Shall we discuss today’s rune magick topic of Thurisaz?
I will go back over the basics. It’s not actually super complicated or anything. Rune magick uses a rune or small group of runes as an attentional focus, and the purpose is to attune oneself to the force of nature/reality represented by the rune in order to grow personally in both understanding and as with all understanding also comes power.
This rune is called Thurisaz. Symbolically, it’s the thorn, but has other symbols associated with it as well, giants and Thor’s hammer. The thorn is a gateway and giants are the guardians. The giants were elemental creatures in Norse lore, less inclined to reason than even the passionate Aesir were. In fact, their creation story features not necessarily a god or gods, but two giants. Ymir, a living avatar of ice or frost, and Suter, the complimentary aspect of fire, and through their rather violent combination was the world said to be formed.
I think they use Ymir in World of Warcraft. Oh indeed, they do, and largely for the same reason. In WoW, the giants were servants of the titans who brought order and life to a world previously governed only by chaos and violent elementals.
In ages past, patches of thorn were large and very effective barriers, hedges against any human trespass though mysteriously allowing birds and other small animals to pass with much more ease. This is how they got associated with fairy lore.
We replicate it with barbed wire. Indeed, the story of Sleeping Beauty being one example. Her curse not only sending her into a state of suspension, but causing her entire native kingdom to be lost in thorns. This ring a bell?
You rarely hear that bit. It was the reason her prince had to be of exceptional character. He had to have to clarity of mind to find his way past that hedge in the first place, but yes, back to giants… Giants were the passions. They were so even in Roman mythology, as thus their divinities were not so much the originators of their passions but a stage in moderation of the same passions.
Moderation? A prototype for it, yes, though they were only more moderate than their parents the titans were.
To bring this to personal symbolism, your giant is your shadow, both literally in the tendency of your shadows dimensions to exceed your own, and more esoterically as your personal demons. The spiritual landscape itself has the hedges I mentioned earlier. We normally dwell in the clear relatively placid glades of normal life, but we inevitably hit a threshold, and repeatedly throughout our life. Is this not so? We have different names for it, but we can’t really escape the legendary associations. They are deep seated in our consciousness. We call it burn out. Remind you of Suter?
We also think of these transitions as a sort of death. The origin of the grim reaper figure was originally the titan known as Chronos, Father Time and Death. The creative act itself is turning the gifts of the passions against the elemental forces that originate them, turning the passions against themselves. Lust taken to its extremes becomes quiescence, but only after it has passed the threshold, only after you have been there, done that and seen it all.
I ponder “hedonic adaptation.” You can only desire so much chocolate. This rune embodies that principle yes, and it’s actually symbolic of the process of fortune and regression, growth and extinction.
When I recently gave up chocolate, I found to my surprise I had so much more energy. Our metabolism has amazing resources that we do tend to lose track of.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~