Sevens in the Minor Arcana The sevens can be interpreted as aspects of ᛃ (Jera): You put in the work, and this is your reward. The rewards are very different in each suit, however, and the amount that ᚦ (Thurisaz) appears varies from suit to suit as well. . The cards from the Rider-Waite Tarot […]
Wunjo is the Rune of joy. Think of the joy waiting for you at the end of the Four of Wands. It is an ecstatic joy, not merely the pride shown by the Nine of Pentacles. Unsurprisingly, though, the Suit of Cups, the suit of strong emotions, is the suit that is most closely associated […]
Gebo is the rune of the Six of Pentacles. However you read the Six of Pentacles, that is almost certainly a reasonable reading of Gebo. Gebo is the rune of gifts, but don’t think of birthday presents. Think of Yule gifts. I don’t know about your family, but in my family, the tradition at Yule […]
Sixes in the Minor Arcana There are two pairs of sixes, rather than a single, unifying theme. The Six of Cups and the Six of Pentacles fall under ᚠ (Fehu). Both show someone handing something to someone whose head is lower, but they show opposite circumstances of that giving. The Six of Wands and the […]
As with Ansuz last week, Kenaz looks different from the Elder to the Younger Futharks. In the Elder Futhark, Kenaz looks vaguely like a letter C, written without curves. The Younger Futhark actually looks more like its meaning, a torch. (In the Anglo-Saxon Futhorcs, Kaun tends to look the same as in the Elder Futhark.) […]
Fives in the Minor Arcana For all the talk of how depressing runes are, there is no Rune of sadness. The Fives are cards of ᚦ (Thurisaz) and ᚾ (Naudhiz), but only because there isn’t a rune that really captures the longing and despair of the cards. I will discuss the cards in chronological order, […]
Raidho literally means cart and is cognate with the English word “ride,” so the natural assumption is that this card can be compared to The Chariot. This is true insomuch as The Chariot is a card of movement, but Raidho doesn’t have the same connotation of control or willpower. On the contrary, Raidho is a […]
The Fours have this sense of anticipation to them. They are like Isa and Othala, but with a little bit of Kenaz and Naudhiz burning underneath them. I will discuss the cards in the order of the ages of the people in the pictures. The Four of Cups shows a young person, who gets married […]
You may notice that there are two runes at the top of the page, which is different from the last three posts on this blog. Ansuz is the first rune of the Futhark which changed dramatically from the Elder Futhark to the Younger Futhark. This rune has had at least a half-dozen shapes that I […]
The threes are about looking to the horizon, at that which could be.