The Book of Runes

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A rune is a letter in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised purposes thereafter. In addition to representing a sound value (a phoneme), runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named ( ideographs). Scholars refer to instances of the latter as Begriffsrunen ('concept runes'). The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark or fuþark (derived from their first six letters of the script: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc or fuþorc (due to sound-changes undergone in Old English by the names of those six letters). Blum has also written books on the Tao Te Ching, Zen Buddhism, and UFOs. His work has also been published in Readers Digest, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Saturday Evening Post, and Western Horseman. Blum also published three novels: The Simultaneous Man (1970), Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks (1972), and The Foreigner. Both The Simultaneous Man and Old Glory... reflect his involvement in early drug research. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( March 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The earliest runic inscriptions found on artifacts give the name of either the craftsman or the proprietor, or sometimes, remain a linguistic mystery. Due to this, it is possible that the early runes were not used so much as a simple writing system, but rather as magical signs to be used for charms. Although some say the runes were used for divination, there is no direct evidence to suggest they were ever used in this way. The name rune itself, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite. [ citation needed] The 6th-century Björketorp Runestone warns in Proto-Norse using the word rune in both senses:

Grimm, William (1821), "18", Ueber deutsche Runen[ Concerning German runes] (in German), pp.149–59 .In the book’s words, “I do not believe in any tradition except ‘Find out for yourself!’… Instead of asking you to believe in my interpretations, I ask you to examine them critically. I do not want you to adhere to my dogma… but to explore with an open mind in the joy of self discovery.”

William, Gareth (2007). West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300. Brill Publishers. p.473. ISBN 9789047421214 . Retrieved 2018-05-22. Blum seems to be a well-intentioned, spiritually-minded monotheist with a propensity for adopting other cultures' divinatory systems. The problem, for me, is that rather than write a book that seeks to collect historical information for neophytes, or a book called "My Life with the Runes" which details his personal interpretation of the runes and methods for using them, he has combined a bit of each and released it as the authoritatively-titled "Book of Runes." Penzl & Hall 1994a assume a period of "Proto-Nordic-Westgermanic" unity down to the 5th century and the Gallehus horns inscription. [27]Odenstedt, Bengt (1990). On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script. Uppsala, Sweden: Gustav Adolfs akademien. ISBN 978-91-85352-20-3. The term is related to Proto-Celtic * rūna ('secret, magic'), which is attested in Old Irish rún ('mystery, secret'), Middle Welsh rin ('mystery, charm'), Middle Breton rin ('secret wisdom'), and possibly in the ancient Gaulish Cobrunus (< * com-rūnos 'confident'; cf. Middle Welsh cyfrin, Middle Breton queffrin, Middle Irish comrún 'shared secret, confidence') and Sacruna (< * sacro-runa 'sacred secret'), as well as in Lepontic Runatis (< * runo-ātis 'belonging to the secret'). However, it is difficult to tell whether they are cognates (linguistic siblings from a common origin), or if the Proto-Germanic form reflects an early borrowing from Celtic. [7] [8] Various connections have been proposed with other Indo-European terms (for example: Sanskrit ráuti रौति 'roar', Latin rūmor 'noise, rumor'; Ancient Greek eréō ἐρέω 'ask' and ereunáō ἐρευνάω 'investigate'), [9] although linguist Ranko Matasović finds them difficult to justify for semantic or linguistic reasons. [7] Because of this, some scholars have speculated that the Germanic and Celtic words may have been a shared religious term borrowed from an unknown non-Indo-European language. [4] [7] Related terms [ edit ] Specifically, the Rhaetic alphabet of Bolzano is often advanced as a candidate for the origin of the runes, with only five Elder Futhark runes ( ᛖ e, ᛇ ï, ᛃ j, ᛜ ŋ, ᛈ p) having no counterpart in the Bolzano alphabet. [16] Scandinavian scholars tend to favor derivation from the Latin alphabet itself over Rhaetic candidates. [17] [18] [19] A "North Etruscan" thesis is supported by the inscription on the Negau helmet dating to the 2nd century BC. [20] This is in a northern Etruscan alphabet but features a Germanic name, Harigast. Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante suggest that runes derived from some North Italic alphabet, specifically Venetic: But since Romans conquered Veneto after 200 BC, and then the Latin alphabet became prominent and Venetic culture diminished in importance, Germanic people could have adopted the Venetic alphabet within the 3rd century BC or even earlier. [21] Laguz signifies what alchemists called the conjunctio, or sacred marriage. In fairy tales, it is the end where the hero and heroine live happily ever after ( Blum, p. 91).

The Serenity Runes: Five Keys to the Serenity Prayer with co-author Susan Loughan (1998); reissued as The Serenity Runes: Five Keys to Spiritual Recovery (2005) utilizes runic divination as a method for assisting self-help and recovery from addictions; the title is a reference to the well-known serenity prayer widely used in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Learning Runes for Beginners

The moon portrays the urge to sink oneself into the experience of living, without having to evaluate or understand the experience; it also symbolises the urge for comfort, and for the satisfaction of emotional needs. While the sun strives for differentiation, the moon strives for relationship and merging of identity ( Greene, pp. 33–34). With the potential exception of the Meldorf fibula, a possible runic inscription found in Schleswig-Holstein dating to around 50 AD, the earliest reference to runes (and runic divination) may occur in Roman Senator Tacitus's ethnographic Germania. [29] Dating from around 98 CE, Tacitus describes the Germanic peoples as utilizing a divination practice involving rune-like inscriptions: de Vries, Jan (1962). Altnordisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (1977ed.). Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-05436-3. Lysiane, Lasausse (2018). "Norse mythology in video games: part of immanent Nordic regional branding". University of Helsinki.

Charm words, such as auja, laþu, laukaʀ, and most commonly, alu, [34] appear on a number of Migration period Elder Futhark inscriptions as well as variants and abbreviations of them. Much speculation and study has been produced on the potential meaning of these inscriptions. Rhyming groups appear on some early bracteates that also may be magical in purpose, such as salusalu and luwatuwa. Further, an inscription on the Gummarp Runestone (500–700 AD) gives a cryptic inscription describing the use of three runic letters followed by the Elder Futhark f-rune written three times in succession. [35] The final four books on this list aren’t guidebooks on rune magic. Rather, they’re scholarly books on the runes as historical phenomena. As Proto-Germanic evolved into its later language groups, the words assigned to the runes and the sounds represented by the runes themselves began to diverge somewhat and each culture would create new runes, rename or rearrange its rune names slightly, or stop using obsolete runes completely, to accommodate these changes. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon futhorc has several runes peculiar to itself to represent diphthongs unique to (or at least prevalent in) the Anglo-Saxon dialect. MacLeod, Mindy; Mees, Bernard (2006). Runic Amulets and Magic Objects. Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-205-8. Archived from the original on 2020-09-19 . Retrieved 2020-09-12.

Learning Runes for Intermediate and Advanced Readers

Nowhere in Blum’s book is Greene (or Relating) cited. And in a later edition that I was able to access online, her book is cited under the heading of ‘GUIDES TO THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS’ but still omitted from the bibliography.