Customer Reviews

Rune Power: Make Sense of Your Life Through the Wisdom of the Runes (Craft of Life)

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This book is a great example of New-Age mix & match instant "tradition".

Meadows raids the cultural vaults of the Heathen Germanic, Native American, and others, to cobble together a substantial tome that succeeds in insulting all of these cultures by taking them out of context and effectively trivializing them.

He also rests much of the credibility of his system on the claim that his "uthark" rune order is a Swedish "oral tradition". In fact the Uthark theory is well known to be the invention of Professor Agrell in the 1930s, who only came up with it to investigate what he saw as some interesting numerology. Meadows does not mention Agrell.

Likewise, he presents Thorsson's quasi-Cabalistic runic tree of life figure, with no indication that it was Thorsson's invention, as if it is just part of the "tradition".

Some of the information about Von List in the first couple of chapters was interesting and seemed to be accurate, but it amounts to a couple of pages in a sea of jumbled speculation. Many parts of the book are identifiable as the ideas of well known speculative rune authors. The ideas of Thorsson and Pennick are particularly obvious. Although their books are listed in "further reading", their ideas are never explicitly acknowledged. Pennick's runic astrology, and Thorsson's nine worlds ideas are imported wholesale, and put forward as "tradition", although it is clear from their original works that it is completely their own speculation.

His use of rune names is completely inconsistent using the Old Norse names for some, Anlgo-Saxon for some, reconstructed Elder names for some, and a couple even seem to be his own blend of the three.

In trying to create an impressive looking book, Meadows has dragged in too many incompatible speculative systems, and mixed them with ideas from other cultures, laced with his own preconceptions. The result is a confusing chimera of fantasy "tradition" that will only lead the reader away from any idea of the real cultural heritage of the runes.

At least take the effort to read some basic factual information before going off with the rune fantasists. I recommend:

Rudiments of Runelore

Runes (Reading the Past, Vol 4)

Runic Amulets and Magic Objects

This book is a conglomeration of shamanic nonsense and Nordic phylosiphies. Meadows (who obviously doesn't know anything about Native American spirituality, because the Native Americans don't have shamen, they have Medicine Men) has the hubrus to rearrange the order of the runes (they are in the "futhark" order for a reason, which if Meadows had done his research he would have understood this); at least his rearranging isn't as bad as Ralph Blum's. Stick with the better rune authors: Aswynn, Thorsson, and Paxson.

Kenneth Meadows put a lot of personal thought into this book. There is much historical accuracy... but at the same time he mixes some parts that he doesn't know much about with what he normally writes on - the Native American influenced spiritualities. In fact, I think this is the only book he's writen that is not about Native American studies.

I greatly enjoy the fact that he did lots of research (supposedly talked with Swedish Runic Shamans too... but I don't know...) and used mostly Old English and Old Norse names for the runes instead of the average Germanic names, and I appreciate that he put enough thought into the runes to change their order somewhat, because their "traditional" order was quirky to him. He does seem to add his own specualtions as to what the meanings are in addition to more traditional and historical meanings.

All in all, I'd say the book is good and one could learn some basic runeology and rune magick by reading it and practicing the exercises within - however it is quite unorthodox and shouldn't be a first read for someone who wants to study the runes' traditional associations.

Though it's hard to find a book that DOESN'T go over the so-called misuse of the runes by nazis, this book doesn't dwell on it and loose iteslf in that subject. It doesn't only cover the meanings of the runes, but covers heritage and why the blood is so important. The author even explains at a point about how memory is stored in the blood, reminding us why it feels so natural to think like a Celt, Saxon, and so fourth. He makes VERY important points like these and backs them up with proof and fact-also a very important quality for a book to have. You won't be disappointed if you are looking for just an intro to the meaning of the runes. If you are more interested in casting exercises, and working up to using methods of casting, may I reccomend DISCOVER RUNES by Tony Willis. Otherwise, get this for a nice intro. . . . oh and Follow your blood!