# Hagalaz

Traditional meaning: hail

Meanings when upright:

- the Eschaton
- deep roots of Yewiffe
- repressed memories
- winter/darkness/silence
- water
- creative destruction
- upcoming crisis/trauma
- good outcomes from forced change
- mystic/magician/priest

Meanings when inverted:

- sky-scraping branches of Yewiffe
- a bright sunny future
- stagnation

Hagalaz can be useful for:

- shadow work
- absorbing negative energy
- connecting with the dead
- sifting through the past
- creating disruptions

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Hægl byþ hwitust corna;
> hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte,
> wealcaþ hit windes scura;
> weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan.

> Hail is the whitest of grain;
> it is whirled from the vault of heaven
> and is tossed about by gusts of wind
> and then it melts into water.

Norwegian rune poem:

> Hagall er kaldastr korna;
> Kristr skóp hæimenn forna.

> Hail is the coldest of grain;
> Christ created the world of old.

A modern poem:

> Blow the ashes in their eyes,
> the gentle breath they do despise.
> The hail comes down, delivered by the wind
> you said was my wealth, my dividend.

> I cannot help who I am,
> or what I have become.
> And who I have turned into
> is a gleaming no one,
> nobody at all.

> You told me
> we were
> stagnating.

> Self-baptismal in just-thawed lake
> I had just enough strength to break
> the surface of, watch the ice shatter
> like that which gave birth to you: the mirror.
> You swore to be my eternal blue,
> and my skin now swears by the same hue,
> lake draining into a trickle of a stream
> that, if followed, will drain into Yewiffe,

> into a root of midnight hands
> and walking home from shift at the grill
> wondering, what if I, feral, disappeared
> into those lonely snow-blanketed lands
> that bordered me at every turn?
> Highway headlights also a stream
> draining into boundless woods
> where I easily could swear I would
> disappear with you as if in a dream.

> Sablade, I promised, would be cloaked
> in sunny promising eternal spring,
> but the thought of ever losing you bades me
> to accept hail's cloak, frozen sleeping.