Othala

The picture

A house on a block of land, with people in it who were there before you and people who will be there after.

That is a large picture for a small letter and it is fitting that it comes last. The alphabet started with Fehu, cattle, wealth that moves, the goods you can drive down the road ahead of you. It ends with the wealth that stays put. A paddock. A name. A way of doing things that nobody taught you because you grew up inside it. Othala is everything you did not choose and were given anyway.

I want to be careful here, because inheritance is a mixed bag and the rune knows it. What comes down a family line includes the recipes and the land and also the temper, the silences, the things nobody talks about at the table. Othala holds all of it. The picture is of a house, and every house has a room with the door shut.

In ordinary life Othala is the family home that someone will eventually have to sell. It is the surname, the accent, the way you hold a knife. It is the country you came from or the country your grandparents came from, and the long argument between the two. It is also the home you have made yourself, which is an inheritance you are building for someone else, whether or not you have met them yet.

When it comes up

When Othala comes up I read it as a moment that asks what you have been given and what you are going to do with it. The money is part of it, and the smaller part. The habits, the loyalties, the land under your feet. Something from further back than you is in the room, and the rune is asking you to notice it before you decide.

It is a rune of belonging. If the question was about where you fit, the answer points home, to the people and the place that hold you whether you deserve it that day or not. If the question was about a decision, Othala suggests the long view. Ask what your grandmother would have made of it, then ask what your grandchildren might. Somewhere between the two is usually the right call.

There is also a thread about boundaries. A homestead has a fence. Othala is the rune of knowing what is yours to look after and what is not, of keeping your own ground in good order and letting the neighbours keep theirs. Standing in this rune means taking up your inheritance with both hands, the good and the difficult, and deciding deliberately which parts you will hand on.

Reversed

Upside down, the house stands on its roof with its legs in the air, and I read it as home gone wrong. Family trouble, a dispute over who gets what, a place you cannot go back to, or a line of habit that has run from one generation to the next and needs stopping with you. It can also point to clinging, to tradition held for its own sake, to a fence that has become a wall. The work is to sort the inheritance. Keep what serves, mend what can be mended, and set the rest down with some kindness, because somebody carried it a long way.

Across the traditions

In the tarot I put Othala beside the Ten of Pentacles, the old man under the archway with his dogs, the young couple and the child, and the family crest on the wall behind them. Three generations in one card, which is this rune exactly. That is my own pairing and nothing stronger. The Ten of Pentacles page in The 78 Cards goes further into it. In numerology the same ground is held by the number 4, the builder of foundations, and the number 6, the home and the family, and The Numbers pages cover both. There is no tree in Othala, so I leave the Ogham out, though the oak, the long lived tree of the family stand, is worth a look on The Oak page under Celtic Tree Astrology once you are there. And that is the alphabet. Twenty four pictures, from cattle to the gate they come home through.

What were you handed that you have not yet decided whether to keep?

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