Runes: Fehu, Wealth

One of the major themes of the Rune Fehu (also known as Fee) is money, as you can well guess. The words fee, pecuniary, and peculate all come from the same root word as Fee. These words can be linked easily with similar words in other languages: in Gothic, faihu means “wealth” and “livestock”. In Latin, pecunia means “money”. These themes link with the concept of cattle or livestock with movable wealth in several other languages. In modern German, for example, vieh, (also based on the same root word) means cow. Latin pecu, Lithuanian pḗkus, Old High German fihu, Old Norse fē, Old Prussian pecku, Proto-Frisian fia, and Umbrian pequo all mean “cattle” or “herd”. Latin peculium links the two concepts with the meaning “riches in cattle”.

The concept of cattle even slips over into the Indo-Iranian and Indic side of the linguistic divide. Avestan pasu, and Sanskrit páśu are both related to cattle; Pali pasupalana means “cattlekeeping”. Given the sacred nature of the cow in the Indic tradition, they have plenty of words for cattle, but this particular word is of profound importance. It is the root for a recent epithet of Shiva: Pasupati, Lord of pasture and livestock. I believe, however, that this epithet was a more recent addition to Shiva’s repertoire. It’s clear that in the Rg Veda (written roughly between 1700–1100 BCE), the God called Pasupati was none other than Pushan, a God whose name also incorporates “pashu” with a simple inversion of the vowels. The concepts of wealth and cattle are thus both ancient and sacred with this symbol, especially given that the Sanskrit meaning also extends to "sacrificial" cattle.

With this etymological analysis alone we cover thousands of years and thousands of miles. What’s more, there’s no denying the links between all the words and meanings that go back well over 3000 years into recorded history and likely extend back prior to the known written record. Oddly enough, the poets who wrote glosses on the Runes also seem to have carried on this same knowledge without much variation. In the Rune poems, a collection of riddle-verses written between (approximately) the 8th and the 15th centuries in three different languages and locations, the meaning of “Fee” is remarkably kept quite consistent:

The Anglo Saxon Rune Poem (c. 8c)

(Feoh) byþ frofur fira gehwylcum;

(Wealth) is a comfort to all;

The Old Norwegian Rune Rhyme (c. 13c)

(Fé) vældr frænda róge;

(Wealth) is strife amongst kin;

The Old Icelandic Rune Poem (c. 15c)

(Fé) er frænda róg

(Wealth) is strife amongst kin

Even the ancients agree that money is a comfort, but also that unequal distribution of wealth to the kin can cause strife. There’s ancient wisdom you can take to the bank.

Fehu Reference Page

FEHU

Etymology

Proto Indo-European *peku-: from PIE *pek̑-, pluck or fleece (Pokorny, 797) compare PIE *plek̑-, weave (Pokorny, 834). Looking at later interpretations, the convenient correlation of *peku- to cattle alone is a bit hasty. It is clear milk/meat cows and fleece/meat sheep took separate paths from essentially the same root. Lehmann indicates the PIE meaning is closer to sheep, or fleece-bearing animal. 

Proto Germanic *fehu: from PIE *peku- (Kroonen, 134), compare PGmc *fahaz, sheep (Kroonen, 122) from PIE *pek̑-. It appears to be in PGmc where the differentiation between sheep and cattle is introduced into Germanic languages. The same occurs in Sanskrit and Avestan, where pasu means cattle (Monier-Williams, 571 pasava).

Old English Rune Poem feoh: cattle. From PGmc *fehu through Gothic faihu, movable wealth, money (Feist and Lehmann, F7). Oddly enough, OE feohtan means to fight, but is related to plucking wool rather than the concept of cattle. Still, it contains the root word feoh which relates well with the rog(e) in the Old Icelandic and Old Norse Rune Poems, meaning strife. The Old English Rune Poem does not contain the same warning of wealth being strife in the family, but maybe it was implied by the name in the first place?

Old Norse Rune Poem fe: OIsl fé, cattle - esp. sheep (Cleasby and Guðbrandur 132).

Old Icelandic Rune Poem fé: cattle. The two hints at the end of the poem are aurum and Fylkir. Latin aurum: gold. Would much have preferred Latin pecunia here, as it would relate directly back to the Latinate branch of the same PIE root word, *peku-. OIsl fylkir: Count, which I translate rather loosely given the modern Norwegian use of the word fylke for county or administrative region.

References

1. Pokorny, Julius. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern: Francke, 1959, 1989.
2. Kroonen, Guus. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
3. Feist, Sigmund and Lehmann, Winfred P. A Gothic Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: Brill 1986.
4. Monier-Williams, M. A. A Sanskrit-English dictionary, etymologically and philologically arranged, with special reference to Greek, Latin, Gothic, German, Anglo-Saxon, and other cognate Indo-European languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872.
5. Cleasby, Richard and Guðbrandur, V. A concise dictionary of old Icelandic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.

So, What is Magick?

"Macrocosm and microcosm" Johann Daniel Mylius

Big question, but I think we can make a good start at a concise answer, though a complete answer will remain elusive.

Part of it is a lot like the Theory of Gravity. At the very root of it, the Theory of Gravity is based on a calculation of stuff that happens rather than an explanation of why. If we knew exactly why gravity acted the way it did, we would be able to unify it with the other fundamental forces of the universe in a much grander Theory of Everything. For now, we just explain what it does. It's a useful theory, it's a grand theory, and it's a fundamentally sound theory, but it's not necessarily complete.

Magick, in part, seeks big theories like this. Evolution is another wonderful theory which I would consider Magickal. This is because of the way it can be used in daily life as a rule of thumb. When people look at a raccoon, they might wonder at the fact it washes its food. If you actually understand evolution, you don't wonder about why, you know why! This behaviour gave the modern raccoon's predecessors an advantage over its competitors. All that's left is to find out what the advantages were, and how they helped the raccoon's ancestor derive more energy from its environment. We simply seek to describe how stuff works, and use that set of theories as rules of thumb for life.

Magick was where science came from, after all. So far as I'm concerned, Magick is like science... mit benefits. Isaac Newton didn't come up with Gravity because he was a scientist. No, he wasn't anything of the sort. Newton was an Alchemist and a Deist. His Theory of Gravity was formulated to win an argument - an argument in which he was taking the side of God. You see, he postulated that, because of gravity, if the planets had not been first set in motion, they would have fallen into the sun. His reasoning being that the Primus Mobile - the prime mover - had to have set them in motion at the beginning of the universe. Ipso facto, there has to be a God.

I didn't say it was a good argument, but his premises were incredible. We still use them today and conveniently forget that they were used in an argument about God.

You may find, for the sole reason that we try to sum up the universe using Grand Theories and rules of thumb, that Magick is filled with symbols. The Tarot. The Yi Jing. The Runes. The Astrological Signs. The Periodic Table of the Elements. Many of these sets of symbols are employed in divination or fortune-telling. It's in divination where these Grand Theories get to play. If each symbol represents a principle, then divination is like a game of combining principles and allowing them to create something emergent. It's like a training ground for lateral thinking and imagination. After all I've learned and been through in my life, it's still probably one of the most useful brain exercises I've ever done.

So what is Magick? It's like science mit benefits. We get to philosophise about the universe, put these philosophies in neat symbols, bash them together, and see what comes out. Like a metaphysical supercollider. Sometimes we like to make completely arbitrary symbols, put random stuff in them, and see what comes out. It's creative, it's disruptive, and it's never the same result twice. Kind of like the reproduction of experimental results in most science, come to think of it... only with our Art, such creativity is a good thing!

The Norwegian Rune Poem Reference Page

Reference pages such as this will expand as new information is added to them.

ᚠ Fé vældr frænda róge;
føðesk ulfr í skóge.

ᚢ Úr er af illu jarne;
opt løypr ræinn á hjarne.

ᚦ Þurs vældr kvinna kvillu;
kátr værðr fár af illu.

ᚬ Óss er flæstra færða
fǫr; en skalpr er sværða.

ᚱ Ræið kveða rossom væsta;
Reginn sló sværðet bæzta.

ᚴ Kaun er barna bǫlvan;
bǫl gørver nán fǫlvan.

ᚼ Hagall er kaldastr korna;
Kristr skóp hæimenn forna.

ᚾ Nauðr gerer næppa koste;
nøktan kælr í froste.

ᛁ Ís kǫllum brú bræiða;
blindan þarf at læiða.

ᛅ Ár er gumna góðe;
get ek at ǫrr var Fróðe.

ᛋ Sól er landa ljóme;
lúti ek helgum dóme.

ᛏ Týr er æinendr ása;
opt værðr smiðr blása.

ᛒ Bjarkan er laufgrønstr líma;
Loki bar flærða tíma.

ᛘ Maðr er moldar auki;
mikil er græip á hauki.

ᛚ Lǫgr er, fællr ór fjalle
foss; en gull ero nosser.

ᛦ Ýr er vetrgrønstr viða;
vænt er, er brennr, at sviða.

References:
A runic inscription on a distaff from the Viking Age: a newinterpretation of the runic inscription on the stick from Staraya Ladoga

Two Universal Forces (part one)

Boaz and Jachin, the pillars of the Temple of Solomon

There are lots of twos in Magick.

Yin and Yang. Male and Female principle. Tastes great and less filling. The two that I want to talk about are basic principles of life. I will argue they make life and complexity not simply possible, but inevitable.

You see, it all starts with Hydrogen. Well, it starts before that... I mean there was this big bang and stuff. My problem is that my sub-atomic physics is really poor, and I will let the smartypantses fill in the time between Bang and Hydrogen.

For now, we're at the bit about the Hydrogen.

Hydrogen atoms have a certain gravity and natural attraction due to their single electron. The attraction is infinitesimally small, but nonzero. Eventually they clumped together and formed H2 molecules, because this is what their chemical bonds naturally want to do. Those molecules drifted together with other molecules and we got gigantic clumps of Hydrogen. All of a sudden, under the pressure of the now monstrously massive clumping of Hydrogen, some of these clumps ignite and become stars. The process of fusion begins its long and storied history in the Universe, and there was light.

This is the story of the first principle: Concentration.

The early Universe didn't know what to do with all this Hydrogen crap. It just knew there was an awful lot of Hydrogen. The Universe didn't have to intervene - it just let gravity do its thing and BAM! a whole new phenomena appeared. What's more, the fact that fusion is a Concentrating process is right in the name! It takes Hydrogen atoms, fuses them into Helium atoms, and releases energy while increasing the complexity of matter. The release of energy powers further fusion, making it a system with positive feedback. Until the fuel is gone, fusion will continue to concentrate, diversify, and produce surplus. Stars fizzle out when their fuel is gone. Basically stars have gone and created a whole bunch of new types of matter by Concentrating, and they can't continue to produce surplus. They go into a cycle of death throes, expanding, then suddenly contracting upon themselves. This is followed by a massive explosion, be it nova or supernova, and the Concentrated matter is blasted into the wide.

This is the second principle: the principle of Dispersion.

Once all this new complexity has been created, physics deigns it should be shared with the Universe once again. In the process between being super-heated nova debris to becoming relatively cool dust in the interstellar medium, a lot of this ejecta has the opportunity to interact in interesting ways and at multiple different temperatures and states of matter. Energy - both kinetic and heat - is dispersed and transferred. The new types of matter in different states increase the variety of interactions that occur between matter. These increased interactions may provide novel ways for Concentration to occur once again.

This is just the beginning of a rather extended discussion I would like to have about these two forces. The key to understanding them is to remember that Concentration creates new stuff and is able to derive energy from a new energy source. Dispersion creates new interactions and chances for interaction, and spreads around, shares, and dissipates energy.

A sharp-eyed reader might have identified that the release of energy during fusion could be considered a Dispersive process and the interactions between Dispersed matter could be considered Concentrating processes. You're right. There's a reason there's a black dot in the middle of the white side of the yin-yang symbol. Depending on your level of analysis, any number of different processes can be occurring at the same time, and in turn begetting other processes that contain their opposite. That's just how things go.

Icelandic Rune Poem Reference Page

Reference pages such as this will continue to expand as resources are added to them.

Vaksala Rune Stone

ᚠ Fé er frænda róg

ok flæðar viti
ok grafseiðs gata
aurum fylkir.

ᚢ Úr er skýja grátr

ok skára þverrir

ok hirðis hatr.

umbre vísi
ᚦ Þurs er kvenna kvöl

ok kletta búi

ok varðrúnar verr.

Saturnus þengill.
ᚬ Óss er algingautr ok

ásgarðs jöfurr,

ok valhallar vísi.

Jupiter oddviti.
ᚱ Reið er sitjandi sæla

ok snúðig ferð

ok jórs erfiði.

iter ræsir.
ᚴ Kaun er barna böl

ok bardaga [för]

ok holdfúa hús.

flagella konungr.
ᚼ Hagall er kaldakorn

ok krapadrífa

ok snáka sótt.

grando hildingr.
ᚾ Nauð er Þýjar þrá

ok þungr kostr

ok vássamlig verk.

opera niflungr.
ᛁ Íss er árbörkr

ok unnar þak

ok feigra manna fár.

glacies jöfurr.
ᛅ Ár er gumna góði

ok gott sumar

algróinn akr.

annus allvaldr.
ᛋ Sól er skýja skjöldr

ok skínandi röðull

ok ísa aldrtregi.

rota siklingr.
ᛏ Týr er einhendr áss

ok ulfs leifar

ok hofa hilmir.

Mars tiggi.
ᛒ Bjarkan er laufgat lim

ok lítit tré

ok ungsamligr viðr.

abies buðlungr.
ᛘ Maðr er manns gaman

ok moldar auki

ok skipa skreytir.

homo mildingr.
ᛚ Lögr er vellanda vatn

ok viðr ketill

ok glömmungr grund.

lacus lofðungr.
ᛦ Ýr er bendr bogi

ok brotgjarnt járn

ok fífu fárbauti.

arcus ynglingr.

References:
Select Icelandic Poems

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem Reference Page

Reference pages such as this will continue to expand as resources are added to them.

Copy of original manuscript

Original Anglo-Saxon:

Feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum;

sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan
gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan.

Ur byþ anmod ond oferhyrned,

felafrecne deor, feohteþ mid hornum
mære morstapa; þæt is modig wuht.

Ðorn byþ ðearle scearp; ðegna gehwylcum

anfeng ys yfyl, ungemetum reþe
manna gehwelcum, ðe him mid resteð.

Os byþ ordfruma ælere spræce,

wisdomes wraþu ond witena frofur
and eorla gehwam eadnys ond tohiht.

Rad byþ on recyde rinca gehwylcum

sefte ond swiþhwæt, ðamðe sitteþ on ufan
meare mægenheardum ofer milpaþas.

Cen byþ cwicera gehwam, cuþ on fyre

blac ond beorhtlic, byrneþ oftust
ðær hi æþelingas inne restaþ.

Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys,

wraþu and wyrþscype and wræcna gehwam
ar and ætwist, ðe byþ oþra leas.

Wenne bruceþ, ðe can weana lyt

sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.

Hægl byþ hwitust corna; hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte,

wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan.

Nyd byþ nearu on breostan; weorþeþ hi þeah oft niþa bearnum

to helpe and to hæle gehwæþre, gif hi his hlystaþ æror.

Is byþ ofereald, ungemetum slidor,

glisnaþ glæshluttur gimmum gelicust,
flor forste geworuht, fæger ansyne.

Ger byÞ gumena hiht, ðonne God læteþ,

halig heofones cyning, hrusan syllan
beorhte bleda beornum ond ðearfum.

Eoh byþ utan unsmeþe treow,

heard hrusan fæst, hyrde fyres,
wyrtrumun underwreþyd, wyn on eþle.

Peorð byþ symble plega and hlehter

wlancum [on middum], ðar wigan sittaþ
on beorsele bliþe ætsomne.

Eolh-secg eard hæfþ oftust on fenne

wexeð on wature, wundaþ grimme,
blode breneð beorna gehwylcne
ðe him ænigne onfeng gedeþ.

Sigel semannum symble biþ on hihte,

ðonne hi hine feriaþ ofer fisces beþ,
oþ hi brimhengest bringeþ to lande.

Tir biþ tacna sum, healdeð trywa wel

wiþ æþelingas; a biþ on færylde
ofer nihta genipu, næfre swiceþ.

Beorc byþ bleda leas, bereþ efne swa ðeah

tanas butan tudder, biþ on telgum wlitig,
heah on helme hrysted fægere,
geloden leafum, lyfte getenge.

Eh byþ for eorlum æþelinga wyn,

hors hofum wlanc, ðær him hæleþ ymb[e]
welege on wicgum wrixlaþ spræce
and biþ unstyllum æfre frofur.

Man byþ on myrgþe his magan leof:

sceal þeah anra gehwylc oðrum swican,
forðum drihten wyle dome sine
þæt earme flæsc eorþan betæcan.

Lagu byþ leodum langsum geþuht,

gif hi sculun neþan on nacan tealtum
and hi sæyþa swyþe bregaþ
and se brimhengest bridles ne gym[eð].

Ing wæs ærest mid East-Denum

gesewen secgun, oþ he siððan est
ofer wæg gewat; wæn æfter ran;
ðus Heardingas ðone hæle nemdun.

Eþel byþ oferleof æghwylcum men,

gif he mot ðær rihtes and gerysena on
brucan on bolde bleadum oftast.

Dæg byþ drihtnes sond, deore mannum,

mære metodes leoht, myrgþ and tohiht
eadgum and earmum, eallum brice.

Ac byþ on eorþan elda bearnum

flæsces fodor, fereþ gelome
ofer ganotes bæþ; garsecg fandaþ
hwæþer ac hæbbe æþele treowe.

Æsc biþ oferheah, eldum dyre

stiþ on staþule, stede rihte hylt,
ðeah him feohtan on firas monige.

Yr byþ æþelinga and eorla gehwæs

wyn and wyrþmynd, byþ on wicge fæger,
fæstlic on færelde, fyrdgeatewa sum.

Iar byþ eafix and ðeah a bruceþ

fodres on foldan, hafaþ fægerne eard
wætre beworpen, ðær he wynnum leofaþ.

Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun,

ðonn[e] fæstlice flæsc onginneþ,
hraw colian, hrusan ceosan
blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ,
wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ.

References:
Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples - Bruce Dickins 1915
The Anglo-Saxon Runic PoemA Critical Reassessment - Aya Maria Sofia Van Renterghem (Thesis)