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It is from the Norse culture that the runes come, and it was in the old Teutonic world of northern Europe that the runes were venerated.
They were the very soul of life for the ancient Teutonic people, and encapsulated all of their mystical and mythological beliefs.
Now, after many centuries of being confined to some dark recess
the runes are finally re-emerging as one of the most powerful tools of magic that we have inherited from our forebears.
After much toil they eventually found the goddess Saga, slumped on her throne in a dream-like state.
and at last replied, "Are ye come at last to seek intelligence of the wisdom and deeds of your ancestors?"
"I have written on these scrolls all that the people of that distant land thought and believed, and that which they held to be eternal truth."
"Ye will find much of the wisdom hidden therein, when ye can read the writing and understand the pictures."
The "pictures" to which the goddess Saga is referring are clearly runes.
Tales of the ancient Norse gods have their origins in the early home of the Aryan peoples - India.
These peoples lived very close to nature and believed that each natural phenomenon had its own personality. They wouldpaint with all the colours of thebow before the wind, worship the sun, fear the moon, and imbue every rock and tree with a life of its own.
This approach to the world is now confined to the dictionary as 'animism', though the modern-day Gaia movement is making some headway in resurrecting it.
The Aryan peoples gravitated northwards and, as they experienced increasingly harsh physical conditions, their animism increased in strength.
... Audumla, licking the ice to survive, uncovered Buri, a divine creature and father to all that is good in the universe.
Odin went walking through Midgard with the gods Honir and Loki
It was from Yggdrasill that Odin first saw the runes and was able to reach down and grab them
One of the great gods of the Norse pantheon was Balder, son of Odin and Freya
He was apparently beloved by all the gods except Loki, who was beginning to resemble Lucifer
You play as Baldur who in Norse Mythology was the god of being a total pussy who got his mum to call everything in the world and ask them to be extraspecial nice to him
Amen to that.FurikoMaru said:Hmm... somehow that doesn't sound right to me. If Yggdrasil didn't exist before, how did everyone get around? It's sorta like the Sephirot, right? Connecting the various realms to one another? And if he did plant it, wouldn't that mean he'd had to have gone everywhere and mapped out where the roots and all were supposed to go, including the ones in Jötunnheim with his blood enemies? That's pretty impressive; I want to hear that story.
Well, if the pool was where he got the foresight happening, then I think he just got hanged to gain 'wisdom'. Which is a pretty shitty deal any way you look at it.... am I wrong in thinking this is a huge oversimplification? Aren't the runes and the charms what he spent nine days hanging on a tree - possibly this tree - to get? Or if I'm remembering incorrectly, then they have to be what he got from drinking from the well at the bottom of Yggdrasil. I'm pretty sure foreknowledge of Ragnarok was what he got from the LSD well, though, so the runes have to be the result of the hanging, otherwise I don't have a clue what he did that for. Norse-god-handling specialists, please weigh in.
Baldr was the Mary Sue-iest of the gods. 'The second son of Odin is Baldur, and good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him; he is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him. He is the wisest of the Æsir, and the fairest-spoken and most gracious; and that quality attends him, that none may gainsay his judgments.' And he had the best ship and the coolest house.Also, maybe my education is lacking, but aside from being a real bishie, did Baldr ever do anything? Great is not the word I'd use to describe him.
The simple truth is that, at present, there is no way of knowing exactly where the runes originated. They are certainly ancient; the very earliest runes were written from left to right, as were other ancient languages.
The instantly recognizable Nazi symbol, the Swastika, was an ancient sun wheel symbol used all over the world, and in that particular form was well known in northern Europe. The Nazis reversed the direction of the wheel, with obvious implications. They demonstrated by this their assumed mastery over the sun, and turned a positive symbol into a feared one.
The main reason for the believing that runes were used for mundane writings is the very existence of several different futharks. If the runes were purely magical, then there would have been no need to have a number of variants. In other symbolical languages, such as astrology, the symbols have remained essentially unchanged for many thousands of years. However, this argument is not as compelling as it might appear because another symbolical language, the Tarot, has retained great similarities over the last few hundred years at the same time fostering variants.
The Romans regarded all other races as barbarians but they did hold the Germanians in very high regard for this people had, by the standards of those days, quite a complex and sophisticated society.
At that time, the Romans had become corrupt and indulged in every form of sexual licence. By contrast, the Germans were a highly moral people for whom monogamy was the norm.
As if compound interest weren't bad enough. How strict a definition of gift are we using here? Because if you go too far down that line of thought, you just stay in debt your whole life, desperately clawing your way up out of a muddy pit only for the earth to crumble under your hands yet again the minute you reach the top. That kind of thing scares the shit out of me. Giving should be an impulsive joy in an otherwise organized life, not a tiresome game of accounts.Due to their shamanistic tradition... the Germans saw sex as an almost mystical act in which life was both given and received. A concept that is central to the understanding of the German people and the runes themselves is that a gift demands a gift – that they could appease the gods by leaving gifts for them but that ther would be a price to pay, if not now, then certainly in the afterlife for receiving a gift.
As the Roman Empire began to implode, in the fifth century the German tribes took the opportunity to grab large chunks of territory for themselves.
During this period the Saxons and Angles in the north conquered Britain. They had gone there at the request of the British kings to act as mercenaries against the marauding Picts and Celts,
The Saxons were, however, slowly overcome by the piratical Danish Vikings who pillaged and plundered the British coastline at will
The German tribes appear at first glance to be wild and vicious barbarians.
The narrator goes on to explain absolutely nothing about how they are different, so I'm guessing he only brought it up in order to highlight the negligible similarities in the mind of the reader and... confuse them in the long term by continuing to use comparisons that don't map properly? I don't know. Also he leaves out the fighty-killy-yay aspects of Valhalla, making it sound more like the hotel-heaven from Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life. Which I've always hoped has been waiting for me. I mean, look at that shit:but this was not the same sort of place as the Christian Hell spouting its fire and brimstone
Above all, the runes are steeped in nature and symbolize the power exhibited by different elements of nature
Therefore it is impossible to understand the runes by adopting an intellectual approach.
The peoples of northern Europe led lives that were extremely close to nature and dominated by these elemental forces. As in many other ancient cultures, nature and the gods were considered to be one and the same thing.
This can be quite a hard concept for the modern mind that is trained in logical, empirical thinking to grasp, but it is essential for understanding and using the runes effectively.
I don't even have a problem with that, hippie wooOooooOOOoo totally has its place. But it's like with a plunger; you aren't thinking about the materials that went into making it or who first patented the suction cup while you're using the thing - you just want your shit-disposal unit to work properly. However, if you're writing a book about plungers or an article on comparisons between different models, of course that stuff takes precedence over personal preferences and jiggling-motions. Your own shit is not of interest to anyone but you and possibly your loved ones; what someone you're teaching cares about is shit in general.Guile said:C'mon Furi, you just gotta go with the FLOW, you know? Feel some vibes. Not bow to the tyranny of thinking and objective study. You dig?