Kenaz

These Pagan Portals are all current works in progress, serialised here on the Pagan Collective blog with each chapter being open for comment. In due course the entire script will be published as a Pagan Portal book.

Over the next few months, we will be running weekly Spirit of the Rune lessons on this blog. Follow along and learn the runes!

Kenaz:

ᚲ

Before reading about the meanings and qualities associated with Kenaz, take time to contemplate this rune.

In Your Journal 

1. In your journal or on a separate piece of paper, trace, draw or doodle Kenaz. While drawing, say its name out loud: how does it feel? Where does it resonate within your body?
2. Imagine what color(s) best match(es) Kenaz and apply them to the image you have drawn.
3. What texture do you think goes with Kenaz? Can you represent the texture in your drawing?
4. Look around. From your surroundings, what objects and shapes, if any, would you connect with Kenaz? What natural, man-caused phenomena or activities come to mind when you look at your representation of Kenaz? Write those down.

Now read the lines describing Kenaz in the rune poems.

•  Icelandic: ”Ulcer disease fatal to children/and painful spot/and abode of mortification.”
• Anglo-Saxon: “The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;/ it always burns where princes sit within”  
• Norwegian: “Ulcer is fatal to children;/death makes a corpse pale.”

In Your Journal 

5. Can you relate the description in the poems with your own experience of the rune? You may be able to find correlations with the description given in just one poem. Or you may not see any correlations yet. Journal your findings, whatever they are.

Here are some of the meanings commonly attributed to Kenaz in readings:

• generally translated as  torch, spark;
• infectious disease, inflammation, fever;
• death/ending that ushers in a new beginning;
• transformative experience, “something must die for something else to be born.”
• embarrassment, mortification;
• moving into a new stage (life, work, study, spiritual pursuit)

In Your Journal 

6. Journal about how these meanings fit with your own experiences so far. Be open to the fact that the way you perceive this rune may change over time, with some meanings fading and others emerging. At the end of the course, revisit your journal entry and make updates (if necessary).

  

For more details on Daniela: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/daniela-simina