Description

Sowilo – Sol rune of the Sun, final rune in Heimdall’s Aett

The Sun, success, wholeness, healing, completion, powerful, life, hope, relentless, direction. Achievement, the end of the journey for the adept.

To bask in Sowilo energy is to be at the zenith, in top form, in your prime, you have become a highly skilled expert, an adept.

Although Sowilo is the essence of life energy, it is in fact life at it’s most vital, vibrant and powerful, but for me the sun also means relentlessness, a scorching force of drought and dying. This brutal summer of 2026 when we experienced heatwave after heatwave and no rain for 6 weeks, Sowilo energy was an intense reminder that although vibrant and welcomed is the sun, that power can also scorch and kill. This is why in the painting I depicted a huge sun as it would be seen in space so we can see all the solar eruptions, emphasising the sun’s power and strength both as a positive and negative force. An energy deserving of deep respect and homage.

Sowilo is the last rune of Heimdall’s Aett, what I refer to as the Hunter’s Aett or the Survival Aett … We began this Aett with Hegal and the hunter a top a tor, watchful, aware of the coming storms and challenges with his guides by his side he is ready to traverse the landscape, through weather and hardship on his journey through the following runes. He learns to build his Naidiz fire to keep warm in the stillness of an Isaz winter, he survives and thrives through the Jera harvest season and is balanced, grounded and strong as he becomes part of the earth under the arms of grandmother Yew, and in Eihwaz as above so below, man and mycelium are one … the hunter enters Perthro and all that is left of him is his horn, then he goes through the portal and is embraced by the heart and spirit of the land in Algiz. He flows with the dragons through the forests, into the rivers and under the stones. Then from the land he emerges transformed, a creature of power and energy, climbing to the top of an ancestor stone to greet the blazing sun. Now at the end of the journey the hunter becomes the perfect survivalist, adapted to any conditions from benign to extreme. The journey completed and the tools and skills learned from the hunter’s Aett will take me into the last leg of this journey with the land and the runes I now face Tyr’s Aett.

I began this journey with Freya’s Aett when I did the inner work on myself as a creature of nature, the journey to find myself, my nature… With a strong sense of self I entered the second leg of Heimdall’s Aett, when I learned the skills to help me become adaptable, and resilient, working with nature to survive and thrive. In the third and last stage I must take the lessons from the journey so far and apply them in the spirit of man … nature and the people connecting and cooperating, the lessons of Tyr’s Aett.