INGUZ ( ING )

(the God Ing)

A time of Gestation, both human and symbolic, creative withdrawal, waiting for new strength and life, the promise of better times

Like Jera and Berkano, Ingwaz is another fertility rune with powerful associations with protection, especially of the home. Ingwaz or Ing was the old Germanic Earth God, consort of Nerthus, the Earth Mother. Like many of the old Earth religions the God of the Corn died each year at harvest time and was reborn at the Mid-Winter Solstice to shoot into life again as vegetation in the early spring. Ing was traditionally the God of the hearth and the huge old fireplaces that had seats were called Inglenooks because the members of the household were contained close to the fire.

Ing’s sacred Wagon made a circuit of the fields after the winter in a ritual re-enactment, bringing fertility .back to the land In the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the only one to mention him, talks of Ing riding his wagon eastwards or backwards as it is sometimes translated, away from the sun or natural progression. This led to the realm of darkness inhabited by the Etins or Giants and refers to his ritual annual death to be reborn strong and renewed.

The constellation called Ursa Major or the Great Bear in Western Astrology was known in Northern tradition as the Wagon.