From: radzy@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (T. O. Radzykewycz)
Subject: Re: info wanted on runes
Organization: International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:13:52 GMT




Hi Janis and everyone else!

I found the book I was talking about:
	_Reading_the_Past:_RUNES_ by R. I. Page

The germanic futhark (runic alphabet) is the one I was talking
about in my last posting.  It has 25 runes.  The longest futhark
is the Anglo-Saxon futhork, with 31 runes.  (The spelling
'futhork' is supposed to be different.) The shortest seems to be
the "younger" futhark, either Danish or Swedo-Norwegian dialect,
with 16 runes.

The common fortune-telling rune sets have 25 symbols, which
correspond pretty well with the germanic futhark, plus one
additional which (I believe) is blank.  In addition to the
extra blank rune, they use a slightly different order than
Page does.

The best fortune-telling rune book I've found is:
	_The_Enchanted_Alphabet_ by Dr. James M. Peterson
(who probably ruined his academic reputation by publishing it.)
This is where I got the information about dividing the futhark
into three aettir, along with some info about hidden, or
"secret" runes (similar to disguised-speech word games like pig
latin, but with runes).

One thing that all of the serious scholars I've looked at agree
on is that runes are not fixed, the way our alphabet is.  That
is, a letter can be reversed left-to-right and still be fine,
like with the toys-r-us signs, but it's more common than that.
Individual runes are even occasionally turned upside-down, so
that their "L" looks like ours.  This can be important if you
want to get a lot of letters into a small space -- reverse
whatever letters you need to, to make the words as small as
possible.  Also, words and phrases are not always written
left-to-right, but sometimes right-to-left or top-down.

I'm not up to doing an ascii picture of them, but I'm willing to
send the bitmaps and/or postscript program to anyone who wants
them.  What the heck, I'll go ahead and post them.  Or you can
check out your local occult bookstore for rune books.

Here's a list of the rune names and translations.  This is from
Page's book.  The postscript program prints out this stuff, along
with the symbol itself.  (Note: "j" should probably read "y", but
I've left it the way Page presented it.)

  sound  name   	  meaning
    f  - fehu		- money, cattle, wealth
    u  - uruz		- ?wild ox?
    th - thurisaz	- giant, monster
    a  - ansuz		- a god
    r  - raido		- wagon, chariot
    k  - ken/kauna	- torch/canker sore
    g  - gebo		- gift
    w  - wunjo		- joy
    h  - hagalaz	- hail
    n  - naudiz		- need, necessity, extremity
    i  - isa		- ice
    j  - jera		- year, fruitful part of the year
    I  - ihwaz		- yew tree
    p  - perth		- meaning unclear
    Z  - algiz		- meaning unclear
    s  - sowilo		- sun
    t  - tiwaz		- the god Tiw [c.f. Tuesday]
    b  - berkanan	- birch twig
    e  - ehwaz		- horse
    m  - mannaz		- man
    l  - laguz		- water
    ng - ingwaz		- the god Ing
    o  - othila		- hereditary land or hereditary possession
    d  - dagaz		- day

The fortune-telling books use slightly different meanings, and even
names, for some of the runes.  Please don't flame *me* for this
difference.

gebu wunju		| gift (of) joy
ek radzI erilaZ		| I, radzy, wrote (this)