Runic gymnastics

Runic gymnastics , also rune yoga , is a folk - esoteric form of physical culture that has its roots in rune-eneotericism at the beginning of the 20th century.

history

The runic cult spread at the beginning of the 20th century through occultists , ariosophers and esotericists such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels , Guido von List and Rudolf von Sebottendorf . In the 1920s, the two esotericists Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Siegfried Adolf Kummer independently combined ideas of the meditation forms of yoga with elements of folk nudism and thus developed the so-called rune gymnastics, both of which were spread through various writings from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s tried. Both authors kept silent about the influence of Far Eastern meditation on their teaching or explained that the teaching originally developed by the Teutons had spread in East Asia and that yoga was just a plagiarism. Both claimed to be antennas for the will of the gods and to have received their doctrine of salvation through direct contact with the ancestors.

The Ariosophs, who later became enemies, also had in common that they fell out of favor in the Third Reich . While Marby spent long years in the concentration camp, Sorrows became impoverished. Only after the Second World War did at least Marby continue his apprenticeship, but remained an outsider. Karl Spiesberger redeveloped rune gymnastics in the 1950s. Although he referred to Kummer and Marby, he ignored the anti-Semitic and ethnic elements. Rather, he emphasized the similarities with yoga, autogenic training and Mazdaznan . In the 1970s he taught rune yoga classes.

In the 1970s, the influence of runic yoga began to spread in the right esoteric scene . The Armanen-Order took over the rune gymnastics and in the 1980s it was the right-wing extremist publisher Rudolf Anton Spieth who reissued Marby's writings and made them accessible to a younger audience. The American occultist Stephen Flowers also came up with the topic in the 1970s and triggered a worldwide renaissance of rune magic with his books. Today rune gymnastics is widespread in the esoteric and neo-pagan scene .

practice

According to rune gymnastics, the runes represent body positions and directions of movement, the so-called rune positions. This initially served the self-healing and strengthening. The gymnast should take this position for minutes and couple it with chanting and autosuggestion . The runic positions should be taken naked. At the beginning, the theory of rune gymnastics was mainly racially and anti-Semitic, so it was only intended for "Nordic people". They served the racial enhancement. Contact with the gods was to be established via the runic positions. Marby went so far that he used gymnastics as a "master" for alleged remote healing.

It was not until the 1950s that Spiesberger freed rune gymnastics from this racist connotation. Like Marby and Kummer, he used the runes as a starting point for various postures used for meditation. However, he understood runic yoga as being suitable for everyone. His writings are a mixture of health advice and life reform .

Basic works

• Siegfried Adolf Kummer : Holy Runic Power. Rebirth of Armanentism through runic exercises and dances. Uranus-Verlag, Hamburg 1932
• Siegfried Adolf Kummer: Runic Magic . K. Hartmann, Dresden 1933
• Friedrich Bernhard Marby : Marby runic gymnastics . Stuttgart: Marby-Verlag 1932
• Friedrich Bernhard Marby: Runic script, rune word, rune gymnastics . Stuttgart: Marby-Verlag 1931
• Friedrich Bernhard Marby: Runes whisper right advice! Stuttgart: Marby-Verlag 1934
• Friedrich Bernhard Marby: Racial gymnastics as a Aufrassungsweg - Book 1: ideological religious foundations . Stuttgart: Marby-Verlag 1935
• Friedrich Bernhard Marby: Racial gymnastics as a Aufrassungsweg - Book 2: The rose gardens and the eternal land of the race . Stuttgart: Marby-Verlag 1935
• Karl Spiesberger : Runic retreats for everyone . Freiburg 1958.

literature

• Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe: Runic gymnastics. From völkisch physical culture to alternative self-awareness practice . In: Völkisch and national. On the topicality of old thought patterns in the 21st century . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-20040-5 , pp. 329-340 .
• Bernd Wedemeyer: "To the light". The nudist culture in the Wilhelmine era and the Weimar Republic between the ethnic movement, occultism and neo-paganism . In: Archives for cultural history . Volume 81, Issue 1, ISSN  2194-3958 , pp. 173-198 . (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
• Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe: "The new person". Physical culture in the empire and in the Weimar Republic , habilitation thesis, Würzburg 2004 ( ISBN 3-8260-2772-8 ; 2nd edition Würzburg 2006). Pp. 174-187

Web links

• Runic gymnastics - An introduction by Stefan Neil Klemenc

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernd Wedemeyer: "To the light". The nudist culture in the Wilhelmine era and the Weimar Republic between the ethnic movement, occultism and neo-paganism . In: Archives for cultural history . Volume 81, Issue 1, ISSN  2194-3958 , pp. 194 . (accessed via De Gruyter Online)

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