adopted and modified by Karl Maria Wiligut who was responsible for their adoptions in Nazi occultism. Both List and Wiligut have an "Yr" rune of the same shape as the Younger Futhark Yr rune. In this context, the Man rune (identical in shape to the Elder Futhark Algiz) came to be understood in the Germanic mysticism of the early 20th century as symbolizing "life" and called the "life rune" (). This term occurs as early as the 1920s in the literature of Germanic mysticism, and it came to be widely used within the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, e.g. in official prescriptions for the various uniforms of the . The Yr rune came to be seen as the "life rune" inverted and interpreted as "death rune" () During the World War II era, these two runes ( for "born", for "died") came to be used in obituaries and on tomb stones as marking birth and death dates, replacing asterisk and cross symbols (* for "born", † for "died") conventionally used in this context in Germany. It has always been clear that this association is an innovation of modern esotericism, without direct precedent in the medieval usage of the Younger Futhark alphabet. This fact was pointed out in an article in the German journal Stimmen der Zeit as early as in 1940. After 1945, the term "life rune" continued to be used as völkisch nationalism. Contemporary examples include use by the American National Alliance (as of 2007), and in reference to the Algiz rune in the logo of the Flemish nationalist as levensrune (as of 2016). The term "death rune" has been used in the context of esotericist or occultist aesthetics associated with black metal, in the name of Deathrune Records (as of 2011), formerly Records, a minor black metal record label. Pop culture Following Ralph Blum (1982), the Algiz rune is given a sense of "protection" in some modern systems of runic divination. Blum (1982) himself glosses for Algiz with "Protection; Sedge or Rushes; An Elk". See also Elder Futhark Younger Futhark Notes References Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk (1942). The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Columbia University Press. . Page, R. I. (1999). An Introduction to English Runes. Boydell Press, page 71. . Runes