“I know myself hanging on the wind-cold tree for nine icy nights,
Wounded by the spear consecrated to Wodan, I consecrated to myself.
I was hanging on the mighty tree, which conceals man, where man grew out of its roots.
They offered me neither bread nor wine, so I bent down in search.
I recognized the Runes, and shrieking, I grasped them until I sank down from the tree.
Now, I began to increase and to be wise, to grow and to feel well.
From the word, word grew after word, and work shaped on work to works.
Now, I know the songs like no wise woman and none of the children of man.
And should those songs, o human child, be unlearnable to you for sheer endless time,
Grasp them, once you get hold of them—
Bless you if you retain them!”

— Odin's Rune Song

For those of you who have read my work, you know the importance that rune magick has on the themes expressed in my tales. In this article, I’d like to talk about how I came to bring this concept into my work. For those of you who are new to my writing, I hope this article will give you some preliminary insight into the characters I’ve created and the thought process behind them. But first, let’s talk about a real-life magician.

Born in Vienna, Austria in 1848, Guido Karl Anton List, AKA Guido von List, is the single most important figure to modern esoteric runology. List was a mystic and priest of Wotan who wrote a number of esoteric works. Though List wrote some fiction, he is best remembered for his occult works—particularly his revelation or invention (whichever one prefers to believe) of the Armanen rune row as a complete esoteric system.

Stephen E. Flowers writes in his introduction to his English translation of List’s Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes):

“Late in 1902, List had undergone an operation for cataracts. For eleven months his eyes were bandaged, and in this virtual state of blindness and utter darkness List is said to have been enlightened with regard to the “secret of the runes.” At this time, and by whatever means, List’s occult vision did seem to undergo a major synthesis. That the main features of his thought were solidified in this period is witnessed by the fact that he produced his first manuscript on kala and published an article on his interpretation of glyphs (the swastika, triskelion, etc.) in 1903.

Between this time and 1908, when Das Geheimnis der Runen was published and the Guido-von-List Gesellshaft (Guido von List Society) was founded, List’s ideas probably underwent their final synthesis. After 1908, it seems that “occult wisdom” flowed freely and constantly from the pen of the Master.”

According to List, the Armanen rune row is the original rune row from which all others are derived. The row consists of eighteen runes that correspond perfectly with Odin’s rune poem, though some scholars will argue that the Armanen is just the Younger Futhark with two characters added to correspond to verses 146 through 164 of The Havamal. The Havamal or Words of the High One is the ancient Norse poem of Odin’s words. Strophes 146 through 164 is a magickal text in itself. Each verse corresponds to a rune.

I first encountered the Armanen when I met Austrian expatriate and the founder of the Knights of Runes order, Karl Hans Welz, at an occult bookstore in Atlanta around 1991. When Karl told me about the rune row I told him I wasn’t much interested in divination. He explained to me that the Armanen was a complete esoteric system and told me to come over to his house and he would show me some books he had written and we could discuss it further. Coincidentally, Karl lived right down the street from me in Norcross.

At that time, the Armanen remained a relatively obscure system in the United States, as nothing had been written in English other than Karl’s booklets and a few works by Stephen E. Flowers (AKA S. Edred Thorsson), though I didn’t know about Flowers’ work until much later on.

When I formed my heavy metal band Cauldron Born in 1994, I felt I needed a mascot to grace my album covers. I created a demonic-looking warrior and named him Thorn. Thorn is the third rune in the Armanen row and is of a martial nature. My mascot, Thorn, is the Thorn rune incarnate. Stephen Flowers states in his work The Runic Magic of the Armanen, “This is the most popular rune for curses.”

In 2014, I was invited to submit a story for DMR Books’ first volume of Swords of Steel. Though the Armanen is an actual occult system I wrap some of it in fantasy elements and take it in my own direction. In the following excerpts from my story, “All Will Be Righted on Samhain” (from the anthology Swords of Steel), Bunduica is an Iceni witch who has been severely wronged by the hand of Imperial Rome and invokes the Thorn rune for revenge.

“Balor had said to her, as he made his fateful decision, “You will be working in magick and summoning forces the druids have shunned since before the great cataclysms of old.” The powerful magicks within the book were like trickster spirits, he told her; they would likely destroy the user as well as those against whom they were used.

Balor had concluded with a dark warning. “This tome may not even have been born on this earth. Some say that it was brought down from the stars or from another world. What we know, Bunduica, is this: our world sits on top of, or passes through, the world as it truly is, not as it appears to be. For there surely are such other worlds beside ours. Bunduica—when you summon the rune forces, it isn’t known whether the dark entities evoked will appear to the human eye, or are invisible demonic entities, or are forces of nature. I myself have not spoken these passages aloud. What I do know, myself, is from the undisputed testimony passed down through druidic tradition since before Atlantis sank. The rune forces are most potent—and utterly dangerous.”

And the key to the living forces of the runes, he emphasized, lay in the proper pronunciation and vibration of the sound that each rune represented. “You must practice each patiently. And know that the ritual formula prescribed herein must be followed to the last letter and sound. There is no room for error. Do you understand?”

She began chanting the incantation in a whisper. The sonorous rhythm of the rune sounds lifted above the trees to pierce the silvery moon and grip the sky of the late October night. The sounds grew louder, and louder still. Even in the chill of the cold autumn night, sweat poured down Bunduica’s face and drenched her back and her breasts as she intoned the malefic words over and over, calling louder each time. At last her chant built to a crescendo, and she screamed in a language that had never been intended for human organs to resonate: “Tree-Micalazoda Yom-Gurd! Deesmees! Jeshet! Bonedose! Feduvema! Enttemoss!” Then, “Open wide the Gates! Manifest Rune Thorn!”

Down her fist slammed, driving the dagger into the crying baby’s heart. The thrust made a thumping sound like that of a bursting melon. Blood spurted in jets, landing on the surface of the black stone altar. Bunduica wiped a dripping stream of blood from her eyes and grinned. She dipped the fingers of her right hand into the blood and drew the Thorn rune on her forehead, then smiled.”

Some minutes pass as Bunduica makes her way through the Briton forest, and then we get our first glimpse of Thorn leading the Wild Hunt:

“Because her vision was partly obscured by the trees, she only caught a glimpse of the leader of the hunt.

He was a giant. He had long red hair and wore some sort of helmet with horns that dipped and pointed upward. His upper torso was bare and seemed to be inhumanly white although, after he had passed by, Bunduica reflected that the giant’s skin might actually have been a funereal greyish-blue. Was he dead? Dying?

Behind him loped a band of hunters with the heads—not of human beings—but of boars and horses and of beasts that Bunduica did not recognize. Most were men, but there were a few women. The strange animals that came behind these hunters, sniffing the ground as they went, looked like giant dogs, but their brilliant red eyes cut through the darkness. These demonic animals, all lean and athirst, made loud panting noises. More of them came then; the hounds seemed to materialize from cracks in the shadows or from the misty air that formed sharp angles and opened suddenly, bringing them forth.”

After some time Bunduica seeks shelter from a storm in a cottage inhabited by an old witch, deep in the woods. Here we get our first proper introduction to Thorn:

“As she set the cup down, the door to the cottage slammed open. Bunduica started at the figure stepping through the arched doorway. It was the giant she had seen earlier, or dreamed that she had seen. He must have been seven pedes in height; he had to crouch deeply to make his way inside, he was so tall. His skin was alabaster, startlingly white in contrast with his long, red hair. In shape he looked human, except for his face, which was fixed in a rictus of evil. The curved horns that Bunduica remembered protruded from his head - they dipped toward the ground, and thrust back up in defiance of the heavens. His eyes burned a horrible red. Bunduica couldn’t stand to look into them.

Bunduica became dizzy; the room tilted away from her, then toward her, the deep shadows and the candlelight blurring to her vision. Seized in the grip of vertigo, Bunduica tried to look away from the creature’s red eyes.

She summoned the courage to look upon him. Slowly she felt her head begin turning toward him, but against her will. To Bunduica’s astonishment, a handsome man with long red hair and a well-groomed beard and mustache now sat across from her. He seemed to have shrunk in size, and horns no longer protruded from his head.

He again spoke in a voice that resonated with a more human timbre. “Is this better? We have much to discuss and little time to do so.”

Bunduica felt her heart racing and thumping. Her mouth was dry. Trying to speak, in a quavering voice she managed to ask, “W—who are you? What do you want of me?”

“I think it is my place to ask you those questions, woman. It was you who summoned me.”

Bunduica’s eyes went wide. “You are the demon sent by the Rune? How—?”

”I am the Rune. I am Thorn. I am king of Hel-Valha—and anywhere else I care to tread. The spirit of the child you dispatched to me now screams in agony, awaiting my return. When dawn comes in this world, woman, I must be away to my kingdom. You have offered me a most precious gift with this child you have damned. Now it is I, by my own law, who must give you a gift of vengeance in return. Name your price!””

Because the Thorn character is nearly omnipotent it is often necessary that he possess a more vulnerable character, usually through some object or device. Thorn returns in “The Heart of the Betrayer” (Swords of Steel II) and aids Argantyr against those who betrayed and tried to destroy him by taking possession of him through a weird suit of armor. Here is an excerpt:

“They walked on past a silver-winged minotaur and stopped in front of a suit of armor. Argantyr estimated that the armor was nearly seven feet in height. He wondered how he was to move in armor of such girth and stature as his eyes took in the details of the eldritch suit. The whole suit was of a shiny black color and looked as if it were made of polished stone. There were runes all over the armor—they appeared as though they were etched into the suit. The helmet would cover the skull and had eye holes and a cheek guard. The suit of armor seemed to stand there of its own volition—sentient. The helmet rested on top with nothing visible to support it other than a black void.

Bunduica spoke. “I must now leave you. Come back to the house—to the spot that I showed you near the black stone. There you and Thorn will find Æbbath. You… Thorn will know what to do.” With these words, she turned and made her way out of the cave.

As Argantyr buckled on the last piece of armor and slipped the helmet over his head, he felt an incredible surge of power starting at the top of his head and moving down into his forehead, through his throat, through the heart region, into his groin, down to his feet, and then into the ground. He felt heat moving through his body; then at the base of his spine, he felt the power spiraling back up toward the base of his skull. When it reached his head, he heard strange music as he had never before experienced. The agony and the ecstasy of the experience brought him to his knees. Glimpses of another life flashed before him. He was wading knee deep through snake-men as he hacked and slayed his way to a destination he didn’t remember. A naked barbarian queen screamed behind him as the snake-men clutched at her to take her away to their breeding camps. Long daggers shot out of Argantyr’s gauntlets. He spun around and threw a dagger with each hand as one found its way into the heart of one snake-man; the other blade went into the second reptilian’s throat. Argantyr quickly turned to face a snake-man rushing upon him with a battle-axe. He hacked into the monster’s belly with his mighty broadsword and the greenish-yellow reptilian ichor sprayed into the air before him and spattered his armor.

Argantyr could feel his body changing. He was growing in both girth and stature. He tried to rise to his feet, but screamed in agony and fell to his knees again as horns sprouted from his head—horns that curved down and jutted back up in defiance of the heavens. His hair turned red as blood and grew even longer to fall down over his swollen, rippling muscles. Argantyr rose to his feet, standing nearly seven feet tall. The suit of armor had all melded together forming one piece. As Argantyr looked down and flexed the mighty sinews of his arm, he saw that the armor had molded itself to fit his body like a second skin. Argantyr grinned a razor-sharp smile, baring the elongated fangs in realization of what he had become—he had now merged and become one with the Rune—Thorn; God—Demon—Witch Maker—King and Warlord of a strange empire that existed in ages undreamt of by man. Time was merely relative. Thorn had been here before man, and he would exist long after man was no more.”

Did I mention snake-men? They are a recurring theme in my fiction. Here is another excerpt from my book, The Snake-Man’s Bane, in which Thorn takes possession of a wandering musician who is in a whole heap of trouble, through a crystal talisman that serves as an artificial, magickal eye.

““The talisman,” he mumbled through parched lips. “Give me the Key.”

Tawna held her hand out to Vegtam, and he took the Key to the Rune Realms and shoved it into the empty socket that had once housed his eye. At first he cried out; then a sense of warmth passed through him like heady liquor coursing through his veins. Pain, hunger, thirst, fear: all vanished from him, and yet the sensation of strong liquor swimming in his veins came again, but this time tenfold.

He felt a rush of power go up his spine like a crack of lightning. The talisman told him what to do. He staggered upright and brought the tips of his thumb and ring finger of his left hand together. The rest of his fingers pointed upward. “Th-Th-Thorn…” he chanted.

That was all he could get out. It was as if the Guardian of the Rune Realms had been waiting to take over. Tawna drew back in fear as Vegtam sank to his knees, screaming and growling like a maddened beast. The talisman glowed inside of Vegtam’s eye socket. He looked upon dim vistas far beyond the ken of man. He saw before him runic characters forming worlds within worlds. He saw the wyverns, the giant white spiders with demon heads, and the horrible grotesqueries that swam about and screamed in a pre-human land of fire, darkness, and primordial soup when man was still but a dream. Anon, man arose from primal slime and walked forward, still in his infancy of beasthood. The runes flashed forth through the nine angles, and Vegtam saw the nine worlds cut from the Rune Realms of creation and come into being.

Vegtam’s spine readjusted itself, and he grew in stature and girth. His skin turned the color of snow, and his skull and cheekbones cracked and reset themselves. Two horns burst from his head, dipping down and thrusting back up in defiance of the two black orbs that loomed high above this world wherein he had been immured. The sable discs cast their purple rays down on the hateful grimace that spread over his countenance. Long hair the color of blood spilled over his massive shoulders. Sinews of steel rippled when he drew forth his mighty broadsword. He stood nearly seven feet tall. With both clawed hands, he raised the massive glaive high, throwing his head back and laughing maniacally.

Tawna shuddered and shrank back. “Vegtam?” she asked the demon.

“I am Thorn, the Rune incarnate. I guard the Rune Realms. I am borrowing Vegtam for a time. We now hold discourse. There is important work to be done. Fear not, woman! Vegtam will be returned to you unharmed, for he is of the Ӕsir blood. Let us leave this place!””

While the roots of the Armanen (at least in the modern age) can be traced back to Guido von List, runemasters have revealed varying approaches to the runes. Rune magick is a product of the Germanic psyche and is considerably different than the arts practiced by Levantine and Mediterranean magicians. One such concept of the rune magick practiced by Karl Welz is the runes as defining energies as opposed to defined energies. Defined energies being egregors such as demons, angels, etc. Defining energies are creative energies. I explore this distinction in the following excerpt from The Snake-Man’s Bane:

“I have lain with many a corpse raised up from the House of Shades since I lost you, but all pales in comparison to my Valhia. I would not have you walk about languidly and your cold body lie soulless alongside me in our bed.”

Xexor-Wroth turned away from the pile of bones and fell silent for some time. Then, he turned back around and resumed speaking. “But I have looked into the water and I have seen the Key to the Rune Realms draw nigh. Aye! What we once thought was legendry is out there, and there is one nearby who holds it. I have just dispatched the Aklo to seize the Key and return it to me.

“In life, there was none fairer than Valhia, the Witch of Nephasth. Much has changed since we parted. We freely delved deep into the darkest of magicks and summoned defined presences to do our will. We made pact after pact with the demons. We were powerful then, and even now there is no magician more powerful than Xexor-Wroth! I watched the demons rot you away on the inside, and even then you were beautiful in death. I kept calling on them, thinking you died because you were weak. But they have fed on me in a different way.”

He pulled his hood back and revealed a face covered in transparent skin with a faintly rubrous tint. Had dead Valhia’s skull still possessed the faculties of sight, she would have seen the blood flowing through the clearly visible veins in Xexor-Wroth’s face and the short, once white, now yellowing horns that protruded from each side of the top of his head. She would have seen the dark hollows that were once eye sockets and the burning amber lights that were once the eyes of a human sorcerer.

“I have merely to speak of that which will be, and it is; yet I pay a price. The energies that I command in turn feed on me. If only we had known this in past ages. The true key to mastery isn’t in defined energies. It is in the invocation of defining energies that allow one to create… create servitors, as I have created the Aklo, but also create demons and even create gods and the worlds they inhabit. All of this is possible with the Runes.”

Xexor-Wroth stretched his claw-like hand to a nearby bookshelf and took from it a slender tome bound in the hide of a serpent. The only writing on the book was a series of bind-runes spanning the length of the spine. He gripped the book with both bony hands and held it up for the skull and bones of Valhia to see, as if something of his former leman still haunted her pitiful remains.

“Far Beyond Egregorian Shadows! Some of the fragments contained herein were written down in an eldritch eighteen-rune row of which little is told elsewhere. It took me years to translate some of the more difficult passages, but finally I am confident I possess the knowledge to rid myself of these parasites and restore myself to a man and you to the woman you were in the prime of your life.”

I am able to only touch briefly on rune magick and the influence it has had on my sword-and-sorcery tales in this article, but I feel as though I should talk about one more rune before I wrap up. Some rune magicians refuse to work with the Yr rune. Even though it is common to interpret each rune as having both divine and demonic qualities, the Yr rune is sometimes shunned because it is thought to be primarily feminine in nature, and therefore of the night and the demonic. Runemaster Siegfried Adolf Kummer, author of the seminal Armanen work Heilige Runenmacht (Holy Rune Might, originally published in 1932) states that the Yr rune “leads to black magic”. The rune itself symbolizes the roots of the tree, Yggdrasil connecting the nine worlds. In Karnov: Phantom-Clad Rider of the Cosmic Ice I explore the possibilities of the Yr rune as a female demon.

“A sickening, demoniacal laugh came from the grey withered face, and her lips moved like writhing grave wyrms. “She has gone to the Plain of Gnathongules to traverse time itself. She is possessed by the rune, Yr. As I have said, she looked too deeply into the well of knowledge that comprises The Book of Dead Runes.”

Xycanthia’s head let out a brittle cackle.

“She read too far in the back of the book without heeding the advice in the front of the book. She began tilting the runes. Inverting them. Distorting them. Perverting them!” She flicked her tongue at me and wagged it like a serpent, her cachinnations filling the room. “She dug me up, you know—what is left of me after you murdered me, Karnov!” she screeched.

“I gave her your head assuming she would burn it or destroy it by some sorcerous device—”

“No, Slayer! She had other ideas!” Xycanthia interjected. “She buried what was left of me in her garden of the Earthly Demonic to steep in her sorcery and ferment. Then she dug me up and carved these infernal runes into me to make me her oracle. She wanted me to be her guide to the Plain of Gnathongules. She was already drunk with power and losing her grip on sanity when the Yr rune took possession of her. She fled into the night like a wild animal to wade through the mists of Time itself. Her sole pleasure is to be the corruption of the ‘innocent and the holy men.’” These last words lingered as they came from Xycanthia’s mouth in disgust.”

Later in the story we read the words of Abbot Eothoclemes as he describes the malefic magick practiced by the Yr-possessed witch, D’Vartha:

“I myself had attempted a number of litanies and psalms, but I am sorry to say that all efforts on my part have amounted to only a failed extraction. A strange entity, unlike any I have encountered. The manifestation of a runic force that is feminine and destructive in nature. I thought I had made some progress; things were settling down in the castle. Anon, all changed drastically for the worse one day. I entered her chambers to recite the litanies of Mirkrash. Objects were moving about the room seemingly of their own volition and hurled violently in my direction amidst a barrage of curses and obscenities spewing forth from the woman. It was then that the knight arrived and took her. He rode in on his great white steed and slew man after man, then rode away with her on the back of his mount. I believe the knight is a dark runic force that wears a strange hard suit of shining jet like a man. I believe the witch summoned the knight to rescue her from exorcism, although Count Debrackle believes otherwise.”

Here, I allude to the “tilted runes” (as Welz refers to them) as the oracle is forced to tell the truth about how D’Vartha became possessed by the Yr demon:

“I told her that a great event would occur. There was an alignment of planets in another dimension that would be presaged by a blazing orb that would pass our world. I told her that she must hurry to take advantage of it. She believed that she had me completely enspelled as her oracle, and she did not study the first part of the grimoire as thoroughly as she should have. I told her there was a short path to the mastery of the runes that lay in darkness. I compared it to the Qlippothic powers of other, weaker systems, so she would understand and believe that I had plumbed the depths of gramarye and returned with the gems of knowledge she needed to master The Book of Dead Runes before the great convergence that I alluded to was to come. She called on the tilted runes before she had taken…ah…precautions…”

The oracle fell silent. The hierophant cast another legerdemain and rocked his staff in a circle again. Xycanthia continued. “The shadow of the Yr rune’s realm, which is also named Yr, took possession of D’Vartha—Yr being the feminine demonic in the heart of the very realms of creation.”

“And D’Vartha’s agenda?” asked the hierophant.

“Driven mad by the husk of the Yr rune, which I told you is its…her shadow, D’Vartha ran off to the Plain of Gnathongules. I told her of the place…the place where she could step back in time, work her way back to the beginning, where all of the myths about the fall of man originate with a woman, there to corrupt man in his holiest and drag him down into the unclean mire wherein sits upon the throne the very incarnation of the fall of man.

“As D’Vartha entered the plain of Gnathongules, her intellect and reason became as that of a wild beast. She is powerful and seeks the final fall of man, whereupon he shall not rise again,” D’Vartha croaked.

With a wave of his hand, the hierophant tapped the bottom of his staff on the floor, and Xycanthia’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again.

My own eyes met the hierophant’s cerulean gaze as he spoke. “In our order, the exploration of the darkness within ourselves is encouraged, even mandatory, as to find the light, one must first traverse the darkness. I am from the Northlands. The priests of Wuotan there are masters of the runes. The Book of the Dead Runes is not unfamiliar to me. Neither is the bouleversement of the rune row and its gramarye, the tilted runes, as Xycanthia called them. By your swords,” he nodded to me and Asenthine, “and my staff, we shall vanquish this malignity that has invaded our world and exorcise your friend.”

I have merely skimmed the surface of my references to the Armanen rune row and rune magick in my tales here. For anyone interested in further reading, pick up a copy of The Snake-Man’s Bane at Amazon. For anyone interested in experimenting with rune magick remember the words of Jedediah Orne of Salem, “I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you cannot put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use.”