Rune Might: The Secret Practices of the German Rune Magicians - Edred Thorsson 2018
Early History
Background
A rune is a mystery, first and foremost. It was only later that the word “rune” (and its cognates in the various Germanic languages, which all ultimately derive from a common early Germanic word, rūna) came to designate a letter or writing symbol. In ancient times, the term was most likely used to designate a variety of signs and symbols, of which only a certain codified group became the runestaves employed in writing natural language.
In the later esoteric German tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mystical theories about how and when the runes originated and what their usages were in prehistoric times are at great variance with the theories of academic scholars. The esoteric runologists of early twentieth-century Germany generally held ideas that kept them forever at odds with the available scientific data produced by “exoteric,” or academic, runologists. There is indeed that place, and that key, that opens the door between these two worlds, and these two views, about the runes. But it can only be found through actual initiation into the mysteries themselves.
The academic runologists generally declare that the runes and the notion of writing itself were borrowed in a unique and original form by the ancient Germanic peoples sometime between 200 and 100 BCE. The original runic system is considered the Older Futhark of 24 runestaves. In later historical developments, the original rune row was expanded by the Anglo-Frisians to as many as 33 runestaves and reduced by the Viking Age Scandinavians to 16. Originally the runic signs had their own unique order and bore traditional names relating to various aspects of the spiritual lore of the Germanic folk. (See chapter 6 for further information on the ancient runic traditions.) The runic tradition became increasingly obscured as the system of the Roman alphabet grew in importance during the Middle Ages, and finally any in-depth knowledge of the runes was lost altogether.
Although there are a variety of traditions in German occult circles regarding the origins of the runes, most agree on two things: that the runes are essentially cosmic “encodings” in the very being, or essence, of the Germanic folk and that they were originally formulated within a vastly ancient—perhaps antediluvian—civilization. This primeval culture is often associated with legendary places such as Atlantis (Atland), Thule, Mother Land, or Hyperborea and is in all cases situated in the North.
Guido von List and his followers found much in the esoteric teachings of Theosophy to corroborate their findings that the Aryans*1 were essentially Nordics of a high level of spiritual and mental culture who came from the northern regions to civilize the world. Wherever the Aryans went, they took the runes and other holy signs of their people. These signs were the physical expression of the inner mysteries of the world, which were obvious and fully conscious to the ancient Aryans. These mysteries, and hence the runes, became obscured as they mixed with, and were diluted by, peoples and traditions other than their own.
The chief “mission” of the runes, in the view of many of the German rune magicians, is to help reawaken the vital essence that was lost in times past, and the abilities that were associated with it. The runes are the mysteries and the key to the mysteries at the same time. They have existed eternally within the folk-soul of the Germanics and await only their full awakening.
Based on the scriptural authority of the poem “Hávamál” (The Sayings of the High One [= Odin/Wotan]) from the Poetic Edda, Guido von List claims that the 18-rune Armanic Futhork is the original form of the runic system and that all other rune rows are derived from it by adding extra symbols.
According to Friedrich Bernhard Marby, the runes originated in the Mother Land, which sank below the waves of the North Sea some twelve thousand years ago. For Marby, it was the 33-rune Anglo-Frisian Futhorc that came closest to the original form of the rune row, although he thought that the original system must have contained even more signs. The esoteric German traditions concerning the history of Germanic religion and magic (especially that of the runes) are based very much on the idea that the ancient ways were taken underground into the structure, myth, and ritual of the medieval Christian Church. At first these concealments were quite intentional and conscious on the part of the ancient runic initiates or priests, the Armanen. These Armanen “converted” to Catholicism and infused their own runic religious symbolism and wisdom into that of the church. But with the passage of time, the keys to the hidden meanings of the original Armanic customs and practices were lost. However, the forms remained, and it is these forms that can now be unlocked with the knowledge provided by the runes and by the remanifestation of the Germanic folk-soul.
Long before the runic revival that occurred in the early twentieth century, there was an earlier flowering of an esoteric runic tradition. This was essentially the work of the often overlooked Swedish scholar and mystic Johannes Bureus (1568—1652). Bureus was one of the very first scholarly runologists. He collected many runic texts from Swedish runestones and began to interpret them in a well-informed manner. He also had a mystical side: Bureus was a Paracelsist and Rosicrucian who was well versed in the lore of the Kabbalah and the magical techniques of Agrippa von Nettesheim. This was also the age of storgoticism—“Megalogothicism”—the esoteric doctrine that the Goths (wrongly assumed to be the same as the Swedes) were the once and future master race. Bureus has become the “high priest” of this movement from his chair at the University of Uppsala. To Bureus, the runes were the primeval script containing great mysteries that could be read from an initiated perspective. This he did through a system he called adalruna, “adalrunes,” which was in part a variation of the kabbalistic method known as temura. In recent years the Swedish scholar Thomas Karlsson has devoted two important studies to the work of Bureus.
Continental German rune magic was revived not in the tradition of Johannes Bureus, however, but rather through a synthesis of the school of German Romanticism and the occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout the 1800s there was a growing interest in the ancient traditions of the North. This was in large part a reflection of the Romantic (some might call it “Germantic” or “Gothick”) urge to turn inward, in to the depths of the self, in a quest for ultimate reality. In a way, this urge in the individual was also reflected in the next highest organic unity—the nation, or folk. Thus, the folk began to turn inward and seek within their own traditions and lore for what they had formerly sought in vain outside themselves. Christianity and the traditions of the south of Europe had been found wanting; instead, the truth was to be found within—and northward.
Traditional knowledge, as preserved within the folk itself, was quite decayed by this time. Centuries of ignorance and lack of training had left what remained of the folk traditions rather empty. The only possible exception to this would be the preservation of the family traditions of the German “occult nobility,” as supposedly represented by such claimants as Tarnhari (Ernst Lauterer) and Lobesam (Karl Maria Wiligut). These men claimed to be the repositories of ancient initiatory family traditions, and if this were true, they would be remarkable examples of how the ancient traditions were handed down along family lines. The traditions of Wiligut have been well explored in the book by Stephen E. Flowers and Michael Moynihan titled The Secret King (2007). Similar sorts of occult traditions would, of course, often later be claimed among early revivers of the “Wiccan” way in England in the 1940s and 1950s.
It is more usual, however, for men such as Guido von List to claim extraordinary powers of insight and vision, which enabled them to reconstruct the past through a combination of clairvoyance (insight) and research into the folk ways and ancient customs. An essential component in this idea is that these men were looking into their own national past, and hence to a past that was organically linked to their present reality. The late nineteenth century witnessed the coming of the occult revival to Germany. German-speaking central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.) had long been a breeding ground for esoteric and magical schools. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, and Jakob Böhme were all Germans, and the schools of Rosicrucianism and Illuminism had originated there as well. So the occult was certainly no stranger to the land when it bloomed forth in the late 1880s and 1890s, largely as an immediate by-product of the introduction of Theosophy to the region. This brought out into the open what had been much more secret up to that time. Magical and esoteric ideas were now something that could be openly espoused and promoted; thus the foundations were laid for what we might call the “runic spring.”