Nerding Out: Runes and Sigils
Author: Barmacral Tigana, March 2018
In connection to a larger cosplay project I am working on (that will come up in a future post) I needed to do a bit of research on what runes and sigils are. They seem pretty fun to know how to do properly, so I thought I’d distill the basics here.
- What are they?
Runes are old written languages from northern Europe, where sigils are a symbol considered to have magical power. The pentagram for example, can be a sigil. Why am I putting these together? Both seem to have roots in the world of magic. What makes runes specifically notable in their style is the lack of horizontal lines, all of them are vertical with approximately 45 degree angled lines off of them. This is because horizontal lines would be along the grain on wood, making them less legible and more likely to split the wood.
- How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Runes have a few different languages, all germanic based and most from the nordic region. The most common three are Elder Futhark and Younger Futhark, again from the nordics, but also Anglo-Saxon Futhorc from the region of England. These languages were phased out when christianity came in, in favour of the latin alphabet. The study of runes is called Runology. While the runes don’t truly directly translate to modern letters, they have been associated with them and you can write in the runic alphabets. One thing you don’t find in any of these languages though is numbers.
Sigils are purely in the realm of magic and involve a lot of work of taking your intent and putting it into a symbol and casting it. That I can find it is very commonly used for summoning type spells (though far from exclusively). There are different types of magic that use sigils for different purposes, and different levels of magic that can affect what sigils you use and how.
- How can you too get into this?
In the world of runes you may find something in the linguistic departments of universities, or some books in libraries. You’ll also find things in museums about ancient times. Ren faires also I think work with their own runic stuff and may have some information as well. All of my research came from the combination of talking to a few friends who knew a bit about it and reading on the internet, starting with Wikipedia. I have no idea what books would be useful here.
As far as sigils go, all my research comes from online. It is a world I’ve barely begun exploring beyond how to make them for a costume.
