About Runes for Beginners

Some people are trying to change their lives and circumstances they are in by using runes as they would use Tarot cards or other divination methods. Yet, with divination, you can only foresee how future events will unfold. Nevertheless, “praemonitus praemunitus” which means forewarned is forearmed.

Still, divination is mainly about tactics. Runes themselves are more about strategy. Runes, of course, work in many different capacities and there is no need to diminish their value when it comes to divination. There are times when divination (energy-informational analysis) is enough in order to fully understand the current situation and start acting towards on improving it accordingly. You can work with runes, just as you would with cards and African stone or shell oracles. However, you should not forget that working with runes just for divination makes it one sided and does not fully open the power of their potential.

It is simpler and more complicated at the same time to do magick in the Northern tradition.

What is Northern Tradition? It is the magick of a wondering warrior. Any warrior of the ancient times had to know at least some forms and methods of magick defense. And, of course, techniques of true battle magick that allows one to work with a strong opponent on a distance. What does that really mean?

For starters, they show than in Old North (Scandinavian) magick tradition stationery altars were rarely used. The same goes to massive and expensive instruments. Thus, a warrior on a journey will not carry around all kinds of clumsy/inconvenient attributes. Surely, for more serious ritual actions demand a more thorough preparation. Yet, there is no need to rent out a Carnegie Hall or local Palace for entertainment in order to complete them.

Northern tradition does not require for an Erilaz (Master rune practitioner) or a common person, who have just started to practice rune magick, to abandon simple human needs. Preparation for a rune ritual does not require decades of solitude and eating just the bark of rare trees. A ritual will work well even if the night before doing the magick ritual you are sleeping with your woman/wife, sometimes it is even recommended!

A warrior is being led by Norns – maidens of fate. It means that a warrior lives his life using only own individual skills and experiences from the events that were woven in his life by the Norns. If a warrior has made a decision to do something, that nothing, except maybe the call from the Gods to enter Valhalla, can stop him. The only thing that is required from the rune mage warrior, is an iron will and cold-blooded composure. Those are the qualities that actually characterize a true warrior and mage. Otherwise, that person would be an imposter.

Without those qualities a warrior will never be able to win and his magick would be weak. That is the essence that makes Northern Magick tradition simple and complicated at the same time. The one who thinks that having a phone, a car or other tokens of an elite status makes his will strong and powerful is greatly mistaken. If a person thinks that a true will power and composure/self-control can be achieved through material things – is doubly wrong.

Here is yet another small forewarning. You cannot be a Mage today, and then tomorrow decide otherwise. Magick is the way of life. Magick is a very challenging, consistent and demanding inner work. The work with the consciousness. Will, body and spirit. You have to realize that there is no turning back from this path. No, no, and one more time no! As you cannot enter one river twice, you cannot exit it twice either. If you have a feeling that the path of the Warrior-Mage is not for you, then you should not even think about the path. You may lose a lot of things together with your head if you. And that is the best case scenario, and in the worst case nobody would even find the body. It is what it is.