Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

Divination: The Historical Record and the Modern Revival

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Divination: The Historical Record and the Modern Revival

Runic inscriptions record names, memorials and charms rather than a standardized divinatory set. In the modern revival Wunjo is read for joy, harmony, fellowship, and the fulfillment of a wish. This keyword meaning is a twentieth-century reconstructionist and esoteric development, popularized in the 1980s, and is presented here as a symbolic tradition rather than as ancient practice or a predictive instrument.

Wunjo's Old English stanza is among the more straightforwardly positive of the whole rune poem, and the modern divinatory tradition, a twentieth-century construction rather than an ancient practice, has generally kept that positive sense intact, reading Wunjo for joy, harmony and fellowship with comparatively little of the reinterpretation or darkening some other runes, such as Thurisaz or Kenaz, underwent when their divided or difficult older attestations were adapted for modern keyword use.

The Armanen-descended rune-magic tradition transmitted into English chiefly through Thorsson's work also treats Wunjo as usable actively rather than only read passively: chanted aloud as galdr, or carved into wood, metal or a bind-rune combining several staves, for an intended practical effect. No source earlier than the twentieth century attests any such active magical use of this specific rune, and the practice should be understood as a modern reconstruction built on the reconstructed name and the rune poems rather than as a recovered ancient technique.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.