A little more on True Runes; Runes as a curse.
voice_of_silver asked me if I might write a little on the fact that to bear a True Rune is commonly perceived as a great misfortune. It's a perception that largely comes about from the fact that the majority of well-known Runebearers were young, untrained individuals forced into the situation by dire circumstance; not favourable conditions in the slightest. Bad news travels faster than good; stories of trial and adversity, and the heroes who either overcome them or suffer and perish in the trying, are more common and more widely spread than those stories of people who have gained great knowledge from the Runes, and through that knowledge, a great inner peace.
The problem is chiefly that a True Rune is not a thing for an untrained person to bear. Any Rune requires some magical training to use well; magic is rarely an instinct, and even if one does have an innate gift, that gift does not necessarily come with knowledge of the most efficient strategies for using magic with care and safety. The common Runes, however, can be adjusted to with little or no trouble; they do not have strong wills; they do not dominate the mind. Each True Rune is a vastly powerful force with a will of its own, and the idea alone of allowing such an entity to conjoin to the self terrifies many people. Ironically, it is this terror that is the greatest barrier to working with and understanding the True Runes.
I've periodically compared working with the Runes to working with animals, and while it is a very crude comparison and one unfair to their intelligence, it is a good one in places for the reason that Runes, like animals, are heavily instinctual; in fact, our connection to the weft and flow of existence, which is guided by the Runes, is that same thing we also name intuition. One who tenses up and struggles against an animal, or a force of nature, will get nothing from it except, at best, a headache. To best achieve a bond with a creature whose language you do not understand fully, with which a great part of your communication is intuitive, you must both relax around it-- open yourself to its gestures and ways, learn to speak its language and allow it to know you-- and be firm with it. To let it dominate you utterly is foolish, but to only rail and fight against it will also get you nowhere. What is required in both cases is a gentle yet firm nature that is willing to understand, to meet halfway, yet to also impose understanding.
Those who panic when confronted with this bond, who struggle against it and attempt to fight it off as one would an attacking beast, only spoil it utterly. The Rune cannot relate to its bearer this way; its atempts to communicate are being fought off, and it receives no understanding, nor any indication of what is right to do. The bearer will not understand the visions that the Rune shows to them, and the Rune will not comprehend the bearer's mind.
Most people who have not been taught anything about Runes instinctually panic when first bound to one; it is quite a natural reaction. However, it is also the cause of most bad relationships with Runes, and most of the problems that they cause.
What is it to have a good relationship with a True Rune?; I only speak from experience with mine, and my bond is not like all bonds. But to know the Runes, to listen to their voices, as incomprehensible as they may at first be, is, at the very least, to know the tapestry in which all of life entwines; it is to know fundamental things about the nature of existence more surely than anyone who has never borne a Rune can know even the reality they see in front of them. It is no to know infallibly the future, nor to see all things; it is not to comprehend everything one sees. But it is to see a lot, to know a lot, and to feel a lot of things that are perhaps, in some respects, more vital than anything else intelligent life can come to know. And to know these things surely and absolutely is to be content; for the nature of existence is such that none could look so deeply into it, none could be so certain of its fundamentals, and not have all existential fears put to rest. Existence, amongst other things, is a perfectly ordered fractal.
The problem is chiefly that a True Rune is not a thing for an untrained person to bear. Any Rune requires some magical training to use well; magic is rarely an instinct, and even if one does have an innate gift, that gift does not necessarily come with knowledge of the most efficient strategies for using magic with care and safety. The common Runes, however, can be adjusted to with little or no trouble; they do not have strong wills; they do not dominate the mind. Each True Rune is a vastly powerful force with a will of its own, and the idea alone of allowing such an entity to conjoin to the self terrifies many people. Ironically, it is this terror that is the greatest barrier to working with and understanding the True Runes.
I've periodically compared working with the Runes to working with animals, and while it is a very crude comparison and one unfair to their intelligence, it is a good one in places for the reason that Runes, like animals, are heavily instinctual; in fact, our connection to the weft and flow of existence, which is guided by the Runes, is that same thing we also name intuition. One who tenses up and struggles against an animal, or a force of nature, will get nothing from it except, at best, a headache. To best achieve a bond with a creature whose language you do not understand fully, with which a great part of your communication is intuitive, you must both relax around it-- open yourself to its gestures and ways, learn to speak its language and allow it to know you-- and be firm with it. To let it dominate you utterly is foolish, but to only rail and fight against it will also get you nowhere. What is required in both cases is a gentle yet firm nature that is willing to understand, to meet halfway, yet to also impose understanding.
Those who panic when confronted with this bond, who struggle against it and attempt to fight it off as one would an attacking beast, only spoil it utterly. The Rune cannot relate to its bearer this way; its atempts to communicate are being fought off, and it receives no understanding, nor any indication of what is right to do. The bearer will not understand the visions that the Rune shows to them, and the Rune will not comprehend the bearer's mind.
Most people who have not been taught anything about Runes instinctually panic when first bound to one; it is quite a natural reaction. However, it is also the cause of most bad relationships with Runes, and most of the problems that they cause.
What is it to have a good relationship with a True Rune?; I only speak from experience with mine, and my bond is not like all bonds. But to know the Runes, to listen to their voices, as incomprehensible as they may at first be, is, at the very least, to know the tapestry in which all of life entwines; it is to know fundamental things about the nature of existence more surely than anyone who has never borne a Rune can know even the reality they see in front of them. It is no to know infallibly the future, nor to see all things; it is not to comprehend everything one sees. But it is to see a lot, to know a lot, and to feel a lot of things that are perhaps, in some respects, more vital than anything else intelligent life can come to know. And to know these things surely and absolutely is to be content; for the nature of existence is such that none could look so deeply into it, none could be so certain of its fundamentals, and not have all existential fears put to rest. Existence, amongst other things, is a perfectly ordered fractal.