Meditations on UR: Audumla’s Rivers of Milk
This essay was composed on 1 August 2021 --now half-way between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. The ideas contained within have been fully formed for quite some time. They only needed to be revealed --to be separated -- from the frozen earth that hid their form. ********* I begin my meditations on each rune by reading and reciting the relevant verse from the Hávamál . Here, in the case of UR, the relevant verse is 147. “A second I know: It is useful for people Who practice the healing hand. It chases disease and all pain. It cures hurts and all wounds.”[1] We learn immediately that UR is a rune of healing. How then does this concept correlate with the common association with an aurochs, an extinct wild European beast, that we find in the Old English Rune Poem ( OERP )? “UR (Aurochs) is fierce and high-horned the courageous beast fights with its horns a well-known moor-treader, it is a brave creature.”[2] It is important to understand that the word “ur” means