Runes and system of A'.'A'.'
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This is a question I have had for a while, but no time to really research it. The only association I have made is to cast runes for some experiments after opening a portal. I suspect there are more practical uses in the context of using them to formulate the magickal link, these have been charged over thousands of years and that energy should still be present. Like Qabalah they seem to be a fractal correspondence system, so there must be a linkage but it is not straightforward. Possibly a transitive system is 'Gothic Qabalah'
, whatever that is. Or doing it yourself via symbolic association analysis, which is probably a good learning excercise. Anyway here is a pretty good source on rune symbolism www.midnightmoonchild.com/moonchildrunelistpage.html -
Please do NOT go to that site, it is awful. It even includes "wyrd", the blank rune that was introduced in the 1970s when the first modern runes were marketed using cut-outs from a 5 by 5 template, leaving one spare!
For English I recommend using either the 28 rune Futhorc or the full 33 rune Northumbrian row, even though we have no rune poem for 5 of them and don't know what the name of one of them means.
In spite of what may be written, the runes are part of the same family as English, Greek and Hebrew letters, they first appear in Etruria and seem to have migrated north as the Roman culture expanded. The order of the letters is odd, but to give one example, the letter A has been written with various tilts over the centuries and the "F" shape of the rune for A comes from carving an A but failng to connect the middle line to the right hand line.
Spiritually, work with the Anglo-Saxon rune poem (including the Ealh/Elksedj variant) and see if that works for you, alternately use the Elder Futhark and map them to the Greek alphabet.
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Did you even click on any of the runes for the detailed description? It even says of the wyrd rune :
"There is little or no historical support for a "Blank Rune" in runic divination. It was not included in the Elder Futhark and it was only later that it began to be incorporated into younger futharks by Anglo-Saxons in England. It has been suggested that if you bought a rune set with a blank piece, it would be appropriate to save it in case you lose another rune piece, but you wouldn't be encouraged to include this rune in your casting.
There are very strong opinions offered by many experts that this rune should not ever be used in a rune casting. There are also strong opinions that the use of this rune was merely lost and now, "rediscovered" as it were, it is entirely appropriate to employ this rune in magical or divinatory works.
Yet, a word for this rune, Wyrd, exists and this word clearly has a significant historical heritage and the concept of the "unknowable" or the "unknown" is not entirely absent from runic poems of the day.
We will leave it up to each individual to use, or reject this particular rune as they see fit. As always, these decisions are best left up to whatever works for you rather than blindly deferring to the opinion of "experts" however well published and respected they may be.
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ya, i dont go by the blank rune thing, it wasnt part of the orginal set's, but just as the greeks and hebrews the alphabet is also magickal, from what i heard crowley tried to tie the north in with the system of quabalah but there was insufficient info at the time.
Edred Thorsson is absolutley awsome, he knows his stuff when it comes to "northern magick" if you want to call it, but universaly speaking, i believe it all can be combined, for even in the book 777 theres plenty of room for additions but i dont have the knowledge yet to expand on it, i would like to one day when i better understand the system and commit it to memory. But i dont know if anyone has tried to yet, i read a few things on it, but in my opinion they were failed attempts, the reason being i posted this question is that i like the quabalah and the AA system, but also as my religion is of the old ways ("older style witchcraft, not wiccan") with my interest lying with the celts, teutonics, and the south and eastern systems and what not, i want to find a way to integrate it all in every way possible, with regards to all systems of magick for voodoo to satanism and what not should all correspond in a unison manner so when it comes to the human race, culture languages, systems of religion, theres got to be a way to break the barriers to make the puzzle "more complete".
Just wanted to see others thoughts on this subject, also i use my runes for divinition more then tarot, and dont want to have to feal them as being separate.
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Practitioners have been trying to combine the Celtic and Nordic systems with Qabalah since Qabalah arrived in Northern Europe. In fact, it's hard to find books on druidic / runic material that don't contain Hermetic influences. Another writer to check out is Freya Aswynn, who also comes from a Thelemic-ish background.
"i like the quabalah and the AA system, but also as my religion is of the old ways ("older style witchcraft, not wiccan") with my interest lying with the celts, teutonics, and the south and eastern systems and what not, i want to find a way to integrate it all in every way possible, with regards to all systems of magick for voodoo to satanism "
Sounds like Eclectic Neo-Paganism to me. If Wicca isn't a top choice, you may wish to check out Dragon Rouge or the Temple of Set, as they work a lot with runic magic in a Western ceremonial context.
I generally work with the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc rather than the Elder Futhark. It's more Tarot-like to some people because of the subdivision into four, as well as the presence of 'elemental' runes such as 'cweorth' and 'stan'.
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I've heard rune magicians claim the Tree of Life and runes are compatible.
This gets into interesting questions as to whether the Tree of Life glyph is a unique product of Jewish tradition or whether the Tree is the most precise articulation of a universal archetypal Ur-Tree found in many different civilizations and cultures (Nordic, Sumerian, Egyptian etc). To date, I have not found a satisfactory answer to this question.
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*In Rúnatal, a section of the Hávamál, Odin is attributed with discovering the runes. He was hung from the world tree, Yggdrasil, while pierced by his own spear for nine days and nights, in order to learn the wisdom that would give him power in the nine worlds. Nine is a significant number in Norse magical practice (there were, for example, nine realms of existence), thereby learning nine (later eighteen) magical songs and eighteen magical runes.One of Odin's names is Ygg, and the Norse name for the World Ash —Yggdrasil—therefore could mean "Ygg's (Odin's) horse." Another of Odin's names is Hangatýr, the god of the hanged. Sacrifices, human or otherwise, in prehistoric times were commonly hung in or from trees, often transfixed by spears.*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin
Parallels might be seen with the legend of Osiris. See Crowley's comments on the Hanged Man.
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Or it could be that the tree of life is a very accurate yetziratic map of the human psyche (or God, or whatever word you have) in general, and that, since the human psyche inspired the other maps and systems, they likely all have pretty good correspondence...
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"Sounds like Eclectic Neo-Paganism to me. If Wicca isn't a top choice, you may wish to check out Dragon Rouge or the Temple of Set, as they work a lot with runic magic in a Western ceremonial context. "
i cant say im eclectic, i accept allot of views, i was reffering more towards old northern european witchcraft, ("the difference? includes older concept and principles mixed with the practice of the dark as well as the light, unlike wicca wich basis its principles around "and ye harm none", which is an oath i dont believe and havent taken the vow either, nor will i"), while the old religion takes upon more drui principles and concepts as "an eye or an eye".
anywho
"I've heard rune magicians claim the Tree of Life and runes are compatible.
This gets into interesting questions as to whether the Tree of Life glyph is a unique product of Jewish tradition or whether the Tree is the most precise articulation of a universal archetypal Ur-Tree found in many different civilizations and cultures (Nordic, Sumerian, Egyptian etc). To date, I have not found a satisfactory answer to this question.
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In Rúnatal, a section of the Hávamál, Odin is attributed with discovering the runes. He was hung from the world tree, Yggdrasil, while pierced by his own spear for nine days and nights, in order to learn the wisdom that would give him power in the nine worlds. Nine is a significant number in Norse magical practice (there were, for example, nine realms of existence), thereby learning nine (later eighteen) magical songs and eighteen magical runes.One of Odin's names is Ygg, and the Norse name for the World Ash —Yggdrasil—therefore could mean "Ygg's (Odin's) horse." Another of Odin's names is Hangatýr, the god of the hanged. Sacrifices, human or otherwise, in prehistoric times were commonly hung in or from trees, often transfixed by spears.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin
Parallels might be seen with the legend of Osiris. See Crowley's comments on the Hanged Man."
well personally i believe the jewish tree of life is more universal and provides an important key in understanding the universe through the eyes of the anceints per se', with similarities and correspondences that run through and connect with other systems, but with the celtic tree, the 3 worlds, and the asatru, 9 worlds, which the elder futhark themselves are based off the old germanic/teutonic thingamajiggy, i forgot the term for the nurturer, the warrior, and the royals/preist-preistess, those first three elements of earth, fire, and water, although i think the the earth is a mix of earth and air, considering the runes ansuz mixed with ken(a fire rune), although it might be possible if we mixed them with the order in AA, b/c i know the elements start to get mixed at the cardinal points, so maye the old elemental systems cannot mix with the 1st outer order, with eart air fire water, but further up the tree.
and yes oden, osirus, and horus all have things in commen, since the fictional jesus was made from elements of these three and more.
also with midgard being in the middle of the tree, where tippareth would kinda be, with regards to the belief of the drui and egyptians of conquering the son(tippareth) on earth, which would become the old golden age midgard, with yesod being appropiately at the bottom with hell.
just my thoughts. -
93,
"I've heard rune magicians claim the Tree of Life and runes are compatible.
This gets into interesting questions as to whether the Tree of Life glyph is a unique product of Jewish tradition or whether the Tree is the most precise articulation of a universal archetypal Ur-Tree found in many different civilizations and cultures (Nordic, Sumerian, Egyptian etc). To date, I have not found a satisfactory answer to this question. "
Perhaps re-phrasing the question would help?
Nobody would say that the runes were created by (say) a committee of Nordic wise men in 343 AD, and revised in 421 and 436. The futharks evolved from varied roots, under various societal and other pressures, and kept changing over centuries as other influences came to bear from other cultures.
Similarly, the Tree of Life evolved from Persian, Sumerian, Greek, Egyptian and other factors (not excluding a few stray concepts imported from India), culminating in the glyph we know and its associated body of teachings in the late Middle Ages of the Common Era. The primary synthesizers of the system we recognize were Jewish, but their work was then taken up by Christians and closet pagans.
If you work long enough with the Tree, its universality becomes apparent. At first, it just seems like a big Hebraic filing cabinet, but it can embrace a broad range of spiritual approaches and levels of consciousness.
Those would substantially exceed AvshalomBinyamin's suggestion of it being (solely) a Yetziratic map of the psyche. The similarities with other spiritual systems would probably appear closer the further up (or into) the Four Worlds that one progressed.93 93/93,
Edward
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I tend to believe the Tree is much older (and its origins far stranger than we believe):
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c218/saint2omas/babyloniantree.jpg
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@Edward Mason said
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Those would substantially exceed AvshalomBinyamin's suggestion of it being (solely) a Yetziratic map of the psyche."
(yeah, my statement was probably more of a reflection of where I am, than the scope of the territory itself...) -
I haven't done much work with runes, but in the little exposure I have had to them I do recall, IIRC, that to each rune is attributed Norse deity. Following the lead of 777 it shouldn't be too difficult allocate them to the Tree.
"for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss" - L. II:27
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