 |
I know I hung on the windswept tree |
|||
The Runes
Each character of our modern 26 letter alphabet has no meaning by itself. In the Runic alphabet, each letter has a spiritual meaning. It is only very recently that language literacy is common place. Literacy for most of mankind's experience was for the select few, a Bishop, the ruling classes, the elite, the Rune Master.The average college graduate today has a vocabulary of about 25,000 words of about 450,000 words in the English language.
As Christianity and with it, the use of the Latin alphabet spread throughout Europe, runes became less common and were eventually banned by the Church. But survived in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, Norway and Ireland and have been revived by the modern New Age movement. |
||||
The Runes are a 24-character alphabet first revealed in the First Century C. E. In 1928, a scholar named Marstrander set forth the Etruscan theory or North-Italic (Greek cursive) theory. The hypothesis most accepted is that Germanic people of the Alps adopted the North Italic script perhaps as early as 300 B.C.E. Marstrander suggests that when the Cimbri (the early Celts) came into contact with the North Italic language, they passed it on to the Suevi (people who eventually settled in northwestern Hispania, modern northern Portugal) from there the now Runic language spread north, up the Rhine River, along the coast to the North Sea, and to Jutland near Sweden. By 250 C.E., Runic evidence is found all over the territories occupied by the Germanic, roughly known as Europeans. 
The word "rune" derives from the word runa, meaning "mystery." The runic alphabet is called a "futhark" taking its name from the first few characters. Runes had no lowercase, and could be written in any direction, from left to right or right to left.