Laguz
The Sea Without End
Water as both use and terror: an endless sea, a hull that will not steady. 'Intuition' is a modern graft.
The reconstructed *laguz appears as Old English lagu and Old Norse lögr, and the three poems do not describe the same water. The Old English calls the sea endless to men who venture on an unsteady ship, terrified by the waves, on a sea-steed that pays no heed to its bridle, the steed being the vessel itself. The Norwegian sees a waterfall coming down off a mountain. The Icelandic gives welling water, a wide kettle and the land of the fish, which reads as the geography its scribe had. The letter is often given as intuition or the unconscious; that comes from twentieth-century occult correspondence between the elements and the mind, not from any of the three.
Light
Water as sustenance and force. The Icelandic gloss is a stream and the ground fish live in, the Norwegian a fall of water off a mountain, both things a settlement is built to use.
Shadow
The Old English gloss is plain fear: distance without end, a hull that will not stay steady, waves that frighten the crew, and a vessel indifferent to the hand supposedly steering it.
