Learning the Runes

Where they come from

The runes are an alphabet first. The Elder Futhark, the set of twenty four letters this whole section is built on, was in use from about the second century to about the eighth, cut into stone, metal and wood across northern Europe. People wrote names on combs with it and marked who raised a stone for whom. The word rune itself means something like secret or whisper, which tells you that writing was a rare skill and a slightly uncanny one in a world where almost nobody could do it.

Casting lots is older than the runes and sits beside them. The Roman writer Tacitus, in the first century, describes the Germanic peoples cutting slips from a fruit tree, marking them, scattering them on a white cloth and picking up three while looking at the sky. Nobody knows whether those marks were runes. They may have been. They may have been notches.

Reading the runes as an oracle, one meaning for each letter, is a modern practice. It grew up in the twentieth century, and the blank rune that comes in many bags was added by a popular American book in the 1980s. It has no place in the old alphabet, and it has no place in mine.

So why bother? Because the twenty four pictures are good ones. They are old words that have not worn smooth, for things people still live beside: cattle, hail, ice, a torch, a yew tree, the sun, a horse, a lake, the day. A picture like that, drawn at random and held up against a real question, will show you something about the question. That is what I ask of any oracle.

What a rune is

Each rune is three things stacked on top of each other.

It is a letter, with a sound. Fehu is F. Uruz is U. Thurisaz is the Th at the start of thorn.

It is a name, and the name is a plain word for a plain thing. Fehu is cattle. Uruz is the aurochs, the great wild ox that is gone from the world now. Thurisaz is the giant, and in some readings the thorn.

And it is a picture, which is the thing itself with all its weather attached. Cattle, to a farming people, were wealth you could count and move and trade, which is why Fehu reads as prosperity and the goods you own and share. The wild ox was strength nobody had tamed, so Uruz reads as health and raw vitality. The giant was force that could protect or crush, so Thurisaz reads as defence, the sharp thing, and a warning to think before you act.

When I teach the runes I teach them picture first. If you learn the keyword and skip the picture you have a flashcard. If you learn the picture you have something you can think with.

The three rows

The twenty four runes are arranged in three rows of eight, and each row is called an aett, an old word for a family or a group of eight. The first aett runs from Fehu, cattle, to Wunjo, joy, and its pictures are mostly about the goods and the gifts of ordinary life. The second runs from Hagalaz, hail, to Sowilo, the sun, and it opens with the hard weather and works its way back to the light. The third is Tyr's aett, named for the god of the first rune in it, and it runs from Tiwaz, justice, to Othala, the homestead, and it is mostly about people: the birch, the horse, humankind, the water, the seed, the day and the home. The Elder Futhark page walks through all twenty four in order.

How a rune answers

You ask. You draw. You sit with the picture.

The asking matters more than people expect. A loose question gets a loose answer from any oracle. Put the matter into one plain sentence before you reach into the bag, then draw one rune without looking and turn it over.

Now the part that takes discipline. Look at the picture before you look up the meaning. If it is Isa, think about ice. A frozen surface. Everything stopped, and quiet, and you are not quite sure how thick it is. Let that sit against your question for a minute and notice where it lands. Then read the page for Isa and see what I have to add. I would say the minute with the picture does more work than the page does.

How I read them

I read the runes in plain words. There is a great deal of Norse mythology attached to them in the books, and some of it is wonderful, and almost none of it is needed to read a rune well. I keep two gods in the whole section, Tyr and Ing, because two runes are named for them, and I leave the rest to the people who study that for a living.

The picture before the keyword, every time. A rune drawn upside down is read as its meaning blocked, delayed or turned against you, and the pages give one short paragraph on this for every rune that can be reversed. Eight of them look the same either way up and have no reversed reading at all.

And guidance, always. A rune describes the shape of a moment and how to stand in it. These pages will tell you what kind of weather you are standing in, which is usually what you needed to know, and they leave the forecast alone.

Beside the tarot and the I Ching

If you already read tarot you will find the runes feel like a smaller, blunter deck. There are twenty four of them against seventy eight cards, there is no suit and no court, and a rune carries one picture where a card can carry a dozen. I think that is a strength on a busy day. The How to Read a Card page and the Tarot Spreads page show how much the two practices share.

The I Ching is the closer cousin. Both are old alphabets of a kind, both are cast for a question, and both hand you a picture to think with. The How to Cast a Hexagram page shows you the other one.

One thing the runes do not have is a birth figure. There is no rune for your birthday, so you will not find them on the Find Your Numbers and Signs page. You come to the runes with a question, and that is the only way in.

How this section is laid out

The Elder Futhark gives you all twenty four letters in order with their sounds and pictures. How to Cast the Runes is the practical page, from making a set to the nine rune cast. The Runes is the index, and from there each rune has its own page.

Where to start

Read The Elder Futhark once. Then draw a single rune with a real question behind it and give the picture a full minute before you turn to its page.

You will be your own teacher. All I will do is help you remember what you already know.

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.