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Review by Barb Hayes ( Psychosyntesis Therapist )
This is one of the few books I have read on the origins and mythology of runes, and certainly the only one written by a woman.
As a user of runes, both in my personal life and in my psychotherapeutic work, I found this body of work both useful and illuminating.
For the reader approaching this subject with a little information of the origins and development of runes as a divinatory tool it presents fascinating detail supporting the claim of the author relating the runes to a Shamanic Northern Mythology.
This runic system could have developed in the way of the Greek, Roman and Egyptian Mystery schools had not Christianity intervened and effectively stomped it out over many centuries.
The author presents the runes as a magickal spiritual system of divination, she defines the term magic in a way that is familiar to me from readings of Ancient traditions and more recently described in quantum physics. " Magic is the act of interfering in one part of the web through operation of the will, thereby deliberately causing an effect on other parts of the web. .. The gentlest tug at the periphery of the web transmit vibrations along all its threads." the web referred to here is one's karmic life path. The web referred to in Quantum physics is the "universe" as a web of interrelated energies that we are all part of. the whole is reflected in the part.
In consulting the runes for divination one is consulting the energies of this web system, she gives interpretations of the runic symbols or alphabet and links the association of language and writing with Magickal power in its earliest development.
She presents the Yggdrasil Tree system (the sacred Ash tree upon the god Odin was found hanging upside down). This system has three levels or planes. The higher unconscious; middle or normal working consciousness and the lower unconscious. It also has nine worlds, specific appointed places which are equated with the various psychological states of consciousness - very similar to psychological divisions formulated by C.G Jung.
The author outlines a tree of life; layout for a psychological reading, with
nine aspects: higher self, thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation, personality, lower unconscious, masculine,
feminine (anima, animus). What follows is an excellent psychological divinatory tool which could be used in a psychotherapy setting. all this is outlined in chapter three.
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