Spirituality for Living

Runemal was reserved for the wise people. It wasn’t taught to everyone in the tribe as it was believed the runes held spirits. Contemplation of runes was communion with the spirits, and this contemplation wasn’t confined to the casting of lots, but involved ritual sites with markers bearing runic script as well as the recordings on tribal relics. It was thought that by having the proper runes craft into your tools and clothing, you could balance the influence of your luck.

Individual runes have special meanings, and their meanings are much like the Chinese hexagrams from the i-ching. They have a seasonal correspondence. They also are connected to elements of nature and the environment. They even have numeric values. So you could do a runic numerology if you were so inclined.

“Love conquers all; let us too yield to love.” Norse Runes 1150-1350

Ancient Runes Script

Today we are talking about the runes. They are ancient to the point of prehistoric. The only thing necessary for something to be prehistoric is for it to have had its advent before written history. The first instances of runes as we know them today show up as ancient petroglyphs at various locations around northern Europe, but there is evidence to support that they trace back to earlier symbolism originating in the Caucas mountains. Originally, they hadn’t assumed the seemingly abstract form we see today, and displayed a more obvious resemblance to the concepts behind them. They were originally pictographic… Seek More

Communion with the Spirits

They say in conventional scientific circles that we perceive figures and patterns where there are supposedly no such thing. So as they began to discover the runes, the word rune itself roughly translates as “mystery”. It likely felt as if there was a spirit speaking through the figure, even perhaps a god. Some of the rune figures are actually taken as the symbols of their gods, three in particular. Tyr was one such. I did some research on Mayan books and there are pictures in them of gods coming out of an open book. Yes, indeed. Who’s to say their… Seek More

Balance Your Karma with Symbol

Could you cast runes, not just to predict the future, but to manipulate it? Actually, they were not usually cast to predict the future. It can be cast for that purpose. It’s not invalid. It just wasn’t their most common focus. It was thought that your future was dictated by your personal luck. We get the word luck from them. But in the original sense, luck was a force more like karma than like random good fortune as we think of it today. Luck was coupled with the concept of wyrd from which we get both the word weird and… Seek More

Use of Runes

Are there standard methods to use when casting runes, or a wide variety? A wide variety. It was heavily influenced by the inspiration of the runemal practitioner as well as their traditional training. As long as the understanding of the runes was strong, the form didn’t matter as much. The reason they trained skalds to stick to form (skalds are Norse Bards) was the form allowed the memorization of the story they meant to preserve. A skald was not really an entertainer. The skald was a scholar and journalist, even a tribal tactician. We did a rune casting with our… Seek More