Reading the Tengwar as Runes

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This page is still in progress—please pardon the unedited and/or patchy areas.

1. Some Background Information
2. Links Out
3. Reading Tengwar
4. Corrospondence Chart
5. On Vowels
6. Intepretations of the Tengwar

Background Information

What are the Tengwar?

Tengwar is an alphabet invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his constructed languages, tied especially to Quenya and Sindarin, two languages native to elves but spoken by many others in his fictional Arda setting.

Quenya is, in-universe, the first purposeful, structured language that elves created for themselves after 'waking up' (coming into existence). It was influenced in part by Valarin, the langauge created for and spoken by Valar, the deities/geniuses of Arda, thought the Valar quickly resolved to stop speaking Valarin around elves so as to not influence their own language too much. Sindarin is a language highly influenced by Quenya. Over time Sindarin becomes to common tongue and Quenya becomes archaic, like the Latin of the elves.

'Tengwar' is the Quenya word for 'letters'. It is plural, a single letter is 'tengwa.' As Tengwar is both the name of the alphabet and the word meaning letters, and as Quenya treats plurals diffrently from English anyway, its grammatical use can be shifty.

Exactly how many letters make up a tengwar alphabet varies depending on the version of the alphabet you're using. Tolkien liked his languages to shift and change across the long ages of his setting, so the tengwar used for Quenya, Sindarin, and later Westron (human) languages are all slightly different. Typically a full set of Tengwar will number a little over 30.

Tengwar is completely functional as an alphabet and can be written with. It is a phonetic language, in which each letter represents one sound, and it is an incredibly well-organized phonetic language, showing a deep udnerstanding of how sounds are made inthe human mouth and how those sounds are spatially grouped.

It is also a runic alphabet, meaning that while the symbols represent sounds, they also have names and represent concepts. The first tengwa is not called 'tee', though it is pronounced as a T, it is called 'tinco', which means 'metal' in Quenya. All the traditional names for tengwar are in old Quenya, though they have later Westron names as well and many have shifted over time both phonetically and in conceptual association.

The fictional origin of the Tengwar alphabet was never ironed out in any text published by Tolkien, but posthumously published notes say Tolkien considered making them another invention of Feanaro son of Finwe, a prince who is credited with many of the early technological and academic inventions of the elves. This would make sense, as the symbols, visuals, and references chosen for the names of the letters show a bias toward life in Aman, the land Feanaro grew up in, and to the Noldor, his own people/family of elves. One of the tengwar is named 'Noldo', but there are none named after any of the other peoples of the elves, and numerous tengwar named after metals and heat reflect his profession of smithcraft. There isn't proof that the Tengwar really were a noldorin invention, but I feel like a telerin or sindarin inventor would have included at least one word for water instead of forcing me to really make choices to assign watery symbolism to at least one of them.

When I started studying Quenya, it eventually sunk into me that, since the letters have conceptual names, and since those names are deeply rooted in the lore and visuals of their fictional setting, one could do fortune-telling with them exactly as Norse Futhark runes are used for fortune-telling.

I tried it. It's, like, exactly the same. Just 1:1.

What are the Futhark?

The Futhark was and is a real world alphabet created by northern European peoples, adapted from earlier alphabets, to write their own languages (Old Norse being a blanket term for many of them). How many letters are in any version of the Futhark varied greatly over the many centuries and many peoples who used them, usually landing around 12-24.

There is a version of the Futhark used by modern pagans called the 'Elder Futhark' with 24 letters. The Elder Futhark is based in historical reality and can be found on historical artifacts, though it was not the only valid version of the alphabet. We know from historical poems, lists, and texts that the letters of the Futhark, just like the Tengwar, had names and strong associations with concepts and images. These concepts were used in acts of magic in which the letters, standing in for their associated concepts, were incribed, cast, drawn, and used to dictate power, on their own or in the form of full words.

Because of their historical association with magic, modern pagans also love them for rituals, spells, and fortune-telling. I have worked with Futhark runes for both fortune-telling and protective spellwork for many years, so when I realized how strong the similarities between Futhark and Tengwar were, I intially resisted and then gave in to the urge to make a fortune-telling system for Tengwar grounded in the imagery and history of Arda but pulling from my experience with Futhark, Tarot, and other fortune-telling systems (wax telling, bird-reading, ect.).

This is Not a Coincidence

Tolkien, the man, with a mythologist and a linguist. He pulls from the finnish Kalavala, from the norse Prose Edda, from the german Niebelungenlied in his written works. He even retranslated/rewrote the Niebelungen crossover sections of the Prose Edda as his highly musical and readable Sigurd and Gudrun. The story of Turin Turambar, whose name coincidentally has a purposefully meaningful tengwa in it ('umbar', fate) was influenced by the same legend.

Appreciation for germanic and icelandic lore does not prove Tolkien knew his Futhark, but the fact that he put Futhark directly into Arda sure does. The dwarven language Khuzdul uses letters that simply are Futhark runes. He changed which sounds map to which letters for many of them, but those are Futhark.

From these elements there are no proof that the Tengwar are 'inspired by' the Futhark, but the similarities are not incidental. Tolkien knew and studied more languages than old Norse and there are many inspirations in Tengwar and Quenya (which is famously more influenced by Welsh and by Finnish), but it is my opinion that his love for old Norse language, art, and myth shows in his alphabets as well. Meaningfully named letters do not, to my knowledge, exist in Welsh or in Finnish, and the background fact that all magic in Arda is made by song or speech maps pretty closely to the spoken, language-based magic of the norse sagas. Feanaro's crafting of the magic runes can be tied into the legend of Wayland/Volundr—no, let me not go too far afield.

Tolkien didn't intend his Tengwar to be used for telling fortunes. Heavens, no. But it's not a coincidence that they feel so alike to a historically magic alphabet that he loved so much that he also put it right into his fictional universe as another one of his alphabets.

Links Out

A sense of responsibility drives me to first lead the reader to websites that give them legitimate, actual information about Tolkien's tengwar alphabet before I start doing pagan nonsense with it.

Many of these links are repeated on my Silmarillion and Wicca pages, but I like to be thorough.

Tengwar

Futhark

• By far my favorite free resource on the runes is the work of Ragnar (RIP). He uploaded a rundown of the runes by Bernard King that is just the best in the business, and his translations of the rune poems are invaluable in locking down actual historical fact. Ragnar sticks to the facts in a way I admire.


• Edred Thorsson's Futhark is considered by many to be the essential text for using Futhark in magic/ritual; I can't lie, I read the whole thing too and it provides background radiation for my understanding of Futhark. He does tend to really stray from historical reality and get into mysticism, though, so don't take him at his word for historical fact. I'm not saying he's awlays wrong, he's often right, but do verify his claims about the past before repeating them.


• Evidence of the runes being used for magic can be found easily in the medieval Icelandic sagas; how we want to interpret these post-conversion accounts of pre-Christian beleifs can be debated, but the breadth of use says something. Consider Odhinn's discovery and use of the runes in Hovamol, Skirnir's use of Thurisaz in Skirnismol, or Egil removing carved runes and replacing his own undo a curse on a bed and bless it instead. In Sagas runes tend to be used for blessing, cursing, or warding more often than fortune-telling, for which Seidhr is often used instead; I recognize this discrepancy and mention that my fictional 'reconstructed' Numenorean fortune-telling ritual had heavy influence from Seidhr practice.

Other

Reading Tengwar: A Simple Method

While I may dream up a more complicated method in the future (and the scholarfic includes a 'reconstructed' Numenorean fortune-telling ritual) I want to provide the most bare-bones, beginning friendly version or a reading so that anyone who likes may try it out.

While I took much inspiration from methods for reading both futhark and tarot, what follows uses the symbols and worldview of elves in Arda adapted for real-world use. I took pains to consider the small elements of the ritual and whether they 'fit' the symbols of the source material.

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In daylight, the reader should prepare a physical form of the tenwar to be read. Drawing them onto leaves, writing them on paper, etching them onto stone, or carving them into stones will all work. As the tengwar feature many words for metal, a carved metal set would be most appropriate, but the other suggested materials, though less pricey, are by no means innapropriate.

After waiting for nightfall, the reader selects a dark, empty room where they will not be interrupted. They select a reading place, a clean table and chair being a fine option. Two candles are placed on the table, one is lit and one is left unlit.

If the reader is religious, they might pray to or invoke their deities for guidance and protection before they begin their reading. Then the reader clarifies a present issue or question in their mind to present to the tengwar they are about to read, opens their eyes, and begins.

Three tengwar discs (stones, papers, what have you) are taken out of a dark bag and put onto the table/into the light. One is placed under the lit candle, one under the unlit candle, and one between the two. The tengwa that is placed beneath the lit candle is the 'lit' tengwa, representing things seen, known; this tengwa applies directly to whatever issue is currently on the reader's mind. The tengwa under the unlit candle is the 'unlit' tengwa, and it applies directly to what the reader is not thinking—that is, subconscious worries and forces. The third, between the two, is the 'mingling' tengwa; between the conscious and the unconscious, this tengwa is the one that may predict the future. Balancing things known and unknown into a thin slice of totality, the mingling tengwa indicates something coming for the reader soon.

The reader first considers the ‘lit’ tengwa, pondering how it may apply to the question at hand (feel free to ponder aloud if no one will overhear, spoken word forces the brain to finish its thoughts). Then the unlit tengwa is considered similarly, then the one in the mingling. Then all three are considered together, and what they mean as a ‘map’ of the present situation (And potentially the way forward) is put into words.

Then the reader thanks their deities, replaces the tengwar into the bag, and douses their candle. At this point they may find they have excess spiritual energy–consider spinning this new energy and knowledge into another ritual if you are that way, or else doing something creative if you aren’t. 

Vowels

After viewing that chart, one reasonable question to as is 'where are the vowels?'

Exactly how a person adds vowels into tengwar writing varies depending on the version they use. I am most used to classic Quenya, in which the vowels are five small marks that are written above the constonant preceeding them. These small marks are called 'tehtar', singular 'tehta', and them having a different name reveals that they aren't xactly tengwar themselves.

Even if a person is using a different style in which the vowels are written with larger letters, no matter what, the tehtar don't have their own names and as such are not very useful for runic work or runic reading. To decide how tehtar could be used in fortune-telling or spell work I would have to assign values or symbols to them, and that would be entirely my own work. The first tempation is to apply one each of the five classical elements to the five vowels and let that association 'flavor' the reading somehow, but I would have to start with which element to assign to which tehta; no matter what, there's no basis in Tolkien, it would be UPG all the way down.

Interpretations

For my interpretations of each letter in a reading, I will provide first which aspects from the legandarium I used to interpret the letter's name, then provide a standard reading of the letter in diviniation, and then, for funsies, ruminate on any similarities to other runes/cards/what have you that inspired me in interpreting that letter.

Tinco / Parma / Calma / Quesse / Ando / Umbar / Anga / Ungwe / Sule / Formen / Aha / Hwesta / Anto / Ampa / Anca / Unque / Numen / Malta / Ñoldo / Nwalme / Ore / Vala / Anna / Vilya / Romen / Arda / Lambe / Alda / Silme / Esse / Hyarmen / Yanta / Ure / Osse

Tinco

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Quesse

In Divination: The gentle encouragement of Quesse asks you to consider the tides, the greater pattern. Are you swimming with the current, or against it? Are you in harmony with others, with your partner, with your kin? Are you on the right side of history? If Quesse represents a single person, it is likely a romantic or life partner.

In Tolkien: One thing that is interesting about Quesse is that it’s not Quente, or Quette, or any number of qu- words that mean speech, story, word, ect. Perhaps because it comes so soon after Parma, or perhaps because it felt too muddled to name a letter ‘word’. In any case it is ‘Quesse’, feather.

There is much good bird-watching to be done in Tolkien’s works; nightingale Luthien Tinuviel, the white gulls that call on the shore, the swans of Alqualonde, Manwe and his Eagles. My initial instinct was to make Quesse a symbol of the eagles, of might, of forward motion, of quick solutions to problems. But there was another tengwa already easily associated with him, Sule, and there was another bird I thought could have easily been the one in mind when this tengwa was named Quesse (especially if it was named in Aman by a certain Noldo).

The feather in question, I think, is then the white feather of a swan, the white side of a swan-ship; Quesse is the tengwa for a Teler, for loyalty, partnership, and fidelity, for right action and trust in the natural order. As fate is pre-destined in Arda and it was a loving Deity who designed it, it is usually the right choice to follow the current and trust in the people and natural world around you. In this universe, better understanding of the tides of the world, better understanding of its past and history, usually leads a wise person to flow with those tides; sometimes, very rarely, inspires action against a surge in the wrong direction.

I like having Quesse be the swan’s feather instead of the eagle’s feather better; it does a little to balance the noldorin bias and to bring some water elements into a very fire and air-heavy set of symbols. 

Elsewhere: As this is a symbol related to air no matter what, you can do any air-related correspondences to it (like the Wands Suite of Tarot or directional associations), but if you choose to follow the swan associations, you can do water/cups instead.

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Ampa

In Divination: Something you think is straight and plain is twisted. You may have badly misunderstood the situation, or it may have become more bent out of shape than you realize. You have both trouble ahead and work to do to fix this.

In Tolkien: Faced with the word ‘hook’ (or crook, or claw) and without anything obvious to apply it to, I decided to relate it to the concept of ‘marring’ in Arda and to make it a baleful rune.

In its first form, the world Arda was crafted according to the inherently harmonious design of deity Eru. But it was ‘marred’ by the work of his prodigal servant Melkor, who changed it to suit himself, an act of essential evil in this setting. Since Melkor changed it the entire world is sometimes referred to as ‘Arda Marred’, the world that is no longer its own ideal; Arda Marred is the only world its mortal inhabitants have ever known, though its deities remember a paradise that even they in their power cannot replicate.

Arda Marred seems to have its own roots. Evil acts spring from them, with their own DNA, evil actions with their own divine progenitors, working the world by their evil thoughts; in Arda all evil comes from a counter-melody against the harmony, a second landscape superimposed on the first. Marring is an unbroken chain of missteps coming from these earliest errors.

I have had a lot to say about Tolkien’s concept of evil and its origins in the past. I’m not going to rehash what I feel about it here. Suffice it to say Ampa is meat to symbolize evil as Arda knows it, a design altered from intention.

Elsewhere: Ampa does remind me of the rune Hagal/Hagalaz, which translates to ‘hail’ and usually means ‘trouble’ in a reading. We always say in Futhark reading ‘in tarot there are no bad cards—in Futhark, there are bad runes.’ Hagalaz is a bad rune, it always means trouble. My vision for Ampa is that it’s just always a bad tengwa to see.

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Anca

In Divination: The ‘Dragon’s Rune’ at its most straightforward warns you that a foe is acting against you. When more subtle it may ask you to examine what your supposed enemy is and whether you haven’t let your fear of them overwhelm the real danger. In either case, you should consider the possibility of a malicious actor (and how malicious they really are) more seriously than you have.

In Tolkien: Anca is a tengwar that is used quite well in the name of an existing character: Ancalagon, ‘biting-storm’. Since it comes in the name of the mightiest of dragons I fancifully titled it the ‘dragon’s rune.’ As Anca was created in Aman like the rest of the Tengwar it predates the existence of dragons, but I still prefer to imagine that it was connected to the image of monstrous, biting jaws before, referring to murky memories of monsters in the old continent, or perhaps to the jaws of the snakes associated with one of Feanaro’s own enemies; a younger brother who in actuality bore him no ill will.

Elsewhere: I really want this rune to hearken back to the Chaos Serpent, the primordial monster that the God of Civilization must defeat to establish the beginning of the world/culture and end the animal chaos of pre-humanity. Culture-making myths hold a special interest to me; the myth of beginning culture is likewise interesting, especially as it so often requires an enemy to defeat. To me Anca is Tiamat and Apep and Midgardsormr, but I know how far I’ve taken this from the word ‘jaws’. Then again, we don’t usually say ‘jaws’ about people or domesticated animals, we can ‘teeth’, ‘chin’, ‘mouth’; ‘jaws’ is for wild animals or monsters.

—

Vala

In Divination: The way you understand the world will change enormously. Go forth boldly, but piously.

In Tolkien: There is a reason many fans hesitate to translate ‘Valar’ and leave it as is despite being willing to translate ‘Eldar’ into ‘elves’ and ‘Istari’ into ‘wizards’. Valar are Gods, in a way, but different enough from most real-world pantheons that translating Valar as Gods leads to some unrealistic expectations.

Arda was created by an almighty but removed creator, Eru; their Valar are their servants and are intended to be servants of mortals as well. Valar have domains that they manage, like Ulmo of sea and Varda of the sky, but few are conceived as ‘ruling’ those domains. Others really have jobs rather than domains, like mourning Nienna. The ones that seek power suffer for it. Even choices made by their leader and judge, Manwe of the Winds, cause as much trouble as good. When the Valar become wiser they remove themselves more and more from mortal lives, tend to the natural world, watch and assist when asked, but stop making decisions themselves. If you expect Valar to be Gods, you expect them to rule, enforce, punish; in this setting they are not intended to do that.

They do advise, counsel, and aid. In setting, I imagine that someone drawing the tengwa Vala might think of the Vala they are most connected to or which one to call on for aid, or even ruminate on the domain of a certain Vala in their reading. In my original version of this method I posited that Vala, in fortune-telling, might eventually become associated with Melkor in particular, ‘I Vala’, ‘The Vala’, in the places in which he rules. I think it would be best, however, to see this symbol and recognize by intuition which Vala it indicates; that is, assume whichever one comes to mind is correct. While ‘Valie’ is technically the feminine, I am confident ‘Vala’ here is meant to be the archaic gender-neutral masculine (that is, a word grammatically masculine but intended to be read as universal) and could refer to any of them. If you wanted to title your own V rune 'Valie' as an act of cool subversion I can only support this, I'm the one who insists on using they/them for Eru.

Elsewhere: For someone reading tengwar in our world, Vala can easily stand for your god if you’re religious. I am a polytheist, so I would likely decide which deity is indicated by context. If you’re not religious, I do not presume to tell you what this symbol would mean for you.

—

Anna

In Divination: You may be offered a trade in the future, and you may have to think about what you’re willing to give up to get what you want. Or, perhaps, you might think about whether you should be willing to give more.

In Tolkien: ‘Anna’ is found in the names of two divine characters, Yavanna and Annatar. Yavanna, Valie of nature and agriculture, is strongly associated with the autumn. Her name means fruit-gift and the month of September is named after her in-universe (Yavannie, month of fruit-gifting). Annatar, however, is one of the personas of Sauron, a name he used in the Second Age as an alter ego/false personality. It translates to gift-lord, or Lord of Gifts. My vision for reading this tengwar is that it always contains two possibilities, both of receiving a gift or of giving something away. But the most balanced way to understand this tengwar in its totality is that of a symbol of exchange, both giving and receiving, and being prepared to give away in the hopes of receiving.

Elsewhere: I strongly associated Anna with the Futhark rune Gyfu/Gebo. It is the rune for the letter ‘g’ and its name means ‘gift’. It is shaped like an X, two arms exchanging, two streams crossing. The Hovamol, the sayings of Odhinn, stresses that one should return gifts with more gifts instead of leaving them unanswered, tells us that those who are generous live the best lives, and ruminates on Odhinn giving up his eye to receive inner sight. I have put some of Gyfu’s emphasis on giving to receive and returning gifts with gifts onto Anna, but considering Anna’s dual appearance in the generous gift of fruits from the earth and the double-edged, expectation-laden gifts of Annatar, I feel that this complicated emotional edge of Anna is not unearned.

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