2012-11-25

I was ready to experience magic during this past long weekend, as my companions and I had prepared for it. I was even fortunate enough to take part in my first full magical ritual, complete with the invocation of several deities of Chaos (including Ut-Nephishthim the World Mage and the Black Rabbit of Inle), empowerment of magical items, and the embodiment of Choronzon. That was only the beginning of the magic of this weekend, which included my own ritual (preparing a lavish Thanksgiving feast) that was largely successful in its own right, and then topped off with a trip to Central Square, where we acquired several useful tomes of information.

I've experienced tarot readings before, but have always had trouble getting into it. Nonetheless, my interest was piqued enough for me to look into enhancing my sigils with traditional magic, and to this end I picked up a copy of The Book of Runes. This is a simple introduction to Norse Runes, their magical meanings, and suggestions on properly reading them. Upon examination of the book, I immediately noted that this is exactly the same methodology used for tarot readings, although the 24 Futhark runes here provide a simpler, more archaic, and mor "rough" system than the tarot. It offers the basics of runecasting, from the simple Odin's Rune – draw one single rune and apply its meaning to yourself at that moment – to the Three Lifetimes Spread, in which five runes are placed in a cross formation, with the placement of each rune having significance and meaning from "Past" and "Future" incarnations, to "Birth and Childhood," "Present," and "Future in this life."

After waking up this morning in a haze, I had the idea of taking my own name, "MODEMAC," applying the sigil rule to it (remove vowels and duplicates), and translating it into the Runes. This gave three letters:

M D K

Translating these letters into the Runes gives the following:

As it turned out, this was listed in the Book of Runes as a "Three Rune Spread:" "The number three figures prominently in the oracular practices of the ancients. The Three Rune Spread which, according to Tacitus, was already in use 2,000 years ago, is satisfactory for all but the most demanding situations."

Reading the runes from right to left, the three symbols represent: Opening, Breakthrough, The Self. Curiously, this is suspiciously similar to the tarot reading I received last night, in which it was declared that I have a big change in my life coming, one that will make everything I've done before seem like a prologue. That is, if I make it happen - it's not going to happen if I sit it here and let the Universe deliver it to me.

And that was my first foray into runic magic. I was curious as to whether these runes could help with my crafting of sigils. The meaning and symbolism imparted into these runes, after nearly two thousand years of use, suggests that I may be on the right track.

("Magical ritual?" "Invocation of deities of Chaos?" As I've said, magic is mostly bullshit. If anyone is actually reading this, then a few of you already know that. I leave it to you to figure out how much of this is true.)