Editor’s note: Though Forest Cat Clan was not proposed for 2025, Tchipakkan’s thoughts here are a fitting example of what happens in one of the clans at Twilight Covening each October.
While the world is sometimes dangerous and human bodies fragile, we are stronger together. I feel this is at the core of Twilight Covening. We share our strengths, and become more than we are as individuals.
I identify as a healer (as well as soothsayer and artist), but would rather teach someone how to heal themselves and others than simply heal them. Not “Drink this, it will help,” but “this is how you make a tea that will help.” (Moose Clan) I’d rather show people ways to find the information they need and how to use it, than do a reading for them (Snowy Owl Clan). In the Forest Cat, we are working with runes, which are powerful energetic tools, which have been used in Northern Europe for two millennia for magick, even more than they were used for divination.
At this point in our history, we need the ability to heal ourselves and each other almost daily. The RúnValdr system gives us access to the powers of runic energy, in a way that’s easy and fast. While Reiki draws on our life force to give the body what it needs to heal, the runes are not so benevolent. I tend to use them for healing (almost daily), and so that’s what I concentrate on, but let’s face it, Woden was most interested in gaining more knowledge and power, defeating his enemies, and yes, seducing women. The runes were used to smite as well as to heal.
When I first started using RúnValdr I wondered if I’d ever use the runes Hagal or Thurs, which are powerful but destructive. Then I realized that if you want to break up a tumor, Hagal (then use Lagu to wash the bits away) is the right rune for the job! There are both fire and ice runes for healing burns and warming. Runes are tools, and how you use them is what defines their purpose.
I sometimes joke that attuning people to RúnValdr is like “giving chainsaws to children.” But remember that every child needs to learn how to use knives and needles, stoves and matches, eventually computers and cars. If you don’t teach them how to use tools safely and effectively, they will remain helpless, or, more likely, they could hurt themselves using them without any instruction. We empower each other at any age by sharing tools, and we can use them to do so much more than we can do without them.
Most of what we know about runes, as with many tools, is based on what we’ve learned by using them. We usually start by studying the Lore in the Rune poems and the Sagas, but that is sparse, and cryptic. For example, Lagu in the Old English rune poem says: “The ocean seems interminable to men, if they venture on the rolling bark and the waves of the sea terrify them and the courser of the deep heed not its bridle.”
Old Norwegian gives us: “A waterfall is a River which falls from a mountain-side; but ornaments are of gold.”
Old Icelandic: “Eddying stream and broad geyser and the land of the fish.”
I suppose it’s not surprising, what symbol takes more forms than water?
After the older lore, we turn to modern writings of others who’ve studied runes, but then we need to learn by using them ourselves. The more we have personal feedback, the more confident we become that we understand them. As people of spirit, many use meditation and trance work to contact the runes directly. We develop relationships with them. We come to trust our visions and personal gnosis.
Another benefit of this system is that since we are using the runes as tools, it’s often easier to use them to direct healing on ourselves, something that is often difficult, especially when there is an emotional aspect to the healing required. Since we are using energy not materials, space and time offer no limits to where the healing (or other energy) is sent. I have even discovered that we can change the past, in as much as we allow ourselves to do so.
Beyond healing, RúnValdr can be used to open doorways to other worlds, to awaken inanimate objects and call awareness into them, to forge or sever links between ourselves and others, to ward and to attract, to make other magickal tools, to bless and to seal workings.
Runes can be used for anything we can imagine, … with practice. We have to learn how, learn to discern why it works better one way than another, and then learn to do it that way.
The tool works whether you totally understand how or not. (I know I don’t understand how computers do what they do, but I like them!) if you already understand the runes, you can use them more easily from the start, but if not, you can learn about them as you use them. I liken it to giving a chef a set of master kitchen tools, enabling him to do what he already knows more easily. But if you give a beginner the best tools to learn on, the process will be faster and easier. Did you ever try to cut with a dull knife?
Very early on a new student who didn’t know anything about the runes, but knew dowsing, learned that there was a hurricane headed for her Florida home, a thousand miles away. She used her pendulum to select runes for her, and the system she’d learned that day to send protection down to her house. The next day she called her neighbor to see if she had to return home immediately to make repairs. The neighbor told her that the hurricane had gone right through their neighborhood, but that her house was the only one on the street that had sustained no damage. A tree had fallen behind the house, but hit nothing. She came to me to ask what the runes the pendulum had directed her to were. They were two protection runes, and one for home. That’s what these tools can do whether you know what they mean or not.
I have personally stopped migraines (according to the people who had them); it takes about 15 seconds. I’ve sped healing disease, injuries, burns, and emotional distress. I expect that only my belief in our consensual reality prevents me from more dramatic miracles. I also believe firmly that we are often given challenges from which we are meant to learn, and wouldn’t want to interfere with that. I want to work with my allies, not against them. Since it’s our will directing our working, I expect allies of each practitioner, gods and guides, will be working with them in different unique ways.
The chances are good that the reason I use RúnValdr for healing more than anything else is because I know it works. While I don’t subscribe to “Harm none,” I do believe in consequences, so I try not to put out anything I wouldn’t want to get back on myself. Don’t call up what you can’t put down, clean up your own mess, learn from your mistakes, or even better, learn from the mistakes you see others make. RúnValdr, like other forms of magick, follows the same rules as the rest of the world, so we have what we need to understand it if we try. On the other hand, it could be because so much healing is needed these days.
I am a pragmatist — I like to know why and how things work, and understand the connections, but if I see that something works, I’ll use it. I prefer solutions that are quicker, easier, less expensive, and more effective (and with a better risk to benefit ratio). Anything we can do for ourselves, now, and without tools or materials, appeals to me!
Tchipakkan is an artist, writer, healer, and eclectic pagan/heathen/rustic, quietly but openly pagan for the last 50 years, author of Divine Cookies, co-Founder of Changing Times-Changing Worlds Conference. She practices and teaches RúnValdr, Reiki, Dynamind, huna healing, herbalism, and soothsaying with runes, palmistry, tarot, and other systems.
