Reviews
Discovering Runes
Bob Oswald's Discovering Runes is a very beautiful book. It has the most marvelous photographs of nature and natural scenes.

I have been working on a new book about runes over the last couple of years. I wanted to publish something that would be useful to both experienced runesters and to novices in a down to earth and friendly style and without getting too technical.

All the books for novices that I have read are written like school text books – dry and boring. And all of those for experienced users seem to make wide assumptions about what the reader already knows. I mean, it is possible to be an experienced diviner without having read all the associated runelore, or without learning all the verses of the Edda. But every book I pick up seems to assume I know what they are talking about whatever the subject.

So now I have written Discovering Runes which I hope will be an entertaining read as well as being a vital reference book for everyone. It is published by Regency House in UK and Chartwell Books in the USA. It is available in book stores and online with Amazon and several other websites. If sales go well there are plans to translate and distribute in several other languages including German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

The book is 8×8 inches (200x200mm) and 1 inch (25mm) thick, bound with a vinyl coated flexi cover (tougher than paperback, but not as stiff as a hardback). There are 250 glossy pages and 260 full colour illustrations.

In the introductory chapter dealing with the origins and development of the runes I have advanced some of my own ideas about the origin of the rune characters and the development of runic divination in ancient times.

In the chapter about divination and casting methods I have expanded considerably on the subjects discussed on this website and augmented the rune meanings section to 112 pages. This allows for more thorough illustration and greater discussion of interpretation and associations for each rune. I have described the methods for several more rune spreads and random casting methods.

There are also chapters on the runic pendulum, bindrunes, Gandr magic, runic transcription, rune graphics, a key word index and a very thorough selected bibliography.

Freya’s comments:

This book is very very beautiful. Runic wisdom aside it has the most marvelous photographs of nature and natural scenes. Even someone who could not read would enjoy it!

Needless to say that the rune knowledge contained therein is of the highest value.

– Freya Aswynn