November 6, 2008

• Odin, runes, charms, libraries, tattoos etc.

  It’s all connected, Odin to libraries and beyond.  We wouldn’t have had libraries without books, nor books without writing, nor writing without Odin Allfather hanging for nine days and nights in the Fogmoon, upon a leafless tree, for the gift of runes.

  That’s really not the way I went from library to Odin (or other way ’round) today.  It started with an email from Daykeeper.  A feature article in the November issue, by librarian Nancy Humphries, compared the two systems of library organization, Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress, with Tarot and Runes.  That’s what got me started.  It was Google and my own capricious curiosity that kept me going.

  

  Back when I discovered runes as a tool for divination, after having used Tarot that way for years, one of the differences I noticed was that the runic system was more open-ended, less constrained, than Tarot.  Ms. Humphries makes note of that in her article.  I had never been able to establish a time frame in a certain number of hours, days, months or years, with Tarot spreads, but it was easy as could be to establish, through runes, not only if something could or would happen, but when.  That use of runes was something I derived or discovered for myself.  If other seers in ancient or modern times used runes to tell time, nobody told me.

  Runes also lend themselves to “maybe” answers more easily, I have found, than the more yes-or-no tarot cards.  They are also easier to use as charms and spells than Tarot is, and their designs are more easily adaptable into tattoos, too.  A page I found on runic tattoos displayed one of Odin’s symbols, the Valknut (below), and cautioned readers to try out any runic tattos as the temporary sort before making them permanent.  About the Valknut, the author said, “Odin’s followers have a tendency to die violently, so wear this symbol at your own risk!”

   

  I would add that one should be especially careful about having it tattooed on one’s face.

  I seldom resist the temptation for a free consultation with the Higher Ups, so I went for the free rune reading I was offered.  As I often do when a reading comes to me instead of my seeking it out, I asked the question, “What do I most need to know now?”  From the given menu, I chose a spread with which I’m not familiar, the “fork”.  I randomly drew (the software spit out) the following runes:
  

   
  

  The top two, water (“vast, uncontrollable, ever-changing, and vital “) on the left and ice (“cold, stagnant, frozen, and unchanging”) on the right, symbolize the two possible outcomes.  The bottom rune, mankind, represents the critical factor that will decide which outcome will be:  “…although we must make much of our way in the world on our own, there is nevertheless an entire populace that shares similar experiences.”  I find nothing there with which I can argue.

  I have been reading and writing runes since the 1970s.  It became especially handy when I joined the SCA.  It gave me an in with a crazy group of fighters who called themselves Trolls.  My ability to write runes, and my pregnancy with Doug at the time, impelled them to name me the Trollmother and to make me their first female Troll.

  It also gave me something to etch or carve into the dishes and utensils I took to feasts so that I’d have a better chance of taking them home afterward:

  , for Faianna ni Coinnach na Dunlioscairn.

  Oddly enough, my Xanga nic doesn’t look much different in runes than it does in Roman script.

  

  • 4:06 pm
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