Revival of the Runes: The Modern Rediscovery and Reinvention of the Germanic Runes - Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. 2021

The Second Runic Wave
The Rise of Contemporary Scientific Runology and the Re-Emergence of the Rune-Gild

After the first wave of runic revivalism that began in the early 1980s, higher-quality books on runelore began to be written and published, as the basic traditions were increasingly better understood. The rising use of the Internet and the generally more widespread availability of higher-quality research materials for esoteric rune-enthusiasts made this possible. It seems that after about the year 2000, a second wave of more solidly written esoteric rune books began to be published. These were marked by the tendency to use actual runic traditions, and the names of the runes and so on were increasingly accurate. The best examples from this second wave include Paul Rhys Mountfort’s Nordic Runes (2003), Leon D. Wild’s The Runes Workbook (2004), Diana Paxson’s Taking Up the Runes (2005), and Kaedrich Olsen’s Runes for Transformation (2008). Each of these books contains elements that make it worthy of recommendation. We can now only hope for a third wave, in which the full promise of integral runology will be met.