A Very Basic Introduction to the Runes

Wealth is a comfort to everyone,

Yet each must give freely,

If he will glory in Heaven.

- Poem of Fehu

I’ve blogged about how I use the ancient Viking Runes; as a decision making tool to guide me toward the “course of right action” for the day or specific to a certain event, for insight into my destiny, and even for insight regarding past lives. The Runes were prevalent some two thousand years ago and are more relative to us today. Like the images of the Tarot deck and the hexagrams of the I Ching, Runes are profound keys to personal empowerment, self-development and spiritual awareness.

Runes are an ancient form of writing that was used widely for thousands of years across northern Europe. A great deal of mystery still surrounds their origins and use. According to Viking tradition, the word “rune” means a whispered secret.

Did you know that the days of the week are named after Norse gods and goddesses? Tuesday stands for Tiw’s day, Wednesday is so called after the great god Odin, Thursday is named after the powerful god Thor, and Friday takes its name from the goddess Freya.

It is from the Norse culture that the runes come, and it was in the old Teutonic world of northern Europe that the runes were venerated. They were the very soul of life for the ancient Teutonic people, and encapsulated their entire mystical and mythological beliefs.

To divine, in the original sense of the word, is literally to discover higher insight, the workings of fate, or the “will of the gods,” as it applies to our lives. Divination systems, like the Runes, are based upon sets of meaningful signs, omens that we “randomly” choose and interpret for their personal message to us. You are probably wondering, “How could this possibly work?” The traditional Norse answer would be that in the Web of Wyrd (fate, destiny), all things and events resonate in a profound and luminous way and that the Runes faithfully record the signature of the energy movements underlying our own unique fate path at the moment of consultation. The scientific rationalism of the West generally does not admit that events that are not causally related can have an underlying connection, but the idea is no longer disreputable, even in scientific terms, because the concept of randomness has been subject to scrutiny in modern times. From my college Psychology 101 I learned that in the 1950’s, Carl Jung introduced the concept of “synchronicity”, which he defined as “meaningful coincidence” and some quantum theorists have supported his conviction that “chance” events not physically or causally linked may nonetheless spring from a deeper ordering principle.

During ancient times, divination was of course attributed to the activity of gods and spirits. Whether we regard such entities as real or metaphorical, it is vitally important to know that in northern Europe the highest of all gods, Odin (Germanic translation Woden or Wotan and giving his name to Wednesday), was himself the discoverer and lord of the Runes. Odin in fact provides the model for master of the runic system. In Norse myth Odin goes on a quest for what is really a code for the process of looking within and attaining therein knowledge of all the worlds. The Runes are the physical tokens of his hard-won wisdom, offered to those “to whom they may avail.”

The Runes are said to embody the wisdom of Odin through the connections between the sign and the meaning associated with that sign, which come from three ancient “Rune poems.” In Norse myth, Odin was the god and patron of the oral tradition, so the wisdom of the Runes and the accumulated folk ways they represent can be seen as flowing from him and various guises of the Goddess, from whose springs of knowledge Odin drew. For example, the image of the first rune, Fehu, is cattle. The corresponding associations are assets, wealth and gain. In ancient Norse culture, you were worth only as much as your head of cattle. In a Rune reading, each rune is interpreted as an omen of personal significance – thus Fehu signifies material luck and gain and it is titled “Abundance” in most guide books of Rune translation. The appearance of Fehu during a Rune reading in the present or near future evokes at least a cheer of some sort. But fehu’s association with wealth, good fortune and greed evoke far deeper mythical and legendary themes in traditional rune lore, which I’ll be sharing in an upcoming blog.

For now, I leave you with hopefully a new understanding of how the Runes can teach us self-mastery. They are a guide to action, a remedy for misfortune, and a tool for promoting empowerment, fulfillment, prosperity and peace. This is at least the spirit in which the Runes function for me, today.