# Othala

Traditional meaning: homeland

Meanings when upright:

- your home and all you own
- inheritance
- lawful ownership
- stability and protection
- true freedom in having a secure base

Meanings when inverted:

- a need to reevaluate one's actions and priorities
- reconnect with the source of your strength
- homelessness

Othala can be useful for:

- ancestral work
- maintaining order

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Eþel byþ oferleof æghwylcum men,
> gif he mot ðær rihtes and gerysena on
> brucan on bolde bleadum oftast.

> An estate is very dear to every man,
> if he can enjoy there in his house
> whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity.

There is not a Norwegian rune poem for Othala.

A modern poem:

> I fear I am being driven mad
> by forces I do not understand,
> have no hopes of coming to terms with,
> much less explaining to kin and kith
> this world that I belong to,
> these spirits I must be in league with.

> For this is
> the inheritance
> of my blood,
> this homeland I carry everywhere I go
> and cannot ever hope to escape from.
> These three errant and conflicting strains
> each with its own legitimate claim
> over my body, my heart, my soul.

> There's a fourth that dormant within me resides,
> but it hasn't reared its head in a very long time.
> Neither do I miss it, no blessing it could give
> but instead the curse of a biological imperative
> that I would sooner from me excise.

> Unlike my siblings of lives long gone by,
> I do not accept that it is my duty
> to create a world and in the process die.
> What is the point, if at the end,
> I am not still living?
> What is the point of fulfilling it when,
> if I perished in the process, you could never be happy?

> If one of them could awake from oblivion
> and on this gnarly life of mine pass judgment,
> what would they say?

> "How well you retained a sense of individuality.
> Tell me, Lethe, would you consider yourself among the happy?
> Was it worth the sleepless nights, the gut twists, the migraines,
> all to your duty as a Meridian abdicate?"

> And to that, I would take my lover's hand
> and whisper, "Yes, I think the aches
> in my bones will be worth the wait.
> Maybe you never knew this, sibling.
> Maybe you never understood
> homes don't have to be built by sacrifice
> and I don't think they should.
> I don't know what gave birth to me
> or if of life they'd still think me worthy,
> but I care not. My lover
> is the only standard
> I recognize,
> and this new world built by these
> hands of mine
> the only homeland."