Karl Maria Wiligut (alias Weisthor, Jarl Widar, Lobesam; 10 December 1866 – 3 January 1946) was an Austrian Völkisch occultist and soldier.

He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and was a leading figure in the Irminism movement, eventually joining the SS after being recruited by Heinrich Himmler.

[2] After almost 40 years in military service, he retired on 1 January 1919[3] with an impeccable record, and moved to Morzg near Salzburg where he dedicated his time to occult studies.

Czepl compiled a report for the archive of the O.N.T., where he describes Wiligut as "a man martial in aspect, who revealed himself as bearer of a secret line of German kingship".

A twin brother of one of the girls died as an infant, a devastating tragedy for Wiligut, who was desperate for a male heir to which he could pass on his "secret knowledge", which estranged him from his wife.

[6] Wiligut's wife remained unimpressed by her husband's claim to kingship; blaming him for their destitution, she pushed for his committal to a mental hospital.

[7] Wiligut's medical records reflect violence at home, including threats to kill his wife, grandiose projects, eccentric behavior and occult interests.

In April 1934 he was promoted to the SS equivalent of his old colonel rank (Standartenführer), and then made head of Section VIII (Archives) for RuSHA in October 1934.

In Berlin, where he worked in the office of Karl Wolff, chief adjutant of the SS, Wiligut developed his plans for the rebuilding of the Wewelsburg into an allegorical "center of the world".

[8] In summer 1936, Gunther Kirchhoff and Wiligut, undertook a private 22-day expedition to the Murg Valley near Baden-Baden in the Black Forest, where there was a settlement described as consisting of "old half-timbered houses, architectural ornament, crosses, inscriptions, and natural and man-made rock formations in the forest," which, they claimed, showed it to be an ancient Krist settlement (Krist was a messianic Germanic figure allegedly associated with Irminism).

Wiligut's final years were insecure: he moved to Aufkirchen in 1939, to Goslar in 1940, and to Wörthersee in 1943, and after the war to a refugee camp in St. Johann near Velden, where he had a stroke.

[11] His first book, Seyfrieds Runen, was a collection of poems about the Rabenstein at Znaim on the Austrian-Moravian border;[12] it was published in 1903 under his full real, name and an added moniker, "Lobesam."

[15] Wiligut's convictions assumed a paranoid trait in the 1920s as he became convinced that his family was the victim of a continuing persecution of Irminists, at present conducted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Jews, and the Freemasons, on which groups he also blamed the defeat of World War I and the downfall of the Habsburg Empire.

During the 1920s, Wiligut wrote down 38 verses (out of a number purportedly exceeding 1,000), the so-called Halgarita Sprüche, that he claimed to have memorized as a child, taught by his father.

In esoteric currents of Neo-Nazism, Neofolk, National Socialist black metal and Neopaganism, Wiligut's writings enjoyed renewed interest in the 1990s.

[16] Wiligut's names for his runes are: Tel, Man, Kaun, Fa, Asa, Os, Eis, Not, Tor, Tyr, Laf, Rit, Thorn, Ur, Sig, Zil, Yr, Hag-Al, H, Wendehorn, Gibor, Eh, Othil, Bar-Bjork.