thanks, you're awesome..

The irish started as celts, druids, that sort of thing then christianity and protestants came in. Later on Saint Patrick kicked out many of the protestants from goverment, *Kicked the snakes out of ireland* thats where that actually comes from.


So there ye go, in a basic way.

Ummm, No! The Celts were various invasive tribes through history with a common belief and art system, starting with the Urnfielders and La Tene area tribes.

The "snakes" were the druids. Catholicism was the first Christian belief system and St. Patrick was only of the early bishops who came in fought the druids and forced them out, around 428. Protestantism came along with Martin Luther around 1517, and the Church schismed then.

Im more of a Tarot girl myself. I had runes once but they didn't come naturally to me like the cards did. It is interesting to contemplate why one is attracted to one form of divination over another.

it is kind of weird. Do you read cards or just like being read? I feel personally, if a person is gifted to read cards and have strong intuition about people runes should work too. I dont really know though. I have not tried runing yet. But i have read a bit on them.

I am working them into my new book for pre-teen girls. Its about a girl who tames a unicorn with a bag of runes she finds. The symbols represents the commands that the unicorn follows, but she doesnt realize it. She finds the runes and makes them into a necklace, inadvertently by playing with her necklace and touching different stones the unicorn is responding with certain behaviors.

Oh that sounds like a great book!

I read the cards for others and sometimes for myself. And there are certain decks I do better with than others.

Tarot cards are really cool. Love them, have several, but just cannot get the feel for them. Now animal cards, heck yeah!

That is one of the ideas, that the snakes were the druids, the other is the corruption in goverment.

I think she was correcting more than just the statement about snakes. There may have been government corrumption (there usually is) but there was no such thing as a Protestant when the Bishop went to Ireland. And, he was there to convert the pagans, not deal with political corruption.

Ive NEVER heard of government corruption. what are y'all talking about,

I bow to your superior knowledge!

Seems to me this thread got sidetracked. I've worked with Runes for around 25 years now and one thing I've learned about them is they carry real power. With this is mind they need to be treated with the utmost respect.

They are great as an oracle but that was never their prime purpose. When Odin found them he had hung on the Yggdrasil for nine days and nights pinned there by his own sword so the story goes. Seizing them up with a cry on the point of death he won great knowledge, wisdom and well being. He (supposedly) spread the word and teachings of them and they were used to achieve very real results such as getting a cow out of a bog, healing, endowing courage and strength in battle etc. I have used them in this way myself with sometimes startling results but always sparingly because the gifts they give demand a gift in return according to the laws of karma.

Runes from the word runa originally meaning a hidden thing have long been lost in history and it's only a very few of them that survived in anything like their original form. A lot of the surviving runes have also lost their original meanings and have other interpretations assigned to them during the course of history.

Of course anyone can develop a rune of their own but that's a different story

Here is something of interest in regards to Odin and George Washington: http://www.stavacademy.co.uk/mimir/moere.htm

An interesting document of lineage but I'm not sure how it relates to the origin or use of Runes. Thanks for posting it anyway It's always good to add another few pieces of lifes jigsaw

I actually write fairly fluently in Eldar Futhark, so much so that I jot down my building check notes (details of my job,) in Futhark.

I've had to catch myself from doing that. Especially short stuff, writing on boxes for work. LOL!

I use it quite a bit because it's very easy to engrave straight lines. Almost all of my engravings are signed in Futhark.

So what do you make?!