Armanen Runes
Laf
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Origin 1902 to 1908
Laf, the fourteenth rune, answers to the Younger Futhark logr, water or sea. List read it as the primal law of life and as intuitive flow: experience taken in directly rather than reasoned about, and the ocean as the medium through which such experience arrives. It is one of the shorter entries in his own account and one of the least elaborated. Armanen practice draws it for intuition, for adaptability, and for going with a current rather than across it.
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 logr, 'water'. 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 Laf
Laf 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 L.
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 Laf stands for the primal law of life and the sea; intuition, the flowing of vital force, and the counsel to learn from the tides of experience.
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 Laf
The eighteen Armanen runes were published by Guido von List in 1908. Each is a historical character with his naming and his interpretation on top of it.
The character behind it
Laf corresponds to the Younger Futhark character whose Old Norse name was logr, meaning water, sea or a body of water. The rune poems gloss it as the sea, a waterfall or a stream, and the Old English tradition gives its equivalent a similar reading of water as something one crosses at risk.
What von List did with it
He kept the L value, Germanised the name to Laf, and assigned it a meaning within his own row. His placement of this character also departs from the Younger Futhark order, where the L and M characters fall the other way round. That kind of small rearrangement is one of the reasons the row cannot be treated as a transmitted alphabet: a genuine tradition preserves its order, because the order is how the alphabet is learned.
The frame
Von List presented the eighteen as an ancient Germanic priestly alphabet recovered rather than composed, with its count taken from the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal. Runologists reject that account.
Reception
The Armanen row was taken up in volkisch circles and by National Socialist organisations during the 1930s and 1940s. The atlas records that documented reception rather than omitting it.
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
Laguz, Runes Von List's Laf (L) derives from the Elder Futhark Laguz (water, flow).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.