This past week didn’t go quite as planned, so the painting step, scheduled for Wednesday night, was pushed off to tonight. However, spending Samhain Night painting runes was wonderfully magical!

Runes – Wet Paint

I used Reeves Acrylic paints. Prang recommends an acrylic watercolor for painting Das clay. I like the Reeves colors because they are easy to work with, and the colors are clear and sharp. I wanted to avoid diluting the colors, since the Das clay goes soft when wet, so being able to use the paint straight out of the tubes was ideal. Reeves also makes acrylic watercolor paint, which is different from the regular acrylic paints I used, but again, since the clay reacts to water, adding water back via the paint seemed like it would produce undesirable results.

I was quite glad I had smoothed the edges of the rune shapes, as the few places where I had not done so with full care, the paint bled into the ridges. This was easily addressed with the end of a toothpick dipped in water, as that provided just enough moisture to soften the ridge so I could remove it. There were also a few times where my fine motor skills were insufficiently fine, and I managed to get paint on a part of the tile that wasn’t supposed to be painted. Not to fear, though–my friend, the dampened toothpick, solved that problem as well. I will have to re-buff those tiles once the paint is dry, but it was helpful to be able to erase the misplaced paint.

I chose the colors based on personal preference. Cweorth and Wendhorn, being fire-related, are red. Berkana is a rune of growth, so a vibrant spring green felt like the right choice. Isa is an icy blue. The upper symbol on Jera is green, the lower one is brown, reflecting the cycle of seasons. And so on, as I felt moved to match color to symbol.

Next time around, I will see about finding brushes with even finer tips (if possible–these were pretty narrow), start with new brushes (these have been working with me for a while), and have a few more to hand.

Total painting time: 1.5 hours. Total working project time to date: 4.5 hours.

The paint needs just a few hours to dry, so the runes will sit overnight while I make a little more Samhain magic, and then sleep.

The next step is to re-buff the few that need it, touch up the paint (if required), and then seal them. That’s on the schedule for Monday–check back on Tuesday to see how it goes!

The Giant’s Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s Draw: Utgard-Loki/Emperor; Nauthiz; Svipdag/Knight of Cups.

What do you need? Time off, to relax and play and create.

What do you need? To fulfill your promises to others, and to manage your responsibilities in a calm, adult manner.

You can have both–but the commitments to others come first. Tie up loose ends, make decisions, take action, communicate what must be said. Then you can take time to play. to revel in your creative emotions, to sing and paint and dance and read and be with friends.

Finish the work today, and play tonight. When the New Year begins tomorrow, you will be refreshed in spirit, and free of old business, ready for the new opportunities and adventures which await.

The Giants’ Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s Draw: Nott/The Star; Ac, reversed; Hrimthurs/Three of Coins.

You may be feeling wrung out, tired, or just plain bored with it all, here at the end of the week. Your strength is not what it could be today, and probably not what you need it to be.

Your tools for making it through the day in one piece are focus and faith. You may think you don’t have what you need to do the job–someone flaked on you, a piece is missing, information is unavailable. Do your best, and press on. You can accomplish a lot with duct tape and WD-40–either the actual items, or the metaphysical equivalents.

Nott tells us to keep faith in ourselves and our work. Even if you feel like the week is ending in a mess, with unfinished work and unresolved issues, the world is actually not ending. Do what work you can do today, and let the rest go. Leave work early if you can, park the kids at the neighbors’ house for a few hours, treat yourself to a glass or cup of something nice and spend some time looking at the autumn leaves.

This weekend is Samhain, which brings a New Year with the Turning of the Wheel. Make time for the sacred, allow yourself to enjoy the revels, and you will find that you can start the New Year on Sunday in a much better place than you feel is possible today.

The Giants’ Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s draw: Mjol/Eight of Wands; Isa; Hyndla/The Hermit.

Things around you are moving quickly, perhaps too quickly for you to process thoroughly. Isa is here to help shield you from the chaos. Being ice itself, however, Isa has its own slippery energy, so be sure you are directing that outwards to deflect unhelpful influences, rather than turning it towards you and adding to your own sense of being off-balance.

Mjol gives you the energy to work with Isa, and to move with necessary speed. Just because you are moving quickly does not mean you are moving thoughtlessly, or without a plan. You need to respond, not just react.

Hyndla tells us to stop and think before we act. Use Isa as a shield to give yourself time and space to consider what is happening, and what your best response to the situation will be. Do not let  yourself be rushed; even in the most urgent circumstances (setting aside physical danger), you can give yourself a bit of time and space to sort out what is happening, so you can make a good decision. Respond from your authentic self, and not from someone else’s patterns or expectations.

Let others rush in and slip on the ice. Take the time to put on your snow shoes.

The Giant’s Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s Draw: Thjassi/Three of Swords; Algiz; Gerda/Page of Coins.

Thjassi and Gerda have each turned up three times already this month. You still have a lot of emotional energy to sort out about all that is passing out of your life, and Thjassi is here to make sure you deal with it.

Algiz, the elk with the great horns, provides guardian energy to provide an open space for you to do this work.

Gerda reminds us that emotional work requires this safe space, and to retreat to our walled garden as we sort ourselves out. Once we have acknowledged our grief and loss, we can tend the shoots of the new growth as we heal–but we must have a safe place, and time to do this work.

Take the time, make the time, put up whatever defenses you need. You must take time to heal, and you must take that time now.

If you are new to working with bindrunes, I suggest you read the introductory bindrune post here, then return to this post to read about this specific bindrune.

Life can present us with occasions for which we feel inadequate, or perhaps we just need a boost to help us present our best aspect. To go with last week’s bindrune for confidence, this week’s rune helps to create a glamour to help us appear as we wish to be seen. “Act as if” can be a helpful technique–for example, act as if you are calm and confident, and the casting director at the audition (or potential date at the cafe, or hiring manager at the job interview) is more likely to see you that way.

Now, you could use this bindrune to cast a glamour in a negative way–for example, to convince someone to trust you when you are actually using them for our own purposes–but I wouldn’t recommend that. It’s between you, your conscience, and your Gods, of course. But, my advice is–don’t.

Bind Rune for a Glamour – Ior, Dagaz, Laguz

Ior (green): The rune of Jormundgand draws in the Great Serpent’s boundary magic. We clearly define our boundaries, and thus ourselves, as we wish to be seen. This rune also calls upon Jormundgand’s fluid identity as perceived by others. While the Great Serpent is a unique being without gender, many who work with Jormundgand see him/her/hir as their own gender, and thus Jormundgand becomes the screen for our projections the way we wish to become the screen for the other person’s positive projections.

Dagaz (orange): This rune brings in the light of day, the brightness needed to dazzle our audience. Dagaz also functions as an energy filter, allowing out only what we wish to put forward for others to see. The converse of that, of course, is that it also filters what comes through to us, so the caution is to dazzle with, but not to be dazzled by, your own glamour.

Laguz (blue): With its flowing energy, Laguz can be quite useful in deflecting attention away from what we do not want others to see. We want to appear confident, so we don’t want them to see our nervousness. That’s good. We want to appear trustworthy, so we don’t want them to see our treachery. That’s not good. Just don’t do it. This rune has a a great deal of power to shape others’ perceptions of us–use it wisely.

The bindrune on the left was done in colored pencil. The one on the right was done with calligraphic marker. They are the same bind rune, shown in two different media to give an idea of how the same bindrune looks different depending on how it is created.

You could also put a drop of rose oil on the bindrune, as the scent creates a sense of well-being, which boosts our energy and inspires others to open up to us.

Wishing you a glamourous week!

The Giants’ Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s draw: Jormundgand/The World; Gerda/Page of Coins; Yr; Fenja & Menja/Two of Coins.

Jormundgand was the top card in the deck today, and when I drew the card, Gerda came along. As Gerda is the Lady of the Walled Garden, and Jormundgand is all about boundaries, the secondary card nicely reinforces the message of the card for the day.

Work. Work work work. It’s all about work today. Yr says to focus, to pay attention to the details, to take the time to do it right the first time. Fenja and Menja are all about persistence and endurance. Initially, they were slaves bound to the mill, but they created magic to free themselves, and are now free women in charge of their own lives and livelihood.

Complete the unfinished tasks nagging at the back of your mind. Clear away the clutter of old business. Put your work area in order. Process paper build up–file, shred, or recycle. Clear the decks, wrap things up, so that you have mental and physical space for the new energies and opportunities to come, and are able to move into them with energy and enthusiasm because you have completed your old business.

There may be a lot of work. There may be a lot of details. There may be more than it seems possible to do. Draw on today’s energies to help you focus, to do the work, and to do it well. Buckle down and get to it, and you will surprise yourself with how much you can do today.

The nice folks at Watkins Publishing sent a review copy of the Sacred Sites Oracle Cards by Barbara Meiklejohn-Free, with illustrations by Yuri Leitch.

Sacred Sites Oracle

The cards and book are packaged in a nicely designed slipcase with a pull ribbon, which makes it easy to slide the set from the outer box.

The deck contains 53 cards of various sacred locations around the world. There are 13 cards for each of the four directions, and the card depicting Mecca is Power Card, which emphasizes the message of the other cards drawn. Each direction carries specific attributes–for example, most of the sites in the South suit are places of healing, so if you draw a number of Southern sites, the focus of the reading is on healing energy and actions.

The image on each card is viewed as three levels:

Upper World, representing potental

Middle world, representing the present

Lower World, representing the past

By viewing the card image with each of these perspectives in combination with its underlying directional energy, additional meanings arise, and you can more easily see how the message of the card applies to where you are, what factors led to the situation, and also how to make the most of the potential.

The companion book describes a suggested ritual or meditation to acquaint the reader with the energy of the place, and with the deity (if any) associated with it. For those unfamiliar with a particular location or the culture of the place, the ritual is a helpful addition to the narrative to enable the reader to tap into the energy of the place and its spirits.

The book is lushly printed on excellent quality paper, and the cards are on substantial cardstock with a smooth, non-glare coating, which makes them pleasant to shuffle and good to read, discerning the small details in the drawings with ease.

This is a lovely addition to Watkin’s divination line, and users will greatly enjoy the combination of interesting ideas, concise text, and engaging imagery the deck offers.

The first part of this creative adventure, in which I play with clay and manage not to destroy my kitchen, can be read here.

I’ve managed to leave the runes alone for 24 hours to dry. I turned them over after 16 hours, as the fronts were dry to the touch, but the backs were still visibly damp  (the color difference between wet clay and dry clay is noticeable–the wet clay is somewhat grayish, and the dry clay is more white).

After 24 Hours of Drying Time

So now, they look like this:

Dry on the front

The edges are ragged, although not rough to the touch. Still, I want these to be pleasing to handle, so with my trusty emery board nail file (yes, the cardboard kind you buy in a package at the drugstore or the beauty supply store), I softened the edges and corners, and removed extraneous lumps.

Before:

Before – front

Before – back

A minute with the emery board, and we have:

After – Front

After – back

Since some of the runes were not fully dry, they were soft in the center. This worked well in a few cases where I wasn’t entirely pleased with the shape of the rune incision, so I took advantage of the moment to make the shapes more exact. For the others, though, this required careful handling not to bend the rune out of shape. I probably should have left well enough alone for another 24 hours to let them completely dry. On the other hand, a few really needed to be reshaped, so I’m just as glad to have done this all tonight.

Tonight’s smoothing and polishing took just under an hour, bringing the total project time so far to three hours.

The next step is to paint the symbols. In theory, I will have time on Wednesday evening, so check back on Thursday for the next update!

The Giants’ Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Today’s Draw: Fafnir/Four of Coins; Teiwaz, reversed; Hyndla/The Hermit.

Your guards are down, leaving you open to negative influences–including acting from your own negative energies. You are tired of thinking about this particular problem, and you’ve been thinking about it so long, you almost don’t remember what the original situation was. You’ve been sitting on this particular pile far longer than is good for you–or necessary.

You need to step back and stop thinking about The Problem. Clear your mind and your heart by getting in touch with your authentic self, your actual feelings and thoughts. It’s far too easy to fall into emotional and mental patterns which reinforce us being stuck someplace unhealthy. Stepping away and seeing things honestly takes time and effort–and sometimes we don’t want to see what is really going on.

If you must engage today, act from your best self. Better to withdraw and leave the discussion/fight/brawl for another day when you are more centered and acting from a better place.

Get quiet, get real, get over yourself. Tomorrow, you can get on with things.