Alu (Runic) | Hacker News Reader

Alu (Runic)

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78 pointsbenbreen25 comments

I’ve read 3 books on the runes over the last couple of years. I find them interesting—I like symbolism. That being said, what’s the significance of Alu? Why is it posted here? Generally Curious.

Sometimes we get posts that just tickle the curiousity. I like that.

I think trying to find the meaning of Alu through etymology alone is strenuous. I’ve studied rituals from India, especially the timeline from Vedic to medieval times. The ritual is usually passed down through priests or in some lineages through gurus. If they die, a lot of the culture and knowledge dies with it. If you read the Vedas and then you see a vedic ritual, you just know how much difference there is between the dry words and the actions that infuse and inspire.

That said, Alu might be something along the lines of Soma, which in Vedic ritual is an intoxicating beverage to meet the gods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit

Hackers these days... :P

Would recommend the book "Runelore" by Edred Thorsson (he has many on runic technology).

No. Go to reliable sources, not people who are known for con artistry. There's no shortage of good sources around these days. For instance someone who doesn't arbitrarily invent things to make them sound good, try https://jacksonwcrawford.com/list-of-videos/

Or if you want more entry level information or written, exploring wikipedia is fine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Flowers

I wasn't able to find any sources of his "con artistry".

Funny yeah that one and Futhark (also by thorsson) are 2 of the 3 rune books I’ve read.

Thorsson has a new one titled: "ALU, An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology"

https://www.amazon.com/ALU-Advanced-Guide-Operative-Runology...

It is very unfair to not say the names of those books.:-)

Runelore and Futhark, both by thorsson. Other being “runes and the origins of writing” by benoist.

I recently learned that runes are a semitic script, akin to Phoenician and Hebrew. A bunch of hebraic words came into Scandinavian words along with them.

History gets stranger the more you learn.

I mean, they're descended from Phoenician. But they descended through the Greek branch, same as the Latin alphabet. And I don't think anyone would call Latin a Semitic script.

No, it is direct: Phoenicians traveled from outposts in Iberia deep into northern Europe, and left direct cultural traces, such as runes.

This is easily seen by comparing runes to their cognates in Latin, Greek, and Phoenician alphabets. Unless you believe in spontaneous reversion to the earlier form, or influence from early Greeks in Scandinavia, we are seeing evidence of direct influence.

We already knew Phoenicians were trading for tin in Cornwall and Wales in early Bronze Age, before 1800 BCE. Belgium and Denmark are quite nearby.

I think you misread my comment. Note that I said the Greek branch, not directly from Greek. Phoenician had several branches, but the main ones were Aramaic and Greek. Those, of course, led to several current writing systems each. The leading theory is that Elder Futhark developed from an Old Italic script, or even an early form of Latin.

To directly rebut, rather than appealing to authority: The oldest attestation of Elder Futhark currently at 160 CE. So your proposal has Phoenecian developing directly into Eldar Futhark 300 years after Phonecian was no longer attested. And even then, Phonecian use had been reduced to Carthage while having developed into other systems elsewhere. Note that Gothic origins were ruled out for a mere 100 year difference, so this seems like quite the gap to cover.

160 CE is an upper bound, not a lower. The Phoenicians all over the Mediterranean did not all die when their city was razed, or stop speaking or writing their language.

Sure, Phoenicians proper had a large trade system. But so did the Greeks and those Greek descendants writing Old Italic scripts. And then the Roman empire conquered all of those and had peak extent around 117, which means that the Latin alphabet was also introduced and was a very close and strong cultural presence by 160.

So yes, that date is only an upper bound. But there's a reason the scholars in this area believe what they do regarding the origins. For the type of cultural contact that can lead to the adoption of a writing system, that kind of closeness is important. You can't just handwave away a gap of several actual human generations, while at the same time ignoring the other major powers that are much closer and certainly exerting stronger cultural pressure than Carthage.

Sure, but you still need an explanation for what would have to be reversion to ancestral forms of an italic script.

There would have been a lot of refugees from the Punic disasters, and staying a long way from Roman centers would favor survival.

Being the only literate group in a wide area would explain the surrounding majority's adoption of a non-standard script, otherwise a mystery. Use of the script could be confined to ephemera indefinitely long before a change that led to its use to inscribe durable material, so a gap, while inconvenient for historians, is hardly disposative.

Do you by chance have any related links? I'd love to find out more about this.

I searched "phoenician runes" and interesting PDFs surfaced.

I think I found out originally from a National Geographic article.

I think the takeaway of this article is that the english ale derives from germanic alu which also has the meaning "intoxicating beverage" as descibed in the WP-article.

I like learning these types of things. It’s like the “gebo” rune, which is just an “X”, is the rune for giving or gifting.

It’s where X-mas comes from, the season of giving.

I thought it was because X is Chi, short for Christ?

Wikipedia only mentions the Greek origin, do you have any references?

I read the word “alu” in the title and thought, “is it a misspelling of ‘beer’ in Lithuanian? [1]”

Well, I am not disappointed with the conclusion. :)

[1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/alus#Lithuanian

Not getting what this article is trying to say. So alu is a word for some ineffable charm? Like “mojo”?

Maybe the runic equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here , or sprinkling whatever has taken over from ML liberally through a business plan?

ᚫᛚᚢ ᚱᚫᛗ ᚱᛟᛗ ᛋᛈᚢ

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