by Donald Tyson
Runes are the symbolic tools of a system of magic created around 500 bce by the shamans of warrior tribes living in the great forests of northern Europe. No one knows their origin. It is believed they resulted from a fusion between the native occult symbols of the shamans and the Etruscan and Latin alphabets.
Lured by the prospect of plunder, German mercenary clans crossed the Alps to fight in northern Italy. To the illiterate barbarians, written letters seemed magical. The shamans recognized a similarity between the letters used by the Etruscans and their own secret power symbols. Over generations, the shamans combined their own symbols with some of the Etruscan, and later Latin, letters and developed a system of writing to convey their native language.
Runes serve the balanced functions of letters for writing and symbols for ritual magic. Other alphabets, such as Hebrew and Enochian, are used for magical purposes, but they remain written letters with secondary magical associations. Each rune is equally a letter and a living power symbol for a force in nature.
These natural forces were, in early ages, humanized as gods and spirits. Most of the names of the gods have been forgotten. Today, only a handful of runes can be linked with specific gods. Even so, there is good reason to believe that each of the forces represented by individual runes was looked upon as a mighty spirit by the shamans. This is supported by the ancient division of the twenty-four German runes into three families (aettir) of eight runes.
Thus each rune is the sigil or seal of a deity, and may be used ritually to summon forth and command that deity for human pourposes. For example, the rune Teiwas t is the symbol of the warrior god Tew, after whom Tuesday gets its name. Teutonic warriors cut this rune into their own flesh over their hearts to invoke Tew into their bodies just prior to battle. In this way they sought to become possessed by Tew, who was renowned for his courage and war skills.
The use of runes was not restricted to a particular group in society. Any man or woman might employ the runes for purposes such as protection against poison or to ease the pains of childbirth. However, ignorance carried a price. Each use of the runes involved a sacrifice to the rune gods, usually a sacrifice of blood. The gods were capricious and pitiless. If an insufficient payment was offered, they were thought to exact their own payment in kind. Rune spirits evoked to slay a foe might claim as their gift the life of someone beloved by the person who called them. It was generally considered prudent to leave runes to the shamans, who obtained the knowledge to use them through initiation.
After gashing himself upon the breast (and perhaps on the arms and legs) with rune symbols, the young shaman allowed himself to be tied to a wooden pillar or cross that represented the world tree. He remained suspended for nine days and nights without eating or drinking. At the climax of the rite, Woden possessed the initiate and passed on to him the knowledge of runes. Perhaps this appearance of Woden was pantomimed by the master shaman wearing a mask, who whispered the secret wisdom into the ear of his disciple.
We do not know whether women were formally initiated into the mysteries of the runes. However, we do know that there were female rune masters, renowned for their powers of scrying, healing, and cutting the runes for magical purposes. They enjoyed a position of authority in their tribes, but were regarded with a certain amount of dread by the people.
The purest set of runes that has survived to the present is the twenty-four symbol German futhark (a name that derives from the first six runes in the German rune alphabet: F, U, Th, A, R, K). Later rune alphabets, which evolved in Scandinavia, contain sixteen runes, and other alphabets that evolved in England contain twenty-eight (or thirty-three) runes. All these later rune sets were based upon the elder German futhark. For the purposes of ritual magic, this is the best rune alphabet to use, although Wiccans often prefer the English runes.
One ancient form of rune magic is divination. A branch was cut from a fruit-bearing tree, such as the apple, and divided into twenty-four short wands. The diviner carved a rune into each wand, then cast the wands onto a white cloth. Three wands were picked up in succession with the eyes directed heavenward, then interpreted.
All of the German runes can be made by simple vertical and diagonal strokes. They contain (in their purest, primal forms) no curved strokes and no horizontal strokes. This is a strong indication that they were designed to be incised into the thin green bark of a freshly cut wooden sapling across the grain. Each sapling could thus carry a written message, and it seems likely one early use of runes was to convey messages between the leaders of nomadic tribes.
Shamans carried runes in their heads, and inscribed the runes wherever their magic was required. The thing upon which the rune was cut became infused with the spirit and power of that rune. When runes were written on carved yew wands and other objects for magical purposes, they were grouped into significant sets of repetitions and could not be read as words. Groups of three and nine runes occur frequently, but the meaning of these sets is not understood.
The inscription of runes on large standing stones arose when the use of runes for magic began to give way to the use of runes as a decorative, formal way of writing. Runes were carved on stones to commemorate important events, to mark the boundaries of land, and to preserve the names of great people. These rune stones had no magical function.
Modern rune pebbles or tiles are without historical precedent. They descend from the old rural custom of selecting animal hides by lot. Personal symbols were marked upon flat pebbles, then one was drawn randomly from the group. Some of these personal symbols were runes, but there is no indication that the medieval farmers who employed them as emblems understood their meanings or magical uses.
The Elder Futhark
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1 |
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9 |
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17 |
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2 |
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10 |
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18 |
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3 |
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11 (Ice) |
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19 |
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4 |
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12 |
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20 |
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5 |
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13 |
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21 |
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6 |
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14 |
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22 |
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7 |
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15 |
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23 |
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8 |
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16 |
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24 |
