Alphabetic Excavations : Johannes Bureus and the Runic Kabbalah
Around the turn of the 17th century, the Swedish antiquary and mystic Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) claimed to have discovered the primordial theology and science of his Scandinavian ancestors encoded in their system of writing, the runic alphabet, inspired in large part by earlier Christian interpretations of the Kabbalah. In the leadup to the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he viewe