Three runes. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, then by now I’m sure you’re familiar with them. They’ve been circling around me for nearly a year.
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In the order they fell out of the bag they are: Hagalaz, the rune of all potential, and oddly enough, of the completion of a cycle. Ansuz, Ódhinn’s gift to humanity — his only gift to humanity: Consciousness. The ability to change and self evolve. The ability to blend the logical, biological side of our nature with the illogical, non-biological emotional and spiritual side of our nature. And finally gebo, often reduced to “the partnership” rune, a fuller understanding of gebo reveals it to be about interconnections with others. The exchange of power between two (or more) individuals — often in the form of money (fehu type energy). But it is also, oddly enough the rune of sacrifice (the process of making sacred) those exchanges of power between individuals. Often in the form of marriage, when two (or more) people agree to “pull in the same direction”, but it can also take other forms: a company, a corporation, a board of directors.
I drew these runes after calming down a bit from yet another disappointment (see my last entry). Though in truth I think much of the anxiety was caused by my partner’s reaction: Bearing the burden of risking for reward, of success or failure, and all under the uncompromising eyes of another, another who has their own set of expectations and interpretations of how and why things turn out the way they do, can be exhausting. But so can two weeks of watching and feeling certainty slip away into the abyss of random chance, and knowing there is naught to do but to soldier on. To do my part and let Ódhinn do His part. To willingly sacrifice my self for the good of the partnership, not knowing whether the return will be linear or nonlinear.
The three runes remind me of the story of Winston Churchill, a man who had been all but written off by British society by the time he was forty. He was head over heels in debt. So far in debt it was fairly unanimous that the man would never be able to pay off all his obligations. In plain language, he was bankrupt. He’d suffered failure after failure, each adding to the debt load, and nobody really believed he’d amount to much.
But Churchill soldiered on, refusing to believe his critics, many of whom were cruel — even to the point of public mockery. And as his reward, in the next twenty-five years, from his forties to his sixties, he went from “a complete failure” to one of the most powerful men in Europe, leading his nation in a fight for its very survival against Nazi Germany. Even today this “failure of a man” remains Great Britain’s most legendary Prime Minister, and one of the world’s foremost historical figures.
Within the the hailstone (hagalaz) are not only the seeds of success but also of failure. No one whose ever succeeded at anything worth while in life has done so without passing through the gates of Hell — of failure, again and again. The difference between those who finally succeed and those who fail is as elementary and simple as it is daunting: Those who succeed “never give up!”, as Churchill once told a class of college graduates. (It was his entire speach, the shortest of his career. He repeated the words 3 times then left the podium.)
Along the way, those who succeed master the incomprehensible mysteries of ansuz. The ability to see clearly that which is! Not that which we want to be. Every idiot on main street can do that: And 99% of them waste away their lives in jobs that they hate and in marriages that don’t work, surrounded by children that don’t behave, all the while chasing the butterflies of the illusions of “security”.
No, that which is, is much harder to see because it means accepting one’s own limitations as well as one’s strengths. And for most of us, we’re more than ready to tout our greatness; we’re much less willing to point out our weaknesses and work to over-come them.
Mostly because our weaknesses, as well as our strengths, can only be seen with the aid of another. Gebo enters the picture. It is only through the exchange of power with others that anything happens at all. Success, failure, wealth, poverty, family, isolation . It all requires another, someone for us to respond to.
I could, for instance, become very vindictive about what this property owner did to me. But I choose not to. I shall press on. Already Ódhinn has handed me an alternative — a signed contract worth nearly three times the contract I just lost. And the money is (or could be) ready to hand. Whereas the money from the contract I lost would not be seen for at least a month. Too, I have never known a situation like this, where I have been used or abused by a customer, that the customer’s own karma did not catch up with them fairly quickly — so long as I remain true to my own honor. And when I do so, the justice of the Gods, I have noticed, is far worse than anything I could envision. (One customer who jilted me out of a month’s income aged 15 years in only 3!)
So while I cannot honestly say I am ready to simply let go and accept what is just yet. Yet again the runes have shown me that this is my path. That I am only a failure if I believe myself to be. That as long as I choose instead to never give up, to soldier on, success in whatever form, must indeed be mine.
