Description

Need and distress are the essential words I associate with this rune. It is the ultimate survival rune, testing, constraining, harsh, problem solving, survival, hermit, applying the skills you’ve learnt, fire of necessity.

As Freya’s Aett is the journey of self, where we learn to know ourselves and have the self worth and confidence to step into Heimdall’s Aett to teach us to use our self awareness and expand it past ourselves into the world around us, and turn this awareness into skills to work with the outer world, to survive the elements.

So the journey of survival started with Hagalaz, when I expand my awareness, perceive the storms and crises ahead and face them with acceptance. We need to pass through the storm to transform and move on with our journey.

After gaining farsight and awareness in the first rune, this second rune teaches us to put our skills into action.

For this rune I walked to Great Tor Rocks, beginning at Hound Tor I travelled down into the bracken forests, passing the hidden Oak Grove, and the village ruins towards the rocks. Once I arrived I scaled the western face to the other side where the moor expands outwards towards the sea as you look back on Hay Tor, and tucked half way down the rock face is a little cave where someone has drawn a spiral on the inner wall.

This is my Naudiz cave, it is the much needed place of shelter and safety in a wild, sometimes hostile, landscape. A place where a weary traveller can shelter briefly on their journey. It provides a small dry spot where you are sheltered by relentless wind and rain. Where you can build your fire and attend your needs and be safe. Below the cave the moorland stretches endlessly.

I painted this piece in late summer when the bracken can reach past five foot high and you feel like you are winding through a dense forest of mini trees. The perfect environment for both predator and prey, these are the hunting grounds and where I wanted to have the aspect of distress in Naudiz to be played out.

So the lone traveller is at the cave, above the fray, attending his needs with simple competence and confidence. He is meeting his needs and on top of his game. Where down in the undergrowth below the Bracken are a pair of hares in distress, poised to flee at any moment. They are aware of danger lurking behind the rocks and stalking them from the skies. The knowledge that the Bracken is a flimsy form of cover which may hide them but also holds hidden dangers only adds to their distress. Further back in the bracken stalks is a huddled land spirit, frozen and constrained by deep distress. This part of the painting describes the distress in Naudiz, fight or flight, to be in a perpetual state of hyper alertness for the next crisis to hit!

This is a harsh rune, teaching us that we will fall into distress as life throws it’s challenges at us along our journey, and that is to be expected and accepted.

However it also teaches us about using our skills, our adaptability and our resilience to face life’s challenges and pull ourselves out of trouble and up into the cave to tend our primal fire, and build up our strength for the next part of our life journey.

This rune reminds us that when in distress remember we can become the self sufficient traveller again, we just need to use our life skills to meet our needs.

“Naudiz gives you what you need, not what you want. It gives you just enough to feel the deeper relationship to the problem, just enough to survive without triggering our automatic survival responses, but instead hone the skills of self mastery.” Duncan White