One of my favorite forms of fortunetelling is reading the runes. The runes were part of the alphabet used by many of the early Germanic tribes of northern Europe. There are many different runic alphabets, that are closely related. The runes were viewed as sacred to Odin the Norse God of Wisdom.
I remember purchasing this book as a teenager, and over the years I have returned to it many times. One of the marks of a truly great book is that you can find something new within it every single time. The book may be small but it is simply jam packed with so many techniques that it could take years to fully learn them all!
The book is written by Raymond Buckland, he is one of my favorite authors and a very prolific one. Raymond Buckland is a British author and of Romany Gypsy decent. One of the best parts of the book, is that he provides a great glimpse into Romany culture and beliefs. I have always been entranced by the Romany life, as a traveling nomadic culture, they have such a beautiful perspective, we rarely have a an opportunity to view.
Cartomancy is any fortunetelling method using cards, this practice goes back for hundreds of years. This includes readings with playing cards, tarot cards, oracle cards or any kind of cards. The first appearance of playing cards in Europe was within the eleventh century. But the true origins and source of the playing cards are genuinely lost to history.
Our modern playing cards have some fascinating facts about them. There are 52 weeks in a year, 52 cards in a pack, there are 4 seasons, the playing cards also have 4 suits. The symbols on the playing cards the hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds are called the pips. In a standard set of playing cards, if you count all the pips (symbols) within the entire deck they add up to 365 pips, the exact same number of days within the year!
