Most rune books give you two: upright and reversed. This one gives three, and the third is where the whole reading system lives. After the cast, the Wizard must pay attention to which runes are reversed, backwards and straight.1 Straight is face up the right way. Reversed is face up upside down. Backwards is face down — the blank side showing.
And the three do different jobs. The straight runes are the actual interpretation of a situation. The reversed runes are the difficulties and problems facing the situation. Which leaves the backwards ones, and they are not a third meaning. They are a count.
The physical procedure is short and it contains a piece of modern practical advice. The runes were placed in a sack. Using the right hand, a handful of runes are grabbed inside the bag and tossed over a soft surface. Then: although in the past they were tossed over the ground, something I do not recommend, for most runes today are made out of resin and might break.
A handful rather than a fixed number — so the size of the cast is whatever your hand takes. The right hand, which is the projecting hand everywhere else here. And a soft surface, because modern resin runes chip. That last note is the kind of thing that only appears in a book written by somebody who has broken one.
The counting rule is the most unusual thing in this material's divination, and it needs setting out in full because it works as a ladder. One backward rune means the person will experience an opportunity for spiritual development.
Two backward runes mean the lesson at hand is to be humble and wise. Three backward runes mean the person must surrender its will and yield to the situation.
Four backward runes mean the Great God is trying to do something wonderful but unknown for the person — and then the gloss that makes it usable: it can be an adversity that proves to be a blessing. And if all the runes are backwards, it is a negative omen in which the person must reconsider every manner of choice and decision being made.
Read that as a single scale and it is a graded instruction about how much the querent has to give up. One: an opportunity. Two: be humble. Three: surrender your will entirely. Four: something good is happening that you cannot see. All: stop and reconsider everything.
The reading is not about the runes at all. Straight runes say what the situation is and reversed runes say what is wrong with it — but the backwards ones, which show nothing, say how much the person is required to yield. The blank faces carry the instruction.
That is a genuinely odd and rather good piece of design. The information content of a face-down rune is zero, so the system uses the quantity of them as its own signal, and the signal it carries is the one thing no individual rune could say.
Before the count, backwards runes get a general meaning, and it is double. They mean the situation at hand is an opportunity for spiritual growth — and also that a great challenge is at hand. Then two further claims that are unusually reassuring: they mean powerful magical forces are supporting the person, and that the person's trust in God can never falter.
So a face-down rune is simultaneously a hard time coming and a statement that you are being held through it. Which is consistent with the four-rune reading, where God is doing something wonderful but unknown — good news you cannot yet see.
One combination is given its own line and it is the worst reading available.
Backward and reversed runes mean the person is facing a major problem, in which most probably things will go against planned.
That is a rune both face down and upside down — a state a physical rune can genuinely be in, since a face-down rune still has an orientation. So the system is reading two independent properties of the same object: which face is up, and which way round it is. Straight or reversed, times up or down, gives four states, and all four are assigned.
Alongside the handful-cast there is a fixed spread, and it is the simplest possible one. The first rune taken from the bag represents the actual interpretation of the situation at hand. The second rune will represent the challenge to be overcome. The third rune will represent the final outcome.
Situation, challenge, outcome. And then the same three positions are re-labelled for a different question: it can be used to know the past of a person by reading the first rune, the present by interpreting the second, and the future by reading the third. Same three draws, two readings — which means the positions are defined by the question rather than by the spread. You decide before you draw whether you are asking about a problem or about a life.
The handful-cast and the three-rune spread answer different kinds of question and the difference is worth naming. The cast is diagnostic. A handful thrown down gives you an unknown number of straights, reverseds and backwards, and the reading is a composite: this is the situation, these are the difficulties, and here is how much you have to yield. Nothing is asked in a specific form.
The spread is sequential. Three draws in a fixed order, each with a named slot, producing a small narrative — where you are, what is in the way, how it ends. And only the first uses orientation. In a three-rune spread each rune occupies a position and the position carries the meaning; the counting rule has nothing to count.
Both methods, in order. For a cast. Put the runes in a sack. Take a handful with your right hand and toss them onto a soft surface — not the ground, because resin runes break.
Sort by orientation. Straight runes: read them for what the situation actually is. Reversed runes: read them for the difficulties and problems facing it. Backwards runes: do not read them, count them.
Then apply the count. One backward rune, an opportunity for spiritual development. Two, be humble and wise. Three, surrender your will and yield. Four, God is doing something good you cannot see — expect an adversity that turns out to be a blessing. All of them backwards, a negative omen: reconsider every choice you are currently making.
And watch for the doubles. A rune that is both backward and reversed marks a major problem where things will most probably go against plan. For a spread. Draw three, in order. Either situation, challenge and outcome — or past, present and future. Decide which question you are asking before you draw, because the same three positions serve both.
The three orientation classes, the counting rule and the two methods are asserted with no tradition named and nothing quoted. This is the Eldest Tradition warrant on the source stub. 🚩 SINGLE SOURCE.
The upright-and-reversed distinction is standard in modern rune practice. 🚩 The third class — backwards, meaning face down — and the graded counting rule attached to it are not standard, and this build has not found them elsewhere. They are reported as this system's own.
⚠ Historical rune divination is itself poorly attested. Tacitus describes a Germanic lot-casting with marked wood, but the elaborate orientation-and-count systems in circulation today are modern. The material's own claim of three thousand years of use is not supportable.
The practical note about resin runes breaking on hard ground is sound and belongs to someone who uses them. Unresolved: nothing states what to do when the count and the straight runes disagree — when, for instance, the straight runes describe a favourable situation and four backwards runes say to expect an adversity.
Follow the straight and reversed runes and a cast is informative. The signs say what the situation is and what is obstructing it, and the practitioner's job is to read twenty-four possible meanings in two possible orientations. Follow the backwards count and a cast is corrective. The face-down runes carry no meaning at all — only a number, and the number tells you how far to give way. One is an opening; three is surrender your will; all of them is stop and reconsider everything.
Both readings come out of the same throw. And they point at different faculties: one asks a practitioner to interpret, and the other asks them to comply.
Afa, Geomancy, Binary Code — Both traditions read a cast by the binary state of each element rather than by any single marker, and in both the reading is a pattern across the whole throw rather than a lookup on one piece.
Afa is fully binary and fully mapped. Each of sixteen positions is open or closed, pairing two rows gives 256 outcomes, and every pattern in that space corresponds to a named figure the dibia can check against a canonical list. Here the binary layer carries only a magnitude, and neither corpus notices what that trades. Face up or face down is the same open-and-closed distinction, but a face-down rune has no figure — it contributes a tally, and the tally maps onto a five-step scale of how much the querent must yield. So the pattern space collapses to a count. Afa can distinguish 256 situations; this can distinguish five degrees of surrender. Which is a loss of resolution and a gain in something else: the count is legible to a beginner on their first cast, and 256 figures are not.
Sharpest implication. The runes that show nothing are the ones carrying the instruction. Straight runes give the situation, reversed runes give the difficulties, and the backwards runes are counted — one for an opportunity, three to surrender your will, all of them to reconsider every decision you are making. The blank faces say how much to give way.
Generative questions.