Rune Stones

This is a bit of a deviation from the theme I set myself in the A-Z Challenge discussing the properties of individual crystal stones today as I want to talk about my Runestones. Runes can actually be made of many types of  material including wood or clay but the ones I have are made of Rose Quartz, and that's an R word too, but already covered yesterday.

To be honest I don't know all that much about Runestones except they have been used for thousands of years as an aid to seeing the future, used by Vikings in Scandinavia. The Vikings believed they had been discovered by their god Odin, but now they are thought to have originated from Latin, Etruscan or Ancient Greek though so far there is no connection to them having been used in these countries. The Germanic peoples based them on those alphabets and were then taken up by the Scandinavians. Some people believe they go back even further and are based on neolithic and bronze age carvings.

The actual carvings on Runestones convey messages and ideas from the elements of nature about destiny and fate. The carvings or symbols are based on an alphabet, each symbol based on a word which would have had meaning in the ancient days they were first used, such  as Raido which looks a little like an R and meaning wagon. This Runestone would then convey the message of travel, movement or moving on. There are other correspondents to each Runestone, the Raido has Thor, Oak and Eagle among others, so for each stone there are multiple layers of messages to find. They were used not just for people's personal life but also for bigger uses such as foretelling the weather - useful for both farming and also for planning the next Viking raid on another tribe, I guess.

You can make your own Runes, carve some wood into the right shape or use clay or whatever other material you'd like to use and then carve onto them the symbols. These would have a deep connection to you.  Carry them in a pouch with a drawstring. Generally to use the Runes you would ask a question -  not essential though - and then draw three usually, Runes out from the pouch. The first Rune means the past, the second the present, and the third the future. There are other patterns such as just drawing out one to give an all over view. You need to learn or read from the Runic alphabet the meanings and then interpret their meaning in relation to you, of course there may be very different interpretations to be made. Some people will have more of a 'gift' in this than others.

I have a lot to learn of these Runestones as they are quite new to me, though I have been wanting some in quite a while. Once I understand a bit more I will try to cast the Runes and see what comes up, and then probably add a blog post about it once the A-Z Challenge is over.