21. Wunjo Rune

Golden sun, when shining through the blue waves, tints green. This is how you may see your heart with inner sight, when looking down to the chest from the height of the Water - golden in the middle but with emerald edges. We already saw a similar green glow in the crown of Berkana.
Now let's focus on this upper emerald part.

Do you see how the descending bar of Laguz touches the top ascending bar of Sowilo? There is a rune for this — Wunjo.

Runic Philosopher's Stone - Wunjo

It means joy and bliss, and we can also consider love, desire, and even victory aspects.

Etymologically, the proto-germanic word "wunjô" descends from PIE "wenh" - "to love". Interestingly words "venus", "to venerate", and "to win" also descend from the same PIE root.

Venus - Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. The Norse goddess Freyja is associated with the same domains, and interestingly, she is one of the Vanir - "natural" or "shamanic" faction of gods. Some scholars trace the "Vanir" word to the same PIE root "wenh".

So even if it's not attested in the sources explicitly, both from functional and etymological perspectives we can confidently connect Freyja with the Wunjo.

Freyja was known to possess a somehow important necklace "Brísingamen" but details of its significance are lost in time. Though unattested in sources this necklace reminds the Crystal we are making from Earth as part of the Runic Alchemy process.

From the Runic Alchemy perspective, Wunjo is a full-height vertical of simultaneous resonance of all five levels: Water, Air, Emptiness, Earth, and Fire, followed by a descending transition from Water and an ascending transition from Emptiness, both ending at the Air level - our chest.

The Water flow, the river, can be compared to the flow of time, from the future to the past. It always goes in this direction and we can directly perceive only the present, merely guessing the future and recalling the past. But sometimes on the river, when a normal current faces an obstacle, the whirlpool may form, causing Water to loop, so locally, time may turn back for a while letting us hang on and look around.

This is the power of Wunjo - the flow of Laguz, facing the rising vector of the Sowilo sun, causes the time to make a few circles and let us look around. Those bits of joy and happiness in our life usually happen when we hurry not, but are being in the moment and realizing how amazing is all this stuff around.

By integrating the Wunjo rune, we can adopt such a mindset of being happy, and here is how I suggest doing it:

Runic Alchemy - Wunjo gesture

We will use our right hand only with a vertical forearm aligned with our own vertical axis.
Softly bent palm forms a right-directed triangle of the upper part of the Wunjo: fingers represent descending Water, which we touch with our fingertips. And lower part of the palm helps the sun raise from the Horizon of the wrist to the energy center in the middle of the palm.

We don't even need to associate Wunjo with breathing, just feel:

  • You are sitting or standing straight and Spirit blows along your spine.
  • Fresh, gentle water flows down along your hand.
  • Meets the warm and fluffy Sun and spins around.
  • You now have some pleasant and delicate volume inside your handful, it's ok if you smile a bit.
  • Don't forget about vertical resonance - we do both at the same time.

Doing this you may notice how something is emanating from you in all directions.

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