Dr. Alexandra Chauran (Issaquah, WA) is a second-generation fortune-teller, a high priestess of British Traditional Wicca, and the queen of a coven. As a professional psychic intuitive for over a decade, she serves psychic apprentices and thousands of clients. She received a master’s in teaching from Seattle University and a doctorate from Valdosta State University and is certified in tarot. In her spare time, when she’s not teaching students of Wicca, she enjoys ham radio with the call sign WI7CH. She can be found online at SeePsychic.com.
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Other Books by Alexandra Chauran
365 Ways to Develop Your Psychic Ability
365 Ways to Strengthen Your Spirituality
Clearing Clutter
Compassion Is the Key to Everything
The Ethics & Responsibilities of Being a Psychic
Have You Been Hexed?
How to Be a Professional Psychic
How to Talk to Me After I’m Gone
Palmistry Every Day
Professional Psychic’s Handbook
So You Want to Be a Psychic Intuitive?
For Beginners
Animal Familiars for Beginners
Clairvoyance for Beginners
Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners
Faeries & Elementals for Beginners
Spirit Boards for Beginners
Featured In Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Mindful Living
Shades of Ritual
I’d like to dedicate this book to my gods, the Lady of the Moon and the Lord of Death and Resurrection; to those who have trained me well in the Kingstone tradition of Wicca; and to the members of Lyra Star Coven who are always charmed by runes.
Life is full of confusing decisions that might create big changes in one’s life path months or years down the road. Sometimes it can feel like there’s a fifty-fifty chance that what you’re picking is the right choice for you. Perhaps you’re trying to figure out whether or not to stay with a partner, wondering if he or she is the one for you. It could be that you’re choosing between two college majors, each equally compelling and with similar job-market potential. These are huge decisions, and flipping a coin just doesn’t seem to give these choices the respect they deserve. What if I told you that there’s a way that you can connect to the divine and with your destiny that feels tangible? You can hold in your hands the key to
your past, present, and future. Runes are sacred objects that you can touch and feel that allow you a sense of control over the mysteries of life. Runes are also concepts. Just as the word “love” written out on paper by your beloved can make your heart sing, runes were designed long ago to evoke feelings and a sense of wonder.
What Are Runes?
Runes typically refer to a collection of stones, pieces of wood, or other materials with sacred symbols inscribed upon them. Each rune tells a story. When runes are scattered on a surface, pulled from a bag, or carefully laid out in patterns, they can tell your life’s story.
The word “rune” may come from the very old ProtoGermanic root word run-, meaning “secret,” “whisper,” or “mystery.” The runes are forces of nature—mysteries in the religious sense of spiritual truths, rather than a mere puzzle to be solved. Essentially, runes are ideas expressed in symbols that make up scripts that predate our Latin alphabet by hundreds of years. Written rune symbols are called “staves.” The runes are also called the “futhark” (and later due to language changes, “futhork”), which is the combination of the first six letters.
There are various proposed origins for runes because ancient evidence shows them spread across a wide geographic area. Norse legend says that the god Odin himself first discovered runes, but modern scholars believe that they were derived from an even earlier script, perhaps Etruscan in origin and blended with the ritual symbols of Teutonic shamans. Runes were used in the first or second century of the
Common Era by Germanic peoples, also known as Gothic, Suebian, or Teutonic peoples. Use of runes in modern times is not limited by ethnicity or nationality, and modern Germanic languages include Afrikaans, Flemish, Frisian, English, Gaelic, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and more. Claims of ancient runes discovered in North America were met with shock and renunciation by rune scholars. Modernera runic systems such as Dalecarlian runes, the Runes of Honorius, and Witch’s Runes have also been developed.
What little Scandinavian ancestry I have may not offer me a direct line to the ancient ones who used the first runes; nevertheless, I do find practical uses for these magical scripts. In fact, runes were my first “official” divination tools as a child, probably because stones and markers with which to make cheap and temporary rune stones are easy to come by. Divination is the art of telling fortunes with specialized tools and includes discovering past, present, and future knowledge. Runes are printed, painted, written, etched, or carved individually onto objects.
A collection of these objects that represent an entire runic alphabet, each with their own individual written rune, are sometimes called “trollrunes” (because trolls were associated with prophecy and magic), a set of runes, or simply runes. Ancient peoples may have used these runes for divination and magic. “Magic,” to the ancient world and some modern practitioners, means creating change in one’s world by using one’s mind and spirit. Runes can act as a tool for magic and divination by allowing our minds to focus upon goals and probable outcomes. Because the runes were considered so sacred and might not have been used secularly,
especially after their decline in use as a script, their use only in a sacred context now builds their power over time. It is believed magical symbols, used over and over again, can take on their own power in the collective human subconscious, much like how a wagon wheel wearing a rut in a road can make the path more evident and more easily traveled by that wagon over time.
How Can Runes Be Used?
A set of runes is a very useful thing to have, indeed. This divination tool can be used to discover the potential of your future career, love life, and more. They can help confirm your own personality traits and reveal which virtues you’ve yet to develop. Runes can empower you with advice about relationships, money, conflicts, and an infinite variety of topics. They can make predictions and destroy illusions. A set of runes can also be used as a powerful gateway to meditation, allowing you to take on blessings and banish negativity. Meditation is the practice of quieting or focusing the mind, and it is wonderful for relieving stress.
It’s important to note that the runic stave symbols themselves can also be used alone, without a set of runes. I know that I’m introducing a lot of new terms here, but the distinctions are important. The overuse of the word “runes” confused me as a beginner. I could actually write the true statement that “you can paint runes on your runes to experience the power of the runes.” I strive to use clarifying differentiation in this book to convert sentences like those into something like this: “You can paint staves on your rune
stones to experience the power of the runes.” I’ll give you some concrete examples to help you understand.
Staves can be drawn on anything or anyone, even invisibly, and imbued with wishes to inspire and create change. They can also be used as a secret script to protect information. Staves can be carefully combined and even altered or invented to produce spiritual results. Just as we combine letters to make words, runes can be combined to enhance their meanings, sometimes by layering them on top of one another. Take care with runes. I once saw a man who had tattooed what he thought was an entire futhark, from beginning to end, on his arm just because it looked cool. I was concerned for him. That’s not just harmless alphabet soup!
Like the Hebrew alphabet, staves have stand-alone sacred associations as well as the ability to spell out words. And because each runic letter not only has a phonetic meaning but also a spiritual meaning, imbuing random combinations of runes with spiritual power through ritual exercises such as tattooing is not advisable. There may be ancient wisdom contained in the order of runes in a runic alphabet. This book will give extensive instructions on how simple it is to use runes properly in divination and for spirituality.
Why Use Runes?
Divination is such a useful art. Fortune-telling is my regular job, five days a week. People come to me asking questions about choosing the right career, whether or not an old flame will be rekindled, and about the endless potential paths in life. I use divination in my personal life as well, often to help me refine and develop personality traits that can be both
blessings and curses. Runes are so simple to make and to use that they make an excellent first divination tool. Some of the skills that are developed by using runes can easily transfer to the use of other divination tools, such as the tarot or fortunetelling cards. If you learn to divine with runes, you know that no matter what your situation in life may be, you will always have the means to empower yourself with sound advice.
Learning runes as a sacred script is valuable knowledge as well. You’ll instantly have the power to draw a meditative focus on any object. You can bring the energy of success to your workplace and the power of protection and peace to your home. You’ll have a secret script all your own that your family and colleagues won’t be able to read even if it’s emblazoned on your wall calendar. Rune-marked items even make wonderful gifts for others. And, once you’re familiar with an entire runic alphabet, you may start to notice runes that others have hidden in plain sight. Now that’s a super power.
How to Use This Book
Though this book is written for beginners, I’ve worked to make it a solid reference book for anyone’s shelf. The true novice should work through the book from beginning to end, since I build one skill on top of another. From rote memorization of meanings, you’ll move on toward simple interpretation and the myriad applications for runes, and you’ll also learn advanced techniques that will help you make the runes your own.
Though I strive to use English words for techniques and concepts that span many cultures whenever possible, you’ll find a glossary at the back of this book to help you learn
some of the jargon. You’ll also find, for your reference, helpful breakdowns of the phonetic sounds and meanings of the most commonly used runic alphabet (the Elder Futhark) in the first chapter. The third chapter is devoted to helpful diagrams and charts that allow you to use and interpret a set of runes to gather more precise knowledge on topics in your life that are important to you.
As you move through this book, it may be helpful to keep scrap paper handy to practice writing runes. I am more of a tactile learner than a visual one, which means I had to write down runic alphabets many times before they were committed to memory. I still need to practice writing obscure scripts in order to keep them fresh and accurate in my mind. It is safe to jot down runes in pencil on scratch paper in any combination for learning purposes. Just remember to treat runes with respect. Don’t crumple up and abandon written runes just anywhere. Though I choose to burn my scratch paper that contains written runes, you can safely recycle or compost such paper. I suggest that you visualize their power melting harmlessly back into the earth as you add pieces of paper with staves written on them to the compost heap.
Prepare yourself for the spiritual disciplines of studious practice and plenty of memorization. The book you hold in your hands contains runes of power that will soon be yours to use. From A to Z, alphabets contain the means to create every sound within a language. Sounds and words bring forth human ideas into real manifestation, and thus they are truly divine. Speech is the breath of life that brings meaning to the connection between peoples across time and space. Handle the blessed runes, and all your words, with care.
one
Getting Started with Runes
By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to get started with a simple rune reading. A “rune reading” is a divination session in which you ask the runes a question about your past, present, or future and receive an answer that you can interpret using the guides in this book. Learning through daily divination with runes is an effective way to memorize any runic alphabet. It is also a great way to discover information about your life, confirm what you already know, and empower yourself with advice on any topic under the sun.
Types of Runes
Here’s a brief overview of runic alphabets to help you understand how rune meanings change over time. This factual information is important because otherwise it can be confusing to see one rune with two completely different meanings, when those meanings actually developed over a large span of time and geographic space.
I suggest that you only learn one runic alphabet at a time, otherwise it’s pretty easy to mix them up. It is beyond the scope of this book to teach interpretations of all of the different runic alphabets. The different types of runes below are listed in alphabetical order. In this book I will thoroughly teach the use of only the first and oldest set of runes, the Elder Futhark. I’ve chosen this system as best for beginners because it is still the most popular in use and can easily be studied exclusively for an entire lifetime. The Elder Futhark system was one of the first I learned as a beginner, and it still serves me well to this day.
• Anglo-Saxon Runes: These runes expand on the original Elder Futhark row. This was probably done for writing, not for divination, in order to include more phonetic sounds as other peoples adopted runes as a means of writing. The Anglo-Saxon runes can include up to thirty-three characters. Though harder to memorize due to their number, these runes can add meanings to your lexicon. It would be best to learn these after learning the Elder Futhark.
• Armanen Runes: Though modern in origin, these were claimed to be the oldest runes in Nazi Germany, where
the use of rune magic was perverted toward evil ends. Runes are a magical tool, and they can be misused. This dark time in history does not mean that runic alphabets, even the Armanen, are evil.
• Dalecarlian Runes: When Latin letters came into being, this runic system was an evolution of the Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark, and Medieval Runes, which changed markedly when they were mixed with several other alphabets. Again, this system is not used for divination.
• Dotted Runes: Dotted runes of the Viking Age expanded the Younger Futhark by adding dotted characters. This system was used as a script, not for divination.
• Elder Futhark Runes: These are the oldest runes and potentially the best place to start as a beginner. Not only are they the most common runes used for divination, but they will also help you learn other forms of runes that include Elder Futhark characters. The Elder Futhark runes are twenty-four in number. Much of this book will assume that you are using the Elder Futhark runes, though you can substitute other runes if you wish.
• Frisian Runes: These were one expansion of the Elder Futhark that included twenty-eight runes. This also marked the change of the word “futhark” to “futhork” because of the introduction of a new fourth rune that changed the sound.
• Gothic Runes: The Goths, Northern European peoples, adopted the use of runic script of twenty-five characters. Gothic runes can be used for divination. These brought in influences from Greek deities.
• Marcomannic Runes: These runes are a mixture of Elder Futhark and Anglo-Saxon runes. Though historically interesting, there’s no particular reason to learn the Marcomannic runes for divination unless you really like the meanings of the runes that are included. There are twenty-nine of these runes.
• Medieval Runes: These runes are a version of the Younger Futhark that were re-expanded to include more sounds. Though they are of historical and magical interest, these are not commonly used for divination.
• Runes of Honorius: Also called Theban, this script is not technically runic at all, nor is it commonly used for divination. Nevertheless, it is used as a sacred script. Written words can be charged with energy in a method similar to runes that is explained in the fourth chapter of this book.
• Witch’s Runes: A modern invention, Witch’s Runes are purely divinatory and not a script. Though there are several variations, they typically consist of thirteen pictograms. Since the pictograms are more meaningful than the simple lines of old runic alphabets, I’ve found these to be much easier to memorize and a good option for beginners or children who are struggling to learn. Still, they are quite useful for advanced practitioners. The version I use is detailed in A Witch’s Runes: How to Make and Use Your Own Magick Stones by Susan Sheppard.
• Younger Futhark Runes: These Scandinavian runes evolved due to historical changes in language use and actually have fewer characters. Some of the runes took on additional sounds and eliminated the necessity for
the full set of characters. Since there are only sixteen of them, the Younger Futhark runes are a good option for those who are struggling to learn the Elder Futhark runes. Step back and just learn the Younger Futhark runes first, if this is the case, and then expand your knowledge to the Elder Futhark later on. There are long-branch, short-branch, and staveless (meaning they lack certain strokes) and stylistic variations of these runes. Use the long-branch. The short-branch and staveless are useless for divination due to the impossibility of telling whether you’re reading some characters right-side up or upside down.
Learning What They Mean
Learning what runes mean begins as a practice of rote memorization because the runes don’t give you many clues by their shape. Originally, the runes were developed to resemble things like the horns of a now-extinct species of ox and other objects we no longer see in everyday life. One rune is often similar to another, being either straight-lined or zigzag in shape. So you’ll have to be gentle with yourself and allow yourself time to learn. As a child it may have taken you years to master the alphabet for your own language. Be patient. Perhaps the easiest form of runes to memorize is the Witch’s Runes because they’re pictograms that represent their meanings and because they’re so few in number. The hardest of the divination scripts for me to memorize was the ogham, which will be explained in chapter 2, because the letters all look very similar. Again, I suggest you begin with the Elder Futhark. You can make some flash cards out of three-by-five-inch notecards. I find it much
easier to first associate each runic letter with its divination meaning than to try to memorize pronunciation, name, and symbolic meaning all at once.
Understanding the Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark is organized into groups, each called a “family” (aett), of eight in order. The Elder Futhark, the most commonly used runes, is divided into three aetts of eight. The first, starting with fehu and ending with wunjo, is ruled by fertility gods and is called “Freya’s Eight.” The second is called “Hagall’s Eight,” starting with hagalaz and ending with sowilo, and is ruled by protection deities. The third is called “Tyr’s Eight,” starting with tiwaz and ending with dagaz, and is ruled by deities of divine justice and order.
A blank rune named “wyrd” or “Odin” does not fit into any of the aettir. The blank rune is a modern addition and entirely optional, by the way. I don’t personally use it. If you write out the Elder Futhark runes in these three sets of eight, it may help you organize similar meanings in groups in your mind. The eights are also useful for hiding runes in code, which will be explained in the section about hidden runes in chapter 6. I fully intend to help the beginner memorize these runes, so I’ve kept my explanations of them focused on that goal. For each of the Elder Futhark runes, you will be given information on name, number, name pronunciation, phonetic sound, imagery, and interpretation.
• Rune Name: Since the runes varied across region and time periods, some of them have varied names. I’ve selected one name with a pronunciation guide so that the
beginner can have a consistent and complete system, but be aware that there may be more names out there to investigate. Check out the recommended reading guide at the end of this book.
• Rune Number: The order of the futhark is vital. The order of the runes can help you memorize them in the same way that you learned the alphabet with the alphabet song. The number can also be used for numerology or in rune readings when you are trying to get a number in the form of a calendar date, age, or dollar amount.
• Suggested Pronunciation: Singing rune names while cutting runes, meditating, or casting spells may have been an ancient practice. For this reason I’ll include a suggested pronunciation for each rune’s name. There may be several different ways to pronounce each rune. I chose pronunciations that are simple for a beginner and, whenever possible, can help you remember a rune’s meaning and sound.
• Sounds Like: Knowledge of the phonetic sound is vital if you’re going to use or interpret staves as a script. The singing or chanting of runes may have been done using only their phonetic sound as well, adding another use for phonetic knowledge. Learning the phonetic sound may allow you to discern names of people in the runes during a reading.
• Visualize: As a beginner, all staves can look alike! I’ll give you some mental pictures to assign to each rune. These are from the traditional meanings, modern meanings, and some of my own personal imaginings,
so pick whatever imagery works for you to help match the rune stave with its meaning. Visualize that mental picture overlaid on the stave to give meaning to your runes.
• Remember: This will be a list of interpretations for the rune. Whenever possible, I’ve tried to stick with words that match the sound of the rune. This is a mnemonic device to help you memorize the interpretations and rune sounds because, at first, reading runes will involve rote memorization for the beginner. You’ll integrate some more words and understandings in your own mind as you go along, and that’s great, even if they don’t fit with my alliteration pattern.
The Elder Futhark Runes
Fehu
fRune Number: 1
Suggested Pronunciation: FAY-hoo
Sounds Like: F as in “fee”
Visualize: Ancient peoples imagined fehu as representing cattle, the source of most of their food and clothing. Visualize this stave as a lone, standing cow who still has her short horns jutting out as she looks right, toward the future. Of course, the stave also looks a little like the letter F, which can help you remember its sound.
Since this is the first rune in the futhark, it can often mean beginnings.
Visualize: Uruz referred to a wild horned ox that is now extinct. Its horns sat low on its head and curved forward, almost down rather than up. Visualize the uruz stave as a strong ox with his head bowed down, ready to push back against any odds. Later, the uruz rune became associated with a rainstorm. Now visualize the uruz stave as a cloud with a strong downspout of rain pouring down upon the earth. Try to associate one of these visualizations with the interpretation of uruz, or invent your own imagery that works for you.
Visualize: Early on, the thurisaz rune was thought to be a giant. Imagine the thurisaz stave as a fearsome ax carried by a giant monster. Later, people imagined thurisaz as a thorn. Now visualize the thurisaz stave as a thorn jutting out from the side of a plant’s stem. Use whichever visualization helps you remember the meanings below, or make up one of your own.
Remember: Thorn, Thor’s hammer, thistle
Connect with your intuition, discover more about your personality, and solve problems using the power of runes. With professional fortune-teller Alexandra Chauran as your guide, you can learn how to ask for and interpret the answers to your biggest life questions concerning love, your career, health, and many other important topics.
A solid reference for both beginners and adepts, Runes for Beginners covers everything from rune meanings and memorization techniques to making your own runes. With help from diagrams, practical exercises, and phonetic breakdowns for all the runic letters, you’ll develop a path most beneficial to your goals and improve your life. You’ll even uncover traits about yourself that you may have never known.
Dr. Alexandra Chauran (Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada) received a master’s degree in teaching from Seattle University and a doctorate from Valdosta State University. She is the author of dozens of books, including 365 Ways to Develop Your Psychic Ability, Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners, and Faeries and Elementals for Beginners .
