Alfaleith.org - Intro to Runes and Symbols

After the worlds were formed, and things set in their proper places, Alfather watched them with the wonder of their beauty, and he thought on what he and his kin had made. That living things were ordered for growth, for thriving and coming together and throwing their seeds again; that even the stones were forever forming in Jorth's fires, being thrown up to the surface to wear down again in Njorthr's restless waters; that the newly formed stars were set to such regular dance, and Mani to wax and wane to the tide's rising and falling; all of it was miraculous, all of it was a wonder to the eyes and ears and mind. And when he thought upon Laerath, and upon how all order in the worlds, it seemed, reflected there in her - how it could be seen within her own orderly growth, her own outspreading, and her own decay - he wondered at what set him apart from her. He wondered at what she held within her to cause such order, he wondered if he could not know it for himself.

Alfather then went to her, and he asked her aide, and asked if she could not show him what he did not himself as yet understand. That primal urge that had caused him to create, and his fascination for the creation he had made, and the order it fell into, seemed to him something natural to his being, yet beyond the grasp of his understanding. He stripped away all that he had, and gave it all to her as pledge, if she would but reveal to him what made her seem to understand it all, what made her seem so wise and so steady, so anchored in the worlds yet not quite of them, so beyond the merely natural. He climbed into her branches, and tied himself to her trunk, and as she had not yet answered, nor given any sign, he said, as he had shed all other things of the worlds, even the mind, "I give then my self to my Self," and there he hung, for nine long nights, one day and night for every world in his creation, with nothing but the wind for his food, and nothing but the myst for drink, awaiting.

When everything was gone out of him entire, when his soul itself felt filled with nothing but ginnungap's void, there came to his mind's eye an ordering like a vast webwork, a vision of the order in the worlds he saw below him. The lines of energy that upheld the worlds, that ran through them and crossed and re-crossed and hummed, they seemed the very stuff of life itself, and they began to order themselves into individual sounds that combined together or fell alone, each with its own unique bit of the universal energy, and each with its own being.

He saw it all then, clear, with an awakened awareness that suddenly understood, and had realized its own power. That energy flowing up through her roots and sap and bark into his soul lit up his spirit with the higher understanding of order and architecture in the creation, and he called out with it in joy and awe.

The worlds ordered themselves like a wondrous mysterious song, like long strands of poetry broken here and there and taken up again. They sang and hummed and shone in an overwhelming orchestration of joy, they moved forward and backward and around only through the flickering sense of time thrown by the stars - and even the stars were dancing, humming and shedding their own songs. Her energy, her othr, she had shared with him and let him see it all, not bit by bit but whole and humming and alive.

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