Fehu Meditation

Wealth. Food. Cattle (literal meaning).

Food goes bad, cattle die, money cannot be taken beyond the grave.

Yet many go to their graves early for lack of these things.

This rune had the idea of flow, against stagnation.

Wealth must flow within a community and not be hoarded, stagnant.

Historically, those who hoard food resources in particular, as a form of wealth, have often been murdered. For multitudes without food, it is also a life or death situation, and even when wealth does flow, a community may have difficulty deciding when it is best spent. China, for example, in the early days of this 21^st century, spends millions of dollars building empty apartment buildings... but not feeding the people.

The Ancient Norse knew what we have forgotten – any other economy exists to subsidize the subsistence economy. People are capable of growing food, and making clothes- these were as much “everyone does these things” as television or playing games on a phone are today. (There was not a gender split here – tailors and seamstress, farmers, could be anyone.) Clothing making was found to be simple, meditative, relaxing, and a way to keep the hands busy. Everyone who could grow food did so, and though that was sometimes hard work, by splitting the labor between as many people as possible it was in some ways easier. Home building was often a community event, and the same was true for barns, with a celebration held when the final touches were put in place. American midwestern “barn raising” parties descended from this, as did “housewarming” parties. We have removed food, clothing, and shelter from our own control, and given it over to those who use it to control us, keeping us eternally in their debt.

Can you imagine if clothing, shelter, water, and some food were a “given?” You trade some of your food with neighbors for a variety. You use any other skills to supplement this - to get additional food in trade from those who grow more, or some of whatever passes for technology in your era, and things like shoes that most people could not make. With security of shelter, the economy looks quite different. The economy we know developed out of that sort of economy, which existed relatively unchanged for hundreds of years – thousands, really.

Never since the feudal lords have people been so easily threatened into homelessness on someone else's whim.

Never, even in extravagant empires, has the gap between “rich” and “poor” been bigger.

Because wealth is not flowing. It is staying stagnant.

The wolf, which will destroy the stagnation, grows up in the woods – nature herself will collapse any economy based so heavily on pollution and throw-away consumerism.

Fehu's lesson has not been respected, and both economically and financially, Ragnarok will come if this does not change.