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karmicdragonflyOne thing about reading Old English is that it has definitely opened interesting pathways for me. Old English was originally written in runes; only later was the Roman alphabet adopted. The ones used in Old English are called the "Younger Futhark" as I understand it, to distinguish from the Northern Norse "Elder Futhark" -- Futharc being the order of the first 6 runes.
Today, I've been playing around with them. Thinking of --
"The hail came; the stone remained."
"Se hægl come; se stan ætstod."
-- written one over the top of the other as a wish, or a thought, or a meditation that as the political situation becomes harder, that I will be like a stone and withstand the hailstorm. I believe this would be called a bind rune nowadays.
There are a lot of knowledgable folks online who will argue there is no evidence of runes being used for magical purposes. And that several runes together could be used as a ligature to save space, or when you ran out of space, but not used for magic. And I think those folks are mostly accurate, although there are some historical inscriptions where there are stacked runes, and some used on gravestones, which have the appearance or "feel" of being used as protective wards or prayers. Otherwise, I don't think there is any evidence that we know of for use of runes other than communication.
My thought on this is that I cannot believe the runes would not be used for incantations, prayers, and the like. Since ALL writing is used for communication and for other more, let's call it, "mystical" uses, then why would runes be any different?
As an example of a Christian use of letters as a ligature is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho" ( ☧ ) symbol. It's the first 2 letters of Christos in Greek Χριστοσ. So ostensibly this is a ligature -- an abbreviation -- to save space, but you won't convince me that people didn't use these as magical protection charms. I mean, I think they still do.
So basically, Old English words, sentence structure, letter, runes -- all of it -- has set my mind going down various paths. And I like doing that!
Today, I've been playing around with them. Thinking of --
"The hail came; the stone remained."
"Se hægl come; se stan ætstod."
-- written one over the top of the other as a wish, or a thought, or a meditation that as the political situation becomes harder, that I will be like a stone and withstand the hailstorm. I believe this would be called a bind rune nowadays.
There are a lot of knowledgable folks online who will argue there is no evidence of runes being used for magical purposes. And that several runes together could be used as a ligature to save space, or when you ran out of space, but not used for magic. And I think those folks are mostly accurate, although there are some historical inscriptions where there are stacked runes, and some used on gravestones, which have the appearance or "feel" of being used as protective wards or prayers. Otherwise, I don't think there is any evidence that we know of for use of runes other than communication.
My thought on this is that I cannot believe the runes would not be used for incantations, prayers, and the like. Since ALL writing is used for communication and for other more, let's call it, "mystical" uses, then why would runes be any different?
As an example of a Christian use of letters as a ligature is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho" ( ☧ ) symbol. It's the first 2 letters of Christos in Greek Χριστοσ. So ostensibly this is a ligature -- an abbreviation -- to save space, but you won't convince me that people didn't use these as magical protection charms. I mean, I think they still do.
So basically, Old English words, sentence structure, letter, runes -- all of it -- has set my mind going down various paths. And I like doing that!