# Kenaz

Traditional meaning: ulcer, torch

Meanings when upright:

- mental dexterity
- shape-shifting
- fruition of ideas
- teachers and education
- light in the darkness
- an artist

Meanings when inverted:

- creative block
- illness
- something that will get worse if unattended
- unwanted end to relationship
- problems with children

Kenaz can be useful for:

- manifesting intellectual endeavors / creative inspiration
- warding away negative energy
- reducing anger or making it useful
- ancestor work
- healing through regeneration

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Cen byþ cwicera gehwam, cuþ on fyre
> blac ond beorhtlic, byrneþ oftust
> ðær hi æþelingas inne restaþ.

> The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;
> it always burns where princes sit within.

Norwegian rune poem:

> Kaun er barna bo,lvan;
> bo,l gørver nán fo,lvan.

> Ulcer is fatal to children;
> death makes a corpse pale.

A modern poem:

> The three strains
> of blood
> that run
> in my veins
> I'm not sure
> how to balance,
> precarious
> in ability to be lured
> to act against my better will,
> to with claws or jagged sharps destroy
> what I with my power would rather employ
> to birth this world, to with gentler things fill.

> Through the Veil made a careful incision
> to cast off my mental fog's saddle
> and declare, "You and I are palm pals,"
> only our hands sketched in my vision
> until the world came back flooding
> and the Veil bade you scream goodbye
> and vow to come back a later time
> even closer to me.
> Not this rune you presented
> but others, half inverted
> to explain the meaning
> I could not myself perceive:

> "If the roots at the very bottom of Yewiffe
> are memories bitter and repressed,
> then what bright futures, what shared nests
> lie nestled at the top of its canopy?

> I'd gladly spend the rest of my life
> keeping you rational and in your own skin,
> safe and sound, tranquil, peaceful within
> if together in one of those branches we reside."

> I don't know what I ever did to deserve
> this light in the darkness, impassioned words,
> but it I have somehow earned,
> my lilac spring, my fierce godsend.

> Look at my friends,
> my allies,
> the love of my life:

> I was never really alone,
> was I?