Discover the divinatory meanings and magical uses of the rune Fehu. Together, we’ll explore Fehu rune meanings in the three rune poems, how to interpret Fehu in divination, and how to work with Fehu in your magical practice.
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Fehu (Quick Reference)
| Symbol: | ᚠ |
| Names: | Fehu, Fe, Feoh |
| Sound: | F |
| Translation: | moveable wealth |
| Keywords: | wealth, growth, investment, money, material, matter, resources, gold, trade, branching, expansion, cattle, capital, fee |
| Position: | 1 of 24, first rune of the first aett (Freyja’s/Freyr’s aett) |
| Associated Deities: | Freyja, Freyr, sometimes Njörðr |
| Corresponding Oils: | Frankincense, Abundance, Myrrh, Rose, Sandalwood |
Fehu Rune Meanings
Fehu literally means “cattle” or “wealth,” specifically “moveable wealth,” such as money, livestock, and tradeable resources. To the Ancient Norse, cattle and wealth were one and the same. The rune Fehu is also associated with new beginnings and growth.
Moveable Wealth
Any tradeable resource, transferable wealth, or currency is represented by Fehu. Today, the most obvious manifestation of Fehu is literal money, but in the days of the Elder Futhark, it was cattle. The words “capital” and “chattels” actually derive from the same origin as the word “cattle” because cattle has so long been understood as a form of wealth. “Stocks” and “livestock” are also similarly related. The horns of cattle can be seen in the shape of the rune Fehu.
The nature of the type of wealth that Fehu refers to is that it can be transferred, invested (or invested into), grown, and even multiplied. Cattle can be traded as currency; turned into food, leather, and other resources; and if you invest time and resources into them, they regenerate. With attention and investion, cattle can become more cattle.
Money has these same properties. Money, gold, stocks, dollars, and pennies can all be traded as currency, exchanged for valuable resources, and when invested wisely, can grow and multiply. The unwise can easily squander the wealth that Fehu represents. Slaughter your cow and you can eat for a little while. Breed your cow and you can feed and clothe your family forever. Without wisdom and discipline, wealth isn’t worth much for long.
However…
The Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) rune poem indicates that wealth must be shared. I mean… you don’t have to, it’s yours to do with what you will… but you’d better. For wealth to be healthy, it must be in motion. Miserly hoarding is not the vibe. More on this below.
Growth & Expansion
I often see Fehu in the branching of trees and plants, and the shape of the rune to me suggests growth and expansion. From one seed grows a stem with many branches, which can be cut and cultivated to become many plants… or those branches grow many flowers and fruit, each bearing many seeds, each seed becoming its own plant… and the cycle of growth and expansion continues. Just like cattle, the seeds and plants require wisdom and care to be fruitful and multiply.
Seeds & New Beginnings
The wealth represented by Fehu can regenerate and multiply from very small beginnings. A single seed, a single cow (with the help of a bull), or a single dollar can all, with wisdom and creativity, grow to much greater magnitudes of wealth. This quality, along with Fehu’s position as the first rune in the Elder Futhark, leads Fehu to be associated with new beginnings. Nothing comes from nothing, but a lot can come from a little, and that “little” is Fehu.
Matter & Pattern, Mother & Father
In a more esoteric sense, I think of Fehu as the rune of physical “matter,” and Uruz (the second rune) as the rune of “pattern.” Matter and pattern both exist in all things, creatures, and people. Matter is the stuff we’re made of, and pattern is how we’re made. These correspond to “mater” and “pater,” Latin for “mother” and “father.” Fehu, referring to domesticated cattle, may be thought to refer to the feminine milk cow, mater, mother. Uruz, referring to aurochs, the wild ancestor of domestic cattle, may be thought to refer to the masculine bull. Then again, Uruz is also associated with Audhumla, the primordial cow whose milk fed Ymir, the giant from whose body the world was made, granting Uruz a feminine nature… however it is this very association with Audhumla that gives Uruz its associated with the power of forming and shaping… that is, the power of pattern. When a mother and father come together to create a child, the father (pater) provides a seed (Ingwaz) which carries genetic information (pattern, Uruz). Then the mother’s body provides the material (matter, Fehu) and the rest of the pattern information to form a child. The child is made of both mother and father, both mater and pater, both matter and pattern, both Fehu and Uruz. The fertilized egg grows and grows from a small beginning (Fehu) according to the provided genetic information (Uruz).
Although the conclusions I draw and communicate in the above paragraph are original and could be considered UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis), the evidence for all the aforementioned meanings of these two runes from which I draw these conclusions is historically substantiated.
Freyja & Freyr
The 24 runes of the Elder Futhark are separated into three aettir, or groups of eight. Each aett is associated with a particular Norse deity, and the first aett is Freyja’s aett. It is sometimes also called Freyr’s aett, but while both Freyja and Freyr are gods of fertility, prosperity, and pleasure, only Freyja is associated with magic and witchcraft – therefore I think it more fitting that this is Freyja’s aett.
Freyja and Freyr are twin sister and brother (sometimes called the divine twins, see Ehwaz), children of Njörðr, god of the sea. They are of the Vanir (nature gods, as opposed to the more battle-ready Aesir), but came to live with the Aesir as part of a truce to end a war between the two divine factions.
Freyja is herself associated with gold, wealth, and fertility, so it’s no surprise that the first rune in her aett is Fehu, the rune of wealth, gold, and fertility.
Freyja is also associated with love, sex, magic/witchcraft (especially seiðr – an oracular practice not to be confused with the seiðr or saithe in the kenning grafseiðr, literally “digging-fish,” meaning serpent or dragon, in the Fehu stanza of the Icelandic Rune Poem discussed later). Freyja is also connected with the sea, which may partially account for the use of the kenning flæðar viti (translated “fire of the sea,” meaning gold) in the same poem.
Invoke Fehu when working with Freyja or Freyr. I’d suggest invoking Freyja or Freyr when working with Fehu, but invoking a deity is not something to be done lightly. If you do so, understand that you are beginning a relationship, and if you receive a favorable response, you will be expected to continue that relationship as per Norse expectations around hospitality (see Gebo, gifting cycle).
Divining Fehu: Questions for Reflection
When Fehu comes up in a rune reading, here are some questions you may want to ask yourself to reflect on what it might mean for you in that instance:
- What resources do I have that could help me in this situation?
- Is it possible I have buried my talents? How can I bring them into play?
- How am I expending my energy/time/emotional/physical resources?
- How am I spending my money?
- What am I encouraging to multiply in my life?
- What do I choose to encourage to “be fruitful and multiply” in my life?
- What am I invested in? What do I choose to be more or less invested in?
- How can I be more intentional about what I allow to grow within and around me?
Fehu in the Rune Poems
The rune poems are kind of like ancient alphabet books, but instead of just telling us about the sounds of the letters, each stanza is a clue to the meaning of the corresponding rune. These rune poems are the primary sources for studying and interpreting the historical meanings of the runes. Fehu appears in all three major rune poems.
Fehu in the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Rune Poem
This rune poem is alternately referred to as the Old English Rune Poem (because it is written in Old English) and the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem (because it contains the 29 runes of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc). It is the oldest of the three major rune poems, and is thought to date back to possibly as early as the 8th century. The following translation is provided by Dickins.
ᚠ Feoh bẏþ frofur fira gehƿẏlcum;
sceal ðeah manna gehƿẏlc miclun hẏt dælan
gif he ƿile for drihtne domes hleotan.
Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.
“Wealth is a comfort to all men” is transparent enough. You don’t have to have much money to know that it can solve many a problem. But it can also cause many a problem, as the other two rune poems will show.
“Yet must every man bestow it freely” – Here we see that the wealth represented by Fehu ᚠ must not be stagnant, hoarded, or held too close (locked by the energy of Isa). As Diana Paxson so aptly puts it, “To be productive, the force of FEHU must be kept in motion by the exchange of GEBO or the harvesting of JERA.” For those more familiar with the language of tarot, the Four of Pentacles is what this verse says you ought not to do with wealth; the Six of Pentacles (Gebo ᚷ) and the Seven of Pentacles (Jera ᛃ) are what you ought to do with it (illustrated below with the Hoi Polloi Tarot). Paxson uses the term “harvesting” for how the action of Jera can temper the power of Fehu, but while “harvest” may be the most succinct keyword for Jera, it does not encompass the suggestion. To engage with Jera is to engage with the whole cycle of planting and harvesting, reaping and sowing. Through Jera, Fehu can be multiplied and then shared (Gebo) that much more. It is good to invest and grow your wealth so that it can be of greater benefit to you and your loved ones.
“If he wish to gain honor in the sight of the lord.” – This is an odd translation, and this line varies the most between translations. I am no scholar of Old English (Vern Tonkin is, though, if you want to really read into this), but the words to look at are “drihtne” and “hleotan.”
“Drihtne” is a form of “drihten,” now modern “drighten.” While it does mean “lord,” and did in later days come to mean “the lord” as in the Christian god, its earlier uses were in reference to mortal lords and pagan gods. In this context, “drihtne” may specifically refer to Freyr (member of the Vanir, twin brother of Freyja, and god of prosperity, fertility, peace, and the harvest), whose name means “lord” (just as Freyja’s name means “lady”).
“Hleotan” literally means “to cast lots,” i.e. to play a game of chance to determine one’s fate, so where Dickins gives us “if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord,” a more literal translation might be “if he will cast lots for his fate before the lord.” A slightly less literal translation (and my personal interpretation) of the verse as a whole is:
Wealth is a blessing. To invest it is wise,
and to spread it around is still wiser.
For when one day you have need of god and good friends,
You’ll find both despise a poor miser.
Fehu in the Norwegian Rune Poem
This rune poem is preserved in a 17th century copy believed to be of an original from the 13th century. It contains verses covering the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark. This translation is provided by Dickins, who notes that the poem “is composed in six-syllabled couplets, each of which contains two semi-detached statements of a gnomic character; the first line, which has two alliterating words, is connected by end-rhyme […] and enjambement with the second which has none.”
Fé vældr frænda róge;
føðesk ulfr í skóge.
Wealth is a source of discord among kinsmen;
the wolf lives in the forest.
I promised you earlier, when we were going over the Old English Rune Poem, that the other two rune poems would have more of a “mo’ money, mo’ problems” sentiment, and here it is. The first line is obvious enough. The second line about the wolf is less so. In my own cursory research, I’ve been unable to find a direct translation for the word “føðesk” (ulfr is wolf and skóge is forest), but I’ve seen the second line translated a number of different ways, such as “the wolf is nourished in the forest” and “the wolf is raised in the forest.” However, these slight variations may not matter much. Daniel McCoy’s article “Outlawry in the Viking Age” gives us a potent clue to the meaning of this verse:
“Full outlawry” meant that the outlaw lost his right to live as a full member of society for the rest of his life. Full outlawry was also called skóggangr (pronounced roughly “SKOHG-gahng-er”), a word which literally meant “going into the forest.” The full outlaw himself was called a skógarmaðr (pronounced roughly “SKOHG-ar-mah-ther”), “man of the forest.” This referred to the fact that such outlaws, in order to escape the weapons of their disgruntled former peers, usually fled to otherwise uninhabited wilderness areas or left the country altogether. […] To be outside of the law was also to be outside of society – no longer a member of a social network of family, friends, and tribe, but merely an isolated “man of the forest,” and even a “wolf,” as outlaws were also called.
~Daniel McCoy, “Outlawry in the Viking Age”
Therefore, “the wolf lives in the forest” may be a warning to stay in your friends’ and family’s good graces, lest you be outcast yourself and thrown to the wolves, as it were.
Fehu in the Icelandic Rune Poem
The oldest known copy of the Icelandic rune poem dates back to the late 15th century. It contains verses covering the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark. The following translation comes from Dickins, who notes that the original “consists of sixteen short stanzas [… which each contain] three kenningar [kennings] — the elaborate periphrases which bulked so large in the technique of the Icelandic skaldic poems. The first and second lines are connected by alliteration, the third has two alliterating syllables of its own.”
ᚠ Fé er frænda róg
ok flæðar viti
ok grafseiðs gata
aurum fylkir.
Wealth = source of discord amongst kinsmen
and fire of the sea
and path of the serpent.
Perhaps you’ve noticed the fourth line is not mentioned in the above description, nor is it translated. It is apparently not part of the original rune poem, though commonly included in modern publications.
The A text has two characteristics not shared with others: i) it has an unusual order
of letters in its futhark, interchanging the similar graphs 1 and t. Editors usually amend
the manuscript order to conform to the standard one. I have retained the manuscript order
(though giving the standard numbering of the runes), ii) after each line of ‘verse’ the
manuscript adds two words: the first a Latin equivalent of the rune-name, the second a
heiti for ‘king, war-leader’ beginning with the same letter as the rune-name.~R.I. Page, “The Icelandic Rune Poem”
“Aurum,” then, is Latin “gold,” and “fylkir” Old Norse “king” or war-leader. Regard or disregard these later additions as you wish.
The three kennings original to this poem seem to refer to the story of the Nibelung treasure (part 1, part 2). It is worth a read if you have the time, but to be as succinct as possible, it is the story of a cursed treasure, hoarded by the dwarf-turned-dragon Fáfnir. “Path of the serpent” I believe refers to Fáfnir’s hoard. The treasure’s curse causes not only Fáfnir’s draconic transformation but also many killings among family members and former friends. The story begins with the treasure being stolen from the dwarf Andvari out of its underwater hiding place, and ends (after many deaths) with the treasure being thrown into the River Rhine. “Fire of the sea” in various forms is a rather common kenning for gold, possibly either because sunlight reflected on the surface of the waves has the appearance of glittering gold (incidentally, Freyja is associated with both gold and the sea), or because gold underwater has the appearance of flickering flames (it is said that the jötunn Ægir’s underwater halls were lit by gold that flickered like fire, since flames would not burn underwater). In this context, however, I believe it may specifically refer to the cursed treasure’s point of origin and final(?) resting place.
Rune Magic with Fehu
Below, you’ll find some suggestions for everyday magic and simple spells you can use with the rune Fehu in your own magical practice. I would suggest reading the rest of this post and meditating on the rune Fehu for at least a few days before attempting to work with it magically, since, in my experience, the runes are very powerful and can tend to manifest according to their true meanings, not necessarily according to the runeworker’s intentions. That said, when you are willing to take the risk with awareness of the potential consequences, working magic with the runes can be a highly effective way of learning more about their true meanings.
Fehu Rune in Everyday Magic
- Inscribe or embroider Fehu on your wallet or the lining of your purse
- Inscribe Fehu (can even be in invisible ink) on all the bills in your wallet every so often
- Carve Fehu into the dirt at the base of your garden plants, or write it on the back of garden tags, stakes, etc.
Simple Spells Featuring Fehu
- Carve Fehu into a spell candle and anoint it with Abundance oil to increase your income and investments and attract abundance.
- Carve Fehu into apples, ginger, a lemon, or other ingredients in an Abundance Simmer Pot Spell.
- If you own a shop, incorporate Fehu into the decor – perhaps on a doormat, on the door, or as a wall hanging – and/or use a gold paint pen to mark it on the cash register or point of sale.
- With your partner’s consent, inscribe Fehu on you and/or your partner’s body (with ink or oil) to support fertility and aid in conception (Ingwaz could also be appropriate here).
Curious to learn more about the other runes? Here’s my master list, which serves as a quick reference guide for all 24 runes of the Elder Futhark and links to all my published posts in the Rune Meanings & Magic series.
Until we meet again – be well, seek beauty, and leave a little magic wherever you go.
Blessings,
Bibliography
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Helsdottir, Vervain. Modern Runes: Discover the Magic of Casting and Divination for Everyday Life. Rockridge Press, 8 Sept. 2020.
McCoy, Daniel. “Outlawry in the Viking Age.” Norse Mythology for Smart People, norse-mythology.org/outlawry-viking-age/.
McGrory, Walter. “Understanding the Runes: Episode 1 – Fehu.” YouTube, 13 Jan. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNnA4g2wTGI. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.
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Page, R.I. “The Icelandic Rune Poem.” Viking Society Web Publications, Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 1999, vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/The%20Icelandic%20Rune-Poem.pdf.
Paxson, Diana L. Taking up the Runes: A Complete Guide to Using Runes in Spells, Rituals, Divination, and Magic. Weiser Books, 20 Apr. 2005.
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Tonkin, Vern. “Translating Feoh.” Lettersfortitles.com, Letters for Titles, 22 Apr. 2022, lettersfortitles.com/translating-feoh/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Ægir.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Dec. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86gir.
—. “Rune Poem.” Wikipedia, 27 May 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rune_poem.
Wills, Tarrin. “Expressions for Gold.” Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, Skaldic Project, 23 Sept. 2020, skaldic.org/m.php?p=kenning&i=134. Accessed 30 Oct. 2024.
