Magin Rose

Rune casting is a form of divination.  The runes are either laid down in a particular spread (in a similar way to tarot cards) or they are thrown down and their positions read in relation to each other and the cloth on which they are thrown.

Rune castings

The following links take you to a series of articles on rune castings:

• Rune of the day and Rune of the day: report
• One rune spread
• Two rune spread
• Three rune spread
• Four rune spread
• Five rune spread
• Six rune spreads and bespoke spreads
• Seven runes, seven realms, seven chakras
• Nine rune spreads
• Twelve rune spreads
• Rune casting: soul reading
• Rune casting: Nine worlds
• Rune casting:  Upper, middle, lower world and rainbow bridge
• Rune casting: Norns casting cloth

Wyrd

Loosely translated as ‘Fate’.  Wyrd is very bound up with the concept of time; after the Gods name the phases of the moon and the stations of the day, the Poetic Edda describes  a ‘Golden Age’ which precedes the arrival of three women (normally interpreted as being the Fates):

On Itha Plain met | the mighty gods:
shrines and temples | they timbered high,
they founded forges | to fashion gold,
tongs they did shape | and tools they made.

Played at draughts in the garth: right glad they were,
nor aught lacked they | of lustrous gold-
till maidens three | from the thurses came,
awful in might, | from etin-home.  (The Poetic Edda)

These stanzas describe the first stirrings of ‘doom’ – 0nce the maidens arrive the Gods will know ‘lack’, for they are also subject to Fate.  Immediately after this, the Gods breathe life into Ask and Embla (the first man and woman) who are described as ‘unfated’ before the Gods gave them being.  Imagine a short story as follows : ‘They lived happily ever after’.  To me this is what a world without Wyrd might look like – no substance, no narrative, no sense of who ‘they’ are, of adventure or excitement, of love or loss.  The beginning of the Poetic Edda is lika an unfolding, each new phase of creation demanding the realisation of the next phase; a pattern has been set into motion and that pattern is Wyrd.

Wyrd is sometimes described as being like water (as in the Well of Wyrd), new souls are believed to be born from the Well and naming ceremonies in many cultures include a blessing with water.  Wyrd is also the name of one of the Fates in Anglo-Saxon mythology (corresponding with the Norse Urd), she is the Norn of the ‘past’ from which the present and future flow forth.  The Fates spin, weave and cut the threads of Fate, and Wyrd is often characterised as a web or woven cloth.  The important thing to remember is that Wyrd is a dynamic force, it is always in motion, continuously present as it flows from the past and into the future.