Ingrid Kincaid - Lost Teachings of the Runes: Northern Mysteries and the Wheel of Life

Born out of a visceral and passionate engagement with her own northern ancestral tradition, Kincaid's book is a searching exploration of the runes and their meaning. It is a paean, a poem, a meditation, and a clarion call for the lost teachings of the runes to return with intensity and brilliance. The runes spring to life with a new force as we are taken on a marvelous journey through the symbols, probing their deeper layers and many-faceted messages. For the reader who wants to work actively with the runes, this book provides a framework for orientation and a series of guided meditations. In the words of the author: The teachings and wisdom of the runes bring us back into harmony with all life, with our bodies and with the earth.

Christopher McIntosh PhD, author of Beyond the North Wind

Very impressive and emanating a great love towards the Northern heritage, and the wish to share this universally, the first part of Lost Teachings of the Runes is pure evocative poetry. Reading it induces a pleasant light trance from which your own ideas emerge. It's how it is writtenthe Dance of Runes manifesting themselves in writing. It sings! The runes are understood as primordial Living Beings,' closely entwined with nature. This is very intriguing. Containing a slew of new visualization techniques centering around The Wheel of Life, this book will appeal to Pagans of all stripes, shamanic workers, and Heathens. But it does require an open mind. This book asks many questions, well worth meditating upon. Some are very hard questions and will challenge your perceptions. Lost Teachings of the Runes is a Song of Runes. It's given me a different perspective on the runes to contemplate.

Freya Aswynn, author of Northern Mysteries and Magick and Leaves of Yggdrasil

The ancestors have not stopped teaching us. In Lost Teachings of the Runes, Ingrid Kincaid illuminates a simultaneously very new and very old way of engaging with the mystical North. The runes come alive in unique ways, embraced by a seasonal cycle and rooted in the center of the World Tree. Kincaid encourages a questioning spirit. What do you experience as the Wheel turns around? This book has answers and more questions. It is a pioneering and powerful vision.

Dawn Work-MaKinne, PhD, and author contributor to Goddesses in World Cultures and Myths Shattered and Restored

This edition first published in 2019 by Weiser Books an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2019 Ingrid Kincaid

The thirty-three rune poems were previously published in 2016 in

Runes Revealed by Inkwater Press, ISBN 978-1-62901-349-7.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-676-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover photograph Ingrid Kincaid

Illustrations by Naomi St. Clare

Typeset in Aller Light

Printed in Canada

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The Stories

Directions of the Wheel

Using the Wheel

The Rune Beings

Guided Meditations

Nothing I say is true.

Everything I say is true.

The truth lives in the questions.

Life is a story.

This book is a story.

Each time you enter the story it will be different.

You will be different.

The words will be different.

Life will be different.

Life is a question.

This book is a question.

Many questions.

Changing questions.

Questions with no answers.

Questions with no right answers.

This book is alive.

This story is alive.

You are alive.

This book is a story.

Life is a story.

A story about the runes.

A story about the tree.

A story about the winds and the horizon.

A story about the ancestors.

And you, standing in the center.

Ancestors are life.

Ancestors are stories.

This book is an ancestor.

Ancestors tell us who we are.

Ancestors tell us where we come from.

And where we are going.

This book is a tool.

A useful tool.

A tool for using.

A tool for asking questions.

A tool for asking questions with no answers.

You are standing in the center.

Turning.

Asking questions.

Remembering the future.

Foretelling the past.

This book is dedicated to the stories.

This book is dedicated to the questions.

This book is dedicated to the place where you live in the story.

The stories we have been told are not the only stories, nor are they the right stories.

There are other stories.

The ones that have not been told.

The ones that have been forgotten.

The ones we carry in our bones, not in our minds.

The ones our ancestors wish to tell.

It is my desire that these new stories that are actually old stories will awaken in us something ancient.

remembering

more than blood

my ancestors

were etched inside

Kenaz

split me open

I penetrated the darkness

I saw what was destroyed

spun and woven

frayed and worn

the strands of Wyrd

retied

The earth is in upheaval, again.

Great change is upon us.

Something new is being brought into form, something that is older than time.

Rune wisdom is reappearing for us out of the melting ice.

It is the same wisdom that fed, guided and protected our

indigenous Northern European ancestors.

It is neither female nor male.

It is neither bad nor good, dark nor light, immoral nor moral.

Rune wisdom is the wisdom of life in constant motion and

perfect balance, sourced from the darkness of the great void,

chaos coming into form and returning again to the darkness.

Sadly there are those among us who attempt to corrupt runic

wisdom with patriarchal, misogynistic, aggressive energies.

Myopic, All-Father Odinism

Neo-Nazi white supremacy

Exclusionary Asatru

Glorified Viking violence

It is time we reclaim the lost teachings of the runes, time to

remember who we are, and find our way back to our roots.

This book is about our roots.

This book is about the Center.

This book is about standing in the Center, in the present

moment, remembering who we are by connecting the future with the past.

It speaks of ways to discover and explore what exists above, below, beyond and inside.

It is dedicated to our bones, to our ancestors, to our stories,