We are approaching the beginning of February, which means about forty days after Yule. The mother of the Celtic Sun god, born again on the 21st of December, the Solstice, has experienced her customary forty days of purification after childbirth and is now entering her cyclical change into maidenhood.

At the suggestion of a valued reader I affix here a few of the carols that I wrote for my rune students. They are all sung to tunes familiar to those listening to background music in stores at Christmas.

Tune: We Three Kings

We, Black Wings, his ravens are
Over Midgard we travel far
Hugin, Munin, Thought and
Memory
Odin’s Ravens are
(Chorus)
Ohoooh!
God of Norseman, of insight
With your one Eye shining bright
Aesir leading, war preceding
With your wolves to left and right.

Eight legged Sleipnir travels so far
Nothing can his white coat mar
Son of Loki, mount of Odin

If you ever saw the Kirk Douglas movie The Vikings, or the more recent fantasy adventure The 13th Warrior, you will remember that at a point in each story when nobody knew what to do, an old female shaman of the tribe was asked to throw the runes, or the bones. She threw a handful of things with marks on them on the ground, picked up those that landed in a certain way, and told the puzzled warriors exactly what had to be done. And she was obeyed implicitly. She had used the sacred language of the runes to access the mysteries of the immediate future, the wisdom of Odin.