Rune-ing it

I've had some people lose their mind with me when I said there's no actual "magic" in the runes besides what you make of it.

What Are Runes?

Runes are letters, characters, and glyphs depending on use.

Glyphs are visual symbols used or communicating meaning. They can be letters, or logographic/pictographic. In the case of runes, they fall into the letters category.

As letters they are not enough of them to represent phonemomes or very percise individual sounds, so they are characters. Exactly like what I'm using to write this blog post. A, B, C, D, E, etc.

What Meaning did we give Runes?

This is the special part. Outside of communicating roughly what sounds to make that translated to an oral language, what meaning are we giving hem.

If you want, you can go through my series Runes and figure out what people have said historically about them and what that meaning is today. I am an external processor. I like to think things out loud with people. I want external ideas. I can't do that alone. But using these, I can generate new points of views or different ways of approaching something that I didn't originally come up with.

That is how I use runes. As a tool to help me think about things I'm working with. After time and medication, I usually arrive at a better conclusion than what I started with.

Do I believe in Magick?

Yes and no. We've proven that the mind alone can change how we respond to things with the placebo effect study. All the ones I've read concern the immune response and how perceiving that you are healed or being healed affects your immune response.

I believe we struggle with confirmation bias. For a simple explanation of that I'm going to generally gesture at all of Christianity. If you read the Bible all the way through you don't necessarily leave with the feeling that the Christian god loves you. I even went to learning Hebrew by taking classes and learning as much Aramaic as I could online along with reading photographic evidence of the original text to make the Bible. It's not what it's made out to be. So the people who follow it blindly as it is written (fundamentalists) are not reading it and using confirmation bias and projecting their desires onto it. People do the same with many religions, not just Christianity.

I believe Magick is the changing of fate. You were heading one direction and on that path of least resistance, you will arrive at a conclusion. And that conclusion in the path of least resistance is undesirable in most circumstances.

A song that is empowering and drives you to make positive change is Magick. A period of reflection that helps you understand someone at an emotional level, that is Magick. For me, Magick is the power to change fate.

Why do I add a K? "Magic" is typically seen as street performers. "Magick" is seen as fate changing by heathenistic communities. After my time studying heathenry and paganism, I realized that the essence and draw to magick is the affordance to change your life.

So do I believe in Magick? Yes, in the most purest sense. Do I believe that someone can manipulate fire with their mind? No. We have physics, biology, and chemistry to thank for the study of our world and has given us the affordances to change our fate.