Futhark Village

Tarot for Rune Lovers – Introduction

Who Am I?

I fell in love with the runes the first time I saw them: the Younger Futhark, right there on the page, a system developed by the Vikings to encapsulate their mythology in a magical writing system. I found the Elder Futhark years later, and taught myself all of these new (far older) runes as well. I eventually expanded into the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc(s), and had to teach myself the Frisian and Northumbrian runes.

But before I was introduced to the Elder Futhark, or even to the Rune Poems, I was handed a Tarot deck. The Tarot deck was strange to me, because when I looked at the instruction manual, it didn’t tell me the entire mythology and worldview behind it. All it said was a few keywords to understand the meaning of a card, and some description of what the card showed. I had to interpret the pictures themselves to read the tarot.

This began a long journey of understanding, which has led to where I am today, a high priest in a small coven in New England. As I write this, I am still coming down from the energy high of a ritual we performed in the woods, with a gentle stream rambling to our west. I have studied long and hard, and in addition to the students that I am teaching in person, I have been asked to write for the people who aren’t in my coven, who aren’t near a group of likeminded people.

What is this blog?

This is a non-fiction blog about Tarot from the perspective of The Runes, to teach people who love The Runes how Tarot works. While I write this blog, I will write a parallel blog the other way: teaching people who love Tarot how The Runes work.

How I will structure this blog

There will be a introduction, including a brief history of the Tarot. Then I will examine the Minor Arcana, and I will finish with the Major Arcana. Each week, I will examine one rank of cards from the Minor Arcana. We will discuss the suits themselves while we discuss the Aces, then we will move onto a discussion of each of the numbered cards, and eventually the court cards. As I discuss each, I will talk about which aspects of which Runes are affiliated with which cards.

After I have discussed the Minor Arcana, I will move onto the Major Arcana, which I will examine from the perspective of The Fool’s Journey. While the Major Arcana line up slightly better with The Runes than the Minor Arcana, I will discuss which Runes are most closely aligned with each card, and then I will talk about how they are similar and different.