Miss Pamelot's Book Of Shadows: Futhark: Rune Magic 101 - Chapter 1

“No better burden
can you bear on the road
than the great weight of wisdom;
stronger than riches,
in a strange place it proves,
the refuge of the wretched.
- Hávamál 10

What is Futhark? What are runes?

Odds are you know this already or at least have a pretty good idea, and that’s why you’re reading this, but never the less, let’s be thorough.
These are the Futhark Runes;

The runes are often separated into the elder futhark (24 individual symbols) and the younger futhark (14-18 depending on who you ask). I will be using the Elder Futhark for this series.

The futhark are an ancient set of letters used by the norse-teutonic or viking peoples. Each symbol representing a sound much the same as the alphabet I use to write this. The name “FUTHARK” refers to the first set of letters in this ancient alphabet.

But they aren’t just letters. Each rune is a word onto itself, in the most powerful meaning of the concept of “word”. Each symbol represents a whole, an idea, a complete philosophical, spiritual, and even physical concept. For this reason, each rune will be getting it’s own post, one a day, until the end of the futhark, and then we’ll start talking the how to use them for magical purposes.

I’ll be using these icelandic rune cards as we go along because I think they are beautiful:

A Short History.

The origin of the runes isn’t known in any secular or historic material, and they did not change greatly throughout their use. They do however have an origin story that is important to know should you choose to study them.

Odin, the leader of the norse gods, who was prone to collect wisdom or knowledge even if the price for it was steep (you’ll often see him depicted as with one eye missing, according to mythology he gave it freely in trade for a drink from a fountain or well of wisdom/knowledge to gain omniscience), is thought to have found the runes and brought them to both gods and men.

Rúnatal is a part of Hávamál that deals directly with the discovery of the runes, it tells the story how Odin tied himself (some say hung himself from a tree, depending on translation) to a massive tree, so great that no man knows where it’s roots even go, or come from, (likely a reference to the world tree, or tree of life), and stabbed himself with a spear as a sacrifice to himself.
There he hung from the tree for 9 days and 9 nights, without food or drink, until he looked down and saw the runes, then screaming he simply fell from the tree.

It was after this fall that knowledge flowed to him, word for word, stanza for stanza until he was filled with the knowledge of the runes.

Two stanzas follow this that ask questions and give answers.
The questions are on the back of the runecards I’ll be using, all but one;

The questions are originally seven, not six, and they ask the following;

Do you know how to carve them?
Do you know how to read them?
Do you know how to draw them?
Do you know how to tempt them?
Do you know how to ask them?
Do you know how to sacrifice to them?
Do you know how to destroy them?

What follows as answers, or maybe words of caution is;

It is better unasked
Than too much sacrificed.
A gift demands another.
Better unsent
Than too much received
So “thund” wrote
Before the rise of men
As he rose up
upon his return.

The runes were found through sacrifice, and sacrifice is what it takes to use them, so be careful and respectful if and when you chose to use them.
It’s basically the power v.s. responsibility thing, only in ancient poetic form.

So what will you need?

You won’t actually need to own runes for this, but if you already own a set of runes, and there’s a “blank rune” in the set, please, for the love of all that is holy, take that damned new neo-pagan addition out of there!

If you want to follow along with these posts, or lessons, or whatever you might want to call them, and gain the most from them, I suggest you pick up a small notebook, or a larger one, doesn’t matter what size actually, and a good pen.

Due to the nature of the runes, they will only ever give you something if you give them something in return. Manual labor (hand writing something) will always give you more in return than copy pasting, bookmarking or even typing up on the computer.
Also, hand-written journals, accounts, etc, are harder to lose in too many bookmarks, or harddrive crashes.

But all in all, if you mean to ever work with the runes, putting in careful manual effort is super important.

My Qualifications;

I’m Icelandic, a nerd, I like books and I like history, I’m a heathen and I’ve been working with the runes since I was a teenager.

What does Icelandic matter?
Well, I had my first exposure to the runes before the age of 10. They are referenced in our basic education along with Hávamál and yes, Rúnatal.
The runes are a part of my cultural heritage.
The ways of my ancestors have survived in texts, and in the living religion of the nordic heathenry.

The amount of time and effort I’ve put into learning the old ways, reading old texts in their oldest, rawest form, the attention to detail I’ve given to this whole chunk of my life is considerable, and it’s from this that I draw the knowledge I’m sharing with you.

I’m not a professor and I won’t do either of us the injustice of claiming to be an expert, but I am well equipped to handle this topic.

Freyr & Freyja’s ætt

Heimdall’s ætt