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Got this in the mail: Runes and Anthropomorphic Magic

  
 
grant
12:01 / 22.03.02
quote:been investigating the runes and the Norse system for a number of years now... solo practitioner, new to cyber-realm...
just wondering if anyone else had made a similar observation, could point me to references in print/online.

Observation is thus:

Elder Futhark = 24 runes = 3 groups [aettir] of 8 runes.

human hands = 8 fingers = 8 groups [digits] of 3 sections [phalanges] = 24 sections

I Ching Trigrams = 8 figures, each composed of 3 lines.

back to runic hands.

Possible directions for investigation:

*Draw Futhark on hands to learn names, shapes and futhark order.

*Meditate on "hands as tools for altering
reality"... extend to "hands as runes as tools for altering reality"...

*Use "opposable-thumb-tool" to press on relevant section while meditating on rune. Use rune-pressing to quick charge on-the-spot/nick o' time.

*Create elaborate mudra-style bind-runes in 4D space-time. link people via hand-runes at group workings.

*Use location of short-term injuries/blemishes [minor burns/scratches/etc] as runic divination. Itching in digit section as "HEADS UP" early warning.
Use Location of permanent scars [eventmemoryloop?] for "life-path" divination/history examination.

*eight digits = eight legs? reference to Odin's eight-legged steed, Sleipnir? the same horse borne by Loki [chaos?], that carried Hermod for nine nights in his attempt to win the god Balder from Hel?... compare with eight legs = eight limbs: "beast-with-two-backs", runic interlocking of limbs/joints.

*Use runes to access the nine worlds of
Yggdrasil/world tree. Note differences to QBL. Can both be "right"?

Those new to runes and the Northern Tradition may enjoy perusing "The Norse Myths" [Kevin Crossley-Holland ISBN 0-394-74846-8] for the tales of the ancestors... for those interested in the practical side of things, a glance through "Northern Mysteries & Magick" [Freya Aswynn ISBN 1-56718-047-7] may yield new avenues of investigation - it even comes with a CD of "Shamanic Chants from the Northern Mysteries"!


He also writes:

quote:
Any feedback from the Barbelith mind-mine would be greatly appreciated.
mixmage@hotmail.com


Well?
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
13:21 / 22.03.02
I think Mixmage is doing some really cool communing with the runes and hir runic hands is stuff I've never come across in print before (or anyplace else for that matter). Maybe other runstyrs/vitkis/etc. have. I personally like the feel of what s/he's talking about more than the Runic yoga postures.

I think it's a very cool way to become more intimate with the runes.

I did come across some 'body divination' stuff (non-runic) that was supposedly a modernization of some Lakota beliefs. In this when certain areas, hurt, itched, was warm, cold, etc. it meant certain things about your mindset and current balance. You could then modify your 'future' by recognizing these symptoms.

Not so much divination as a subtle version of common sense and self awareness such as realizing that you're really spacy today and maybe driving on the freeway wouldn't be a real good idea.

The runic hands divination idea could merge this concept with common runic divination.

The closest thing to Mixmage's Runic hands that I've done is the casting of bind runes on my hands and then completeing the casting with Kung Fu forms. I'm still pretty happy with the results of that.

'Mixmage' sounds familiar... didn't s/he post here for awhile? If not s/he should. This is good stuff.

As for...
quote:
*Use runes to access the nine worlds of
Yggdrasil/world tree. Note differences to QBL. Can both be "right"?

This *really* gets into personal beliefs and world views but in my experience, YES they can both be 'right'.

When doing shamanic work in different places (for me the most drastic examples are different countries with differnt languages), with different clients (who come with their own belief systems), or in different traditions you can (and for me almost always do) experience different cosmologies, ontologies, and paradigms.

When working in Guatemala there were plenty of roads that led to Xibalba present when doing lower world work.

My partner and I have worked with Christian clients whose Christian beliefs were so strong that all of the spirits and places encountered during the session were from that cosmology.

When working or studying within the Tamang tradition their cosmology is preeminent.

And definitely, when ingesting the runes, Yggdrasil and Bifrost were the main ways of accessing other realms for me and the Norse pantheon was very present.

Being a shamanic practitioner in time where we are (at least to some degree) a 'global village' is exciting. You get to be a spiritual 'world traveller'. In the same way that both Nepal and Mexico are real, so are their respective worlds of spirit and magic.

It's not much different than earlier beliefs when at a lake or river there may be certain 'rules' and spirits while at this nearby forest other 'rules' and spirits reside.

As for both the Qabbalah Tree of Life and Yggdrasil I feel they are both different viable solutions to the same 'problem'. There are so many cultures that have a 'world tree' of some type, the specifics seem to just be cultural 'handholds' that allow those specific cultures to climb the tree. (with plenty of religious dogma added as more and more time goes by).
 
 
enough
17:06 / 22.03.02
quote:'Mixmage' sounds familiar... didn't s/he post here for awhile?

The latest addition to M.O.B. - I don't remember seeing Mixmage on Barbelith...could be wrong though...
 
 
Lothar Tuppan
19:26 / 22.03.02
Oh yeah. I knew I heard the name somewhere.
 
 
grant
17:21 / 25.03.02
Wanna sponsor hir for membership? See the Policy thread about that....
 
 
Rev. Wright
17:41 / 25.03.02
Really like the runic hands theory. My hands started singing as soon as I began to read, nice.

The more I contemplate the thought, the more it unfolds and sits well in my mind. I like using my hands whilst conjuring and casting, and it would provide a useful technique of hand posturing whilst in meditation.
Some very nice healing hand ideas, both in energy working and in diagnosis. where is teh tingle strongest, which digit, which section.

Wow, just think how rapidly one could mark out a sequence of runes, spelling commands and wishes. sweet

placing hand on screen and uploading this....
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
08:42 / 09.11.02
When I read this my right hand middle finger right below the knuckle started itching like any thing. A little bit of reflection tells me this is my Raidu bone. According to my online rune dictionary: Reid represents structure, and overcoming efforts and troubles. Representing the number 4 (the four wheels of the wagon), Reid also represents the four directions and the four elements.

This connection that mixmage brought up suggests to my mind that the runes probably were inscribed on bones. The bones of the last helrunar probably.

Any thoughts? Has Anyone experimented with this yet?
 
 
JoeCrow
08:40 / 13.11.02
Hmm. You must be projecting them in a line, starting down your right index finger, correct? See, when I read this, I projected them as a mirrored aett arrangement starting with the right index. That way, the right index finger, from the tip, is Fehu Hagalaz Tiwaz; right middle is Uruz Nauthiz Berkano; right ring is Thurisaz Isa Ehwaz and so forth. Kinda accentuates the vertical links between the aetts, doesn't it?

I just ran across this thread, so I haven't spent a lot of time with this method, but is interesting, no? Kinda reminds me of that bit in The White Goddess about the finger codes for the Beth-Luis-Nion ogham script...
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
09:27 / 13.11.02
I arranged it from left to right. starting at the knuckle and going to the tip.

Left Pinky: Feh, hagall, Tyr
Left Ring: Ur, Naud, Bjarka
Left Middle: Thurs, Isa, Eih
Left Index: Ass, Jara, Madr

Right Index: Reid, Pertra, Lagu
Right Middle: Ken, Eoh, Ing
Right Ring: Gifu, Algiz, Othal
Right Pinky: Wunju, Sol, Dagaz

But I see I made a mistake, my ken was tingling.

Kinda reminds me of that bit in The White Goddess about the finger codes for the Beth-Luis-Nion ogham script...

I never even noticed the connection, bad brain, bad! Thanks.
 
 
cusm
15:05 / 13.11.02
If you start at the tip and work towards the knuckle, just as if your hands were a paper and you were writing the runes in order on them from left to right, top to bottom, you end up with Ehwaz over where the wedding ring would be worn. Highly appropriate, Eh being a rune of marriage (my own wedding bands include the Armenian version of Eh in the design for that reason).
 
 
cusm
15:11 / 13.11.02
Er, no you don't, I was looking at Coyote's list rather than the aetts. You'd have to go Left index to pinky, right index to pinky, tip to knuckle, and then that would work. Though in ways, that arrangement makes sense as well. You'd want to start the aette with the Index finger anyway, I'd think, and the order is preserved when you hold your hands left palm up, right palm down, which is a symbolic of its own.

You also end up with Eiwaz in the middle of the right middle finger, right where a bow string might be drawn and held. Interesting. Any other corelations people can spot?
 
 
mixmage
00:02 / 18.11.02
Thank you...



I use it all the time, so there is no control group. No way of knowing how things would have turned out if I didn't. Like Will mentioned, spelling out words, formulae and names of power, noting synchronicity by highlighting fragments of overheard conversations/TV/radio.

Testing my "eff-yu-thuth's" as I transliterated logos, livery, and hoardings... my reaction speed against vehicle number-plates, noting the two layers of letter and number.

... I was driving to Cardiff, testing myself, riding the little shore-breaks of synchronicity between internal dialogue and external world, padding in the plates of cars overtaking me. "MG" passed, but I pressed "mannaz, wunjo"... just as I realised my mistake, the next car passed me ... "MW".

they often joke about W looking like P and X being G and the whole Ehwaz manaz thing... it's fun posting on the noticeboard of deities.
 
 
mixmage
00:16 / 18.11.02
... or passing sentences through a handshake... right index finger it gives me joy to see the sun at daybreak...
 
 
Stone Mirror
14:03 / 22.11.02
Can both be "right"?

Uh oh.

Somebody out there thiks there might be a "right answer"...
 
 
mixmage
14:50 / 22.11.02
heh... a bit of trollery to get my thread going. Shamanic chanting and drumming were the hot Barb-topics at the time of writing... shows, don't it?

Use of loaded terms aside, what I was flagging is the difficulty I noticed people have trying to reconcile the nine-world model with the QBl tree of life. It's not really a question of which is "Right", more like whether it is possible to directly overlay the two models as some have tried to do.

Perhaps I am only exposing my ignorance of qaballah, but [for me] the two trees have never been more than tacked together with nails and gaffer tape. I don't feel that Yggdrasil works in quite the same way.

To me, the Norse system is a mix of cosmology and psychology - an attempt to understand the world and how it works, rather than a self-contained system of Magick. At the end of the day, "rightness" is merely which system best suits the practitioner.

Want to start a thread on QBL vs Yggdrasil?
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
00:11 / 28.11.02
Want to start a thread on QBL vs Yggdrasil?
There kind of was one, Runes, tarot, language and reality
 
 
mixmage
10:29 / 23.08.03
Update.

Still using the "padding-in" technique, still getting good results.

Found myself walking east at dawn this morning, so launched into the dawn invocation:

My name is Thjodrorir and at Delling's Door I chant these runes to bring Power to the Aesir, Prowess to the Elves and Foresight to Odin... Sowelu, Raido, Kenaz... Sol, Rad, Ken... Ssss, Rrrrr, Kkkk.

Just as I completed, I glance across the road and find myself looking at a black door bearing the number "568b". 5, 6, and 8 from row 2.
 
 
grant
21:45 / 26.01.06
Check this out -- in doing some I Ching snooping, I've been plumbing the depths of Hong Kong's Taoist Culture and Information Centre, and found the following passage relating mystical hand gestures to the trigrams that make up the I Ching hexagrams... by using the hands as a kind of celestial map. The Big Dipper is the central motif, because of the number of its stars -- the rest of the article concerns itself with ways of "walking the Big Dipper," which seems to be an internal art similar to bagua, but without the fighting applications.

The content of Finger Gestures is the essential element for making them.


This refers to certain points on the palm or on the joint of the finger that represent the Dipper, the 12 - hour periods, the Nine Palaces and the Eight Trigrams, and the 28 constellations. Among the nine joints of the three fingers (the index finger, the middle finger, and the ring finger), the middle joint of the third finger represents the center of the Nine Palaces, and the rest of them refer to the Eight Trigrams. The corresponding joint implies the content of the specific trigram. According to the positions of the post-existent Eight Trigrams, the root of the fourth finger implies the Qian Trigram, which is the first of the Eight Trigrams. From the second to the fifth finger, each of the joints indicates one of the 12 - hour periods. When a Daoist pinches a certain position, it symbolizes that he controls the Eight Trigrams, the 12-hour periods, and the 28 constellations. The ancient people often used Finger Gestures to represent the functioning of the universe, the mystery of nature, the positions of space, and the changes of time. Therefore, as the Book of Secret Correspondence states, by making Finger Gestures, the Daoist feels that the universe and the transformations of things are under his control, and a contracted scene of the universe is visible on his hand. Usually the practise of a simple type of Finger Gesture involves pinching one finger joint, but complicated ones involve pinching different finger joints simultaneously. For instance, when flying over the Dipper, the ritual master must pinch promptly the seven finger joints that symbolize the seven stars. Sometimes he has to use several fingers together with his palms, even with his two hands.


 
 
grant
21:50 / 26.01.06
It goes on to map the various parts of the hand and how they correspond to 12 hours of the day and so forth. Here's the trigram/Nine Palaces (the eight trigrams plus the center, I'm assuming, like the loshu or feng shui square) :

And below are the Finger Gestures of the Eight Trigrams and Nine Palaces:
Qian: pinch the joint between the fourth finger and the palm with the thumb.
Kun: pinch the second joint of the ring finger with the thumb.
Kan: pinch the joint between the middle finger and the palm with the thumb.
Li: pinch the second joint of the middle finger with the thumb.
Gen: pinch the joint between the index finger and the palm with the thumb.
Zhen: pinch the first joint of the index finger with the thumb.
Xun: pinch the second joint of the index finger with the thumb.
Dui: pinch the first joint of the ring finger with the thumb.
 
 
Sekhmet
12:47 / 27.01.06
That's fascinating. I wonder how the I Ching and runes would work in combination. I'd be interested to see if there are any correspondences as to the significance each system assigns to certain joints.

Thanks for bumping the thread, too, grant. This is one of my favorite Temple threads ever.
 
 
illmatic
13:29 / 27.01.06
I wonder how the I Ching and runes would work in combination.

No offence Sekhment, but the thought makes me shudder... there's no need for this kind of forced syncretism. Both the I Ching and the Runes are of sufficient complexity already (as Grant's digging shows). Moreover, such synthesis often obscures important differences: a key one here being that the hexagrams don't reprresent "things" as such but more are states of change, snapshots of movement. That would make them an uneasy and unweildly fit with the Runes to say the least.

Not having a dig at you, you understand, people have done similar things in the past - Crowley, for one. But, in that instance, one has to understand that his "translation" had everything to do with his own qabalistic system and nothing whatsoever to do with the two/three millenia worth of of Chinese I Ching lore.

Great digging, Grant, btw - there's a lot more on I CHing links with the Dipper in Jan Fries book Living Midnight
 
 
grant
15:24 / 27.01.06
Actually, one of the things that struck me after thinking about this for a few minutes was that although the I Ching and runelore don't really map onto each other at all, if they both map onto the human body then, well, there's a concrete, functional system of correspondences right there.

I'm using it right now to type on this keyboard. It's smelling one of my workmate's lunches. It's feeling a little dry at the back of the throat from staying up too late reading last night.

If I learned the correspondences, I could read all those sensations as a text. What an interpretive frame....
 
 
grant
15:55 / 27.01.06
For the visually curious:

 
 
Sekhmet
16:44 / 27.01.06
The thought was fairly idle on my part, actually. I have no real interest in trying to syncretize them - my hands are quite full with the runes already, to turn a bad pun, and I know absolutely nothing about the I Ching.

I was mainly curious as to how the two systems overlapped or conflicted when mapped onto the hands. It might be interesting to compare them with each other, and perhaps also with traditional palmistry. If there was a significant amount of correspondence, it would be intriguing.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:16 / 27.01.06
Not in the sense of such correspondence saying something about the systems, but perhaps saying something about hands...
 
 
Fritz K Driftwood
18:27 / 27.01.06
Grant, many thanks for resurrecting this thread!

Back in the day, when I was dwelling in the outer darkness (pre-membership), reading Barbelith I slowly made my way thru the Temple threads working from oldest forward. My main interest was on threads relating to runes (but any interesting thread would do), yet somehow I missed this one!
 
 
illmatic
20:15 / 27.01.06
I'm going to be pondering your last phrase all night, Grant, I suspect.

Does the I Ching map onto the human body and if so in what way?

Rather than sticking the trigrams on hexagrams on chakra points or something, I'd be more tempted to relate it to experiences, and how they make you feel in your body. What is the sensation of the Hexagram Ch'ien (The Creative)? How does this make you feel in your body? etc.

I can see some relation here with both the eight palms in Ba Gua, and what's called Plum Blossom Divination - that is reading hexagrams directly from the enviroment.

Just some food for thought!!!

BTW if we're on hands someone should stick up something to do with mudras....
 
 
grant
19:51 / 30.01.06
Does the I Ching map onto the human body and if so in what way?

Actually, there's a heck of a lot of Traditional Chinese Medicine that gets into this kind of thing. Here's one look at how hexagrams map onto body systems. The traditional Chinese ways of looking at the body are a little different than old Western frameworks -- more concerned with meridians (channels through which energy/fluids flow) than with organs.
 
  
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