Rune: Uruz

Names: Uruz, Ur
Represents: Strength, Manhood-Womanhood, Passage, the Ox
Alphabet: U
Color: Dark Green
Sequence Number: 5 Blume, 1 Meadows, 2 Cooper - Tyson - Thorsson
Aett: Freyja
Gods: Adumla (primeval Cow)
Plants & Minerals: Silver Birch
Potency: Limitless Potential of creation.
Challenge: The courage to let go of those things you no longer need. Then allowing new possibilities to arise.
Primary Uses: Starting of new endeavors or adventures... possibly a new business or relationship. It aids in anything that involves risk. It can also be used to boost morale.
Stroke Order: Start at the upper left and carve down diagonally to the right. Then down the right vertical. Then back to the upper left and down the left vertical.

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Blume discusses the third rune in the Cycle of Initiation, Uruz, as the rune of Passage. Uruz bespeaks of a lean time, or time of darkness, through which we must travel in order to enter a new place or be "reborn." Death of an old relationship, with self or others, is at hand. It is a time of building strength through service and humility. Reversed, Uruz is most concerned with your relationship with yourself.

For the other Rune Scholars, Ur is far more than its challenge (what Blume seems fixated upon). The power of Ur is the limitless potential that exists between the two poles of creation. In the Norse Cosmos, this is the space between Cosmic Ice and Cosmic Fire. This "space" was not empty, or void, but a continual maelstrom of creation known as Ginnung. One could think of this essense or "space" as the limitless "unmanifest" reality... or "possibility"... or "potential".

The magic of Ur is not that of raw, brutal force, but of enduring, nurturing strength. There is argument between scholars as to whether UR represents the Auroch (extinct European Ox, similar to a buffalo) or Audhumbla, the Mother of Manifestation.

Tyson talks greatly of how Ur is representative of the Auroch, untamed power, male energies, courage and virility. He believes that UR is the male half of a pairing of UR and Feoh, pointing us to the many such male/female runic pairings as proof.

Meadows disagrees. He believes that Ur is limitless potential of creation, where Feoh is the creation itself (manifest reality). One is the predicessor of the other. It is said that the great cow walked the sky, her utters dripping with the essense of creation, leaving drops of in her wake... making the Milky Way. In this way, it is almost symbolic of man taming nature... the progression of creation from potential or wild (UR), to realized and domesticated (Feoh).

I think Ur is both the bull with his horns down, prepared to charge, and the cow with her head lowered to feed upon the earth. It is limitless potential and the source from which one can manifest reality.

Ur is best used to help bring ideas into reality, to empower you to complete projects, to find the strength to release the past and build your future, and to shape your reality. As a limitless resource, Ur can be used with other runes, in rune spells, to increase their potential and effectiveness.