Book Review: Rudiments of Runelore, Stephen Pollington

If you have been looking for a relatively condensed source to get started with Runes I think I may have just the book for you. In this post, I will be going over the book Rudiments of Runelore, by Stephen Pollington. This is a small book that focuses more on the historical evidence we have for runes and their development rather than a magic- or divination-focused description, although these topics are briefly mentioned.

Cassandra Eason – Runen

This is one of my first books about runes and covers specifically the Anglo Saxon runes (not the Elder Futhark, which is most common) in combination with the feminine divine powers.

The title of the book I own, which is the Dutch version, is “Runen, De toegang tot je unieke innerlijke kracht” while the English variant is “Runes, Talk to the woman within“. I haven’t read the English version (yet) so I cannot confirm if some of my issues with it are translation-related (which I think it is), or not. If I manage to read an English copy of it I will update this post!

This book was published in 2004, so some things that bothered me may also be because it is simply outdated in certain aspects.
Also, my copy I’ve probably had since around 2011, so if you wonder why it looks a bit damaged in the pictures, that’s why. The images also feature my jade rune stones + self-made pouch.

Design.

There isn’t really too much to say about the design. It looks a bit old-fashioned, but it’s alright. The symbols are fine (this version seems different from the one I use though), the informative pages on the runes look well structured and honestly, it’s just a basic book with an okay design. Nothing fancy, not terrible. The design isn’t incredibly important anyway, as long as it supports the information it holds and doesn’t stop you from understanding it. With that, I don’t just mean the cover, but also how the internal pages look. The build-up of the book is fine, especially if you’re a beginner.

Pros and Cons.

What does this book really well and what doesn’t it. Well, let me be very honest. There’s a lot of information in this that I felt was old fashioned, not applicable, confusing or useless. There are even mistakes in there!

Pros

• Shows all the runes, symbols, the object related to the rune, keywords of its meanings and goes a little more into detail about both regular and reversed meanings of the runes.
• It covers a rune throwing system with examples for 3, 6 and 9 runes.
• It covers rune magick. (Spells)
• Overall practical reference guide.

Cons

• There are mistakes in there, like how the Vikings wore horns on their helmets. (They did not!)
• Can be very vague or confusing (at least in the translated version)
• Written from the perspective of probably a basic mom taking care of her children and 10 hobbies or something? (Sorry, as a young adult this annoyed the shit out of me. I can not identify with some of her examples at all, even from the perspective of my own mom.)
• It doesn’t explain why some things are needed or done in the spells which I think is important

Rune Magick

The spells/magick mentioned in this book is okay. I would never say “hey, read this and exactly copy and do this spell” in general, but especially in this case. I believe in order for a spell to work you need to understand it 100% on the “why, what and when”, otherwise it won’t mean as much to you and therefore not work to its full potential.

However. The spells mentioned in here can certainly inspire you to make your own and give you basic guidelines. There are 2 that I thought would be nice to use as inspiration but I most probably won’t use this book for that purpose.

Recommended?

I think you should, first of all, clarify what you expect from this book. This book did not meet my personal expectations based on the title. However, it isn’t all bad.

If you just want some basic knowledge on how to use the runes (their meanings, throwing, and magickal usage) then yes. This is a good book for that, especially for beginners or when you’re looking for a book on Anglo Saxon runes specifically.

Here’s the big but. If you don’t care about Anglo Saxon runes and would be fine with Elder Futhark, which is used by most, then don’t get this book. There are much more and better books on this subject focused on the Elder Futhark. Plus, a lot more rune sets will be sold using this system.

I’d only recommend using the Anglo Saxon ones if it is based on your cultural spiritual path. Anglo Saxon runes were used by the British, Frisian, Danish and German people. So if you are from these regions or have family from these parts then this could be a great addition to your ancestry work. If you’re Dutch, then these runes will probably be part of your ancestry as well, since most of the Netherlands was part of the Anglo Saxon migration around c. 500.

Cassandra Eason also wrote a book on Elder Futhark, which I recently received (in English this time). This book was released on March 2018 (as an ebook and hardcover) so it is quite new. I have high hopes for this one. I wrote a review on that as well for those interested.