Author: Alexander Dugin

Translator: Jafe Arnold

Chapter 9 of Mysteries of Eurasia (Moscow, Arktogeia: 1999) 

Runology à la Herman Wirth

There exist several points of view on what runes are. Some believe that runes are an altered version of the Latin alphabet which appeared in the 5th-6th centuries among the Scandinavians and Northern European Germanic peoples. Others suggest that runes were ancient signs used for divination which only later, under the influence of the Latin script, came to be used for recording texts. But there is yet another theory of runes . – that proposed by the German scholar, Professor Herman Wirth. We should mention from the outset that this theory is not recognized by broader scholarly circles. The reason for this neglect of Wirth is not so much his paleo-epigraphic and runological works as his assessment of the text famously known as the Oera Linda Chronicle, the story behind which resembles that of the Book of Veles. The Oera Linda Chronicle was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century and purported to present the most ancient history of a Germanic people (the Frisians) stretching back centuries to many millennia. The Oera Linda text was written in a special quasi-runic script and contained tales of pre-Christian mythology and the sacred history of the Germanic people. The Book of Veles (discovered only at the beginning of the 20th century) represented a precise analogue of the Oera Linda Chronicle, only applied to the Slavs.

Scholars immediately deemed the Oera Linda Chronicle to be an outright forgery dating back to the Dutch Renaissance when some encyclopedist projected the mythological and geographical knowledge of the epoch back into distant times, thereby creating a pseudo-mythological outline. Supporters of the authenticity of the Oera Linda Chronicle were recognized as marginals, charlatans, and subjected to mockery. The parallel with the history of the Book of Veles is obvious in this aspect. Herman Wirth, however, did not argue that we are dealing with an original. He merely suggested that the matter at hand is a very ancient version of a pre-Christian mythological tradition processed and stylized much later by a Dutch humanist. Wirth, being an expert in hundreds of ancient and modern languages, an archaeologist, a linguist, and an historian, accomplished a colossal feat in analyzing the content of this entire “antique” and deconstructing it into temporally different layers – most ancient, later, and altogether recent. The result of his reconstruction was the publication of the Ura Linda Khronik with a detailed commentary, which turned Wirth into an outcast among official historians, who believed that the forgery of the Oera Linda Chronicle manuscript itself automatically discredits the author. For this reason, Wirth’s other writings and even major works, such as Der Aufgang der Menschheit and Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit [50], which contain his runological theories and do not even mention the Oera Linda Chronicle, have been neglected by the wider scholarly community. Yet these works contained stunning paleo-epigraphical material which fully deserves to become a sensation in the history of human proto-culture. Many of Wirth’s intuitions anticipated the so-called Nostratic linguistic theories that appeared much later than the first works of this German professor. But this is only one aspect of Wirth’s fantastic discoveries. The most important have been hitherto left aside.

And so, Wirth suggested the following explanation of runic characters. From his point of view, Scandinavian and ancient Germanic runes and runic circles represent traces of the most ancient symbolic model, that which lies at the heart of all types of languages, mythologies, cultures, rituals, sacred doctrines, calendar systems, astrological observations, etc. The runes were once known to all the peoples of the earth who descended from a single ancestral home, the Northern country of Hyperborea. Wirth, as a supporter of the archeological theory of “cultural circles,” called this primordial proto-culture Thulekulturkreise, i.e. “the cultural circle of Thule.” Originally, runic circles were ritually applied only to wooden surfaces, since in the “cultural circle of Thule” wood was believed to be a sacred element, the physical embodiment of the World Axis. For this reason, it is impossible to trace the chronological development of fully-fledged runic writing in ancient epochs. The mere fragmentary inscriptions on cave walls, ceramics, stone, and later on bronze and iron are likely anomalies rather than the norm of the most ancient culture, which only allow one to judge the evolutionary steps (or, more precisely, involution) of runic writing. Historical runes as they authentically appeared in the 5th-6th centuries are but the inertial traces of a forgotten ancient system which, in order to avoid confusion, might be called proto-runic.

According to Wirth, such a proto-runic system lies at the origin of all writing systems, including the Phoenician, Indian, Sumerian, Chinese, Egyptian, etc. Moreover, proto-runes and their system represent a key to the deciphering of absolutely all mythological tropes and sacred doctrines, both monotheistic and developed, pagan and primitive. The runic circle is unmistakably evident in the phonemes, characters, mythological tales, traditions, rituals, superstitions, correspondences, and ceremonies of all peoples of the earth. One merely needs to know the code in order for the deciphering of any system of symbols to not present any difficulty.

In his works, Herman Wirth accomplished the colossal labor of isolating the series of tropes and signs that composes the primordial ensemble of symbols of the “culture of Thule,” which can be traced from cave drawings to the most developed and modern theological constructions. Each volume of Wirth’s works consists of around 1,000 pages, including atlases and albums cataloguing his discoveries in the fields of archaeology (he actively participated in excavations), paleo-epigraphy, comparative linguistics, and the history of religions. It is impossible, of course, to give even a brief presentation of these unique studies in a few pages and, what’s more, Wirth’s works are so rare that they are sometimes even absent in the fullest of European libraries. This circumstance is explainable in terms of political considerations. The point is that Herman Wirth was the founder of the scientific research organization, “Ancestors Heritage” (Ahnenerbe), during the Third Reich, and although he was found completely innocent of the crimes of Hitler’s regime, a certain shadow fell upon Wirth, as upon other famous German scholars and thinkers of a patriotic orientation, such as Martin Heidegger, Ernst Junger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Karl Haushofer, etc. However, Wirth suffered even more, since the subjects he examined did not arouse the interest of European scholars (unlike Junger and Heidegger, who were defended by their French supporters as spotless from the point of view of “anti-fascism”). This is perhaps in conjunction with the fact that Wirth’s discoveries are incomparably more important to our understanding of the origins of the human spirit than the works of many other authors…

Wirth lived until 1982, but for the entire remainder of his life, he and his works were met with a silence so thorough that the impression arises that this involves some kind of sinister secret, some kind of “conspiracy.” One episode in particular is indeed very strange. Herman Wirth’s last book, “Das Palestinabuch”, in which he collected all the results of his research on the “Hyperborean” origins of the Old Testament tradition on the basis of the systematization and study of the archaic layers of Middle Eastern culture, was mysteriously abducted from his house on the eve of its submission to the printer. If Wirth’s studies were simple charlatanism, then it is hardly believable that someone simply came up with the idea of stealing this manuscript of many thousands of pages.

But this mystery has yet to be unraveled.

Slavic runes

What interests us here is not simply the history of this German professor, but the way in which his concepts can aid us in studying Slavic antiquity and might explain many of the mysteries of the ancient pre-Christian culture of our distant ancestors. Today, this topic is exciting a growing number of people, hence the interest in the Book of Veles and the reconstruction of pre-Cyrillic writing, etc.

If Wirth’s view is accepted, then we know that the Northern peoples of Eurasia, who lived in close proximity to the primordial Arctic homeland of Hyperborea, preserved proto-runic systems much longer than others, albeit with their full meaning, ritual use, and alphabetical and calendric understandings distorted and forgotten. The runes found among these peoples are thus in fragmentary form, a legacy of ancient knowledge, the key to which has been irrevocably lost. Nevertheless, starting in the 5th century, such later runes appeared in Northern Eurasia. Wirth attentively studied the Germanic-Scandinavian regions and pointed towards a precise correlation between runic signs and the Orkhon inscriptions of the ancient Turks. Such Turkic runes appeared at almost the same time as the Germanic ones, which means that it is difficult to assume that they directly borrowed from each other. From the standpoint of simple geographical symmetry, what is immediately striking is that the ancient Slavs, mixed with Ugric tribes, were distributed between the settled areas of the Germano-Scandinavian tribes and the Turks of Siberia. Chernorizets Hrabrar wrote that these Slavs “wrote with lines and cuts.” Later runic writing was shaped by its indentation into wood or stones whereas, according to Wirth, the characters of the original proto-runes were rounded. Thus, it is most likely that these “lines and cuts” were the symbolic system of “Slavic runes” which existed as a sort of intermediate layer between the Germanic and Turkic systems. Hrabrar’s indication that the ancient Slavs “pondered” these “cuts” suggests that the Slavs used their own runes as the Germanic tribes did, i.e. thee runes served both as an alphabet and as a means for sacred rituals (in the lowest form, for divination).

It is indeed astonishing just how similar the characters of the Hymn of Boyan and the Book of Veles are to Germanic runes. However, it cannot be excluded that Sulakadzaev, by means of his Masonic contacts to which all the threads of the history of the Book of Veles converge, might have been aware of the Oera Linda Chronicle similar styled in runic writing. In such a case (which cannot be entirely discounted), the value of these documents is lost. But it also cannot be ruled out that, as in the case of the Oera Linda Chronicle, we are dealing with a later re-working of some kind of genuine ancient document. In the very least, it is important to approach this topic objectively and impartially, without falling into premature enthusiasm or deliberate prejudice.

If the fragments of Sulakadzaev’s collection are authentic, then the Slavs must have had runic-type systems, the fragments of which we can unmistakably encounter in traditional Slavic embroidery, mythological tales, ornaments,  rituals, and beliefs. Consequently, the question at hand is initiating a thorough and large-scale deciphering of the ancient Slavic heritage, although without expecting that history will grant us any reliable material of a textual character. That would be all too easy. However, it also cannot be completely excluded that, sooner or later, such attestations might be found. At the present time, we can proceed to decipher Slavic antiquity on a global scale given that we have the opportunity to utilize the invaluable scholarly framework developed by the genius German professor.

If we can explain the system of the Slavic runic circle, the problem will be solved, and all that will remain is to compare this model to the Germanic runes and writing system and the calendric signs of the ancient Turks. Thereby we will gradually draw nearer to deciphering the ancient mysteries of Eurasia, grasping its proto-culture and its secret, forgotten language – a language that is not merely a means of transmitting information (as technocrats and pragmatists today mistakenly understand language to be) but information itself of the most important, the most significant, and sacred form.

The Mystery of the Apple: the Mystery of the North

Before we take the first steps in our study of Slavic runes, let us denote in the most general terms Herman Wirth’s concept in regards to the meaning of runic or proto-runic writing.

Wirth argues that the primordial cultural model, on the basis of which writing, phonemes, calendars, rituals, legal institutions, arts, and occupations developed, i.e., all of human culture in its primordial, nascent state, was centered around the observation of the natural yearly phenomenon of the Arctic North [51]. Many traditions say that it is from the North that humanity’s ancestors descended to the middle and Southern latitudes at which the ancient civilizations arose as images of the ancient homeland, as its reflections, reconstructions and imitations. This is affirmed by the Iranian tradition, which speaks of Airyanem Vaejah, the homeland of the ancient Iranians’ ancestors. The same legend is harbored in the Vedas, where it is said that the first people lived in a place where day and night lasted a whole year, i.e., the Arctic. The Greeks also knew of the Northern country of Hyperborea, the homeland of the solar Apollo [52]. 

The Hindus possess a traditional theory of cosmic cycles which they associate with the dynamics of continents. Each cycle has a corresponding continent, or dvipa. Our cycle corresponds to the so-called Jambudvipa, or “land of apple trees.” René Guénon showed that this does not concern India alone, but rather all relevant, existing continents and especially their synthesis in the form of the Northern Land, Arctogaia, or Hyperborea.[53]This symbolic point is important. In many myths, the apple tree or apple are associated with paradise, or the Garden of Eden, the place where mankind dwelt in primordial times. The very root of the Russian word for apple, yabloko is etymologically related to the Hindi jambu and German Appfel, English apple, etc., which Wirth considers to be a kindred name of Apollo, the Hyperborean god of the Sun and Light. If one considers this “Arctic,” polar point, then the meaning of the many tales involving apples is illuminated – such as the rejuvenating apples of the Scandinavian sagas, the apples of Hesperides, the forbidden apple from the tree of knowledge which caused the ancestors to abandon paradise, etc. In addition, there is yet another expressive detail: if one cuts an apple crosswise, we have a five-pointed star in the middle , and this symbol was a primordial image of the pole, the North, paradise.

Wirth explains the polar symbolism of the star in the following manner. The ancient calendar was represented by a six-pointed star marking the six key positions of the sun. The summer sun (the upper line), the winter sun (the lower line), the point of sunrise and winter sunset (the winter solstice – two slants on the top) or the summer solstice (the two slanted lined at the bottom). Sometimes a horizontal line was marked, which corresponded to the points of the equinoxes, thereby yielding an eight-pointed star . In the Arctic, a sixth, lower line is absent, since in winter the sun does not rise at all and, consequently, the six-pointed star becomes a five-pointed one. Arctogaia is thus the land of apples and apple trees. Proceeding from this understanding, one can easily discern the role of apples in Russian and Slavic folklore [54].

Basic runes

Let us return to the proto-runic circle. Observing the annual events from the Arctic, Northern polar circle allows one to envision the following characters which are essential to proto-runes. The circle  depicts the daily sun over the head of the observer as if expanding the roundness of the sun to a cosmic scale. Perhaps the most ancient phoneme of this sign was the consonant R (with the variant of L since “fluid” consonants are often interchangeable when moved from language to language). The circle is sometimes adorned with a vertical bar at the bottom , from which derives the Greek ro – .

This closed circle is broken in the Arctic autumn and spring periods when the sun makes short arcs over the southern point . These arcs are the most ancient proto-runic sign in Scandinavian circles, UR . Its vocalization, the vowel “u”, is the only sound which can be made with a closed mouth. Symbolically, this corresponds to the sun’s descent into the darkness of night, based on the symbolic identification of the mouth and and voice with the cosmos. Compare the Russian word nyebo, which means both the roof the mouth and sky. 

In the beginning of the year, the same sign UR was probably pronounced as “a”, since the vowel “a” is sounded by a fully opened mouth, the symbol of a new beginning. The sun comes out from under the earth, from the darkness of a cave. Thus beings the New Day or New Year begins.

This sector is further associated with the sign KA  , which symbolizes lifting, upraised hands, horns, etc. This sound was used to identify everything relevant to upwards movement, hence its frequent connotations of spirit or fire. Above KA rises R (or RE or RI, since the vocalization of consonants in transition from the post-New Year A moves to the intermedia E and further to the I, which is the main sign of the summer solstice, the highest point of the year).

Following the summer solstice pronounced as I, and depicted by the vertical bar , the highest sign, the spirit, or regal dignity, the sun begins to slope downwards towards winter and the Arctic night, from the top to the bottom. The connection between these phases is preserved in the hieroglyph S,, and the proto-rune SOL, ,which represents descending fire, sun, sunset, as well as lightning. This is also the falling apple bringing autumn down to the Earth.

Further follows the hieroglyph TU or TO, . This is the autumn descent, the lowered hands, or branches (willow, spruce, pine, yew, etc.). The vowel O represents the middle point between I (sounded with a half-closed mouth and stretched lips) and U (voiced by closing the mouth).

In addition, there are the two nasal consonants N and M, () which, according to Wirth, denote the horizontal, water, the Earth, the womb, stone, the bottom, night, darkness, etc. This is a consonant which has not acquired clear form. Thus, the first cry of a child, MA, expresses the ancient Hyperborean cult formula “from the depths of the night is born new life, new light, a new cosmos.”

Historical runes have several intermediate markers: THURS , the sign of the axe (or thorn) cuts the umbilical cord of the New Year from the Old. The axe and thorn, as well as the verb “to prick” are linked through the word “pick,” i.e., an axe. It is thus possible that the Slavs called this rune kolo or something similar. AS  and FEON are the two parts of the World Tree, the Spruce, Birch, or Apple Tree, etc. From FEON comes Russian BOG, god. From AS comes Russian az’, the first person singular of “I.”

The consonant N, initially depicted by a horizontal line  was later combined with NYT , hence Russian ne (negation), nyet (“no”), and noch’ (“night”). The vocalization of the springtime KA  (KEN in later circles) yields GYFU , a rune similar to KA, the uplifted hand and horizontal bar. A variation of I was the rune IEH which indicates the change in the trajectory of the sun’s path during the summer solstice.

At the point of the autumnal equinox was fixed the composite rune BEORG  or , i.e., the “two mountains” which pass from the winter solstice in more ancient versions. From this phoneme is formed the Russian word for “birch”, bereza, the sacred tree of the Slavs. All the other runes belong to the pre-New Year period, the autumn-winter season.

Next comes LAGU, a hook which means water or lake. The Russian word for meadow, lug, carries both proto-significations, i.e., something crooked, a bow, or bent (the appearance of this ideogram, the hook, or the handle of a stick) and a space filled with water in spring. This is close to the German roots meaning “lake.” Hence the Russian word for puddle, luzhka.

The rune MADR fell from the spring to the autumn, where it portrayed M (and sounded the same), the surging of water in contrast to the stagnant water of autumn, N .

The rune EOH resembles the ideogram of a horse, hence all the mythological tales of “water horses” or “sea stallions.” The rune ING  is the rune of marriage, the union of the sky (the upwards triangle ) and land (the downwards triangle ), or the masculine and feminine elements. It is also two entwined serpents phonetically pronounced by the gliding vowel NG (sometimes with a nasal N). In the ancient Russian language, “n” was nasal, but gradually fell. Such modern Russian words as ugol (angle), ugr’ (eel), kryuk (hook), ruka (arm), lyagushka (frog), etc. once had nasal “n” in front of “g” or “k.” Perhaps the Slavic name of the rune ING was ugol or kryuk.

ODIL  represents a node, loop, or drop. It means spirit, seed, and sometimes fish due to hieroglyphic similarities and the fact that fish live in water while the pre-New Year sector of the sacred year corresponds to water. In ancient Russian, the real name for fish, zva, was taboo. It is possible that the Russian ODIL was called none other than zva or “spirit.”

The important rune DAG means day, light, a double axe, or a bowl, vessel, or pot for ritual celebrations. This rune yielded the name of the Celtic god Dagda, who in Irish mythology was associated with a magic cauldron in which food never expires. This is none other than the New Year rune. From this root are derived the Indo-European names for the celestial god, the Hindus’ Dyaus, Latin Deos, the Greek Qeoj. The German Tag and Russian den’ (“day”) can be traced back to this same root. 

Now all that remains is attempting to discover the Slavic roots, patterns, legends, and mythological tales, etc. which correspond to this set of sacred ideograms. Thereby, we will near the restoration of our ancestors’ sacred picture of the world and clarify the sacred models underlying our ancient culture, language, ceremonies, our psychology, etc.

 

Footnotes:

[50] See Herman Wirth, Der Aufgang der Menschheit (Berlin, 1927),  Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit (Leipzig, 1936).

[51] The Russian word god (“year”) originally etymologically connoted “fitting” or “dignified”, hence the words godnyi (“suitable”), ugodnyi (“pleasing”), prigodnyi (“useful”), vygodnyi (“advantageous”), and goditsya (“to serve the purpose of”). It is related to the Gothic guots and Old High German guot, meaning “good”, “blessed”, or “well.” It follows that the Russian language originally held a view of the Year as a Blessing, i.e., as an ethical, qualitative concept, not a quantitative unit for measuring time. It is also striking that Wirth’s term Gottesjahr or “God-Year” is contained in the single Russian word god (“year”) if, of course, we accept the etymologically disputed but otherwise intuitively evident parallel between Gut (“good”) and Gott (“god”).

[52] See A. Dugin, Giperboreiskaiia teoriia (Moscow, 1993); Julius Evola, La Rivolta Contra Il Mondo Moderno (Rome, 1969)  René Guénon, Le Roi du Monde (Paris, 1927); Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques (Paris, 1970); Gaston Georgel, Les Rythmes dans l’Histoire (Belfort, 1937); Les Quatre Ages de l’Humanité (Besancon, 1949); ;  Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas; Orion (Poona, 1955); Herman Wirth,  Der Aufgang der Menschheit (Berlin, 1927); Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit (Leipzig, 1936).

[53] René Guénon, Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques (Paris, 1970)

[54] See chapter 37 in Alexander Dugin, Metafizika Blagoi Vesti in Absoliutnaia Rodina (Moscow, 1999).

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