Mystery and power, held within the written word.

     The typical image we have of the Rune comes to us from all of the pre-Greco-Roman cultures of Europe, but the term itself originates from the Germanic, Scandinavian and British Ile races. It has very close ties to a practice of tribal artistry that is purely functional, much like the well known American Indian idea of the functional craftsman within the tribe, never the artist or author.'
     But the functionality of the Runemaster has a distinct significance and is a title many use in a most unqualified manner to this day.

     The concept of Runeology is very simple to fathom, it is present in all cultures, and best considered from the fundamental use of alphabetic characters.  In the case of the varied European Futharks (alphabets), each letter has a totemic identity unto itself as well as the commonly understood sound and grammatical value.
     Should one inscribe a phrase or even an entire prose, the power that is imbued into these runes does not come from the Runemaster who so artfully constructed them. Rather, they come from the weaving of symbols and meanings within the runes themselves.
     The linguistic phrasing has meaning. The sounds when spoken have yet another value. The mere visual aesthetic of how the runes look, compiled as letters placed in a certain order, have significance.  And then there are the varied layers of symbolic, allegorical, and overall totemic values this collection of letters and grammar possess.

     Theoretically simple, yet an incredible challenge to practice merely on a competent level, let alone to master.

     This is a quality all alphabets around the world share, though most have now lost their original intricacies, becoming nothing more than a common method of writing for what we know as a spoken dialect.
     And contrary to what mainstream historians would have you believe, ancient cultures that restricted their passing of knowledge and wisdom through the spoken word, and the spoken word alone... these tribes were not a stone's throw away from primitive ape-men.  These were communities with a high level of self-awareness.  Societies that understood the social value of mutable legends versus the awesome, yet irreversible power of the written word, and the inherent danger of a pseudo intellectual worship in the finality of written texts.
     We have an extensive source of history, worldwide, of people that mindlessly espouse the popular written word because it is their only finger hold on having the appearance of intelligence. Over and over again, they do so with no knowledge of the social atmosphere from whence those words were spawned.      No skill in deciphering the allegories within each paragraph, each sentence... each word.

     Yet the value of Runelore has survived intact.  And nowhere is it more blatant as in the one truly identical feature that exists within all tribal cultures: The Weave Tattoo.

     No matter the era or the race, the layered runic meaning of the tribal weave contains the same irrefutable properties of the written sigil.
     Here we must stress that the modern trend of tattoo parlor tribal designs are nothing more than a mute fashion.  They do not embody the significance of a real tribal tattoo that has been painstakingly devised... and very few tattooists even know the ritualistic procedures that MUST be observed when the ink is applied to the flesh, let alone offer this service.

     It is by understanding these two dominant forms in Runeology that we are able to pursue an understanding of the dichotomy behind these ideals.

     The Mystery of the Wyrd and the Mystery of the Weave.