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)
3 comments:
Actually the Armanen Runes are historical. All 18 of them are also found in at least one of the other rune rows in some form or name (the first 16 of them are the same runes found in the Younger Futhark).
Basically List was trying to reverse-engineer the rune-rows back to their original Odinic form mentioned in the Havamal. The Vikings had already attempted this in the Middle Ages with the Younger Futhark, reducing the 24 "Elder" runes to just 16 - they were unsure about the identity of the last two of the 18 runes alluded to in the Havamal, so they left it at 16.
Guido von List simply discovered the identity of the last two Odinic runes. The result was the 18-rune Armanen Futharkh, which is basically a COMPLETION of the reverse-engineering job the Viking skalds were attempting centuries earlier with the Younger Futhark. What came to him in the dream during his recovery from cataract surgery was not the Armanen runes themselves - it was their esoteric meanings and how it all tied in with the origins of ancient Germanic words that had multiple (seemingly unrelated) layers of meaning.
List's vision (and the resulting ten books he wrote about runes and Germanic and Indo-European lore) explained how these seemingly unrelated levels of meaning in Germanic words were all mystically related, and all through the hidden meanings of the 18 Odinic (or now Armanen) runes.
It is all culturally AND linguistically grounded, albeit in ways never explored by "mainstream" academics. And it's FAR more culturally valid than Golden Dawn or Wicca. List actually used his native knowledge of the German language in its ancient forms, as well as Old Norse and Gothic, to decipher what the runes meant to the three classes of ancient Germanic (and perhaps even other Indo-European) societies, and how they were thus applied to language, law, religion, and magick in Bronze-age and Iron-age times, leading up to and even after the Viking age and the advent of xtianity (and how the runic symbols were hidden in "hex signs" in late medieval times and influenced "hexerei" or German folk magick).
List also ties in concepts common in all Aryan-derived cultures, including Iranian and Indo-Aryan (pre-vedic) concepts to fill in the gaps and show us how the Runes symbolize a solar worldview which pre-dates even a German identity and is in fact a primal pan-Indo-European mysticism.
You can learn more about Armanen runes (and the other three major runic systems) on my blog, http://realrunemagick.blogspot.com/
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