Are runes witchcraft? An answer with dates
Runes are letters: an alphabet that wrote Germanic languages for about a thousand years. Reading fortunes with them is a practice of the twentieth century, and none of the four medieval poems about runes is a scripture or a spell. Where the dark reputation comes from has a date, and it is on this page.
Where this comes from
first appearance in print Guido von List, Das Geheimnis der Runen · 1908
Here the runes begin as an occult system. One detail almost nobody prints: von List’s row is not the Elder Futhark. It has eighteen signs, built on the Younger Futhark with two added. His ideas became the foundation of Ariosophy, and through it of the runic symbolism of the SS, where rune training was part of instruction until 1939. The twenty-four runes of this site are not the row that was taught there, and that difference is not an excuse. It is precision.
What the poems say
None of the four witnesses is a scripture or a spell. The Norwegian poem rhymes Christ into its couplet about hail, and every Icelandic stanza ends with a Latin gloss. They are poems about letters, and the letters are what this site is about.