Tag: yule

Heathen Holiday Crafts: Rune Ornaments

This one was a lot of fun and super, super easy.  All you need is paint, paper, and string or ornament hooks and glue.

First, you cut the paper, which needs to be stiff (I used watercolour paper) into squares which were about 3×3, and then fold them in half so they open like a book.

ornaments1

Each of the 33 Runes and ornaments was painted individually, in the order they appear. I selected two colours that I associate with each rune, and would first paint the background, then the rune.

In the “front” I painted the runes in the second colour:

ornaments3

And the “back” I painted the name and an image of some kind I also associate with them or which help illustrate the meaning.

ornaments2

After the paint dried, I used a thick sewing needle to make a small hole in the upper corner of the fold, about 1/4 inch from the top and threaded a gold string through. I knotted it and then tucked the ends inside the fold before glueing them together with tacky glue

Put them between waxed paper in a heavy book to help them dry flat – as you can see, Raidho (and Algiz, but it fixed up better) got stuck together.  If you use thicker card stock, you don’t have to double up your paper. I was working with what I had on hand.

In hindsight, I realized that hooks are so easy and cheap to find they had them at the CVS I went to the next day, and were I to make them over again, I would definitely use hooks instead of loops of string, as the loops will break eventually and are not as easy to hang on the branches.

Yule Tradition: Divination

Last year I started a Yuletide tradition for myself that I am continuing this year. I know I saw the idea on someone else’s blog ages ago and I can’t remember where, but I thought it was a fantastic idea for seasonal divination.

Each night of the 12 nights of yule, I draw a rune for each of the next 12 months. I spend some time in meditation, draw a rune, and then journal about it and what it indicates for that month of the year.

I started last night, as it was the Solstice, and historically the Northern folks counted days from evening to evening, not morning to morning so while today is Yule, yesterday was the start, at least for me.

It is a simple thing, but powerful, and last year the tides and themes were on point.

I tweaked a bit from last year, doing more journaling and less focus on dreaming, as I rarely dream (last year I slept on each rune, but had no dreams I could recall). I had also been doing the draws in the morning rather than evening due to my ridiculous work schedule, so I was trying to record one new rune and dream journal from the night before.

The first rune jumped out of the bag. I had my selection between my fingers and half way out the bag when this one dropped on the ground and demanded attention, and glad I am of it – January looks like it will be a surprisingly good month.

gebo by RomOnFire
gebo by RomOnFire on DeviantArt