In his books on the runes, Sigurd Agrell argued that the conventional runic order, the Futhark, represents a displacement cipher, in which the last rune has been placed in the first alphabetical position, in order to hide the esoteric numerical value of each rune. He introduced the Uthark system, where the first rune is Uruz, not Fehu, and proposes to show how all the mystical interpretations of numbers through this operation correspond with the numerical values in several alphabets and other symbolic numerical contexts within the mystery religions in Late Antiquity, where particularly the Mithras cult predominates.
From the Summary: "The author's aim is to set forth the mystical system of numbers found in the runes, and to show their connection with the alphabetical magic of the late Greeks and Romans. The series of the 24 runes was composed at the end of the second century by Germanic soldiers serving in the Roman army. Their teachers in the art of alphabetical magic were the worshippers of Mithras... It is shown how, by means of the author's reconstruction of the "uthark" series, the mystical ancient runic inscriptions can be calculated according to the principles of gematria."
Note: this is a machine translation and may contain small textual errors.
