The Elder Futhark: why this row and why this sequence

The first two lectures established the general frame: we know what the runic tradition is as a path, and we know on what sources it stands. The time has now come to approach the very material with which all the further work will be carried out. In the series of initiations and deep initiations we will pass through the twenty-four runes of the Elder Futhark, one at a time, in a strict sequence. Before beginning this passage, it is important to understand what the Elder Futhark itself actually is, why precisely this row, why precisely in this order, and how it differs from the other runic rows which a contemporary practitioner may encounter.

What the word "futhark" means

"Futhark" is not a random name. It is formed, by a scholarly convention reaching back to the late nineteenth century, from the names of the first six runes of the row, just as the word "alphabet" is formed from the names of the first two letters of the Greek abecedary. The first six runes of the Elder Futhark carry the sounds "f," "u," "th" (a single voiceless dental fricative, the "th" of English "thorn," and not a stop), "a," "r," "k," and their joining in the name of the whole row reflects an important principle: the row begins precisely with these runes, and that sequence is not accidental. The ancient practitioners of the tradition did not, so far as our sources show, have a single recorded name for the row; the designation "futhark" is the modern way of naming it, and it has the merit of naming it from inside, from its own first sound values.

If one compares this with the usual alphabet, where the letters are arranged according to a principle that reaches back to Phoenician roots and which today is largely conventional for the native speaker, the runic row is built otherwise. The sequence of runes in the futhark is not conventional. It is structural. The first rune stands first not by accident, the last stands last not by accident, and each rune between them occupies its place according to an inner logic that we will examine in detail in the next lecture on the three aettir.

The very fact that the row is conventionally called not "the runic alphabet" but precisely "the futhark," a name coined directly from its own first six sound values, is telling. It emphasises that we are dealing not with an abecedary for the recording of sounds but with a closed system of forces, each of which is in its own place.

Twenty-four: why precisely this number

The Elder Futhark consists of twenty-four runes. This number is not accidental, although in the ancient sources we will not find a direct explanation of why precisely so. Yet the very structure of the row hints at the inner logic.

Twenty-four is divisible into three equal groups of eight, and these three groups (the aettir) form the basic architecture of the row. Three and eight are numbers deeply rooted in the Northern worldview. Three appears constantly: three norns, three roots of the world tree, three fastenings of the world. Eight is most solidly grounded in the figure of Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of the supreme god of the Northern pantheon, attested in both the Poetic and the Prose Edda. The number recurs in other contexts of Norse ritual and cosmology, although the deeper grounding lies in the threefold-times-eight structure of the runic row itself, which the next lecture will take up. Beyond Sleipnir and the aettir, attempts to ground "eight" in pre-Christian Norse cosmology should be made carefully, since some later schematisations (such as the eight-direction wind-rose familiar from modern revivals) come from post-medieval folk tradition rather than from the early sources. The joining of three and eight gives twenty-four as a number that carries within itself both a triadic and an octadic logic at once.

There is also a convergence with natural and cultural cycles. The twenty-four hours of the day, the twenty-four semitone steps that form the chromatic scale in equal temperament, and the twenty-four solar terms (二十四節氣, jiéqì) by which the Chinese and the wider East Asian lunisolar calendars mark the year, first codified in the Taichu Calendar of 104 BCE. This does not mean that the Elder Futhark was directly built upon these cycles, nor that any of them historically influenced the other. It shows that across very different traditions twenty-four recurs as a number adequate to articulating a full cycle or a complete system.

It is also important to understand that the twenty-four runes are not twenty-four isolated units. They form a wholeness in which each rune has meaning only through its relation to the others. This is a fundamental point that is often missed. If one studies the runes one at a time, torn out of the row, half of their meaning is lost. Each rune holds within itself a particular place in the overall structure, and it is precisely that place that gives it its concrete meaning.

Each rune in its own place

This means that the first rune is first not because someone began the record with it, but because it carries within itself the quality of beginning. The force that breaks through from the primordial depth, the force that gives motion in the still, the force from which any manifestation begins. The last rune is last not by accident but because it carries within itself completion, the return to wholeness, the closing of the circle.

Between the first and the last, each rune occupies its place as part of an inner path. Some runes describe the initial forces of creation, some describe inner work and ordeal, some describe states of consciousness, some describe concrete aspects of human life (kin, home, road, gift, joy), some describe cosmic principles (the order of the cosmos, the cycle of the year, shadow and light), some describe transformations (death and new birth, the restoration of connection with the source). In the next lecture we will see how this multiplicity arranges itself into three great stages that describe the full path from emergence to completion.

For now it is important only to fix the principle: a rune means what it means partly because of its own qualities, and partly because of its place in the row. If one rearranges the runes, the inner logic is lost. If one throws out a single rune, the wholeness of the system is lost. The Elder Futhark is a closed system in the same sense in which a scale is closed in music: one can add tones from outside, but within the scale each tone holds the entire mode.

The difference between the principal runic rows

A contemporary practitioner may encounter several different runic rows, and it is important from the very beginning to understand the difference between them. Otherwise confusion will arise when in one source he finds one set of runes and in another a different one, with different names and a different number of signs.

The Elder Futhark was used within the continental and Scandinavian Germanic world from approximately the second century, with the earliest dated runic inscription on any object being the Vimose comb (southern Denmark, around 160 of the common era), until about the eighth century, when in Scandinavia it began to give way to the Younger Futhark. The earliest known sequential listing of the complete row is the Kylver Stone (Stånga, Gotland, around the year four hundred). It has twenty-four runes and is considered the oldest known runic row. It is precisely this one that is the object of our work.

The Younger Futhark arose in Scandinavia around the eighth century as a simplification of the Elder. It has only sixteen runes. This simplification took place not because of a loss of knowledge but for linguistic reasons: the language changed, certain sounds merged or disappeared, and the row was rebuilt for new needs. The Younger Futhark was used effectively in the Viking Age and later, but for deep practice it is less complete than the Elder. Sixteen runes do not give the integral architecture that the twenty-four give.

The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc arose on the territory of present-day England from approximately the fifth and sixth centuries onward (with the Undley bracteate of the fifth century already carrying a new Anglo-Frisian rune-form). Unlike the Younger Futhark, it went the opposite way: it did not contract but expanded. The early form has about twenty-eight runes; the later Northumbrian expansion of roughly the eighth and ninth centuries brings the count to as many as thirty-three (adding such runes as calc, gar, and cweorð). The additional runes reflect specific sounds of the Old English language, but some of them also carry their own semantic fields and cannot be reduced to a mere phonetic extension. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc is an interesting source, but it has a different inner logic from the Elder Futhark and cannot simply be superimposed onto the twenty-four runes.

There also exist later runic systems, such as the medieval runes (a twenty-seven-character extension of the Younger Futhark used in Scandinavia from roughly the twelfth to the sixteenth century), the Dalecarlian runes (continued in the Swedish province of Dalarna into the early twentieth century), and the runic calendar tradition (the calendar staves, primstavs, and clog almanacs, with the oldest known example a thirteenth-century staff from Nyköping, used for tracking weekdays, lunar phases, solstices, equinoxes, and Christian feasts on a nineteen-year lunar cycle). Each of these had practical purposes in a later epoch and stands apart from the deeper initiatic tradition. Within the bounds of our work they are not considered.

Why the Elder Futhark was chosen for the path of initiations

The choice of the Elder Futhark for the path of runic initiations is not accidental. There are several reasons why precisely it is suited for systematic inner work.

The first reason: completeness. The twenty-four runes of the Elder Futhark form a finished system, within which are represented all the principal forces and principles a human being has to do with on his own path.

The second reason: antiquity. The Elder Futhark is the oldest of the runic rows known to us. This does not mean an automatic preference (the ancient is not always the better), but in this case antiquity is significant because the Elder Futhark stands closer to those primordial forms out of which the runic tradition arose. The later rows are derivatives that have undergone the influence of concrete historical circumstances.

The third reason: the inner logic of the row. The threefold division into three aettir of eight runes each in the Elder Futhark is clear and carries deep significance. In the Younger Futhark this threefold grouping is preserved, but the sixteen runes form three groups of unequal length (six, five, and five, with the first group reduced to its first six letters, fuþąrk), so the eight-by-three symmetry of the older row is no longer present. In the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc the threefold structure is complicated by the additional runes, which do not fit cleanly within the original architecture.

The fourth reason: a convergence with the practice of the other traditions of the Basics Path. In its deep dimension, runic work touches the very same levels of reality with which the Buddhist, Theosophical, Hermetic, and Toltec traditions work. Within the Basics Path the Elder Futhark gives, by the tradition's own self-understanding, the fullest and most structured map of those levels in the Northern current. The Younger Futhark, simplified for the everyday-magical needs of the later epoch, loses a part of this fullness.

What it means to pass through the futhark in order

In the path of initiations that awaits us, we will pass through the runes of the Elder Futhark in the classical order: from the first to the last, without skipping and without selective approach. This is fundamentally important, and the reason is that the order of the row reflects the inner logic of advancement.

Each next rune rests on the work done with the previous one. This does not mean that the second rune is "higher" than the first, or the third "higher" than the second. There is no hierarchy here. But there is a sequence of unfolding, in which each rune prepares for the next. The first rune establishes a certain quality with which the practitioner begins the path. The second rune adds a different layer that would be missing without the first. The third rune builds in the next level. And so on to the closing of the circle.

If one skips a rune, the support for all the subsequent ones is lost. If one disrupts the order, each rune comes not to its own stage of the practitioner's readiness, and its action will be either superficial or, in some cases, premature and difficult. The classical order is not a choice that can be altered, it is a given.

This does not mean that it is impossible to turn to a particular rune outside the order of initiation, if there is a concrete need in life (for example, during periods of crisis). It means that systematic inner passage, in which the runes lay down a path in the practitioner's consciousness, takes place only in the classical order.

The futhark as a circle, not a line

The last important point of this lecture: despite the fact that we will pass through the runes sequentially, from the first to the twenty-fourth, the Futhark by its inner nature is not a line but a circle. The last rune is not simply an end. It leads back to the first, closing the cycle. He who has passed through the full circle of the Futhark does not finish the path. He returns to the point of beginning, but already otherwise than he began, with a new understanding, a new quality of presence, ready to enter the second circle at a deeper level.

This is a fundamental point that changes the relation to the entire process of passage. The path will not end at the twenty-fourth initiation. It will make a full turn and open the possibility of a different, still deeper passage of the same runes. Some ancient traditions hold that the full mastery of the Elder Futhark requires many such turns, each of which opens a new level. There is no need to worry about this in advance. For now it is enough to know that what we are about to undertake is not a short course that will end after a given number of weeks. It is the beginning of a long path, in which the Futhark will be opening itself again and again.

Typical misunderstandings

A few cautions in closing. The first misunderstanding: one is free to choose which row to take runes from, the main thing being "what one likes." This is not so. Each row has its own inner logic, and the mixing of runes from different rows leads to confusion and to a loss of wholeness. The second misunderstanding: the Elder Futhark is "the real one," and the Younger and the Anglo-Saxon are "distortions." This is also not so. Each row is legitimate within its own context, and the Younger Futhark, for example, was a deep practice for those who worked with it in the Viking Age. The question is not one of "authenticity" but of correspondence to the task. For our path of initiations, the Elder Futhark is suitable, but this does not discredit the other rows. The third misunderstanding: within the Elder Futhark one may choose "one's own" rune and work only with it. This is superficial and misses the meaning of the row as a system. Working only with a single rune outside the context of the others gives a distorted experience of that rune, because the supports provided by the other runes are absent.

Conclusion

The third lecture has established the very material with which we are going to work. The Elder Futhark, twenty-four runes, the classical order, the threefold structure. This is not a random set of symbols, it is a considered and constructed road. We now have a frame (from the first two lectures) and material (from this lecture). What remains is to disclose the inner logic of the material, and the next lecture will be devoted to this.