Runes · Týr’s ætt
Laguz
Sound: l · The name: water, lake
- water
- flow
- intuition
What the old rune poems say
In the Old English poem lagu is the ocean, which ‘seems interminable to men’ when the waves terrify them and the ship heeds not its bridle. The Norwegian poem has a waterfall coming down a mountainside, the Icelandic one ‘eddying stream and broad geysir and land of the fish’. Some scholars think the Elder Futhark name was laukaz, leek, instead.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers see Laguz as the rune of water: flow, feeling and intuition. The modern books speak of going with the current where you cannot steer, and of trusting a sense you cannot yet explain. This is a modern reading.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as being swept along, or ignoring an inner sense. That is a modern device.
As your rune of the day
Let the day carry you a little way where it wants to go.
Drink a glass of water slowly and listen to what you already know.
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.