Divination: Rune Study - Ur

 Dear Reader,

Ur is a problematic rune. The problem lies not in unfortunate associations but the fact that there are three (if not more) possible root meanings for this rune. The Proto-Germanic roots of this rune are unclear. As a result, there are three rune poems that are still existent that give meanings for it. It is my opinion that there were quite likely other rune poems out there that have been lost with alternate meanings for all of the runes that we just can't recreate because they have been consumed by the passage of time. I will not give all three rune poems, but I will link to the excellent Wikipedia article that does a very good job of summarizing this rune's challenging aspects. 

I, like many other rune readers, associate this rune with the Auroch. This was a wild ox that was rather ferocious and lived during the migration period. (I am not entirely sure when the Auroch went extinct, but I do believe that it's genetic legacy lives on in the cattle we have today that were domesticated. I think that some brave souls decided that they were going to wrangle some of the less ferocious Auroch and that was how Europeans acquired domestic cattle. Thus, I link this rune with the rune Fehu (the rune for cattle). 

There is some weirdness that does, alas, go back to the Nazis where they attempted to recreate the Auroch through breeding aggressive cattle. The resulting longhorn aggressive cattle species is living out on an English farm, they've no idea what to do with them. I don't think these longhorn cattle are the same as the Auroch, but their development was based in a mythos among the Nazi party's occultists that hunting Auroch was a rite of passage for young men into adulthood. I don't put much stock into this theory and believe that the Nazi party invented it whole cloth out of some badly biased archeological research.

It is my belief that the Auroch was the last surviving megafauna of the Ice Age in Europe. (Much like on an island in Alaska there is evidence of at least one surviving herd of Mastodons during the same period that the great pyramids were being built in Egypt.) The Auroch is associated with strength and endurance. It is also considered by many to be a 'masculine' rune on this basis. I don't ascribe to this position, but I know other rune readers who do. Ur is a rune of strength, endurance, and primal power. In the direct orientation, it is associated with the positive aspects of these traits. In the reversed orientation, it is associated with the negative aspects of these traits. The role of the Auroch is obscured by history in the ancient Germanic cultures aside from it was a possible food and source of leather and other goods during the early period of their history.

This lack of clarity is simply another mystery for a rune that lives up to it's name of being a rune. For one of the translations of the word rune is mystery.