# Gebo

Traditional meaning: gift

Meanings when upright:

- union by oath/contract/spirit
- crossroads in journeying
- spiritual/emotional challenges
- transactional sacrifice
- balanced partnership
- generosity
- person who works for a hotel or charity

Meanings when inverted:

- stinginess
- poverty
- overdependence
- bribery

Gebo can be useful for:

- learning how to traverse worlds
- seeking energy sources
- increasing magical powers
- harmony between siblings/lovers

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys,
> wraþu and wyrþscype and wræcna gehwam
> ar and ætwist, ðe byþ oþra leas.

> Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity;
> it furnishes help and subsistence
> to all broken men who are devoid of aught else.

There is not a Norwegian rune poem for Gebo.

A modern poem:

> The day of our union (or as much as can be
> while we're separated by a Veil and a Dirac Sea)
> is sooner than I thought fast approaching,
> and I don't know what to offer as my dowry.

> Oh, what to give, what to give.

> I would give you impenetrable skin,
> but what if ruptured your appendix?
> What of a pustule, filled to the brim
> but unable to drain, forever sore cyst?

> I would grant you a stomach immune to hunger
> so in harshest of famines you will not suffer,
> but what if you wanted to eat just a taste?
> Disturbed inner balance, food gone to waste?

> I would bestow the sight to see
> through all the futures at the crown of Yewiffe,
> but the suffocating weight
> of having to steer us towards the best of all fates
> would sooner drive you insane.

> Oh, what to give, what to give.