ASTROLOGY, MAGIC AND PARANORMAL

KAUNAZ As with Raido, no immediate and clear interpretation emerges for this rune. Meanings which have been given include torch, light, boil, abscess and ulcer.

ASRP reads ‘torch’, known to all living by its pale, bright flame, and adding that it always burns where princes sit within. This could read just as easily if the meaning were fever, and the less equivocal renderings of IRP and NRP agree that the rune’s most likely interpretation is an association with some form of discomfort or disease. Both these texts take ulcer as the most probable meaning, and IRP’s ‘disease fatal to children, and painful spot, and abode of mortification’ can leave us in little doubt, as does its Latin gloss of flagella. NRP provides a direct parallel with ASRP by stating that this rune ‘makes a man pale’. 

Other possible interpretations include an association with cremation, as well as a correspondence with kano, skiff, the sacred vehicle of the cult of Nerthus. Some form of burning pain or fever, however, still seems the most likely interpretation. 

The rune is pronounced exactly as in modern English.