Wunjo

“Great minds think alike, though fools seldom differ.”

“Be careful what you wish for…”

Wunjo – “Won-joe” – Literally: “Joy” – Esoteric: Hope, Harmony, Perfection

Wynn (Ƿ ƿ) (also spelled wen, ƿynn, or ƿen) is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound /w/.

While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph ⟨uu⟩, scribes soon borrowed the rune wynn ᚹ for this purpose. It remained a standard letter throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, eventually falling out of use (perhaps under the influence of French orthography) during the Middle English period, circa 1300.[1] It was replaced with ⟨uu⟩ once again, from which the modern <w> developed.

The denotation of the rune is "joy, bliss" known from the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poems:
ᚹ Ƿenne bruceþ, ðe can ƿeana lyt
sares and sorge and him sylfa hæf
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht. [Lines 22-24 in The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem]
Who uses it knows no pain,
sorrow nor anxiety, and he himself has
prosperity and bliss, and also enough shelter. [Translation slightly modified from Dickins (1915)]
It is not continued in the Younger Futhark, but in the Gothic alphabet, the letter 𐍅 w is called winja, allowing a Proto-Germanic reconstruction of the rune's name as *wunjô "joy".

It is one of the two runes (along with þ) to have been borrowed into the English alphabet (or any extension of the Latin alphabet). A modified version of the letter ƿynn called Vend was used briefly in Old Norse for the sounds /u/, /v/, and /w/.

As with þ, ƿynn was revived in modern times for the printing of Old English texts, but since the early 20th century the usual practice has been to substitute the modern ⟨w⟩ instead due to ƿynn's visual resemblance to P.

Key Concepts: joy, perfection, the art of correct wishing, correct application of the will, well-being, contentment, hope, expectation, relationship, family, bonding, trusted kinsfolk, shared ideals or aims, group harmony, symbols of shared identity, optimism, cooperative effort, like-mindedness, friendship

Runic Number: 8
Meanig: Emotional satisfaction. Happiness. Light.
Translation: Joy
Gemstone: Diamond
Color: Light Blue
Polarity: Male
Element: Ice (Water)
Gods: Odin, Frig
Astrology correspondence: Leo
Tree: Ash
Plant: Flax
Psi: contentment, optimism, like-mindedness, wishful thinking, shared identity
Energy: harmony of like forces, effortless ease, fellowship, fulfillment, wishing, genuine friendship,
Mundane: parties, friendship, family, community

Divinations: Joy, harmony, fellowship, accomplishment, prosperity; or stultification, sorrow, strife, alienation, warns of caution, blindness to danger, deception, betrayal.

Governs:
Strengthens links and bonds
Invocation of fellowship and harmony.
Banishes alienation and other inharmonious impediments to trust
Creating joy through the use of true will
Realization of the link and multiplicity of relationship of all things
The art of correct wishing, ‘law of attraction’

Wunjo is the inner urge for realization of your soul’s true will to achieve perfection of consciousness and the drive to this realization in this life-time. It wards off woe and sorrow so that the abundant gifts of the multiverse have no trouble bestowing themselves upon you. In Wunjo we find harmonious energies characteristic in functional families, group affiliations, healthy societies and nations and ultimately, the world.

It is here we find the force of Love curing the warrior who has hate in his or her heart. Because the Northern tradition was abruptly cut short in its evolution of conceptualizing Love as a cosmic force, we have to search for ideas in the Elder tradition that would indicate its latent potential. We find this idea especially in the rune meaning of Wunjo, for Wunjo carries all the elements of Love between and among human beings. Wunjo is the rune that guides harmonizing human energies into a whole. It is the alignment of individual will with the will of the community and ultimately with the divine will. The rune of Love and Unity between all life is LAGUZ, and it’s interesting to me that they have similar shapes.

Alienation and failing community is a severe problem in our society now, which can be deeply troubling to almost every human exchange we engage in. Alienation presents itself as mistrust. In a social group with no overriding objective, it’s only a nuisance. In a community service group, the project fails. In a family, it can lead to disaster. Wunjo can reduce alienation by broadcasting love into the chaotic human energy field. Yet rather than being performed abstractly with no conscious awareness of the intervening energies, the invocation of Wunjo is focused by the magical will of the operator for specific results. This is a technique paralleled (and complimented by) modern Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

The art of correct ‘wishing’ is perfected by seeking your unique purpose in life and aligning your thought and action with it. It is the motivation to act upon your true will which opens the path to completing your personal purpose in this lifetime. Step by step, life by life, we fulfill our cosmic destiny. This is the essence of the Law of Attraction, and a core magic of the Nothern tradition.