Jan
Feeling the Perdra Rune
Here are exercises to help you experience the Perdra Runes:
Exercise 1: The motion of Perdra is down and in, but it is falling rather than pushing (Naud) or pulling (Lagu). Perdra is gravity, Lagu is suction and Naud is compression. The shape or form of Perdra is like an empty bowl or a cup. It is hollow. The device that most simulates this motion and shape is a funnel. You can use a funnel to get an idea of this. Try dropping different things into it: sand, small stones, fluid or something thick like mud. The idea you are working with is a downward flow that is drawn to the center. In effect, you are watching a manifestation of Perdra motion.
Now comes the other part. Perdra is related to pregnancy. It is the hollow womb, inside of which is the fetus. Think of birth as down and in: the child forced down and inward to move through the narrow birth canal. Consider how this is like things falling into and through a funnel.
Exercise 2: Perdra the Pit is the Rune of prognostication. It is like a pregnancy where one can see the fetus and then deduce how the child will be when he is born. Rather than use divination, try prognosis without magick. A simple thing is the old weather warning:
“Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
(Alternative to second verse: “Red sky in evening, sailor be leaving.”)
A red sky in the morning is a reliable portent of coming bad weather. Red sky at night means clear skies and a likelihood of good weather the next day.
Other common predictions include bus, airline and train schedules. These foretell the times of arrivals and departures. They are based on present knowledge of future conditions. Using them is an application of Perdra, where a thing drawn in the past – the schedule – portends and even in the future – arrival or departure time. The same is true of the weekly television schedule. Using schedules is a Perdra action. Finally, there are weather forecasts made several days in advance. By looking at present conditions, they attempt to predict the future weather. If you are a weather fan, you can see a forecast and then track conditions as they go from today’s weather to the predicted condition a few days in advance.
Schedules and weather predictions can err due to unforeseen circumstances. That is also a Perdra thing.
Alternate exercises: The Perdra Rune has been called a “dice cup” in some writings. Just as Perdra is the Rune of Wyrd, it also has a random factor within it. This is a different kind of randomness than that of the Hagal Rune. (To those unused ot it, divination looks like a random selection of Runes, cards, etc.) Dice are an example of this factor. You touch Perdra’s “random factor” when you roll dice or play other games of chance. These can range from classic gambling games to something as simple as the dice for playing a simple board game.
The classic form of this exercise is to put several dice in a cup, shake it, and then roll the dice on the table before you. For added effect, you might want to roll them into a large, flat bottomed bowl.
Here you have a contrast from Exercise 2. The scheduling and forecasting of the second exercise try to minimize the random factor. Rolling dice in a cup would seem to maximize it. Both have a connection to Wyrd. It becomes entirely comprehensible why Norse lore described the flow of Wyrd as weaving. There is a linear cause-to-effect flow interconnected to a crossweave. “Warp and weft.”
For the modern mother-to-be, ultrasound can be a very powerful Perdra experience. It reveals the child-to-be. One of the allegories of Perdra is that it is like peeking into the womb to see the growing fetus, and thereby predict the future child. By analogy, the future is growing in the womb that is Perdra. Pregnancy and ways to see the fetus are a very Perdra thing. Ultrasound and other technologies which reveal the growing fetus are a Perdra experience.
Perdra is like a cave going down into the Earth, beneath the Roots of the Yew Rune. Going into an underground cave, or its modern equivalents, has a bit of Perdra to it. Riding the subway can be a Raido Rune experience and getting to the subway can be a touch of Perdra.
A nickname for Perdra is “The Pit Rune.”
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