Ehwaz

The picture

A horse and its rider. Two creatures, two minds, one direction, and neither of them gets anywhere worth going unless they agree.

I think this is the most practical picture in the whole alphabet. A horse is faster than you, stronger than you and heavier than you, and it will carry you a long way if it trusts you and will put you in a ditch if it does not. The partnership works through small daily signals, through weight and voice and habit, and it is built long before it is tested. Nobody climbs on a strange horse and gallops. You walk first.

In ordinary life Ehwaz is the marriage that has worked out who drives on long trips. It is the business partner who finishes your sentence in the client meeting. It is the two friends who can move a wardrobe up a staircase without a word. It is also the relationship you have with your own body, which carries you about all day and is a horse of a kind, and which goes better when you listen to it.

The two strokes in the shape are the same height. I notice that. Neither one is in charge.

When it comes up

When Ehwaz comes up I read it as a moment that belongs to a pair. Whatever you asked, the answer involves someone else, and the question underneath is whether the two of you are moving together or just moving at the same time. Those look alike from a distance and feel very different from the saddle.

It is a good rune for progress. Things are going forward, steadily, at a pace that can be kept up. The promise is of steady ground covered at a walking pace, and only if both parties keep their side of it. If you have been pulling alone, the rune suggests it is time to ask for a hand, or to notice the hand that is already offered.

The third thread is trust, and trust is specific. Ehwaz asks who you rely on, who relies on you, and whether the signals between you are still clear. A lot of partnership trouble is two people who used to understand each other without words and have stopped checking that they still do. Standing in this rune means walking before you gallop, and checking the girth before you set off, which is dull advice and saves a great many falls.

Reversed

Upside down, the joined strokes hang from the top and I read it as a partnership out of step. One pulls, one drags. Trust has thinned, or the pace suits one of you and is wearing the other out. It can also show restlessness with no destination, movement for the sake of moving, a change of job or house or partner that is really a change of scenery. Before you change horses, ask whether the horse is the problem or the direction is. Often it is the direction.

Across the traditions

In the tarot I put Ehwaz beside The Chariot, the seventh card of the Major Arcana, with its two creatures of opposite colour pulling one vehicle under a single steady hand. The card is about getting two forces to move as one, which is this rune exactly. That is my own pairing and nothing stronger. The Chariot page in The 78 Cards goes further into it. The Two of Cups sits nearby as well, for the quieter side of partnership, the two people who have simply agreed to walk the same way. There is no tree in this picture, so the Ogham has nothing to add here, though if you want the horse's opposite, the rune of standing still, look at Isa.

Who are you moving with, and when did you last check you were both heading the same way?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.