Now Thor’s hammer… You can run up against the thorns at any time, be confronted by your giants for no reason you can determine. I think we experience this routinely, is this not so? Thor’s hammer is the same as the Buddhist dorje or lightning bolt. They are the same symbol.

How and why would people devote their energy to this rune? People devote their energy to this rune in an effort to understand conflict and crisis. It’s the avant garde threshold of the mad genius, the daemonic inspired, the berserker. One would dedicate their path to this rune even outside of crisis when they reach the understanding that every moment is mortal, every choice is a chance for world shaking opportunity, Thor’s thunder. They would also dedicate their paths to this rune as a way of tempering their own passions, and more specifically their arrogance and hubris.

I really liked what you explained last time how people would choose one rune to study to gain insight into it and let it affect their lives. Indeed, that applies here for those who are stuck in Isa. Isa, the rune of ice. Its equivalent in the tarot is the hanged man. For those stuck in Isa, rigidity, living death, Thor’s hammer is the ice breaker.

Thurisaz beats Isa, like rock beats scissors? It does, indeed. Yes.

In Norse lore, where we get the word hell from in the first place, hell is not a place of fire and suffering and agony. Hell was a forever in winter, ice locked, and a place of apathy and ultimately despair.

Did the Norse see themselves as living in hell? They did not. They had a great deal of lore about the coming of the bright one. They have a spring and summer season, but their winters were long and cold and hard. In fact, their idea of the other world was not something alien like a lot of modern thinking describes it, but rather an extension of the natural world, places you would reach if fate permitted.

So Santa clause lives in hell. Ah yes, though would go by the name Krampus. This Thurisaz rune is also the symbol of the demon, a.k.a. Krampus. In the Buddhist hells and in a later adaption of Catholic thinking, even Roman thinking really, hell is inhabited by devils that among other names are known as the kindly ones because as horrifying as the impact of Thor’s hammer is, sudden enlightenment, it’s also the surest way to liberation in the face of despair. It’s the gate that leads both into and out of the dark night of the soul.

Ever take a sudden scare and instead of jumping in fright you spontaneously cackled with strange glee? That’s the impact of Thor’s hammer. The liberation offered by seeing the world as if you were already dead. Living the code of Bushido, life is ugly to the degree that you expect it to have some fixed state, becomes grey and dead. For those who would take up the path of Thor’s hammer as a path of service to their fellow human beings, they would immerse themselves in this paradoxical view in order to be ready at any time to help liberate people from the seemingly endless cycle of despair.

Like a bodhisattva. Yes.

If you’re stuck in a rut, you may want to reflect on this rune for a while? Yes.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~