runes

[palindrom]

hello : )

what are runes? i've been working with them for close to two years now, and i'm still baffled as to understand what they actually are.

they don't feel like "entities with a personality"
some of them feel very elemental, some don't
inside the runes i sometimes meet beings with an independent consiousness - it's definitely a different kind of presence than the runic presence
they feel like huge streams of a certain quality, but very "naturally" so, perhaps a bit like i imagine giants to be, a kind of consiousness that's quite unlike mine.
but then, in nordic mythology, giants are not in the least mentioned as in any way runic, and the runes seem to be far more elegant and sophisticated anyway...
grmpf. i'm not able to understand the runes with my mind - do i have to?

...i also wonder, where could the runes be located in comparison to the system of the golden dawn?

as far as i understand it by now, the runes seem closest related to the hebraic aleph-beth, being used kabbalistically, as sound-form-energy-packages...

but then, where does the kabbalistic use of the aleph-beth stand in regard to the gd-work with the elements, the planetary work?

...quite a lot of questions here : )

greetings!

pali

[Shinichi]

To understand the nature of the Runes, you need to understand Web of Wyrd, or the Well of Urd as it is termed in the Eddas.

The entire conscious world that we know as "reality," or "nature," is a peculiar thing. The Indians call this Maya. It is, on one hand, the Cosmic Dream. On the other hand, it is Reality, the concrete world that you deal with every day. And no matter which way you look at it, a couple of things remain true.

One, the whole world is made of Vibration. This is scientific fact. Everything vibrates. Studying this is part of what lead to String Theory, where a serious attempt was made to figure out the root of all that vibration and energy.

Two, everything within the world is connected to everything else. "Modern" science is a little behind in studying this particular field, but it is true none the less.

If you take these two pieces of information and put them together, then you may understand why Wyrd is called a Web. Much like the image that String Theory calls to mind, the world is made up of vibrating threads, and these threads are all connected to everything.

And, each one of those strings (or series of strings) is a Rune.

This is why, via Galdr, we can use the Runes to cast spells and literally bend reality. A Runic Formula (much like Magical Formulea from any other system of Incantation, like IAO) is quite literally a spell that bends the Web of Wyrd a particular way by Weaving the Threads the way you want. This is also why, via Spa and similar, we can use the Runes to Divine. The Runes themselves are the strings and webs, and thus by casting them, we can gain insight into how the Web is weaved in regards to a particular subject.

And, this is also why Odin hung himself off of Yggdrasil (outside Wyrd, or above Urd as the Edda tells it) in order to understand the Runes. He transcended the world of fate and cosmic dreams (in deep trance / samadhi) in order to understand the forces that make it work.

Of course, there's lots more besides that, but that may give you a start. They are forces of nature, like with Elementals there are sometimes entities born of them (I have also created artificial entities / servitors using runes), and like with any other force of nature they can sometimes have a mind of their own. There is much here to explore, so don't get hung up on "it's this, not that" when exploring them. The True Mysteries will always be very deep, and very personal experiences.

As to how things work with cross overs, don't worry about cross overs so much. Runes are a Native European Magick. Hermetics is a Greco-Egyptian Magick. Kabbalah is a Jewish Magick. To get the most out of any paradigm, you have to dive into the culture that it comes from, or you will never experience the full initiation of the material that you're working with. Culture is vital to understanding Cosmology, and when you mix cosmologies that were born of a culture, you tend to lose something very important.



~:Shin:~

[magari]

As to how things work with cross overs, don't worry about cross overs so much. Runes are a Native European Magick. Hermetics is a Greco-Egyptian Magick. Kabbalah is a Jewish Magick. To get the most out of any paradigm, you have to dive into the culture that it comes from, or you will never experience the full initiation of the material that you're working with. Culture is vital to understanding Cosmology, and when you mix cosmologies that were born of a culture, you tend to lose something very important.

Here! Here! [thumbup]

Gotta walk in the footsteps of the mystics before you if you want to use their tools properly.

[palindrom]

To understand the nature of the Runes, you need to understand Web of Wyrd, or the Well of Urd as it is termed in the Eddas.

The entire conscious world that we know as "reality," or "nature," is a peculiar thing. The Indians call this Maya. It is, on one hand, the Cosmic Dream. On the other hand, it is Reality, the concrete world that you deal with every day. And no matter which way you look at it, a couple of things remain true.

One, the whole world is made of Vibration. This is scientific fact. Everything vibrates. Studying this is part of what lead to String Theory, where a serious attempt was made to figure out the root of all that vibration and energy.

Two, everything within the world is connected to everything else. "Modern" science is a little behind in studying this particular field, but it is true none the less.

If you take these two pieces of information and put them together, then you may understand why Wyrd is called a Web. Much like the image that String Theory calls to mind, the world is made up of vibrating threads, and these threads are all connected to everything.

And, each one of those strings (or series of strings) is a Rune.

this kind of fits with what i perceive as "streams".

This is why, via Galdr, we can use the Runes to cast spells and literally bend reality. A Runic Formula (much like Magical Formulea from any other system of Incantation, like IAO) is quite literally a spell that bends the Web of Wyrd a particular way by Weaving the Threads the way you want. This is also why, via Spa and similar, we can use the Runes to Divine. The Runes themselves are the strings and webs, and thus by casting them, we can gain insight into how the Web is weaved in regards to a particular subject.

in one of the few moments where i did real magic so far, i had exactly this experience of just reaching through the universe and placing my "letter" with the person i wanted to contact me, and half an hour later there came the message by sms.
it was a very "spatial" feeling, this reaching out, and i was defitnitely surfing along a stream or pathway to get to this person...

never tried to surf on a rune like this yet.

and my spatial/astral senses are still just developing, so my ability to weave on this plane(s) is still quite limited...

thank you for your description!

And, this is also why Odin hung himself off of Yggdrasil (outside Wyrd, or above Urd as the Edda tells it) in order to understand the Runes. He transcended the world of fate and cosmic dreams (in deep trance / samadhi) in order to understand the forces that make it work.

"transcended" to me always suggests that there is something behind the whole net.
i wonder, but in a passive kind of way, what lies behind the universe...

Of course, there's lots more besides that, but that may give you a start. They are forces of nature, like with Elementals there are sometimes entities born of them (I have also created artificial entities / servitors using runes), and like with any other force of nature they can sometimes have a mind of their own. There is much here to explore, so don't get hung up on "it's this, not that" when exploring them. The True Mysteries will always be very deep, and very personal experiences.

i start to see that, this very alive, creative and creating way a rune/an energystructure seems to re-invent itself.
it seems one has to let go of definitons again and again, although at the same time the understanding/the definition are getting clearer.
it's a weird process, this kind of learning, isn't it?
to quieten down my mind really helps me in this - just stop interpreting what happens, go into total presence of chanting, painting, seeing, sensing the runes...

interesting what you say about creating artifitial entities which are tied to/living in the runes...
a bit early for me to try to do something like this, but i'll keep it in mind.

As to how things work with cross overs, don't worry about cross overs so much. Runes are a Native European Magick. Hermetics is a Greco-Egyptian Magick. Kabbalah is a Jewish Magick. To get the most out of any paradigm, you have to dive into the culture that it comes from, or you will never experience the full initiation of the material that you're working with. Culture is vital to understanding Cosmology, and when you mix cosmologies that were born of a culture, you tend to lose something very important.

yes, i start to this more clearly, the way each culture has it's own energetic signature.
it's also why i went for the runes straight away when i started with magic - i just love this energy, this way of weaving patterns.

it's also why i couldn't let go of one of my branches of esoteric study, because they're all so wonderfully different [happyface]

as to diving into the culture, this i find a bit difficult (and not only with what is recorded from the northern tradition), because the written history carries a heavy patriachal seal, which i don't like. there are good books around, also some written from women, but, for example, all the knowledge about freya that seems to have been stamped out is quite hard to bear sometimes...
one has to grope around for snitches of this and that and try to find the goddess and her power behind them.
how a woman felt who lived somewhere in the north a thousand years ago, i find very hard to tell so far...

so diving into cultures - not soooo easy to me.

the runes themselves, and that's part of why i love them, are telling the whole story, very fresh and alive and present.
or at least, that's how i experience them

...isn't the whole golden dawn system a mix-up of greek, egyptian and jewish stuff? do you tink they missed something by mixing things?

...isn't there also the possibility to create new, interesting pathways?

have a good day : )

pali

[Shinichi]

in one of the few moments where i did real magic so far, i had exactly this experience of just reaching through the universe and placing my "letter" with the person i wanted to contact me, and half an hour later there came the message by sms.
it was a very "spatial" feeling, this reaching out, and i was defitnitely surfing along a stream or pathway to get to this person...

never tried to surf on a rune like this yet.

You can read the book The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates for an interesting, though entirely fictional, perspective on "surfing" a rune.

"transcended" to me always suggests that there is something behind the whole net.
i wonder, but in a passive kind of way, what lies behind the universe...

Gunningagap is The Void outside of Wyrd. The Abyss. And then, of course, there's always something on the other side of The Abyss, isn't there?

i start to see that, this very alive, creative and creating way a rune/an energystructure seems to re-invent itself.
it seems one has to let go of definitons again and again, although at the same time the understanding/the definition are getting clearer.
it's a weird process, this kind of learning, isn't it?
to quieten down my mind really helps me in this - just stop interpreting what happens, go into total presence of chanting, painting, seeing, sensing the runes...

Yes, it is a Wyrd process. [wink2]

interesting what you say about creating artifitial entities which are tied to/living in the runes...
a bit early for me to try to do something like this, but i'll keep it in mind.

Entities are an advanced subject, but once you get there, you can explore a lot of different ways of creating both passive and sentient things.

as to diving into the culture, this i find a bit difficult (and not only with what is recorded from the northern tradition), because the written history carries a heavy patriachal seal, which i don't like. there are good books around, also some written from women, but, for example, all the knowledge about freya that seems to have been stamped out is quite hard to bear sometimes...
one has to grope around for snitches of this and that and try to find the goddess and her power behind them.
how a woman felt who lived somewhere in the north a thousand years ago, i find very hard to tell so far...

so diving into cultures - not soooo easy to me.

Digging through the history is good and important, but you shouldn't base your life on how someone lived a thousand years ago. Your life and needs are very different from theirs.

Do you want to know what it's like to be a Germanic man or woman? Simple: be yourself. Know your own nature, and be true to it. If you are a warrior, fight. If you are a witch or wizard, weave your spells. If you are a seer, see. If you are a farmer, farm. Do not over complicate life, do not let your life be dictated by others. For even when a King must pass down rule, he cannot have the power to change who you are.

Besides that, just know the stories. Learn the cosmology, and become immersed into it until you can look anywhere in the world and see it with the spiritual, nature loving eyes that the ancestors saw it with. Worship the gods without idolizing them, honor the spirits without fearing them. Live well, live true, and live noble, and then the rest just sort of falls into place.

...isn't the whole golden dawn system a mix-up of greek, egyptian and jewish stuff? do you tink they missed something by mixing things?

Yes, they missed quite a lot of things. Theosophy missed even more. Crowley missed a bit less, but even he faced issues mixing paradigms.

...isn't there also the possibility to create new, interesting pathways?

There is indeed. Psionics and Chaos Magick are both relatively recent metaphysical developments. I also have my own work that I am developing, where I tend to focus on independent fundamental principles that come together in a cosmologically neutral paradigm.



~:Shin:~

[Maya The Generator]

Thank you guys. It is my first time that somebody had shown me how to even start dwelling in runes. [thumbup]

I should research moar. Have fun and Praise Teh Sun \[T]/ [cool]

[palindrom]

You can read the book The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates for an interesting, though entirely fictional, perspective on "surfing" a rune.

sounds good to me - i had a look at in the net, and it looks juicy enough to order it to read properly...

although i like to know approximately what (recent as well as older) historical research can tell me about runes, it's nice to read from people who live this stuff, as well...

Gunningagap is The Void outside of Wyrd. The Abyss. And then, of course, there's always something on the other side of The Abyss, isn't there?

the void outside of wyrd. have you been there? what is it like?

...i just know (in theory at least) from things on the other side of an abyss from the kabbalistic tree-of-life-idea. although friedrich weinreb doesn't really mention this whole abyss-stuff greatly. maybe it's more a magic-style kabbalah thing...

is there something on the other side of ginnungagap? i don't remember having read about that in my northern tradition books so far...

Entities are an advanced subject, but once you get there, you can explore a lot of different ways of creating both passive and sentient things.

grmbl... patience and diligence are my best friends these days [wink]

Digging through the history is good and important, but you shouldn't base your life on how someone lived a thousand years ago. Your life and needs are very different from theirs.

it's not about basing my life on the past. it's about knowing of different ways of life-bases (don't know if this word exists at all...); and about being able to choose more clearly what i want as a base in my deep roots.

the rune-powers sometimes seem to bring me closer to those people who lived differently with the elements, rougher, more archaic. i'm fascinated by that, the smell of clean dirt and fresh leaves and wood and cold water which seems to linger in the runes' presence.
there were people living completely in tune with this - what did they perceive?
how do you feel when you are a part of nature like this?

Do you want to know what it's like to be a Germanic man or woman? Simple: be yourself. Know your own nature, and be true to it. If you are a warrior, fight. If you are a witch or wizard, weave your spells. If you are a seer, see. If you are a farmer, farm. Do not over complicate life, do not let your life be dictated by others. For even when a King must pass down rule, he cannot have the power to change who you are.

ok, i can try to see me as a germanic or celtic woman, being swiss. but what about being indian, when i'm fascinated by sanskrit and yoga?

Besides that, just know the stories. Learn the cosmology, and become immersed into it until you can look anywhere in the world and see it with the spiritual, nature loving eyes that the ancestors saw it with. Worship the gods without idolizing them, honor the spirits without fearing them. Live well, live true, and live noble, and then the rest just sort of falls into place.

that's lovely [happyface]
and worth trying it

Yes, they missed quite a lot of things. Theosophy missed even more. Crowley missed a bit less, but even he faced issues mixing paradigms.

would you mind telling me a bit more about what you think gd missed, and what crowley missed less, and how you came to this conclusion?
i'm veeery interested in this!
(and since it is my own thread i take the freedom to lead it away from the main-topic, if you're inclined to follow...)

There is indeed. Psionics and Chaos Magick are both relatively recent metaphysical developments. I also have my own work that I am developing, where I tend to focus on independent fundamental principles that come together in a cosmologically neutral paradigm.

what is a cosmologigally neutral paradigm?

greetings!

pali

[palindrom]

Thank you guys. It is my first time that somebody had shown me how to even start dwelling in runes. [thumbup]

I should research moar. Have fun and Praise Teh Sun \[T]/ [cool]

they're a wonderful, very powerful set of signs, the runes...

sometimes they get almost to strong for my body, but i learned to recognize the signs of overdose and know better now than to push on in that moment...
but as long as i don't overstep this intensity-border, they're really good and wise teachers.

if you check them out, i'd be happy to hear about your experiences - there aren't so many people working with runes, it seems...

have a good day [yay]

pali

[Shinichi]

the void outside of wyrd. have you been there? what is it like?

I've walked the web of wyrd and looked across it. I haven't been "in" the abyss and I have not crossed it, but I have been to its gateway. It is...like the space between planets and atoms, like the open spaces in a spider web. It's more than "the beyond," it is "the in between."

...i just know (in theory at least) from things on the other side of an abyss from the kabbalistic tree-of-life-idea. although friedrich weinreb doesn't really mention this whole abyss-stuff greatly. maybe it's more a magic-style kabbalah thing...

is there something on the other side of ginnungagap? i don't remember having read about that in my northern tradition books so far...

Gunningagap isn't really a hierarchal thing like the kabbalistic abyss. It's all around you, all the time. It's like the space between planets, between atoms - it is simply there, omnipresently. Yes, there is something on the "other side" of it, but getting there with pagan methods tends to be a bit different than with modern hermetic based methods. Daoist ascension may be the closer comparison, where you work on tuning yourself into nature and unifying yourself with it.

how do you feel when you are a part of nature like this?

Like you are a drop of water in a lagoon in a vast and endless sea, where the sea is always with you, the lagoon always a part of you, and you yourself are the immortal child of everything.

At least, that's what Odr is like for me.

ok, i can try to see me as a germanic or celtic woman, being swiss. but what about being indian, when i'm fascinated by sanskrit and yoga?

Early on in my training I held a deep fascination with sanskrit and yoga, as well. I even worshiped Shiva with traditional Bhakti Yoga for several years, and I had opportunity to learn and remember things about Yoga that I've found in only a few books. Then one day Odin showed up and claimed me, explaining that those things that are my native roots in this life are easier to work with than those things that were my native roots in another life. I've been walking a the path of my roots, both Native European and Native American, ever since.

Whether you want to be a Germanic woman or an Indian woman, that is something you have to decide at some point unless you are both. They are two very different cultures, and I can tell you from personal experience that at some point you are going to get hit with a culture shock. And, at the end of the day, no matter what cultures influence you - you are simply you. Be true to who you really are, to your Spirit, and you will live a good life. The rest, that's just dress up. Fun, sometimes kinky dress up that is never as important as what's inside the package. [wink2]

would you mind telling me a bit more about what you think gd missed, and what crowley missed less, and how you came to this conclusion?
i'm veeery interested in this!
(and since it is my own thread i take the freedom to lead it away from the main-topic, if you're inclined to follow...)

That, my dear, would require entire volumes to fully explore.

In general essence, anyone who mixes occult traditions without fully understanding the native culture (which is hard to do without being a native) end up corrupting those occult traditions by only looking at the principles at hand through their own native lens. The founders of the GD were students of the Rose Cross tradition, of Theosophy, and of what was becoming popularly known as Hermetics. They took things from Kabbalah without really understanding Jewish Lore and Tradition, and they took things from other traditions without really understanding their native culture either. There's also the edition of the Goetia that Mathers published, which scholars today understand to be a thoroughly flawed translation of a thoroughly flawed translation.

Theosophy was much worse, since they had the terrible habit of simply throwing everything together and expecting their students to figure out what occult and spiritual principles are universal without understanding the native lore of the symbolism and principles they often employed. Some Rosicrusian schools followed in this tradition, looking at the entire world through the lens of their own beliefs and expecting everything to simply fit and apply to the Rose Cross paradigm.

Crowley got some things less mixed up because he did a remarkable amount of work on his own. He used the principles he learned from Mathers and others to found his own school, and to employ an Egyptian mythos that nobody else was using. His work is most certainly not traditional Egyptian Mystery, but it's an often decent paradigm. Alas, he also falls into the habit of looking at everything through his own lens, as broadly displayed in Liber 777 (though much of that, itself, came from the GD).

It is important to remember, when working with any tradition, that your point of view is not the most important - the point of view that is most important is the native one, which has been there for, in some cases, many thousands of years.

As to how I came to these conclusions...well, I've been around the block, seen and read a fair bit, and seen the difference between foreigners who look at Mysteries through their own lens and natives who truly understand those same Mysteries through the lens in which they were established. A Tibetan adept will always understand his Tibetan stuff better than Chinese Daoist stuff, and the Chinese Daoist adept will always understand the Chinese Daoist stuff better than the Tibetan stuff. Yet, the two adepts will be able to talk about the same spiritual experiences, will be able to demonstrate the same siddhis, and will be able to achieve the same enlightenment.

This differences are a difference of Path. Everyone has a natural path suitable for them, as per what Crowley dubbed True Will. Cosmologies can be vastly different and end up in the same spiritual places. But when you are on a certain path, it can be very different from other paths, and these differences are important if you are going to walk a particular path correctly.

Native European spirituality, as but one example, is vastly different from the ascetic spirituality of Ashrams and Temples found in India. You can't simultaneously be a meat eating, drinking, polyamorous pagan and a vegan, sober, celibate Yogi. You can do one or the other, but trying to mix those two particular examples is like mixing oil and water.

what is a cosmologigally neutral paradigm?

A paradigm of practice where principles are used simply because they work, regardless of what gods you pray to or what names you give to the spirits or what have you. Things like Life Force, Consciousness Development, The Sight, Journeying and many other Lesser Mysteries - training in these things can be done in any culture or paradigm, with any cosmology.

Bardon's IIH is a good existing example of such a paradigm, but it does have a fair bit of cosmology as well that comes from Greek tradition. Chaos Magick works very hard to be a Meta Paradigm, but it tends to get caught up in...yeah.

Perhaps the best example of exactly what I mean in this context is my Fundamental Development work. It doesn't matter what god you pray to if any, it doesn't matter whether you call nature spirits elementals or faeries, and it doesn't matter what type of magio-social label you stamp on yourself. It's just simple, independent, fundamental practice that works. Period. My entire method of magick is just like that. Rooted in old school tradition, revised for modern meditative practice, and completely stripped of almost all initiatic veils simply because I believe most of them to be out dated and I'm not bound by oaths to keep secrets anyway.



~:Shin:~

[Candy Ray]

I used to write to a specialist in Seidr, (mainly about the sexual magic he did!) and he said this about the runes: "The runes are natural currents of energy or power. Traditionally they are accessed by carving their glyphs i.e.letters in wood and staining them with one's blood or other bodily fluids while chanting their name. The runes themselves are like spirits with very low levels of consciousness.The rune glyphs are the key to working with the actual runes." I sometimes share his comments because he really seemed to know what he was talking about. He was a strange person- knew the Vanir personally and because of that did not like the Aesir, just as if the Eddas were all taking place now instead of in the distant past!

I would like to say to Shinichi you also seem to know what you're talking about and your account of the runes in this thread is very inspiriing. I hope you don't think that I don't like your training system because you once sent it to me and I never did it- there are a few people whose systems I want to do and I may come back to yours some day.

[palindrom]

hi shinichi

I've walked the web of wyrd and looked across it. I haven't been "in" the abyss and I have not crossed it, but I have been to its gateway. It is...like the space between planets and atoms, like the open spaces in a spider web. It's more than "the beyond," it is "the in between."

that sounds gorgeous - when i was a child, i used to lie on my back in the grass and look into the starstrewn sky, and feel completely at home. that's what your words remind me of...
nowadays i'm wondering if i can "see" this starstrewn sky hovering behind the matrix...

...it's crazy, isn't it, that everything just exists because of being in relation to something else.

Gunningagap isn't really a hierarchal thing like the kabbalistic abyss. It's all around you, all the time. It's like the space between planets, between atoms - it is simply there, omnipresently. Yes, there is something on the "other side" of it, but getting there with pagan methods tends to be a bit different than with modern hermetic based methods. Daoist ascension may be the closer comparison, where you work on tuning yourself into nature and unifying yourself with it.

do you think the hermetic method ist "outside of nature"?

the runes are drawing me back in, towards the pulse, the lungs of the universe. with my studies in chassidian kabbalah, i don't get that. there, it's more like passing all of this by in order to get... home.
(but, in friedrich weinreb's case, this getting home isn't bound to a running away from materia - he wants to reconnect the two)

to me, one of these homes is inside nature (the runic one), the other one is outside of everything (the kabbalistic one).
but that's just where i'm standing at the moment with my perceptions...

Whether you want to be a Germanic woman or an Indian woman, that is something you have to decide at some point unless you are both. They are two very different cultures, and I can tell you from personal experience that at some point you are going to get hit with a culture shock. And, at the end of the day, no matter what cultures influence you - you are simply you. Be true to who you really are, to your Spirit, and you will live a good life. The rest, that's just dress up. Fun, sometimes kinky dress up that is never as important as what's inside the package. [wink2]

the interesting thing about being born and living in the heart of europe is, that there is the germanic/celtic heritage, but there is also a deeply ingrained culture of semitic heritage. in the same place/space. that these two big streams were set to fight against each other time and again doesn't make it any calmer...
as to living a good life in good neighborhood with myself... that's actually really beyond every paradigma, you're right [happyface]

In general essence, anyone who mixes occult traditions without fully understanding the native culture (which is hard to do without being a native) end up corrupting those occult traditions by only looking at the principles at hand through their own native lens. The founders of the GD were students of the Rose Cross tradition, of Theosophy, and of what was becoming popularly known as Hermetics. They took things from Kabbalah without really understanding Jewish Lore and Tradition, and they took things from other traditions without really understanding their native culture either. There's also the edition of the Goetia that Mathers published, which scholars today understand to be a thoroughly flawed translation of a thoroughly flawed translation.

Theosophy was much worse, since they had the terrible habit of simply throwing everything together and expecting their students to figure out what occult and spiritual principles are universal without understanding the native lore of the symbolism and principles they often employed. Some Rosicrusian schools followed in this tradition, looking at the entire world through the lens of their own beliefs and expecting everything to simply fit and apply to the Rose Cross paradigm.

Crowley got some things less mixed up because he did a remarkable amount of work on his own. He used the principles he learned from Mathers and others to found his own school, and to employ an Egyptian mythos that nobody else was using. His work is most certainly not traditional Egyptian Mystery, but it's an often decent paradigm. Alas, he also falls into the habit of looking at everything through his own lens, as broadly displayed in Liber 777 (though much of that, itself, came from the GD).

It is important to remember, when working with any tradition, that your point of view is not the most important - the point of view that is most important is the native one, which has been there for, in some cases, many thousands of years.

thank you for this, that's very enlightening to me. i've been drinking in as many books as possible about all kinds of magic streams, and i'm just starting to get a bit of an overwiev, what was and is there.

as to the native ones... sometimes i wonder, who could really call himself a native, at least in europe, where there has been so much movement of peoples, overlaying and mixing of cultures...

As to how I came to these conclusions...well, I've been around the block, seen and read a fair bit, and seen the difference between foreigners who look at Mysteries through their own lens and natives who truly understand those same Mysteries through the lens in which they were established. A Tibetan adept will always understand his Tibetan stuff better than Chinese Daoist stuff, and the Chinese Daoist adept will always understand the Chinese Daoist stuff better than the Tibetan stuff. Yet, the two adepts will be able to talk about the same spiritual experiences, will be able to demonstrate the same siddhis, and will be able to achieve the same enlightenment.

you know, i was raised in swiss reformed church tradition, which ist, frankly, quite dull, if you're not a really strong intellectual person, and which is, as far as i can see is quite devoid of any mystery-cult...
so, where to go from there? [pray] [crazy] [grin]

You can't simultaneously be a meat eating, drinking, polyamorous pagan and a vegan, sober, celibate Yogi.

pity, isn't it? [wink]
no, seriously, are you sure that being pagan equals automatically to what you wrote?
i'm a meat-eater these days, but lately i have repeatedly thought about going vegetarian again - and i think this is brought on by my work with runes as well, a result of the new and even deeper tuning in into everything around me. i'd just rather not hurt anything (i know that's impossible, but i'm ok with following ideals which i will never reach).

what is a cosmologigally neutral paradigm?

A paradigm of practice where principles are used simply because they work, regardless of what gods you pray to or what names you give to the spirits or what have you. Things like Life Force, Consciousness Development, The Sight, Journeying and many other Lesser Mysteries - training in these things can be done in any culture or paradigm, with any cosmology.

so this means the greater mysteries have to be reached with the help of a cosmology?

Bardon's IIH is a good existing example of such a paradigm, but it does have a fair bit of cosmology as well that comes from Greek tradition.

ah? i'll keep that in mind while i keep working with this book...

Perhaps the best example of exactly what I mean in this context is my Fundamental Development work. It doesn't matter what god you pray to if any, it doesn't matter whether you call nature spirits elementals or faeries, and it doesn't matter what type of magio-social label you stamp on yourself. It's just simple, independent, fundamental practice that works. Period.

i've read through your work last week, and it helped me getting a fresh angle into my meditation-practice [happyface]

My entire method of magick is just like that. Rooted in old school tradition, revised for modern meditative practice, and completely stripped of almost all initiatic veils simply because I believe most of them to be out dated and I'm not bound by oaths to keep secrets anyway.

...and i have to say, that's quite refreshing.

hey, thanx a lot!

pali

[palindrom]

I used to write to a specialist in Seidr, (mainly about the sexual magic he did!) and he said this about the runes: "The runes are natural currents of energy or power. Traditionally they are accessed by carving their glyphs i.e.letters in wood and staining them with one's blood or other bodily fluids while chanting their name. The runes themselves are like spirits with very low levels of consciousness.The rune glyphs are the key to working with the actual runes." I sometimes share his comments because he really seemed to know what he was talking about. He was a strange person- knew the Vanir personally and because of that did not like the Aesir, just as if the Eddas were all taking place now instead of in the distant past!

hi candy ray!

and did you work with the runes like that?
i never tried this approach, with my own blood. did'nt really feel it necessary, so far, but perhaps for certains workings it might be...

as to the very low level of consiousness: i perceive the runes to be very different in the way they "move" than i am; perhaps they're not "lower" in conciousness, but just very foreign to me?

pali

[corvidus]

Greetings! I've enjoyed your questions and Shinichi's responses. I'd like to comment from my perspective.

what are runes?

To me, runes fall into the category of Symbolic Languages (along with the Aleph-Bet and maybe Sanskrit), and are the Force of Universal Principles set into Form.

Before there is 'Thought', there is 'Being' -- a deep, meditative state. Being then moves itself towards Thought, and in order to do this, it needs, at first, simple structure to work with. Runes, Letters and other 'simple' symbols are this simple structure. Their substance is basically an adaptation of Being (Pure Consciousness at Rest), and being an adaptation, they still contain that original piece of Cosmic Intelligence. They can also be considered to be different frequencies, potency, qualities of this original Pure Consciousness.

An interesting book on the subject of Letters is Franz Bardon's Key to the True Kabbalah.

i'm not able to understand the runes with my mind - do i have to?

Don't try to understand them with your mind, the mind is too rigid. Try to understand them with your Soul and Spirit

as far as i understand it by now, the runes seem closest related to the hebraic aleph-beth, being used kabbalistically, as sound-form-energy-packages...
but then, where does the kabbalistic use of the aleph-beth stand in regard to the gd-work with the elements, the planetary work?

As far as I know, and if I understand your question correctly, the Aleph-Bet's elemetal properties first come from the Sephir Yetzirah. This text attributes Fire to Shin, Water to Mem, and Air to Aleph (Air is also what all the letters are made of, and therefore all the letters are made of Aleph -- thus everything has a foundation in vibration once again).

In regards to the planetary work, the Letters are the '32 paths' on the Tree of Life which connect the 'Planetary' Sephiroth.

[Candy Ray]

hi candy ray!

and did you work with the runes like that?
i never tried this approach, with my own blood. did'nt really feel it necessary, so far, but perhaps for certains workings it might be...

pali

No, I didn't work with the runes like that, all I did was cut out some neon pink paper runes from a magazine, so not serious about the runes in the way he was! I wouldn't be likely to use blood, I even cringe about such things as spitting when you make a servitor (I did do that but I cringed.) I quoted this authentic Seidr shaman in case you would to try his methods.

[Shinichi]

I wrote a big ass reply and just lost it. [crymore]

I'll answer your post again later, palindrom. In the mean time, on the issue of blood:

The reason why bodily fluids were used in the old days is because staining the runes that way acts as a physical transference of Life Force (Ond), which gives the rune Fuel to act on your Intent.

This is the traditional practice, yes, but it is not in my experience the most efficient nor necessarily the most powerful. These days it is easy to learn how to feel and control Life Force directly. Bardon has a excellent information on this and his exercises for accumulating Vital (Life) Force are wonderful. There are some basic Ond exercises in books like The Book of Seidr, and it's not that hard to begin the practice of Qi Gong these days. One of my favorite books on the subject draws from the Yoga tradition, and is The Science of Breath. Regardless of the method that you use to develop your Life Force, once you do, it is a simple matter to directly charge a rune with your life force without the use of any physical medium like a bodily fluid. You just breathe into it, or once you get skilled enough, you can learn to easily move your Life Force just with thought.

Besides the principles that are unique to Blood Magick (which can be easily substituted anyway), there is no reason why anybody these days has to use bodily fluids to charge any rune galdr. Or any sigil, for that matter.

Tradition is important and valuable, but it is the responsibility of every generation to improve upon it. Don't get stuck worshiping the ashes of long dead ways.



~:Shin:~

[palindrom]

hey corvidus [happyface]

To me, runes fall into the category of Symbolic Languages (along with the Aleph-Bet and maybe Sanskrit), and are the Force of Universal Principles set into Form.

Before there is 'Thought', there is 'Being' -- a deep, meditative state. Being then moves itself towards Thought, and in order to do this, it needs, at first, simple structure to work with. Runes, Letters and other 'simple' symbols are this simple structure. Their substance is basically an adaptation of Being (Pure Consciousness at Rest), and being an adaptation, they still contain that original piece of Cosmic Intelligence. They can also be considered to be different frequencies, potency, qualities of this original Pure Consciousness.

...i heard once in a documentary film about "sacred geometry" that what the mind does in order to recognize something/anything is that it simply "highlights" a structure out of the primeval soup (in german "die ursuppe").
i just wonder, how it comes that the (sometimes) so called "sacred alphabeths" came to look so different - must have been very different characters who fished them/dreamed them out of the soup...

An interesting book on the subject of Letters is Franz Bardon's Key to the True Kabbalah.

yes. i got i t here, read it twice so far, but a bit superficially, meaning that i didn't work with it at all yet.
friedrich weinreb wrote in great detail about the hebrew aleph-beth, what every curve and line symbolizes, and why which letter follows after the one before, etc.
and for the time being i ride on his train, but i'll definitely come back to bardon's kabbalah-book later on...

Don't try to understand them with your mind, the mind is too rigid. Try to understand them with your Soul and Spirit

i'll do my best [happy2]

As far as I know, and if I understand your question correctly, the Aleph-Bet's elemetal properties first come from the Sephir Yetzirah. This text attributes Fire to Shin, Water to Mem, and Air to Aleph (Air is also what all the letters are made of, and therefore all the letters are made of Aleph -- thus everything has a foundation in vibration once again).

i haven't read the sepher yetzirah yet. i've heard about the elemental attribution for shin, mem and aleph, but i'm a bit puzzled about all the letters being made of air. because i read that the letters, all of them consonants, are the "form" and the vowels are the ruach/the spirit, and that's also why they aren't written down, because one shoudn't fix the spirit...
(...which goes nicely with your counsel not to understand the runes with the mind, hehe...)
where do you have the information about the letters made of air from?

ah, it would be very interesting to have a unbroken tradition for the runes... but perhaps the big chance in the runes lies exactly in their cryptic nature.

what i ment with my gd-question was actually more about the elemental rituals which work with the pentagramme... how do these rituals tie with the kabbalistic tradition of creating with sound?
i mean, a real kabbalist should be able to create things without the help of (elemental) spirits, shouldn't he?

greetings!

pali

[palindrom]

I wrote a big ass reply and just lost it. [crymore]

I'll answer your post again later, palindrom.

huh, don't cry [yay]

happend to me as well, loosing nice big long answers in a forum, but i was intrigued to see how and what i answered the second time - that was interesting. so, i hope it will be the same for you, and that i'll get another nice big ass reply (also simply because i'm curious what such an answer looks like [grin] )

about the energy-offerings to the spirits/runes: jan fries, whom i really like as an magical author, wrote that one can just rub one's hands together for a while and then offer the heath...

i for my part treated my runes with sage and honey and the like, and i felt like this was nicely accepted...
and the best results in bringing the runes alive i had with chanting and dancing them, so far - but i don't set them on doing anything for me yet, i'm just getting to know them

[palindrom]

No, I didn't work with the runes like that, all I did was cut out some neon pink paper runes from a magazine, so not serious about the runes in the way he was! I wouldn't be likely to use blood, I even cringe about such things as spitting when you make a servitor (I did do that but I cringed.) I quoted this authentic Seidr shaman in case you would to try his methods.

nothing against neon pink, please! i got a neon pink cellphone, and i seriously love it [tongue2]

thanks for bringing this method up here.

did your servitor like the spit? why spitting? (i never worked with servitors or the like yet, am still quiete new to this all...)

[corvidus]

hey corvidus [happyface]

...i heard once in a documentary film about "sacred geometry" that what the mind does in order to recognize something/anything is that it simply "highlights" a structure out of the primeval soup (in german "die ursuppe").
i just wonder, how it comes that the (sometimes) so called "sacred alphabeths" came to look so different - must have been very different characters who fished them/dreamed them out of the soup...

Yes it is an interesting line of thinking. Might have to do some serious study to narrow down that one

yes. i got i t here, read it twice so far, but a bit superficially, meaning that i didn't work with it at all yet.
friedrich weinreb wrote in great detail about the hebrew aleph-beth, what every curve and line symbolizes, and why which letter follows after the one before, etc.
and for the time being i ride on his train, but i'll definitely come back to bardon's kabbalah-book later on...

I haven't looked into Weinreb, I'll have to check him out.

i haven't read the sepher yetzirah yet. i've heard about the elemental attribution for shin, mem and aleph, but i'm a bit puzzled about all the letters being made of air. because i read that the letters, all of them consonants, are the "form" and the vowels are the ruach/the spirit, and that's also why they aren't written down, because one shoudn't fix the spirit...
(...which goes nicely with your counsel not to understand the runes with the mind, hehe...)
where do you have the information about the letters made of air from?

The Sepher Yetzirah is a mystical text which teaches the creation of the world from a mystical perspective. The elements of the Sepher Yetzirah are adaptations of Spirit. The information is taken from the first chapter of the Sepher Yetzirah: "10. Second, from the Spirit he made Air and formed for speech twenty-two letters, three of which are mothers, A, M, SH, seven are double, B, G, D, K, P, R, T, and twelve are single, E, V, Z, CH, H, I, L, N, S, O, Tz, Q, but the Spirit is first among these."

After this Water is formed, then Earth, and finally Fire (if you are familiar with alchemical theory, you may see some similarities in this philosophy).

It is a very short read, but reads on many levels: Sepher Yetzirah

what i ment with my gd-question was actually more about the elemental rituals which work with the pentagramme... how do these rituals tie with the kabbalistic tradition of creating with sound?
i mean, a real kabbalist should be able to create things without the help of (elemental) spirits, shouldn't he?

greetings!

pali

You're quite right on this. There is a great difference between "practicing Kabbalah" and "speaking Kabbalistically".

Generally, a modern student of Kabbalah will tell you about how to climb the 32 paths on the Tree, the progression down the Tree via the 'lightning bolt' and meditations on how to connect (or attempt to connect) to the Sephiroth. They'll also make up their own personal rituals for you to try (and sure, they work) so you feel like you've learned something and didn't waste your money. This so-called 'practical system' is almost every book on Kabbalah -- I stopped buying these books because it started to seem like the authors just copy and paste from book to book...

Then there is "Speaking Kabbalistically". This is the meaty-mashed-potatoes you want to understand. This is how to make union of Self and Ruach and cause the Earth to literally shake when you speak. When a real Kabbalist speaks Kabbalistically, a cold and dead world becomes living and green again.

[cool]

Don't fret though, speaking Kabbalistically can be done in any Language. For example, think of the mother who in one ultra-authoritative utterance stops her child in her tracks -- usually with the child's name (wink wink). In that moment it isn't just some set of letters forming a word or a sentence, it's pure Force of Will!




edit: haha, it's probably why magicians take on magickal names, so that someone can't call them out like their mother used to.

[Candy Ray]

did your servitor like the spit? why spitting? (i never worked with servitors or the like yet, am still quiete new to this all...)

It's not a case of liking it, it is for the initial creation of a servitor, however I'm quite new to that as well and I've only done it about twice. I stopped because you really need to make time for detailed follow-up and I find it difficult to do that. Chaos magic is a really different subject from the runes, though there is some similarity to the idea behind the runes that everything is made from words. That must be why we're talking about Kaballah as well!

[Shinichi]

[edit: haha, it's probably why magicians take on magickal names, so that someone can't call them out like their mother used to.

That is part of it. The rest of it has to do with the nature of death and reincarnation. A true initiate name is the name of your Spirit, the part of you that simply exists whether you are "alive" or "dead" in the mortal sense. So, while reincarnating for centuries, and taking on dozens of mortal names, the initiate will be known by all the gods and spirits he has encountered by a single name. His initiate name. It's not something we make up every lifetime, it's something that is there for every lifetime, and it is usually an initiates best kept secret.



~:Shin:~

[corvidus]

Hello Shinichi,

A true initiate name is the name of your Spirit, the part of you that simply exists whether you are "alive" or "dead" in the mortal sense. So, while reincarnating for centuries, and taking on dozens of mortal names, the initiate will be known by all the gods and spirits he has encountered by a single name. His initiate name. It's not something we make up every lifetime, it's something that is there for every lifetime, and it is usually an initiates best kept secret.



~:Shin:~

Very interesting. I'm guessing this name is found through meditations? Are there any specific ones you'd recommend to find this out?

[Rin]

Hey Shin, any chance on some recommendations for reading on runic magic and norse mysticism? I've tried to look into the subject before, but most of what I came across was very generic/new age.

[Shinichi]

Very interesting. I'm guessing this name is found through meditations? Are there any specific ones you'd recommend to find this out?

Something to keep in mind is that not everybody has the type of initiate name that I mentioned, because not everybody is that kind of initiate. It's not an elitist thing, just a matter of age. Some people have been studying magick for a very long time.

In the case that one does have such a name, it is usually remembered while in the process of reattaining the state of Self-Realization. The HGA, if you achieve communion with it, may also tell you if you ask. Sometimes a familiar will point you in the direction of it. This name is, essentially, the name of your Higher Self - so any meditation that will effectively connect you to your Higher Self will help you remember this name. If you do have it.

In the case of not having such a name, it is usually either the name one had in the first lifetime that Self-Realization is achieved (which is particularly common in the Yoga traditions), or an Initiate Ceremony will take place in a lot of old school Orders. I know that Ramose and Veos at TDS offer a Naming Ceremony to all of their Initiate students ("graduates" of the Aspirant Flow), and all of the most senior students and teachers of that school are known by an earned magical name (and by earned, I mean it usually takes a minimum of four and a half years to work through their basic training).

At the end of the day, though, it's really not that important for most practitioners these days. I just threw it out there as a fun fact.

Hey Shin, any chance on some recommendations for reading on runic magic and norse mysticism? I've tried to look into the subject before, but most of what I came across was very generic/new age.

Edred Thorsson is a good place to start with the Runes. Futhark, Northern Magic. I haven't read all of ALU yet, but it looks decent. The Nine Doors of Midgard is a decent training system, but it's mainly for his Runegild Order. One thing you will notice about Thorsson is that his work is heavily influenced by his Hermetic training. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, most of the time, but it is notable. Katie Gerrard's book Odin's Gateways is also a good read for the Runes. Diana Paxon has a well regarded book on them, though I found that to focus more on the Divination side than the Galdr side of the craft.

On getting into general Native European Mysticism and Magick, Kveldulf Gundarsson has a couple of notable works. Teutonic Magic being a particularly important one, with Elves, Trolls, and Wights being another good book to introduce you to the traditions. It is also vital, of course, to read the Eddas themselves. I have Hollander's version of the Poetic Edda and Byock's edition of the Prose Edda, both on my Kindle. Though, you can read older translations for free online. Teutonic Mythology by the infamous Grimm is also worthy of familiarizing yourself with, because even though a lot of the fairy tales here are from the post-christian period, there is still a lot of native roots in them. Any native fairy tale you learn about will have dots that can be connected to other dots from other stories, and slowly you will find yourself immersed in this culture and way of thinking.

And if that isn't enough, you may also read the Kalevala, a book on Finnish mythology. This may not seem relevant, but the Finns were neighbors to the people you are studying and there was a fair bit of cross over (you may find, for example, strong parallels between Ukko and Thor). They are also mentioned often in the Eddas, with several of the few mentioned Seidkonna giving credit to the Finns for teaching them their craft.

I'm also working on my own writings for these things, but they are on the back burner now and I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them. [blush]



~:Shin:~

[palindrom]

i liked

- "myth and religion of the north" by e.o.g. turville-petre
- "the road to hel" by h.r. ellis
- "myth and symbols in pagan europe" by h.r. ellis davidson
- "runenkunde" by helmut arntz (don't know if this one has been translated into english)

these books give a decent background in northern european mythical hystory, tradition, and the development of the runic alpabeth.
nigel pennick is also an author to consider. he wrote quite a lot about rune magic and northern tradition, but he's more centered towards ING-land...
you get some good information about the anglo-saxon 33-rune-row from him as well... but he wrote e.g. also a book about northern martial arts, "the power within" it is called...

thorsson is fine. i'm following his "nine doors to midgard" (will be arriving at the 5th door in a few days time), and it has given me a fine schedule to follow so far, although i'm taking more liberties now then when i began...
as shinichi wrote, you feel the un-northern influence in the background -
for example he tries to build a kind of tree of life. the exercise he gives with it is excellent, creating a personal power-sphere which feels really good (to me at least); but he tries to fit in the nine worlds into nine powercenters building a kind of double-octaeder-shape in which one stands, and the way he distributes the worlds feels just forced to me... these nine worlds, for all i know by now, like to move around.
and anyway, i'm not convinced about the use the tree of live is set to in gd-tradition as well...
so i'm not placing the worlds where he wants them, but instead i place the different vowels in these powercenters, according to the way i experience them in my overtone-chanting, and weave ways from vowel-center to vowel-center... and so i get a nicely vibrating, very alive construction of sound and light all around me, with slowly emerging possibilities of how to place the runes inside this web, and "worlds" which open up wherever they deem it right...
"ALU" is actually the book i like the least from thorsson; it just didn't seem to fit with what i have learnd about the runes so far, somehow too precise, too much nailing it all down... my impression.
"runelore" is the one i like most; and the one that's called "nordische magie" in german...

and, last but not least, jan fries' "helrunar" - it's fun, it's magic, and it's honest about what the author takes from historical sources, and what is just his own impression.
great writer, mr. fries. i love all his books.

cheers [wink]

pali