One Impactful Book
Happy Halloween, everyone! I’ve been writing more than reading in the last weeks. Between teaching, readings, and Patreon, as well as witching, I’m a busy crone. Not surprising, it’s the season of the witch. Regardless, I finished one impactful book and it has a place of honor now on my rune study shelf now.
Queering The Runes: Reclaiming Ancestral Wisdom in Rune Magic & Mythology by Siri Vincent Plouff
Friends, I feel so validated in my own relationship with the runes after reading this book. It’s certainly a book I’ll recommend to my runic divination students. The author starts the book with this true seer’s perspective, too:
“The runes collapse time. It’s actually helpful that they are letters from a dead language – because sometimes, to get over the clashing static of our own modern psyches, we need to look to something older. We need to slow down and interpret something that isn’t directly of our own world.”
Of course the book has all the basics like a rune cheat sheet, but finding a book that feels like how I connect with the runes may have given me a moment of ugly crying when I was done reading.
I’ve often told my clients and students about the promise to Those That Came Before we are and when the gift rune shows up in a reading, we need to pay attention. Plouff confirms it while discussing that particular rune: “Gyfu is not just a gift, but an oath: that you will use what has been given for the greater good.”
Those that work with the runes quickly find out that understanding the mythology of the people who used this ancient tool is important as well. I appreciated Plouff’s take on this mythology – again resonating with me about figures like Freyja, Óðinn, and, warming my black heart, Hel.
They wrote: “Hel is a great equalizer. For queer folks, she is the understanding that we are all subject to the same laws of physics, the same law of mortality. Hel is also a great connector. Heathenry relies so intensely on ancestral veneration and connection with the wisdom of those that came before us that Hel becomes a connector. When we are working on connecting with our queer ancestors, Hel operates as a link in the chain.”
Plouff’s weaving in the astrology within the book had me clapping with delight. I often replace the Greek and Roman gods of astrology with those of my Nordic and Germanic ancestors, and then by how I move through the seasons of my witchcraft practice.
“Jera is not just about the year; it is also related to earth itself. This is a rune of appreciation of the gifts of nature, as well as of cultivation. The shape of the rune – two v’s turned on their side and intertwining – speaks to me of cycles. This has always spoken to me of the cycles and seasons that recur year after year, the patterns within a set of bounded time. The shape is strangely reminiscent of the astrological symbols for Cancer, with a mirror image turning on itself. And just like the sign of Cancer, Jera has a nurturing energy.”
I love to tell stories within my rune readings and witchcraft writings, and Plouoff hits on that energy when they write about Ehwaz. “There’s a reason a lot of the famous high fantasy books are journeying narratives. The act of movement creates a liminal space in which magical workings can occur.”
The book helps readers understand bindrunes, traditional casting methods, and rune spells in a manner that is engaging and approachable. Sometimes these applications of the runes get muddied and complicated for no reason, and Plouff lays it out in a manner the reader can easily embrace and make their own, especially where developing your question(s) to the runes is concerned. Definitely a good resource for any student of the runes – beginning or advanced.
It felt very much like Plouff was speaking to many of us in the witch and pagan circles, too with why the diversity of queering the runes is necessary. Reading it felt like a reassuring hug, which sounds sappy to type out, but to be seen in the pages of a book about a divination tool you love, is something magical. “It is hard work to be a pattern breaker, but it is critical.”
Plouff’s biggest success with this book is that they opened up a tool that is sometimes wielded by an aspect of Heathenry that is not empowering. As appears on the back cover, they “paves the way for understanding how to work with runes disencumbered from patriarchy and white supremacy.”
If you are curious, want to study, or use runes in your practice, Queering the Runes is highly recommended. P.S. Plouff does a podcast with co-host Cassandra Snow that you might want to check out, Chaos & Cunning. The two of them, “explores heathenry and folk magic through a queer, anarchist perspective.”
Next Month
l told you back in September that I was reading Storm Faerywolf’s The Witch’s Name. I’m not done yet, but hope to include it in next month’s edition.
Hope you get some time to get cozy with your TBR pile, until then, Witches!