Autorentext

Judith Dillon has a degree in Near Eastern languages and anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. For more than 40 years her research has focused on the history of alphabets, runes, oghams, Hebrew, and ancient Phoenician as well as its relation to number magic. She is the author of Alphabets and the Mystery Traditions.

Klappentext

Uncovers the ancient Egyptian origin and magical power of the runes

• Reveals the lineage of the runes by tracing their historical journey from Egyptian hieroglyphs through the Semitic Phoenician language to northern Europe

• Draws on stories of the Norse sagas to show the runes’ spiritual attributes by looking at the physical characteristics of the objects that represent them

• Illustrates the initiatory nature of the runes and how they, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, reveal mysteries of passage through life, death, and the afterlife

This book reveals the “alphabet secrets” encoded in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and traces their journey to the frozen north, where they came to be known as the runes—twenty-four magical symbols, each with their own unique story and power.

The author illustrates the evolution of the runes and how they became not only an alphabet for communication but a spiritual portal to enlightenment. Drawing on Norse sagas and runic poems, the author reveals the spiritual and divinatory attributes of each rune by looking at the physical characteristics of the objects chosen to represent them. According to the author, “In addition to the gift of an alphabet, each symbol represents a secret taught to a few initiates through trade guilds” that moved over Phoenician trading routes. The meaning of “rune” is secret. The author also shows how the magical properties of runes are demonstrated through mythological tales. Just as we see in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or Spells of Coming Forth by Day, these secrets were taught to initiates to reveal mysteries of passage through life, death, and the afterlife. More than an alphabet, the runes contain the promise of a return to the light.

As a work of magical scholarship and history, this book provides a multifaceted perspective on the linguistic, magical, and historical nature of the runes and their roots in ancient Egypt.