8/18/2006 - Runes
There are 2 basic different types of runes. The ones which are most commonly known and the ones which are most likely to show up in TV and on movies and such, are the Germanic runes, these runes consist of symbols which are carved into usually a stone or wood surface.
Here to give you an idea what they look like. I am sure these images are familler to most of you. It is also from these type of runes that many fictional languages or scripts are created for both movies and litature, you can see runic influence in the well known Tolklien for exmaple.
The runes are commonly mistakanly associated with Celtic Druids, but this is not so, for they were an oral culture with no real wirtten language, though there are mondern Druids today which are familler with these kinds of runes and use them. They were traditionaly and originaly used by the Norse.
The way these runes are read is very simillar to reading Tarot which I will probaly discuss here later at some point. That is the runes are laid out in a particular spread/pattern and then you interput what the symbols mean and thier relation to each other.
The secound type of runes is much more simple and rough, and basicly consists of gathering varrious objects which come from nature, stones, seeds, bark, twigs, and so on. You then cast them upon the ground and read them by the pattern in which they happen to fall, much like reading tea leaves.
These types of runes were used by the Druids, and some African tribes use a very simallar type of runes, the difference being that they will use a wide gatering of different objects including trinkets collected that are man made, instead of using things that are purely natural.
The way these runes are read for another person usually involve having the person being read for pick out among the collection the things which they feel most drawn for, and then those items which have been selected are cast and as before read according to the pattern in which they happen to fall.
| 
