If I runed the world

What started out as a jolly has turned into a full on linguistics project! I mention in the book that Sem's sports team wears the rune for power as their emblem. Much like my map I thought "Wouldn't it be fun to include some of the runes of Arbea in the book".

Well, to include them requires them to exist. And what started as a way of illustrating chapter titles has required me to take a hard look at the structure of language, pictographic writing and runes.

Often runes illustrate complex concepts. But, these concepts are quite basic archetypes. I started by looking at Karl Jung's concept of archetypes, creating runes for each. Then I began working backwards breaking down the major archetypes into its component parts.

Then it was thinking of other basic concepts one might night, figuring out how to represent other compound ideas, concepts, reading/writing structure, etc. I won't go into too much detail about how I went about it. It's made even my head hurt. And, I need to get me to a linguist to see what insights they can offer. But, I'm having super fun exploring it.

Here is my first crack at runes (actually more of glyphs) and then the rough translation of each of the chapter names in the book.

Enjoy!
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Page one of glyphs

Title and chapters as glyphs