Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit is latin, a dead language for To boldly go where no man has gone before The runic alphabet, in use for well over a thousand years, was employed by various Germanic groups in a variety of ways, including, inevitably, for superstitious and magical rites. Formulaic runic words were inscribed onto small items that could be carried for good luck; runic charms were carved on metal or wooden amulets to ensure peace or prosperity. There are invocations and allusions to pagan and Christian gods and heroes, to spirits of disease, and even to potential lovers. Few such texts are completely unique to Germanic society, and in fact, most of the runic amulets considered in this book show wide-ranging parallels from a variety of European cultures. The question of whether runes were magical or not has divided scholarship in the area. Early criticism embraced fantastic notions of runic magic - leading not just to a healthy scepticism, but in some cases to a complete denial of any magical element whatsoever in the runic inscriptions. This book seeks to re-evaulate the whole question of runic sorcery, attested to not only in the medieval Norse literature dealing with runes but primarily in the fascinating magical texts of the runic inscriptions themselves. Dr MINDY MCLEOD teaches in the Department of Linguistics, Deakin University, Melbourne; Dr BERNARD MEES teaches in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne. This 2006 submission from The Boydell Press is in my opinion one of the better scholarly works that I have come across on rune magic to date. The credentials of both authors Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees raised the bar of academic expectations, at least from my point of view as reflected by this work. However, it has been argued by academic critics of this work that it is not as scrutinizing as it should be and further suggest that the authors rely heavily on John McKinnell and Rudolf Simek (both are non runologists) as their basic source for their arguments. amazon/Runic-Amulets-Magic-Objects-MacLeod/dp/1843832054/ref=cm_cr-mr-img Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Preface Abbreviations 1 Introduction The principal of runic alphabets The names of the runes 2 Gods and heroes 3 Love, fertility and desire 4 Protective and enabling charms 5 Fertility Charms 6 Healing Charms and leechcraft 7 Pagan ritual items 8 Christian amulets 9 Rune-stones, death and curses 10 Runic lore and other magic 11 Conclusions Bibliography Index The book has some ten chapters with 278 pages, is well referenced throughout with footnotes. The main bug bear seems to be a cursory and uncritical reading of several runic inscriptions with arbitrary linguistic analyses. For instance: The Danish Ribe cranium pp. 25-27).where the authors state that [t]he Ribe text is a `transitional inscription which predates the Viking period (p. 25) is certainly incorrect. Linguistically speaking, it seems that the Ribe cranium inscription, around 725 C.E., had undergone significant sound changes of the transitional period, and its graphemic system witnesses the parsimony of the younger, reduced fuþark with only 15/16 runes (Schulte 2006b:48) This book however is a bold attempt at challenging the earlier criticisms which embraced farcical and fanciful notions of rune magic based loosely on manufactured ideas or traditions extending from the New Age and other 19th century Germanic Nationalism based esoteric sources. It questions the notion if the runes were indeed associated with medieval Norse literature dealing with rune magic and demonstrates a strong interdisciplinary focus on Germanic-Mediterranean epigraphy. Despite some misgivings, I enjoyed this work as a refreshing change from the many fabrications out there about runelore and indeed rune magic and would certainly reccommend it!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 18:21:22 +0000
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