Runes · Freyr’s ætt
Ansuz
Sound: a · The name: a god, one of the Æsir
- words
- messages
- good counsel
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem names the rune os and reads it as the mouth, ‘the source of all language, a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men’; scholars think the word once meant ‘god’. The Norwegian poem makes it an estuary, ‘the way of most journeys’. The Icelandic poem keeps the god: ‘aged Gautr and prince of Ásgardr’, lord of Valhalla, which is Odin.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers take Ansuz as the rune of words, messages and good counsel. They draw on both the Old English mouth and the Icelandic Odin, the god who in the Hávamál wins the runes. In the modern books it asks you to listen as well as to speak. This is a 20th-century reading.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as a misunderstanding, or advice that goes unheard. That is a modern device.
As your rune of the day
Choose your words with care today; one well-placed sentence can do a great deal.
Listen a moment longer than usual before you reply.
Reading runes as an oracle is modern, from Guido von List (1908) and Ralph Blum (1982); the people who carved them, Vikings included, used them for writing, names and charm words.