Last night and tonight I performed some rune magic. The two spells were quite different so I will describe each in turn. Questions of UPG are fairly irrelevant to this post except to say that the techniques used are only loosely inspired by historical evidence and a knowledge of general magical techniques.
The first ritual I performed with my wife. We both have had struggles with certain personality traits which tend to get in the way of getting on with working towards one’s goals, so we decided to do something about it. Here’s what happened.
While Annalise smudged the house, tidied it up a bit and got the ritual space ready, I worked out a bindrune based on our conversations about the concept of the ritual.
We set it up on the ironing board amid lots of unironed clothes as this seemed very appropriate. I played an old, very flammy and out of tune floor tom, both to alter our consciousness and also as an additional vehicle for channelled communication.
Then we personified the habit we wanted to change as a separate being. First I asked her lots of questions about its effect on her life and what she would prefer, which helped to summon it. We spoke in quite hypnotic… repetitive … ways, which really helped shift us into trance. Then she quizzed me about its affects in my life and what I would prefer and it possessed me.
She then bargained with it. In exchange for getting to wallow in the cat’s laziness it would leave us alone so that we could develop new, better habits and ways of being. It was shifty and sneaky, but I think Annalise did quite well with reaching an accord with it.
I think a day later we are both feeling the difference already. The sigil is now on the wall in the lounge room. I won’t analyse the rather complex bind runes and other symbolism because a) forgetting about it makes it more effective and b) some of it came straight from my unconscious mind and I don’t know what it means.
The second bit of rune magic I did was just tonight. It had a specific goal which I’ve already forgotten (read up on your chaos magic or Jan Fries’s books if you need to get some basic understanding of how sigil magic works).
I chose the runes for the bindrune by looking at a picture of the Elder Futhark and letting the relevant runes choose themselves. It was hard to resist my conscious mind’s desire to pick out what seemed like the most obvious runes, but I trust my instincts. I am not a big fan of the Rune Gild approach to rune magic, but when I was in the Gild I spent a lot of time chanting and meditating on runes as per their ‘curriculum’ and all those hours of effort have definitely paid off.
Anyway, I drew the bindrune, then prepared for the ritual. I turned off all the lights and the room was lit by a single candle in front of the bindrune on the floor. I then played that old floor tom and chanted and stared at the bindrune, letting my mind wander, slowly pouring off the endless pointless, petty random thoughts of the
day, then letting my mind sink in and out of trance, touching the bindrune, taking it into the deeps. I chanted the names of runes, I chanted gibberish, and I even found myself chanting “Woden, Vili, Ve” over and over again. After some indeterminate time (and hour?) I fel the urge to wet the image with my saliva and then I knew it was done. Now that bindrune is on the lounge wall too :) Let’s see what results come of it!
