In love
In a relationship, Eihwaz speaks of faithfulness to your values and of stability: being present over time, including when it is less easy.
Rune
Eihwaz: rune meaning
Eihwaz is the rune of the yew: a tree that lasts, and an endurance that stands upright through the seasons.
- endurance
- axis
- reliability
The essentials
Eihwaz at a glance
For you, Eihwaz invites you to lean on what lasts within you, a value or a habit, to get through a demanding time.
A strength
A quiet endurance, anchored in a few stable values, that lets you hold on without stiffening.
Something to watch
Confusing firmness with rigidity: if you never bend at all, you end up breaking.
- Reversed
- Always upright
- Family
- Hagalaz’s aett
The meaning of Eihwaz
Eihwaz evokes the yew, a tree of remarkable longevity, always green. The rune puts forward what lasts: a deep root, a trunk that holds, an ability to pass through the seasons without losing your axis.
It is often read as a moment to check what keeps you standing. Which values, which habits, which bonds stay solid when everything moves around you? Eihwaz also invites you to connect things, to keep coherence between thought, word, and deed.
Its shadow is stiffness: holding a position out of sheer habit when it has lost its reason for being.
Eihwaz in your life
At work
Reliability, perseverance in a demanding task, coherence that inspires trust: Eihwaz salutes these quiet but lasting qualities.
Draw Eihwaz or another rune
One rune for advice, three to read a situation: the interpretation starts with what the reading means for you.
Free, no account · nothing is sent · no predictions
Why Eihwaz does not reverse
The shape of Eihwaz stays the same when turned over: there is no way to tell whether the rune came up reversed. It is always read upright, including in a reading.
The divinatory meanings of the runes are a modern reading: take them as lines of reflection, not as answers.
What the ancient sources say
The reconstructed name, *ī(h)waz, remains uncertain; its meaning is the yew, the tree. The divinatory meaning of Eihwaz, endurance and axis, is a modern reading. Its vertical axis stays unchanged upside down, which rules out any reversal: the rune therefore has only one way of being read, upright, like a trunk that stays straight.
Reflecting on Eihwaz
A question
What keeps you standing when circumstances become difficult?
A gesture
Write down three values you hold to, then choose one concrete gesture this week that honors them.
How is it built?
- Glyph
- ᛇ (U+16C7)
- Reconstructed name
- *ī(h)waz (uncertain reconstruction)
- Meaning of the name
- yew (the tree)
- Sound
- ï
- Position
- 13th rune of the futhark, 5th in Hagalaz’s aett
Where the sources disagree
- Runes that do not reverse: Nine runes whose shape stays the same after a half turn (Gebo, Hagalaz, Nauthiz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz, Dagaz) are never read reversed; Labyrinthos keeps eight, without Nauthiz.
Sources
- Wikipedia (English), “Elder Futhark,” read on October 15, 2026: table of the 24 runes, reconstructed Proto-Germanic names (asterisk), meanings, aett.
- Unicode, Runic block (U+16A0–U+16FF), character names (Python’s Unicode database).
- Wikipedia (English), “Rune poem,” read on October 15, 2026: Anglo-Saxon poem (composed around the 7th century, Cotton Otho B.x manuscript destroyed in 1731, Hickes’s copy, 1705), Norwegian poem (17th-century copy of a 13th-century manuscript) and Icelandic poem (manuscripts from around 1500), the last two on the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark.
Frequently asked questions about Eihwaz
What does the rune Eihwaz mean?
Eihwaz means endurance and the axis that holds: leaning on what lasts. Its ancient name designates the yew, a tree known for its longevity, but its reconstruction remains uncertain.
Does Eihwaz change meaning when reversed?
Its figure, a vertical axis, stays the same upside down. Reversed, it does not change in appearance: Eihwaz keeps a single meaning, the endurance that stands upright.
Nearby runes