Divination Offering: Ask the Ogham or the Runes

[jprussell]

Doing divination with the Runes was actually the first occult thing I learned to do, and since then I've also picked up the Ogham. I do a daily reading for myself with one or the other, and as needed for specific questions where I'm looking for guidance. But I've never done a reading for someone else, and I think it's time I give that a shot.

So! Do you have a question that some additional information might help? A decision you're contemplating? If so, let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. Fair warning, as I said, this is my first shot at other folks' questions, so I can't guarantee how helpful or accurate I'll be! That being said, I wouldn't be offering this if I didn't think I could help.

In your comment, let me know your question, any details or context you think might be relevant that you're willing to share, and whether you'd like me to consult the Ogham or the Runes. For what it's worth, I tend to go to the Ogham for spiritual or magical questions and the Runes for life-direction or practical questions, but I've used both for all sorts of questions. If you have a simple "yes/no" question, I find that easier with the Runes.

With all that out of the way, fire away!
Thanks everyone, but this offer is now closed! Next time I'm offering readings, I'll post here again.

Comments

[tamanous2020]

Thanks for the rune reading!

Much like you, I'm trying to prepare for the long decline and specifically, towards figuring a trade or skill that'll be useful down the road. My history of office work has not exactly lead to a lot of options that really stick out as possibilities though, so divination would be appreciated.

Q- What trade/skill would I be both good at and would bring in enough resources/money for my family and I to live on?

Thanks,

Tamanous

[jprussell]

Hmm, this one ought to present an interesting challenge to get to an interpretation that tells a specific trade/skill, or at least hints toward one. I'll get to your reading either tonight or tomorrow and share what I find then.

[jprussell]

Alright, so to ask this, I opened a sacred space, prayed to the Gods that I ask for help with divination, called upon the Wyrds (Norns), and then shook the Runestaves vigorously while thinking of your question, dropped them in a dice tray, and then picked one for each piece of the spread without looking. I said a prayer to the same Gods to help me understand what I was seeing and then did the interpretation. In this case, I drew a follow-up Rune from the remaining 21 without re-shuffling to clarify the last Rune drawn in the normal spread.

Asking - "What trade/skills sould Tamanous be good at that would bring in enough resources for his family to live on?"
Draw
Setting: Algiz - "Elk" or "Protection"
Work: Ansuz - "Ancestral God (Woden)"
Outcome(s): Othala (Murky) - "Homeland"
Follow-Up Asking - "What does Tamanous most need to understand about the Outcome(s) drawn above?"
Follow-Up: Laguz (Murky) - "Lake"

My Take on It
Okay, given the context you gave for your question, I had to chuckle a bit at some parts of this reading, as the short version is that this reading says "do some thinking/talking work" of the sort it sounds like you're trying to get away from, but I think there might be more going on here that has to do with what question(s) to ask than that simple answer implies. So let's step through it.

Algiz is a bit of a tough Rune, with different commentators attributing fairly different meanings to it, but the feeling I'm getting here, in Setting, is that something about the world around you, your life, your context is risky/dangerous, but that the risk is double-sided. There's an opportunity in it if you know how to handle it well. Given the question, it seems likely to point to something about how the trouble and disruption created by the Decline will create opportunities for those who know how to spot them.

For the Work, I drew Ansuz, which is the Rune of Woden and all that he stands for, but most of all his links to speech, thinking, consciousness, and magic. When it indicates a profession, it indicates an intellectual or a priestly sort of person. For this reading, then, it seems to be saying that the work that best answers your question is some kind of brain-work, likely of the "talky" kind. More on this in a moment.

So far, so good, but then for Outcome(s), I drew Othala (murky), which means that it landed face down. "Murky" is roughly equivalent to drawing a card "reversed" in card-based systems, and in the system of interpretation I use, it means either that the qualities represented by the Rune are manifesting in an unhelpful or unwanted way, or that they are somehow blocked and not manifesting enough or at all. Othala is the Rune for "homeland," whether the small scale (your family's household) or the large (your nation), and it emphasizes the kind of "freedom" you have from orderly and positive relations and interchanges with those around you, guided by appropriate boundaries. For this to come up murky in this question for the Outcome is concerning. It implies that pursuing this course of action would lead to something bad or unbalanced in that sphere.

Because I was troubled by this, I asked "what does Tamanous most need to understand about Othala (murky) as the outcome for this question?" and I got Laguz (murky) - "Lake". Laguz has come up a lot in these readings I've been doing, and it's been murky most times, which is interesting. Laguz is the Rune of "the deep," and pretty much anything that Carl Jung would bring up about the symbolism of deep water applies here. There's also a connotation of "challenges" or "tests", and when it comes up murky, the idea that these challenges are being avoided, most likely out of fear.

As I was trying to work out what to make of this seemingly contradictory reading, it struck me: maybe we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps the qualifiers of "both be good at and would bring in enough resources/money" is drawing your attention in less helpful directions. The interpretation I'm leaning toward is that your (very much understandable) concern with the "practical" side of this question - where do you already have skills to make the transition easier, what will be fairly easy to start making money with - may be drawing your attention away from what you most need to be focusing on. It might be that some amount of "being bad at it" and/or not getting "enough" money/resources are a necessary step. Or perhaps your assumptions about what "good at" and "enough money/resources" mean are artificially constraining what you're considering.

I'm sorry I don't have a more immediately concretely useful answer, like "go start a drywalling business," but that's what I got. Happy to do some follow up questions if any of that strikes a chord and brings some to mind.