HAGALAZ

Galdr-sound: hhhhh (a powerful aspirated breath)
Letter: H

"Hail is the whitest of grains, / it comes from high in heaven / showers of wind hurl it/ then it turns to water"
(Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem)

"If I see fire / high on the hall around my bench companions / I can help them by singing the spell"
(Havamal 152)

The rune Hagalaz, hailstone, shows the shaping drizzle of uruz frozen into a solid form: the pattern instead of the patterning force. It is always spoken of as a "cold grain"; this shows the seed-pattern of shaping held in this rune. This is the rune of the primal crystal which bears the same relationship to the overall pattern of being, that the DNA of a single cell bears to the ideal (unaltered) shape of the body. The reference in the Anglo-Saxon Rune poem "then it turns to water", writes forth the relationship between hagalaz and uruz, the essential blueprint and the force which endlessly works to bring it forth, Ymir and Audhumbla. It will be noticed that the vertical model of the Norse cosmos is patterned in the exact shape of the stave in the younger Futhark, the literal glyph for the crystalline shape.

Hagalaz represents the unchanging structure or set pattern of the Nine Worlds in the tree Yggdrasill through which all living wights move and through which the runic energies flow - the unity of organic and inorganic. You may see this relationship by finding a quartz crystal which is either naturally symmetrical or has been shaped to the six-sided form. Looking at the tip, you may see the younger form of hagalaz inside the solid hailstone, a symbol which contains all the other rune snad which continued to be used as a mighty hex sign even in the Pennsylvania Dutch settlements in America. The crystal is useful in understanding this aspect of hagalaz if you meditate on the relationship between the ordered, unchanging crystal and the energies which one can guide to flow through it. Hagalaz is a great controller and focuser of energies, as written forth in the Havamal, where it is spoken as a rune with which to control the wild might of fire - raw active fire.
Hagalaz being the rune of perfect and unchanging structure is a mighty rune of warding when used against entropic forces. The foundation of buildings in the ancient days had the stave of hagalaz carved on them for many hundreds of years.
The main effect of hagalaz on the individual life is to bring you into unity with the universal pattern, which often appears as a mighty and seemingly woe-working breakage of everyday life.

Above all, hagalaz is the rune of completion and bringing into being. It may be seen, in one sense, as the passive form of thurisaz, and in another sense as its antithesis. Thurisaz melds fire and ice to create force which breaks down form; hagalaz uses ice and fire to create that form which holds and guides force. Thurisaz is active more int eh way of fire; hagalaz is unmoving, more in the way of ice. Sides of the being of both are destructive or disruptive for the sake of regeneration, and both are associated with Ymir - the blind force and strength (father and mother) of the whole race of thurses, as well as represents the first coalescing around the original seed-crystal of the universe and the source of the structure of the World Tree. It is interesting to note that the terminated crystal holds the shape of both hagalaz and thurisaz - hagalaz in the pattern and thurisaz in the pointed tip bringing the forces of all sides together and aiming them.

Used with other runes, hagalaz brings them into complete being on all levels. You should remember that ine id the greatest Germanic number of power. Hagalaz may be seen as the equivalent of the hexagram in Western Magick, which also represents the unified structure of the universe.

BALANCING THE PATTERN

You stand in the center of a small, hex-shaped crystal, surrounded by a six-spoked framework that reaches all through the crystal, which is rigid, clear and cold as ice. You find that you can move easily and at will within this pattern, although you cannot alter it; and indeed you fear to try, thinking that if you should cause one break in the crystal, the whole would crumble, leaving you to the darkness outside. The crystal slowly begins to grow, the glittering walls moving farther and farther back and light gleaming less brightly from the icy pattern inside as it stretches farther and farther above your head. You stand now in what seems to be the first floor of a building that you somehow know to be firmly grounded in a foundation that probably has the rune hagalaz inscribed in it for protection against all sorts of misfortunes and to ensure the completion of an enterprise.

As you climb up to the first floor of this huge building, you see that within it there are greenhouses and fields, where crops, flowers and fruits are grown. People tend to beds of flowers and fruits, and as you move along, you are struck by the fact that your presence seems not to be noticed. Puzzled, you touch your body and realise you have become somewhat incorporeal in this fixed world. And deep within you know you need to explore all floors and doors which will be open to you at this stage. Even if you seem to be unable to act and change circumstances and events.
Strange building this is, because as you climb up and up, the floors seem to reflect the order and structure of things and beings that resonate first with the reality you know, with your life. You feel most certainly disconcerted, but know that you need to move. And you suspect the building changes for everyone who crosses its magickal thresholds, yet being the same in essence. The building mirrors the unchanged patterns of being and becoming we have to learn to accept and bring to completion on a solid basis.
The second floor up is a sort of homely place, where you, or the phanton who you seem to have become for the circumstances, have to encounter family relations of past, present and even future, because some of the faces are an older you. Tears start to flow when you are confronted by the highs and lows of your life-in-relation-to-others as next of kin, and you allow them to roll down your cheeks. There are in the end some advantages in being a phanton. Even if you cannot change circumstances, you can face the facts and struggle to find meaning and healing in them. Beyond the tears, you add to yourself with a sad grin.
The third floor is a library, the place of learning where one is taught the skills to be productive and creative, the fourth a workshop. These are floors you glide through easily.
Then comes the fifth, which appears first as a playground where you see yourself playing as a child and then becomes a succession of places you have been hanging out with different sorts of people, friends and lovers. Here, for the first time you contradict the designs the gods may have for you. You do not intend to visit all chambers of this floor in one go. The lounge or bar that may well mean present-going-to-future you don´t want to visit as yet for now. Why so? Because deep down you want the immediate present to be a surprise, for the fates may bring gifts as well as challenges and you fervently hope to grow with whatever you receive or come your ways to have and to hold. And transform and grow.
Then you reach a point where you cannot go any further, for doors seem not to open, no matter how long it takes you to try and find an entrance. So you move towards the closest balcony to meditate on what has happened to you so far.

The weather changes, a grey curtain of rain starts to fall and soon it becomes hail. The balcony is no longer a safe for you to stay, and you swallow hard because the way back is through the floors you have just explored, and some of the rooms were quite uncomfortable for your feelings, pride and misconcpetions about facts, people and things in your life, past and present.
To your surprise and relief, most doors seem to be closed for you now. You go purposefully down and down, until you see yourself within the hex-shaped crystal, indeed where your journey started. The question now is, how to get out?
You close your eyes and think of what you experienced so far. Hagalaz is about completion, it is about establishing a strong foundation for your actions and deeds in all worlds.

Why could you not change the Unchangeable?
Because the Pattern that is impossible to change is in the Past,THAT-WHICH-HAS-BECOME, which still influences your THAT-WHICH-IS-BECOMING, your present and future, but the Past you can can never break up, only heal the wounds self-inflicted or not, so that you can move on to another level. But one can build THAT-WHICH-IS-BECOMING, the Present and Future, the Pattern that was shaped in the past, but which must be made harmonious here and now, by one who threads upon all worlds with intention, conscious about his/her role in it. Only then conflicts will be avoided or overcome and a solid foundation for What Must Not Change will be Established. You swallow hard, at once moved and energised and discover that somehow at this very moment you can smile.
Why so? Because some of the healing, hard Magick of Hagalaz is yours to share in all levels and spheres. Within the core of Hagalaz you are One with the Machinery of the Universe, and the pattern is in balance, balance that is yours to keep in all levels and spheres as you walk all worlds towards a major infinite

I have a commitment to actualize who I really am
I have the ability to restore and heal myself all times

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