THE RUNES: A Guide to Rune Reading, Divination, and the Meanings of the Elder Futhark & Viking Runes

The Runes is a complete guide to using runes for divination and reflection, based on new, word-for-word translations of the rune poems. The author combines a deep respect for the ancient texts with years of rune reading experience to bring you the most authentic and useful rune meanings. In The Runes you will find beauty and inspiration, along with some hard truths and a warrior spirit.Rune reading is a tool for gaining insight, using ancient symbols to challenge and inspire. Some see it as divination—a way of tapping into hidden knowledge. Others use it for self-reflection or focusing intention. Consulting the runes can be like talking to an old friend: you may know the truth, but sometimes you need to hear it before you believe it. Reading runes lets you practice trusting your intuitive wisdom, helping you see a little further, feel a little deeper, and reach a little higher.Before Christianity spread to northern Europe, the indigenous peoples of the region were Germanic tribes, like the Anglo-Saxons, Goths, and Norsemen. Runes were the letters of their alphabets. Over time these letters developed rich symbolic meanings, passed down through poems and myths. Like most pre-Christian cultures, the Germanic peoples were polytheistic, and they revered natural elements as sacred. When you pick up the runes, you are entering a vibrant world, grounded in nature and everyday life, yet full of heroes, gods, and mythology.Most of what we know about runes comes from just a few ancient poems. It's tempting to pick and choose the easier elements from one poem, while overlooking anything unpleasant in the others. But it's clear from the poems that runes have a dark side, and we know from history that the people who created them were both fearless and fearsome. This book doesn't leave anything out. All of the mystical beauty is there, and so is the fighting spirit. The Runes gives you strong, unfiltered runes with a hard-enough edge to face anything that comes up.