Reddit reviews Runic Amulets and Magic Objects

Okay, let's talk about runes. I'm almost sure I haven't the answer you might want.

First, the whole Elder Futhark has its names known through linguistic reconstruction. Please check more informations about how these names were reconstructed here.

That being said, there is a chance that Fehu and the whole set as well had different names. But there are no evidences for runes being used as ideograms, like Fehu used to mean cattle, when written, or most probably carved, alone. The names of the runes are made up using the phoneme of their first letter. This argument by itself is rather problematic, since most of todays work is made through their individual meanings -- which as stated above, is reconstructed.

But, as people said in another commentary, there actually is evidence of magical purposes in runic inscriptions. Nevertheless, you find just a few cases in historical runic inscriptions where Tiwaz or Ansuz (see Lindholm amulet) runes are used as somewhat like bindrunes, or isolated runes with some purpose.

In my current research, I already found 2 different types of use of the runes for magical purposes. The first one is as magical words, like alu, laukaz/laukaR, Laþu, erilaz, etc. These charms seems to have been used as magical incantations, evoking some kind of supernatural or natural force through them. You can read more here.

The second and most common type of use you can find through evidence are places where runes are decodifying some poetic message, as an enchantment, and probably these verses came from an oral tradition or folklore. For example, retelling the history of a hunter in a belt to provide its user with the power of that mythic hunter. In the previous link you can find more about that.

So, in my practice, I don't use runes based on their individual names; I really think that the rune poems are made just as a way to better memorize the sounds they represented. If you want to do so, feel free, but be aware that there is NO historical evidence for that.

You can read more here:

• The modern origins of todays rune divination.
  
  
• Runic Amulets and Magic Objects, by MacLeod and Mees. It is also available in PDF version, I'll not share the link to avoid copyright problems, but you can google it.
  
  
• Handbook of the old-northern runic monuments of Scandinavia and England, compiled by Stephens.
  
  
• and this link about Norse bindrunes.
  
  I hope it helps you.

Runic Amulets and Magic Objects by MacLeod and Mees