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Usually Daeg is interpreted as the light of day and linked with the sun cult. The Old English Rune Poem calls Daeg the "glorious light of the Creator, a source of joy and hope." In the light of day, the horrors of darkness are impotent. The light of day is an earthly manifestation of the more ethereal Light of the divine Spirit. If Ken is the artificial light of the torch in the halls of men, Daeg is the natural light of the sky. Ken is the Spirit acting through man in the form of the human virtues; Daeg is the Spirit acting through Nature to create the beauties of the greater world.

Daeg may also be interpreted as a period of time in which the light strengthens, reaches its maximum power, and then declines. For the Germans the day began in darkness. Tactitus, the Roman historian who recorded the fact, found it very strange:

Instead of reckoning the days as we do, they reckon by nights,

and in this manner fix both their ordinary and their legal

appointments. Night they regard as bringing on the day.

The passage of the sun across the sky may be likened to the passage of a human soul through its earthly life. it begins in the darkness of the womb; birth is like the dawn; the fullness of manhood comes at noon; old age brings a dimness to the sight, a kind of twilight; and death seals the eyelids on darkness once again.

In the abstract, Daeg can signify completeness or totality. The span of a process or thing. A circle that defines limits. A name - in the sense that the sum of a life is its name before God. The period of existence. It should be distinguished from Ger which stands for a revolution or inversion.

MEANINGS:

UPRIGHT:

Completion, full circle, period of study or labor, phase, span of a life, unit of time, total view, all facts known, end meeting the beginning, fulfillment of cycle, uniting of loose ends, rebirth.

REVERSED:

End of growth, finish of career, breaking up of a marriage or a love affair, limitation, boundary, termination, enclosure, fence, wall, prison, death, fear of the unknown, end of the road, step into darkness.

KEY: COMPLETION