I've tried looking some of these up, but they are different from anything I have seen. They remind me of Ancient Japanese form of writing but I'm not sure. If you know what they are let me know, I'd be much oblidged.

Can you give us a little bit more information as to where you found them. In a book, scratched on a wall? Something to start us off with?

Strangely enough one of my close friends woke up, finding them scrawled across his arm, there were many of them but he didn't have the sense to take pictures and erased them out of fear. He explained to me that they were closely clumped together with many little X's around and inbetween them. I have no other information on them, besides their strange japanese writing appearance.

Looks a lot like norse runes or some crudely made sigils.

the first one looks like a symbol for revising papers. you know the one that means "insert an indent here" the second one is a number sign. the third one is a 4. The last one i dont know. But the first three seem to mean.

"Indent Number 4"

or if the last one is an "n"

"Indent Number 4N"

or if the last one is an "r"

"Indent Number 4R"

Other than that I dont know.

It does resemble that, now that you mention it, but I'm not sure if that is it or not.

(Warning, author was tired and in a bad mood.
Please be gracious to the author, and mentally filter out his blatant and totally uncalled for @$$holeness, trying to glean the facts, wich are academically sound. I freely admit that this is an exampel of a bad post.
- The @$$hole author, Mike)



Ummm... no offense, but "Ancient Japanese"?

Sorry, but I'll have to step in here. I have been studying linguistics (structural linguistics, historical linguistics, philology, and the history of writing) for fun for over five years. I recently took an undergraduate and graduate level linguistics class for fun (and got an A in both), and four semesters of Japanese. I also read a book on the history of writing in Japan as part of my Japanese 4 final paper. I also learned quite a bit about typography when I started designing True Type fonts for fun.

So....

There is no "Ancient Japanese". Not at all. Sorry.

The first "writing" in Japan was Greater Seal and Lesser Seal characters on Chinese imports, in particular Chinese mirrors, in late 6th through early 8th centuries. The first writing in Japan was brought in Korean scholars fleeing a war between three kingdoms in North Korea in the 8th century. (Surprisingly, Japan and part of North Korea were originally allies.) The writing was all "Court Mandarin", and was translated into Mandarin Chinese when written, and back to Japanese by the scribe when read. The phonological spellings and margin notes in most writings in the 8th through 10th century are period Korean, not period Japanese. It wasn't until the 12th century that the notion of writing Japanese in Japanese started to take hold. (The idea was on par with heresy; the same was true in Vietnam [Ang Am], the Korean kingdoms, and other countries.) In the 14th century, the first pure-Japanese-language written in purely phonetic characters in "Woman's Hand" (what would later become Hiragana) became a cultural transformation point. Before that, the only "Japanese" writing in Japan were phonetic and gloss notes on religious, government, and business text (a different simplification set that would become Katakana). Women were the first to use writing for true, native Japanese culture. Anyway, the character sets of the time were fairly close to the modern Kanas. There were two extra characters (the Iroha poem makes more sense with these), it is believed the ha-gyo and a-gyo were reversed phonetically (and at times the ha-gyo and wa-gyo seemed interchangeable, hence the ha-pronounced-wa subject marker, he-pronounced-e object of preposition marker, and wo-pronounced-o direct object marker), and the list of Hengana (acceptable alternate Kana forms) was a bit larger and more commonly used.
("A History of Japanese Writing", Christopher Seeley, University of Hawaii Press.)

The "Kana Hifumi", or "God Age Characters", are largely believed to be legend, and the "rediscovery" a hoax.

http://base.kb.dk/manus_pub/cv/manus/Manus...=365&p_Lang=alt

You may be thinking of the Shang dynasty characters, which are ancient *Chinese* (and were never used outside a limited area of China). However, these tend to be stylized pictographs, and only encompassed a small set of concrete ideas. They were used almost exclusively on scapulae (shoulder bones) and turtle shells. They do not look like the picture you provide. Further, the early "Court" writing (Greater Seal and Lesser Seal), and the alternate writing systems that evolved before in China before the War of the Three Kingdoms (such as Jurchen and Hsi-Hsia) look more like modern Chinese than this.
("A History of Japanese Writing". Also, "The Writing Systems of the World", Florian Coulmas, Blackwell Oxford & Cambridge Press.)

The picture you give has some vague characteristics of Phoenician and Punic scripts of the early Mediterranean, and Mangyan of the Philippines, but I would say that it's no where near close enough to be even possibly related.
("Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms", Akira Nakanishi, Tuttle Publishing.)

Furthermore....

As someone who has studies Santeria, and live in the middle of Hatian Voodoo, New Orleans Voodoo, Paolo, Shango, Macumba, and Candomble (large Brazilian population for the latter two), I can also say that these don't look like any veve of the Loas or Orisha. Further, they don't look anything like early runes (I can quote books for that, too), or anything used in European magical traditions such as Hermetics or modern Wicca (practicing Wiccan for about 15 years, long before Buffy, Charmed, and such made it fashionable).

Honestly, given what I know about writing, which I can honestly say is fairly extensive, I'd say the characters in the picture are gibberish. I'd pose three situations as to their "meaning".

[1] Your friend was sleepwalking and drew on himself. People have done much weirder. I knew one guy who went through his house, gathered all his flashlights, even asking his wife where more were, and stacked them all neatly on top of his dryer (while sleepwalking). Another guy I knew as a kid peed in the refrigerator *twice*. His mother backed him up on that one. (... yeah, I didn't know what to say to that either.....) So, drawing on oneself is not that unusual.

[2] Your friend wants attention, and made sh*t up to get it. Kids do that.

[3] You want attention, and made sh*t up to get it. Kids do that.

Sorry, but I just can't bring myself to buy it.

Mike

I only wish to know if these are familiar to anyone, it could be a practical joke by my friends brother, but not by me, I am only the messenger so don't shoot me. It was only a notion that they seemed to resemble ancient japanese so thank you for pointing out my mistake, I have plenty of attention from my art which keeps me busy thank you very much, so I have no time to make up silly things to take time away from people such as yourself. If they are nothing but lines and squiggles I am sorry for wasting your time, but perhaps there is something overlooked that isn't in your vast knowledge of language and culture. Also, I would never post this 'sh*t' as you called it, as a practical joke and am a little disappointed that someone with your vocabulary and intellect would stoop down to use such a term.
Thank you for your insight no matter how rudely your conclusion put it.

Yeah, that did come across as harsh....

I'm sorry. I really came off as a pig-f---ing b@astard. My bad day (another 12 hour shift chasing the computer worms the news is reporting) doesn't excuse such behavior. You were far more polite than I in giving me less than I deserved. Lashing out over a topic which I'm well read in was a cheap and inappropriate attempt to grasp at a sense understanding and controll, and lash out in anger, when work is currently a complete lack of order, understanding, and controll. It was base, inappropriate, and unenlightened. I was an @$$hole.

I'm sorry.

Let me try that again.

There is no Ancient Japanese. The earliest writings in Japan were in "Court Mandarin" by Korean scribes fleeing wars. (Korea, and most surounding countries, thought using anything other than Mandarin was barbaric.) It wasn't until several centuries later that Japan, then Korea and Vietnam, realized that not having to translate things from their language to Mandarin and back was far more useful in business. "Ancient Japanese" is less than 800 years old, and is actually rather close to modern Hiragana and Katakana. The books I referenced will confirm this.

The "Language of the Gods" is a historical myth. The Japanese wanted to have partial responsibility for creating their writing, and it became more appealing as time went by and North Korea became "The Bad Guy". (Tell most modern Japanese that their writing was brought to them by North Korean and they'll give you "That Stare", much like if you pick a booger in front of them and try to hand it to them.) So, Hifumi was "rediscovered", and became central to a few cults.

Shang characters are very stylized pictographics, and do not resemble your image at all. They were not used in writing except in a few art objects, which are believed to be ritualistic and therefore exceptions from the norm. Otherwise, when writing in China became popularized, the caligraphic stylizations used in Mandarin, and other forms like Jurchen and Hsi-Hsia, have a strong resemblence to modern Chinese.

The "Woman's Hand" of Yi is the only form to commonly use diagonal lines, but it is more "balanced" in form than what you present. Woman's Yi is obviously influenced by modern Chinese, and has the same style (common radicals, a pictographic basis, etc.)

The other alphabets use primarily diagonal lines. However, they all show more stylization than your image.

It also doesn't match the veves from the Orisha traditions, or any European magic.

My three synopsys still more or less stand. If you didn't make this up, than it's one of the first two. Either your friend was sleepwalking (perhaps also drunk and/or stoned), in which case drawing on himself would not be unusual. Or, he's just "making sh*t up" for attantion or a joke. (That tends to happen *a lot* on these bords.)

Mike

Being fairly intelligent with the runes myself, these are definetly not them. Normal or combined into a design, they are different. If you do know the letter equals to the runes, try and decipher what my signature says


Answering you without a lecture:
The first symbol appears to be, as stated above, a symbol used for Grammar.

The second symbol appears to be an overdrawn #.

The third symbol appears to be the symbol for the planet Jupiter with two lines through the bottom.

The fourth symbol I'm completely stumped on. The only thing this reminds me of is a symbol a friend showed me awhile ago, which appeared to be related to the movie Army of Darkness and the series Evil Dead. [Movies]

Thank you Mike for appologising, and in all likely hood they are no more than squiggles, knowing my friend he probably did have too much to drink or something of that sort, Thank you for your insight on the Japanese writing forms. We all have our bad days so no one can blame you. With all my sorrys and thank yous you can tell I'm Canadian ^_~ thanks for the help everyone

i still like my idea.

maybe answers for a test or somthing like that?

try looking at them upside down

wait a sec i have seen talismans that look a little like this before

Looks like the witing of my niece....

Your friend must be an avid Stargate SG1 fan.
the symbols appear to be very similar to the symbols that surround the Stargate

i translated your sig the first bit kinda looks like a load of gobblede gook but the last bit made sense this is what i got:hitarhraffnarraenruneodinthoralifreja.
and dude have you never heard of a runic spaces their like little floating full stops.

To me it looks like a strange maths question but needless to say it is very strange indeed...

The end part sounds like look in the freezer which is quite creepy...* shivers.
but is that just me, I'm quite weird myself... :

I've seen them before I've realized they are symbols to do with Wicca they are dark symbols indeed I'd look out for your friend... I've been studying Wicca for a year now and remembered reading about those symbols...

Soory for the bad news but it sounds like dirty business... I can't remember what they mean but I'll look it up in my books and get back to you ok?

I've seen them before I've realized they are symbols to do with Wicca they are dark symbols indeed I'd look out for your friend... I've been studying Wicca for a year now and remembered reading about those symbols...

^^^
still like mine

I think you are right about these symbols being japanese, but I recken modified for unknown reason or motive. If you do not already know their is three alphabets used to express japanese writing of "KANJI" (<most popular), HIRAKANA and KATAKANA try this site for a lead or answer >

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/jap.html
Online English to Japanese to English Dictionary

Hope this helps

There’s a slight resemblance to Vinca symbols. IMHO

Old European / Vinča