Winifred Hodge Rose
Here is a brief response I wrote to some questions about defining the difference between Orlog / Orlay and Wyrd. I plan to develop it further, but am offering it here as food for thought in the meantime!
Let me say up front, that as far as I can tell, the dividing line between Orlog and Wyrd is blurry in many respects, and pursuing an exact definition of the difference may be something of a will-o’-the-wisp! But it is both meaningful and interesting to try to follow that path as far as we can. In all my work, I do something like creating bindrunes, except instead of binding runes, I bind words and ideas. So here I’ll lay out some pieces, the individual ‘runes’, if you will, then use them to point toward some kind of conceptual whole, though I am definitely not there yet!
So, I like to start with words: Orlog…or rather, orlaeg or orlay in Anglo-Saxon. In addition to meaning “primal layers, first laws” and the like, orlay was most used in the specific context of battle, not surprisingly, since fate and orlay play such a great role in the personal outcome of battle for each warrior. I find 9 words in the A-S dictionary compounded from orlay, and every one of them has to do with battle, including orlege itself meaning war and battle. So that’s one context to kind of meditate and chew on, to get a flavor of Orlay’s meaning. What does it feel like, what does it mean, to know that the tide and outcome of battle for oneself personally is interwoven with one’s orlay?
Anglo-Saxon Wyrd has some interesting additional meanings and connotations, besides the idea of fate or destiny. Wyrd comes from the root meaning “to become, to come to pass.” Something is fulfilled, comes to fruition here. I find no wyrd-words directly associated with battle in Anglo-Saxon; instead, there are wyrd-based words that relate to speech, eloquence, conversation. “Gewyrdlic” means “historical”, and a “gewyrd-writere” is an historian or chronicler. In other words, we use words, speech, writing, and chronicles, to record and examine the workings of Wyrd: what exactly is the situation? What is happening? Why is it happening this way? Who is involved, and why? What events led up to the situation? We try to discern and analyze the strands to get a full picture of what has been, and how it relates to what is, and what is becoming.
We can see that there are some definite overlaps of meanings here, but also some differences, between the two concepts of Orlog and Wyrd. Another thing to consider is that Wyrd / Urdh etc is personified in Germanic thought, as well as being an abstract force, whereas I have never come across any hint of Orlog / orlay being personified. So there must be a root difference there, in addition to the similarities.
What this suggests to me is that Orlog is “what Wyrd-the-person does,” laying the primal layers, while wyrd-the-event / thing-that-is coming-into-being, that is arising from the primal layers, is “what Wyrd-the-person is.“ Almost like saying that orlog is the food we eat, with all its nutrients and anti-nutrients and everything that went into the creation of that food, while wyrd is how our body reacts to, metabolizes, and incorporates that food, bringing into being our physical person and our energy that is expressed in thoughts, actions, inner being.
Another piece of the puzzle consists of runes themselves. I wrote in “Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World” that the Nauthiz rune is a primal container for the active force of orlay, while Perthro is a container of the wyrd that is set in motion by that force. This insight came to me during spae-runeworking, and I’m still unpacking it: there is a lot there! It is worth further meditation and rune-work, to understand both how these runes are different from each other, and how they overlap and interact. Orlay clearly has to do with Need and Necessity, and how they shape our actions and our lives. Does the orlay laid down for us drive the needs and necessities that shape our lives, or do we ourselves shape these drivers for our future selves? Probably both, right? Maybe a chicken and egg thing.
And Perthro itself is a really mysterious rune with a lot of overtones. Some Heathens have suggested, and I agree, that an original or alternate scenario is not warriors playing dice in the beer-hall, as the Anglo-Saxon rune poem suggests, but rather women working in the birthing-hall, midwifing a birth, with all the orlay and wyrd that is wrapped up in such a momentous event. Some have suggested, and I agree, that the shape of Perthro mimics a mother with her knees spread, lying or squatting in the birthing-position.
There are orlay-related events that precede a birth: conception, gestation, all the events leading to the parents of the baby coming together, the genetic and social heritage of the parents, etc. These are clearly orlay or orlog: the primal layers that all weave together to produce the birth of a new individual. Then the birth happens, and the playing out of wyrd begins for that new person. Orlog comes into play in the birthing-hall in the same way as on a battle-field, in the sense that there are serious risks to the life and wellbeing of mother and baby during the birth process.
Well, either scenario, birthing or gambling, can prove to be impactful for those involved, one does not have to pick only one of them! It’s well-known historically (see, for example, Tacitus’ Germania) that Germanic men sometimes became so involved in gambling that they might stake all their property, and even the freedom of themselves and / or family members, on games of ‘chance’. Ending up enslaved, impoverished, with enslaved family members, can certainly be seen as dire workings of wyrd and orlay!
A further image that comes to mind regarding the difference between orlog and wyrd is the three Wyrd Sisters / witches in the Shakespeare play “Macbeth”, paired with the runes Nauthiz and Perthro. The witches stir their cauldron, and fate comes about. We can see Nauthiz as the stick they’re using to stir the cauldron, and Perthro as the cauldron itself. Ingredients — orlog — go into the pot, are stirred up by Need and Necessity, and magical spells — wyrd — come out of the pot and waft outward to shape the events of the world.
As for what I have written elsewhere, about Wyrd being the circumstances of death: one does get a strong impression of this, when reading the old poetry. But my own feeling is that there is a whole lot of other stuff underneath the surface here. I don’t have concrete or absolute answers on this subject of the differences between Orlog and Wyrd; these are very nuanced concepts, and don’t want to be pinned down too firmly! Orlog and wyrd are a big area of spiritual research that I want to turn a lot more of my attention to, once I’ve finished with the foundational soul lore writing I’ve been working on for so long. I feel like this is a big, unknown terrain that I want to explore further. The pot is bubbling!