Saturday, June 20, 2009

Meanings Of The Runes

Meanings Of The Runes Cover

Book: Meanings Of The Runes by Bernard King

from The Elements of Runes by Bernard King.

As with all scripts, the runes grew and evolved with use, taking on different meanings in different areas. The Norwegian, Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon runic poems all provide variants which, for the beginner, serve to confuse the issue rather than clarifying it. Because of this I have consistently used the (reconstructed) Common Germanic names throughout this book.

While the role played by the runic poems must, because of their comparatively late dates, be suspect when attempting to consider the earliest assigned meanings of the rune-names, they served a useful mnemonic role at the time of their composition. In all probability there was a poem which gave the names of the Common Germanic Futhark, but it would have been too early, or too secret in later times, to have been recorded.

Download Bernard King's eBook: Meanings Of The Runes

Recommended reading (pdf e-books):

Nicolas Schreck - Demons Of The Flesh
Bernard King - Meanings Of The Runes

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Beautiful And Unique Rune Sets

Beautiful And Unique Rune Sets Image
Visit Magin's on-line shop to view her selection of clay and wood rune sets. Unlike many mass produced rune sets available, these runes are hand made and each rune is individually empowered using traditional rune craft and shamanic techniques.

In ancient times runes were used for divination and magic (INCLUDING HEALING), their energy being raised through carving their shapes and with the power of the voice. Rune practitioners were also skilled in the art of '"faring forth"' - journeying between the worlds or working over long distances to bring good (OR ILL) fortune. Modern practitioners continue these traditions and have also developed new techniques for working with the runes including the uses of incenses, body posture, crystals and spirit guides to enhance their divinatory, magical and healing skills.

In 2011 our level 1 RuneCrafting programme will be completed, offering courses in rune casting, rune making, rune crafting, Journeys with the Elder Futhark, and space balancing and protection techniques. The level 1 RuneCrafting programme will provide the foundation for more advanced, exploratory work with the runes - courses, groups and workshops at level 2 will start to appear over 2011/12. All the courses available on our RuneCrafting pages at present are componenents of the level 1 programme.

Source: www.magic-online-shop.de



Labels: greek gods and goddesses books  all about gods and goddesses  greek god odin  greek gods and goddesses coloring pages  facts on greek gods and goddesses  the book of shadows spells  god of the witches  lucid dreaming pictures  

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Asatru The Northern Way

Asatru The Northern Way Cover

Book: Asatru The Northern Way by Anthony Arndt

Asatro as a Reconstructionist movement was founded almost simultaneously in Iceland (Islenska Asatruarfelagid) and America (Asatru Free Assembly). This occurred in the early 1970s.

The historical basis for Asatro is Norse mythos, which may be up to 40,000 years old and originated in northern Europe.

It is very important though to note that Asatro and ancient norse religion are by no means same - they simply share mythology, and symbols, as religions they are however fundamentally different. The latter was a nature religion which primarily focused on pleasing gods, in exchange for basic material needs and provide protection from the forces of nature and enemies, whereas the latter is a New Age religion with more spiritual aims.

As our knowledge of the old norse religion is fairly scarce, and sources for Understanding the thinking of this ancient people even more limited, it is safe to assume that making an accurate reconstruction of the the norse religion is an impossibility, and would also serve little or no purpose.

Download Anthony Arndt's eBook: Asatru The Northern Way

Free eBooks (Can Be Downloaded):

Tommie Eriksson - Tree Cults In Northern Magic
Emilie Kip Baker - Stories From Northern Myths
Anonymous - Asatru And The Paranormal
Anthony Arndt - Asatru The Northern Way

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Goddess Bertha

Goddess Bertha Cover Bertha: The White Lady, a birch goddess. (For more on the nature of birch Goddesses see the section on runes, under Berkana.) She is supposed to dwell in a hollow mountain, and the souls of unborn Children were in her keeping. She is patron of spinning and every Yule she went to every house where this art was practiced. Good spinners were rewarded with the goddess' own flax, but bad spinners, or those who failed to honor the goddess by eating enough of the right cakes at Yule were punished by her. She was also supposed to travel the world during Yule, followed sometimes by the dead or the souls of the unborn children and Tradition credits her with leaving gifts for good children and with either leaving birch twigs to punish the bad ones or to take them away with her in a sack.

Free e-books (can be downloaded):

Anonymous - Confessio Fraternitatis
Franceska De Grandis - Be A Goddess
Franceska De Grandis - Goddess Initiation

Monday, June 1, 2009

Sources Of Nordic Paganism

Sources Of Nordic Paganism Cover Although the Eddas and Sagas are by far the most respected and influential texts consulted by modern Nordic Pagans, other texts and sources of Information are widely shared and discussed. The Heimskringla, also written by Snorri Sturluson, is a semihistorical, semimythological account of ancient Norwegian kings that provides information about gods, ritual practices, and life and society on the Scandinavian mainland (as opposed to the Icelandic focus of the Sagas). Skaldic poems, an archaic Icelandic genre from Viking times, provide vivid accounts of warrior heroes and gods.

There are also non-Norse, non-Icelandic texts. The medieval Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, which tells of Scandinavian warrior life, is a valued literary treasure from England. More fragmentary Anglo-Saxon texts, such as the Nine Spells Charm (Rodrigues 1993), provide insight into the Anglo-Saxon variants of Norse Paganism—for example, the Norse Odin worshipped as the Anglo-Saxon Woden in England and the poem The Dream of the Rood, which blends Christian and Norse Pagan motifs in strange and startling ways. A fragmentary German text, the Merseburg Charm, tells of spells and incantations containing mythological information. The German epic Nibelungenlied is popular as an illustration of warrior ethics. German and Scandinavian folk and fairy tales are also valued as expressions of Nordic sensibility toward life and nature. The Gesta Danorum, a history of the Danes written in Latin by an antiquarian monk, Saxo Grammaticus, provides alternate and sometimes strikingly different accounts of Eddic myths and gods. The Roman historian Tacitus’s Germania, an account of German tribes on the fringes of the Roman Empire, is also studied with interest as the earliest documentary text related to Germanic-Scandinavian peoples. Most Nordic Pagans read these texts in English translation, but scholarly Pagans study these documents in their original languages.

Various nontextual sources of information about past Nordic life and culture are highly valued. Archaeological remains in the Scandinavian nations—from the ancient kings’ tombs in Denmark and Sweden to Viking tombstones and runic inscriptions on the Baltic island of Gotland to the site of the original Icelandic Thing parliament at Thingvellir—are sites of Nordic Pagan pilgrimage. Discussions of the history and significance of such sites are followed with intense interest in both popular and scholarly media, from documentary programs on the Discovery Channel television network to archaeological journals. Runes, the ancient Scandinavian writing and symbol system, receives intensive interest because of the widespread belief among modern Nordic Pagans that the runes possess esoteric, ritual significance.

Although it is doubtless true that modern Nordic Pagans take an extremely positive, even romanticized view of past Nordic history and culture, theirs is not an entirely uncritical view. They seek to reconstruct only select aspects of the worldview and lifestyle of the Vikings and other past Nordic peoples, and they acknowledge that there are other aspects, such as slavery and wanton violence, that they are all too happy to leave in the past. A good many Nordic Pagans follow scholarly debates about Nordic history and are conscious that the contemporary Understanding of the Nordic past is continuously evolving through the clash of multiple perspectives and interpretations, like modern Nordic Paganism itself.

Free eBooks (Can Be Downloaded):

Richard Roy - 13 Questions On Paganism And Wicca
Jean Seznec - Survival Of The Pagan Gods
William Phelon - Our Story Of Atlantis
Shri Gurudev Mahendranath - Notes On Pagan India
Yves Kodratoff - Seidr Seid Sol Iss Burs And Nordic Shamanism