s so open-ended and so dependent on the emphasis of our wyrdweaving.  

If anything, the response I usually get when Perthro comes up in a cast for others is frustration, because the onus is put back on us to be involved, to take action in the variables at play. It demands that we do something more or different than we’ve been doing, which is an incredibly uncomfortable ask, especially right now, when the whole world feels on edge.

Perthro puts a lot of emphasis back on us and how we move among–maybe more than any other rune in the Elder Futhark. Maybe that is its mystery. In the traditional ordering of the Elder Futhark, Perthro presents a progression for us to explore in our relationship to Sacred Risk. We’re asked to honor it as part of our process–not something to be avoided, and to even practice it in our trusted community. In this way we ritualize Sacred Risk to cultivate deeper relationship, not just with the friends who engage in gameplay with us, but with Sacred Risk, themself. In this way, we don’t just acknowledge risk, but we intentionally invite it. 

Imagine if we could change our thinking from looking at Perthro as the big question mark in our lives, and start seeing it as the change we must bring to the world.

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 on most social media as @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.

Show Notes

Music used in this episode is Sunset at Sandy Isle, by Blue Dot Sessions.

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.

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@kelleysoularts