Now runes are based on an alphabet but they are based on sounds and ideas rather than shape. It was a written language to reflect personal and social experience, send messages and transcend time (Northern European and Germanic cultures were big on that idea). The "I was 'ere" part of the language seems fairly straight forward. Even taking into account the multiple variations of the written forms.
Then we get to rune magick. To wear a rune, to cast one, to paint it on a rock or doorway, and this, this is where most people get it horribly wrong.
Mostly because many early books on the subject were....generous with their imaginings? Or sparse with the truth?
At any rate some of the complexity was washed away. X means gift, is fine except that it within a bindrune, a sentence or word it doesn't just mean X. The context of rune work is intricate to the point of mind boggling. As far as I can tell (and my friend would tell me, very hush hush you know) each rune belongs to one of Nine different planes (places/energies/dimensions) and how you evoke the rune (and where, and when, and with what) will affect the relationship to that particular place. Adding to the complexity each rune also belongs to an Aett or "family" of runes and interact with different Aett runes in new and interesting ways.
Runes are ancient. I mean really really ancient and have great power. Even the crap ones. The ones on clay tablets or painting gleefully onto pebbles have the capasity to do powerful magick, except, mostly they don't.
Firstly this is because they are connected to their respective planes by the tiniest thread. Secondly because people using them have almost no clue what they are doing.
The casting of runes is to whisper to the Norns, to rattle the cages of the crows and ask old Gods (who are grumpy and cantancerous as well as generous and wise) to pay attention to the caster. To draw them does the same and how they are drawn matters. Where they are positioned and how they interact matters. The same runes for new growth and good beginnings mangled together can mean dark endings and death to your beginnings. "What about intention Lucy? What if all I intended was good? Won't only good happen?"
No. You are working with code. Much like computer code if you put it together in the wrong way you don't get what you want. This is not the codes fault. This is the failure to understand the code AND how the system works.
Also remember that runes were used to curse as often as heal. Not because they were bad people, just people. The ripple, memory of that curse is still out there in the planes.
As a planeswalker, journeyer; fey traveller in strange and wonderful places I have become more aware of how runes and for that matter signs an sigils can and do connect to places. That doesn't mean I don't use runes (though I haven't casted in a while). I am just wary. Gentle with what I write and how I write it.
TK has a gift for understanding the art and poetry of this work. He connects to those places with ease and grace. I marvel and wonder at how such simple lines in his expert hands become something magickal.
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