The Weekly Rune - Isa – Soul Intent Arts

For the week of 29 November 2020

Stillness in cycle

Isa is the half-month stave through 13 December. Fehu is the intuitive rune, and Ingwaz indicates Life Cycle’s message to us. Read right to left is Isa, Fehu, then Ingwaz.

I truly believe that #theweeklyrune includes the keys to making better choices based on keen insight into the present, to help each of us be more active in creating a better life for us all. That realization process includes learning to tend what can’t just be fixed, and using every tool at our disposal. The runes are such a tool, and in the Old Norse tradition, this process is wyrdweaving at it deepest potential. The runes provide one way we can create ourselves as fit elders, so that upon our good death, we can be well Ancestors.

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What’s a half-month rune?

“Half-month” is an astronomical concept in which each month is divided into two parts: days 1-15, then 16-month’s end. In terms of the runic calendar, each half-month rune is one of the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, and governs for a tad over two weeks (14 and 1/4 days, or a fortnight).

Learn More

The Weekly Rune is a three-rune cast. Those runes are the half-month, the intuitive rune, and the overview. The half-month is a set rune, which for the most part follows the traditional ordering of the Elder Futhark. The intuitive stave (meaning, I draw it blind) indicates the life force most available to us, to the focus of the half-month rune into sharper focus. It suggests how we can best handle the half-month energies. The final rune (also drawn blind) provides a high overview of the current time, and speaks from different voices. These voices have been Nature, Earth, Creation, though are sometimes others. I note who’s speaking each week, as it is revealed.

New to The Weekly Rune?

Catch a couple of my IGTV videos, which explain the intention and process behind the runecast, and what makes it different from other ways of casting.
Listen to my What in the Wyrd podcast, which is available across all popular podcast platforms, including Google Play and iTunes.
A few people have asked the reason that I switch between different rune sets for TWR. The short answer is: because. The more nuanced answer is, I ask which sets wants to speak each week. I don’t assume the same elements are in play according to the timing of the runes; I also don’t assume the same elements of my runes are appropriate to speak each week. I did a podcast on this subject, so there’s more info there. (See above)
Also, for deep work on coming into relationship with the runes in season, check out my book, Runic Book of Days.

The Runecast

All of the runes have depth. We don’t necessarily have long precedence with the meanings and uses of them all, though some definitely come with more layers than the others. Isa is such a rune.

The final rune of the winter trio, it is with Isa that we endure those last moments frozen in place. Thus, once passed our time with it, in the runes that follow, the second futhark finally gains momentum. Until then, we’re forced into wintry stasis. Isa represents both the gestation space of the sacred seed and the forces that hold us in place until we’re truly ready for whatever comes next.

Learn more about this seasonal progression, and how to draw its insights into the personal spiritual path in Runic Book of Days.

What does it mean?

Isa is often depicted as the combustion point of icy rime (Nifleheim) and fire (Muspelheim)–Ginnungagap multiversal forces that created Midgard and the other eight worlds. It is that point in stasis that the elements must be just right before they explode into being, which of course generates change that leaves nothing the same.

It works the same way with humans. We move slowly along change–that which is wanted and that which is shunned. While we can recognize change for what it is, we don’t usually embrace it right away, if ever. All of that long, laborious, tedious time passage and the range of experience that comes with it is Isa. It brings no quick fix, no bypass. It is purely: Stay put until we get it. A phrase that travels with Isa is “ring not pass,” as in until we grok what the current sphere of influence has for us to learn we can’t move into the next sphere. Of course the wrap-up of that is, once we get it, we’re booted out of the current ring and into the next. Read more…

For more insight into the runes, tending your unquiet dead and Ancestors, and cultivating a strong spiritual path

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Originally published on Soul Intent Arts.

S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

I’m an animist, author, deathwalker and death doula. For the last 25+ years, through Soul Intent Arts I’ve helped others to ethically build thriving spiritual paths as fit, embodied elders, who upon death become wise, capable Ancestors. My work is Nature-based, and focuses soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral healing, and deathwork. I’m author of Runic Book of Days, and I host the podcast, What in the Wyrd. I also write The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Full bio.

#beyourcommunity ~ #youareecosystem

elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts