The Armanen runes look ancient, and that is exactly the problem. They are often presented as a lost Germanic alphabet, yet the system is barely a century old. It was invented in the early twentieth century by one man.
The Armanen runes are a set of eighteen runes, sometimes called the Armanen Futhark, created by the Austrian mystic Guido von List. He introduced them in a 1908 book and built an entire esoteric philosophy around them.
This page covers who made them, the full list of eighteen, the claim that they come from the Hávamál, whether they count as authentic runes, and the troubling history that many sources leave out. The honest account is more useful than the myth.
Who Created the Armanen Runes
Guido von List (1848 to 1919) was an Austrian occultist and writer fascinated by Germanic antiquity. In 1902 he underwent cataract surgery and spent about eleven months blind during his recovery. He later claimed that in this period of darkness a vision revealed the true runes to him.
He first published the idea in a 1906 article, then expanded it into the book that made it famous, Das Geheimnis der Runen, or The Secret of the Runes, in 1908.
The work launched Ariosophy, a movement that fused rune mysticism with esoteric ideas about a supposed ancient Aryan priesthood, the “Armanen.” Followers founded the Guido von List Society in 1908 to promote his teachings.
Two things are worth holding onto. First, this is a documented modern origin, a personal revelation from 1902, not an inherited tradition passed down from the Norse. Second, Ariosophy carried racial and nationalist ideas from the start, a thread that matters for the later history of these symbols.
The 18 Armanen Runes
List’s system uses eighteen runes rather than the twenty-four of the older row. Here they are in order, with the sound each represents.
| # | Rune Name | Sound |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fa | F |
| 2 | Ur | U |
| 3 | Thurs | Th |
| 4 | Os | A, O |
| 5 | Rit | R |
| 6 | Ka | K |
| 7 | Hagal | H |
| 8 | Nauth | N |
| 9 | Is | I |
| 10 | Ar | A |
| 11 | Sig | S |
| 12 | Tyr | T |
| 13 | Bar | B |
| 14 | Laf | L |
| 15 | Man | M |
| 16 | Yr | Y |
| 17 | Eh | E |
| 18 | Gibor | G |
The names echo older runes, so Fa recalls Fehu and Ur recalls Uruz, because List drew heavily on the Younger Futhark. The eighteen-rune count and several of the forms and meanings, though, are his own construction.
One pairing became especially well known through his work: Man, treated as the rune of life, and Yr, its mirror image, treated as the rune of death. For the meanings of the genuine historical runes, see the rune meanings library.
The Hávamál Claim and Where It Falls Short
List did not present the eighteen as an invention. He tied them to the Hávamál, the Old Norse poem in the Poetic Edda. Its Rúnatal section, roughly stanzas 147 to 165, has Odin describe eighteen charms or songs he knows. List argued that these eighteen encoded an ancient Armanen row.
The text does not support that reading. The Hávamál lists eighteen spells, described by their effects, and it never names eighteen runes or presents them as an alphabet. No inscription, manuscript, or archaeological find records an eighteen-rune Armanen Futhark.
The runic rows that genuinely existed are the Elder Futhark, the twenty-four-character system used from roughly 150 to 800 CE, and the later Younger Futhark of sixteen runes. Both are attested by thousands of real inscriptions. The Armanen eighteen are not.
Are Armanen Runes Authentic Ancient Runes?
No. The Armanen runes are a modern esoteric creation, assembled by one writer in the early 1900s and drawing loosely on the Younger Futhark. Scholars describe them as pseudo-runes.
That does not make them uninteresting as a piece of history, but it does mean they sit apart from the genuine article. If your goal is to learn the runes the Norse and Germanic peoples actually carved, start with the authentic rows: the Elder Futhark and the Younger Futhark, with the wider story on the ancient runes page.
Reading Armanen material first gives you a twentieth-century occult layer laid over the runes, a step away from the historical foundation beneath them. Many beginners meet the Armanen system without realizing it is a modern branch, which is why naming it clearly matters.
The Troubling History You Should Know
This is the part many rune sites quietly skip, and it is the part a reader most deserves to know.
Von List’s Ariosophy combined rune mysticism with Aryan racial and nationalist ideology. Over the following decades his ideas spread through the German and Austrian völkisch movement, a current of ethnic nationalism that fed directly into later extremism.
Under the Third Reich, the occultist Karl Maria Wiligut, sometimes called Himmler’s rune magician, drew on Armanen and related runology to design symbolism for the SS. Two runes from List’s row became notorious through this use. The Sig rune, doubled, formed the lightning-bolt insignia of the SS. The Odal rune (related to the older Othala) marked certain SS units and is still used by extremist groups today.
Because of that history, several Armanen-derived symbols are now classified as hate symbols by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League. The genuine ancient runes were an ordinary writing system used by whole societies, and they carry no such meaning. The ideological layer belongs to this modern chapter alone.
Knowing the difference is the point. It lets you study the Armanen runes honestly as history while keeping the authentic runes clear of associations they never had.
FAQ
What are the Armanen runes?
The Armanen runes are a set of eighteen runes, also called the Armanen Futhark, created by the Austrian mystic Guido von List and published in 1908. They are a modern esoteric system inspired by the Younger Futhark, not an authentic ancient runic alphabet.
Who invented the Armanen runes?
Guido von List, an Austrian occultist who lived from 1848 to 1919. He claimed the eighteen runes were revealed to him in a vision during eleven months of blindness after cataract surgery in 1902, and he published them in his 1908 book Das Geheimnis der Runen, The Secret of the Runes.
How many Armanen runes are there?
There are eighteen. List chose that number to match the eighteen charms Odin describes in the Rúnatal section of the Hávamál, though the poem lists spells rather than an eighteen-rune alphabet.
Are Armanen runes historically accurate?
No. They are modern pseudo-runes from the early twentieth century. The historically genuine runic rows are the Elder Futhark of twenty-four runes and the Younger Futhark of sixteen, both recorded in thousands of real inscriptions.
What is the difference between Armanen runes and the Elder Futhark?
The Elder Futhark is the authentic twenty-four-rune alphabet used across the Germanic world from about 150 to 800 CE. The Armanen runes are an eighteen-rune modern invention from 1908. One is a real historical writing system, the other is a recent esoteric reconstruction.
Why are some Armanen runes associated with the Nazis?
Von List’s Ariosophy carried Aryan nationalist ideas, and under the Third Reich Karl Maria Wiligut adapted Armanen runology for SS symbolism. The Sig rune doubled became the SS insignia, and the Odal rune marked SS units. Several such symbols are now recognized as hate symbols by groups like the Anti-Defamation League.