Ancient Rune Stones

The runes that we use today for scrying and divination purposes were essentially an ancient form of alphabet. Each rune was a letter and also possessed one or more meanings.

Runic alphabets were used for carving, usually in stone or in wood. For this reason a notable feature of runes is that they are constructed almost exclusively of straight lines. Carving a circle in stone is not easy!

Runic History

The use of runes for writing and divination dates back at least two thousand years. The earliest known runes date from around the third century however many experts believe that they were in use much earlier.

The earliest known runestones - the "Elder Runes" - are Germanic in origin. They were used in central and Northern Europe and are often connected with Norse mythology.

There are, of course, many different runic systems. These include viking runes and anglo-saxon rune systems.

Futhark

Our modern word "alphabet" comes from a concatenation of the words "alpha" and "beta", the first two letter of the Greek alphabet. In a similar fashion runic alphabets are known as futharks. This comes from the first six letters of the oldest runic alphabet: f-u-th-a-r-k.

The oldest known futhark derives from the third century. This consists of twenty four letter symbols and is known simply as the Elder Futhark. A later Scandanavian simplification of the Elder Futhark resulted in a sixteen character runic alphabet called the Younger Futhark. There are also other variations such as the Anglo-Saxon Futhark.

Using Runes for Divination

When used for divination purposes, each rune was carved onto a separate stone or piece of wood. These could then be mixed up and selected randomly.

Today you can buy beautiful reconstructions of the ancient rune stones in a wide variety of materials from plastic to valuable metals. A cheaper alternative is simply to buy or draw the runes ona set of playing cards, however this lacks the authentic atmosphere.

Some modern runestone sets on the market do not depict the original ancient runeshave but created their own symbols. That's not a bad thing but personally I prefer to buy the real thing. In particular I'd never use runes that included curved lines or circles.