If there is one thing we all wish to strive for, it is happiness. No one likes to be stressed, depressed or anxious. The wunjo rune can help us find happiness and joy in our lives. Now, it won’t give you happiness just by holding it, but it can be used as a reminder to look for the positivity and good around us. And perspective is powerful.
Wunjo Rune Meaning
Wunjo (woon-yo) is the eighth rune in the Elder Futhark ancient runic alphabet, as well as the eighth and final rune in the first aett family runes. The wunjo rune means joy, but is also linked to happiness, harmony, prosperity, friendship, luck, and pleasure.
The wunjo rune is also a rune of emotional healing. Working with this rune can help you connect your body and mind and help you reshape and improve your mindset. How you view the world around you strongly impacts your mindset as well as your body’s immune system.
When looking at the world through a negative lens, the world seems sad, mad, evil (insert all negative feelings here). Seeing things through this viewpoint not only keeps our mind in a negative space and mindset, but it also can make your body feel ill. How we look at things and what we tell ourselves in our minds can make how we see the world either positive or negative.
Using the Wunjo Rune
The wunjo rune can be used in many different ways. If you are an extrovert, use this rune in social settings to help strengthen relationships with the people you are around. This may help you find the joy in your current relationships, and if there is no positivity or joy in some of those relationships, it may be a good time to start distancing yourself away from those relationships.
Having people around that bring you down or you feel drained after being around is not good for your mindset. Their negative vibes will move onto you if you are not careful. If removing those relationships are easier said than done, just make sure you are cleansing your energies, and preparing yourself mentally for these interactions.
Try using the wunjo rune in your meditation sessions. Center and connect your body and mind with wunjo, and find harmony within yourself.
Invoke happiness by drawing the wunjo rune on yourself. This could be drawn on with pen, marker, or even makeup. If this is something you do not wish others to see, use water to draw wunjo on you. However, just putting this rune on your body will not bring you the happiness you wish to seek. You still have to put in the mental and emotional work into it. This is where meditation would help.
Rune Casting
Just like in tarot, when you cast your runes upon a surface, how they land is how you read them. There is an upright and a reverse. Upright meaning the symbol is facing the right direction. When it’s reversed, this means that the symbol is in an upside-down direction.
What do these rune positions mean?
Upright
Joy, happiness, friendship, prosperity, new energy
Joy is a feeling that is not an easy one to describe. It is a feeling that can only be described through feeling it. Like love, you know the feeling once you truly feel it. And it is a feeling that everyone deserves to experience throughout their life.
Now is the time to reach within yourself and embrace the world around you. Good things are around you, even if you cannot see them at first glance.
Reverse
Stillness, strife, alienation
When the wunjo rune comes up in reverse, it may be time to really look within yourself and how you view the world. You may have brought your mind down into a dark place and it craves the light. It may be time to do some meditation and shadow work to look inward. Work through what may be holding you down and preventing you from finding true joy in your life. This may take a few sessions (or more, depending), but when we work through any issues we are experiencing, it opens a door for us to let go of that emotional and mental baggage and open ourselves up to brighter and more beautiful experiences.
First Aett Family
Wish to learn more about the other runes in the first aett, check out these links below:
Sources
Taking Up the Runes by: Diana L. Paxson
Norse Magic & Runes by: Frederick Strom
Futhark: A Handbook of Rune Magic by: Edred Thorsson
The Book of Runes by: Ralph H. Blum