Runes

Origin

The earliest known runic inscriptions date from around 150 CE, on objects such as the Vimose comb from Funen, Denmark, and the Meldorf fibula from Schleswig-Holstein. Scholars trace the script to North-Italic alphabets carried north by Germanic mercenaries serving in the Roman frontier, although the question is still debated. The 24-letter Elder Futhark spread across the Germanic world from Scandinavia to Anglo-Saxon Britain and as far south as Gothic territories on the Black Sea coast.

By the early Viking Age, around 800 CE, the Elder Futhark was simplified into the 16-letter Younger Futhark, used throughout Scandinavia until roughly 1100 CE. Anglo-Saxon England expanded the row in the opposite direction, producing the 29-rune Futhorc, which later grew to 33 letters in Northumbria. The first explicit description of runes as a magical practice appears in the Old Norse poem Havamal, where Odin hangs nine nights on the world tree Yggdrasil and seizes the runes from the well of Mimir. Roman historian Tacitus, in his Germania of 98 CE, describes Germanic priests casting marked sticks to read omens.

Meaning and method

Each rune has three layers of meaning. The phonetic value is the sound it represents in writing, such as F for Fehu or U for Uruz. The acrophonic name, preserved in rune poems from Norway, Iceland, and England, names a concrete object or force: Fehu means cattle and wealth, Thurisaz means giant, Ansuz means god, Raidho means journey. The third layer is the symbolic and divinatory meaning derived from the name and from the rune poems themselves. Fehu speaks of mobile wealth and abundance, Hagalaz of crisis and transformation, Tiwaz of justice and sacrifice.

Modern divinatory practice draws on three Old English, Norwegian, and Icelandic rune poems composed between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Ralph Blum's The Book of Runes of 1982 popularised rune casting in the English-speaking world. The runes are usually grouped into three sets of eight called aettir, the families of Freyr, Hagal, and Tyr. Reversed positions, called merkstave, are used by some readers and rejected by others on the grounds that several runes are symmetrical and cannot be reversed.

In practice

You can cast runes in several ways. The single rune draw answers a focused question with one symbol. The three-rune cast, often called Odin's draw, places the runes in a row representing past, present, and future or situation, action, and outcome. The five-rune cross adds influences from above and below to the three-rune line. For complex questions some readers use a nine-rune cast on a white cloth, reading the central cluster as the heart of the situation and the outer runes as influences. Use the Runes Answer oracle to consult them now.

Traditional materials are wood, bone, antler, or stone, with the rune cut and stained red, the colour of blood and life. Each session begins with a clear question stated aloud, a moment of silence, and the drawing or casting of the runes. Read each rune in its primary meaning, then in relation to its neighbours, and finally as a whole pattern. Combine the runes with numerology by counting their order and reducing to a digit, or with tarot by laying a rune over each tarot position.

Symbolic depth

In Old Norse the word run means secret, mystery, or whispered counsel, and runa is the verb to whisper. The runes were never merely an alphabet. They were considered the visible names of forces operating in the cosmos, taught by Odin to humanity after his ordeal on Yggdrasil. The poem Sigrdrifumal lists victory runes carved on the hilt of a sword, sea runes carved on the prow of a ship, birth runes for safe delivery, branch runes for healing, speech runes for eloquence. Each carving activated the force the rune named.

In the wider esoteric tradition the runes are placed alongside the Hebrew alphabet of Hermetic Kabbalah and the Greek alphabet of Gematria as a sacred script in which letter, number, and force are one. Twentieth-century occultists such as Guido von List and Karl Maria Wiligut produced reconstructed runic systems that mix scholarship with personal vision, with results that should be read with caution. For grounded study, consult the rune poems themselves and the work of academic runologists. Continue with the Elder Futhark, Futhark, and the main oracle hub.

Also known as

• Runic Script
• Futhark Letters
• Norse Runes
• Germanic Runes
• Runic Alphabet