The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc fell into complete disuse for centuries, and thus became quite out of tune with the English language, which stubbornly insisted on continuing to change. In reforming it into the American Futharch, “What to do about it” is a big question, one for which there is no simple answer, let alone an answer that everyone could agree on. In deciding what to do about it, I kept two related key notions at the forefront:
- What design principles are to be balanced in making the American Futharch?
- What is the American Futharch for?
I’ll address both of those below in order. But of course they have some overlap.
Design Principles, but not necessarily in any order:
- Mythic foundations. First and foremost, the runes must accord with their legendary origins in Hávamál 138–45. Here, we’re told that Odin took up the runes, and that the first fruit of this victory was poetry! And after that, we get rune-staves for writing. From this, it follows that the runes must be the mysteries of speech, the distinct sounds of the language, for it is only that kind of mystery that leads directly to both alliterative poetry and writing. This does not preclude the runes from also being the “mysteries of the universe” (they are) but mainly to say that poetry and writing are “front and center” here—essential, not optional. We see also in these stanzas (though it’s less obvious) that runes are sacred and for ritual, magic, and divination.
- Living language link. Like the Elder Futhark for its first runemasters, the American Futharch is in the native language of its intended users.
- Traditional. That is, keep what was handed down, such as retaining rune names that are still vibrant and useful words. Those included Thorn, Year, Day, Ash, and many others. The aett structure itself is another aspect of this.
- Revolutionary. That is, restore the primordial conditions, in keeping with the root meaning of revolution as a “rolling back.” For example, in the Elder Futhark, stave #15 was a /z/, and so I have restored it to a /z/.
- One stave, one sound. Each stave stands for one sound, and every sound in the language is represented by exactly one stave. For instance, Pear stands for only /p/, and /p/ is represented by only one stave, Pear. (This also constitutes “revolutionary” in the above sense, for this is what the Elder Futhark had at its creation. The technical term is biunique.) A key part of this is that all sounds in the language are given equal dignity. For instance, the two-letter (digraph) approach of writing a single sound such as /ʃ/ with “sh” treats it as a second-class sound, ultimately for no better reason than it was a sound that didn’t exist in Latin. This is a big reason why Ice isn’t a rune name in the American Futharch: its initial vowel is two sounds, and so it gets two staves. Similar goes for Odal (which also has the problem of being a dictionary word, see below). One stave, one sound is also why there can’t be both Hail & Horse, or Year & Yew, or Gift & Gar, and so forth.
- Acrophonic. Where possible, the names begin with their sound and bear the primary stress in the word. That’s the traditional runic approach, and it enables their fruitful use in alliterative poetry. This was possible for all of them except Ing. (Some things haven’t changed in 2500 years.)
- Living words vs. Dictionary words. I coined these terms, but they’re simple enough. Living words are ones we acquire mouth-to-ear in our youth, so we just know how to pronounce them naturally. Dictionary words are ones we primarily encounter through reading, and so we guess how to pronounce them, or we look them up in a dictionary. Generally, I favored living words in most cases, especially where pronunciation matters were crucial. After all, living words were the only kind the ancient runemasters had! Hence avoiding the use of something like urus /jʊrəs/, which, according to the dictionary, starts with the wrong sound anyway! Strange names like Os and Tue are actually the direct descendants of Ansuz and Tiwaz, but in this case, liberated from the living names Oscar and Tuesday.
- No artificial names. This is why I didn’t try to make something like “ordal” as a replacement for Ōþala / Œðel, or to make a special word “ees” so that an Ice rune could have its Elder Futhark value.
- Maximize meaningfulness. That means that given a seemingly equal choice between two names, the one with the richer range of meanings is to be preferred. As an example, consider Char (something burned) vs. Charcoal (carbonized wood used for fuel and many other purposes). There’s simply more to get out of Charcoal.
Now, what is the American Futharch for? The home page touches on much of this in brief, but here I’ll give some more details:
- Connect with your speech. The American Futharch enables a direct perception and knowing of the actual sounds of your speech, unencumbered by obfuscatory spelling traditions. Most people sleep-walk through life without ever thinking consciously about the sounds of their language, and many even assume that English spelling is actually a guide to sound. It’s not. But the American Futharch is a guide to sound that gives you the “red pill” to wake you up to conscious awareness of those sounds—which is key in using those sounds for so many other things on this list.
- Galdor. The use of every distinct sound of American English in galdor magic (with rich meanings) such as seen in Edred Thorsson’s Futhark and The Nine Doors of Midgard. Prior to the American Futharch, this was not possible.
- Divination. Runecasting, as all are familiar with, but using modern names that speak our language and for which we can more easily relate to. For instance, we can only imagine an aurochs, but we already know things and beings like Ooze, Eagle, and Pear more intimately than we can ever know an aurochs.
- Writing. It enables writing American English in a purely phonetic manner, just as the first runemasters of the Elder Futhark had with their language. All latinate and alphabetic conventions are swept aside, just as those first runemasters had swept aside latinate conventions and alphabet order when they got writing from the Romans.
- Rune-Carving magic: As a consequence of the immediately above, words written in American Futharch runes are directly concretized speech. That is, the writing is a direct reflection of the sounds of what you say, not an abstraction buried under convoluted spelling conventions.
- Futharch as order and totality. A magical explanation for some ancient futhark inscriptions is that the complete futhark is symbolic of right order and wholeness. This was possible because the Elder Futhark represented all the sounds of its language. The American Futharch is the first modern runic system that can actually serve as a proper symbol of the totality of the language, and in the same way the Elder Futhark did.
- Poetic integration and magic. Traditional Germanic alliterative poetry is profoundly sound-based in alliteration and rhyme. The runes must be and serve as a guide to proper poetry. For example, the 23 initial consonant runes of the American just are the entire range of possible alliterating consonants in the poetry! And all rhymes can be precisely identified with the rune names. For example, the rhyme in a word such as bed is Elk-Day, and the alliteration of a word like chef is Ship. And then you can esotericize and magic from that, in creating meaningful lines of poetry that feature particular sound combinations.
- Esotericism. Again referencing The Nine Doors of Midgard, its model of Yggdrasil has nine worlds and twenty-four roadways, and the Elder Futhark runes serve primarily as keys to the roadways, with the vowels (serving “double duty”) covering only five of the worlds. With 33 total runes, the American Futharch uses the nine vowels as keys to the nine worlds, and the twenty-four consonants as keys to the roadways.
All this could probably be expanded or added to, but that will suffice for now.