To begin an essay on taufr, we must destroy the usual preconceptions about the subject. Nearly everyone, as soon as the topic is brought up, instantly conjure up images of antler, wood, bone or stone, engraved in simple fashion with rune, bindrune or galdrastafir. They recall their own work with them, often limited to selecting a piece of material and then carving a formula into it and perhaps blooding it during a ritual conceived for the purpose. While this is all well and good, and can certainly be an effective and quick means of bringing the will into being, it certainly lacks the imagination and inventiveness that any magician would pride himself on. With so many materials at our fingertips, we should broaden not only our physical methods, but our spiritual ones as well.
Obviously, our first question when setting about to create an item and will it to a specific purpose must be: What for? We have the option of honing down the answer to something brutally simple, or we can respond with a multi-faceted, many veined idea that requires a mastery over concentration even to weave all of its complex strands together. Depending on our style here, this will be something to keep in mind when we are deciding on materials as well: the form often matches the function. The reason we consider function prior to form is the difference between what hexologists call “hexefoos,” or true magical hex-signs, and “just for nice,” meaning a simple piece of art, beautiful to look at, but serving no deeper purpose.
Our thinking even at this early stage in the process can become oversimplified and clouded with learned limitation, as we block our own wondrous ideas and replace them with simple ones handed down to us from those fearful minds that trembled at going off the beaten path of the safe and banal. This fear of the unknown, or fear of ridicule and mockery have kept many a potential powerhouse of spiritual strength weakly wallowing instead in the morass of popular approval and insincere praise. Think and act in accordance with your inner desires and intentions, listen to your own counsel and give rein to your dreams. Without the freedom to stretch branch to sky and sink root into earth, a seed destined for greatness often gets trampled by the wayside.
Now, once the idea has seeded itself in your conscious mind, and you are ready to will it into a physical (or at least fully realized) existence, the time has come to choose your medium. The same limiting factor that one fights at the beginning must be conquered and brought to heel again- allow yourself time to explore the idea and match it with physical realities and materials, finding correspondences previously undreamed of between thing and idea, magic and matter, principle and raw creative force. I have seen wonderful and awe-inspiring creations from magicians who were unaffected and unafraid of going beyond the horizon to bring back with them legendary pieces: A pig skull that the magician had painted with personal symbols, connecting the idea of the swine as a rooter and eater of filth and scrap, giving it the function of setting on the mantle-piece during a feast to absorb and swallow all negative thought and impure impulse- later to be shattered with a hammer and immolated along with all it had accumulated. A Hagalaz rune, hand forged by a master smith, adding into it metals specific to his intention, beating them together physically and spiritually as his work took form from molten metal and was purified, re-shaped and hardened into its permanent form. These are the work of imaginative and fearless magicians, not limited by the same old ideas, but striking out on their own as true journeymen, into the mists of the unknown.
We live in a modern world with a thousand different variations on every theme. It is fitting that we use what we have available to us in order to achieve our own goals. I myself have used stencils and spray paint to mark ancient symbols filled with might and pulsing with meaning onto the soulless grey concrete of bridge and underpass. Ridden on bicycle or motorcycle which has itself been altered by stain and blood for the pure intention of taking me to wherever my destiny, my wyrd would have me go. Worn masks over my face that have been painted and molded with wolf hair, my body covered in tattoos inked with the ashes of that mighty animal, turning myself into a breathing taufr, my life aimed toward a specific purpose that I can never fail.
The point is, there is no thing that can be imagined that cannot be given wondrous form and set to work the will upon or with. The tapestry gifted to me by a friend, the green of which filters the sunlight into my bedroom, concentrated in the center by a white madhur/elhaz rune, and fills me with peace and joy while I speak my morning consecrations; the Black Sun hex sign that hangs on the wall in my music room and draws me inside itself during composition and performance; the many varieties of “landwaster” raven taufr that members of my tribe never go on long distance journeys without- these things resound with a power and purpose of their own, willed into them by their creators, and experienced directly by those that they are meant to affect.
Perhaps one of the most visible for all of us, the Galdragildi emblem, emblazoned on the cover of the Groandibók, is in and of itself an amazing and multi-layered taufr of Order, Degree and Initiation. Within its form, many truths and mysteries lie waiting to be delved into by those who live a life dedicated to Understanding.
Grafgrímr, Journeyman of the Galdragildi, May 9, 2011
