Long before tarot, people across northern Europe carved runes. The good news for beginners: there are far fewer runes than tarot cards, the system is refreshingly direct, and you can learn the whole set in a fortnight.
This is the complete Elder Futhark, all twenty four, with what each one means, how they group, how reversals work, and how to read your first spread. It also includes something most rune guides leave out, which is an honest account of where these meanings actually come from.
What the runes are
The Elder Futhark is the oldest known runic alphabet, in use roughly from the second to the eighth century. It takes its name from the sounds of its first six runes: F, U, Th, A, R, K. Twenty four symbols. Each one is a letter, a sound, and a name with a meaning attached.
Here is the part worth knowing before you start. The runes were writing first. There is no surviving instruction manual for reading them as an oracle, and scholars have not found unambiguous evidence that the Elder Futhark was used for divination in the way we use it now. Tacitus, writing in the first century, describes Germanic people cutting strips from a fruit tree, marking them with signs, scattering them on white cloth and drawing three. Whether those signs were runes is still argued over.
The names themselves are reconstructions. Philologists worked backwards from the later rune poems, Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian and Icelandic, which describe the futhorc and the Younger Futhark, not the Elder Futhark directly. So Fehu and Perthro are scholarly best guesses, not signatures on a document.
None of which makes rune reading less useful. It makes it honest. What you are working with is a genuinely ancient alphabet carrying a genuinely modern interpretive tradition, and knowing which half is which will make you a better reader, not a worse one.
The three aettir
The twenty four runes divide into three groups of eight called aettir (singular ætt, meaning clan or group). The division is attested in the historical inscriptions, so this part is real structure, not modern invention. The themes commonly attached to each group are modern, but they are a useful scaffold:
Freyr's aett, runes 1 to 8. The material world. Wealth, strength, conflict, communication, movement, craft, exchange, joy.
Heimdall's aett, runes 9 to 16. Disruption and endurance. What happens to you, and what it makes of you.
Tyr's aett, runes 17 to 24. The social and the lasting. Justice, growth, partnership, self, flow, potential, breakthrough, inheritance.
Learning them in aettir is much easier than learning them as a list of twenty four. Eight at a time, one group a week.
Freyr's aett: runes 1 to 8
1. Fehu (f), "cattle, wealth." Movable wealth, the kind you can count and lose. Asks what you actually own and whether you are holding it or spending it. Gain that comes with something to manage.
2. Uruz (u), "aurochs," the wild ox. Raw strength, health, untrained power. Stamina you have not spent yet, or a force in your life that needs directing rather than fighting.
3. Thurisaz (th), "thorn," also read as the god Thor. A sharp edge, which defends and wounds with the same point. Conflict, a warning, or a boundary that has to be hard to work.
4. Ansuz (a), "god," associated with Odin. The mouth and the breath. Messages, signals, teaching, the sentence that changes a situation. Pay attention to what arrives in conversation.
5. Raidho (r), "ride, journey." Travel, but also rhythm and right order. Being on the road and being on the right road are two different questions, and this rune asks both.
6. Kenaz (k), "torch." Fire under control. Knowledge you can carry into a dark room. Craft, skill, the moment something becomes visible.
7. Gebo (g), "gift." Exchange. A gift creates a bond and an obligation in the same motion. Partnership, generosity, and the balance between what you give and what you take.
8. Wunjo (w), "joy." Harmony, belonging, things fitting together. The reward at the end of the first eight.
Heimdall's aett: runes 9 to 16
9. Hagalaz (h), "hail." Weather you did not order and cannot stop. Disruption arriving from outside. It also melts into water, so what it flattens can feed what grows next.
10. Naudiz (n), "need." Constraint, friction, the thing you lack. Not a catastrophe, a discipline. Need teaches by narrowing your options.
11. Isa (i), "ice." Stillness. Freeze. Sometimes preservation, sometimes a stall, and the reading has to tell you which. Nothing is moving for now.
12. Jera (j), "year, good harvest." The complete cycle. Reward that arrives on schedule rather than early. Patience with a season you cannot rush.
13. Eihwaz (ei), "yew tree." Endurance and the axis. The yew is poisonous and evergreen at once, which is the whole point: continuity that runs straight through the hard part.
14. Perthro (p), the dice cup or lot. Chance, the hidden, the roll that has not landed. The rune of what you have not been told yet.
15. Algiz (z), "elk," or "protection." A raised hand, antlers, a sanctuary. Defence, a signal to guard something, a reach toward something higher.
16. Sowilo (s), "sun." Success, vitality, clear sight. The rune that simply goes well, and there are not many of those.
Tyr's aett: runes 17 to 24
17. Tiwaz (t), the god Tyr. Justice, courage, and the cost of keeping a promise. Tyr put his hand in a wolf's mouth so the binding would hold, and lost it. Doing the right thing when it is expensive.
18. Berkano (b), "birch." Growth, birth, nurture. Beginnings that still need shelter. The quiet start nobody has noticed yet.
19. Ehwaz (e), "horse." Partnership and steady movement. Two working as one. The trust between rider and horse, which neither one can fake.
20. Mannaz (m), "man," meaning humanity. The self, but the self among others. Identity, community, being seen accurately.
21. Laguz (l), "water, lake." Flow, intuition, depth, and the part you cannot see through. Feelings that will not be argued with.
22. Ingwaz (ng), the god Ing. The seed underground. Potential held in reserve, work happening where you cannot watch it. Nothing looks like it is happening, and something is.
23. Dagaz (d), "day, breakthrough." Dawn. The moment the light changes and does not change back.
24. Othala (o), "inherited estate." Heritage, home, land, what you were handed and what you will pass on.
A note on order: most modern sets and most scholarly listings end Dagaz then Othala, and that is the order above. Some historical inscriptions reverse the final two. If your set arrived the other way round, nothing is wrong with it.
Reversed runes, or merkstave
A reversed rune, often called merkstave, usually softens, blocks or shadows its upright meaning, in much the same way a reversed tarot card does. Sowilo upright is success; the question with a difficult draw is always whether the energy is dialled down, blocked, or turned inward.
Runes differ from tarot in one interesting way. Some of them are symmetrical, so an upside-down draw is identical to an upright one. Eight are agreed on by essentially everyone: Gebo, Hagalaz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz. Whether Naudiz and Mannaz join them depends on which carving style your set uses, which is why you will see the number given as eight, nine or ten depending on the source. Look at your own runes and count. Your set is the authority on your set.
Worth saying plainly: reading reversals at all is a modern convention, most likely borrowed from tarot. It is not attested historically. Plenty of experienced readers use it and plenty deliberately do not.
For your first few weeks, read upright only. Learn what each rune says before you start learning what it says quietly.
How to read runes
Three methods, in order of difficulty.
One rune, daily. Draw one in the morning and ask what to keep in mind today. Write it down. At the end of the day, write one line about whether it landed. This is the single fastest way to learn the meanings, because you are attaching each rune to a real day rather than a definition.
Three runes. Past, present, future, or situation, challenge, outcome. Read each rune, then read how they connect. The connection is where the actual reading lives.
Nine-rune cast. Take nine from the bag, scatter them on a cloth, and read the ones that land face up, paying attention to what sits near the centre and what has drifted to the edges. This is closer to what Tacitus describes, and it is harder, because nothing is pre-labelled. Save it for when you know all twenty four.
Pull from a bag or lay them face down and choose. Either is fine. Consistency matters more than method.
Your first two weeks
Week one, Freyr's aett. Eight runes, one a day, with a spare day to review. Week two, Heimdall's aett, same pattern. Week three, Tyr's aett. By the end you will know all twenty four well enough to read a three-rune spread without looking anything up, which is the point at which runes stop being homework and start being useful.
Do not try to memorise twenty four definitions in one sitting. It does not work, and it is not necessary.
Four mistakes beginners make
Reading the definition instead of the draw. The meaning is a starting point, not the answer. Naudiz in a question about money and Naudiz in a question about a relationship are not the same rune.
Adding reversals too early. Forty eight meanings before you are solid on twenty four is how people quit.
Redrawing until you like it. If you are going to overrule the runes, you did not need them. Ask a different question instead.
Treating the hard runes as bad. Hagalaz, Naudiz, Isa and Thurisaz are the ones that carry the most information. A reading full of Wunjo and Sowilo is pleasant and tells you almost nothing.
Where runes sit next to everything else
If you are building a broader practice, the runes fit alongside the rest of the esoteric world rather than competing with it. Tarot gives you seventy eight images and a lot of narrative range. Astrology gives you timing and temperament. Numerology gives you one number and a lifetime to argue with it. Runes give you twenty four sharp, concrete symbols and almost no room to waffle, which is exactly why they are such a good first system.
How to practice
Runes reward repetition, and the meanings sink in fast once you are actually using them. Astra Trainer's Runes world teaches the Elder Futhark in short daily lessons, from the symbols and sounds through to full readings, and it is part of the Esoteric World alongside tarot, astrology, numerology and kabbalah.
» Start free and open your Runes world.
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Until next time, keep learning, and be kind to yourself on the days it is hard.
— Alex, Founder, Astra Trainer 🌟
