Armanen Runes
Ar
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Origin 1902 to 1908
Ar, the tenth rune, is the one that shows most plainly how List's philology worked and why it should not be trusted. He derived the word Aryan from Ar, the sun, and built on that derivation an account of a solar Aryan nobility whose light drives out darkness. The derivation is false: Aryan comes into European languages from Sanskrit arya and its Old Iranian cognate, terms a group used of itself, and has no connection to any Germanic word for sun. That did not stop the identification from spreading, and it is one of the threads by which List's runology fed a racial mythology that others put to political use. The rune itself corresponds to the Younger Futhark ar, meaning a good year or harvest. Armanen practice reads it for the sun, for clarity, for beauty and for what List called the noble spirit.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1902 to 1908 2Tradition: Armanen system (Guido von List) Origin Period800 to 1100 CE 1Tradition: Younger Futhark, the historical row von List built on Origin PeriodSixteen of the eighteen Armanen characters adapt the historical Younger Futhark script, in documented use across Scandinavia from about 800 to 1100 CE. The row itself was published by the Austrian occultist Guido von List, first as a periodical article in 1906 and then in full as Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908. 2 Place of OriginVienna, Austria-Hungary. 2 Attributed Author / CompilerGuido von List (1848-1919). He published the row as a periodical article in 1906 and as Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908, and did not present it as an invention: his claim was that he had recovered the secret alphabet of an 'Armanen' priest-king caste of a pre-Christian Aryan civilisation. No trace of such a caste exists in any source. 2 Origin of the NameAdapted from the historical Scandinavian rune name ar, 'year, plenty'. Sixteen of the eighteen Armanen characters are the Younger Futhark, the row genuinely used across Scandinavia in the Viking Age, and their names are largely the historical Scandinavian names, sometimes lightly altered. The meanings von List attached to them are new. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe Armanen row was formulated inside an Austrian volkisch milieu, was taken up by the Germanenorden and by later Ariosophical and SS-adjacent runic enthusiasts, and is today used both in ordinary modern esotericism and on the far right. The row itself does not distinguish the two, which is why its origin has to be stated rather than assumed. 2 Order
Position in the Sequence Attributions
Associated Sound Learn More
The Armanen Rune Ar
Ar is one of the eighteen Armanen runes, the runic row devised by the Austrian occultist Guido von List and published in his Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes) in 1908, developing ideas he had begun to set out from about 1902. It is given the sound-value A.
The rune and its meaning
Von List did not recover an ancient alphabet. He built his eighteen runes on the sixteen characters of the Younger Futhark, expanded to eighteen to match the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal in the Poetic Edda, and assigned to each a mystical meaning of his own. In his system Ar stands for the sun, the dawn and honour; the light that consumes darkness and untruth, and the nobility of the well-ordered life.
These readings are von List's early twentieth-century esoteric invention, not the meanings of the historical Viking-age runes, and are described here as such. The Armanen system was later taken up by volkisch and, in the 1930s and 1940s, National Socialist circles; that political appropriation is a separate and widely condemned chapter, and forms no part of the historical or comparative study of the row set out here.
What von List Took for Ar
The eighteen Armanen runes are Guido von List's, published in 1908, and every one of them is a historical character with his own naming and meaning laid over it.
The character behind it
Ar corresponds to the Younger Futhark character whose Old Norse name was ar, meaning year in the specific sense of a good season and a successful harvest. The rune poems treat it as plenty, and the Old English tradition glosses its equivalent in the same direction. It is one of the more favourable characters in the medieval material by every surviving account.
What von List did with it
He kept the A value and the name, and assigned the character a meaning within his own eighteen. Because the historical gloss is uncomplicated and consistent, this is another of the runes where his row stays close to the medieval material rather than departing from it.
The frame
Von List described the eighteen as an ancient Germanic priestly alphabet recovered from the past, with the count matched to the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal. Runologists reject the recovery claim: no attested futhark has eighteen characters, and the Havamal does not describe an alphabet.
Reception
The row was taken up in volkisch circles and, during the 1930s and 1940s, by National Socialist organisations. The atlas records that reception as documented history and does not present the Armanen row as Germanic antiquity.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
Devised by von List, by his own account during the temporary blindness following his 1902 cataract surgery, and published in Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908.
Contained In
One of the eighteen runes of the Armanen row.
Derived From
Jera, Runes Von List's Ar derives from the year/harvest rune ar, the Younger Futhark descendant of Elder Futhark Jera (year, harvest, cycles).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. Runes: A Handbook
Michael P. Barnes, The Boydell Press, 2012On the sixteen-character Younger FutharkView the Source 2. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Aquarian Press, 1985Part I, on Guido von List and the Armanist revivalView the Source Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes)
Guido von List, Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft, 1908The eighteen Armanen runes, no. 10View the Source The Science of the Swastika
Bernard Mees, Central European University Press, 2008On solar and Aryan etymologies in volkisch runology
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