Runeveil
Runic casts and Norse symbols
For runic casts, symbols, and Norse-style oracle work.
Oracle / Runes
The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic row, twenty-four signs in three families of eight, carved from about the second century onward. Each rune has a name that is also a thing in the world: cattle, the aurochs, a torch, hail, the yew. The medieval rune poems of England, Norway and Iceland keep a short verse for many of them, and those verses are the oldest commentary we have.
Casting runes as an oracle is a modern practice built on that material. Tacitus describes lots cut from a fruit tree and read three at a time, but he does not say the signs were runes. Choose a cast below and hold the question while the runes are drawn.
About the runes
The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic row, used by Germanic peoples from about the second to the eighth century AD. Its name comes from its first six letters, F, U, Th, A, R, K, the way “alphabet” comes from alpha and beta. It has twenty-four runes, traditionally divided into three families of eight, the ættir of Freyr, Hagal and Tyr. Each rune stood for a sound and carried a name that was a real word: Fehu, cattle or wealth; Isa, ice; Sowilo, the sun. The letters were most likely adapted from an Old Italic alphabet of the Alps, and the earliest inscriptions are short: a name, a maker, a single charged word.
Where rune casting comes from
The oldest account of Germanic lot-casting comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, writing in AD 98. In his Germania he describes slips cut from a fruit-bearing tree, each marked with a sign and scattered on a white cloth. A priest, or for private questions the father of the household, prayed, looked up to the sky and took up three slips one at a time, reading them by their signs. If the answer forbade, the question was not asked again that day.
What Tacitus does not say is what the signs were. His book is older than the earliest runic inscriptions we can date, so the link to runes is a reasonable guess, not a fact. No handbook of rune divination survives from the Viking age. Modern rune reading is built on Tacitus, on the medieval rune poems and on a century of practice. Reading runes reversed is a modern convention as well, borrowed most likely from tarot.
How a reading is laid out and read
Begin with a clear question. “What do I need to understand about this?” works better than “What will happen?”
A single rune gives one answer, a theme to carry with you. Three runes are often laid for the Norns, who sit at the well beneath the World Tree: Urðr for what has come to be, Verðandi for what is coming to be, Skuld for what is owed or what shall be. A five-rune layout adds a rune for what is hidden and one for what the matter could still become. The Tacitus lot takes three runes one at a time and reads them together as a single answer.
Read each rune on its own, then in its position, then with the others. The runes do not decide for you. They show the shape of a situation, and the reading is in what you see there.
Further reading
- The Rune Poems: Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic Verses and Their Kennings The three medieval rune poems are the closest we come to a voice from inside the runic tradition. What each one is, why they differ, and how to read their kennings.
- How to Cast and Read Runes: Tacitus, Layouts, Reversals and Making a Set What Tacitus really says about Germanic lot-casting, how modern rune layouts work, why reversed runes are a modern convention, and how to make your own set of runes.
- Runes in Stone: Runestones, Bind Runes and the Misuse of Runic Signs Three famous stones (Kylver, Rök, Jelling), what bind runes really were on the old inscriptions, and how some runes were taken over by 20th-century movements.
- Yggdrasil, the Norns and the Nine Worlds: The Cosmos Behind the Runes A source-based guide to Norse cosmology: the World Tree Yggdrasil, the well of Urðr and the three Norns, the meaning of wyrd, and the nine worlds hung on the tree.
- The Runic Rows: Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc Where the runes came from, how the 24-rune Elder Futhark was ordered, why the Viking age cut it to 16, and how the English expanded it to 29 and more.
- Runes in the Old Texts: Rúnatal, Ljóðatal, Sigrdrífa and Egil What the Eddic poems and sagas actually say about runes: Odin on the tree, his eighteen charms, Sigrdrífa's lesson to Sigurd, Egil's carvings, and galdr and seiðr.
Runes on your phone
The app keeps a history of your readings, has a sign for every day and a home-screen widget, and goes further into the tradition.