#runelore

Source: SonofCetanu [DeviantArt]

Posted 20th April 2024.

I really really hope that intensity carries over to you all’s end, so I’m very excited to see what my regulars and lurkers think.

To preface this I’d like to say that by no means am I an expert on Runes (lore, casting, reading,etc...) but I have been working with them for a long time and participated in handfulls of various workshops and studied under seasoned practitioners who I would say are as close to experts as it really gets. This will probably be somewhat lengthy because various things require a bit of explanation so I apologize in advance for that. 

I’ve wanted to make this post for a while because I think that there’s a very common misconception with many folks who work with runes on this website, which is that runes are a simple divination device similar to tarot, oracle cards, I Ching, etc...  In my experience and the experience of many this isn’t true.

So why aren’t runes the same as tarot? 

We have zero factual evidence showing us that the cultures who originally used runes used them as tools for divination. What we do know however is that they were looked at as energies/spirits of the earth. So given that that’s how they were originally considered, we should pay them similar mind. 

The origin story of the runes is equally important here. Odin sacrificed himself by spearing himself to a tree (Yggdrasil) to obtain the secrets of the runes. The runes only revealed themselves to him after he shed blood to them. For those of y’all who don’t know why he did that,  as legend goes, the runes won’t reveal themselves to those who don’t prove themselves worthy. 

So how do you prove yourself to the runes?

There are a few ways I guess. And for a while at first, it’s not entirely necessary to blood them. Start with sacrifices. Gebo should be considered heavily here. A gift for a gift. What are you asking of the runes? What seems like a fair trade for their help? Most divinatory exchanges can be repaid with alcohol or bread, blood if you’re feeling up to it. But note that the substitutions for blood will only be sufficient for so long. I like to think of the runes as being mercenary in nature. What I mean by that is that the favors granted by them aren’t necessarily favors per se. They’re more like paid debts (I use that word for the lack of having a better one here) So if you haven’t given anything to them, they likely won’t be very willing to work for you. 

What is blooding runes?

Blooding runes is simply giving blood to the runes. If it’s just a blood offering you can put your blood in an offering vessel and I would recommend galdring them. Now if you have a set of runes, you can physically blood them, and everyone seems to have a different method for this but mine is to blood each rune individually while galdring their names as they’re in my hand. I do this for every rune. In certain cases, like asking for favors from specific runes, you would just blood the ones you’re working with.