A Rune is best described as a “secret” or as a “mystery.” They are indeed cosmological mysteries that date back to the dawn of time—to the Ginnungagap itself. What most people think of however are not the mysteries themselves but rather the symbols carved into wooden discs or stones. These symbols are more appropriately called “runestaves;” however, for simplicity, we often use the term “Runes” as it is popularly used to mean the carved symbols as well as the mysteries. The Runes, when arranged in a certain order, represent what we might call an alphabet, but what is generally called a Futhark—derived from the first six runes of the Elder system: F-U-Th-A-R-K.
To make matters more complex, runic systems evolved over time and geography. The earliest known “alphabet” of Runes is comprised of 24 symbols and is referred to as the Elder Futhark. This Germanic system was in use from as early as 200 BCE through about 500 CE. Carvings utilizing this system are sprinkled across Northern Europe. In the years that followed, and throughout the Viking Age, an evolution occurred that continually reduced the number of runes until only 16 remained—resulting in what scholars branded the Younger Futhork. This Younger system, primarily of Norse origin, was used up until approximately 1050 CE and is widely found on stone carvings throughout Scandinavia. A third system, from Northern England, Northern Germany, and coastal Netherlands, is the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc, which was in use from 600 to 1100 CE. This system had grown to 29 runes by the time of the writing of the Old English Rune Poem. A fourth runic system is commonly known as the Armanen Futhork. The Armanen system is attributed to Guido von List’s mystical revelation while recuperating from cataract surgery in 1902-03. List’s vision helped him to discover “the secret of the runes” —that there was a specific rune associated with each of the 18 verses from the section of the Hávamál known as Ljóðatal (“List of Songs”).
Before considering List’s insights, it is critical to understand the zeitgeist of this age and the history that led to it. From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries there was a growing interest in Runes and several theories and interpretations were documented. This was a time of monumental change in the course of human history. As Luther’s Reformation challenged the excesses of Roman Catholicism, it also inspired a burgeoning spirit of nationalism that stood in defiance of Rome’s empire. Standing up to threats of persecution by the Church, scholars translated the Bible into the vernacular. Such challenges to long-held doctrine resulted in a new spirit of humanism that also included tremendous breakthroughs in the sciences and the arts.
By the late nineteenth century, throughout Europe, there was a whirlwind of competing and supporting ideas. Politically and economically, the benefits of reorganizing disparate city-states into larger national unions were exemplified by Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871. In 1885, Friedrich Nietzsche published his completed magnum opus, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra). In the world of music, Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs) had its public debut in Bayreuth in 1876. Wagner’s four-day total work of art (Gesamtskunstwerk) utilized age-old Germanic mythology to inspire, among other things, an answer to the question that he himself posed in his article “Was ist Deutsch?” (“What is German?”). The West was at its zenith. Its people had no doubt of their greatness and its scholars and artists began to look deeper into their collective and national past to better comprehend their origins. It was into the spirit of these times that Guido von List was born.
In his youth, List was an avid outdoorsman. He spent considerable time boating and mountaineering. He also dedicated himself to the study of history, archeology, and anthropology. His thoughts on a wide range of subjects were recorded in numerous articles. As a journalist, his articles were published in several newspapers including the Neue Welt, Neue Deutsche Alpenzeitung, Heimat, and the Deutsche Zeitung. In 1888, he published his first novel, Carnuntum, an historical novel centered around the old Roman city on the Danube that archeologists began to excavate in 1853. In 1891 List, along with some friends, founded the group Iduna, the Independent German Society for Literature. List contributed an article on the mythic and historical ideas associated with the goddess Iduna to the society’s new journal, Iduna—Zeitschrift für Dichtung und Kritik (“Iduna—Journal for Literature and Critique”). List’s philosophy and ideas matured and took on a more mystical bent by the turn of the twentieth century. There is no doubt that he became familiar with the ideas and works of Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical movement around this time. He was also influenced by the rising tide of nationalist and völkisch thinking prevalent in Germany and Austria. Most important, however, for those interested in the runes, was the publication of his Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes) in 1908.
Das Geheimnis der Runen documented List’s explanations of the meanings of the runes. List’s discovery (or rediscovery) was that “according to the Edda, in the “Rúnatáls-þáttr-Óðins” [the runic Futhorkh] consisted of eighteen such signs.” Beyond associating each of the 18 identified runes with a verse from the Hávamál, List sought to derive the root words for each from a primal Germanic language. He noted that most of these runic root-words were monosyllabic primal words. It is from these ancient Germanic primal or Ur-terms that he deduced meaning through what has been described as folk-etymology. List’s ideas on such primal terms were based on an adaptation of Indian doctrines on the mystical content of seed-words or syllables (bijas).
While List is credited as being the first to identify a Rune with each of the 18 Rune verses of the Hávamál, nowhere in Das Geheimnis der Runen does he call them “Armanen Runes.” Rather his introduction to a rune-by-rune explanation is simply,
…the song presents characterizations of the eighteen runes with mystical interpretations. When these strophes are paired with the names of the runes they enlighten us in a very special way and essentially provide the solution of the ‘secret of the runes.’
Interestingly, while the term “Armanen Runes” is often used to describe List’s system, key followers of List also avoided this term. Siegfried Kummer, for example, refers to the “18 Rune Row according to G. v. List.” Rudolf John Gorsleben refers to them as “Eighteen cosmic Runes” and “the Rune Futhorkh of the Edda.” Karl Spiesberger called them, “The Eighteen Runes of the Futhork.”Karl Hans Welz typically refers to this system as the “Eighteen Sacred Futhork Runes.”
“Armanen” was a term coined and utilized elsewhere by List in his writings. To better understand the meaning of this term, we may break it down to its runic roots—AR and MAN. In so doing, we find the idea of enlightenment joined with that of man’s spiritual or esoteric knowledge. For List, “Armanen” referred to the “men of knowledge.” List described a split within the old primal Germanic religion (Wihinei) into two doctrines:
These were the secret doctrine belonging to those of knowledge (esotericism), which is here to be called “Armanism” for the sake of brevity, and into the general religious doctrine of the people (exotericism), which for the sake of easier understanding will be termed “Wuotanism.”
The Armanen were a leadership class that could be equated with the Brahmin caste of the Indians. They were essentially teachers, priests, and judges all rolled into one. List considered the balance of the Aryo-Germanic people Wuotanists. Wuotan is the Old High German language equivalent of the god more commonly identified as Wotan or Odin today. Wuotanists are more widely understood as followers of Odin or Wotanists or Odinists (or even Ásatrúars). In an ancient society in which few were literate, it makes perfect sense that there was some specific order that maintained the “secret knowledge,” including the writing of the runes.
List’s ideas appeared when the Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement was sweeping through German society. This movement, sometimes considered an early twentieth-century “hippie” movement, espoused a back-to-nature lifestyle. Adherents of the movement embraced a wide range of ideas,including vegetarianism, organic foods, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicines, and even abstention from drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and vaccines. Some, too, embraced völkisch ideas about naturally grown communities bound together by race or ethnicity.
Rune Masters Siegfried Kummer and Friedrich Marby were very active during this period. Today they are most well known for incorporating the idea of forming the runes through postures—namely Rune Yoga or what Marby termed Runengymnastik (Rune Gymnastics.) Kummer also provided various techniques of Rune Magick in his book, Heilige Runenmacht (Holy Rune Might). These concepts included meditation, visualization, and self-development. Kummer also wrote of Rune Dance, bind-runes and sigils, the relation of the Runes to the zodiac, the powers of stones, and Rune hand-postures (Runen-Griff).
Marby and Kummer each led organizations with hundreds of members. Marby founded the League of Runic Researchers, and Kummer led his rune school, Runa. While Marby primarily worked with the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc, his extensive work in runic occultism and Rune Gymnastics, and his description of channeling of Rune might, were incredibly important for both his contemporaries and the Rune Masters who would follow. Both Marby and Kummer were influenced by the society in which they lived. As such there are passages in their books that were not only völkisch, but even deemed supportive of the nascent National Socialist movement that had come to power in Germany. Despite what might, by twenty-first century standards, seem approving of the Hitlerian regime, both Marby and Kummer suffered at the hands of the Third Reich.
Marby was arrested in 1936. His property was seized, and his printing presses were destroyed. He was imprisoned in various concentration camps. He spent 99 months shuffled between Welzheim, Flossenburg, and ultimately Dachau where he was liberated by American forces on April 29, 1945.
Kummer experienced similar difficulties, and his organization was banned in 1934. While it seems that he too may have been arrested, the events of those years are uncertain with disparate reports. Regardless of his fate, his final known Rune publication was Runen-Magie (Rune=Magic) of 1933. A.D. Mercer is undoubtedly correct when he writes, “The simple fact is that the Armanen Masters did not fare well under the Nazis and were forced underground and, in many cases, completely disappeared.”
In the years following the Second World War, and down to the present day, the Runes have been smeared by their usage by the Nazis. The first major attempt to rehabilitate the runes and to recast them in a context free from the nationalist or völkisch language of the past was made by Karl Spiesberger. Spiesberger published his groundbreaking volume Runenmagie: Handbuch der Runenkunde (Rune Magic: Handbook of Runelore) in 1955. Spiesberger, who has been called an “eclectic occultist,” was a member of the Fraternitas Saturni (Brotherhood of Saturn), the oldest continuously running magical order in Germany. The Brotherhood, was and remains, concerned with the study of esotericism, mysticism, and magick.
While he is not a proponent of the “Armanen” system, I would be remiss to exclude mention of Stephen Flowers, aka Edred Thorsson, in this review of relevant personages. Flowers is largely responsible for reviving interest in the Armanen Runes throughout the English-speaking world. His book Rune Might, first published in 1989, presents many of the ideas of Kummer, Marby, and Spiesberger. It remains easily accessible through most booksellers. He also translated List’s Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), Der Unbesiegbare (The Invincible), Die Religion der Ario-Germanen (The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk), and other important works.
Karl Hans Welz took up the tradition of what he called “The 18 Sacred Futhork Runes” after having studied under Spiesberger. In 1984 he established his organization, Knights of Runes, upon his arrival in the United States from Austria. Throughout the 1980s, his organization grew to a membership of nearly 1,000. Welz created several mail correspondence Rune courses that were ultimately made available through his website. Following in Spiesberger’s footsteps, Welz overtly espoused a universalist perspective in his teachings. He also further incorporated eastern philosophical and esoteric concepts including chakras into his rituals and courses as well as elements of Western ceremonial magic. Welz wrote:
“The Sacred Futhork is the most powerful Runic system in use. This is so because this runic system connects with the basic creative structures of the universe. These structures are the building blocks of the universe, so to say. On a material level these building blocks are the chemical elements. The system of the chemical elements is founded on the number 18, the number of the Sacred Futhork! The 18 also connects with the natural zodiac and with the structure of the world crystal. The creative force of the enneagram comes to its peak in the connection with the 2 x 9 Runes!”
Karl Welz passed away in December of 2021. It is in his memory and to keep his work alive that Knights of Runes endeavors to this day!