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Concept
Ariosophy
Summary
Armanism and Ariosophy are esoteric ideological systems that were largely developed by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which means the wisdom of the Aryans, was invented by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915, and during the 1920s, it became the name of his doctrine. For research on the topic, such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the term 'Ariosophy' is generically used to describe the Aryan/esoteric theories which constituted a subset of the 'Völkische Bewegung'. This broader use of the word is retrospective and it was not generally current among the esotericists themselves. List actually called his doctrine 'Armanism', while Lanz used the terms 'Theozoology' and 'Ario-Christianity' before the First World War.
The ideas of Von List and Lanz von Liebenfels were part of a general occult revival that occurred in Austria and Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; a revival that was loosely inspired by historical Germanic paganism, holistic philosophy, and Christianity, as well as by esoteric concepts that were influenced by German romanticism and Theosophy. The connection between this form of Germanic mysticism and historical Germanic culture is evident in the mystics' fascination with runes, in the form of Guido von List's Armanen runes.
The ideology regarding the Aryan race (in the sense of Indo-Europeans), runic symbols, the swastika, and sometimes occultism are important elements of Ariosophy. By 1899 at the earliest or by 1900 at the latest, esoteric notions entered Guido von List's thoughts. In April 1903, he sent his manuscript, proposing what Goodrick-Clarke calls a "monumental pseudoscience" concerning the ancient German faith, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna onwards. These Ariosophic ideas (together with, and influenced by, Theosophy) contributed significantly to an occult counterculture in Germany and Austria.
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