I mean, in societies which (from an unabashedly modern POV) were highly illiterate and superstitious, all writing could be seen as being somewhat magical. Personally I don't think it's quite that clear-cut, because it's hard to define what it would mean for them to be magical on their own. Henrik Williams take a pretty hard line against runes being inherently magical and that it's just a writing system. More likely it's different magical symbols or perhaps most likely, different kinds of inscriptions/invocations written in ordinary runes. This is probably what's being talked of in Sigrdrífumál which mentions carving a half-dozen kinds of runes (beer-runes, limb-runes, thought-runes, etc) and is almost certainly not talking about specific Futhark letters. It's the content of the text which make up the 'powerful runes'. The Björketorp stone has 'powerful runes' but it's clearly not the runes themselves it is talking about (which are no different from the ones used in mundane inscriptions like wooden tags reading 'property of Erik'). There are of course also lots of inscriptions with textual magical formulas, and the term rúnar (runes) in magical contexts seems to have referred to such formulas in a lot of cases, rather than characters themselves. (and magical symbols tend to be pretty malleable and amorphous in their meanings anyway) So magical symbols without phonetic values (or at least not known ones) did exist, and would've been called runes in Norse (and have been occasionally called 'amulet runes' in the serious literature) So far nobody's been able to assign them any particular meanings though. the verb heita 'to be called, named' into hight) They just love translating Norse terms into their English cognates, even when they have somewhat different meanings or are obscure and archaic terms. English translations from over 100 years ago, which are the ones people find free online too, are often very bad in this way. So a lot of this misconception stems from bad (or at least misleading) translations. But the problem here is that the word 'rune' in English is taken to refer to the phonographic runes of the Futharks, while the Old Norse term is broader meaning symbol, letter, character. Written sources do refer to 'magical runes'. Personally I used a combination of ᛅᛋᛏ and simply overlapped them, which is what I have carved into my quartz. This may not be necessary, however my piety and beliefs leads me this way and it may just be another practice which can strengthen my intention, such as prayer can strengthen your intention and also meditation can too.Īnybody can create their own sigil and give it meaning. For example, I have created a talisman by mining my own piece of quartz crystal from Swowdonia Wales, put it on a necklace and created my own sigil giving it meaning through intent under the last blue moon and when I was finished I gave my hand a tiny slice and tightened my fist over my new talisman so my blood runs through the sigil that I have carved out using a rotary tool. You have to be open to the belief and their energy otherwise if you refuse to believe you are at the same time rejecting any energies which may benefit you. It is us who hold the magic and through intent we can imply this to certain objects which may benefit you if you allow them to. It is performed through intent when creating such things. Its not the runes and the letters or the symbols/sigil that hold the magic. With respect, creating magic talismans can be done in all different ways. (their methodology basically being akin to reading "A is for apple" in an ABC-book and concluding that A is a symbol of apples and perhaps of fruit in general). Most of what the internet will tell you about what what runes mean is frankly more or less made-up by first assuming letter runes had this deep symbolism despite no evidence of it, and then taking the Rune Poems as accurate descriptions of said symbolism. During the Viking Age, the Old Norse word ást (love) would've been written a-s-t, in runes: ᛅᛋᛏ (long twig variants) or ᛆᛌᛐ (short twig). And it's really very rare runes were used as shorthands for what their names were. You've got the equivalents of 'man' and 'birch' and 'hail' for instance but 'love' isn't one. It's true that the runes had names (varying with time and place Elder Futhark names are not Younger Futhark names and neither are the names of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc). That's a very nice sentiment but there's no more a 'rune for love' than a 'letter of the alphabet for love'.
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