It is such a satisfying feeling when I draw the rune Laguz during my daily morning divination. I draw a rune daily as it gives me feedback on the energies/archetypes I am swirling out on any given day and can give me some clues as to how I am handling the daily business of individuation.

Laguz signifies that one’s intuition is tracking and, according to the Rune Secrets website, reflects these qualities:

Divinations: Life, passing a test, sea of vitality and of the unconscious growth, memory, dreams; or fear, circular motion, avoidance, withering, depression, manipulations, emotional blackmail, lack of moral fiber, fantasy, poison, toxicity

Governs:
Transpersonal powers
. Mastery of emotion in order to shape wyrd
. Guidance through difficult initiatory tests, ie. initiation into life
Increase in vitality and life force
Communication between your conscious mind to another’s unconscious mind
Development of ‘second sight’ or prophetic wisdom
All powers of dreaming (lucid dreams, astral projection)…

Let’s take that phrase I’ve bolded: Mastery of emotion in order to shape wyrd. Wyrd is a word that refers to fate, or personal destiny and shares an old etymology with the word “weird.” Upon reading that, I was reminded of what Brenda Hillman said about revision: “Revise toward strangeness.”

And what gets in the way of mastering emotion? We are emotion’s slave when we are stuck in our woundedness. It is a familiar place, which (when we lack courage) and may be comforting in its familiarity, but does keep us stuck. There is no evolution without risk. Which brings me to my favorite James Baldwin quote:

“Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty…the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mark of cruelty.”

Why revise toward the weird? Risk. No risk, no evolution. We are here to evolve and there are artisinal distractions in our age which can be quite effective in deflecting us from the now and here; from The Work.

Back to the Weird (from Wikipedia)

The Old English term wyrd derives from a Common Germanic term *wurđíz.[1] Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon wurd,[2] Old High German wurt,[3] Old Norse urðr, Dutch worden (to become), and German werden. The Proto-Indo-European root is *wert- “to turn, rotate”, in Common Germanic *wirþ- with a meaning “to come to pass, to become, to be due” (also in weorþ, the notion of “origin” or “worth” both in the sense of “connotation, price, value” and “affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity)… Old English wyrd is a verbal noun formed from the verb weorþan, meaning “to come to pass, to become”.[4] The term developed into the modern English adjective weird.[5] Adjectival use develops in the 15th century, in the sense “having the power to control fate”, originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, in the Elizabethan period detached from their classical background as fays, and most notably appearing as the Three Witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Charles Olson knew that writing spontaneously (his word was projective) the content of one’s poetry changes and, by extension, we can see how the soul develops. Every path to individuation is unique. Or weird. It is not a recipe for overnight literary fame, but in the long run, it’s where we need to go anyway to experience joy, health, consciousness. Having a poetry practice where we accept the weird connects us with larger forces and allows us to use emotion to shape wyrd (destiny.) Why would anyone choose to do less than “control their fate” with their poetry practice? (Gourmet distractions.)

peN
7:07am
31-MAR-2022
Casa del Colibrí