THE LIFE OF LIST

Guido von (Karl Anton) List was perhaps the most important figure of runic revivalism in the late 19th, early 20th Century. He was THE revivalist of the mystic/occultic wisdom and it's arts in the Germanic tradition. 

"He was the first popular writer to combine volkish ideology with occultism amd theosophy"... "He was regarded by his readers and followers as a bearded old patriarch and a mystical nationalist guru whose clairvoyant gaze had lifted the glorious Aryan and Germanic past of Autria into full view from beneath the debris of foreign influence and Christian culture." - The Occult Roots of Nazism: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.

This paper includes a biography of Guido von List, a survey of his other works, and a comprehensive outline of his Armanic philosophy. List's seminal work, 'The Secret of the Runes', contains examples of virtually all of his major themes. No other work so clearly and simply sets forth the full spectrum of his fantastic vision of a mystical philosophy based on ancient Germanic principles. It will be of special interest to students of the Western occult tradition, as well as to those involved in ancient history, language, and mysticism.

Name: Guido Karl Anton List, later changed to 'Guido von List' 
Born: October 5th, 1848,Vienna, Austria. 
Died: May 17th, 1919, Berlin Germany. 
Buried: Cremated in Leipzig and his urn then buried in Vienna Central Cemetery, Zentralfriedhof , on the 8th of October 1919 in the gravesite KNLH 413 - Vienna's largest and most famous cemetery (including the graves of Beethoven , Brahms , Schubert and Strauss.) in Vienna's 11th district of Simmering. Since the grave is within a building that may be locked, you should contact the cemetery administration situated at the main entrance (Tor 2)of the Central Cemetery if you wish to pay a visit to the grave. Philipp Stauff wrote an obituary which appeared in the Münchener Beobachter .

Renowned as an expert in Indo-European Germanic linguistics and mythology, Guido von List was the undisputed "high-priest" of the Germanic occult renaissance of the early twentieth century. List's long-term interest in occultism came to full expression following an aye operation in 1902 that left him virtually blind for several months. During this time the runes are said to have "revealed themselves" to him, uncovering a complete cosmology and esoteric understanding of the primeval Teutonic/Aryan peoples. The runes became the cornerstone of List's ideology, which he later developed in more than ten volumes of occult study.

Written as an introduction to List's basic ideas, The Secret of the Runes contains examples of virtually all of his major themes. No other work so clearly and simply sets forth the full spectrum of his fantastic vision of amystical philosophy based on ancient Germanic principles. It will be of special interest to students of the Western occult tradition, as well as to those involved in ancient history, language, and mysticism. 
Stephen Flowers (Dr. Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D. - Edred Thorsson) studied Germanic and Celtic philology and religious history at the University of Texas at Austin and in Goettingen, West Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1984 in Germanic Languages and Medieval Studies with a dissertation entitled Runes and Magic. To his translation of The Secret of the Runes, Dr. Flowers has added an extensive introduction which includes a biography of Guido von List, a survey of his other works, and a comprehensive outline of his Armanic phlosophy.

The Modern Myth of "Ariosophical" Culpability for Nazi crimes.

More than once Stphen E. Flowers former work with the early 20th centruy rune-magicians and Guido von List has caused a critic or two to remark to the effect that he failed to point out that these esoteric ideas led directly to Auschwitz. One German academic - Stephanie von Schnurbein, as an example, writing in her 'Religion als Kulturkritik [(Winter, 1992) p. 136]' remarked concerning his introduction to 'The Secret of the Runes': "Dabei erwähnt [Flowers] an keine Stelle, daß List und die andere Ariosophen Vordenker des Rassenwahns des Nationalsozialismus warren..." (In this work [Flowers] nowhere mentions that List and the other Ariosophists were intellectual predecessors of the racial madness of National Socialism...). It is just taken as a matter of course, with little to no actual critical investigation, that the ideas of list, Lanz and others were directly implemented in the Nazi genocide. A critical analysis would, however, show that such was no tthe case. First of all, no one has ever shown that racial policies of the NSDAP are based on so-called "Ariosophical" ideas. The very term "Ariosophy" points to its having been created as something based by analogy on its predecessor, Theosophy. All of the racial ideas contained in Ariosophy can be traced to Theosophy, and even the most "extreme" of the Ariosophists, Lanz von Liebenfels (cited several times by List in "The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric" () cannot be shown in any way comparable to the anti-Semitism practiced by the Nazis. Lanz not unfavorably about the Jews and cooperated with learned Jews in many of his publications. If individual Nzis became familiar with some of the mystical racism of Theosophy through the works of List and Lanz, this does not make the latter culpable in the crimes of the former. Why not blame Theosophy? Actually, of course, the Anti-Semitism that drove Nazi policies was much older and more deeply rooted in the people of central Europe than can be accounted for in a few fringe works by mystics and rune-magicians. Th eroots of Nazi anti-Semitism is in the Christian churches, both Catholic and Lutheran, but most especiall the Catholic Church. It was the Catholic Church Fathers who first invented ideas about the Jews being aninferior "race," and who drove Anti-Semitic policies right up to and all during the Second World War. (See David Kertzer, Popes Against the Jews [Knopf 2001].) The real truth about the "Occult (=hidden) roots of Nazi Anti-Semitism" is that these roots are to be found in Christian doctrines and teachings, not in pagan Germanic ones. The postware insistance upon the "occult" roots of these ideas is simply a matter of misdirecting historical attention away from the age-old perpetrator of the ideas and toward a "straw man" who is at present perceived as being to weak to define himself. It is safe to blame "mystical sects" and "pagans" for the crimes in question because these folks are so few and historically weak that they cannot defend themselves (norare many even interested in "defending" themselves) and few others (even in the name of truth) will stand up to defend them for fear of being tarred with the same brush. In any event, the works of Guido von List are interesting due to their spiritual rather than political content. Despite whatever weaknesses the works might be seen to have from today's perspective, they are most often worthy of our careful study. Pioneers and visionaries such as Guido von List represents remain the kind of men whose words we never tire of hearing.

The time has come to let Guid o von List at last speak for himself to the English reading public. With the possible exception of Lanz von Liebenfels, no other figure of the German "occult" movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been more misrepresented than List. This work will, it is hoped, help to set the record straight on the exact nature and scope of "Armanism" and the pre-National Socialist neo-Germanic cult of the early part of this century. The original impetus of this book came in 1973 when I first picked up a copy of Trevor Ravenscroft's work The Spear of Destiny. 1. I found the contents of that book utterly fascinating and intriguing. But it must be added that I was only twenty years old at the time. What the book did, however, was fuel my interest in the study of Germanic and neo-Germanic mysticism. It seemed to be quite unique from that most readily available for study, that is, the systems based on Mediterranean , Middle Eastern, and Eastern ideas. After studying the content of the book, much of what seemed to give specific leads for further research, I began to acquire the works of List, Liebenfels, and others. As my collection and knowledge of the works and ideas of these men grew, it became quite obvious that they had been-at least factually-misrepresented by Ravenscroft. In any case, it seems appropriate that an ideologue who, according to different sources, was such a great influence on the events of this century should at least have a study dedicated solely to his life and ideas. To this end, I have introduced List's first systematic occult treatise - 'Des Geheimnis der Runen' (The Secret of the Runes) - with a general outline of his life and works.