How do you activate runes?
The instruction exists, and most of it is younger than a century. Consecrate the set by the elements, keep it in its own bag, show it to nobody, spend time with it. One piece is genuinely old: the source does not say draw, it says cut and name. The rituals around a bought kit are exactly as old as the booklets they come printed in, and the carving is not.
Where this comes from
attested use Sigrdrífumál, stanza 6 · Codex Regius, 13th century
Sigrdrífumál does not say draw: it says cut victory runes on the hilt and name Týr twice. The act beside the mark is in the source. The modern sequence around a bought set took shape in the twentieth century, together with the booklets. A set you can buy is itself younger than a century. The first appearance of the blank tile in print is 1982, in a book that was sold with a set.
The instruction, dated
Consecrating by earth, water, fire and air, the bag the set lives in, showing your set to nobody, and time spent holding, carving, naming aloud. That is the instruction as the booklets give it, and as a sequence it is younger than a century. The one piece with an old floor under it is the carving and the naming. If you want the old part, make your set with your own hands and say the names out loud: that much is in the source.
What the poems say
The poems treat the runes as things that mean, not things that do. Cattle, hail, ice: each stanza says what the letter is, and no stanza tells anyone to wake one. That plainness is the oldest voice in this subject, and it is printed whole on the witness pages.