Are Runes and Ogham Magic?

People often ask in the comments of my videos if I can help them with runic tattoos. "What rune can I get that means loyal and honest?" they ask. Or "What rune brings good luck in studying at school?". And this video will hopefully explain why I can't help, because that's not always how runes worked.
The writing systems of our ancestors often seem mystical, magical and wreathed with misty secrets from a long time ago, as though simply writing one of their ancient letters down might cure sickness or bring wealth or power. I wish it were as simple as that! I'd be rolling in dough!
Alphabets are usually just alphabets unless you write things down in very specific ways. Whether they're Phoenician, Old Norse, Proto-Germanic, Thai, Old English, Ogham, Latin, Welsh, or Hebrew. Unless you actually have the lore to go along with the letters you write, anything you scratch or draw is just graffiti. And I'm not sure lore made up by a weird poet in the 1920s counts as real Ogham lore, just like I'm not sure lore made up by German nationalists in the 19th century counts as real Norse lore!
But hey! At least it's sunny!
Go and check out @TheEsotericaChannel for some proper scholarly treatments of ancient magic. Then go and check out @JacksonCrawford for some proper scholarly treatment of runes and Old Norse language and culture.
Find me elsewhere:
Patreon: / jimmyjohnson
Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/thewelshviking
My actual website: www.welshviking.com
Insta: @littlewelshviking
Twitter: @realwelshviking
Letters, parcels, packages?
The Welsh Viking,
PO Box 821,
YORK,
YO1 0PY
Business and collaboration email (sorry, I won't read/respond to anything else): thewelshviking1 at gmail dot com

[@KalteGeist]

As my prof used to say, "If people thought a rune could bring wealth it would be on every extant piece we've found."

[@jasminv8653]

Your professor sounds brilliant, thank you. Over-thinking these things is so funny.

[@dantherpghero2885]

The letter Q has powerful healing magic. That's why it is so prominent on the NyQuil bottle.

[@Vera-kh8zj]

hahaha

[@LaneBeScrolling]

I feel like if we had to Miracle Max Jimmy by pumping him full of air and pressing on his diaphragm, his body would vocalize “…we don’t know…” just from muscle memory

[@elisabethmontegna5412]

Or “nuance” which Miracle Max would insist was actually “nuisance” and refuse to bring Jimmy back on the basis that he was definitely a troublemaker

[@LaneBeScrolling]

@@elisabethmontegna5412 😂

[@hurremhascki]

As a Roman history nerd I can attest that 'Don't believe anything that Robert Graves wrote' is very good advice.

[@tophers3756]

True, but "I, Claudius" was an entertaining read.

[@hurremhascki]

@@tophers3756 Yeah that's true. And the show is iconic as well.

[@eric2500]

Bad history, decent enough fiction and speculation on ideas. Life's more fun if you sometimes say "what if"....

[@BetsyDudash]

But "Good-bye to All That" is extraordinarily powerful and one of my favorite books.

[@hurremhascki]

@@BetsyDudash Fair. But he did also make a lot of things up about the Romans and the Celts.

[@GallowglassVT]

I think it's grand when fellow pagans divine new meanings in runes or ogham letters, but as Jimmy says, ours is a new tradition, not an old one. Also, once again, and I say this as a pagan, stop selling merch and billing it as "the ancient Viking -insert relevant stuff here-". It implies continuity between the two, and there isn't. Stop it

[@kathyjohnson2043]

Exactly, why does it have to be old to be insightful or relevant or meaningful; all beliefs were new at some point. All are a reaction to, inspired by, (or both) other beliefs.

[@GallowglassVT]

@@kathyjohnson2043 sadly, people equate ancient with wisdom, especially those of a conservative mindset, and while that can be true for some things, other aspects of our ancestors' world haven't aged well and need to be left alone. Getting too bound up in tradition often does more harm than good.

[@bast713]

I love the creativity inherent in neo-paganism. I agree it doesn't have to be old to be valid.

[@euansmith3699]

@@GallowglassVT Apparently, the "ancient" game of Mah-Jong was created in China in the 19th Century; it was advertised as being "ancient" as a Modern Chinese game wouldn't have sold well in the West. Bigotry, eh? 😣

[@mjinba07]

Buyer beware. When people seek imaginary influence, there's bound to be other folks willing to exploit that for their own gain.

[@yetanother9127]

If Ór was used in magical practice as a charm for wealth, it was probably not because the letter itself was intrinsically magical, but rather because, as a rule, ancient people really loved puns.

[@washipuppy]

The amount of religious and cultural practices that turn out to be because of a pun is delightful. Heck, in Australia we give our mothers Chrysanthemums on mothers day. Because they're often shortened to 'mums, and they're in season around Mothers day here. Mums get 'mums on Mums day.

[@Loweene_Ancalimon]

@@washipuppy This is incredibly funny to me, because in France they're in season in Oct-Nov, and you do *not* gift a Chrysanthemums pot to someone because they're the flowers you put on graves for All Saints' Day/All Souls' Day. Some varieties can be used as part of bigger bouquets, but the ones you buy in pots that make big spheres are for the dead only.

[@beth12svist]

Humans love puns. They don't have to be ancient humans.

[@sc149]

To draw a modern comparison, press F to pay respects.

[@anthonyhayes1267]

​@@Loweene_Ancalimon I think you just gave me a cool writing idea.

[@solveigw]

I remember discovering the runic alphabet as a child and believing they where magic in their own right. And the disappointment when my dad told they were basically normal letters... And then realizing that letters actually do have their own kind of magic. Depending on how they are put together they can make a person feel all the feels. The can tell about people long gone and futures yet to come! The true magic is that reading and writing gives us humans the ability to read minds!

[@ragnkja]

Writing is magic, in that it lets us transmit thoughts across time and space. In our case the distances involved might not be huge, but still almost certainly further than either of us could shout (and it’s way too late to shout outside right now anyway).

[@talscorner3696]

Like, if you think about it, writing brought people to the moon. If that's not magic, I don't know what is xD

[@CapriUni]

Exactly! I can look at funny-shaped squiggles on a page, or screen, or carved into a rock, and hear words in my head.

[@sisuguillam5109]

Well put!

[@RukoHanaji]

This.

[@janetmackinnon3411]

"Criticise your sources" is one of the most important sentences ever to be spoken on KZbin!

[@euansmith3699]

Jimmy is an erudite young man -outstanding- out sitting in his field. Another cracking video 👍

[@TheWelshViking]

HAH! Cheers Euan!

[@GymGirl88]

Really loving these outdoor PhD rants. Feels like we're just hanging out and sharing our knowledge.

[@charlespentrose7834]

Random Internet Person: I've heard bindrunes are dangerous My response: Then why is there a bindrune on millions of electronic devices?

[@maebhryan3040]

See how dangerous they are?

[@wanderingspark]

Using Bluetooth does make it easier for people to hack your phone.

[@henrikleppa7632]

I mean JavaScript for example can be pretty magical and dangerous, *_and_* you can learn its secrets from the "Wizard Book" (SICP). 🧙‍♂λ🧙‍♀

[@eric2500]

To ward off malevolent entities like Trolls, "Vai - Rai" and the disembodied all knowing spirit known as *"Aaa-Eye* !!!

[@viktorsilva4017]

"I want to tattoo a rune that means good luck and good health" Why not just write "good luck and good health" ?

[@AzraelThanatos]

Probably the same reason why several people like having tattoo's of Japanese and Chinese letters...and the ensuing idiocy about, often, not knowing what they were getting put on that can either be rather horrible or parts off of a takeout menu...

[@marcellacruser951]

@@AzraelThanatos Oxen hoodalalie in fermented bean paste is quite respectable, I'll have you know!

[@eric2500]

Putting it in another language is can be a way to shift your own awareness and feel magically inspired and positive about your luck and health.

[@chrysanthemum8233]

I wonder how much these late Victorians were influenced by their fellows' discoveries of things like Daoist magic, in which the characters/letters used really were believed to have spiritual power. Chinese-speaking people still hang up a traditional charm at the lunar new year: the character 福 written upside down. 福 (fu) means "prosperity" and the word for "inverted" is a homonym for the word for "arrives" so "fu, inverted" is a pun for "good fortune arrives" and you hang it on your front door to bring good luck in the new year.

[@marmotarchivist]

I love the last bit of the video. As an archivist currently describing medieval latin charters, people always assume they contain very meaningfull or even magical things. 9/10 times John bought a piece of land from Peter. 10th time, Peter exchanged a piece of land with John. But they are still awesome.

[@johannageisel5390]

They always forget that writing was invented to keep track of taxes.

[@BlueEyedBrunette]

@@johannageisel5390 And customer complaints, ala Nanni to Ea-nāsir. The earliest yelp review.

[@grandmasgopnik9642]

Graves being called a “sex person” is possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever heard 😂

[@P-Mouse]

the point about inscriptions being boring, is in itself kinda interesting it tells you what was important to people at the time. Rongo-Rongo tablets we cant even read, but they are assumed to be genealogies mostly. The Rosetta Stone talks about tax-breaks for the temples.

[@jasminv8653]

And a lot of rune stones and other inscriptions are just people naming their relatives and loved ones or places and things important to them.

[@censusgary]

A familiar example of acrophony is the radio alphabet (saying “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, …” instead of “A,B,C, …”). Radio operators use it because Charlie, Echo, Golf, and Tango are easier to distinguish from each other by ear than Cee, E, Gee, and Tee (and so on).

[@sisuguillam5109]

For reasons I tend to spell out words in the NATO Alphabet when someone askes me to spell something for them... The looks people give me...

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

Oh gosh! 🙈 I used radio alphabet by habit on the phone with customer service people for a while after working with the fire service, and ISTG, it added confusion rather than avoiding it! 😂 The number of people that would then think your name was "Alpha" or whatever... 🙄 Second-language barriers probably not helping either!

[@Poohze01]

What rune would I use to mean 'This Rune Doesn't mean Anything"? More seriously, I think people confuse symbolism with magic. A symbol can have cultural significance without being what we would call magical. Things that get interpreted as magical charms might be the early medieval equivalent of AC/DC badges.

[@Asbjern_Longfellow]

I'm planning a runic tattoo that says "Whoever reads this is stupid.". Can't wait XD

[@cypriennezed5640]

I can't wait for future beings to find "ermahgerd gersberms" somewhere and impart the ancient mystical meaning and get tattoos and stuff.

[@spinecho609]

but what rune can i get that will particularly annoy Jimmy?

[@TheExalaber]

Get something from an unrelated writing system, and insist on calling it a rune.

[@TheWelshViking]

Coelbren y Beirdd!

[@TwoMikesProductions]

A for Apple, C for Cataclysm has made me honk laughing with stygian majesty

[@TheWelshViking]

Roaring like a Kushite

[@TwoMikesProductions]

@@TheWelshViking 'Ah must be the monday evening blood wind'

[@eric2500]

Why, Hades bless you then!

[@krikeles]

Able, Baker , charlie...... The letters of the Latin alphabet have been given names to avoid confusion in radio transmission. So that F tattoo on your ankle means foxtrot......may improve your dancing 😊

[@doobat708]

Here, I could put one of them letters that mean "elbow" on my elbow that was broken, just to make sure people aren't confused about what it is again.

[@MereMeerkat]

The ancient mystical practice of writing "not this leg" on the healthy limb was thought to ward off evil spirits during knee surgery.

[@maleahlock]

​@@MereMeerkat 😂😂😂

[@stiofanmacamhalghaidhau765]

if you can find a letter called 'arse' and can tell them apart, you can tell your... okay. okay... okaaaayy I'm going. sorry.

[@peterd86]

As a second-language-learner of Thai, I'd argue that acrophony is actually an essential part of study! In fact, in my experience it's used pretty much on a daily basis: whenever spelling a word aloud, you'll invariably name the letters as you go. This is very useful since there are so many seemingly redundant letters (there are 5 or 6 symbols that all represent an aspirated T sound, for example) that actually give clues to a word's etymology (from Sanskrit, Pali, etc.).

[@TheWelshViking]

Amazing. Thank you!

[@grandmasgopnik9642]

That’s super interesting

[@Albinojackrussel]

Do Thai people use this to make joke sentences out of letters? Kind of like the FUNEX skit from the two Ronnie's? Apologies in advance, the joke might be a little hard to understand if you're an English second language speaker. The idea is basically using letters as homonyms so "F-U-N-E-X?" becomes "have you any eggs?"

[@luciasoosova2182]

So, does that mean Slovaks use acrophony as well? If we spell out a surname, for example, we normally use first names to spell them out to combat confusion in legal documents or reservations because some of our spoken letters don´t always match the written ones, like v and f under certain situations. So a person with surname Slafko would spell it like: Samuel-Lucia-Alena-Filip-Kristína-Ondrej. It´s so cool Thai people use something so similar.

[@SarahGreen523]

I read The White Goddess in the mid 90s. Those who recommended it to me assured me it was very enlightening and gave insights into the magickal practices of the dark ages blah blah blah. I read it. It reminded me of Graham Hancock's work, though the subject was different, the style was similar enough. Pseudo, that was my word for it back in the day. Jimmy, it does my heart and soul good to hear you debunk and set straight the *mystery* of the runes. lol I burn runes into some of the art I create. I just write what the item is or the name of my shop. People don't know what it says, they just see runes and think it's cool and magical. I make no claims about what it says or does and if people ask I tell them the truth.

[@nataliestanchevski4628]

Whenever there is a "k" in magical it's an instant pass and cringe for me lol.

[@SarahGreen523]

@@nataliestanchevski4628 Exactly! I was hoping someone would pick up on that.

[@euansmith3699]

I guess that, as magic is in the mind of the practitioner, there can be power in the runes; even it is just the power to say, "Buy me" to a suitable customer. 👍

[@ragnkja]

“Sarah made this spoon” is absolutely a classic style of inscription.

[@beth12svist]

​@@ragnkja Considering, say, both labels on quilts and labels on ready-to-wear clothing: Nothing's changed.

[@chrisball3778]

I live in Coventry. A few years ago, during the pandemic someone undergoing a boredom-enforced reintroduction to the world of gardening dug up a rock in their garden here and it turned out to be an Ogham stone, dated from the 4th-6th centuries. It was registered with the portable antiquities scheme (WMID-634A9A) and appeared in a few small news articles about unusual things people dug up during lockdown. Since then, I've heard nothing more about it. I believe it was returned to the people who found it. I'd SO love to know what it said. Coventry is obviously a long way from Ireland, and also from Wales, Western Scotland and the other places most Ogham is found, so it's tempting to think it must mean something really cool, interesting and unusual like "The Gaels of the West pledge their swords to Arthur, war-chief of the men of the Island of the Mighty'. Yeah... well thanks to this video, I know that it's more likely to say something like 'Eoin's farm. Private property. Trespassers will be prosecuted'. I'd still absolutely love to know what it said and how it got to Coventry.

[@TheWelshViking]

Probably erected there! We have Ogham from Norfolk too! That stone should have been national news

[@cork..]

Trespassers will be prosecuted 💀💀

[@johannageisel5390]

There are pictures and a 3D scan when you search for that number you gave. Now we only need to find somebody who can read Ogham and speaks old Welsh....

[@maryellencook9528]

Jimmy, I love yours or editing Jimmy's designation of Alistair Crowley as "poop eating loon". I gave it a belly laugh that woke my chihuahua.

[@jirup]

I still have the Encyclopædia Britannica set that my parents bought when I was born. Nearly 60 years later, I still think every volume is magical.

[@SarahGreen523]

Knowledge is powerful. More powerful than magic even.

[@LearnRunes]

That's beautiful.

[@lenabreijer1311]

60 years ago a young person's version kept me from going out of my mind. I had a kidney infection, and nearly died but that is another story, I was in bed for nearly 6 months and bored out of my skull at 13. I read all 16 volumes and it changed my life. I fell in love with science. Yep those books were magical.

[@timhallfarthing383]

@@SarahGreen523 “The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

[@ragnkja]

I have the letter “æ” in my name. Does that make writing my full name more magic than writing a name that only requires the basic Latin alphabet?

[@solveigw]

Yes!

[@reivenne]

YES OBVIOUSLY

[@cypriennezed5640]

💯

[@TheWelshViking]

Turns out your name cures warts!

[@ragnkja]

@@TheWelshViking 😂😂😂

[@sarahmcgillivray8340]

Ah hah I did my senior thesis on archaic and old Irish so THANK YOU for this one. “””magical””” ogham then came up in a TV show I watched and I spent a lot of time hitting my head against my desk.

[@art-is-awen8842]

what tv show?? jc

[@jaimemariekasper5077]

Thank you thank you thank you for this video ! As a reenactor who depicts a Völva people are almost offended when I tell them that runes where predominately just a writing system and there is actually a LOT about seiðr practice we dont know. Maybe they expect me to pull some sort of magical Nordic rabbit from my Birka cap covered in runes 🤷🏼‍♀️ anyway, thats for the back up !!

[@wanderingspark]

I like the secret oghams because they let me put my name in my embroidery designs while making it look like it's just more decoration. (My name is Irish in origin, so it mostly transliterates correctly into ogham.)

[@johannageisel5390]

Nice! Do you sell your designs?

[@wanderingspark]

@@johannageisel5390 No, this just personal stuff. I am working on a reconstruction of a 16th c. leine (the Irish version of a shirt/smock/tunic). We know from written descriptions that they were often embroidered, but there are no extant examples of period Irish embroidery, and 16th c. art does not depict the embroidery with much detail, so I largely have to make up my own design anyway.

[@johannageisel5390]

@@wanderingspark I would love to see that, though. Would you consider putting a short video about it on your channel and the tag me?

[@angelcollina]

Oh genius!! I love it! And it’s so easy to stitch!

[@CollinMcLean]

I also recommend Dr. Jackson Crawford's audiobooks of the sagas. They're very relaxing and make for great listening when you're laying in the bath and meditating.

[@HakinLaeknir]

I take issue with any historian who often states they don't believe in magic

[@ragnkja]

A huge number of runic inscriptions were just names on tools, just like you yourself might write your name on a tool you might lend to someone and wanted returned to you if you were to lose it.

[@AzraelThanatos]

Probably mixed with things of people naming their things...think about how many people name their vehicles, phones, or other things and anthropomorphize them as it is.

[@kenanjones3481]

modern day people: ooh magic tools, such mystical power! Viking dude: "give me back my fucking pickaxe already Bjorn!"

[@andersnygaard909]

Oh! This reminds me - I've always wondered if the whole modern bindrune mythology were influenced by neopagan writers misinterpreting house marks. Both illiterate and literate people used them to mark their property and sign documents, and they're most often encountered as mason's marks. And many of them do have that five-different-letters-mashed-up look to them, with runes or rune-ish symbols often in the mix - and often "everyday" magic symbols - apotropaics with fun names like like the mare-gate, rune rose, førkja, valknute (not that triskelion thing), cock's foot, crow's toes and grouse claw. It seems like the kind of thing a 19th German romantic would get very excited about, but I'm a bit stumped about where to start looking for a connection.

[@ragnkja]

@@andersnygaard909 Some are better explained as ligatures within words, but yes, that’s probably part of the explanation.

[@johannageisel5390]

"Halfdan was here" becomes immediately sacred when written in runes. :P

[@washipuppy]

Getting F tatted on my ankle actually sounds like it'd be pretty sweet. And I did have a friend who had L and R tattooed on their respective left and right hands, so getting a single letter tattoo isn't outside of the realm of possibility for English either.

[@kellyosullivan990]

As a neo pagen myself I have to give you a huge thank you Jimmy. The omg magical rune thing drives me coocoo bananas.

[@LaneBeScrolling]

I know zilch about Vikings, runes, etc., but the reference to Phoenician (and my immediate jump to “wow Hebrew didn’t modify this at all!”, at least in letter naming) made me think of how common acronyms are in Hebrew. Maybe some instances of the seemingly nonsensical runic “chants” could be acronyms for a sentence that would have just been understood in the time? Granted, many of those are quite long.

[@TheWelshViking]

Could well be, right? I really wish we had some surviving texts on it. An actual Old Norse/proto-Norse grimoire would be amazing

[@stiofanmacamhalghaidhau765]

mystical ancient runic magic charm inscription from the distant days of far off 21st century: ROFLMAO suspected by some to be an invocation of the power of an otherwise unattested ancient cat deity ROFL through the ritual marking out of the wildcat call: MAO others think it was possibly a deodorant brand name. scholars remain divided on the issue.

[@katharinecooke1873]

When I went through my occult phase I got tattooed with runes that were, according to a newagey book I picked up somewhere, associated with something or other that was meaningful to me at the time. Fortuitously they turn out to spell a word in Norwegian that means rough (I think as in roughly textured), which I'll take.

[@ragnkja]

“Ru”? (For a fun bonus, that’s also the Norwegian name of Roo, Kanga’s joey in _Winnie-the-Pooh,_ when he’s not just called “Kengubarnet”, “the Kanga child”.)

[@katharinecooke1873]

​@@ragnkja that's the one!

[@RandomAFP]

I'm just itching to go out picking buttercups. SUCH a lovely yellow dye!

[@orcanerdc6204]

It is kind of you to make a video about this. Some would just respond to every such request with "runes dont work like that" in runes. 😂

[@CottageTales]

Loved this, informative as ever. And funnily enough I feel a little vindicated: I dabble in witchcraft and associated practices and the whole "runes and ogham are magical symbols that have innate power" always felt super off to me. It's an alphabet. People likely used it like an alphabet. So if I want to make something magical using runes, I do the same thing I would when making a sigil with our standard European/Roman alphabet... Makes more sense to me, and apparently that is probably just as likely to be a thing as anything else, because, like you say: we don't know.

[@knutanderswik7562]

Thank you for a refreshingly sober take. In Egils Saga the nithing pole is carved with runes but it is explicitly stated that they simply express the curse, an analog might be like those lead scrolls with curses left around by Roman pagans to communicate to the gods, who are imagined to be literate. We can probably imagine illiterate people soliciting the help of a rune master but this is a fancy title for someone who can write and carve in stone. Also I like that hat.

[@KathrynsRavens]

F to pay respects tattoo

[@Qmeister044]

And then your Futhark F gets mistaken for Gandalf's G rune from The Hobbit.

[@ca44444]

I practice divination using runes (specifically using elder futhark runes) and I knew that runes were regular old letters, but I didn’t know about the acrophony stuff. I’m tempted to make a rune set with the English Alphabet now. The ability to read and write is its own sort of magic, after all.

[@kathyjohnson2043]

We need a collab with you and miniminuteman!

[@phatlaluke]

Love the esoterica shout, love that guy's content. iirc, there's at least one instance of "runic magic" in eigil skallagrimsson's saga, where some peasant lad tried making a love charm by writing it on a whale bone and sticking it under the target's bed, but he did it wrong and just made her sick. Eigil had to fix them to cure her.

[@ragnkja]

But it wasn’t the runes themselves that were the magic, but what he wrote with them.

[@phatlaluke]

@@ragnkja right. didn't mean to imply otherwise, just to provide an example of what norse runic magic might have looked like (or at least what later medieval norse writers thought it looked like)

[@CollinMcLean]

@@phatlaluke And Freyr's servant in the Poetic Edda.

[@astreaward6651]

Atun-Shei Films just did a collab with Esoterica on Aleister Crowley! I'd love to see a Welsh Viking/Atun-Shei collab in the future :) Two of my absolute fave Viking geeks in a video? Absolute brilliance!

[@moxiebombshell]

Yes! I was just thinking about how cool it is that thanks to Esoterica there's now an Atun-Shei -> Welsh Viking connect! I think Jimmy and Clark ( I think that's the Atun-Shei Film guy's name...) would get along splendidly and make for an excellent video. Or even one with the guy from Esoterica, too! COLLAB TIME!

[@euansmith3699]

@@moxiebombshell Atun-Shei's secret identity is Andrew Rackich 👍

[@astreaward6651]

@@moxiebombshell I think his name is Andrew, but I could be wrong. I'm working my way through his New Orleans History playlist right now. I fell in love with that place and can't wait to go back lol

[@darthbee18]

OMG so seconding this!!! 🔥🔥🔥

[@euansmith3699]

@@astreaward6651 I really enjoy the video about what it is like to be a New Orleans's Tour Guide.

[@C.G.Hassack]

I was bitten by a Quoka back when I was a kid, I was feeding a group of them, and one dropped their bit of carrot and latched on to my arm as I reached across to feed another. I was surprised, but not traumatized. It's hard to be traumatized by a cute chook sized kangaroo. I did have a scar, but that has long faded.🙂

[@LearnRunes]

Good on you for not holding a grudge against your hungry quokka friend.

[@Mockingbird_Taloa]

Really glad you touched on how this is often more cultural appropriation than honouring one's heritage. I'm Indigenous & was always taught the wrong people getting the wrong tats (or even there right ones in the wrong way) is a surefire way to get the ancestors on your bad side. I can't help but think there are a lot of angry ancient ancestral Scandinavians scowling at the folx who get some of these 'magical' runic tats. We've lost a lot of our traditional tattoo knowledge, especially in the Southeast, but one thing we believe firmly in is that integral knowledge never dies, though sometimes Creator lets it fall asleep for a while so the wrong people don't get ahold of it. As our communities have strengthened over the last few decades, we've begun to experience a revitalization of our tattooing traditions--but it all comes with immense amounts of research and prayer, and there is so, so much we know is out of reach for now, if not forever. IF ancient Scandinavian or Irish tattooing practices were to make a come back, I'd expect it to do so on the tails of intense scholarship and to originate in culturally continuous communities. Given how hard it is to overcome ~175 years of not being allowed to practice tattooing, it's hard to imagine how a thousand years is going to be to overcome and the result still be able to be called a faithful reconstruction of past practices. There is an argument that it's often more respectful to create new traditions in the spirit of what is known of the old than to butcher/misrepresent what our ancestors understood about the traditions contemporary to their own times. Living cultures do organically attach new meanings to old motifs, after all.

[@cerdic6305]

It’s very unlikely given that there is basically no evidence of tattooing in ancient or Viking age Scandinavia

[@VikingBecka333]

Great video! Runes aren't magic, it's the existence of language itself that's magical ❤

[@ragnkja]

Writing is telepathy: by writing this, I make you hear words in your mind as you read it.

[@angelcollina]

As a linguist, I embrace this take.

[@KellyBergerDeusVult]

It's hard to really impress upon modern people that the mere presence of writing is magical enough. It changed the human trajectory in so many ways. It's inherently magical, not in the sense of mystic, but in the sense of wonderment of amazement of the ability to transit knowledge from one place to another without the physical presence of a person.

[@amberadams9310]

I had a feeling the lady trying to sell us rune stones at a festival last year was… misinformed, we’ll say But I didn’t have evidence what she was saying was bull. I’m just skeptical of festival vendors making historical claims anyway

[@eazy8579]

I set my phone down to get some food,and when I came back, this was in my feed. Never in my life have I clicked on something so fast! Learning about the actual realities of runes is super cool, and honestly really cool; I love modern practice using runes as magic, but it grinds my gears so hard when people claim this is how it was in the period, when it either wasn’t or we just don’t know. Using writing as magic is super cool, but stop Mysticising the past; if that works for you as a modern practice, then do it, but remember, people in the past probably just used their alphabets to write phrases to curses and blessings, and of course, lots of insults and braggery.

[@eazy8579]

Realized I said “Honestly really cool” when I meant “Honestly really fun” I’m dumb

[@billiemacdonald8436]

As someone who has been a pagan for 23 years I think it's really really crucial that new pagans take the time to look at content like this. When you are a new pagan you come to see the world as beautiful, mystical, and magical. And it is! But that doesn't mean that history is one unbroken line of knowledge that we can trace. But it doesn't need to be. We can see magic in the world without assuming that the power we see is the same as the power our early ancestors saw and that's fine. We are at our own place in history. Magic is beautiful but it's for you alone.

[@ramblingseth]

Yes! Personally I think the truth of it is much more complicated, interesting, and magical than the made up version.

[@Earendil1979]

Right! I'm much more interested (As a pagan) in what the perspective of an ancestral practitioner of heathenry was, such that I am better able to relate to and base my practice on that ancestral perspective, in my life today in the 21st. I appreciate Jimmy's dogged adherence to the mantra's of "We DON'T *KNOW*", and "Nuance." because I know that what I'm getting is as unvarnished by bias as possible, and will enable me to understand the ancestors better.

[@Haverlock]

Abandon magic and embrace rationality ❤

[@Earendil1979]

@@Haverlock No :)

[@andersnygaard909]

To me the smoking gun on how the runes intersected with magic is the history of the magic charms they were used to write down. People kept writing the charms - there's whole catalogs of them collected from folk healers and grimoire manuscripts from the 1200's up until the 1950's - but as runes gradually went out of fashion and became an obscure relic rather than a functioning community of letters, people simply switched to writing basically the same things with Latin letters. So it seems pretty clear they believed the magic wasn't in how you said it or what you used for saying it, but what you actually said.

[@ironlion45]

Talking about using healing runes, reminded me of Otzi the ice man's tattoos. The locations and nature of the tattoos seem to suggest that they had a medicinal...intention. The going theory is that his aches and pains and such were "treated" in a way that involved tattooing specific patterns over them. of course that's thousands of years too early to be related in any meaningful way to viking age magical practices but it does stand as an example of one way that it was viewed historically.

[@timflatus]

"Ailm" might even refer to Elm. I don't think we have any native firs as such, just one variety of pine. As you say, most of these correlations are medieval and probably did work like a children's alphabet, A is for apple and so on.

[@art-is-awen8842]

Ailm likely was an onomatopoeia for a groan of pain, as the kennings point to: mentioning the sound of a dying man or the first scream after childbirth

[@davidcheater4239]

At 6:24 I thought JImmy was going to go into "Rah, Rah, ah, ah, ah Roma, Roma, ma Gaga, ooh, la la:

[@ramblingseth]

Honestly this really makes me want to apply the same logic to the latin alphabet, because that feels more relevant to my modern day pagan practice than runes or ogham. It wasn't a thing in the past but we can make it a thing now if we want to 😂

[@katyalysander1490]

Bonus: your bag of scrabble tiles now doubles as a Mystical Intuitive Reading tool 🤓

[@Ninnisha]

@@katyalysander1490 suddenly scrabble becomes more pricey and valuable

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

​@@katyalysander1490Seriously though, I wonder if there is anybody out there who has tried to use Scrabble for divinatory purposes?? 😂 The way that the darn vowels always keep constantly turning up in clumps could lead to some decidedly weird predictions... 😋

[@pacman1386]

It was such a beautiful day I spent about 3 hours out side reading a new source book for my era of reenacting with a beer. Don't forget the aftersun!

[@margaretbarclay-laughton2086]

Another good one . I love the maeshowe runes they are rude and funny no magic just typical sailors no mater what country or century

[@azteclady]

The whole "making everything mystical/magic" thing will always remind me of Time Team's Francis Pryor. Had the good doctor lived in the 1880s, he would have written whole treatises on the magic of 'old times'.

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

Yeah, every outhouse was a chapel and every dovecote a mortuary temple in his mind! 😆

[@KaiKristoffersen]

You are correct, the Thais learn the alphabet like you sugested, Gai, Kai, Quat, Kuai.

[@rosswhite-chinnery5725]

Good work scourging the humbuggery that has accumulated around this topic. Rounding it off with a shout out to Dr Sledge and quokka appreciation makes this video a masterpiece by default.

[@the.one.and-only]

2:58 Oh thank goodness, Editing Jimmy knows about the Apple Badger Cataclysm. I thought I was the only one.

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

I am very glad to see such a clear, respectful video on this subject. I have always been bothered by this personally, since I am very much aware of the fact that futhark and futhorc are just alphabets. Also, it really does make sense that mostly non-literate societies would see writing as "magical" in that you can record thoughts and ideas.

[@bld6187]

Thank you so much. For evrerybody able to read German, I highly recomment "Runenkunde" by Klaus Düwel.

[@mildlycornfield]

It's like saying writing 'H' will give you a 'Horse' because they start with the same letter... Are linguistic textbooks going to be mistaken for magical tomes in a thousand years?

[@januzzell8631]

Just lovely - and the weather is lovely too :) - Seriously, thank you for the video - always fascinating

[@daughterofbastet]

The English alphabet has names, too! Ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff... We just don't think of them that way for some reason.

[@oldmanofthemountains3388]

It makes me ridiculously happy to hear that you like Esoterica

[@melissamybubbles6139]

I think you and Jackson Crawford could make a good collaboration video. That would be fun.

[@laurengloriana1507]

Love the Esoterica shout out!

[@GothiGrimwulff]

Great video. I'm Norse Pagan and just did a video on the Runes. This is absolutely correct. From sources like Egils Saga it looks more like literacy = magic than individual letters. With the possibility* of Animist connection to Runes like Tiwaz being associated with their name. But again, thats an unconfirmed possibility. Maybe seen in Sigrdrífumál. But even that's written later when Runes were no longer in use.

[@anieth]

Crawford is awesome! I wish he would have been teaching when I lived there. NO one was doing this kind of thing when I was in school at CU. Love the outside videos! You're looking fabulous! Healthy! Oh, Graves and the Battle of the Trees. He was definitely obsessed.

[@juia7336]

A is for Apple. I write down the letter A, in as minimal a style as possible. Immediately, thousands of iphones, airpods, imacs, and other apple products drop out of the sky around me. This is a true story and why you should be very careful with things like "writing" "logos," "symbolic representations." Anything could happen. Thank you for the video!

[@GooberFace32]

In addition to Esoterica, I also highly recommend Angela's Symposium! Both are really great channels!

[@Asbjern_Longfellow]

My favorite runic inscription is that of the Mjolnir from Lolland, ithas written "Hamr is" , "This is a hammer". I love the stupidity of this and I wear it almost every day^^

[@elizabethmcglothlin5406]

People have been creating symbols and sigils for a very long time, often drawing on other sources. Magic is how you use them! (This, of course, includes ordinary letters made into such things as wonderful books!) And don't forget that makings some marks that someone can read long after you're dead is certainly pretty magical.

[@ragnkja]

By writing these letters, I am transmitting my thoughts to you across time and space.

[@elizabethmcglothlin5406]

@@ragnkja Thank you! And the internet is just one more method. Be well!

[@euansmith3699]

"And don't forget that makings some marks that someone can read long after you're dead is certainly pretty magical." *NECROMANCY!!!!*

[@andruloni]

@@ragnkja By writing these letters I express my thanks. mighty Ragnhild, for your gifts of knowledge.

[@lenabreijer1311]

​@@euansmith3699yep! I can communicate with long dead people just by reading a book they wrote. I can see into their minds!

[@stevenpeterson8582]

I love the fact that the two other KZbinrs that you refer people to just happen to be two that I am already subscribed to and following. Jackson Crawford and Esoterica. Good video. And I love the sunshine in the Welsh countryside. Looks like a beautiful land.

[@airo30]

Best are the people that call themselves witches, and write their magic spells in english, with elder futhark runes, calling it an old norse spell that made the vikings strong.

[@MonkeyWhoWouldBeKing]

woohoo! shout out for Esoterica is always good to hear :D

[@robintheparttimesewer6798]

That was great! I will never be able to look at rune tattoos without smiling! Research is your friend when using someone else's alphabet! Have a wonderful day and thank you for the smile!

[@KelciaMarie1]

I always get so happy when Jimmy posts!

[@C_H_P_A]

Just stumbled upon your channel! Love it thanks for some knowledge 🙌🏻🤙🏻

[@jamesblenn5146]

This is a very concise description. As a Scandinavian man in America I can only imagine what others may have said about your previous video, we have a lot of people claiming ownership based on stupidity and race. I hope their bitter ignorance never disuades your curiosity. Knowledge is for ALL of mankind. Happy studies, Happy teachings and keep up the good work! 😊

[@fikanera838]

So interesting! And what a lovely spot on such a beautiful day! Thankyou, Jimmy, & best wishes from Czechia.

[@stefanb6539]

I mean, one possible explanation for "magical" nonsensical combination of letters: I worked with a dementia patient, who was very fond of writing, and had even a very pretty handwriting. She just did no longer remember or care, that letters were supposed to carry meaning. She just liked writing them. If one of her many "texts" would have been preserved for future historians, they wold likely also be interpreted as somehow ritualistic in nature. They even somehow were, just that the ritual only had meaning to herself.

[@rd6203]

I do not have dementia, but I can sympathize. Sometimes I sing to myself absentmindedly and then I'll suddenly realize that I'm gibbering.

[@cakeeeetime]

I now want a detailed rune tattoo, that looks bad ass, but basically says 't is for tree'. Thank god I don't have money!

[@elewysoffinchingefeld3066]

I love your videos. Every so often, I'll just have to stop the video and laugh so I don't miss the next hot take. Encyclopaedia sets are wiggity-wiggity.

[@noviceworks1503]

Might try to legally change my name to 'acrophony', great word, great concept. And a great, educational video as always!

[@moxiebombshell]

Ah, Jimmy - love the way a sunny day plus a thoughtful rant just lights you up 😁

[@alphafemme8154]

I've just come across your channel today & you're a breath of fresh air for several reasons : just like most things that are genuinely sacred have been demonized for centuries, nowadays anything spiritual is labelled as " magic " just to either divide & confuse people or make a tonne of money out of people who dont question things, with the goal to manipulate, so thank you for confirming not EVERYTHING is magic! Secondly, I really appreciate your straight forward way of explaining things without romanizing, exaggerating or confusing the topics you are sharing. As a neuro divergent, that's how I need people to explain things in general, especially if whats being explained is lengthy. Last but not least, I truly like your sense of humor and when you speak in Welsh Gaelic... I haven't a clue what you're saying, but I still love the sound of it 😊 I come from a mixed heritage : biological mother is Scottish 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 with Irish grandparents 🇨🇮, so I naturally love all the Celtic Gaelic languages. Keep the knowledge & humour rolling Welsh Viking, I'm here for it 🙏🏼✌🏼🙌🏼

[@gigi3242]

Beautiful setting, thanks for the informative video. Take care, be well

[@michaelkelly1267]

Great to see Esoterica get a mention.

[@ShawnNowlan]

Your way of looking at history, mysticism and history totally resonates with me. Life and history really are always more complex and nuanced than we initially think. Thank you for being a guy on the internet! :-)

[@dogmaticpyrrhonist543]

the Crowley image cracked me up.

[@carolefraser7798]

"What rune can I get to mean 'loyal' and 'honest'?" Oh that's easy. L-O-Y-A-L and H-O-N-E-S-T :). Another great video, Jimmy!

[@nienkedejong2433]

I used to wear a necklace with a "nautiz" (or N-rune) because it had emotional value (got it from my boyfriend, and my name starts with an N) the amount of times (neo) pagans came to me and asked me "what it meant" and me answering "well, its an N, my name starts with an N, i think its pretty" and they go off into an hour long story about the deeper meaning of the (boringass) rune tattoo they got....

[@dianeteeter6650]

Awesome video. Some folks think everything was in a book and then other folks think this is away to make money and write books about magic runes.