Originally Posted by SeerCassandraTrelawney

She looked at the class and said "While we do a rune reading by casting runes, in a similar way as Tarot cards, Tarots are used to foretell the future, runes are not. Remember, when you do a rune reading, you ask a question, address a particular issue, and it gives you a possible past, present and 'future', or rather what will be if you follow the path you appears to be on. The future is always perceived as mutable, changeable. You need to be very familiar with the person you are doing the reading for." She took a breath. "and a rune reading is done as an evaluation process, not as fortunetelling."

She pointed to the ravenclaw, "As Master Pryce pointed out, runes are rooted in the present, because they do not answer the question you ask, but they guide you to that answer through the essence of it, as it exists now. It's true that sometimes, knowing the true essence of something will allow you to guess at what the future will bring, but that's all it is, guessing. For instance, if you know that a wand was made to harm," she decided to emphasize "was made specifically to cause harm, one can then infer that it will, in the future, indeed cause harm; but runes, futhark, or Rowling, or any other, can not tell the future, only the present, and the reader is guided to their answer. So in essence using runes, you can merely examine cause and effect and be pointed to a likely outcome."

Did she lose them? That was long... maybe she should go back to the text book... no... questions... "Any questions?"