Armanen Runes
Rit
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Origin 1902 to 1908
Rit matters more inside List's system than its modest fifth position suggests, because it carries the concept he called Rita: a primeval Aryan law, at once cosmic order, legal right and religious rite, which he believed had governed a lost Germanic civilisation before Christianity displaced it. The rune's name gathers right, rite, rhythm, red and the wheel, and List treated the resemblance of those words as proof of a common origin. It is not; the etymologies do not connect. But Rita was the ideological centre of Armanism, the argument that Germanic peoples had once possessed and could recover a superior indigenous order, and this is the rune where that argument sits. It is read for law, for rightness, for ritual correctly performed, and for acting in accordance with one's own nature.
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 reid, 'riding'. 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 Rit
Rit 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 R.
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 Rit stands for right, rite and rhythm, the cosmic law and ordered measure; counsel, and the just ordering of one's affairs.
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 Rit
The Armanen row is an early twentieth-century construction by Guido von List, published in 1908. Every one of its eighteen characters can be described by what it was before he took it and what he did to it.
The character behind it
Rit corresponds to the Younger Futhark character whose Old Norse name was reid, meaning riding or a ride, and which the rune poems gloss with horses and journeys. The character is common in the Viking-age inscriptional record, where it does ordinary work as the letter R.
What von List did with it
He kept the sound value, Germanised the name to Rit, and gave the character a meaning belonging to his own scheme rather than to the rune poems. Sixteen of his eighteen map onto Younger Futhark characters in this way; the last two, Eh and Gibor, do not exist in that row and were supplied to reach the count of eighteen.
Why eighteen
Von List set the number to match the eighteen rune-charms listed in the Havamal in the Poetic Edda. The Havamal does not describe an alphabet of eighteen characters, and no historical futhark has eighteen. The correspondence is his, not the tradition's.
Reception
The Armanen row was taken up in volkisch circles and, in the 1930s and 1940s, by National Socialist organisations. This atlas records that history plainly and does not present the 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
Raidho, Runes Von List's Rit (R) derives from the Elder Futhark Raidho (riding, right order).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
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