Meditations on HAGAL: Yggdrasil, the Wind-Tossed Tree
This essay was completed on 23 November 2021. Life's experiences over the past several weeks helped provide new insight into the HAG-ALL rune and in turn to that tree of which none telleth from what roots it doth rise. ********* As I begin my meditations on the rune HAGAL, I return to the Hávam ál. In verse 152 Odin reveals how he uses this rune magically to save people from a hall in flames: “A seventh I know: Should the hall blaze high in flames above all the people; no matter how it burns, I save them all: This magic I know to perform.” [1] Immediately the exoteric association of HAGAL with hail, which is emphasized in each of the standard rune poems, comes to mind. It is simple to envision hail colliding with the blazing hall resulting in the flames being extinguished. Each of the standard rune poems also use “corn” as a metaphor for HAGAL. Representative of these is the Old English Rune Poem ( OERP ): “Hail is whitest of corn, from heaven’s height it whirls, w