A Handbook of Saxon Sorcery & Magic: Wyrdworking, Rune Craft, Divination & Wortcunning - Alaric Albertsson 2017

Blood to Blood: Health Magic
More Magic Techniques

By this point you should have a basic working knowledge of rúncræft, galdor, and wortcunning. If you are unsure of how your work should proceed, you can utilize divinatory runes, wyrd stones, or the arts of seething or scrying to perceive influences shaping the future. Let us now explore the application of these skills on issues that the majority of us are likely to be confronted with at some time or another.

A common issue that everyone faces is his or her own state of health. Throughout much of our lives, this is something we tend to take for granted. Like every other part of your Self, your lic is an intelligent and responsive entity. Your heart beats with no conscious instruction from your mód. Your lungs take in fresh air and release carbon dioxide as needed. When the lic is compromised, you do not need to issue commands to release antibodies, or send out marching orders to your leucocytes. The lic itself handles all of that for you. For many of us, myself included, health only becomes a concern when things go wrong.

But things do go wrong from time to time, no matter your age or general condition. And the skills you have learned can often help set things straight. Note that I said “help.” You should always see a physician if you suspect anything may be seriously wrong with you. What follows in this chapter is intended to assist the healing process, not take the place of medical attention.

When the sorcerer’s concern is healing, wortcunning comes into its own. This is so much so that many people today identify wortcunning solely with herbal “teas” and remedies. What most of these people do not know is that much of our Western herbal lore is based on an elemental theory developed by early Greek scientists. Four of the elements are the same basic building blocks recognized by many Pagans today—earth, water, air, and fire—but they have specific qualities that few people are aware of.

The Saxons turned from their gods before Western elemental theory became widespread in northern Europe, but there is no reason to believe their conversion caused them to accept the theory any earlier or more readily than they would have otherwise. Elemental theory is not related to any particular spirituality. It became widely popular throughout the Western world simply because it worked. Hippocrates’ own theories of restorative healing, based on the four elements known in his time, were the basis of traditional European medicine for centuries.

Each element is essentially a description of two qualities: temperature and humidity. Elemental theory postulates that everything in the universe is either hot or cool, and either moist or dry, in varying degrees. Water describes the combined condition of coolness and moisture; earth, the condition of coolness and dryness; air, the condition of warmth and moisture; and fire, the condition of warmth and dryness. Since these conditions can and do change, the elements are constantly transforming into one another. Thus, water transforms into earth if it loses its moisture. On the other hand, it will transform into air if it begins to warm up. Hippocrates, the Greek physician who became known as the Father of Medicine, took this further with his theory of humors. Humors are essentially the same four elements as they relate to the human body. They are perceived as four “body fluids” known as black bile (earth), phlegm (water), blood (air), and yellow bile (fire).

Traditional European medicine strove to achieve a state of health by balancing the body’s four humors. Disease was accepted as an imbalance of one or more humors. Diet, massage, exercise, and herbs were used to restore the balance. Hippocrates’ teachings were more successful than anything else at that time in history, and over the next millennium, his ideas spread across Europe.

Some of this Hippocratic lore survives even today in our language. We understand almost instinctively what a person means if he or she says, “I’ve caught a cold.” All of us who grew up in English-speaking families understand what a pernicious cold condition is. Most colds are phlegmatic in nature, cold and moist, and thus related to the element of water. Balancing this is a matter of warming and drying the body. In Hippocratic medicine, herbs associated with air and fire would be used to help accomplish this.

In practice, of course, Hippocratic medicine was far more complex than I have described here. Foods and herbs were not just hot or cold, moist or dry; there were varying degrees of each of these qualities. One earth herb might be cooler or drier than another earth herb. Every influence in a person’s life was taken into consideration. The person’s diet and lifestyle, his or her emotional state, and even the season of the year factored into an evaluation of that person’s condition.

It might be argued that herbal remedies are not magic, but the Saxon sorcerer does not make this distinction. Wortcunning can be used for many different effects, and healing is but one of them. Nevertheless, healing is a widely popular effect today among people who work with herbs, and there are countless books about herbal remedies available for those interested in pursuing the subject in depth. I especially recommend Ody’s The Complete Medicinal Herbal.

A sorcerer’s remedies will often be magic by anybody’s definition. When I carve the ur rune into a piece of wood and place it in a small red pouch with a garlic clove and dill seeds, it is difficult to describe my remedy as anything other than magic. The dill seeds are to fortify the hama, and the garlic is to ward off pernicious wights, but I don’t intend the garlic or the dill to be ingested as a medicine (not that it would hurt anybody if they did). The pouch, put together to ward against colds, is intended to be carried or worn.

A Wortcunning First-Aid Kit

No matter what effect a practitioner is attempting to achieve through wortcunning—healing, protection, prosperity, etc.—some advance preparation is usually needed. This is especially important when using herbs for remedial effects. If you want to use herbs in this way, keep your essential materials together in one place. Nobody afflicted with a headache or upset stomach wants to rummage around for herbs and the equipment to prepare them. All of this should be kept together in one convenient area. Think of it as your wortcunning first-aid kit.

The herbs should be prepared for convenience as much as possible. Ointments, infused oils, and tinctures should be prepared in advance. If your kit contains any dried herbs intended for infusions, a tea ball should be included with them.

The exact contents of your kit will depend on your personal needs and the needs of other members of your household. Here are a few suggestions:

· • comfrey ointment for cuts and abrasions; clean the wound thoroughly before applying the ointment

· • marigold ointment for athlete’s foot and similar fungal infections; by “marigold” I mean the herb Calendula officinalis, not the garden variety of marigold

· • lemon balm oil for insect bites

· • dried peppermint to infuse as a potion for indigestion

· • dried lavender blossoms to infuse as a potion for headaches

· • dried chamomile blossoms to settle the nerves

· • tea ball

· • cotton swabs

· • tweezers

· • tea tree essential oil for use as a natural antiseptic

Keep the contents together in one container, and keep the container in a place where you can quickly find it. The location should be dark and cool to extend the longevity of the herbs and herbal preparations. A bathroom cabinet is ideal.

Examine your herbs and herbal preparations periodically to make sure they are still reasonably potent. If stored in a cool, dark place, the dried herbs in your kit should easily last a year. Tinctures and ointments will remain potent much longer.

Hama Lácnung

Wortcunning is not the only art available to the Saxon sorcerer for use in healing work. Hama lácnung is a technique for relaxing a person’s hama, which in turn causes every part of the Self to relax and become receptive to healing.

This technique is related to the age-old practice of “laying on hands,” but hama lácnung involves no connection with the subject’s lic. There is no direct, physical touch. Instead the practitioner touches and manipulates the subject’s hama, the astral body surrounding and protecting that person. Today the hama is sometimes given names like biomagnetic field or energy field. Hama lácnung uses principles common to Pranic healing, Reiki, acupressure, and other modalities of energy healing.

To practice hama lácnung, the subject should be seated or laying down. Meanwhile the practitioner should be calm and relaxed. A short prayer can help the practitioner become spiritually centered. The practitioner reaches out with both hands, bringing them within two or three inches of the subject’s head. With slow motions, the practitioner moves his hands downward, stroking the hama, keeping palms and fingers within a couple of inches of the subject’s skin. The stroking movements should be long and smooth, but not hesitant. At no time does the practitioner physically touch the subject.

The practitioner moves downward, stroking lower portions of the hama over the neck, chest, arms, and abdomen. Then lower still, over the thighs and legs, until eventually coming to the feet.

While stroking the subject’s hama, the practitioner may feel areas of warmth or coolness, or a tingling sensation. When this occurs, the practitioner should remain at that area, giving additional attention to that region of the hama. The practitioner can then continue downward; after reaching the feet, he or she should return to any “problem” areas to ensure that the anomalies have been drawn away. The locations of the anomalies in the hama may be entirely unrelated to the location of a physical complaint in the subject’s lic. The practitioner may go over the subject’s hama several times, until the work feels complete.

Keep in mind that hama lácnung does not directly address a physical complaint. Its purpose is to relax the hama, which helps facilitate the healing process in a general way.

Healing Runes

The runes of the Futhorc can be powerful healing tools. There are various approaches to this, but first let us look at some specific runes useful for various healing needs. Again I need to credit my friend West Hardin for some of this, and thank him for sharing the results of his own rune work with me.

Feoh can help fortify the blood in a rune working. This makes absolutely no sense if you have fallen into the trap of assigning a simple, finite interpretation to each of the runes, because this rune is usually interpreted as “money.” But when we look at the deeper meaning of the rune, we see that it is interpreted as money only because money is a flow or exchange of potential. Feoh nurtures a continuous flow, which is essential for our blood to ensure a state of health.

Use the rune eolh to alleviate skin conditions. The skin is the protective covering of the lic, and is rejuvenated by the protective influence of eolh. The rune can also be used to repair the hama if you have reason to believe that part of the Self has been compromised in any way. As a general protection rune, this symbol can be used for almost any healing work.

Not all disease is purely physical in nature. Rád is useful for work in combating addiction. From the perspective of the rúnwita, it does not matter if the addiction is physical or psychological. Rád is the rune of journeying. It creates movement and, more importantly, the movement is toward a place of contentment. It is a journey home. Thus, this rune is useful to help leave an addiction and move on to more wholesome, productive behaviors.

Hagol is useful for work intended to improve the digestion. It is the rune of transformation, and digestion is the process of transforming food into the components necessary for sustaining and rebuilding the lic. Consider the description of hagol in the Rune Poem. How “its circling comes from the lofty sky,” as food passes downward into the digestive tract, and how “it then becomes water afterward.” Hailstorms are a blatantly destructive force, but then digestion itself is essentially the destruction or transformation of food matter into energy.

Glandular disorders may be helped with the influence of sigel. The rune of the sun is a rune of navigation and guidance. The early Anglo-Saxons did not understand how glands regulate bodily processes, but this does not matter. It is the function itself—body guidance or regulation—that matters. The sigel rune promotes guidance. Use this rune, too, to help delay the progression of dementia.

Ing is the rune to use to stimulate or nurture the sexual organs. The god Ing, represented by this rune, is sovereign over sexual pleasure. In the eleventh century, the historian Adam of Bremen describes the god’s statue at Uppsala as having a large erect penis. He went on to say that Fricco (another name for Ing) was a god of peace and “sensual delight.” The ing rune can be used to benefit the sexual organs of men and women equally.

Note that sexual pleasure is not the same thing as fertility. There is no single rune indicating fertility, but ing can be combined with other runes such as beorc and gear to nurture this effect.

The runes mentioned here can be used alone to affect specific aspects of the lic. But most of the other runes are also useful for healing work when used in appropriate combinations. As with all rúncræft, the first step is to familiarize yourself with the runes and the mysteries they embody.

One approach to healing is to create runic charms for the ill to carry on his or her person. A permanent health charm can be crafted from wood, bone, or antler. I prefer cardstock or even paper for a charm to induce a finite effect, because the charm can be readily disposed of by burning after it has served its purpose. However, for most of my own runic healing work, I apply the runes directly to the body.

Healing runes can also be applied directly to the body. Paint the rune or runes over the area they are intended to affect. Use a non-toxic, water-based red paint. While painting the rune onto the skin (or immediately afterward if this is too complicated to do at the same time), recite the relevant passage from the Rune Poem. If painting a bindrune, paint each symbol completely, one over the other, to achieve the final form.

If the rune or runes will be on a visible part of your body, do this in the evening, when you do not plan to go out in public. Since you are using a water-based paint, it will shower off the following morning, leaving at most a slight discoloration.

Bringing It All Together

The first thing to do is determine whether the problem requires the attention of a physician. If there is any question in your mind, err on the side of caution.

There is rarely any need for scrying when it comes to healing work. Either you are sick or you are not. However, if you receive any indication through a wiglung that your health may soon become compromised, you can work some general proactive healing magic. Whether taking precautions about potential challenges or addressing a current issue, decide what modalities will work best for you. You may use a single technique or combine as many as you like. We know from the Old English healing charms that wortcunning and galdor were frequently used in conjunction with each other.

The amount of work needed should correspond to the severity of the complaint. There is no reason to work through hours of chanting and rune carving for a mild headache when a simple betony potion will do the trick.

Several years ago, a lump formed on my thyroid. I needed a biopsy, and the only way to ensure a reliable result was to have half of the thyroid gland removed. Healing work was done, and I obviously survived the experience. Let us look at this and consider my options.

A physician was already aware of the problem. In fact, it was my physician who discovered the lump in the first place, so that issue was already settled. Any healing work would be done to support the unavoidable surgery; it was not a replacement for medical care.

Wortcunning offered little in this situation. I could have brewed a potion for my nerves, or perhaps as a general tonic, but I did not. For myself and my situation at that time, other techniques were more appropriate. I chose rúncræft as the primary modality for the healing work. Fortunately I am blessed with other wyrdworkers in my life who were able and willing to help with this.

A few minutes of hama lácnung prepared me to receive the healing influence of the runes. I laid down on a massage table, which kept me elevated. One person recited a short narrative galdor.

Runes were then painted in red on my throat, directly over the thyroid gland. One person painted each rune while others helping with the work recited the relevant passages from the Rune Poem. This wove into a group chant by the time the final rune was applied. From a subjective perspective, I felt as though I was rising above the table. I had a sensation of floating. I was on a lake, or so it seemed, and the sun was streaming down. (Sigel was one of the runes used, since it assists glandular functions.) The wyrdworkers chanted lines from an eleventh-century healing charm, “Bone to bone, blood to blood.” They chanted this over and over, sealing the power of the runes painted on my neck. And those runes remained on my neck throughout the night until I washed them off the following morning before going to the hospital.

If the subject had been a person other than myself or if my condition had been a different challenge, another approach may have been more appropriate. A successful sorcerer must always be flexible in his or her work.

Review

1. What is the first thing to consider before proceding with any healing work?

2. An “element” is a description of what two qualities?

3. What is the purpose achieved by hama lácnung?

4. What rune or runes would you select to help soothe an upset stomach? Is there an herbal potion you could use in conjunction with this?

5. What two cræftes are often used together in Old English healing charms?