A bad witch's blog: Review: Portals, Patterns, and Pathways

Are you ready to take a deep dive into runic lore? Portals, Patterns, and Pathways, a new book by Imelda Almqvist, shows you how. The subtitle is A Handbook for Rune Magicians, Star Gazers, and Myth Makers - and that's exactly what it is.

Don't read it expecting it to be beginners' guide on how to read the runes. You need to already have a basic understanding first. Portals, Patterns, and Pathways takes you beyond basic knowledge, exploring rune groupings and the spaces between them. As the title suggests, these can be portals to greater wisdom.

In its pages you will find an in-depth course on using runes for advanced divination, magic, and greater understanding of cosmology, plus reference material to use going forward. This is the synopsis on publisher Moon Books' website:

"The runes map a mythical or imaginal realm where cosmic blueprints share their stories and wisdom through archetypal figures, deities, personifications, alchemical images, and symbols. Years ago, Imelda Almqvist wrote in her Rune Journal: 'Every liminal space between runes is a mystery school, and its curriculum is mythology!' This insight proved to be incredibly fertile ground for mapping the liminal spaces between the runes. The letter sequence of many early alphabets appears to be connected to the night sky and star patterns. Does such a correspondence exist for the runes? Does the Poetic Edda contain astronomical numbers and references to celestial events? Before the Enlightenment, astronomy and astrology represented different faces of one unified field of study. What happens if we arrange the Runes of the Elder Futhark in a Circle and then look at that circle the way an astrologer reads a natal chart? This book shares the author’s discoveries, and she hopes that its readers will join her on this adventure!"

Portals, Patterns, and Pathways is more than just a book to read once. It's something to work through carefully then keep as a valuable resource in future.

About the author

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seidr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). Her earlier books include Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit and Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in possibility. She appeared in the TV programme Ice Age Shaman, talking about Neolithic arctic deer shamanism. She has an on-line school, Pregnant Hag Teachings.

Website: www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk
Online School: https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

Pages

Thursday, 28 May 2026

Review: Portals, Patterns, and Pathways - Rune Magic

No comments:

Post a Comment