HERB - Off Topic: Rune Casting.
Rauthulfr
mwolfe at nwlink.com
Sat Nov 20 10:01:54 PST 1999
Greetings from Rauthulfr;
On the whole Runic Literacy (writing & basic reading) was not all that
uncommon, although Runes were generally used for brief messages. At least
in as far as what survives would indicate. Esoteric rune crafting, such as
Egil's use of runes to heal or curse would be a much more select thing and
would probably be associated with the followers of Othinn. Documentation
for the esoteric use of runes is very scarce. Indeed it is scarce enough
that conservative scholarship tends to view its existence with a great deal
of caution. The woman who appears to foretell the future in the Saga of
Erik the Red hears runes along the hem of her dress. Egil and some others
carve runes in the sagas. The majority of the runic inscriptions which
are taken to be magickal tend to be the ones which have no exoteric meaning.
This means that we can't really say who in particular would have used runes
esoterically. The presumption is that it would have been a relatively
small portion of society. On the whole one does not encounter Kings or
others casting runes for themselves. There is no extant reference to
Othinn casting runes to foretell the future, although he does use them for
spell casting.
The poems about runes in Eddic materials tend to depict them as powerful
tools, often with elemental qualities: fire, Ice, water, holding,
breaking... that sort of thing. They are very different tools than
something like Tarot cards which provide insights into situations.
Esoteric runes seem to represent much more essential elemental forces, and
as such deserve caution. Using them for divination or messages would seem
to be innocuous, using them for charms or spell crafting would seem to be
something requiring much more caution.
One suspects that those wishing to discuss this further ought to contact me
directly and we can take the discussion off the list. So that we can free
up space to discuss herbs here.
At 11:45 PM 11/19/99 , you wrote:
>Greetings Rauthulfr,
>do you think that in period ( let's say pre 1000 Iceland) runes were
>cast by women only, or by both sexes? Odin was granted the gift of
>runes, but did he cast them or only use them for 'magical purposes'. Did
>Rig cast runes? What about Kon?
>
>Isrið.
Rauthulfr Meistari inn Orthstori (OL, MC, P-eX, Et Cetera)
An Tir Arts & Sciences Champion AS: XXXIII-XXXIV
or, non- SCA: Michael Wolfe M. A. I. S. AB-
*Practice Random Acts of Chocolate.....
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