Earned Income
Money offers comfort to anyone,
though one must spend it willingly,
if one seeks the Lord’s support.
The Primary Fire, through the power of generation, brought forth the first cattle — the cow Audumbla.
The rune Fehu (“Cattle”) begins the first Aett of the runic cycle, opening the entire cycle to the source of Power.
It is clear that this rune is the most active in the Futhark; its power must suffice for all three turns of the Wheel.
Usually this rune is equated with wealth, gold, money. This is, in part, true. However, Fehu (Cattle) is not merely property. It is the sort of property that requires constant care and attention and disappears if neglected. It is active multiplication.
Therefore it is dangerous to use this rune merely to attract income. Such income must be earned. And if one breaks the law, one can receive a beating as well. That is the danger. These primal forces require impeccable conduct and do not tolerate mistakes.
This idea is well illustrated by Saint-Exupéry’s famous phrase: “You are responsible for the one you have tamed.”
Another important mythological parallel in the semantic field of the rune Fehu is Brisingamen — Freyja’s famous necklace.
Among all the tales connected with this treasure, the most important for us is that it was precisely because of it that the first clash between Loki and Heimdall occurred, which later led to their final battle, Ragnarök. In other words, Brisingamen (and with it the rune Fehu) symbolizes that aspect of embodied matter which has always made, and still makes, it an apple of discord between the Upper and Lower worlds — the aspect of primordial generation.
Matter provides support for the fulfillment of will — precisely because what is born in it endures. But matter demands transformation, change. The aspect of Possession symbolized by Fehu is active multiplication (“everyone should spend it willingly”). Power grows through use.
Moreover, such (even if indirect) association with Freyja made Fehu one of the runes of love magic (its passion is fiery and scorching) and enabled its use in healing, imparting strength.
However, I would like to note once again that the values symbolized by this rune need protection on all levels. This is symbolized by the close relationship between Fehu and Algiz, which can easily transform into one another by a simple shift of the stave.
Otherwise Fehu becomes the Rune of Discord (“gold brings discord to the kin“), turning into Nauthiz by shifting the stave — recall the fateful gold of Andvari…
And also, it seems to me that the rune Fehu can be considered one of the runes endowing Luck because Fehu – is Gold, and in ancient times gold did not serve as financial prosperity; this function was performed by silver, but as a means of receiving Luck from one’s king. A lucky king always played the role of a ring-giver, that is, through the gift of giving a golden ring, he gifted His Luck. And Luck is such a ‘thing’ that the more you give, the more you receive.
Can the rune Fehu also be considered a rune of Will? I think that on one hand it resembles Jera in that it reflects a certain cyclicality, but only in a miniature way, that is, this cyclicity is supported not by the world but by the will of a particular individual. Also, Fehu is a kind of engine for Raido, without which the chariot stops. Is such an interpretation correct?
Fehu can be considered a Rune of Will, but this Will is elemental and chaotic, it is not yet directed by reason. Therefore, comparing Fehu to Jera is not entirely appropriate, precisely because the chaotic Will of Fehu will lead to the closure of the macrocycle – manifestation-unmanifested, plunging the world into chaos (‘gold causes discord in the kin’).
In my opinion, Fehu is also the rune of “Possession” – the wealth of the Spirit achieved through effort and overcoming. The symbol of the Path of the North.
I recall the lines from the song “Ballad of Three Sons.” All of this is Fehu. And only without falling under strife (the shine of coins and fame) can one discover its true meaning – the wealth of the Spirit.
I feel it this way, but this does not negate other meanings.
It is a good rune.
The metaphor of the symbolic field of the rune Fehu – completeness of possession, which is not limited to material property alone. A person’s possessions include experiences, memories, and intellectual baggage. Fehu is the rune of materials, means, and energies of life. This concerns money, things, household items, and knowledge that people need as tools to organize their lives. The rune Fehu symbolizes well-being, which is not accompanied by self-satisfaction but rather considered a given, as the natural state of a person. Well-being is a psychological category, not a financial one. It poses the question of having or being, that is, imitating life or truly living; if you will, the problem of external or true being, outward social behavior or genuine spiritual culture. Property, ownership, possession – this is a very complex, purely spiritual problem. Modern people view property as a justification for their own existence, as an extension of themselves, as something that really belongs to them. This problem confronts almost every person since it is not about quantity but about the quality of acquisition, about the mechanism of the very process of acquisition.
I can share a practical story about Fehu: I work as a jeweler, and one of the new apprentices in our craft had hands that didn’t quite seem to grow from the right place. He was managing to create something, but it was always a bit crooked, and he constantly managed to injure himself. I advised him to draw the Fehu rune on a silver plate and wear it around his neck. The result amazed not only him but also the atheists in the workshop. Within the first few weeks, he stopped injuring himself. After a month, his creations no longer provoked anger from the management. In a year, he learned all the chain weavings that were in the workshop, and he often received profitable orders. But not everything is so simple under the moon. The constant wearing of the Fehu rune around his neck had its downsides. First of all, he spent everything he earned; he was always short on cash. Though his earnings grew, the situation always forced him to spend his savings irrationally. Secondly, his inner world began to narrow (I knew him as a cheerful and resourceful guy). Over the year, he turned into a grumbler who constantly argued with everyone about everything. He ended up falling out with everyone at work, including management. His health started to deteriorate. When he was fired after his vacation, he found a new jewelry workshop on the same day. But even there, his relationships with the team and management did not work out. Although he had no complaints regarding his skills as a master.
And most importantly, he did not wish to remove the Rune of Feu, engaging in aggressive disputes with anyone who tried to convince him to remove the rune. Everything should be balanced and in moderation.
When a magician gains a creative mind and finds strength to resist the dissolution by Baphomet, does this affect the entire lineage of the magician or does it specifically relate to the individual consciousness of the magician?
Thank you many times; this resource has opened a door into the world of Runes for me. So many household tasks have been completed this morning, which had been waiting for weeks, years – I feel satisfaction and am not tired at all; I want to dance. So, Fehu has come up. And… shyly, I want to say: For me, today, Fehu expresses the life of the body, the flesh. The body for some is wealth, gold, property. This is income earned in past incarnations. Who does not know the power of the body, the passions of the flesh? This is what demands attention, daily care, and protection. Just like the livestock of ancient man, the body through the eyes, ears, skin, and all of itself feeds us sensations, and from that emotions and feelings, thoughts come. The body is endowed with colossal energy. It realizes our intentions, ideas, desires. The body requires activity, action. It is a means of transportation, a cosmic vessel that carries us to different worlds and levels of awareness. It wants and can increase.
Everything in the runes is very individual. When I studied Fehu, I saw it in the form of wings in the sky. Two wings, as if tied together, moving, but “hovering,” like a helicopter hovers. To me, Fehu represents the possibility of movement towards a goal. This was somewhat unexpected. Nowhere had I found it interpreted like this before. Only later did I find in K. Meadows that runes can have different interpretations in different layers. Perhaps he meant the layers of the unconscious, where the influence of the runes on a person occurs.
I still don’t know who Meadows is, but that runes should have different interpretations, which depend on who interprets them, for whom, and when they are interpreted is already obvious. Have you seen how differently the same task is performed by students of an art school? One pitcher, but the drawings are so different. And in each drawing, there is both the pitcher and the author. The same goes for runes and their interpretation. I’m familiarizing myself with the understanding of runes by Synko and Enmerkar. This forms the primary motif – like notes on paper. And yet, for me, the main thing is how I feel the runes, and I am interested in how they will resonate with me. I now understand why before I was not tempted to agree to the offers of fortune-telling on the runes – I perceive it as quite dangerous – to pass on responsibility for one’s self to another. Marina, thank you for sharing your vision of Fehu – I find it so interesting – two wings.. folding and moving down like a stone toward a goal. This is such movement that cannot be interrupted.
Many write about the runes. O. Shaposhnikov, S. Batyushkov, A. Platov, Ralph H. Blum. K. Meadows writes more about shamanism, but he also devotes quite a bit of attention to runes. There are magicians who have walked the path and achieved a lot in interacting with runes through the trainings led by Meadows. The runes are Primordial, pure Forces. They carry a vector, a direction of action. I don’t know if the runes will “play” for someone, but “they can certainly give” in a metaphorical sense. Runes change a person, their life, worldview. This is certainly true, if approached properly, with an understanding of which Layer you are communicating with. One can remain at the level of fortune-telling and predictions. But there are magicians who absolutely despise when people use runes for fortune-telling. I have met such people. For them, it is tantamount to taking a computer and bringing it to a sandbox to play there. Using Primordial Forces for divination is fashionable, and they do use them. But it is very important to understand that the runes do not indicate an end result in a situation, but the possibilities relative to the situation. Moreover, they indicate a direction of action to achieve the desired result. But they do not do anything for a person. It is only up to the person whether they use the possibilities opened by the runes or not. But this is the most primitive use of runes (just my opinion). For divination, it’s still better to use tarot. And regarding wings 🙂 that’s left to individual choice, whether their goal is to rise higher or to descend like a stone 🙂 Fehu represents values. In ancient times, the most important thing for a person was to survive. Therefore, livestock was more valuable than any possessions. There was no need to go hunting and hope for success to survive. Times have changed. And the values in society remain at the level: more, better, higher. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that all of this is based on a person’s striving not to do for themselves but to take from someone else what they need. People are becoming predators of consciousness, as Enmerkar writes about. But while for predators of consciousness, it’s a survival method, people become predators with different goals. This could be a thirst for power, money, for example. And there is no limit to this. Because for some, values start counting on earth, while for others, in the sky. This depends on the person and their aspirations. This is what Meadows wrote about, only from a slightly different angle. And in order to decide where to fly on wings, one first needs to have them:)
🙂 As I wrote in the previous comment, I think about this – Fehu – is it down or up. And if before survival was the most important value, and now it’s blooming, maybe Fehu is like a sprout, like a ripening ear of wheat that I touched yesterday? I am looking for support in the rhythms of the Futhark that Enmerkar has marked: https://enmerkar.com/en/myth/24-steps-of-actualization And if Fehu means activity, then of course that’s upward, skyward. It looks down at the earth. And yes, I wouldn’t so belittle and restrict earthly values. After all, we are human; our stories are being enacted down here on earth, and this is our place now. As a woman, I know that down here on earth, the main values are not only money, power, more, better, higher. There is also the ability to be, to manifest, to survive, to react, to grow, to bloom, to fertilize, to die and to renew, and something else 🙂
Marina, thank you for the list of authors; although of course the ones I have chosen are enough for me right now. I want to share a book: The Alphabet of Silence. Non-verbal communication in life and art. The author Brodetsky reveals the unconscious meanings of directions – what it means to go down, up, backwards, forwards, to the right, to the left, etc. for a person and how these meanings are formed in the first year of life. He condenses these vectors into the alphabet and shows how these signs influence us. This is what I will re-read regarding my acquaintance with the runes.
I do not impose either authors or my vision of the runes. It’s all very individual. No books, no reading and understanding can replace the very non-verbal communication. Many who read Enmerkar’s blog use this well in life 🙂
At the Beginning of the Path, you know, I haven’t read anywhere that Odin gave up earthly values. Wasn’t it when the gods told him to leave the familiar warm country and move to rather harsh conditions for survival? Speaking of values and living accordingly is also a different matter.
And I would also like to say regarding the growth of wheat (or something), it relates more to the rune Jera. To perceive Fehu as activity, I don’t know. Closer, it’s like “initial capital.” A point of reference. It’s no coincidence that it stands at the beginning of the Futhark. Just the vision of the runes by a separate person depends on what values they are oriented towards (this is just my opinion). Also, I would like to focus on values like money, power… There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. One could even say it’s a necessity. Some religions (or rather their ministers) preach almost the good in poverty, etc. This goodness is simply that there is less responsibility. Nothing more. Poverty, being broke is bad. A person shouldn’t be hungry to be compassionate or to understand the state of the hungry (in a somewhat exaggerated example). They simply need to remember that they are a human. I want to illustrate with two examples of using money and power (influence). Look at Gosha Kutsenko. He was asked once to help children with cerebral palsy. It ended with Gosha organizing the “Step Together” foundation; he organizes charity events where funds are gathered to help children. And not only for treatment. The children receive various gifts. This person spends a lot of time on this. Does he have a bad car, or house, or does he go hungry? No. He shouldn’t suffer to do such a wonderful deed. But he gives, SIMPLY GIVES to those who need it. He earns money not at the expense of others and uses it not just for himself. The second example is quite grim, but it’s a real-life story. In a family with six children, a primary school teacher was hired as a governess. She loves children very much and finds it hard to find work. She cannot bear when parents don’t care about their children. Here were her two children and four from an orphanage. She was attracted by the fact that the mother reads the Bible, and the children were well cared for. For a couple of weeks, she worked with the biological children (around 8 and 9 years old), then they brought in the four adopted kids (from 2 to 5 years old). The house was very wealthy, the setting, the rooms for the children, their clothes, toys, and the play area – everything was just excellent. The father was a businessman. The governess noticed that the children saw neither meat, butter, cheese, nor cottage cheese. Bread was issued by the maid… Then such a case happened. One 4-year-old girl misbehaved. The stepmother had previously told the governess that the girl was proud and needed to be taught strictly. So, the girl misbehaved. The stepmother initially scolded her; then, she put her on all fours and made her crawl and bark. The child complied, but cried. Then the stepmother beats her with a belt and tells her: you must smile and rejoice, pride is leaving you. The child’s tears roll down her face; she smiles and crawls. A few more nits and punishments with the belt. A four-year-old boy stood aside the whole time with hands folded like a dog and trembling. After that, the girl performed foot massages for the biological children of the “mother.” And she was deprived of dinner. She lay down hungry. The fifth child from the orphanage was on the way. The governess couldn’t speak for a whole day after that. The only one she could talk to about it was her son. She couldn’t prove anything. Businessmen, connections. She is just a teacher. Her son advised her to stay there, reasoning that he knew how mom loves children and cares for them. His words were convincing: but don’t you think that for these kids you are like a bright ray that will warm them? There was no alternative. She had to stay there. But the stepmother began to dislike that the governess had started to treat the children well, and the children loved her. They fired her. They even wanted to take money from her. There, with the children, there was also a nanny. The nanny once took the children for a walk, and the governess was given the smallest one (2 years old) to swing on the swings. While saying (quite insistently) that the little one loves to swing very high. On the swing, there was a very easily twisted screw on one side. If the child had fallen, then there… But the governess was experienced; she tightened the screw and did not swing the children anymore. Everything is very simple. Power over small beings who have no one to protect them, money for each child paid by the state, a mortgage on the house repaid by the state (they wanted to take four more from the orphanage to have a total of 10 children), practically no taxes in business. Here is real use of power, money, means to earn this money. The children didn’t even eat fish while their parents feasted on royal shrimp. The governess faced a choice – either to try to take the children away and return them to the orphanage or leave everything as it is. It is a responsibility for the fate of the four she knew and for those who were to be brought in. She didn’t know what to do. After that, she couldn’t find a job for a year. But she found some solutions. She was helped to remain in the shadows. A very good person, a wise grandfather. There were cameras set up. Everything was recorded. They were stripped of their parental rights, even the biological ones were taken away. The stepmother went to a psychiatric hospital. I don’t think anyone regretted this. Here are two examples of using money, power, and influence. It’s not about the amount of money or power, but about how it is acquired and used. Sorry for such a long comment. This just reflects a view on the essence of humanity. Why were you born human?
Good morning!
The recent comments evoke such a reaction: I feel like remaining silent and praying.
I feel deep compassion for that woman—whether she is a mother or a stepmother. And while children have many opportunities to heal their wounds, with a lot of support from people, the law, and nature on their side, what can help their “failed parents,” who are in such a deep pit? Only God.
I returned once more to the Credo of Another Mage. “The world is infinitely diverse, and it is in this diversity that it has the wonderful ability to provide suitable Paths for everyone. This means that what has proven true for me may not be so for others, and that does not mean that any of us is more right, smarter, or stronger—it simply means that we have different Paths.”
No one here imposes anything on anyone; we exchange our knowledge, experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
And, you know, the Sun has not yet extinguished—despite all the evil that exists on Earth. After all, there is still a little bit less evil than good.
The myths tell that Odin, traveling among people, could take a soul, could take a life, could take luck and give it to another, etc.
He was not afraid of looking wrong in the eyes of people. Or did he just do it that way?
To mock other people’s children, even if it’s just before the state taking responsibility for them, not to mention human values.
The path here is irrelevant.
Having pity for scoundrels is yet another trick of society: we are so good that we won’t say that their actions are bad.
It’s a personal choice for everyone. There are people who do care.
I have a friend who is a witch, and she has a unique test. At the first meeting, she asks a question (only then does she start helping the person): there is a murderer standing nearby, and he will kill a stranger’s child next to you; you know this. You have a knife. What will you do? Even if you know you might not overpower him, that he’ll kill both you and the child? What will you do?
Her answer surprised me. Most said they would step aside.
It’s one thing not to interfere where you’re not invited and to help even when you’re not asked just because you know you can help. There’s no one else.
One can pretend to live. No pain, no great upheavals. Or one can live fully. There is pain and loss there. But there is also real joy. In any case, that’s the essence of it – how to live.
Each person chooses for themselves 🙂
In my line of work, I am on the side that removes children from families in situations of risk and deprives them of parental rights. Here, you have to act decisively and without doubt. Submitting to promises to correct the situation is a utopia. These people are incapable of changing without external help. But there is no one to provide that help. Yet deep inside, there are many doubts. My pity for them is merely a reflection of the pity that can be seen in the eyes of the victimized children (in our view) of such parents. No one else will feel sorry for them, only their own children.
This is such a division of function and argument. 😉
I am grateful to Marina for her comments – they made me reflect on many things within myself. Where does this pity come from – this internal attention to neglectful parents? Yes, I understand that we are all “leaves of the same tree.” But where does this urge to feed all the suffering individuals, to nurse everyone, come from? When I look at my little garden – no matter how hard I try, the Earth remains indifferent – it nourishes and nurtures both my flowers and the weeds. And of course, it will be ineffective to give in to this current – I have too few resources and there won’t be enough milk for everyone. But this pity is also a sign of where to direct attention (if I were to live forever ;)- when mechanisms to protect children in risky situations are established, we must also address the situations of risky parents.
The Fehu rune represents two frequency channels directed at Vishuddha (mental) and Manipura (astral) to activate them and feed them with a high-frequency stream of etheric energy. It activates will – Manipura and Mind – Vishuddha, through which a person can achieve success in the material world. It is stated here that nothing is given simply; material success can be achieved by possessing the aforementioned qualities, which this rune activates.