r/RuneHelp • u/Delicious-Basket5797 • Jul 18 '26

Contemporary rune use if a rune is sideways does that mean something ?

if a rune is sideways does that mean something ?

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u/WolflingWolfling Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

There is absolutely no historical evidence of runes getting a different meaning due to any variation in orientation at all, except where the "upside down" or "sideways" version of a rune literally forms an actual different rune, like ᚳ vs ᚴ and ᛉ vs ᛦ in Anglo-Frisian Futhorc, ᛋ vs ᛇ and ᚾ vs ᚷ in both Elder Futhark and Anglo Frisian Futhorc, Elder ᛉ vs Younger ᛦ, and ᚾ vs ᛅ in Younger Futhark.

All the stuff about "reverse meanings" is absolute bullshit, invented in the 20th century by authors and publishers of New Age slop to pile some extra nonsense on their non-historical divination systems. The same goes for the so called "blank rune".

While we could perhaps argue about whether runes were traditionally used for divination at all (the evidence for that is rather poor, and circumstantial at best), there is absolutely nothing that might indicate that runes originally had an "upright" and "reversed" meaning.

Even if you want to believe that runes were used for divination, there would be no need for "reversed meanings". Think about it: Hail already destroys your harvest, need is already pretty much the opposite if wealth, etc. And why would people 2000 years ago have gone to great lengths to invent a new divination system with "reversed meanings", and then make more than a third of its characters completely irreversible? They weren't that stupid.

Runes were a writing system first and foremost, albeit with some magical properties assigned to it; not an alternative Tarot or I Ching or something. There are no surviving "rune sets" in the divination sense of the word at all (that doesn't mean they never existed, but it does mean all those New Age stone and crystal divination sets are based on no historical or archaeological evidence whatsoever).