Are Von List’s runes a genuinely historic futhark, or pure invention?
Does it matter?
If you’re a runic traditionalist seeing the Armanen runes listed next to the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and Younger futharks may well make your blood boil!
While these three Futharks have a genuine traceable history going back at least to the middle ages, if not before, the Armanen futhark appears apparently ‘out of the blue’ with the publication of Von List’s Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes) in 1908. Of course Von List claims that they are not only genuinely historic, but actually predate all others, although he actually offers little as verifiable proof for this claim (most of it is subjective and unverifiable)
And, as a consequence, people who are interested in the genuinely historic runes reject them for this reason (there’s no evidence of a history prior to Von List outside of the claims of Von List and followers) But does it really matter? What if Von List DID just invent them? We are dealing with an ‘Esoteric’ runic system, being historic or not does not matter !
What!! I heard you say? Well, take another, probably far better known, form of ‘magic’, that of the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn (GD for short) popped into existence in 1888. They claimed that their teachings and basic rituals came from the ‘discovered’ Cipher manuscripts. These manuscripts were supposedly found in a second hand book bought at Portabello Market in the UK. They ‘traced’ them back to a German group called 'Gold- und Rosenkreuzer' and having belonged originally to one ‘Fräulein (Miss) Anna Sprengel’ who ran the group. The GD sought, and were given, permission to set up their own group, they were then told never to contact the German group again. Interesting story, and total rubbish! No one has ever traced this mysterious Fräulein Sprengel, or her group and very few now believe it. Most likely they were compiled for material in the UK in the mid 1800’s and the story was invented in order to make the claim of genuine pre-history of the order seem real! HANG ON A MINUTE! Doesn’t that sound familiar??? A group inventing a ‘pre=history’ to validate its claims... The pre-history of the GD has been largely rejected as a fabrications but this in no way detracts from the importance and significance of the GD. The same can be said of Gerald Gardener the founder of the ‘Wicca’ movement. He claims to have been taught witchcraft by an old witch who lived in the New Forest. Again this story has been largely rejected as made up by Gardener. In fact Garderner was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a group then lead by former GD member Aleister Crowley drawing many ideas from it. Incidentally the OTO has links to a group called the Fraternitas Saturni who, at one time studied and made use of the Armanen runes. Coming back to the main point, which is essentially this.
We are dealing with an ‘esoteric history’ and esoteric histories don’t necessarily match up with reality, BUT this does not detract from either the importance or effectiveness of the system of magic. Just because Von List invented the Armanen runes is no reason to reject them, as he was not looking to extend the genuine historic development of runes, he was looking to create an esoteric system with an esoteric rune row as the basis of his system.
Part 2 : the Armanen runes and magic (coming soon)
