The worst book about runes ever?
Published: Fri, 12/13/13
A few years ago someone gave me a copy of Ralph Blum's 'The
Book of Runes' I can't actually remember who but am pretty
sure I didn't buy it myself. It is still in its plastic box
with the 25 fake stone rune counters at the bottom and a nice red
bag to put them in. Then the book which is very handsomely printed
in hardback. When I say 25 rune stones, the elder futhork is
covered plus a blank stone. I read somewhere that the publishers
of the book wanted to sell it with a set of runes but the packaging
they intended to use had been designed with a game in mind which
had 25 counters. With only 24 rune counters there would have been
an embarrassing gap so the blank rune was invented. From the
beginning of the book Blum candidly admits that he doesn't
actually know anything about runes. Apparently he just had a
sleepless night during which the meanings came to him and that was
effectively the basis of his book. Blum's book was first
published in 1982 and his excuse was that all the rune masters had
died out by the 17th century so is only guide was his personal
inspiration. To be fair Blum does seem to be familiar with the
Eddas and quotes accurately when appropriate.
So why did I suddenly decide it was time to take the little plastic
box down from the shelf of books with similar 'new age'
themes and read some of it? I am not quite sure except that it
felt like the right thing to do at that moment. It is rather
beautifully written and there is something quite charming about the
way the book presents itself. I discovered on page 15 an
invocation which made an excellent call to worship with which to
start the church service which I conducted last Sunday. No one
asked me where I got it from but I would have been happy to say if
they had. According to MacMillan publishers over 900,000 copies of
Blum's little book have been sold over the years and it is
still in print, Amazon currently advertising the 25th anniversary
edition.
At least Blum got people interested in Runes to some extent,
Stephen Flowers (writing as Eldred Thorson) followed soon after and
I had bought and read 'At the Well of Wyrd' long before I
met Ivar. So why haven't we done better with Stav over the
past 20 years or so? Lots of reasons and part of it is not having
published popular books. Perhaps one reason why not is that Stav
is an oral tradition and learning Stav requires absorbing
'knowledge of the rune staves' and making it part of your
life. Books are very important for preserving and transmitting
knowledge but there is a very big difference between having a book
on a shelf and being able to do the stances each day.
However I am writing about the runes month by month. Today I will
be making progress on the third edition of the members newsletter.
The theme will be Ur and I will be digging into the meanings and
associations as well as the mythological references. I will also
look at how to create a rune set using the 16 runes but represented
3 times on 24 counters, I will even explain why, and no blank rune
I am afraid.
Over the past two months I have managed to get the monthly members
newsletter out by the end of the month, just. So including time in
the postal system, especially to places like Australia, Canada and
Chile, the posted copies cannot have landed on doormats until well
into the next month. So this month I am setting myself the
challenge of getting the newsletter written and distributed before
the deadline for Christmas posting here in the UK, which means
around the middle of next week. If you would like to join Ice and
Fire and receive the monthly newsletter, get access to the online
video training material and benefit from priority booking and
discounts on training then go to
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/join.html
regards
Graham
PS Meeting this evening with the owner of the building we are
going to make our Stav Centre. So I will be able to finalise
details and get things moving ready for the new year.