List and the Armanic Runes

                                      by Justin Kimberlin

                                      Literature and the Occult

                                                                      Fall 2002

The runes were the writing symbols of the ancient Germanic people.  Runic writing was found as far back as the 3^rd or 4^th century B.C.E.  The original runic system, according to the academic runologists was the Elder Futhark consisting of twenty-four runes.  This was Aexpanded by the Anglo-Frisians to a futhorc of 33 runestaves.@(Rune Might p.3)[COMMENT1]  By the Viking Age, the Scandinavians were only using 16 runestaves.  This system was known as the Younger Futhark.  In contrast to the accepted academic belief, there exists a 4^th system of 18 runes known as the Armanic Futhork.  This last system is the product of a German esoteric runologist, Guido Von List. [COMMENT2] 

A new revival of the Ancient Germanic religion has taken place in recent years.  [COMMENT3] Many of Germanic decent have discovered a newfound belief in the old Germanic Gods.  In Iceland, the fervor was the most prolific and many lobbied the government for a legitimization of this religion.  At the time, only Christianity was official there.  Finally in the 1970s, the Icelandic government made the religion official.  One of the requirements for this was that the religion must have a name[COMMENT4] .  The new name of Ásatrú was given to the religion. Ásatrú  means the loyalty or Troth [trú] of the Gods [Æsir^[1]]. (Northern Magic p. 41) Though there were several Germanic Gods and Goddesses, the focus is often on one of two Gods.  The first is Odin (Ódhinn), the God of war, poetry, magic, and[COMMENT5]  the runes.  He was known to the Germans as Wotan or Wuotan and to the Anglo-Saxons as Woden.  The other is Thor (Thórr), the god of thunder and justice.  Known as Donar to the Germans and Thunar to the Anglo-Saxons, his weapon was the hammer Mjöllnir.  Along with a renewed interest in the old Gods the movement has inspired many to study the holy books known as the Eddas and the Runes.  This renewed interest in Runology has prompted some to look back to the Germanic occult revival of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Guido Karl Anton List was perhaps the most important figure of the runic occultism revival.  (Rune Might p.9)  On October 5, 1948, List was born into a prosperous merchant family.  He was raised as a Catholic and visited the catacombs beneath St. Stephen=s Cathedral in Vienna in 1862 with his father.  The then fourteen-year-old knelt before an altar and proclaimed: AWhenever I get big, I will build a Temple of Wotan!@(List quoted by Flowers p.2)  In 1875, List visited the Roman ruins of Carnuntum, the site of a tribal German victory over the Romans in 375 C.E.  In honor of the 1500^th anniversary of this victory, he sought out the Heidentor^[2] where he performed Athe drinking of ritual toasts to the memory of the local spirit (genius loci) and the heroes of the past, the lighting of the solstice fire, and the laying of eight wine bottles in the shape of the Afyrfos@ (swastika) in the glowing embers of the fire.@ (Flowers p.4)   It is important to note that List had no knowledge of Theosophy or the Theosophical use of the swastika at that time.  The Germans had used the symbol from early times either as a symbol of Odin or Thor.  This trip to Carnuntum inspired him to eventually write his first full-length novel Carnuntum, a mythological work that became popular among many German nationalists in Austria.  List eventually became a celebrity among the Austrian Pan-Germans.

Following an operation to remove cataracts, List went through and eleven-month period of enlightenment.  During this time he was unable to see but claimed to have mystical inner sight.  Wotan himself lost vision in one eye to gain knowledge from the well of Mimir in the Völuspá (the Sybil=s Prophecy), with which List was familiar.  List became very interested in occult knowledge during this time, especially the runes. The newly inspired list Asent a manuscript about the Aryan proto-language to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna@ setting out the conception Aof a monumental pseudo-science concerned with Germanic linguistics and symbology@ in April 1903.  (GC p.41)  This was his Afirst attempt to interpret, by means of occult insight, the letters and sounds of the runes and the alphabet on the one hand, and the emblems and glyphs of ancient inscriptions on the other.@  (GC p.41) The Academy was not interested in the document and returned it without any input on their part though it did become popular among the occultists.  List later had an article published in the occult periodical Die Gnosis.  This article showed the Theosophical influence that List was now under. 

List believed that the ancient Teutonic (Germanic) people had practiced the religion of Wotanism.  This was, according to List, Aa gnostic religion emphasizing the initiation of man into natural mysteries.@ (GC p.49) Unlike other non-classical European religions, the Norse had left behind the Eddas.  The Völuspá and the Hávamál, found in the Elder Edda, were the most valuable to List=s research.  The Völuspá contains both the creation of the world and the end of the world (the Ragnarök).  The Hávamál contains Wotan=s advice to his followers.  The end of the Hávamál is the story of Wotan hanging on the tree Yggdrasill for nine days and nine nights after have been mortally wounded with a spear.  Wotan dies and comes back to life with the knowledge of the runes and eighteen runic spells containing esoteric knowledge from the realm of the dead. 

The runes were more than just a writing system.  They were also used for divination.  Each of the runes had a unique name, magical property, sound, and letter representation.  List envisioned a runic system that came to be known as the Armanic Futhork.  This system was completely different from the three accepted academic systems.  List matched up 18 runes with the 18 runic spells of Wotan from the Hávamál.  In his publication The Secret of the Runes he gives the names and descriptions of each of the runes and adds  Aoccult meanings and a summary motto of the spell@ which Awere supposed to represent the doctrine and the maxims of the rediscovered religion of Wotanism.@ (GC p.50) These mottoes were along the lines of: AKnow yourself, then you will know all!@^[3] and AYour blood, your highest possession.@^[4]  Perhaps the most interesting of these runes is the 18^th.  List believed that the incomplete form of the 18^th rune or the God-rune Gibor[COMMENT6]  was the swastika or fyrfos[COMMENT7] .

It harkens back to this sign in both name and meaningBwithout, nevertheless, exhausting it. In this the intention of the skalds to guard vigilantly the fyrfos as their exclusive innermost secret, and as the sigil of that secret, can be seen.  Only after yielding to certain pressures did they reveal another sign which partially replaced the fyrfos. (List p.64-65)

It was this very power which most likely causes the Thule and the Nazis to adopt this symbol.  The author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich attributes this symbol with motivating the German people to rally behind the Nazis.[COMMENT8] 

List began using the title von[COMMENT9] , at first only occasionally.  In 1907, List began to officially list his name as Guido von List prompting an inquiry by magistrates.  He argued that he was of Lower Austrian and Styrian decent.  He claimed that an ancestor had given up use of the title and also had a coat-of-arms on a signet ring, which List produced as evidence. [COMMENT10]  List possibly was concerned with this title to establish him as one of the Armanen who List believed to be the priestly order of the ancient Germans.  This priesthood was called the Armenschaft and list believed that this caste must be returned back to power. 

Inspired heavily be Theosophy, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism, he proposed a system of exoteric and esoteric teaching in the gnosis. (GC p. 57).  The Exoteric doctrine of Wotanism would provide the mythology and parables to the lower social classes and the esoteric doctrine of Armanism would be concerned with the gnostic mysteries.  The latter system would have a lodge hierarchy and would be an initiatory brotherhood.  This would provide a separation of the religious and the occult practices of the gnosis.

List=s Armanic rune system is perhaps the most influential runic system in terms of magic.  List believed that his runic system was the primeval system from which the other three systems developed.  While academics tended to scoff at this, the rune magicians and esoteric philosophers of Germany did not.  It was the basis for the works of S.A. Kimmer, Gorsleben, and Karl Spiesberger.  The only notable German runic occultist who did not employ the Armanic system in any way was F.B. Marby, who employed the 33-rune Anglo-Frisian system.  (Rune Might p.44-45) Marby believed that the original runic system contained even more signs that the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc and that Athe runes originated in the Mother-Land, which sank below the waves of the North Sea some 12,000 years ago.@ (Rune Might p.5) The Armanic runes and List=s ideas about race were well-received by the völkisch and Pan-German movements, the German Theosophists, Ariosophists, and later the Nazis.  List was a legend in his own time.  There was even a Guido von List Society who made sure that his work was published until the outbreak of World War I, a war which List had predicted. List had made some other predictions involving dates and types of events that have come true.  The biggest one that did not was that of a thousand-year-rule of the Germans or the German Millennium.  This reign in fact lasted only twelve years and did more to damage the reputation of the ancient Germanic religion and its symbols than Christianity had ever been able to.  List himself never lived long enough to see its reign and probably would have been a threatening presence to Hitler if he had.  Whether or not List would have agreed with their methodologies we will never know.  One thing, however, is clear.  List was the most influential occult runologist of the 20^th century.

                                                     Bibliography

 

Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism : Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence On Nazi Ideology : the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1992.  ISBN: 0-8147-3054-X, LOC Call: DD256.5.029 1992, DD Call: 320.5'33'0943Bdc20

 

List, Guido von.  Translated, edited, and introduced by Stephen Flowers. The Secret of the Runes (Das Geheimnis der Runen). Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1988.  ISBN: 0-89281-207-9, (pbk.), LOC Call: BF1623.R89L5713 1988, DD Call: 133.3'3

 

Thorsson, Edred. Northern Magic : Rune Mysteries and Shamanism. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1998, Second Edition.  ISBN: 1-56718-709-9 (pbk.), LOC Call: BF1622.G3T483, DD Call: 133.4'3'0893-dc21

 

Thorsson, Edred. Rune Might: Secret Practices of the German Rune Magicians. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1989.  ISBN: 0-87542-778-2 (pbk.), LOC Call: BF1623.R89T485, DD Call: 133.4'3--dc21