THE RITE OF THE TWENTY-FIVE STONES
A Personal Rite of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Liquid Life Force, Word, and Self
Twenty-four are inherited.
The Twenty-Fifth must be made.
Its form belongs to the maker alone.
Its meaning is:
BE THYSELF.
The Nature of the Rite
These stones shall not be bought.
They shall not be shaped from earth taken without knowing its place.
They shall not be made in haste.
They shall be born of a place known to the maker as sacred.
The Earth shall come from that place.
The Water shall come from beneath that ground.
The Air of that place shall dry them.
The Fire of that place shall transform them.
The Liquid Life Force of the maker shall enter them.
The Voice of the maker shall speak over them.
And there, where these things are joined by hand, breath, attention, and will, the Twenty-Five shall be made.
This rite is not presented as an ancient rite.
It is not claimed as a surviving ceremony of the old Norse peoples.
It is a living rite.
A personal rite.
A rite made in reverence toward the Elder Futhark, yet built upon a final principle that cannot be inherited from any ancestor, teacher, book, or tradition:
No other being can be thyself in thy place.
Twenty-four runes are received from the inherited row.
The Twenty-Fifth is not received.
It is made.
It must not be left blank.
It must not be copied from another.
It must not bear the personal bind rune of the one who first performed this rite.
For the Twenty-Fifth Stone bears one meaning shared by all who undertake the rite:
BE THYSELF.
But its form belongs to the maker alone.
Thus the rite begins with common Earth and ends with individual Self.
I. THE CHOOSING OF THE SACRED PLACE
Before clay is gathered, know the place of the making.
Do not choose merely for convenience.
Choose a place with which there is relationship.
A place where the maker can work with intention.
A place where Earth may be touched, Water drawn, Air felt, and Fire kindled.
For the first making of this rite, that place was a wigwam and the sacred ground surrounding it.
Another maker need not possess the same place.
To imitate the place of another would betray the final teaching of the rite.
The place must be known by the maker.
What makes it sacred may be ancient or recent.
It may be a place of prayer.
A place of solitude.
A place of ancestry.
A place of work.
A place of grief.
A place of transformation.
A place where the maker has returned again and again.
A place where the maker can say:
Here, I know where I stand.
Once chosen, do not treat the place merely as scenery.
The place is part of the making.
Stand upon it.
Know it.
Listen before beginning.
Then speak:
From this place I take no nameless thing.
The Earth I touch has known my feet.
The Air I breathe has known my breath.
The Water beneath has moved unseen.
The Fire shall rise here.
The work shall be done here.
And here I begin.
II. THE TAKING OF THE EARTH
The clay shall be gathered by the maker’s own hands from the Earth.
Know where it lay.
Know the ground that held it.
Remember the place from which it was taken.
For before there was a rune, there was Earth.
Before Fehu bore its first line, before Uruz took shape, before Tiwaz pointed upward, before Dagaz opened the day, the clay rested without name beneath the feet of the living.
It was not yet divided.
It was not yet twenty-five.
It was not yet symbol.
It was possibility without mark.
Body before name.
Take the clay with purpose.
Carry it by hand.
As it is gathered, speak:
Earth beneath me,
Earth before me,
Earth that bore the root and received the fallen,
I take from thee the body of what shall be made.
Not as a thing without origin.
Not as matter without memory.
I know the place from which this came.
May my hand remember.
Carry the clay to the place of making.
Do not yet call it rune.
It is Earth.
Let it first be what it is.
III. THE DRAWING OF THE WATER BENEATH
The clay shall be softened with Water drawn from the ground.
Let the Water belong to the place when this is possible within the maker’s own sacred ground and practice.
The Water has moved where the eye could not follow.
It has passed through darkness.
It has touched stone.
It has traveled beneath root and soil.
Now it is raised into the hand.
Pour the Water gradually into the clay.
Work them together.
Let what is hard become yielding.
Let what would crumble learn cohesion.
Let what had no chosen form become capable of receiving one.
As Earth receives Water, speak:
Water beneath me,
Water unseen,
Water that moves where the eye cannot follow,
Rise now into the work.
Soften what is hard.
Join what is divided.
Give yielding to Earth,
that Earth may answer the hand.
Continue until the clay becomes workable.
Do not hurry this union.
Feel the change beneath the fingers.
Remember:
Earth gives body.
Water gives yielding.
The hand gives intention.
IV. THE MAKING OF THE FIRST VESSEL
From the softened clay, form a pinch pot.
This vessel is temporary.
It is not made to survive as a vessel.
It is made to receive.
Shape it by hand.
Press the thumb inward.
Raise the walls.
Turn it.
Thin it.
Hold it.
This small vessel is the first deliberate form of the rite.
Yet it is made with the knowledge that it shall soon be destroyed.
Thus the first lesson is given before any rune is carved:
Not every sacred form is meant to remain unchanged.
Hold the vessel and speak:
I make a form that shall not remain.
I make a vessel that shall be unmade.
What receives shall be folded inward.
What is separate shall be joined.
What is given shall enter the whole.
Set the vessel before thee.
Prepare for the First Redding.
V. THE FIRST Redding
The First Redding is the joining of the living maker with the unformed body of the stones.
The Liquid Life Force shall be the maker’s own.
It shall be ritually offered according to the maker’s established personal practice.
No person undertaking this rite is required to imitate another person’s manner of Liquid Life Force offering, nor to injure a particular part of the body because another maker did so.
The original maker associates this act with the place of the Third Eye: the symbolic seat of inward sight, intuition, perception, and the seeing that is not accomplished by the two eyes alone.
Another maker must approach this portion according to their own conscience, symbolism, safety, and established practice.
The meaning is not the wound.
The meaning is the offering of the living self.
Gather the Liquid Life Force into the pinch pot.
Look upon Earth and Liquid Life Force together.
Then speak:
This is not the Liquid Life Force of another.
This is not an offering borrowed from another life.
What I give is mine to give.
What enters the Earth comes from the living body that now shapes it.
Before the stones are divided,
before the runes are named,
before the Fire changes them,
let the living self enter the work.
Then unmake the vessel.
Fold it inward.
Press it.
Knead it.
Turn it.
Work the Liquid Life Force thoroughly through the clay.
Destroy the separation between vessel and offering.
The cup disappears.
The Liquid Life Force enters the Earth.
The Earth receives the Liquid Life Force.
What had been contained becomes distributed.
What had been one vessel becomes the body from which twenty-five stones shall emerge.
As the clay is kneaded, speak:
Liquid Life Force into Earth.
Earth around Liquid Life Force.
No stone yet named.
No rune yet chosen.
Before division, union.
Before symbol, body.
Before the Twenty-Five,
One.
Continue until the clay is prepared.
Then let the hands become still.
VI. THE DIVISION OF THE ONE
From the prepared clay, form twenty-five stones.
Seek to make them equal in care.
Seek to make them alike in size and weight according to the ability of the hand.
Let none be deliberately exalted above another by grandeur.
Let none be deliberately diminished through neglect.
Do not make the Twenty-Fifth larger merely because it is personal.
Do not make a favored rune more beautiful merely because it is loved.
Do not make a feared rune smaller merely because its meaning is difficult.
Give each a body worthy of attention.
As the clay is divided, remember:
Equality is not sameness.
The hand may seek consistency.
The Earth may refuse it.
The Air may alter it.
The Fire may transform it.
This is not failure.
This is part of the rite.
As each stone is formed, place it among the others.
When all twenty-five bodies have been made, look upon them before any rune is impressed.
Then speak:
From one body, Twenty-Five.
Equal in care.
Not promised sameness.
I shall not know what the Air will change.
I shall not know what the Fire will mark.
I shall do my part.
I shall release what is not mine to command.
Now the stones are ready to receive their signs.
VII. THE IMPRESSING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR
The twenty-four inherited runes shall be impressed one at a time.
Do not work as though marking inventory.
Do not carve several while thinking of none.
Do not permit the hand to race ahead of attention.
Take up the first stone.
Forget the remaining twenty-four.
There is only this stone.
There is only this rune.
With a flat, blunt-bladed tool, impress the rune into the softened clay.
As the mark is formed, hold its meaning in the mind.
Contemplate it.
Speak its associated rune poem.
Chant the words that belong to the rune within the maker’s chosen practice.
Do not merely reproduce a shape.
Attend to it.
When Fehu is made, there is only Fehu.
When Uruz is made, there is only Uruz.
When Thurisaz is made, there is only Thurisaz.
Continue through the Elder Futhark in order:
Fehu.
Uruz.
Thurisaz.
Ansuz.
Raidho.
Kenaz.
Gebo.
Wunjo.
Hagalaz.
Naudiz.
Isa.
Jera.
Eihwaz.
Perthro.
Algiz.
Sowilo.
Tiwaz.
Berkano.
Ehwaz.
Mannaz.
Laguz.
Ingwaz.
Othala.
Dagaz.
For each:
Take the stone.
Hold the rune in mind.
Contemplate its meaning.
Impress its form.
Speak or chant its poem.
Remain with it until the act is complete.
Then set it down.
Only then take up the next.
Thus each rune receives the full chamber of attention.
One stone.
One rune.
One meaning.
One poem.
One act of making.
Until the Twenty-Four stand marked.
VIII. THE SEEKING OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Now comes the stone that cannot be completed by inheritance alone.
The Twenty-Fifth shall not be blank.
It shall not be an empty stone of unknown fate.
It shall not bear a symbol copied from the original maker of this rite.
It shall not bear a personal bindrune stolen from another because that rune appears powerful, beautiful, mysterious, or complete.
For the Twenty-Fifth Rune has one meaning:
BE THYSELF
Yet there is no single universal mark for this teaching.
Its meaning is shared.
Its form is personal.
Its teaching is universal.
Its answer is individual.
Therefore the maker must create a personal rune.
This may be a bind rune formed from inherited runes.
It may contain mirroring.
Reversal.
Repetition.
Crossing.
Rotation.
Balance.
Asymmetry.
It may bind together forces that describe the maker’s nature, struggle, aspiration, contradiction, wound, strength, path, or becoming.
But each choice must belong to the maker.
Do not ask first:
What looks powerful?
Ask:
What is true?
Do not ask:
What would impress another?
Ask:
What would remain mine if no other person ever saw it?
Do not ask:
What rune did the first maker use?
Ask:
What rune can only I make for myself?
Sit with the Twenty-Fifth Stone.
Do not hurry because the other twenty-four are finished.
The Twenty-Fifth may require more time.
It may require drawing.
Contemplation.
Revision.
Failure.
Erasure.
Beginning again.
Let it.
For the final stone asks a question the old row cannot answer on thy behalf:
Who art thou when no one is watching?
Who art thou when praise is removed?
Who art thou when shame is imposed?
Who art thou beneath imitation?
Who art thou beneath fear?
Who art thou beneath the masks that once kept thee safe?
What within thee must change?
What within thee must endure?
What hast thou inherited?
What hast thou chosen?
What is truly thine?
From this contemplation, make the rune.
Then impress it into the Twenty-Fifth Stone.
As it is carved, speak:
This is not the self of another.
This is not the mark of another life.
I do not copy another person’s answer.
I stand before the inherited row and answer for myself.
Twenty-four were received.
The Twenty-Fifth is made.
Its meaning is:
Be Thyself.
Set the Twenty-Fifth among the others.
Look upon all twenty-five.
The making by hand is complete.
The work of the elements is not.
IX. THE GIVING TO AIR
Give the Twenty-Five to the Air.
Let them dry within the sacred place.
Do not mistake stillness for inactivity.
The Air is working.
Water departs.
The clay contracts.
The surface changes.
The stones harden.
What was easily reshaped begins to resist.
The marks remain.
The poems have been spoken.
The personal rune has been made.
Now the hand must cease interfering.
As the stones are left to dry, speak:
Air around me,
Air within me,
Breath that carried every poem,
Breath that carried every chant,
Take now the Water that must depart.
Leave the form.
Leave the mark.
Teach the soft body to remember.
Then wait.
Do not hurry them into Fire before they are ready.
The rite is not improved by impatience.
Let the Air complete what the hand cannot.
X. THE PREPARATION OF THE PIT
When the stones are fully dry and ready for firing, prepare the pit fire in the sacred place.
The Fire is not merely a tool used to harden clay.
Within this rite, Fire is transformation beyond complete human control.
The maker shaped the stones.
The maker impressed the runes.
The maker spoke the poems.
But the maker does not command every mark that Fire shall leave.
Prepare the pit according to the maker’s established firing practice and the needs of the clay.
Place the stones with care.
Understand that their positions may matter.
One may know greater heat.
One may know more smoke.
One may lie where oxygen reaches differently.
One may be touched by ash.
One may emerge unlike its neighbor.
Before kindling the Fire, speak:
I have shaped what I could shape.
I have marked what I could mark.
I have spoken what I could speak.
Now I surrender the work I cannot command.
Fire, take what is fragile.
Do not preserve sameness for my comfort.
Transform.
XI. THE GIVING TO FIRE
Kindle the Fire.
Let the pit burn.
Attend it according to the needs of the firing.
Watch without pretending that watching is control.
The stones enter together.
Yet they may not emerge identical.
One may emerge ochre.
One may emerge orange.
One may bear the red of burned Earth.
One may darken toward brown.
One may carry charcoal.
One may emerge near-black.
One may bear the mark of smoke.
Another the memory of a hotter place.
Another may reveal where mineral, flame, oxygen, ash, and chance met in a way the hand never designed.
Do not correct these differences merely because they differ.
Do not mourn them merely because the stones no longer resemble one another perfectly.
Do not demand that children of one Earth wear one face.
For the Fire teaches what the Twenty-Fifth Rune declares:
To be equal is not to be identical.
To belong is not to disappear.
To stand among others is not to surrender the Self.
Twenty-five entered the Fire together.
Twenty-five shall emerge themselves.
When the firing is complete, allow the stones to cool.
Do not hurry their return.
Do not seize them from heat merely from impatience.
What has passed through Fire must be permitted to become still.
When they are cool, gather them.
Look upon what the Fire has done.
Do not compare them to the perfection of manufactured things.
See them.
One Earth.
One making.
One rite.
Many faces.
Then speak:
I knew what entered.
I did not know what would emerge.
I sought equality.
I was not promised sameness.
Fire has answered in its own hand.
I receive the Twenty-Five as they have become.
XII. THE VESSEL OF THE SECOND Redding
Prepare the small fired clay cup made specifically for the Redding of the runes.
This vessel shall not be common.
It belongs to the rite.
It too was Earth.
It too knew Water.
It too dried in Air.
It too passed through Fire.
Now it receives Liquid Life Force.
The First Redding entered the clay before the stones were divided.
The Second Redding enters the signs after the stones have survived Fire.
Thus the two Reddings are not the same act.
The First Redding joins the living maker to the body of the stones.
The Second Redding enters the runes themselves.
Prepare the offering according to the maker’s own established personal practice.
Again, no maker is required to imitate another person’s method of Liquid Life Force offering or bodily location.
The original rite associates this act with the Third Eye and with inward sight.
Another maker must act according to their own symbolism, conscience, and safe practice.
Gather the offering into the fired clay cup.
Then speak:
The First Redding entered what had no rune.
The Second Redding enters what has survived Fire.
The first joined body to body.
The second enters sign and meaning.
What was formed shall now be Reded.
XIII. THE MAKING OF THE BRUSH
The runes shall be Reded with a brush made by the maker.
Take a twig.
Use it as the handle.
Take hair from the maker’s own body.
Use it as the bristle.
Bind them into a small brush suitable for filling the impressions of the runes.
Thus the instrument itself joins living body and living world.
The tree gives the handle.
The body gives the hair.
The hand gives the motion.
The Liquid Life Force gives the mark.
Hold the completed brush and speak:
Twig of the growing world.
Hair of the living self.
Joined by hand.
Carry now what is mine
into the signs I have made.
XIV. THE REDDING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR
Arrange the Twenty-Four.
Take up the first.
Again, do not think of the others.
Again, there is only this stone.
There is only this rune.
Dip the brush of hair and twig into the Liquid Life Force.
Carefully fill the impression.
Do not rush.
Do not smear without purpose.
Attend to the carved line.
As the Liquid Life Force enters the rune, chant again the poem associated with it.
The poem spoken during formation is spoken again after Fire.
Thus each inherited rune is encountered twice.
First in softness.
Then in hardness.
First before Fire.
Then after Fire.
First as becoming.
Then as being.
Red Fehu.
Speak Fehu.
Set it down.
Red Uruz.
Speak Uruz.
Set it down.
Continue through the Elder Futhark.
One by one.
Stone by stone.
Rune by rune.
Poem by poem.
Until the Twenty-Four have been Reded.
Do not permit the final stones to receive less attention because weariness has entered the body.
The last inherited rune deserves no less presence than the first.
When Dagaz is complete, set it among the others.
Then turn to the Twenty-Fifth.
XV. THE REDDING OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Last comes the personal rune.
The Rune of Self.
The rune that cannot be inherited.
The rune that cannot be prescribed.
The rune that must not be copied.
Take it in hand.
Look upon the sign created for this purpose.
Remember every line.
Remember why it was chosen.
If inherited runes were bound within it, remember each one.
If forms were mirrored, remember why.
If forms were reversed, remember why.
If one sign was repeated, remember why.
If symmetry was broken, remember why.
If the rune changed during its creation, remember the path by which it changed.
If part of it represents suffering, do not deny it.
If part represents strength, do not boast before it.
If part represents contradiction, do not force false simplicity upon it.
If part remains mysterious even to the maker, acknowledge the mystery without pretending certainty.
This is not the rune of the founder.
This is not the rune of a teacher.
This is not the rune of an ancestor.
This is not a mark copied because another person gave it power.
This is thine.
Dip the brush of hair and twig into the Liquid Life Force.
Begin filling the personal rune.
As the Liquid Life Force enters the mark, speak:
This sign is not the self of another.
This sign is not the shape demanded of me.
This sign is not a mask.
This sign is not obedi
A Personal Rite of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Liquid Life Force, Word, and Self
Twenty-four are inherited.
The Twenty-Fifth must be made.
Its form belongs to the maker alone.
Its meaning is:
BE THYSELF.
The Nature of the Rite
These stones shall not be bought.
They shall not be shaped from earth taken without knowing its place.
They shall not be made in haste.
They shall be born of a place known to the maker as sacred.
The Earth shall come from that place.
The Water shall come from beneath that ground.
The Air of that place shall dry them.
The Fire of that place shall transform them.
The Liquid Life Force of the maker shall enter them.
The Voice of the maker shall speak over them.
And there, where these things are joined by hand, breath, attention, and will, the Twenty-Five shall be made.
This rite is not presented as an ancient rite.
It is not claimed as a surviving ceremony of the old Norse peoples.
It is a living rite.
A personal rite.
A rite made in reverence toward the Elder Futhark, yet built upon a final principle that cannot be inherited from any ancestor, teacher, book, or tradition:
No other being can be thyself in thy place.
Twenty-four runes are received from the inherited row.
The Twenty-Fifth is not received.
It is made.
It must not be left blank.
It must not be copied from another.
It must not bear the personal bind rune of the one who first performed this rite.
For the Twenty-Fifth Stone bears one meaning shared by all who undertake the rite:
BE THYSELF.
But its form belongs to the maker alone.
Thus the rite begins with common Earth and ends with individual Self.
I. THE CHOOSING OF THE SACRED PLACE
Before clay is gathered, know the place of the making.
Do not choose merely for convenience.
Choose a place with which there is relationship.
A place where the maker can work with intention.
A place where Earth may be touched, Water drawn, Air felt, and Fire kindled.
For the first making of this rite, that place was a wigwam and the sacred ground surrounding it.
Another maker need not possess the same place.
To imitate the place of another would betray the final teaching of the rite.
The place must be known by the maker.
What makes it sacred may be ancient or recent.
It may be a place of prayer.
A place of solitude.
A place of ancestry.
A place of work.
A place of grief.
A place of transformation.
A place where the maker has returned again and again.
A place where the maker can say:
Here, I know where I stand.
Once chosen, do not treat the place merely as scenery.
The place is part of the making.
Stand upon it.
Know it.
Listen before beginning.
Then speak:
From this place I take no nameless thing.
The Earth I touch has known my feet.
The Air I breathe has known my breath.
The Water beneath has moved unseen.
The Fire shall rise here.
The work shall be done here.
And here I begin.
II. THE TAKING OF THE EARTH
The clay shall be gathered by the maker’s own hands from the Earth.
Know where it lay.
Know the ground that held it.
Remember the place from which it was taken.
For before there was a rune, there was Earth.
Before Fehu bore its first line, before Uruz took shape, before Tiwaz pointed upward, before Dagaz opened the day, the clay rested without name beneath the feet of the living.
It was not yet divided.
It was not yet twenty-five.
It was not yet symbol.
It was possibility without mark.
Body before name.
Take the clay with purpose.
Carry it by hand.
As it is gathered, speak:
Earth beneath me,
Earth before me,
Earth that bore the root and received the fallen,
I take from thee the body of what shall be made.
Not as a thing without origin.
Not as matter without memory.
I know the place from which this came.
May my hand remember.
Carry the clay to the place of making.
Do not yet call it rune.
It is Earth.
Let it first be what it is.
III. THE DRAWING OF THE WATER BENEATH
The clay shall be softened with Water drawn from the ground.
Let the Water belong to the place when this is possible within the maker’s own sacred ground and practice.
The Water has moved where the eye could not follow.
It has passed through darkness.
It has touched stone.
It has traveled beneath root and soil.
Now it is raised into the hand.
Pour the Water gradually into the clay.
Work them together.
Let what is hard become yielding.
Let what would crumble learn cohesion.
Let what had no chosen form become capable of receiving one.
As Earth receives Water, speak:
Water beneath me,
Water unseen,
Water that moves where the eye cannot follow,
Rise now into the work.
Soften what is hard.
Join what is divided.
Give yielding to Earth,
that Earth may answer the hand.
Continue until the clay becomes workable.
Do not hurry this union.
Feel the change beneath the fingers.
Remember:
Earth gives body.
Water gives yielding.
The hand gives intention.
IV. THE MAKING OF THE FIRST VESSEL
From the softened clay, form a pinch pot.
This vessel is temporary.
It is not made to survive as a vessel.
It is made to receive.
Shape it by hand.
Press the thumb inward.
Raise the walls.
Turn it.
Thin it.
Hold it.
This small vessel is the first deliberate form of the rite.
Yet it is made with the knowledge that it shall soon be destroyed.
Thus the first lesson is given before any rune is carved:
Not every sacred form is meant to remain unchanged.
Hold the vessel and speak:
I make a form that shall not remain.
I make a vessel that shall be unmade.
What receives shall be folded inward.
What is separate shall be joined.
What is given shall enter the whole.
Set the vessel before thee.
Prepare for the First Redding.
V. THE FIRST Redding
The First Redding is the joining of the living maker with the unformed body of the stones.
The Liquid Life Force shall be the maker’s own.
It shall be ritually offered according to the maker’s established personal practice.
No person undertaking this rite is required to imitate another person’s manner of Liquid Life Force offering, nor to injure a particular part of the body because another maker did so.
The original maker associates this act with the place of the Third Eye: the symbolic seat of inward sight, intuition, perception, and the seeing that is not accomplished by the two eyes alone.
Another maker must approach this portion according to their own conscience, symbolism, safety, and established practice.
The meaning is not the wound.
The meaning is the offering of the living self.
Gather the Liquid Life Force into the pinch pot.
Look upon Earth and Liquid Life Force together.
Then speak:
This is not the Liquid Life Force of another.
This is not an offering borrowed from another life.
What I give is mine to give.
What enters the Earth comes from the living body that now shapes it.
Before the stones are divided,
before the runes are named,
before the Fire changes them,
let the living self enter the work.
Then unmake the vessel.
Fold it inward.
Press it.
Knead it.
Turn it.
Work the Liquid Life Force thoroughly through the clay.
Destroy the separation between vessel and offering.
The cup disappears.
The Liquid Life Force enters the Earth.
The Earth receives the Liquid Life Force.
What had been contained becomes distributed.
What had been one vessel becomes the body from which twenty-five stones shall emerge.
As the clay is kneaded, speak:
Liquid Life Force into Earth.
Earth around Liquid Life Force.
No stone yet named.
No rune yet chosen.
Before division, union.
Before symbol, body.
Before the Twenty-Five,
One.
Continue until the clay is prepared.
Then let the hands become still.
VI. THE DIVISION OF THE ONE
From the prepared clay, form twenty-five stones.
Seek to make them equal in care.
Seek to make them alike in size and weight according to the ability of the hand.
Let none be deliberately exalted above another by grandeur.
Let none be deliberately diminished through neglect.
Do not make the Twenty-Fifth larger merely because it is personal.
Do not make a favored rune more beautiful merely because it is loved.
Do not make a feared rune smaller merely because its meaning is difficult.
Give each a body worthy of attention.
As the clay is divided, remember:
Equality is not sameness.
The hand may seek consistency.
The Earth may refuse it.
The Air may alter it.
The Fire may transform it.
This is not failure.
This is part of the rite.
As each stone is formed, place it among the others.
When all twenty-five bodies have been made, look upon them before any rune is impressed.
Then speak:
From one body, Twenty-Five.
Equal in care.
Not promised sameness.
I shall not know what the Air will change.
I shall not know what the Fire will mark.
I shall do my part.
I shall release what is not mine to command.
Now the stones are ready to receive their signs.
VII. THE IMPRESSING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR
The twenty-four inherited runes shall be impressed one at a time.
Do not work as though marking inventory.
Do not carve several while thinking of none.
Do not permit the hand to race ahead of attention.
Take up the first stone.
Forget the remaining twenty-four.
There is only this stone.
There is only this rune.
With a flat, blunt-bladed tool, impress the rune into the softened clay.
As the mark is formed, hold its meaning in the mind.
Contemplate it.
Speak its associated rune poem.
Chant the words that belong to the rune within the maker’s chosen practice.
Do not merely reproduce a shape.
Attend to it.
When Fehu is made, there is only Fehu.
When Uruz is made, there is only Uruz.
When Thurisaz is made, there is only Thurisaz.
Continue through the Elder Futhark in order:
Fehu.
Uruz.
Thurisaz.
Ansuz.
Raidho.
Kenaz.
Gebo.
Wunjo.
Hagalaz.
Naudiz.
Isa.
Jera.
Eihwaz.
Perthro.
Algiz.
Sowilo.
Tiwaz.
Berkano.
Ehwaz.
Mannaz.
Laguz.
Ingwaz.
Othala.
Dagaz.
For each:
Take the stone.
Hold the rune in mind.
Contemplate its meaning.
Impress its form.
Speak or chant its poem.
Remain with it until the act is complete.
Then set it down.
Only then take up the next.
Thus each rune receives the full chamber of attention.
One stone.
One rune.
One meaning.
One poem.
One act of making.
Until the Twenty-Four stand marked.
VIII. THE SEEKING OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Now comes the stone that cannot be completed by inheritance alone.
The Twenty-Fifth shall not be blank.
It shall not be an empty stone of unknown fate.
It shall not bear a symbol copied from the original maker of this rite.
It shall not bear a personal bindrune stolen from another because that rune appears powerful, beautiful, mysterious, or complete.
For the Twenty-Fifth Rune has one meaning:
BE THYSELF
Yet there is no single universal mark for this teaching.
Its meaning is shared.
Its form is personal.
Its teaching is universal.
Its answer is individual.
Therefore the maker must create a personal rune.
This may be a bind rune formed from inherited runes.
It may contain mirroring.
Reversal.
Repetition.
Crossing.
Rotation.
Balance.
Asymmetry.
It may bind together forces that describe the maker’s nature, struggle, aspiration, contradiction, wound, strength, path, or becoming.
But each choice must belong to the maker.
Do not ask first:
What looks powerful?
Ask:
What is true?
Do not ask:
What would impress another?
Ask:
What would remain mine if no other person ever saw it?
Do not ask:
What rune did the first maker use?
Ask:
What rune can only I make for myself?
Sit with the Twenty-Fifth Stone.
Do not hurry because the other twenty-four are finished.
The Twenty-Fifth may require more time.
It may require drawing.
Contemplation.
Revision.
Failure.
Erasure.
Beginning again.
Let it.
For the final stone asks a question the old row cannot answer on thy behalf:
Who art thou when no one is watching?
Who art thou when praise is removed?
Who art thou when shame is imposed?
Who art thou beneath imitation?
Who art thou beneath fear?
Who art thou beneath the masks that once kept thee safe?
What within thee must change?
What within thee must endure?
What hast thou inherited?
What hast thou chosen?
What is truly thine?
From this contemplation, make the rune.
Then impress it into the Twenty-Fifth Stone.
As it is carved, speak:
This is not the self of another.
This is not the mark of another life.
I do not copy another person’s answer.
I stand before the inherited row and answer for myself.
Twenty-four were received.
The Twenty-Fifth is made.
Its meaning is:
Be Thyself.
Set the Twenty-Fifth among the others.
Look upon all twenty-five.
The making by hand is complete.
The work of the elements is not.
IX. THE GIVING TO AIR
Give the Twenty-Five to the Air.
Let them dry within the sacred place.
Do not mistake stillness for inactivity.
The Air is working.
Water departs.
The clay contracts.
The surface changes.
The stones harden.
What was easily reshaped begins to resist.
The marks remain.
The poems have been spoken.
The personal rune has been made.
Now the hand must cease interfering.
As the stones are left to dry, speak:
Air around me,
Air within me,
Breath that carried every poem,
Breath that carried every chant,
Take now the Water that must depart.
Leave the form.
Leave the mark.
Teach the soft body to remember.
Then wait.
Do not hurry them into Fire before they are ready.
The rite is not improved by impatience.
Let the Air complete what the hand cannot.
X. THE PREPARATION OF THE PIT
When the stones are fully dry and ready for firing, prepare the pit fire in the sacred place.
The Fire is not merely a tool used to harden clay.
Within this rite, Fire is transformation beyond complete human control.
The maker shaped the stones.
The maker impressed the runes.
The maker spoke the poems.
But the maker does not command every mark that Fire shall leave.
Prepare the pit according to the maker’s established firing practice and the needs of the clay.
Place the stones with care.
Understand that their positions may matter.
One may know greater heat.
One may know more smoke.
One may lie where oxygen reaches differently.
One may be touched by ash.
One may emerge unlike its neighbor.
Before kindling the Fire, speak:
I have shaped what I could shape.
I have marked what I could mark.
I have spoken what I could speak.
Now I surrender the work I cannot command.
Fire, take what is fragile.
Do not preserve sameness for my comfort.
Transform.
XI. THE GIVING TO FIRE
Kindle the Fire.
Let the pit burn.
Attend it according to the needs of the firing.
Watch without pretending that watching is control.
The stones enter together.
Yet they may not emerge identical.
One may emerge ochre.
One may emerge orange.
One may bear the red of burned Earth.
One may darken toward brown.
One may carry charcoal.
One may emerge near-black.
One may bear the mark of smoke.
Another the memory of a hotter place.
Another may reveal where mineral, flame, oxygen, ash, and chance met in a way the hand never designed.
Do not correct these differences merely because they differ.
Do not mourn them merely because the stones no longer resemble one another perfectly.
Do not demand that children of one Earth wear one face.
For the Fire teaches what the Twenty-Fifth Rune declares:
To be equal is not to be identical.
To belong is not to disappear.
To stand among others is not to surrender the Self.
Twenty-five entered the Fire together.
Twenty-five shall emerge themselves.
When the firing is complete, allow the stones to cool.
Do not hurry their return.
Do not seize them from heat merely from impatience.
What has passed through Fire must be permitted to become still.
When they are cool, gather them.
Look upon what the Fire has done.
Do not compare them to the perfection of manufactured things.
See them.
One Earth.
One making.
One rite.
Many faces.
Then speak:
I knew what entered.
I did not know what would emerge.
I sought equality.
I was not promised sameness.
Fire has answered in its own hand.
I receive the Twenty-Five as they have become.
XII. THE VESSEL OF THE SECOND Redding
Prepare the small fired clay cup made specifically for the Redding of the runes.
This vessel shall not be common.
It belongs to the rite.
It too was Earth.
It too knew Water.
It too dried in Air.
It too passed through Fire.
Now it receives Liquid Life Force.
The First Redding entered the clay before the stones were divided.
The Second Redding enters the signs after the stones have survived Fire.
Thus the two Reddings are not the same act.
The First Redding joins the living maker to the body of the stones.
The Second Redding enters the runes themselves.
Prepare the offering according to the maker’s own established personal practice.
Again, no maker is required to imitate another person’s method of Liquid Life Force offering or bodily location.
The original rite associates this act with the Third Eye and with inward sight.
Another maker must act according to their own symbolism, conscience, and safe practice.
Gather the offering into the fired clay cup.
Then speak:
The First Redding entered what had no rune.
The Second Redding enters what has survived Fire.
The first joined body to body.
The second enters sign and meaning.
What was formed shall now be Reded.
XIII. THE MAKING OF THE BRUSH
The runes shall be Reded with a brush made by the maker.
Take a twig.
Use it as the handle.
Take hair from the maker’s own body.
Use it as the bristle.
Bind them into a small brush suitable for filling the impressions of the runes.
Thus the instrument itself joins living body and living world.
The tree gives the handle.
The body gives the hair.
The hand gives the motion.
The Liquid Life Force gives the mark.
Hold the completed brush and speak:
Twig of the growing world.
Hair of the living self.
Joined by hand.
Carry now what is mine
into the signs I have made.
XIV. THE REDDING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR
Arrange the Twenty-Four.
Take up the first.
Again, do not think of the others.
Again, there is only this stone.
There is only this rune.
Dip the brush of hair and twig into the Liquid Life Force.
Carefully fill the impression.
Do not rush.
Do not smear without purpose.
Attend to the carved line.
As the Liquid Life Force enters the rune, chant again the poem associated with it.
The poem spoken during formation is spoken again after Fire.
Thus each inherited rune is encountered twice.
First in softness.
Then in hardness.
First before Fire.
Then after Fire.
First as becoming.
Then as being.
Red Fehu.
Speak Fehu.
Set it down.
Red Uruz.
Speak Uruz.
Set it down.
Continue through the Elder Futhark.
One by one.
Stone by stone.
Rune by rune.
Poem by poem.
Until the Twenty-Four have been Reded.
Do not permit the final stones to receive less attention because weariness has entered the body.
The last inherited rune deserves no less presence than the first.
When Dagaz is complete, set it among the others.
Then turn to the Twenty-Fifth.
XV. THE REDDING OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Last comes the personal rune.
The Rune of Self.
The rune that cannot be inherited.
The rune that cannot be prescribed.
The rune that must not be copied.
Take it in hand.
Look upon the sign created for this purpose.
Remember every line.
Remember why it was chosen.
If inherited runes were bound within it, remember each one.
If forms were mirrored, remember why.
If forms were reversed, remember why.
If one sign was repeated, remember why.
If symmetry was broken, remember why.
If the rune changed during its creation, remember the path by which it changed.
If part of it represents suffering, do not deny it.
If part represents strength, do not boast before it.
If part represents contradiction, do not force false simplicity upon it.
If part remains mysterious even to the maker, acknowledge the mystery without pretending certainty.
This is not the rune of the founder.
This is not the rune of a teacher.
This is not the rune of an ancestor.
This is not a mark copied because another person gave it power.
This is thine.
Dip the brush of hair and twig into the Liquid Life Force.
Begin filling the personal rune.
As the Liquid Life Force enters the mark, speak:
This sign is not the self of another.
This sign is not the shape demanded of me.
This sign is not a mask.
This sign is not obedi