system
A chat on 4chan
human
>”Hey google, what are living oral traditions with taboos against writing them down because it kills the living breath of the ancestors and legends?”
gpt
This thread turned out pretty decent.


This is probably the closest answer to my real question which I couldn't quite express correctly.

This is why I'm not sure READING anything about the occult is really that useful. Because most of the elaboration and interpretations were done in the last 2 centuries. (I know there was work done in the middle ages too, but most of that was filtered through 20th Century writers or at least translators) Though to be fair this problem exists in more areas than just rune magic lol.
human
when it comes to anything occult i tend to not really trust anything from past the late medieval era. agrippa is the youngest grimoire writer i will trust. the older ones are just pen names or unknown. 
but you are correct, at least with rune magic, its more valuable to do some archeological research than it is to read most of that runic magic stuff. study the catalogues of runestones and their inscriptions; although most of them just gravestones with variations of 'sven was buried here', there are some that reveal interesting bits of rituals, beliefs, procedures during funerals etc etc but the most interesting bits describe how runes should be carved and the rituals involving them . study bracteates as well which are probably the oldest runic writings we have, but theyre very difficult to understand usually .