This was touched on in a different
thread here but worth repeating here; apparently, one of the most often used runic charms was "ALU", which is believed to be what's referred to as the "Ale runes" in The Sigrdrifumol. It's exact function as an amulet is still debatable, but it might have been seen to have imbued whatever it was inscribed upon with magic, in a general sort of way.. maybe an enabler of sorts. Or, they might have been used in conjunction with Nauthiz as a "fidelity" charm of sorts.
It could be written straight out, left to right, or right to left, as runes could be written either direction. Or up or down, vertically.
Sometimes it was written both ways at once, like this:
It could also be made into a bindrune, like this:
That's a bit clunky though. And the runemasters of old found a better way!
It's been seen written utilziing a form of runic encryption, known as the hahalruna system, where a runemaster would use the rune Tiwaz as a "base" rune; marks on the left indicate an Aett, and marks on the right, the number of the rune found in that aett.
Example, Jera is the 4th rune of the 2nd aett, so there would be 2 marks on the left, and 4 on the right.
There is one object found that showed this interesting bindrune of ALU, which seems to incorporate the hahalruna system to depict Uruz:
In this bindrune, you can clearly see Ansuz, as well as Laguz (simply ignore the second mark of Ansuz), but also note the fact there is one mark on the left (1st Aett) and two on the right, indicating Uruz via hahalruna. Very clever stuff!
I'll touch more on hahalruna and other forms of runic "encryption" in a separate post, but it's really interesting stuff.
So.. long story short, it could be worth adding this to any other runes you wish to use, to see if it makes a difference in efficacy.
