page_title: Guido von List
section_title: Runes and the Armanenschaft
hierarchical_section_title: Guido von List / Ideology / Runes and the Armanenschaft
context_page_description: Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List, was an Austrian occultist, journalist, playwright, and novelist. He expounded a modern Pagan new religious movement known as Wotanism, which he claimed was the revival of the religion of the ancient German race, and which included an inner set of Ariosophical teachings that he termed Armanism.
  Born to a wealthy middle-class family in Vienna, List claimed that he abandoned his family's Roman Catholic faith in childhood, instead devoting himself to the pre-Christian god Wotan. Spending much time in the Austrian countryside, he engaged in rowing, hiking, and sketching the landscape. From 1877 he began a career as a journalist, primarily authoring articles on the Austrian countryside for nationalist newspapers and magazines. In these he placed a völkisch emphasis on the folk culture and customs of rural people, believing that many of them were survivals of pre-Christian, pagan religion. He published three novels, Carnuntum, Jung Diethers Heimkehr, and Pipara, each set among the German tribes of the Iron Age, as well as authoring several plays.
context_section_description: List believed that the basic teachings of Wotanism were found in the runic alphabet, believing that they could be deciphered by linking these letters with particular runic spells which appear in the Old Norse Havamal. He claimed to have deciphered these secret meanings himself, translating them as statements such as "Know yourself, then you know everything", "Do not fear death, he cannot kill you", "Marriage is the root of the Aryan race!", and "Man is one with God!" List emphasised the importance of a mystical union between humans and the universe, viewing divinity as being immanent in nature, with all life being an emanation of it. Connected to this, he believed in a close identification between the racial group – the volk or folk – and the natural world. List believed that human beings had an immortal soul, and that it would be reincarnated according to the laws of karma until eventually uniting with divinity.
  In the 1890s, List initially devised the idea that ancient German society had been led by a hierarchical system of initiates, the Armanenschaft, an idea which had developed into a key part of his thinking by 1908. List's image of the Armanenschaft's structure was based largely on his knowledge of Freemasonry. He claimed that the ancient brotherhood had consisted of three degrees, each with their own secret signs, grips, and passwords. He believed that the Armanenschaft had societal control over the ancient German people, acting as teachers, priests, and judges. In List's interpretation of history, the Christian missionaries persecuted the Armanenschaft, resulting in many fleeing northward into Scandinavia and Iceland. He believed that they developed a secretive language for transmitting their teachings, known as kala.
  List claimed that after the Christianisation of Northern Europe, the Armanist teachings were passed down in secret, thus resulting in their transmission through later esoteric traditions such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. He also claimed that the Medieval Knights Templar had been keepers of these Armanist secrets, and that they had been persecuted by the Christian establishment as a result of this; he believed that the deity they were accused of worshiping, Baphomet, was actually a sigil of the Maltese Cross representing Armanist  teachings. According to List, a number of prominent Renaissance humanists – including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Trithemius, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Johann Reuchlin – were also aware of this ancient Armanist teaching, with List claiming that he was actually the reincarnation of Reuchlin. In addition, List claimed that in the eighth century, Armanists had imparted their secret teachings to the Jewish rabbis of Cologne in the hope of preserving them from Christian persecution; he believed that these teachings became the Kabbalah, which he therefore reasoned was an ancient German and not Jewish innovation, thus legitimising its usage in his own teachings. Rudgley stated that this "tortuous argument" was used to support List's anti-semitic agenda.
caption: Runic Circle of the Armanen Futharkh.