Secret Lore Runes and other Ancient Alphabets by Nigel Pennick

by Nigel Pennick

Genres: Magic, Language

Mass Market Paperback

First published May 9, 1991

About the author

Nigel Campbell Pennick, born 1946 in Guildford, Surrey, England in the United Kingdom, an author publishing on occultism, magic, natural magic, divination, subterranea, rural folk customs, traditional performance and Celtic art as well as runosophy.
He is a writer on marine species as well as an occultist and geomancer, artist and illustrator, stained-glass designer and maker, musician and mummer. He also writes on European arts and crafts, buildings, landscape, customs, games and spiritual traditions. He has written several booklets on the history of urban transport in Cambridge and London . He is best known for his research on geomancy, labyrinths, sacred geometry, the spiritual arts and crafts, esoteric alphabets and Germanic runic studies.
He has written many books in German and has over 50 published books and hundreds of published papers on a wide range of subjects.

Reviews

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books in which I’d pressed four- and five-leaf clovers because its pages are stiff with a toothy texture, and so rarely opened, though I’ve reread some passages without dipping into the rest. I must have bought it in the ’90s, when I used to make runes; it offers more nuanced interpretations than others I consulted (like Ralph Blum’s money-spinner, with sections lifted from Liz Greene’s Relating).

As the title suggests, Nigel Pennick is a generalist and I would have found an index helpful. In his postscript he sums up his project’s raison d’être: ‘Clearly, our era is in desperate need of a reassertion of this ancient wisdom.’ And yet for all his research, this claim lacks persuasiveness. Though no doubt wholly sincere, he’s like a boy with one finger plugging a dyke while the inrushing sea laps at his ear lobes.