Rune Reading

Runes as a writing system

The runologist Michael Barnes describes runes as an alphabetical system of writing that was, for the most part, used to record language. World History Encyclopedia dates the earliest confirmed runic inscription, on the Vimose comb from Denmark, to about 160 CE, and describes early inscriptions as mostly names on wood and metal objects. It dates the 24-character Elder Futhark to about 160 to 700 CE. These dates come from one encyclopedia entry and were not cross-checked against a second specialist source.

Tacitus and marked lots

In chapter 10 of Germania, the Roman author Tacitus describes a way of consulting lots among Germanic peoples. In the Church and Brodribb translation, a small bough from a fruit-bearing tree is cut into pieces distinguished by certain marks and thrown at random over a white garment. A priest or the father of a family invokes the gods, takes up each piece three times and reads a meaning from its mark. The translation refers only to marks and does not mention runes or letters.

Paul Mountfort reports that Wilhelm Grimm argued in 1827 that these signs were the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark. Mountfort adds that the historical evidence for early Germanic runecasting is equivocal and has divided scholars. Whether the marks were runes is therefore an interpretation and not an established fact.

Rune magic and the literary evidence

Barnes separates runes as magical symbols in themselves from the use of runes to write incantations. He regards the evidence that rune-carvers believed the mere use of runes harnessed magical power as slight. Citing Raymond Page, he says the case for rune magic rests mainly on literary evidence from medieval Iceland, which produced few runic inscriptions, mostly dated after 1200. This is one runologist's assessment and concerns magic more broadly, not divination.

Twentieth-century revival and rune sets

Mountfort places the first modern attempt to revive runes as a magico-religious system with the Austrian occultist Guido List, who claimed visions of the secrets of the runes while blindfolded for eleven months after an eye operation in 1902. His 18-rune Armanen system, published in 1908, was presented as based on eighteen verses of the Hávamál, and Mountfort says it was not concerned with divination. Stephen Flowers, himself an occultist author, writes that it was promoted again from the 1950s.

Flowers describes Ralph Blum's 1982 book as combining a text with ceramic rune stones for fortune-telling and, by his account, selling as many as two million copies worldwide. He criticises its treatment of the order, names and shapes of the runes as careless. A library catalogue records a 1982 London edition, while another page gives 1983 for the first edition, so the publication date needs checking.

Rune, futhark and runology

In specialist usage a rune is a letter of a runic alphabet, and a runic inscription is a sequence of runes placed on an object. Barnes sets runology, the study of these symbols and inscriptions, apart from archaeology, art history, mythology and occultism. The name futhark comes from the first six characters of the row. Elder Futhark names the 24-character row, Younger Futhark the 16-character Scandinavian row, and futhorc the Anglo-Saxon row used in England and Frisia.

Runecasting and runic divination

Mountfort defines runecasting as divination using runes and describes runic guidebooks as a genre of divination manual. They generally consist of an index of the alleged meanings of the Elder Futhark runes, set between a historical rationale and instructions for runic divination. The sources reviewed use runecasting and runic divination more often than rune reading, and they do not say whether practitioners treat these terms differently.

Differences between rune sets

Rune sets differ in size and origin. The historical Elder Futhark has 24 characters. A Blum set is described on a tarot education website as 25 ceramic stones, the basic 24 and one blank rune with the keyword 'Unknowable'. The Armanen system associated with Guido List has 18 runes. The blank stone does not correspond to a character in the 24-character historical row, so it belongs to the modern practice and not to runic writing.

Casting and interpreting

Mountfort writes that runic guidebooks are used in an oracle reading in which the runes are cast, and from which users construct what he calls narratives of destiny. He compares the guides to interpretive texts used to explain tarot or I Ching readings, and contrasts them with the stapled booklets that sometimes accompany commercial rune sets and the weightier workbooks used by dedicated practitioners. In this literature each rune is treated as a symbolic token for forces of nature, gods, mythical monsters or talismanic objects.

Sets and materials

A commercial form described by both Flowers and the tarot education website is a boxed set of ceramic stones sold with a book. Guides to such sets are written for a reading in which the stones are cast. The sources reviewed do not describe other materials, such as wood or bone, and do not compare them.

What the sources do not describe

The sources reviewed do not describe a typical session with a practitioner, its length, any intake questions, fees or privacy arrangements. Mountfort's account concerns guidebooks and the people who use them, and the other sources concern history or the product. A standard format for professional readings should not be inferred from this entry.

Oracle, guidance and self-awareness

Joan Bunning, writing on a tarot education website, says Ralph Blum's Book of Runes has helped people discover the power of runes as an oracle and as a tool for self-awareness. Flowers describes the same book as a means of fortune-telling, and Mountfort says users construct narratives of destiny from a cast. These are descriptions of what the practice is used for, given by commentators and by a tarot educator describing a product, and they are not findings of benefit.

Claims of antiquity

Rune reading is often presented as an ancient oracle. The catalogue record of Blum's book carries the subtitle 'a handbook for the use of an ancient oracle', and the tarot website calls the runes an ancient Germanic oracle of 24 symbolic markings. The scholarly sources reviewed are more cautious. Barnes finds the evidence for magical belief among rune-carvers slight, Mountfort calls the evidence for early runecasting equivocal, and Flowers says the modern revival cannot be considered a direct continuation of the ancient runic tradition.

Health and therapeutic claims

The sources reviewed do not document medical or therapeutic claims made for rune reading, so none are recorded on this page. Where a reading is offered as part of a wider wellbeing service, the claims made for that service need to be assessed separately and against their own evidence.

Searches for outcome studies

No controlled studies of rune reading were identified. Two PubMed searches combining runes with divination, casting, reading or stones returned five records each, none concerning the practice apart from a 2012 British Dental Journal editorial that used 'casting the runes' as a metaphor. A PubMed title search for divination, tarot, oracle cards and fortune-telling returned 66 records, and the first 20 were screened. None tested rune reading. A general academic search found history and text analyses of runic guidebooks but no trials of health or psychological outcomes. This describes what was found and is not evidence that rune reading has no effect.

Historical evidence for divinatory use

Evidence about early use is textual and archaeological, not experimental. The Tacitus passage describes marked lots without mentioning runes, and Barnes judges the evidence for runes as magical symbols to be slight, with the literary case resting mainly on medieval Iceland. Mountfort calls the question of historical authenticity probably unresolvable. Taken together, the sources reviewed do not establish that runes were used for divination in the first centuries CE, and they do not rule it out.

Research on divination in general

A 2021 modelling paper by Ze Hong and Joseph Henrich argues that strong prior belief, underreporting of negative evidence and misreading belief from behaviour can each lead people to overestimate how well divination works. It is a theoretical model of divination across societies and not a test of rune reading, and it does not show that any particular practice is ineffective.

Heathen and New Age settings

Mountfort describes runic guidebooks as a fixture of New Age bookshops and of online Heathen revival groups, and says the guidebook genre belongs to a revival of Heathen interests with roots about two centuries old. He notes the widespread presence of spurious or exaggerated truth claims about runes in revelatory texts. Flowers says academic runology and experiential rune practice follow different rules of knowledge, and acknowledges that poor scholarship is common in New Age settings.

Use of runic symbols by extremist movements

The Anti-Defamation League reports that Nazi Germany used the othala rune, among other symbols, in an attempt to reconstruct a mythic Aryan past, including as divisional insignia of two Waffen-SS divisions, and that white supremacist groups have used it since. It also notes that the symbol appears in non-extremist contexts, including among non-racist pagans, so context must be assessed. Mountfort says the SS insignia was formed by doubling the sig rune and, quoting Flowers, calls List a doctrinaire racist. Neither source examines rune reading specifically.

What the sources report about harm

The sources reviewed contain no clinical adverse-event data, contraindications or safety studies specific to rune reading, which is not the same as showing that no one is harmed. A reading is not a medical, legal or financial assessment, and it should not delay or replace necessary care or professional advice.

Findings from research on fortune telling in general

Related research concerns fortune telling more widely and not runes. In three studies reported in 2022 (two online experiments, n = 252 and 441, and one laboratory study, n = 193), a positive fortune-telling outcome increased financial risk taking, especially among men and with little effect in women. A 2015 case report described one woman whose use of clairvoyance services met criteria for an addictive disorder. A single case cannot show how often this occurs.

Training and regulation

The sources reviewed do not describe any training standard, professional register or legal regulation for rune reading in any jurisdiction, and none was verified. A reader can ask how a service is described, what it costs and whether it claims to give medical, legal or financial guidance.