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Re edited and Republished from original March 2021
Note: The author has been using runes for over 40 years and was taught their principles and use by a traditional Swedish/Finnish practitioner. While she has added to that knowledge over the years, she abides by the traditions transmitted through her teacher when they contradict "bookish" information. Some traditional knowledge is transmitted in this article.
Heathen world social media lit up about a week ago (March 2021) concerning a symbol that could be read into the staging fixtures at the CPAC conference in Florida.
The frenzy fixated on the shape of the platform stage, which resembled a variation on a rune that has become notorious for its use by white supremacy groups. And I’m not talking about the Swastika.
This particular rune (it’s actually what’s called a ‘bind rune’) appears to the casual observer to be an Odal rune with little wings (called ‘serifs’ by the young adults who are tweeting about it).
The apparent use of this runic form at CPAC, assuming that it was an intentional use and not just dumb luck (because the people at CPAC are also guilty of that on occasion), has been seen by many in the Heathen community as a direct reference to the use of a similar runic form used by the SS Main Office of Race and Settlement that concerned itself with the racial/blood purity of SS divisions. It was also used by the SS Volunteer Divisions in Germany and the Netherlands.
Given CPAC’s proclivities and connections, and the fact that said Nazi divisions did, IN FACT, use that symbol, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in the CPAC's marketing department didn't deliberately intend to send such a message to those who would pick it up.
However, that is not the whole story of this rune, or rather of the rune CPAC's version resembled.
I was first made aware of this controversy through the Pagan/Heathen news website Patheos.com, and this blog is my response to some of the comments made by the principal writer of that news item. Here is the link to that article:
The main issue that I had with the blog was the general comment that “The CPAC version of the rune is only found in Nazism."
At best that is a massive over-simplification, and at worst, actual ignorance. So here's the more nuanced version of the story.
My first exposure to a similar runic form was through the writings of Nigel Pennick who has made his living researching and publishing about runes, folklore and the shamanic/spiritual practices of pre-Christian Europeans.
While many of his works concentrate on the runes, especially the runic sets of Anglo-Saxon England, he has also sought to demonstrate that many of the traditions of Northern Europe, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Finnish, etc, have common ideas and practices and that these various peoples shared many things with one another over time.
In his book Rune Magic, (pg 146) now sadly OP, Pennick first describes this rune (a version of “Odal with wings”) in his section dealing with Anglo-Saxon additions to the Elder Futhark rune row. It is part of a set of bind runes which he indicates are in common folk usage throughout England and Germany.
He describes its name as Erda and that it is the rune of the mother goddess. Magically, it is a rune of nurture, protection and enclosure. It resembles Odal but has a distinctly different use.:
"The two tails that distinguish this rune from Odal represent the links between the protective enclosure of the Earth upon which we live and are nurtured and the wider universe. Being composed of eight straight lines, all of the same length, Erda is thus a rune that engenders stability and the maintenance of wholeness." He links it to the Ogham alphabet of the eight ifins or the hurdle of pine branches." Magically, the application of the Erda rune is for all things which require a holistic approach--the bringing of reintegration of human actions with the wider world of which they are a part."
The most important component of his explanation is to explicitly state that this rune resembles but IS NOT Odal, specifically because all the lines are supposed to be the same length. This indicates that it is not an Odal with wings, but a bind rune comprised of two or more runes. If the Nazis were using this rune, they didn't get the form right, which energetically, means everything.
In no place does Pennick talk about this rune being principally about Nazis (he doesn’t spare the Swastika in this regard and certainly mentions other symbols the Nazis used), nor white supremacy, nor blood purity.
If you check his bibliography (in this book or in the others he's written about runes), you’ll find NO books about Nazism or white supremacy, but many books in English, German and other Northern European languages about symbols, runes and folklore.
Given the context in which Pennick discusses this rune it seems clear that Erda was probably originally a German or English property marker.
Many medieval property markers took the form of bind runes and on page 230 of his book Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition, Pennick provides a number of these property/owner markers that take after runic forms.
Now Erda is not among this collection of property markers in Pagan Magic, but given where Pennick places Erda in his original illustration of extra magical rune forms in both Rune Magic and Runic Lore and Legend: Wyrdstaves of the North (which deals almost exclusively with Anglo-Saxon rune forms from Eastern England), it seems pretty clear to me that he’s talking about something which occurs with some frequency in folk symbolism.
Furthermore, in a YouTube video that Pennick produced and uploaded just this last year called 50 Runes and Sigils of the European tradition (minute 3:34) Erda is included right in the middle of the Anglo-Saxon "extra runes" which are often part of the extended FUTHARKS of that tradition. Furthermore, he has rendered the bind rune correctly, unlike the Nazi and presumed CPAC version.
In order for this rune to be correctly drawn, the "serifs" or wings must be the same length and extend up evenly to the bottom of the diamond shape. Bind runes must be drawn correctly or the runic energies are not activated.
Erda is a bind rune that connects to several other runic forms. It is actually an Ing with a version of Sowilo running along the bottom of it. The fact that it looks like an Odal with wings is one of those happy runic coincidences that extends its meaning (probably also indicating that it was originally a property marker).
As Pennick rightly notes, this bind rune connects the individual not only to the Earth and to the Ancestors, but to the Heavenly powers (Sowilo), which requires that the person using the rune be able to connect to all others in a universal way.
Sowilo does many things—but in this form it shatters division while maintaining a sense of safety and repose. I seriously doubt that anyone using it in the name of CPAC, or white supremacy, would be that magically sophisticated.
It would make sense that the Nazis would try to use something from folk symbolism because that’s what they were/are all about—bending common symbols to their own use in order to corrupt the energies thereby.
In fact, by using an incorrect version of this bind rune (an altered Odal with uneven lines), the SS groups in question, who used unbalanced versions of this rune, sowed the seeds of their own destruction, since the energy in this rune cannot be contained or so exclusively used in the manner they probably intended. This is a runic form that demands complete integrity and honesty in the user—and Nazis are hardly capable of that by definition.
In fact, the Odal rune, which many Neo-Nazi groups are trying to claim, is itself comprised of two mirrored Sowilo runes in their more standard version, joining heavenly and earthly forces together through ancestral inheritance and Nazis/fascists who are trying to mold the energy of that rune to their own use will find themselves brought to grief as well. Heaven and earth are patient, but not ultimately kind to those who would pervert the essences of life.
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Why does this all matter?
Well, once again, we may have, in the service of CPAC, individuals and groups who are committed to using and corrupting completely useful and time honored symbols for their own nefarious purposes of racism, and “blood and soil” BS.
At the same time, it is also clear that there are members of the larger pagan/heathen community who have either declared themselves, or who have been so declared, as leaders, and who only know part of the deeper history that they are talking about—and so, in many ways, energetically, play right into the hands of the ‘bad guys.’
Regardless of what CPAC tries to do, it is vital that Heathens/Pagans guard against both the misuse of their symbols and heritage, but also seek to completely inform themselves of the very heritages they wish to defend.
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