Yesterday I promised to explain how the stances provide an opportunity for the runes to talk to you. But I may be getting a little bit ahead of myself without a couple of words of explanation. What are runes? Big question and one we will be looking at in some depth over the next couple of weeks. For today the answer is; runes are symbols and symbols enable communication between the cognitive and intuitive parts of the mind. Symbols are both simpler than and beyond language as a means of communication.

There is some degree of cultural specifics in a symbol as we saw yesterday with Buddhists using the symbol of the monkey for a particular aspect of consciousness and in the northern tradition using the squirrel, but once you understand what kind of animal each is and how similar their behaviour is they become quite interchangeable as symbols.

Symbols obviously have meanings but the interesting thing is that it seems to be the cognitive mind which needs to learn how to name their meanings but the intuitive mind simply knows. This means that when you do a rune reading for someone, they can pick out the appropriate runes but it needs someone who knows runes to interpret them. Now I am getting way ahead of myself and rune reading needs at least one article to itself.

When doing the sixteen stances there is always the possibility of missing one out. Yes it could be because you don't really know them, but there are only 16 of them and even through I have been doing them daily for nearly 20 years it still occasionally happens to me. Lack of concentration? Well possibly, but when you know something well enough you can do it on auto pilot.

Think about driving car, a few months after passing your test and you should be carrying out most of the functions of driving more or less automatically, your concentration should be reserved for navigation and watching out for other road users. You shouldn't have to think about which pedal is the brake or how to find the indicators. But you may well have had the experience of setting out to drive to work and suddenly finding yourself heading for your favourite pub/shop/friend /park etc. You might want to believe that you just forgot the route to work that morning, but really you should be thinking about how you really feel about going to work that day.

So if you find yourself missing out a stance stop and ask yourself what the corresponding rune symbolises. It isn't usually difficult to see, in fact often blindingly obvious. But at least you know what is actually bothering you and it is a relatively painless way of getting the message. If you are seriously resistant to messages from your subconscious then more drastic means of communication are stupid accidents, psychosomatic illnesses, embarrassing slips of the tongue etc. Much better to just stop and ask yourself for example: If I missed out Tyr am I lacking courage in some situation? If Fe is there a financial issue I am ignoring? Believe me, it only usually takes a few seconds to see, and that is what Stav is about, learning to see reality, about ourselves and the world around us.

Regards,

Graham

www.iceandfire.org.uk