Wunjo

The picture

The first row of the alphabet ends here, and I think the order is telling you something.
You start with the herd, find your strength, meet the thorn, learn to speak, get on the road, light the torch, learn to give.
Then, if you have done all that with any care, you arrive at Wunjo.
Joy is the last of the eight because it is the result of the other seven.
Nobody draws it out of thin air.

The picture is a flag, and I have always read it as the banner over a hall where the people are at peace with each other.
Fellowship is the old word.
A group of people who belong together, who have fought and made up and know each other's faults and are glad anyway.
The feast after the harvest.
The barbecue at the end of a long week when the kids are running round the yard and nobody is looking at a phone.
Wunjo is that evening.
It is also the quieter joy of a body that feels well, a mind that is not fighting itself, a house where the arguments have stopped.

It is a moment.
The flag goes up, the hall is warm, and then the night ends and tomorrow is a Tuesday.
It is real for all that, a thing to be in while it is here, with both feet, and a poor thing to hoard or to fret over losing.
Wunjo is the good moment to be glad in, and the gladness is the whole instruction.

When it comes up

When Wunjo comes up I tell people to enjoy it.
That is most of the reading.
Something good is here or close, a reconciliation, a success, a patch of plain happiness after a hard run.
The rune says you are allowed to feel it.
A lot of people have become so braced for the next blow that they cannot stand still in a good moment without looking over their shoulder.
Wunjo asks you to put the shoulder down.

It also points at other people.
Joy in this alphabet is shared or it is not really the thing.
A win you cannot tell anyone about is a lonely win.
So the rune often says go and find your people, mend the small rift, accept the invitation, host the dinner.
Fellowship is a verb here.
You make the hall warm by turning up to it.

Stand in it by being glad out loud and being generous with the gladness.
Tell the person they did well.
Say the thing you appreciate before the moment passes.
If the question was about a relationship, Wunjo is one of the best answers in the bag, and it says the harmony is real and worth tending.
If it was about health, it says wellbeing is near, and the ordinary things, sleep, sunlight, company, are the road to it.
Wunjo says now, and so does everything else in the bag.
Now is the only place joy has ever lived.

Reversed

Wunjo reversed, the flag hanging down to the left, reads as joy held back or gone sour.
Sadness, a falling out, a group that has stopped getting on, or the kind of forced cheer that everyone in the room can see through.
It can also show a person who is waiting to be happy until some condition is met, the promotion, the partner, the house, and who will find another condition the moment that one arrives.
When it lands this way up I ask what is standing between you and the plain good moment that is probably already available.
Often it is a conversation.
Sometimes it is just the habit of bracing.
Either way the flag can go back up, and it goes up faster with company.

Across the traditions

I put Wunjo beside The Sun in the tarot, the child on the horse under the full light with nothing to hide, and some days beside the Ten of Cups, the family under the rainbow.
Both are my own associations and nothing stronger.
The Number 8 page in the Numerology section reads the same count as achievement and balance, which sits well at the end of this first row, and The Week Ahead, each Monday, reads the coming week for the twelve signs, and a lighter week there is a bit of Wunjo on offer.

When did you last stand in a good moment without waiting for it to end?

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