Runes of the Goddess

Some time ago I wrote a post in which I described reading the book Runes of the Goddess while on vacation in California. While there, I picked up smooth beach rocks and brought them home to create my own set of runes based on this book.

To the set, I followed my intuition and incorporated one additional stone from Lady of the Nothern Light: A Feminist Guide to the Runes by Susan Gitlin-Emmer: Ansuz: Mouth. (This book was recommended to me in the comments section of my previous runes post and it is a good resource as well.)

Ansuz, or mouth, is the Goddess as source of all speech: song, history, poetry and the magic in naming and words. She is the source of inspiration, the ways in which Her daughters partake in Her divinity. This is an especially important rune for artists, writers and storytellers, because it means that they are able to hear Her voice clearly. If you are using your creativity in some project, this rune is telling you your vision is true, that it comes from your deepest source. What you are working on is important and it is your job to bring it into being. If Ansuz comes to you in a reading, listen carefully for the voice of the Goddess; She has something to say to you. Listen for Her voice within you. Use Ansuz in your spellwork when you need to hear Her voice and when you need Her to hear you. Ansuz is the power of all naming. Think of the many thousands of names for the Goddess. Speak your own names of power. Remember that She is the source of all being, and honor Her with all you say. Know that all history is fluid, including your own. You can rewrite the stories you tell yourself about yourself, reshape your personal mythology. Call on Her and the power of Ansuz to shape the words of your spells and incantations. Know that speech can call things into being. We cannot conceive of that which we lack the words to describe. Words can limit what we see as possible. Invent new language. Remind others of its power. Sing Her songs in your rituals. Honor and invoke her with poetry.

While it seemed a little simplistic, all I did was draw the runes onto the beach rocks with sharpies and they turned out very nicely

What I do with my Womanrunes is a type of divination too, but it is pretty simplistic compared to the artform described in Runes of the Goddess. Author PMH Atwater uses a set of 16 runes based on the ancient Elder Futhark runes and she calls them Goddess runes. Each time they are used, the whole set is cast and interpreted. Rather than relying on a single stone for guidance, the whole cast is interpreted based on the pattern and relationships to each other as well as their relationship to the questioner and the question asked. (There are two question stones, one for a male questioner and one for a female questioner. The questioner holds the appropriate stone while thinking/asking their question and then casts them all. The rest of the runes are considered, in part, based on their relationship to where the question stone falls in the spread. In my set of beach rock runes, pictured above, the red stone with no symbol in the upper right is the female stone and the one next to it is the male stone.)

These are two of my first castings in July, one for my husband and one for me). It definitely takes practice to figure out how to interpret them as a whole.