A Portrait of Karl Spiesberger

Intended as another installment of my Portrait series for inclusion in the journal FUTHORKH, the research for this article rekindled my interest and deepened my appreciation for the work of Karl Spiesberger. While his two Rune books have long been among my favorites, I came to better understand the title of the latter of these volumes, Runenexerzitien für Jedermann. In 1958 it was critically important to indicate that Rune Exercises were indeed for "Everyman" and not only for the few. With this bold title, Spiesberger ensured the future for Rune Magick and its part in spiritual rebirth of its initiates. 

Written on 18 and 19 April 2026.

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On October 29, 1904, there entered the world a figure who would later stand at the crossroads of ruin and renewal: Karl Spiesberger—Austrian mystic, magician, and architect of a postwar esoteric renaissance.[1] In the long shadow cast by the collapse of the Third Reich, when ancient symbols lay buried beneath distortion and suspicion, it was Spiesberger who rekindled their living flame. 

He is remembered, above all, as the reviver of the Armanen Futhorkh, the Runic system first revealed by Guido von List (1848-1919). Yet Spiesberger did not merely resurrect—he transmuted. Where earlier Rune magicians such as Siegfried Kummer and Friedrich Marby had labored, he gathered their insights and refined them, stripping away any racialist and völkisch ideas that had entangled the Runes in the ideological machinery of National Socialism.[2] What emerged was a purified current: the Runes re-envisioned as universal symbols, as living archetypes, as vessels of transformation rather than instruments of division.

The Saturnian Initiation

Spiesberger’s path into deeper mysteries began in Germany in the 1930s. Arriving from Baden bei Wein to Berlin in 1932 with aspirations of becoming an actor, fate soon redirected him.[3] In 1935, he met Gregor A. Gregorius (1888-1964)—the magickal name of Eugen Grosche, founder of the most influential magickal lodge in Germany, Fraternitas Saturni (Brotherhood of Saturn).[4] Founded in the 1926 as a magickal order that accepted the Aleister Crowley’s Law of Thelema,[5] the order distinguished itself through its independence from other esoteric organizations, its uncompromising emphasis on individual spiritual development over rigid dogma, and through the creation of a unique initiatory structure of grades and rituals designed to guide the adept through inner transformation. Through the years, the Brotherhood synthesized the disparate esoteric ideas of Freemasonry, Pansophy, Thelemism, sex magick, Indian yoga, ceremonial magick, alchemy, astrology, and even Luciferianism.[6]

In 1948, Spiesberger was initiated into the Brotherhood, taking on the lodge name, Frater Eratus. Through his initiation, Spiesberger discovered a path of discipline, limitation, and illumination through shadow. These elements along with the teachings of the Brotherhood would later infuse his Rune work with a distinctly syncretic and initiatory character.

Runes After the Ashes

The aftermath of the Second World War left the Runes in a state of exile. Tarnished by their appropriation under National Socialism, they were cast into obscurity—dismissed, misunderstood, or feared. It was Spiesberger who, in this vacuum, undertook the work of restoration.

In his seminal work Runenmagie (Rune Magic, 1955), Spiesberger became both preserver and initiator. He honored the lineage of those who came before, while recontextualizing their insights within a broader esoteric framework. The Runes, in his vision, were no longer powerful symbols of a singular völk, but sigils of cosmic ideas, radiant nodes within a universal magickal language. In the Preface to Runemagie, he explained how mistaken it would be to banish Runic study and Rune Magick from esoteric practice because “criminals also availed themselves of Rune Powers.” 

He wrote with clarity and conviction:

“It is time to finally take the momentum away from the racial fanatics and make the knowledge and power of the Runes accessible to those who dedicate their lives to researching parapsychological and magical-mystical phenomenology. Then it will become clear what the multifaceted Runic symbols truly are: mana-carriers of cosmic ideas and radiant forces.”[7]

With the publication of Runenmagie, and three years later, Runenexerzitien für Jedermann (Rune Exercises for Everyman), he reintroduced the Armanen system to a world ready—if cautiously—to receive it anew. By this time, List’s Runes had come to be regarded as the “traditional” framework for Rune work in Germany, and Spiesberger ensured their survival by reframing them within a universalist and esoteric paradigm. Unlike his predecessors, Spiesberger did not confine Rune Magick to a purely Germanic worldview. Instead, he wove it into the greater tapestry of Western esotericism. His system drew upon: The ceremonial and Thelemic currents associated with Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), Kabbalistic structures of symbolic correspondence, Hermetic philosophy, and magical praxis. Through this synthesis, the Runes became adaptable, dynamic—capable of interfacing with multiple traditions while retaining their intrinsic power.

The Pendulum and the Invisible Forces

Spiesberger’s genius was not limited to the Runes. His writings span a vast terrain: dreams, mantras, telepathy, levitation, auras—each treated as a facet of the greater mystery of consciousness and its hidden powers. 

Spiesberger also stood as a master and reviver of the Sidereal Pendulum, a subtle instrument of divination and energetic perception. His work, Der erfolgreiche Pendel-Praktiker (1955) remains a cornerstone of modern dowsing literature, later translated into English as Reveal the Power of the Pendulum.[8] 

Here again, his pattern repeats: recovery, refinement, and reintroduction. Just as with the Runes, he brought forgotten techniques back into conscious practice, grounding them in both magickal and quasi-scientific frameworks.

Legacy of the Rune Magus

Yet it is through the Runes that his Spiesberger’s name endures most vividly. His work shaped later authors including, quite importantly, Edred Thorsson (Stephen Flowers), whose widely read texts introduced Rune lore to English-speaking audiences. In several volumes, Flowers recounts how as an undergraduate student, he discovered Spiesberger’s works at his university library.[9] In his best-selling volume, Futhark, Flowers acknowledges Spiesberger’s influence, “the present work in traditional runic system(s) owes much to Spiesberger’s research and synthesizing.”[10] 

Spiesberger also strongly influenced, and may have even instructed Karl Welz,[11] further extending his lineage into modern Runic currents. Welz translated two of Spiesberger’s rituals and included them in his Letter of Instructions: “Magical Calling of the ‘You’” and “Ritual of the Gnostic Wedding.” Welz commented that these rituals “unify spirit and consciousness-matter.”[12]

Karl Spiesberger died on January 24, 1992, at the age of 87. But in the language of the mysteries, death is not an end—it is a transition. The currents he reawakened continue to flow: in ritual, in symbol, in the cosmic resonance of the Runes themselves. Where once the Runes lay buried beneath history’s wreckage, he raised them again—not as emblems of division, but as keys to the infinite. And in that act, he transformed not only the fate of the Runes—but the path of modern Western occultism itself.

Notes:

1. https://persondata.toolforge.org/p/Karl_Spiesberger

2. Edred Thorsson, Rune Might: The Secret Practices of the German Rune Magicians (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2018), 36.

3. Stephen E. Flowers, Revival of the Runes: The Modern Rediscovery and Reinvention of the Germanic Runes (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2021), 152.

4. For the most in-depth study of the Fraternitas Saturni, see Stephen E. Flowers, The Fraternitas Saturni: History, Doctrine, and Rituals of the Magical Order of the Brotherhood of Saturn, (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2018).

5. Flowers, Fraternitas Saturni, 32.

6. Ibid, 34.

7. Kenneth Chipman, “Preface to Spiesberger’s Runenmagie.” Privately shared by the author.

8. Karl Spiesberger, Reveal the Power of the Pendulum: Secrets of the sidereal pendulum. A complete survey of pendulum dowsing (London: W. Foulsham and Co. Ltd, 1987).

9. Flowers, Revival, 164. Flowers also recounts this story in Edred Thorsson, History of the Rune-Gild: The Reawakening of the Gild 1980-2018 (North Augusta, SC: Arcana Europa, 2019), 16.

10. Edred Thorsson, Futhark: A Handbook of Rune Magic (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1984), 16.

11. Kenneth Chipman, Grand Master of the Knights of Runes and a student of Karl Welz, recounted that Welz personally told him he had met Spiesberger in Berlin during his time as a member of the Sacred Brotherhood of the Golden Ray. According to Chipman, Welz attended a weekend workshop led by Spiesberger that was devoted to the 18-rune Futhorkh system.

12/ Karl Welz, Letter of Instructions #17, The Rune EH. https://knightsofrunes.godaddysites.com/lesson-17:-eh