Llewellyn's Truth About Runes

By Donald Tyson

Join Donald Tyson on a guided tour of the history and modern use of runes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Jun 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780738738567

Donald Tyson

Donald Tyson is an occult scholar and the author of the popular, critically acclaimed Necronomicon series. He has written more than a dozen books on Western esoteric traditions, including Tarot Magic, and edited and annotated Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Donald lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.

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About the Author

Donald Tyson (Nova Scotia, Canada) is an occult scholar and the author of the popular, critically acclaimed Necronomicon series. He has written more than a dozen books on Western esoteric traditions. Visit him online at DonaldTyson.com.

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Llewellyn's Truth About Runes. ©1989 by Donald Tyson. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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First e-book edition © 2013

E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-3856-7

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Manufactured in the United States of America

The Truth About Runes

What Are Runes?

From a word to a word I was led to a word,

From a deed to another deed.

—Havamal

The runes are a set of symbols that concisely embody the most potent magical system of the ancient world. Because rune magic was rarely described in written records, persecution by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages succeeded in almost obliterating the entire tradition of rune use from the memories of the peoples of northern Europe, the indigenous home of the runes. Runes became the recreation of antiquarian scholars, known only as an obscure and obsolete alphabet preserved in crumbling parchment manuscripts and on leaning stone monuments erected by the vanished Vikings.

Runic characters are letters that can be used for writing. This is their exoteric function. But in pagan times, they were used for much more. The undivided forest wilderness in which the wandering Germanic tribes hunted and made war upon each other was ruled by elemental forces—Water, Sun, storm, the seasons, trees, necessary beasts such as the bull and the horse, fire on the hearthstones, the cleared camp circle, the human virtues of cunning speech, courage, battle skill, and the mysteries of birth, growth, and death—all of which combined together to determine the life of frail human beings.

The German god Donar (called Thor by the Norse) can be traced back to the Sun. Woden, or Odin, was originally the fury of the storm. Ing, the deity who gives England its name, sprang from the fertility of the Earth. All the major Teutonic gods are based upon a limited number of natural potencies. Although they were later refined and made more human in poetry and art, in earliest days they were different masks of the ever-changing face of Nature.

The Germanic tribes embodied these same elemental forces in simple symbols that

Reviews for Llewellyn's Truth About Runes

[Malte Christensen · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read the introduction and thought what a load of, you know what. Runes are alphabet, plain and simple.