How I Began

Kari Tauring

Given my Scandinavian heritage and my studies in religion and philosophy (my first major at St. Thomas) my Linguistic professor, Luanne Dummer, was surprised I had not yet studied the runes. So in 1988, at her urging, I searched out the books containing the Icelandic Rune Sagas and sought complimentary reading materials on the myths and deities of ancient Scandinavia. Many were to be found at my local occult book store!

I discovered that in addition to the shape (symbol) of each rune and the phoneme or sound assignation, each rune also had it's own meaning, like a hieroglyph. A single rune standing on it's own has many levels of meaning. The F stave, for example, represents the alphabetic letter F, means domesticated cattle, and can indicate that the person using the stave in a predictive manner may be trying to draw wealth to her family or the skills of husbandry to a project. I also learned that using the runes as an alphabet was tertiary in importance. They were primarily used in divination and spell casting. This is why I didn't learn about them along with the Norwegian table prayers at my Grandmother's knee.

To memorize the runic alphabet and their symbols I reordered the runes into the "English" alphabet, the familiar A,B,C,D pattern. While reordering them was effective for memorization, I do not recommend it unless you intend to go back and learn the FUTHARK ordering. This is because the runes were placed next to each other in a meaningful way and to understand all the layers of meaning within this ancient system it is prudent to study the relationships in the placement given to the runes from ancient times.

I drew the runes on a large white board with red ink. Ansuz, Beorc, Kenaz...and repeated their names every night and every morning like a mantra. I studied the Nordic Gods, myths, and histories of the people with whom I share a bloodline. For the first time I realized that the pagan Norse had two completely separate deity systems. One stemmed from an agricultural class and the other a nomadic warring class. The duality of this system called me into further study of other dualistic systems. For about a year I read, thought, worked, and prayed. I began to see the rune shapes in the world around me and to know their names by heart.

Next, I asked my father, a carpenter, to make me 25 oak buttons a little smaller than a quarter. The buttons rested on my altar until I came up with a method of writing. I chose a red Sharpie to inscribe the Runes. Carving didn't work well for me and paint was a mess. I now use a wood burning tool or sometimes henna to stain them. I chose Oak for my first set as I had read that Oak was sacred to Odin, the god of the Aessir who hung on the World Tree to obtain the runes. The red Sharpie was chosen to honor the blood of his sacrifice while hanging on the tree. In ritual fashion I created a space to meditate and a rune shape would form randomly in my mind's eye.

When I intuitively received the letter I was to study I drew the rune and carried it with me in contemplation in a special amulet bag. I took it out often, staring at it, pondering it's meaning in my life. When each Rune felt "integrated" into my being, I would place it in a large bowl of sea salt on my altar and wait for the next one to come to me. This sometimes took a week, sometimes a month.

Once they were all created I began to study the patterns of association, one Rune to another. This is where I began to study the FUTHARK placement and to do preliminary "readings" for myself. After a year and a day of this study, it is now 1990, I began to use them in divination for others. Friends, family, people at parties, many people began to come to me for readings. It was my standard birthday gift. Here it is, 10 years later and I can honestly say that I never gave a reading that didn't ring true to the one asking the question. I have made it my practice never to ask what the one drawing the runes is wondering. Sometimes the information is volunteered, but I have always felt that my job is to make a safe space and read what is drawn, not to speculate or go into some psychoanalysis about what ever issue the person is facing.

The Runes are so practical and resonate here in Minnesota where the Nordic Ancestors settled. Ice, hail, cattle, lake, birch...all the runes make sense in this land and with the people of this land. Sometimes I have found it difficult to give myself readings and have put the Runes away for months at a time. But always, they come to me in my time of need, a refuge.

As I have studied the linguistic aspect of the runes I discover the Indo-European migrations. Each aspect of the language, culture, mythologies, ship building, fashion and art, connects me to the Indus Valley. It's an amazing adventure to go a Viking along the route to my root. I love working with this material in every way.

My Runelore

Runes Main Page