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EspañolNAZI OCCULTISM
(Redirected from Nazi Mysticism)
'Nazi occultism' is an occult undercurrent of Nazism, of minor overall importance.[1] While some historians attest semi-religious elements in Nazism,[2] these are frequently portrayed incorrectly by pseudo-historic writers.
In his third film, the popular American movie character Indiana Jones battles the Nazis over the Holy Grail. Some might find it hard to believe but there is actually a connection between a section of the RuSHA department of the SS and the Holy Grail, centering on the person of Otto Rahn. This Indiana Jones movie is just one example of the representations of Nazi occultism in popular culture, not to mention several conspiracy theories (e.g. about the Vril Society or about Karl Haushofer). However, the real difficulty with this topic lies not in the fictional accounts but in the vast ''Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism'' which exists in the form of books that tend to portray themselves as objective, but are basically inventions. The best known example of this is Trevor Ravenscroft's ''The Spear of Destiny''.
Among high-ranking Nazis, Richard Walther Darré, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg are credited with an interest in the occult. Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs in particular have been a question of examination. Their views seem to have continued an occult or esoteric movement of the 1920s in Germany that is generally referred as Ariosophy. However (with the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut), there is no evidence that prominent 'Ariosophists' had any direct influence on Nazism.[3]
Key concepts of ''Ariosophy'' as well as ''Nazi occultism'' include the origins of the Aryan race (and its alleged ''purest'' branch, the Teutons or Germanic peoples), and the alleged superiority of Aryans over all other races. (In this point they bear similarity to ''völkisch'' movements.)
Locations such as Atlantis, Thule, Hyperborea, and after 1945 also Shambhala and the star Aldebaran have been proposed as the original homeland of the Aryan Übermenschen (supermen). One other key belief is that the Herrenrasse (master race) has been weakened through interbreeding with those considered ''untermenschen'' (lesser races).
After 1945, esoteric elements within Nazism were continued and expanded into new ''völkisch'' religions of white identity, collectively described as 'Esoteric Nazism'.
Since there has been no independent movement of Nazi occultism, one can not possibly write a history of it. There are only certain occult elements within Nazism that are difficult to connect to each other.
Main articles: Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
Since 1957, when the Austrian psychologist Wilfried Daim published the important study on Lanz von Liebenfels[4] enough evidence exists to say that Hitler had been exposed to the ariosophic ''Weltanschauung'' in Vienna. However, to which extent he was influenced by it, is not clear. In the research into this question, Hitler's ''Mein Kampf'' has even been compared to Liebenfels' ''Theozoologie'' in detail. [5] According to Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ([1]), the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler.
The Thule society, from which the NSDAP originated, clearly was one of the ariosophic groups of the 1920s. ''Thule Gesellschaft'' had initially been the name of the Munich lodge of the Germanenorden. It took its name from an alleged lost continent Thule, which was assumed to be the mythical homeland from which the Aryan race had originated. (Atlantis at least, and most likely also Hyperborea, were taken to be identical with Thule.)[6] The superiority of Aryans over all other races was a key concept and the members of various Germanenorden-lodges saw themselves (as Teutons or Germanic peoples) as the 'purest' branch of the Aryan race.
Credited retrospectively with being the founder of "Esoteric Hitlerism", and certainly a figure of major importance for the officially-sanctioned research and practice of mysticism by a Nazi elite, was Heinrich Himmler who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by pan-Aryan (i.e. broader than Germanic) racialism and by certain forms of Germanic neopaganism. Himmler has been claimed to have considered himself the spiritual successor or even reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler, having established special SS rituals for the old king and returned his bones to the crypt at Quedlinburg Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg castle decorated in commemoration of him.
It also seems that Himmler had an interest in Astrology. The astrologer Wilhelm Wulff was consulted by Himmler in the last weeks of the Second World War.[7] One detailed but difficult source for this is a book written by Wulff himself, ''Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz'', published in Germany in 1968. That Walter Schellenberg had discovered an astrologer called ''Wulf'' (!) is also mentioned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's ''The Last Days of Hitler''.
''Too much can be made of the importance of bizarre cultism in Himmler's activities, but it did exist, and was one of the reasons behind the split between Himmler and Darrè that took place in the late 1930s.''[8]
The SS had invented its own mystical religion, based very loosely upon imagery taken from Germanic tribal faiths combined with Christianity and "visions" from those figures in order to counter what they viewed as the Jewish-influenced religion of Christianity.[9] Mystical organizations were created, usually connected with elite SS corps, and adopting specific rituals, initiations and beliefs.[10]
This religion was seen as the German ''original race-cult religion'' (''ursprüngliche Rassenkult-Religion'', a phrase attributed to SS-member Rudolf J. Mund), however, what exactly was indoctrinated in the SS about it is not known.[11]
In 1935 Himmler established with Darré the Ahnenerbe.[12] At first independent, it became the ancestral heritage branch of the SS. Headed by Dr. Hermann Wirth, it was dedicated primarily to the research of proving the superiority of the 'Aryan race' but was also involved in occult practices.
A great deal of time and resources were spent on researching or creating a popularly accepted “historical”, “cultural” and “scientific” background so the ideas about a “superior” Aryan race could prosper in the German society of the time. For example an expedition to Tibet was organized in order to search for the origins of the Aryan race.[13] To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger make face masks and skull and nose measurements. Another expedition was sent to the Andes.
Himmler ''is supposed to have sent an a party of SS men to Tibet in order to search for Shangri-La, an expedition which is more likely to have had straightforward espionage as its purpose''.[8]
Surrounding the Ahnenerbe Society there was also speculation about Atlantis and the Holy Grail. (It seems that there were no official expeditions related to this; one can assume that they would have been rather unsuccessful anyway.)
Otto Rahn had written a book ''Crusade against the Grail'' (''Kreuzzug gegen den Gral'') in 1933.[15] In May 1935 he joined the Ahnenerbe, in March 1936 he also joined the SS formally.[15] ''In September 1935 Rahn wrote excitingly to Weisthor [Karl Maria Wiligut] about the places he was visiting in his hunt for grail traditions in Germany, asking complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler.''[17]
Rahn's connection of the Cathars with the Holy Grail ultimately leads to Montségur in France, which had been the last remaining fortress of the Cathars in the Middle Ages. According to eyewitnesses, Nazi archaeologists and military officers had been present at that castle. [18]
Notwithstanding Trever Ravenscroft's theory on this, the Nazis did not need to search for the Spear of Destiny. With the annexation of Austria in 1938, the ''Hofburg Speer'', a relic stored in Vienna, had already come into the possession of the Third Reich and Hitler subsequently had it moved to Germany (Berlin most likely). It was returned to Austria after the war.
The totalitarian State of the Nazi party had a tendency to suppress all independent religious groups. This not only applies to groups such as Freemasons and Rosicrucians, but even to the established churches in the Third Reich (see: Nazism and religion). Hitler would later openly ridicule many German mystics, particularly practitioners of Freemasonry, Theosophy, and Anthroposophy. According to their private writings,[19][20], the leaders of the Nazi Party in Germany did not wish to encourage forms of paganism which did not serve to further their goals of promoting pan-Germanic ethnic consciousness.
Already in 1927, Hitler had fired the Gauleiter of Thüringen, Artur Dinter, from his post because he wanted too much to make a religion of Aryan racial purity. In 1928, Dinter was expelled from the party when he publicly attacked Hitler about this decision.[2]
The full focus of the state was not aimed at religious groups until 9 June 1941[21] when Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the security police, banned lodge organizations and esoteric groups in the wake of the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess, who had been attracted and influenced by the organic farming theories of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy.[22] However, the suppression of esoteric organisations began very soon after the Nazis acquired governmental power. Dr. Anna Bramwell points out that "occultist racialists were banned as early as 1934."[23]
Rudolf von Sebottendorff had been involved in the Thule Society and a schismatic offshoot of the Germanenorden. In January 1933 he published ''Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung'' (Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement). Nazi authorities (Hitler himself?) understandably disliked the book, which was banned in the following year. Sebottendorff was arrested but managed to flee to Turkey.
Bramwell notes that a secret society called the Skald Order "was banned by the Nazis after 1933 because of its allegedly masonic nature."[24] Several members of the Skald held office in the Third Reich, including Dr Ludolf Haase (a founder member of the Skald), Herbert Backe and Theo Gross; all came under covert investigation, though Backe is said to have been cleared of disloyalty by Heydrich from his deathbed.[25]
Even "the German Order of Druids was caught in the National Socialist anti-Masonic law of 1935, and was closed down", observes Bramwell, "protesting to the last that they were not Freemasons but good, German Druids."[26]
In 1936, Friedrich Bernhard Marby, who had developed his own rune theories after reading the literature of Guido von List,
was arrested and sent to a concentration camp.[27] He was released from the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.[28] [29] Siegfried Adolf Kummer[30] was, like Marby too, censured by Wiligut in his capacity as Himmler's cousellor on the occult.[31]
Allegedly the stage magician Franz Bardon had attracted the notice of Adolf Hitler ''"Like other workers for the Light"'' and
was incarcerated in a concentration camp for three and a half months in 1945.[32]
Rudolf John Gorsleben[33] had died due to a long standing heart complaint on 23 August 1930.[34]
Werner von Bülow had supported Wiligut, while the later had been involuntarily committed to the Salzburg mental asylum between November 1924 and early 1927.[35] He and ''Herbert Reichstein'' also had applauded the advent of the third reich in their esoteric magazines.[36]
Peryt Shou[37] went apparently without being molested.[38]
Lanz von Liebenfels, one of the most important of the Germanic racial-mystics, had his writings banned in 1938.[23] Allegedly Ludwig Fahrenkrog, the founder and leader of the Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft, was prohibited to write or exhibit his art because of his refusal to end his writings with the words "Heil Hitler", and Ernst Wachler, a member of his group and of Jewish ancestry, ended in a concentration camp.[40][41]
The persecution of occultists could have been due to the influence and recommendations to Himmler by Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's personal occultist. Wiligut had identified Irminism as the true ancestral religion, claiming that Guido von List's Wotanism and runic row was a schismatic false religion. On Wiligut's recommendation Himmler could have had many of List's followers and non-official Nazi occultists imprisoned. However, historians assume that these measures were most probably the result of the general Nazi policy of suppressing lodge organizations and esoteric groups. [42]
After the war Germany was demonised and the occult seen as a Nazi practice. Post-1945 German mysticism was virtually driven underground [43]. Germanic spiritualism was revived to a large extent by Karl Spiesberger (Fratur Eratus) and by 1955 the Armanen runic system and Pendulum dowsing had once more become very much traditional in German speaking circles as it was before the war. Other notable German pendulum dowsers of which a great deal of pendulum material has been derived from are the works and practices of, not only but mainly, Spiesberger and Straniak, are Dr. E. Clasen, Dr. K.E. Weiss (ß), Rud. Vöckler, Von Reichenbach, Professor Karl Bähr, Friedrich Kallenberg 1911-1934, Professor DR. Leopold Oelenheinz, and Professor Hellmut Wolff (30/3/1906-22/3/1986). [43] Other than popular Western astrology, there is also a school of thought regarding Germanic Runic Astrology and its usage in divination within the northern tradition of Odinism.
With the fall of the Third Reich, a new form of Nazi esotericism took off as Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, could now be deified. Examples of post-war Nazi mystical philosophies include 'Esoteric Hitlerism' and the Tempelhofgesellschaft. Esoteric Hitlerism includes the Nazis' race-specific pre-Christian ''Paganism'' (including Hindu mythologies).
Savitri Devi Mukherji was the first major post-war exponent of what has since become known as Esoteric Hitlerism.[45] She connected Hitler’s Aryanist ideology to that of the pan-Hindu part of the Indian Independence movement,[46] and activists such as Subhas Chandra Bose. For her, the swastika was an especially important symbol, as it symbolized the Aryan unity amongst the Hindus and Germans (and was also a symbol of good fortune for Tibetans, Navajo, and Hopi).
Savitri Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history. She considered Hitler to be Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, and called him “the god-like Individual of our times; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times”[47], having an ideal vision of returning his Aryan people to an earlier, more perfect time, and also having the practical wherewithal to fight the destructive forces "in Time". She saw his defeat —and the forestalling of his vision from coming to fruition — as a result of him being "too magnanimous, too trusting, too good", of not being merciless enough, of having in his "psychological make-up, too much 'sun' [beneficence] and not enough 'lightning.' [practical ruthlessness]”[48]; unlike his coming incarnation:
The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a former Chilean diplomat. Author of ''The Golden Ribbon: Esoteric Hitlerism'' (1978) and ''Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar'' (1984), Serrano is one of a number of Nazi esotericists who regard the Aryan blood as originally extraterrestrial:
Serrano supports this idea from pagan myths which assign divine ancestry to 'Aryan' peoples, and even the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl (one of the 'White Gods' of the ancient Americas) descending from Venus. He also cites the entirely respectable (but not widely accepted) scientific hypothesis of Bal Gangadhar Tilak on the Arctic homeland of the Indo-Aryans, as his authority for identifying the earthly centre of the Aryan migrations with the 'lost' Arctic continent of Hyperborea. Thus, Serrano's extraterrestrial gods are also identified as Hyperboreans.[51]
In attempting to raise the spiritual development of the earthbound races, the Hyperborean ''divyas'' (a Sanskrit term for god-men) suffered a tragic setback. Expanding on a story from the ''Book of Enoch'', Serrano laments that a renegade group among the gods committed miscegenation with the terrestrial races, thus diluting the light-bearing blood of their benefactors and diminishing the level of divine awareness on the planet.[52]
The concept of Hyperborea has a simultaneously racial and mystical meaning for Serrano (cf. [3]). He believes that Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews who follow Jehova) in a last battle and thus inaugurating a Fourth Reich.
According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (''Black Sun'', p. 182), "Serrano follows the Gnostic tradition of the Cathars (fl. 1025-1244) by identifying the evil demiurge as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. As medieval dualists, these eleventh-century heretics had repudiated Jehovah as a false god and mere artificer opposed to the real God far beyond our earthly realm. This Gnostic doctrine clearly carried dangerous implications for the Jews. As Jehovah was the tribal deity of the Jews, it followed that they were devil worshipers. By casting the Jews in the role of the children of Satan, the Cathar heresy can elevate anti-Semitism to the status of a theological doctrine backed by a vast cosmology. If the Hyperborean Aryans are the archetype and blood descendents of Serrano's ''divyas'' from the Black Sun, then the archetype of the Lord of Darkness needed a counter-race. The demiurge sought and found the most fitting agent for its archetype in the Jews". As religious scholars Frederick C. Grant and Hyam Maccoby emphasize, in the view of the dualist Gnostics, "Jews were regarded as the special people of the Demiurge and as having the special historical role of obstructing the redemptive work of the High God's emissaries" (Collier's Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, 1997, p. 166). Serrano thus considered Hitler as one of the greatest emissaries of this High God, rejected and crucified by the tyranny of the Judaicized rabble like previous revolutionary light-bringers. Serrano had a special place in his ideology for the SS, who, in their quest to recreate the ancient race of Aryan god-men, he thought were above morality and therefore justified, after the example of the anti-humanitarian "detached violence" taught in the Aryo-Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
In the book Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reports how C.G. Jung described "Hitler as possessed by the archetype of the collective Aryan unconscious and could not help obeying the commands of an inner voice. In a series of interviews between 1936 and 1939, Jung characterized Hitler as an archetype, often manifesting itself to the complete exclusion of his own personality. 'Hitler is a spiritual vessel, a demi-divinity; even better, a myth. Mussolini is a man' ... the messiah of Germany who teaches the virtue of the sword. 'The voice he hears is that of the collective unconscious of his race'".[53] Richard Noll has controversially argued that the early Jung was influenced by Theosophy, solar mysticism and völkisch nationalism in developing the ideas on the collective unconscious and the archetypes.[54] Jung's suggestion that Hitler personified the collective Aryan unconscious deeply interested and influenced Miguel Serrano, who later concluded that Jung was merely psychologizing the ancient, sacred mystery of archetypal possession by the gods, independent metaphysical powers that rule over their respective races and occasionally possess their members.[55]
A similar esoteric thesis is also put forward by Michael Moynihan in his book Lords of Chaos.
The Tempelhofgesellschaft was founded in Vienna in the early 1990s by Norbert Jurgen-Ratthofer and Ralft Ettl to teach a form of Gnostic religion called Marcionism. The group identifies an "evil creator of this world," the Demiurge with Jehovah, the god of Judaism. They distribute pamphlets claiming that the Aryan race originally came to Atlantis from the star Aldebaran (this information is supposedly based on "ancient Sumerian manuscripts"). They maintain that the Aryans from Aldebaran derive their power from the vril energy of the Black Sun. They teach that since the Aryan race is of extraterrestrial origin, it has a divine mission to dominate all the other races.
The writings of Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi and other proponents of Esoteric Nazism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about hollow earth civilizations and shadowy new world orders. The book ''Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival'', by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin, discusses pseudoscientific theories about surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. ''Arktos'' is noted for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translations. Godwin and other authors such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have discussed the connections between Esoteric Nazism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases, as well as Hitler’s supposed survival in Antarctic oases or in alliance with Hyperboreans from the subterranean world.[56]
Organisations such as the Armanen-Orden represent significant developments of neo-pagan esotericism and 'Ariosophy' after World War II, but they do not all constitute forms of Nazi esotericism. Some northern European neopagan groups, such as Theods, Ásatrúarfélagið and Viðartrúar, have explicitly stated that neo-Nazism is not common among their members. On the other hand, there are neopagan organisations with close ties to neo-Nazism, such as the ''Artgemeinschaft'', and the attraction of many neo-Nazis to Germanic paganism remains an issue particularly in Germany (see Nornirs Ætt).
Esoteric themes, including references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus, are also often alluded to in neo-Nazi music (e.g. Rock Against Communism) and above all in National Socialist black metal.[57]
By its very nature the study of the occultist influences on the Nazis attracts sensationalistic authors who often seem to lack the ability or the patience to conform to the scientific method of history. ''There is a persistent idea, widely canvassed in a sensational genre of literature, that the Nazis were principally inspired and directed by occult agencies from 1920 to 1945.''[58] Appendix E of Goodrick-Clarke's book discusses ''The Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism''.[59] He refers to the writers of this genre as ''crypto-historians''.[60] As their possible motive he mentions a ''post-war fascination with Nazism''.[58] Mattias Gardell, a historian who researches a related field, points at another explanation:
:''"In documentaries portraying the Third Reich, Hitler is cast as a master magician; these documentaries typically include scenes in which Hitler is speaking at huge mass meetings. [...] Cuts mix Hitler screaming with regiments marching under the sign of the swastika. Instead of providing a translation of his verbal crescendos, the sequence is overlaid with a speaker talking about something different. All this combines to demonize Hitler as an evil wizard spellbinding an unwitting German people to become his zombified servants until they are liberated from the spell by the Allied victory after which, suddenly, there were no German Nazis left among the populace. How convenient it would be if this image were correct. National socialism could be defeated with garlic. Watchdog groups could be replaced with a few vampire killers, and resources being directed into antiracist community programs could be directed at something else."''[62]
Gardell obviously refers to documentaries such as History Channel's documentary Hitler and the Occult.[63][64] This documentary takes Joachim von Ribbentrop's infamous statement of his continued subservience to Hitler at the Nuremberg Trials[65] as evidence of Hitler's ''"occult power"''. After the author Dusty Sklar has pointed out that Hitler's suicide happened at the night of April 30/May 1, which is Walpurgis Night, the narrator continues: ''"With Hitler gone, it was as if a spell had been broken"''.
Another documentary quotes Walter Johannes Stein, who is otherwise known as an esotericist researching on the Holy Grail and source in Trevor Ravenscroft's ''The Spear of Destiny''.[66] Well-known religious figures like Pope Pius XII and Pope Benedict XVI claim that Hitler was possessed by devils; Pope Pius XII even performed an exorcism on Hitler at a distance, but failed every time[67][68].
For a demonic influence on Hitler, Hermann Rauschning's ''Hitler Speaks'' is brought forward as source,[69] although most modern scholars do not consider Rauschning reliable.[70] (As Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke summarises: "''recent scholarship has almost certainly proved that Rauschning's conversations were mostly invented''".)[71]
Similarly to Rauschning, August Kubizek, one of Hitler's closest friends since childhood, claims that Hitler--17 years old at the time--once spoke to him of "returning Germany to its former glory"; of this comment, August said: "It was as if another being spoke out of his body, and moved him as much as it did me."[72]
Various conspiracy theory homepages claim that the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley sought to contact Hitler during World War II.[73][74]
Indeed, if Hitler (and also Stalin) or the Nazis in general, were the agents of Satan, or'' 'black forces', 'invisible hierarchies', 'unknown superiors' ''or any other ''discarnate entity''[60], this would be a convenient explanation. Explaining Hitler's rise to power, the Second World War and possibly even The Holocaust by the means of the paranormal seems to serve the function of protecting the authors and readers alike from having to deal with this rationally.
:''"The truth, however, is that millions of ordinary German workers, farmers and businessmen supported the national socialist program. [...] They were people who probably considered themselves good citizens, which is far more frightening than had they merely been demons."''[76]
Goodrick-Clarke examines several ''"books written about Nazi occultism between 1960 and 1975."'' These ''"were typically sensational and under-researched. A complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation."''[77] Books debunked in Appendix E of ''The Occult Roots of Nazism'' are:
★ Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, 1960, ''Le Matin des Magiciens''[78]
★ Dietrich Bronder, 1964, ''Bevor Hitler kam''[79]
★ Trevor Ravenscroft, 1972, ''The Spear of Destiny''[80]
★ Michel-Jean Angbert, 1971, ''Les mysticques du soleil''[81]
★ J.H. Brennan, 1974, ''Occult Reich'' [79]
Other pseudo-historic books:
★ Wulf Schwarzwaller, 1988, ''The Unknown Hitler''[83]
★ Alan Baker, 2000, ''Invisible Eagle. The History of Nazi Occultism''[84]
These books, or any that refer to them as source, are not reliable literature.
The use of runic symbology and the existence of an official Nazi government department for the study of the Germanic ancestral heritage (including paganism) have lent some credence to the idea that there was a pagan component to Nazism. As early as 1940, the occult scholar and folklorist Lewis Spence identified a neopagan undercurrent in Nazism,[85] for which he largely blamed Alfred Rosenberg, and which he equated with “satanism”. He further connected Nazism to the Illuminati.
Occultist or neopagan authors like Stephen McNallen, Stephen Flowers (translator of ''The Secret King'') and Michael Moynihan argue however that the Nazis' occult and runic pretensions amounted to a distortion and misrepresentation of the ancestral religion, Odinism.[86] Thus McNallen denounces ''"the lie that 'Hitler was a pagan' or that 'Asatruar trace their roots to Nazi Germany'"''.[87] In an article entitled "The Wiligut Saga" featured in ''The Secret King'', Adolf Schleipfer points out the differences between Wiligut's beliefs and those generally accepted within Odinism. Flowers, who is also a scholar of Germanic religious history, contends:
This is not only the opinion of occultists. Heinz Höhne, an authority on the SS, observes that in practice the organisation was modelled on Ignatius Loyola's Jesuit order and that ''"Himmler's neo-pagan customs remained primarily a paper exercise"''.[89]
1. ''"The occult side of Nazism can be easily dismissed as a popular [post-45] fantasy."'' The Occult Roots of Nazism, Short article by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke at www.lapismagazine.org
2. ''"Semi-religious beliefs in a race of Aryan god-men, the needful extermination of inferiors, and a wonderful millennial future of German world-domination obsessed Hitler, Himmler and many other high-ranking Nazi leaders."'' Goodrick-Clarke, 1985, 203
3. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 177
4. W. Daim: ''Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab'', 1. Edition 1957, 2. rev. ed. 1985, 3.rev.ed.1994
5. Harald Strohm, ''Gnosis und Nationalsozialismus'', 1997, p.46-52
6. Harald Strohm, Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus, 1997, p. 57
7. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 165; Wilhelm Th. H. Wulff, 1968, ''Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz''
8. Bramwell 1985: 90
9. Aside from general books on the Third Reich, the following would be of use.
Levenda, Peter. "Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult" 2002.
Heinrichsdorff, Dr. Wolff. "Westfalia Landeszeitung" January 9, 1938.
Ravenscroft, Trevor. "The Spear of Destiny" 5th Edition, 1988.
10. Erich Halik (Claude Schweikhart), "Um Krone und Gipfel der Welt", ''Mensch und Schicksal'' 6, no. 10 (1 August 1952), pp 3-5.
11. Harald Strohm, ''Gnosis und Nationalsozialismus'', 1997, p. 89
12. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 178
13. See ''Himmler's Crusade'' by Christopher Hale.
14. Bramwell 1985: 90
15. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189
16. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189
17. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189; Rahn to Weisthor, Letter dated 27 September 1935, Bundesarchiv, ''Koblenz'', Himmler Nachlass 19.
18. Strohm 1997, 99; Strohm refers to René Nelli, ''Die Katharer'', p.21
19. ''Hitler's Table Talk'', page 61, translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, 1953
20. ''Mein Kampf'', chapter 12
21. Bramwell 1985: 178.
22. ''Ibid.'', 175, 177. When organic farmers and their supporters — and even nudists — were arrested, Agriculture Minister Walther Darré protested to Himmler and Heydrich, "despite a letter from Bormann, warning Darré that Hitler was behind the arrests" (''ibid.'', 178).
23. Bramwell 1985: 42.
24. Bramwell 1985: 95.
25. Bramwell 1985: 126.
26. Bramwell 1985: 50.
27. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 160,161
28. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 161; Friedrich Bernhard Marby, 1975, ''Sonne und Planeten im Tierkreis'', p. 225
29. Odinist Library: Friedrich Bernhard Marby
30. Odinist Library: Siegfried Adolf Kummer
31. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 161; Weisthor to Himmler, letter dated 2 May 1934, Bundesarchiv, ''Koblenz'', Himmler Nachlass 19.
32. Merkur publishing: Franz Bardon Biography
33. Odinist Library: Rudolf John Gorsleben
34. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 159
35. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 182
36. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 192
37. mentioned shortly by Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 143, 165
38. Odinist Library: Peryt Shou
39. Bramwell 1985: 42.
40. Asatru Historical Time Line
41. The Seeker Journal: Who Are the Asatruar? (reprinted on Beliefnet.com)
42. Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 197
43. http://geocities.com/odinistlibrary/OLArticles/Articles/karlspiesberger.htm
44. http://geocities.com/odinistlibrary/OLArticles/Articles/karlspiesberger.htm
45. See her "Hitlerian Esotericism and the Tradition" (http://library.flawlesslogic.com/souvenirs_10a.htm)
46. See her "Hitlerism and Hindudom" (http://library.flawlesslogic.com/hindudom.htm). Originally published as "Hitlerism and the Hindu World" in ''The National Socialist'', no. 2 (Fall 1980): 18-20.
47. From the dedication to her book, ''The Lightning and the Sun''.
48. ''The Lightning and the Sun'', unabridged edition, p. 53 (http://www.savitridevi.org/lightning-03.html).
49. ''The Lightning and the Sun'', unabridged edition, p. 430 (http://www.savitridevi.org/lightning-16.html).
50. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 181.
51. Serrano finds supporting evidence in, for example, the Irish legends (recorded in the Book of Invasions) which tell of divine ancestors, Tuatha Dé Danann, arriving from the northern islands; and the Greek tradition according to which Apollo returned every 19 years to Hyperborea in the far north in order to rejuvenate his body and wisdom (Goodrick-Clarke, ''ibid.'').
52. Goodrick-Clarke, ''ibid.''
53. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 178
54. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 335 (Note 18 to Chapter 9)
55. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 179
56. Godwin 1996, chh. 5-6, 10; Goodrick-Clarke 2002, especially chh. 6-9.
57. Neo-Nazi Hate Music: A Guide
58. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217
59. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217-225
60. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 218
61. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217
62. Gardell 2003, 331
63. The History Channel online Store: The Unknown Hitler DVD Collection
64. Another critique of Hitler documentaries: Mark Schone - All Hitler, all the time
65. ''"Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'Do this!', I would still do it."'' - Joachim von Ribbentrop, 1946
66. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 222
67. The Daily Mail newspaper. Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil, says Vatican exorcist. Retrieved on August 2007
68. Vatican exorcist: Hitler Knew the Devil
69. Demonic Possession of World Leaders
70. Theodor Schieder (1972), ''Hermann Rauschnings "Gespräche mit Hitler" als Geschichtsquelle'' (Oppladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag) and Wolfgang Hänel (1984), ''Hermann Rauschnings "Gespräche mit Hitler": Eine Geschichtsfälschung'' (Ingolstadt, Germany: Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle), cit. in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2003), ''Black Sun'', p. 321.
71. Goodrick-Clarke (2003: 110). The best that can be said for Rauschning's claims may be Goodrick-Clarke's judgment that they "record...the authentic voice of Hitler by inspired guesswork and imagination" (''ibid.'').
72. “Hitler and the Holy Roman Empire”
73. Illiminati-News: Aleister Crowley
74. Occult Symbolism: As American as Baseball at Alex Jones' prisonplanet.com
75. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 218
76. Gardell 2003, 331,332
77. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 225
78. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 219-220
79. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221
80. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221-223
81. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 224
82. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221
83. If ''The Unknown Hitler'' is quoted correctly in The Vril Society, the Luminous Lodge and the Realization of the Great Work, then this book makes false allegations about Karl Haushofer and G. I. Gurdjieff.
84. Chapter 5 of the Free online version of ''Invisible Eagle'' is mainly based on Ravenscroft
85. Spence 1940.
86. http://www.runestone.org/RS32/books/index.htm, http://www.runestone.org/lep4.html, http://www.angelfire.com/wy/wyrd/odinvsnazi.html; "The Myth and Reality of Occultism in the Third Reich" lecture by S. E. Flowers, November 12th, 2006. http://www.woodharrow.com/lectureseries.html.
87. Review of ''The Secret King'' by Stephen A. McNallen, (http://www.runestone.org/RS32/books/index.htm).
88. Flowers 1984: 16.
89. Höhne 1969: 138, 143-5, 156-57.
★ Anna Bramwell. 1985. ''Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler's 'Green Party'. Abbotsbrook, England: The Kensal Press. ISBN 0-946041-33-4
★ Stephen E. Flowers (as Edred Thorsson). 1984. ''Futhark: A Handbook of Rune Magic''. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc. ISBN 0-87728-548-9
★ Mattias Gardell. 2003. ''Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3071-4
★ Joscelyn Godwin. 1996. ''Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival''. Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 0-932813-35-6
★ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. ''The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935''. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Reprint, 1994. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3060-4)
★ ———. 2002. ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity''. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3124-4. (Paperback, 2003. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4)
★ Heinz Höhne. 1969. ''The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS''. Martin Secker & Warburg.
★ Lewis Spence. 1940. ''Occult Causes of the Present War''. London: Rider & Co. (Reprint, 1997. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-7661-0051-0)
★ Harald Strohm. 1997. ''Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus''. . Suhrkamp.
★ The Secret King: Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's Lord of the Runes, Wiligut, Karl Maria, , , Dominion Press and Runa-Raven Press, 2001, ISBN 1-885972-21-0
★ ''The Voice of Destruction'' by Hermann Rauschning
★ ''Hitler's Secret Sciences: His Quest for the Hidden Knowledge of the Ancients'' by Nigel Pennick
★ ''Runic Astrology: Starcraft and Timekeeping in the Northern Tradition'' by Nigel Pennick
★ ''The SS Family Book: Procedure for Conducting Family Celebrations'', authored by Charles Barger & Ulric of England. Ulric Publishing. - SS Pagan rituals.
★ ''Reveal the Power of the Pendulum: Secrets of the Sidereal Pendulum, A Complete Survey of Pendulum Dowsing'', by Karl Spiesberger, (1962) ISBN 0-572-01419-8 (Der erfolgreiche Pendel-Praktiker) - 1962 [4]
★ ''Rune Might: History and Practices of the Early 20th Century German Rune Magicians'' by Stephen Flowers
★ ''Mythos Schwarze Sonne'' by Gerhard von Werfenstein
★ ''Odinism and Christianity under the Third Reich'' by John Yeowell, published by the Odinic Rite in 1993.
★ ''Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult'' by Peter Levenda, (May 1, 2002, ISBN 0-8264-1409-5)
★ ''Nazis and the Occult'' by Dusty Sklar
★ ''Hitler and the Occult'' by Ken Anderson
★ ''Zodiac and Swastika: Astrologer to Himmler's Court'' by Wilhelm Wulff
★ ''The Occult Understanding of Hitler and the Nazis'' by Cyril Scott
★ ''Unknown Sources: National Socialism and the Occult'' by Hans Thomas Hakl & Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Translator)
★ ''Hitlers Visionäre. Die okkulten Wegbereiter des Dritten Reiches'' [Hitler's Visionaries. Nazism's Occult Roots] by Eduard Gugenberger [5]
★ ''Astrology and the Third Reich: A Historical Study of Astrological Beliefs in Western Europe Since 1700 and in Hitler's Germany, 1933-45'' by Ellic Howe
★ '' by Ellic Howe (1968)
★ ''Astrology and Psychological Warfare During World War II'' by Ellic Howe (1972)
★ ''Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race'' by Christopher Hale (Wiley 2003. ISBN 0-471-26292-7)
★ ''Heinrich Himmler's Camelot: Pictorial/documentary: The Wewelsburg Ideological Center of the SS, 1934-1945'' by Stephen Cook (Kressmann-Backmeyer, 1999)
★ ''Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo-Nazism'', Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 1998. ISBN 0-8147-3110-4
★ Spence, Lewis: ''Occult Causes of the Present War''; 1940, Rider and Co, London.
★ ''The Occult Establishment'' by James Webb
★ ''Storm Troopers of Satan'' by Michael FitzGerald
★ ''Das Ende des Hitlermythos'' by Josef Greiner
★ ''Himmler's Black Order 1923-45'' by Robin Lumsden
★ ''Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition into Tibet'' by Christopher Hale
★ ''Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman--Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine'' by Abir Taha
★ ''Reich Of The Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons & The Cold War Allied Legend'' by Joseph P. Farrell
★ ''Satan and Swastika: The Occult and the Nazi Party'' by Francis X. King
★ ''Himmler's Castle'' by Stuart Russell, J A Bowman (Editor)
★ ''Hitler and his God: The Background to the Hitler Phenomenon'' by Georges van Vrekhem, Rupa & Co. ISBN 81-291-0953-0
★ '' by Gerald Suster, ISBN 1-871438-82-9.
★ ''Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant'' by Mel Gordon
★ '' by Gerald Suster (1981)
★ ''Schwarze Sonne (book)'' by Rüdiger Sünner
★
★ Heinrich Himmler's Great Chair
★ Nazi UFOs
★ Universal Order
★ Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
★ Nazism and religion
★ Neofascism and religion
★ Positive Christianity
★ German Christians
★ Protestant Reich Church
★ Cosmotheism
★ The Nexus (journal)
★ National Socialist black metal
★ Nazi archaeology
★ Vienna Circle (esoteric)
★ Führerbunker
★ Author and Odinist, Stephen A. McNallen, with the book 'The Secret King' by Stephen E. Flowers, Ph. D., and Michael Moynihan have turned the tables of belief relating to Nazi mystisism [6] but he also wrote the article Hitlerism and Odinism [7]
★ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke on Nazi Occultism
★ Hitler and the Occult
★ NARA Research Room: Captured German and Related Records on Microform in the National Archives: Captured German Records Filmed at Berlin (American Historical Association, 1960). Microfilm Publication T580. 1,002 rolls
★ Hitler and the Occult: Nazism, Reincarnation, and Rock Culture
★ Straight dope - was Hitler Christian?
★ Kevin Davidson, "Was Hitler a Christian?", extensive analysis of sources and misconceptions.
★ Adolf Hitler - Christian, Atheist, or Neither?, a response to claims that Hitler was Christian and to claims that he was atheist.
★ The controversy of the occult reich By John Roemer
★ The Unknown Hitler: Nazi Roots in the Occult
★ The Nazi Trapezoid - Nazis and the Occult by Tim Maroney
★ Odinism vs Nazism
★ Hitler, Nazis & the Occult by M. Sabeheddin (New Dawn International News Service)
★ White Blood, White Gods: An Assessment of Racialist Paganism in the United States A Senior Honors Thesis by Damon Berry in June 2006.
★ The Hidden Origins of Nazism
★ The Thule Society
★ Seed of Lamas and Nazis: The SS in Tibet -- 1938-39
★ Historic Results of Hitler's Thule Societies pursuit of the NWO
'Nazi occultism' is an occult undercurrent of Nazism, of minor overall importance.[1] While some historians attest semi-religious elements in Nazism,[2] these are frequently portrayed incorrectly by pseudo-historic writers.
Introduction
In his third film, the popular American movie character Indiana Jones battles the Nazis over the Holy Grail. Some might find it hard to believe but there is actually a connection between a section of the RuSHA department of the SS and the Holy Grail, centering on the person of Otto Rahn. This Indiana Jones movie is just one example of the representations of Nazi occultism in popular culture, not to mention several conspiracy theories (e.g. about the Vril Society or about Karl Haushofer). However, the real difficulty with this topic lies not in the fictional accounts but in the vast ''Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism'' which exists in the form of books that tend to portray themselves as objective, but are basically inventions. The best known example of this is Trevor Ravenscroft's ''The Spear of Destiny''.
Among high-ranking Nazis, Richard Walther Darré, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg are credited with an interest in the occult. Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs in particular have been a question of examination. Their views seem to have continued an occult or esoteric movement of the 1920s in Germany that is generally referred as Ariosophy. However (with the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut), there is no evidence that prominent 'Ariosophists' had any direct influence on Nazism.[3]
Key concepts of ''Ariosophy'' as well as ''Nazi occultism'' include the origins of the Aryan race (and its alleged ''purest'' branch, the Teutons or Germanic peoples), and the alleged superiority of Aryans over all other races. (In this point they bear similarity to ''völkisch'' movements.)
Locations such as Atlantis, Thule, Hyperborea, and after 1945 also Shambhala and the star Aldebaran have been proposed as the original homeland of the Aryan Übermenschen (supermen). One other key belief is that the Herrenrasse (master race) has been weakened through interbreeding with those considered ''untermenschen'' (lesser races).
After 1945, esoteric elements within Nazism were continued and expanded into new ''völkisch'' religions of white identity, collectively described as 'Esoteric Nazism'.
Occult elements within Nazism
Since there has been no independent movement of Nazi occultism, one can not possibly write a history of it. There are only certain occult elements within Nazism that are difficult to connect to each other.
Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
Main articles: Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
Since 1957, when the Austrian psychologist Wilfried Daim published the important study on Lanz von Liebenfels[4] enough evidence exists to say that Hitler had been exposed to the ariosophic ''Weltanschauung'' in Vienna. However, to which extent he was influenced by it, is not clear. In the research into this question, Hitler's ''Mein Kampf'' has even been compared to Liebenfels' ''Theozoologie'' in detail. [5] According to Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ([1]), the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler.
Thule Society and the origins of the NSDAP
The Thule society, from which the NSDAP originated, clearly was one of the ariosophic groups of the 1920s. ''Thule Gesellschaft'' had initially been the name of the Munich lodge of the Germanenorden. It took its name from an alleged lost continent Thule, which was assumed to be the mythical homeland from which the Aryan race had originated. (Atlantis at least, and most likely also Hyperborea, were taken to be identical with Thule.)[6] The superiority of Aryans over all other races was a key concept and the members of various Germanenorden-lodges saw themselves (as Teutons or Germanic peoples) as the 'purest' branch of the Aryan race.
Himmler and the SS
Credited retrospectively with being the founder of "Esoteric Hitlerism", and certainly a figure of major importance for the officially-sanctioned research and practice of mysticism by a Nazi elite, was Heinrich Himmler who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by pan-Aryan (i.e. broader than Germanic) racialism and by certain forms of Germanic neopaganism. Himmler has been claimed to have considered himself the spiritual successor or even reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler, having established special SS rituals for the old king and returned his bones to the crypt at Quedlinburg Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg castle decorated in commemoration of him.
It also seems that Himmler had an interest in Astrology. The astrologer Wilhelm Wulff was consulted by Himmler in the last weeks of the Second World War.[7] One detailed but difficult source for this is a book written by Wulff himself, ''Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz'', published in Germany in 1968. That Walter Schellenberg had discovered an astrologer called ''Wulf'' (!) is also mentioned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's ''The Last Days of Hitler''.
''Too much can be made of the importance of bizarre cultism in Himmler's activities, but it did exist, and was one of the reasons behind the split between Himmler and Darrè that took place in the late 1930s.''[8]
The SS had invented its own mystical religion, based very loosely upon imagery taken from Germanic tribal faiths combined with Christianity and "visions" from those figures in order to counter what they viewed as the Jewish-influenced religion of Christianity.[9] Mystical organizations were created, usually connected with elite SS corps, and adopting specific rituals, initiations and beliefs.[10]
This religion was seen as the German ''original race-cult religion'' (''ursprüngliche Rassenkult-Religion'', a phrase attributed to SS-member Rudolf J. Mund), however, what exactly was indoctrinated in the SS about it is not known.[11]
In 1935 Himmler established with Darré the Ahnenerbe.[12] At first independent, it became the ancestral heritage branch of the SS. Headed by Dr. Hermann Wirth, it was dedicated primarily to the research of proving the superiority of the 'Aryan race' but was also involved in occult practices.
A great deal of time and resources were spent on researching or creating a popularly accepted “historical”, “cultural” and “scientific” background so the ideas about a “superior” Aryan race could prosper in the German society of the time. For example an expedition to Tibet was organized in order to search for the origins of the Aryan race.[13] To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger make face masks and skull and nose measurements. Another expedition was sent to the Andes.
Himmler ''is supposed to have sent an a party of SS men to Tibet in order to search for Shangri-La, an expedition which is more likely to have had straightforward espionage as its purpose''.[8]
The Nazis, occult relics and Atlantis
Surrounding the Ahnenerbe Society there was also speculation about Atlantis and the Holy Grail. (It seems that there were no official expeditions related to this; one can assume that they would have been rather unsuccessful anyway.)
The Fortress of Montségur from the 16th century. If the castle that is linked to the myth of the Holy Grail has existed, it was destroyed in 1244.
Otto Rahn had written a book ''Crusade against the Grail'' (''Kreuzzug gegen den Gral'') in 1933.[15] In May 1935 he joined the Ahnenerbe, in March 1936 he also joined the SS formally.[15] ''In September 1935 Rahn wrote excitingly to Weisthor [Karl Maria Wiligut] about the places he was visiting in his hunt for grail traditions in Germany, asking complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler.''[17]
Rahn's connection of the Cathars with the Holy Grail ultimately leads to Montségur in France, which had been the last remaining fortress of the Cathars in the Middle Ages. According to eyewitnesses, Nazi archaeologists and military officers had been present at that castle. [18]
Notwithstanding Trever Ravenscroft's theory on this, the Nazis did not need to search for the Spear of Destiny. With the annexation of Austria in 1938, the ''Hofburg Speer'', a relic stored in Vienna, had already come into the possession of the Third Reich and Hitler subsequently had it moved to Germany (Berlin most likely). It was returned to Austria after the war.
Esotericism in Nazi Germany
The totalitarian State of the Nazi party had a tendency to suppress all independent religious groups. This not only applies to groups such as Freemasons and Rosicrucians, but even to the established churches in the Third Reich (see: Nazism and religion). Hitler would later openly ridicule many German mystics, particularly practitioners of Freemasonry, Theosophy, and Anthroposophy. According to their private writings,[19][20], the leaders of the Nazi Party in Germany did not wish to encourage forms of paganism which did not serve to further their goals of promoting pan-Germanic ethnic consciousness.
Already in 1927, Hitler had fired the Gauleiter of Thüringen, Artur Dinter, from his post because he wanted too much to make a religion of Aryan racial purity. In 1928, Dinter was expelled from the party when he publicly attacked Hitler about this decision.[2]
The full focus of the state was not aimed at religious groups until 9 June 1941[21] when Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the security police, banned lodge organizations and esoteric groups in the wake of the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess, who had been attracted and influenced by the organic farming theories of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy.[22] However, the suppression of esoteric organisations began very soon after the Nazis acquired governmental power. Dr. Anna Bramwell points out that "occultist racialists were banned as early as 1934."[23]
Rudolf von Sebottendorff had been involved in the Thule Society and a schismatic offshoot of the Germanenorden. In January 1933 he published ''Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung'' (Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement). Nazi authorities (Hitler himself?) understandably disliked the book, which was banned in the following year. Sebottendorff was arrested but managed to flee to Turkey.
Bramwell notes that a secret society called the Skald Order "was banned by the Nazis after 1933 because of its allegedly masonic nature."[24] Several members of the Skald held office in the Third Reich, including Dr Ludolf Haase (a founder member of the Skald), Herbert Backe and Theo Gross; all came under covert investigation, though Backe is said to have been cleared of disloyalty by Heydrich from his deathbed.[25]
Even "the German Order of Druids was caught in the National Socialist anti-Masonic law of 1935, and was closed down", observes Bramwell, "protesting to the last that they were not Freemasons but good, German Druids."[26]
In 1936, Friedrich Bernhard Marby, who had developed his own rune theories after reading the literature of Guido von List,
was arrested and sent to a concentration camp.[27] He was released from the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.[28] [29] Siegfried Adolf Kummer[30] was, like Marby too, censured by Wiligut in his capacity as Himmler's cousellor on the occult.[31]
Allegedly the stage magician Franz Bardon had attracted the notice of Adolf Hitler ''"Like other workers for the Light"'' and
was incarcerated in a concentration camp for three and a half months in 1945.[32]
Rudolf John Gorsleben[33] had died due to a long standing heart complaint on 23 August 1930.[34]
Werner von Bülow had supported Wiligut, while the later had been involuntarily committed to the Salzburg mental asylum between November 1924 and early 1927.[35] He and ''Herbert Reichstein'' also had applauded the advent of the third reich in their esoteric magazines.[36]
Peryt Shou[37] went apparently without being molested.[38]
Lanz von Liebenfels, one of the most important of the Germanic racial-mystics, had his writings banned in 1938.[23] Allegedly Ludwig Fahrenkrog, the founder and leader of the Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft, was prohibited to write or exhibit his art because of his refusal to end his writings with the words "Heil Hitler", and Ernst Wachler, a member of his group and of Jewish ancestry, ended in a concentration camp.[40][41]
The persecution of occultists could have been due to the influence and recommendations to Himmler by Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's personal occultist. Wiligut had identified Irminism as the true ancestral religion, claiming that Guido von List's Wotanism and runic row was a schismatic false religion. On Wiligut's recommendation Himmler could have had many of List's followers and non-official Nazi occultists imprisoned. However, historians assume that these measures were most probably the result of the general Nazi policy of suppressing lodge organizations and esoteric groups. [42]
After the war Germany was demonised and the occult seen as a Nazi practice. Post-1945 German mysticism was virtually driven underground [43]. Germanic spiritualism was revived to a large extent by Karl Spiesberger (Fratur Eratus) and by 1955 the Armanen runic system and Pendulum dowsing had once more become very much traditional in German speaking circles as it was before the war. Other notable German pendulum dowsers of which a great deal of pendulum material has been derived from are the works and practices of, not only but mainly, Spiesberger and Straniak, are Dr. E. Clasen, Dr. K.E. Weiss (ß), Rud. Vöckler, Von Reichenbach, Professor Karl Bähr, Friedrich Kallenberg 1911-1934, Professor DR. Leopold Oelenheinz, and Professor Hellmut Wolff (30/3/1906-22/3/1986). [43] Other than popular Western astrology, there is also a school of thought regarding Germanic Runic Astrology and its usage in divination within the northern tradition of Odinism.
Esotericists in Nazi Germany
★ Karl Spiesberger ★ Ludwig Straniak ★ Wilhelm Wulff ★ A. Frank Glahn | ★ Carl Reichenbach ★ Hellmut Wolff ★ Thomas Charles Lethbridge ★ Karl Ernst Krafft |
Esoteric Nazism and other developments after the Third Reich
With the fall of the Third Reich, a new form of Nazi esotericism took off as Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, could now be deified. Examples of post-war Nazi mystical philosophies include 'Esoteric Hitlerism' and the Tempelhofgesellschaft. Esoteric Hitlerism includes the Nazis' race-specific pre-Christian ''Paganism'' (including Hindu mythologies).
Esoteric Hitlerism
Savitri Devi
Savitri Devi Mukherji was the first major post-war exponent of what has since become known as Esoteric Hitlerism.[45] She connected Hitler’s Aryanist ideology to that of the pan-Hindu part of the Indian Independence movement,[46] and activists such as Subhas Chandra Bose. For her, the swastika was an especially important symbol, as it symbolized the Aryan unity amongst the Hindus and Germans (and was also a symbol of good fortune for Tibetans, Navajo, and Hopi).
Savitri Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history. She considered Hitler to be Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, and called him “the god-like Individual of our times; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times”[47], having an ideal vision of returning his Aryan people to an earlier, more perfect time, and also having the practical wherewithal to fight the destructive forces "in Time". She saw his defeat —and the forestalling of his vision from coming to fruition — as a result of him being "too magnanimous, too trusting, too good", of not being merciless enough, of having in his "psychological make-up, too much 'sun' [beneficence] and not enough 'lightning.' [practical ruthlessness]”[48]; unlike his coming incarnation:
“Kalki” ''will act with unprecedented ruthlessness''. Contrarily to Adolf Hitler, He will spare not a single one of the enemies of the divine Cause: not a single one of its outspoken opponents but also not a single one of the luke-warm, of the opportunists, of the ideologically heretical, of the racially bastardised, of the unhealthy, of the hesitating, of the all-too-human; not a single one of those who, in body or in character or mind, bear the stamp of the fallen Ages.[49]
Miguel Serrano
The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a former Chilean diplomat. Author of ''The Golden Ribbon: Esoteric Hitlerism'' (1978) and ''Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar'' (1984), Serrano is one of a number of Nazi esotericists who regard the Aryan blood as originally extraterrestrial:
"Serrano finds mythological evidence for the extraterrestrial origins of man in the Nephilim [fallen angels] of the Book of Genesis....Serrano suggests that the sudden appearance of Cro-Magnon Man with his high artistic and cultural achievements in prehistoric Europe records the passage of one such ''divya''-descended race alongside the abysmal inferiority of Neanderthal Man, an abomination and manifest creation of the demiurge....Of all the races on earth, the Aryans alone preserve the memory of their divine ancestors in their noble blood, which is still mingled with the light of the Black Sun. All other races are the progeny of the demiurge's beast-men, native to the planet."[50]
Serrano supports this idea from pagan myths which assign divine ancestry to 'Aryan' peoples, and even the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl (one of the 'White Gods' of the ancient Americas) descending from Venus. He also cites the entirely respectable (but not widely accepted) scientific hypothesis of Bal Gangadhar Tilak on the Arctic homeland of the Indo-Aryans, as his authority for identifying the earthly centre of the Aryan migrations with the 'lost' Arctic continent of Hyperborea. Thus, Serrano's extraterrestrial gods are also identified as Hyperboreans.[51]
In attempting to raise the spiritual development of the earthbound races, the Hyperborean ''divyas'' (a Sanskrit term for god-men) suffered a tragic setback. Expanding on a story from the ''Book of Enoch'', Serrano laments that a renegade group among the gods committed miscegenation with the terrestrial races, thus diluting the light-bearing blood of their benefactors and diminishing the level of divine awareness on the planet.[52]
The concept of Hyperborea has a simultaneously racial and mystical meaning for Serrano (cf. [3]). He believes that Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews who follow Jehova) in a last battle and thus inaugurating a Fourth Reich.
According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (''Black Sun'', p. 182), "Serrano follows the Gnostic tradition of the Cathars (fl. 1025-1244) by identifying the evil demiurge as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. As medieval dualists, these eleventh-century heretics had repudiated Jehovah as a false god and mere artificer opposed to the real God far beyond our earthly realm. This Gnostic doctrine clearly carried dangerous implications for the Jews. As Jehovah was the tribal deity of the Jews, it followed that they were devil worshipers. By casting the Jews in the role of the children of Satan, the Cathar heresy can elevate anti-Semitism to the status of a theological doctrine backed by a vast cosmology. If the Hyperborean Aryans are the archetype and blood descendents of Serrano's ''divyas'' from the Black Sun, then the archetype of the Lord of Darkness needed a counter-race. The demiurge sought and found the most fitting agent for its archetype in the Jews". As religious scholars Frederick C. Grant and Hyam Maccoby emphasize, in the view of the dualist Gnostics, "Jews were regarded as the special people of the Demiurge and as having the special historical role of obstructing the redemptive work of the High God's emissaries" (Collier's Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, 1997, p. 166). Serrano thus considered Hitler as one of the greatest emissaries of this High God, rejected and crucified by the tyranny of the Judaicized rabble like previous revolutionary light-bringers. Serrano had a special place in his ideology for the SS, who, in their quest to recreate the ancient race of Aryan god-men, he thought were above morality and therefore justified, after the example of the anti-humanitarian "detached violence" taught in the Aryo-Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
The collective Aryan unconscious
In the book Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reports how C.G. Jung described "Hitler as possessed by the archetype of the collective Aryan unconscious and could not help obeying the commands of an inner voice. In a series of interviews between 1936 and 1939, Jung characterized Hitler as an archetype, often manifesting itself to the complete exclusion of his own personality. 'Hitler is a spiritual vessel, a demi-divinity; even better, a myth. Mussolini is a man' ... the messiah of Germany who teaches the virtue of the sword. 'The voice he hears is that of the collective unconscious of his race'".[53] Richard Noll has controversially argued that the early Jung was influenced by Theosophy, solar mysticism and völkisch nationalism in developing the ideas on the collective unconscious and the archetypes.[54] Jung's suggestion that Hitler personified the collective Aryan unconscious deeply interested and influenced Miguel Serrano, who later concluded that Jung was merely psychologizing the ancient, sacred mystery of archetypal possession by the gods, independent metaphysical powers that rule over their respective races and occasionally possess their members.[55]
A similar esoteric thesis is also put forward by Michael Moynihan in his book Lords of Chaos.
Tempelhofgesellschaft
The Tempelhofgesellschaft was founded in Vienna in the early 1990s by Norbert Jurgen-Ratthofer and Ralft Ettl to teach a form of Gnostic religion called Marcionism. The group identifies an "evil creator of this world," the Demiurge with Jehovah, the god of Judaism. They distribute pamphlets claiming that the Aryan race originally came to Atlantis from the star Aldebaran (this information is supposedly based on "ancient Sumerian manuscripts"). They maintain that the Aryans from Aldebaran derive their power from the vril energy of the Black Sun. They teach that since the Aryan race is of extraterrestrial origin, it has a divine mission to dominate all the other races.
Conspiracy theories
The writings of Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi and other proponents of Esoteric Nazism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about hollow earth civilizations and shadowy new world orders. The book ''Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival'', by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin, discusses pseudoscientific theories about surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. ''Arktos'' is noted for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translations. Godwin and other authors such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have discussed the connections between Esoteric Nazism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases, as well as Hitler’s supposed survival in Antarctic oases or in alliance with Hyperboreans from the subterranean world.[56]
Influences within neopaganism and black metal
Organisations such as the Armanen-Orden represent significant developments of neo-pagan esotericism and 'Ariosophy' after World War II, but they do not all constitute forms of Nazi esotericism. Some northern European neopagan groups, such as Theods, Ásatrúarfélagið and Viðartrúar, have explicitly stated that neo-Nazism is not common among their members. On the other hand, there are neopagan organisations with close ties to neo-Nazism, such as the ''Artgemeinschaft'', and the attraction of many neo-Nazis to Germanic paganism remains an issue particularly in Germany (see Nornirs Ætt).
Esoteric themes, including references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus, are also often alluded to in neo-Nazi music (e.g. Rock Against Communism) and above all in National Socialist black metal.[57]
The modern mythology of Nazi occultism
By its very nature the study of the occultist influences on the Nazis attracts sensationalistic authors who often seem to lack the ability or the patience to conform to the scientific method of history. ''There is a persistent idea, widely canvassed in a sensational genre of literature, that the Nazis were principally inspired and directed by occult agencies from 1920 to 1945.''[58] Appendix E of Goodrick-Clarke's book discusses ''The Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism''.[59] He refers to the writers of this genre as ''crypto-historians''.[60] As their possible motive he mentions a ''post-war fascination with Nazism''.[58] Mattias Gardell, a historian who researches a related field, points at another explanation:
''"Occultist believe, Hanussen may also have imparted occult techniques of mind control and crowd domination"'' on Hitler. - Hitler and the Occult
:''"In documentaries portraying the Third Reich, Hitler is cast as a master magician; these documentaries typically include scenes in which Hitler is speaking at huge mass meetings. [...] Cuts mix Hitler screaming with regiments marching under the sign of the swastika. Instead of providing a translation of his verbal crescendos, the sequence is overlaid with a speaker talking about something different. All this combines to demonize Hitler as an evil wizard spellbinding an unwitting German people to become his zombified servants until they are liberated from the spell by the Allied victory after which, suddenly, there were no German Nazis left among the populace. How convenient it would be if this image were correct. National socialism could be defeated with garlic. Watchdog groups could be replaced with a few vampire killers, and resources being directed into antiracist community programs could be directed at something else."''[62]
Gardell obviously refers to documentaries such as History Channel's documentary Hitler and the Occult.[63][64] This documentary takes Joachim von Ribbentrop's infamous statement of his continued subservience to Hitler at the Nuremberg Trials[65] as evidence of Hitler's ''"occult power"''. After the author Dusty Sklar has pointed out that Hitler's suicide happened at the night of April 30/May 1, which is Walpurgis Night, the narrator continues: ''"With Hitler gone, it was as if a spell had been broken"''.
Another documentary quotes Walter Johannes Stein, who is otherwise known as an esotericist researching on the Holy Grail and source in Trevor Ravenscroft's ''The Spear of Destiny''.[66] Well-known religious figures like Pope Pius XII and Pope Benedict XVI claim that Hitler was possessed by devils; Pope Pius XII even performed an exorcism on Hitler at a distance, but failed every time[67][68].
For a demonic influence on Hitler, Hermann Rauschning's ''Hitler Speaks'' is brought forward as source,[69] although most modern scholars do not consider Rauschning reliable.[70] (As Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke summarises: "''recent scholarship has almost certainly proved that Rauschning's conversations were mostly invented''".)[71]
Similarly to Rauschning, August Kubizek, one of Hitler's closest friends since childhood, claims that Hitler--17 years old at the time--once spoke to him of "returning Germany to its former glory"; of this comment, August said: "It was as if another being spoke out of his body, and moved him as much as it did me."[72]
Various conspiracy theory homepages claim that the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley sought to contact Hitler during World War II.[73][74]
Indeed, if Hitler (and also Stalin) or the Nazis in general, were the agents of Satan, or'' 'black forces', 'invisible hierarchies', 'unknown superiors' ''or any other ''discarnate entity''[60], this would be a convenient explanation. Explaining Hitler's rise to power, the Second World War and possibly even The Holocaust by the means of the paranormal seems to serve the function of protecting the authors and readers alike from having to deal with this rationally.
:''"The truth, however, is that millions of ordinary German workers, farmers and businessmen supported the national socialist program. [...] They were people who probably considered themselves good citizens, which is far more frightening than had they merely been demons."''[76]
Pseudo-historic books on Nazi occultism
Goodrick-Clarke examines several ''"books written about Nazi occultism between 1960 and 1975."'' These ''"were typically sensational and under-researched. A complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation."''[77] Books debunked in Appendix E of ''The Occult Roots of Nazism'' are:
★ Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, 1960, ''Le Matin des Magiciens''[78]
★ Dietrich Bronder, 1964, ''Bevor Hitler kam''[79]
★ Trevor Ravenscroft, 1972, ''The Spear of Destiny''[80]
★ Michel-Jean Angbert, 1971, ''Les mysticques du soleil''[81]
★ J.H. Brennan, 1974, ''Occult Reich'' [79]
Other pseudo-historic books:
★ Wulf Schwarzwaller, 1988, ''The Unknown Hitler''[83]
★ Alan Baker, 2000, ''Invisible Eagle. The History of Nazi Occultism''[84]
These books, or any that refer to them as source, are not reliable literature.
Neopaganism
The use of runic symbology and the existence of an official Nazi government department for the study of the Germanic ancestral heritage (including paganism) have lent some credence to the idea that there was a pagan component to Nazism. As early as 1940, the occult scholar and folklorist Lewis Spence identified a neopagan undercurrent in Nazism,[85] for which he largely blamed Alfred Rosenberg, and which he equated with “satanism”. He further connected Nazism to the Illuminati.
Occultist or neopagan authors like Stephen McNallen, Stephen Flowers (translator of ''The Secret King'') and Michael Moynihan argue however that the Nazis' occult and runic pretensions amounted to a distortion and misrepresentation of the ancestral religion, Odinism.[86] Thus McNallen denounces ''"the lie that 'Hitler was a pagan' or that 'Asatruar trace their roots to Nazi Germany'"''.[87] In an article entitled "The Wiligut Saga" featured in ''The Secret King'', Adolf Schleipfer points out the differences between Wiligut's beliefs and those generally accepted within Odinism. Flowers, who is also a scholar of Germanic religious history, contends:
"The ''Ahnenerbe'' and the ''Totenkopf Orden'' made more practical use of Judeo-Christian and Manichean techniques and ideas in their magical traditions and organizational principles....One brief glance at a book on ancient Germanic and old Scandinavian culture and religion will show the massive degree to which the Nazis perverted the egalitarian systems of the ancients into a totalitarian scheme....just as the Christian evangelists would employ old pagan symbols (such as the cross) to convert the heathens and then gradually infuse those venerable symbols with a contrary significance, so too did the Nazis employ old Germanic symbolism (which was very popular at that time) and infuse it with non-Germanic concepts for manipulative purposes."[88]
This is not only the opinion of occultists. Heinz Höhne, an authority on the SS, observes that in practice the organisation was modelled on Ignatius Loyola's Jesuit order and that ''"Himmler's neo-pagan customs remained primarily a paper exercise"''.[89]
Notes
1. ''"The occult side of Nazism can be easily dismissed as a popular [post-45] fantasy."'' The Occult Roots of Nazism, Short article by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke at www.lapismagazine.org
2. ''"Semi-religious beliefs in a race of Aryan god-men, the needful extermination of inferiors, and a wonderful millennial future of German world-domination obsessed Hitler, Himmler and many other high-ranking Nazi leaders."'' Goodrick-Clarke, 1985, 203
3. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 177
4. W. Daim: ''Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab'', 1. Edition 1957, 2. rev. ed. 1985, 3.rev.ed.1994
5. Harald Strohm, ''Gnosis und Nationalsozialismus'', 1997, p.46-52
6. Harald Strohm, Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus, 1997, p. 57
7. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 165; Wilhelm Th. H. Wulff, 1968, ''Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz''
8. Bramwell 1985: 90
9. Aside from general books on the Third Reich, the following would be of use.
Levenda, Peter. "Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult" 2002.
Heinrichsdorff, Dr. Wolff. "Westfalia Landeszeitung" January 9, 1938.
Ravenscroft, Trevor. "The Spear of Destiny" 5th Edition, 1988.
10. Erich Halik (Claude Schweikhart), "Um Krone und Gipfel der Welt", ''Mensch und Schicksal'' 6, no. 10 (1 August 1952), pp 3-5.
11. Harald Strohm, ''Gnosis und Nationalsozialismus'', 1997, p. 89
12. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 178
13. See ''Himmler's Crusade'' by Christopher Hale.
14. Bramwell 1985: 90
15. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189
16. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189
17. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 189; Rahn to Weisthor, Letter dated 27 September 1935, Bundesarchiv, ''Koblenz'', Himmler Nachlass 19.
18. Strohm 1997, 99; Strohm refers to René Nelli, ''Die Katharer'', p.21
19. ''Hitler's Table Talk'', page 61, translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, 1953
20. ''Mein Kampf'', chapter 12
21. Bramwell 1985: 178.
22. ''Ibid.'', 175, 177. When organic farmers and their supporters — and even nudists — were arrested, Agriculture Minister Walther Darré protested to Himmler and Heydrich, "despite a letter from Bormann, warning Darré that Hitler was behind the arrests" (''ibid.'', 178).
23. Bramwell 1985: 42.
24. Bramwell 1985: 95.
25. Bramwell 1985: 126.
26. Bramwell 1985: 50.
27. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 160,161
28. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 161; Friedrich Bernhard Marby, 1975, ''Sonne und Planeten im Tierkreis'', p. 225
29. Odinist Library: Friedrich Bernhard Marby
30. Odinist Library: Siegfried Adolf Kummer
31. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 161; Weisthor to Himmler, letter dated 2 May 1934, Bundesarchiv, ''Koblenz'', Himmler Nachlass 19.
32. Merkur publishing: Franz Bardon Biography
33. Odinist Library: Rudolf John Gorsleben
34. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 159
35. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 182
36. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 192
37. mentioned shortly by Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 143, 165
38. Odinist Library: Peryt Shou
39. Bramwell 1985: 42.
40. Asatru Historical Time Line
41. The Seeker Journal: Who Are the Asatruar? (reprinted on Beliefnet.com)
42. Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 197
43. http://geocities.com/odinistlibrary/OLArticles/Articles/karlspiesberger.htm
44. http://geocities.com/odinistlibrary/OLArticles/Articles/karlspiesberger.htm
45. See her "Hitlerian Esotericism and the Tradition" (http://library.flawlesslogic.com/souvenirs_10a.htm)
46. See her "Hitlerism and Hindudom" (http://library.flawlesslogic.com/hindudom.htm). Originally published as "Hitlerism and the Hindu World" in ''The National Socialist'', no. 2 (Fall 1980): 18-20.
47. From the dedication to her book, ''The Lightning and the Sun''.
48. ''The Lightning and the Sun'', unabridged edition, p. 53 (http://www.savitridevi.org/lightning-03.html).
49. ''The Lightning and the Sun'', unabridged edition, p. 430 (http://www.savitridevi.org/lightning-16.html).
50. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 181.
51. Serrano finds supporting evidence in, for example, the Irish legends (recorded in the Book of Invasions) which tell of divine ancestors, Tuatha Dé Danann, arriving from the northern islands; and the Greek tradition according to which Apollo returned every 19 years to Hyperborea in the far north in order to rejuvenate his body and wisdom (Goodrick-Clarke, ''ibid.'').
52. Goodrick-Clarke, ''ibid.''
53. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 178
54. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 335 (Note 18 to Chapter 9)
55. Goodrick-Clarke 2002: 179
56. Godwin 1996, chh. 5-6, 10; Goodrick-Clarke 2002, especially chh. 6-9.
57. Neo-Nazi Hate Music: A Guide
58. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217
59. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217-225
60. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 218
61. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 217
62. Gardell 2003, 331
63. The History Channel online Store: The Unknown Hitler DVD Collection
64. Another critique of Hitler documentaries: Mark Schone - All Hitler, all the time
65. ''"Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'Do this!', I would still do it."'' - Joachim von Ribbentrop, 1946
66. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 222
67. The Daily Mail newspaper. Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil, says Vatican exorcist. Retrieved on August 2007
68. Vatican exorcist: Hitler Knew the Devil
69. Demonic Possession of World Leaders
70. Theodor Schieder (1972), ''Hermann Rauschnings "Gespräche mit Hitler" als Geschichtsquelle'' (Oppladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag) and Wolfgang Hänel (1984), ''Hermann Rauschnings "Gespräche mit Hitler": Eine Geschichtsfälschung'' (Ingolstadt, Germany: Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle), cit. in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2003), ''Black Sun'', p. 321.
71. Goodrick-Clarke (2003: 110). The best that can be said for Rauschning's claims may be Goodrick-Clarke's judgment that they "record...the authentic voice of Hitler by inspired guesswork and imagination" (''ibid.'').
72. “Hitler and the Holy Roman Empire”
73. Illiminati-News: Aleister Crowley
74. Occult Symbolism: As American as Baseball at Alex Jones' prisonplanet.com
75. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, 218
76. Gardell 2003, 331,332
77. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 225
78. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 219-220
79. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221
80. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221-223
81. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 224
82. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 221
83. If ''The Unknown Hitler'' is quoted correctly in The Vril Society, the Luminous Lodge and the Realization of the Great Work, then this book makes false allegations about Karl Haushofer and G. I. Gurdjieff.
84. Chapter 5 of the Free online version of ''Invisible Eagle'' is mainly based on Ravenscroft
85. Spence 1940.
86. http://www.runestone.org/RS32/books/index.htm, http://www.runestone.org/lep4.html, http://www.angelfire.com/wy/wyrd/odinvsnazi.html; "The Myth and Reality of Occultism in the Third Reich" lecture by S. E. Flowers, November 12th, 2006. http://www.woodharrow.com/lectureseries.html.
87. Review of ''The Secret King'' by Stephen A. McNallen, (http://www.runestone.org/RS32/books/index.htm).
88. Flowers 1984: 16.
89. Höhne 1969: 138, 143-5, 156-57.
Bibliography
Referred literature
★ Anna Bramwell. 1985. ''Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler's 'Green Party'. Abbotsbrook, England: The Kensal Press. ISBN 0-946041-33-4
★ Stephen E. Flowers (as Edred Thorsson). 1984. ''Futhark: A Handbook of Rune Magic''. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc. ISBN 0-87728-548-9
★ Mattias Gardell. 2003. ''Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3071-4
★ Joscelyn Godwin. 1996. ''Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival''. Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 0-932813-35-6
★ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. ''The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935''. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Reprint, 1994. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3060-4)
★ ———. 2002. ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity''. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3124-4. (Paperback, 2003. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4)
★ Heinz Höhne. 1969. ''The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS''. Martin Secker & Warburg.
★ Lewis Spence. 1940. ''Occult Causes of the Present War''. London: Rider & Co. (Reprint, 1997. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-7661-0051-0)
★ Harald Strohm. 1997. ''Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus''. . Suhrkamp.
Primary
★ The Secret King: Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's Lord of the Runes, Wiligut, Karl Maria, , , Dominion Press and Runa-Raven Press, 2001, ISBN 1-885972-21-0
★ ''The Voice of Destruction'' by Hermann Rauschning
★ ''Hitler's Secret Sciences: His Quest for the Hidden Knowledge of the Ancients'' by Nigel Pennick
★ ''Runic Astrology: Starcraft and Timekeeping in the Northern Tradition'' by Nigel Pennick
★ ''The SS Family Book: Procedure for Conducting Family Celebrations'', authored by Charles Barger & Ulric of England. Ulric Publishing. - SS Pagan rituals.
★ ''Reveal the Power of the Pendulum: Secrets of the Sidereal Pendulum, A Complete Survey of Pendulum Dowsing'', by Karl Spiesberger, (1962) ISBN 0-572-01419-8 (Der erfolgreiche Pendel-Praktiker) - 1962 [4]
★ ''Rune Might: History and Practices of the Early 20th Century German Rune Magicians'' by Stephen Flowers
★ ''Mythos Schwarze Sonne'' by Gerhard von Werfenstein
Secondary
★ ''Odinism and Christianity under the Third Reich'' by John Yeowell, published by the Odinic Rite in 1993.
★ ''Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult'' by Peter Levenda, (May 1, 2002, ISBN 0-8264-1409-5)
★ ''Nazis and the Occult'' by Dusty Sklar
★ ''Hitler and the Occult'' by Ken Anderson
★ ''Zodiac and Swastika: Astrologer to Himmler's Court'' by Wilhelm Wulff
★ ''The Occult Understanding of Hitler and the Nazis'' by Cyril Scott
★ ''Unknown Sources: National Socialism and the Occult'' by Hans Thomas Hakl & Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Translator)
★ ''Hitlers Visionäre. Die okkulten Wegbereiter des Dritten Reiches'' [Hitler's Visionaries. Nazism's Occult Roots] by Eduard Gugenberger [5]
★ ''Astrology and the Third Reich: A Historical Study of Astrological Beliefs in Western Europe Since 1700 and in Hitler's Germany, 1933-45'' by Ellic Howe
★ '' by Ellic Howe (1968)
★ ''Astrology and Psychological Warfare During World War II'' by Ellic Howe (1972)
★ ''Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race'' by Christopher Hale (Wiley 2003. ISBN 0-471-26292-7)
★ ''Heinrich Himmler's Camelot: Pictorial/documentary: The Wewelsburg Ideological Center of the SS, 1934-1945'' by Stephen Cook (Kressmann-Backmeyer, 1999)
★ ''Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo-Nazism'', Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 1998. ISBN 0-8147-3110-4
★ Spence, Lewis: ''Occult Causes of the Present War''; 1940, Rider and Co, London.
★ ''The Occult Establishment'' by James Webb
★ ''Storm Troopers of Satan'' by Michael FitzGerald
★ ''Das Ende des Hitlermythos'' by Josef Greiner
★ ''Himmler's Black Order 1923-45'' by Robin Lumsden
★ ''Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition into Tibet'' by Christopher Hale
★ ''Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman--Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine'' by Abir Taha
★ ''Reich Of The Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons & The Cold War Allied Legend'' by Joseph P. Farrell
★ ''Satan and Swastika: The Occult and the Nazi Party'' by Francis X. King
★ ''Himmler's Castle'' by Stuart Russell, J A Bowman (Editor)
★ ''Hitler and his God: The Background to the Hitler Phenomenon'' by Georges van Vrekhem, Rupa & Co. ISBN 81-291-0953-0
★ '' by Gerald Suster, ISBN 1-871438-82-9.
★ ''Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant'' by Mel Gordon
★ '' by Gerald Suster (1981)
★ ''Schwarze Sonne (book)'' by Rüdiger Sünner
See also
★
★ Heinrich Himmler's Great Chair
★ Nazi UFOs
★ Universal Order
★ Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs
★ Nazism and religion
★ Neofascism and religion
★ Positive Christianity
★ German Christians
★ Protestant Reich Church
★ Cosmotheism
★ The Nexus (journal)
★ National Socialist black metal
★ Nazi archaeology
★ Vienna Circle (esoteric)
★ Führerbunker
External links
★ Author and Odinist, Stephen A. McNallen, with the book 'The Secret King' by Stephen E. Flowers, Ph. D., and Michael Moynihan have turned the tables of belief relating to Nazi mystisism [6] but he also wrote the article Hitlerism and Odinism [7]
★ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke on Nazi Occultism
★ Hitler and the Occult
★ NARA Research Room: Captured German and Related Records on Microform in the National Archives: Captured German Records Filmed at Berlin (American Historical Association, 1960). Microfilm Publication T580. 1,002 rolls
★ Hitler and the Occult: Nazism, Reincarnation, and Rock Culture
★ Straight dope - was Hitler Christian?
★ Kevin Davidson, "Was Hitler a Christian?", extensive analysis of sources and misconceptions.
★ Adolf Hitler - Christian, Atheist, or Neither?, a response to claims that Hitler was Christian and to claims that he was atheist.
★ The controversy of the occult reich By John Roemer
★ The Unknown Hitler: Nazi Roots in the Occult
★ The Nazi Trapezoid - Nazis and the Occult by Tim Maroney
★ Odinism vs Nazism
★ Hitler, Nazis & the Occult by M. Sabeheddin (New Dawn International News Service)
★ White Blood, White Gods: An Assessment of Racialist Paganism in the United States A Senior Honors Thesis by Damon Berry in June 2006.
★ The Hidden Origins of Nazism
★ The Thule Society
★ Seed of Lamas and Nazis: The SS in Tibet -- 1938-39
★ Historic Results of Hitler's Thule Societies pursuit of the NWO
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