Norse Runes: The Elder Futhark, Their Meanings, and How to Use Them for Divination
Before the Roman alphabet reached northern Europe, before Christianity spread across Scandinavia and Germany, the peoples of the Germanic world had a writing system that was also, simultaneously, a cosmological map, a magical alphabet, and a divination tool. They called it the Futhark — named for its first six characters — and they called its individual symbols runes , from the Proto-Germanic rūnaz : mystery, secret, whispered counsel. The runes were not merely letters. Each rune was a force — a living principle embedded in the fabric of reality, with a name, a sound, a set of correspondences in nature and myth, and a specific kind of power that could be invoked, contemplated, or read as an oracle. The runic alphabet was an interface with the structure of the world, given to humanity — according to Norse myth — by Odin himself, who hung for nine days and nine nights on the world-tree Yggdrasil, wounded by his own spear, until the runes rose from the depths and revealed themselves t...