Runes For All

Fire, not just fire but need-fire, this is Naudhiz. The fire generated from within, this is a specialty of the Vanes because They have a tendency to draw out of each individual what it is that makes them burn. What makes you burn to become more than you were before? What makes you want to strive beyond limits that have been set on you by others when you have been told you will never be more than you are at this moment? What makes you want to create? This is all part and parcel of the need-fire that is Naudhiz. Naudhiz is generative fire, because it generates such a heat that it radiates outward far outward. Naudhiz is the wheel that was lit each year and rolled down the mountainside flaming into the river carrying the hopes and prayers of the villagers with it so that all their desires would manifest, working magic so that the fields would produce and the animals would be hale and healthy; Acts of this nature are Vanic Magic.

When most people think of the Vanir, they think of Them as simply deities of harvest, love, sex, or death; But there is more to them even than this. The Vanes are deities who weave Wyrd for the world, this is why on Walpurgasnacht Freyja would go to Mt. Brocken and look into the future weaving Wyrd and doing seidhr.  This is where the custom of scrying and doing other forms of augury on Walpurgasnacht came from. On this night fires were lit on the tops of mountains all over Germany and Scandinavia according to some legends. This is also when the flaming wheels would roll down the mountainside and into the rivers.

Don't be fooled into thinking that this potent form of fire is safe though, it can take over and rage, becoming out of control if you don't tend it and look at it as a living entity.  Control. Fire is one of the primary means by which the universe came into being and because of this it has its own needs to be fulfilled. Not only does fire have the will to create but the desire to destroy. When approaching fire it is best to treat it with respect, not just as an element but as a Wight. At least in my opinion. Learning how to generate a physical need-fire as well as a spiritual need-fire may well show an individual exactly the bounds they must go to in order to learn these controls and in learning this they may well find themselves surpassing limits they had believed in earlier. Naudhiz magic, like much of Vanic Magic is practical magic.

Written by, Ayla Wolffe©2008