This is why I always stick to the original, the real McCoy. It helps avoid any confusion that some self- dubbed "innovators" and "pioneers" stir up. What's i- Ching? Lol.

The "blank rune" is also a Wiccan/ New Ager concept. What is the purpose behind it's inclusion? Who knows. My only knowledge on it is the aforementioned. I purchased a set of Bloodstone Runestones some months ago and included therein was a "blank rune." I was sour about it and I eventually discarded it several days ago when I purified (I felt it was necessary since you never know what negative energies may have made their way into the stones during the manufacturing and distribution process) my runestones.

The forum is very interesting as it is. There's no doubt that we can turn this into a pretty powerful forum, loaded to the t with heaps upon heaps of information on just a single rune.

You're welcome Ya. I see it's still pretty fresh. I sent out an invitation to all Odinists on Stormfront in hopes of helping you out and really expanding this forum.

Hal, Svol,

Thanks for coming by, glad to see someone from Odinist.net here!  I hope you find the forum useful and interesting. It's still a little wet behind the ears, but hopefully soon it will grow into a vast resource for runesters and others.

-Grymm

Heils to all. By the way, lol, thanks for the invitation Grymdycche.

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.

The short and simple answer is, no one knows. They're anonymous, much as the classic story of Beowulf is.
The poems are ancient, and the oldest sources we do have have likely been copied down from still older sources.

Further compounding the question is the fact that there are at least 3 different sets of poems;  Anglo-Saxon (AKA Old English),  Norwegian, and Icelandic..  All of them differ to some degree, sometimes greatly.  For example, none of them agree as to what Uruz means - Ox, drizzle, or slag?  (If you're wondering where the name "Uruz" comes from, it's also a scholarly educated guess,  reconstructed  from an originating Old German language.. whether high or low german though I don't recall, if either even.)
In almost all cases, as well, the OERP (Old English Rune Poem) has different names for the runes than do the NRP and the IRP, in the which the latter two, in most cases agree. Someone in old Anglo-Saxon England was a busy bee, reworking many of the runes' names and sometimes meanings.

Whether or not there was once a single, original unifying poem that later diverged is really anyone's guess. If there was, it'd probably be around 2,000 years old  .. give or take a couple of centuries.

I recently bought Makko to make some incense cones as it's self burning. In Japan they take a u shaped piece of wood and make in indent in sand then fill it with makko and burn. I immediately though to drawing a rune in the sand and doing the same thing. It's goes with some of the other posts of drawing the rune and letting it be taken, especially the one on the beach.

Glad to see you're back!