Thurisaz

The picture

Two pictures share this rune, and I find it helps to hold both.

The first is the giant.
In the old stories the giants were the raw forces of the world, frost and rock and storm, older than the gods and not interested in anybody's plans.
You did not reason with a giant.
You got out of its way or you met it with something equally blunt.
The giant is force without manners.
The flood that takes the bridge, the boss who sacks a department by email, the temper that comes up from nowhere and says the thing that cannot be unsaid.

The second is the thorn, and it is the one I use more.
A thorn is small and it is sharp and it faces outwards.
A hedge of thorn kept the stock in and the wolves out, and it did both without moving.
Walk into it carelessly and it will have your arm open.
The thorn protects what is behind it and punishes what is in front, and it does not stop to check which you are.

Put the two together and you have a rune about force.
Force used to defend, and force used to hurt, and the uncomfortable truth that they are made of the same stuff.
I think of the person who has learned to be prickly because something once got through.
The prickles work.
They also keep out the people who were only coming to help.

When it comes up

When Thurisaz comes up I slow the reading down, because it is the first rune in the alphabet that says stop.
Something sharp is in the picture.
It may be a threat you need to defend against, in which case the rune says build the hedge, set the boundary, say no and mean it.
Protection is a good thing and this rune is on your side when it is doing that job.

It may instead be a warning about your own hand.
You are about to act with more force than the moment needs.
The email you are drafting, the ultimatum, the door you are about to slam.
Thurisaz says think first.
A pause is enough, just long enough to ask whether this is defence or whether it is the giant getting loose.
Nine times out of ten the answer arrives in the pause.

It can also simply mean a hard patch.
A conflict, a shock, something that cuts.
Stand in it by staying upright and keeping your hands where you can see them.
Do not pretend the thorn is not there.
Do not grab it either.
Walk around the hedge, or put on gloves, or wait until the thing in front of you has spent its force.
Giants tire.
Storms pass.
The one who is still standing calmly afterwards is the one who did not swing first.

Reversed

Thurisaz reversed, the thorn pointing to the left, reads as force gone passive or turned inward.
A defence that has become a prison, a refusal to act when action was needed, or a danger you keep walking into because you will not admit it is there.
It can also show someone else's spite aimed your way, the thorn under the saddle.
When it lands this way up I ask what you are defending so hard that nothing good can get in, and whether the giant you are afraid of is as big as it looks from behind the hedge.
Usually it is smaller.
Usually it is also not going anywhere until you turn and face it.

Across the traditions

I put Thurisaz beside The Tower in the tarot, the lightning striking the stone, because both describe a force arriving that the structure was not built to hold.
That is my own pairing and nothing stronger.
The old Irish alphabet has a letter for the blackthorn, the hedge tree, and The Ogham and the Tree Calendar page covers that alphabet, so if you want the thorn as a tree it is worth reading beside this rune.

What are you protecting with those prickles, and who have they kept out that you miss?

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