In love
In matters of the heart, Laguz speaks of sensitivity and listening: expressing your emotions without running from them, then giving the other person a pause to respond.
Rune
Laguz: rune meaning
Laguz is the rune of water: a fluidity that invites you to follow your intuition and let your emotions flow.
- water
- intuition
- fluidity
The essentials
Laguz at a glance
For you, Laguz invites you to trust your sense of things, while letting situations evolve without trying to fix them in place.
A strength
Adapting like water, which flows around obstacles, and listening to your feelings before deciding.
Something to watch
Drifting with no direction, or drowning a decision in so many emotions that you cannot examine it clearly.
- Reversed
- Can also be read reversed
- Family
- Tiwaz’s aett
The meaning of Laguz
Laguz bears the name of water, subject to an uncertain reconstruction of the name. The rune evokes what flows, rises, and falls: emotions, intuition, the current of a river that always finds its way.
The modern reading sees a call for flexibility in it. Where a dike resists, water flows around. Laguz puts forward the feelings that inform, dreams, the impressions that come before thought, while recalling that a river needs a bed so that it does not overflow.
Its shadow is confusion: letting yourself be overwhelmed, or avoiding a decision for fear of upsetting things.
Laguz in your life
At work
Adaptability, a nose for things, attention to the atmosphere: Laguz values these qualities, provided you confirm your impressions with facts.
Draw Laguz 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
Laguz reversed
Reversed, Laguz is read as a flow that is blocked or overflowing: emotions held back, or on the contrary overwhelming, that cloud judgment.
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, *laguz, remains uncertain; its meaning is water. The divinatory meaning of Laguz, intuition and fluidity, is a modern reading, which starts from the course of a river. Drawing a meaning of its own from the reversed rune is another recent addition, which you are free not to keep.
Reflecting on Laguz
A question
What does your sense of things tell you about this situation, before reasoning gets involved?
A gesture
Take ten minutes to write, without rereading, what you feel about a decision, then underline what keeps coming back.
How is it built?
- Glyph
- ᛚ (U+16DA)
- Reconstructed name
- *laguz (uncertain reconstruction)
- Meaning of the name
- water
- Sound
- l
- Position
- 21st rune of the futhark, 5th in Tiwaz’s aett
Where the sources disagree
- Reversed reading (merkstave): A modern practice with no basis in the ancient sources: offered as an option, unchecked by default, and presented as modern.
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 Laguz
What does the rune Laguz mean?
Laguz means water, intuition, and fluidity: listening to your feelings while adapting. Its ancient name, reconstructed with reservation, evokes water.
What does Laguz mean reversed?
For those who turn runes upside down, a modern practice, Laguz evokes a flow that is blocked or overflowing: emotions held back or overwhelming that cloud judgment.
Nearby runes