Algiz or Eohlxsecg
I had to adjust a bit to get this myself wrapped around this new concept for this rune. However, once I got it – I think it will work for me! I can see the sedge or tall grass going along the stream banks and in the bogs and even began to feel the sharpness of trying to wade through it if unprotected. When I am working with the Ogham there are three trees that especially come to my mind when I think of protection and all of them have sharp thorns or their leaves are sharp and pointy – holly for instance which is planted as a protective barrier in front of homes. Another one which is similar to this is the reed which also grows as a grass on the waters edge. There isn’t anything about the reed being something that hurts you as you walk through it but it does have a protective value because it was the last thing that was placed on the home (during construction) the roof which offered protection from the elements. But this is really different in that elf sedge often coimes as a complete surprise~!
All of this is of course, my way of remembering this new meaning.
The Elk-sedge usually lives in the fen,
growing in the water. It wounds severely,
staining with blood any man
who makes a grab at it.
I found this rune poem about elk sedge. It is a spiky plant – it really is a grass whose seeds are on sort of a shaft and grow these spiny seeds outward which are sharp! They catch your leg if you walk through them. It grows in shallow boggy water and a lot of the plant is submerged – especially the spiky pods! It would point to elk-sedge as being about hidden dangers and opportunities arising from concealment, especially as applied to battle and defense. I read that many rune scholars interpret algiz or eohlxsecg as “Halt, who goes there!”
I was rather amused with the guidance in our reading material to “assert that complex, dense, occasionally sharp sedgy self” because most of the time I am told to “disappear “my sharp, sedgy self!!!
Our reading material also makes reference to the regal and imposing figure of the elf/moose. I immediately remembered way back to my early childhood. When I was in elementary school, I took voice (singing) lessons from my grandmother. One summer she was house sitting in this wonderful old mansion (seemed like a mansion to me!). We worked at a grand piano and where she had me stand was most disconcerting because directly over my head was this huge head of a moose mounted on the wall! I did not ask her to let me stand elsewhere – I certainly did not want her to know it scared me – so instead, I worked up my own courage to not be intimidated by it.
And for the stipping away of "what we no longer need or is beneficial to us" aspect of this rune - it is right on target for me becasue I am doing just that. I am unloading myself of about 500 books and anything else I have in my home that has been stored or boxed up and unused for the last year.