Category: Runes

Waterfall Galdor

One day around the turn of the century I was driving down the M1 motorway to a meeting in London. I was listening to Radio 4, and an item came on about church singing on the Hebridean Isle of Lewis, off the west coast of Scotland. They were singing Gaelic psalms, powerful voices weaving together like knot-work, spilling over each other in what the presenter described as ‘waterfall singing.’ One voice would start then others would join in, improvising rich polyphony on a simple basic tune.

The sound was incredible. This music was uplifting, mysterious, scalp-tinglingly visceral. Here is a sample.… Read more

Making the Mystery Your Own

The Runes, being a set of symbols encoding the Mystery, one needs to immerse oneself in their known meanings in order to use them for practical work. In the Rune-Gild we always start with the known because, to start with one’s own ideas without this approach, will just lead inexorably into cloud cuckoo land. This is easily tackled by referring to any reputable book containing the various Rune Poems. In translation, if needs must, but better yet, by learning the old tongues and understanding the original.

Once the traditional meanings are memorised and understood, the next stage is to fit them into one’s own mindset in a contemporary context.… Read more

The Origin of the Runes

From Scott Shell’s The Application of Peircean Semiotics to the Elder Futhark Tradition

The Elder Fuþark, a biunique writing system used by the Germanic tribes from roughly 50 CE to 700 CE, consisted of twenty-four runes in an arrangement very different from the roman alphabet (see Appendix A for Elder Fuþark rune names and meanings). In addition to their unique fuþark order, i.e., not alpha–beta, they were also divided into three groups of eight, which are often referred to as ON ǽttir (‘families’ or earlier ‘group of eight’). The following arrangement is based on Antonsen (2002, 43). I have, however, chosen to add the transcription ï for the y rune, since this has become a standard for many runologists.… Read more