Perhaps two runes were destroyed forever by the Nazis. The Norse neo-Pagans tried to bring back the Swastika as a runic symbol without much success. The ancient usage of the swastika not only as a symbol by Indo-European cultures dates back perhaps prior to 700 BC in Greece where it was painted on amphoreis and various ceramic artifacts, and even graves. Also it exists in many other cultures such as the Chinese and Native Americans. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present it became popular to use rune stones for divinatory purposes, they are cast like coins or sticks in I Ching or laid out in crosses or wheels such as Tarot cards.
Some modern witches inscribe their magical tools and personal jewelry with runic characters.
The magical use of runic in Western practices has been revived in New Age ideas and activities. Ralph Blum, a Fullbright scholar and Harvard graduate, has adapted runes for oracular purposes. He details these purposes and activities in his two books The Book of Runes and Rune Play which are accompanied by 25 letters stationed on ceramic counters which can be used for casting in a similar divinatory manner as in I Ching. Another method of casting runes in Western magic is to write the letters on slips of papers that are given, handed, or sent to the victim of the spell. Such a method was brilliantly described in the short story Casting the Runes by M. R. James in More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary , 1911.