Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Runes are not Celtic!, January 1, 2008
The runes are, and always have been, Germanic.
How can someone write a book on runes without even knowing this basic fact? You need only look up "runes" in any encyclopedia, but this author did not even bother to go that far.
Avoid being misled by such examples of New-Age fantasy. At least have enough respect for a real historical tradition to read a properly researched book first. For example:
Rudiments of Runelore
Runes: An Introduction
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1.0 out of 5 stars
As Uneven as the Californian Shoreline, April 19, 2009
The 'Celtic' runes are merely the Ango-Saxon futhork with a 'wishing stone' symbol added. Mr. Parry, who wrote the introduction, says he saw runes in a passage grave at Newgrange, but doesn't describe what they looked like. We shall have to assume he means the futhork as well. The back cover says the runes were 'first' influenced by the Celtic 'Goddess Religion', whatever that is. Chapter two, the 'history of the runes', is actually a history of the Celtic people. It is here, though, that the misnomer is given sense: 'some students of the runes' (and, again, whatever that means) believe the Fomorians (from the Lebor Gabala Erenn) fled from Atlantis after the 'great consciousness-closing' (page 18), settled in Ireland, bringing the runic alphabet with them, and gave it to the Celts, who gave it to the Germans who passed it onto the Etruscans. Apparently the Atlanteans practised the Celtic Goddess Religion-but wait, the Celts came from Lithuania (page 17), so how can this be? That is never explained, but she does make a point of mentioning (page 15) that the Romans were not an Indo-European people, being that they did not speak an Indo-European language, nor had a similar culture involving nature and pagan deity worship and have no living descendants in Britain. I assume she also thinks modern Latin people still have not adopted an Indo-European language. If that wasn't bad enough, she says the Romans completely drove out all the Celts in France (apparently there weren't any in Spain) who moved to the hill of Tara in Ireland (page 19). As divination systems go, though, I have found that one is just as good as the other, and if you like runic divination and are looking for more 'spreads' then the book is okay. Just skip the first few chapters.
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