Nazism and The New Age, Hitler and the Occult
~Hannah Newman~
Creation is not finished. Man is clearly approaching a phase of metamorphosis. The earlier human species has already reached the stage of dying out.... All of the force of creation will be concentrated in a new species... [which] will surpass infinitely modern man.... Do you understand now the profound meaning of our National Socialist movement?
~Adolf Hitler, quoted by Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, translated in The Occult and the Third Reich, French scholars Michel Bertrand and Jean Angelini writing under the name of Jean-Michel Angebert
You'll think I'm crazy, but listen to me: Hitler will bring us to a catastrophe. But his ideas, once they have been transformed, will acquire a new strength.
~Josef Göbbels to his aide-de-camp, Prince Schaumburg-Lippe, quoted in Angebert
Nazism and the New Age
While most Jews are sure that Hitler represented the Christian community, his associates knew better. In this section we see not only that Hitler rejected Christianity, but that there is also ample research showing that Hitler founded far more than a political regime - the Third Reich was an occult-based religious movement to usher in the New Age.
The Nazi President of the Danzig Senate, Hermann Rauschning, who defected to the Allies and in 1939 wrote the book quoted above, recorded statements made by Hitler which are unintelligible except from a NA orientation. The fact that Rauschning included quotes which he admitted he did not understand only adds to the credibility of his testimony, for these often turn out to be occultic references of the kind meant to be understood by fellow-initiates alone.
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Readers interested in an authentic record of Hitler's personality and private views should look into the fascinating and wide-ranging memoir of Otto Wagener, published in August 1985 by Yale University Press under the title Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Wagener was the first Chief of Staff of the SA ("Stormtroopers") and Director of the Economic-Political Department of the National Socialist Party. He spent hundreds of hours with Hitler between 1929 and 1932, many of them alone. |
One of the best sources I have seen is the Angebert book quoted above. For documentation besides Angebert see also D. Sklar, The Nazis and the Occult; Joseph Carr, The Twisted Cross; Robert G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God - Adolf Hitler; Gerald Suster, Adolf Hitler, The Occult Messiah; Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny]. The strength of their work is ironically due to their positive attitude toward the occult: it appears they rather admire the "Ancient Wisdom" as expressed in Gnosticism, Catharsism and other esoteric movements, and they trace its threads through history with nostalgia as well as academic interest. Their far-ranging documentation allows them to conclusively show that Nazism was/is an initiation into the classical Gnostic "path of enlightenment", but unlike me the authors do not fault the "Ancient Wisdom" itself for the infamous results. On the contrary, "the prime lesson to be learned is that the practice of occultism and magic is fraught with danger and, therefore, not to be entrusted to just anyone."
This book is valuable for its uninhibited look at the many movements and occultists - including unlikely names like Plato, Nietzsche, Göthe and Pythagoras - who shared Hitler's dream of the Holy Gral and a new-age return of the ancient Hyperborean godmen with their "sacred sciences".
According to available sources (see above), Hitler first made contact in 1909 with other occultists, the first of these being Georg Lanz von Lieberfels and Guido von List, after coming across their occultic-racist magazine Ostara in Vienna. (Sklar). Besides his publishing activities, Lanz was known for starting a society called the "Order of New Templars" which imitated the traditions of occultic Grail lore. (Angebert) Lanz would later claim credit for influencing Nazi ideology - a claim which has some merit considering that one of his books was found in Hitler's personal library (now archived in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC). As for List, he founded the "Armanen", a Germanic pagan priestly order which apparently accepted Hitler into their brotherhood; evidence is in another occultic book from Hitler's library bearing an inscription from a comrade to Adolf, "my dear Armanen brother." (Sklar)
Books by List were found stamped with the insignia of the SS Ahmemerbe (the Nazi Ancestral Research division), indicating that his teachings were studied by SS candidates. (As an aside, Angebert note that the documents dealing with the Ahnenerbe itself, which they identify as "the Nazi Occult Bureau", are listed in the U.S. National Archives but for some reason are not available to researchers) Both Lanz and List were obsessed with blood purity, the Jewish threat, Grail legends and a "new world order". Both embraced the Swastika as a central symbol, borrowing it from Hindu mysticism. [see comments below]


The Nazi motto, "One Reich, One Folk, One Führer", reflected the standard 3-fold power circles of the occult. (See a good example in Bailey's Discipleship in the New Age II, where the Great Invocation is to be explained on three distinct levels.) The Reich was the psychic adepts of the Nazi Party, which would build the bridge between the Folk (the masses which unite into a cosmic Entity greater than its parts) and the Führer (the initiates in the elite leadership which unite with Hitler, the divine incarnation). The outer fringe, the Folk, are taught what they can handle: blind obedience, group service, a new history and identity. The Party elite such as the SS are taught something different: psychic knowledge, tapping into the "Vril Force", self-denial, brotherhood mission, medieval lore, fearlessness of death. The innermost circle was privy to the hard-core Gnostic teaching on the Grail, immortality and godhood.
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Jacolliot was an avid reader of occult literature, and was familiar with the work of Swedenborg, of the theosophist Jacob Böhme and of Louis Claude de Saint Martin. In the course of his professional career Jacolliot had been president of the tribunal at Chandernagor, India, and afterwards French consul in Calcutta. The works of Jacolliot have inspired several writers and occultists, among them Rudyard Kipling and H. P. Blavatsky. Among Jacolliot's many books are: La Bible dans l'Inde ou la Vie de Iezeus Christna (1859); Les Fils de Dieu (1873); Christna et le Christ (1874); Les Traditions indo-européennes (1876); La Genèse de l'humanité (1879); and L'Olympe brahmanique (1881). The main theme in his books is that modern civilizations were originated from a single, primordial nucleus, which was the same for India, western Asia, and Europe. The Semitic and indo-European races were not different at the beginning, but the Semitic races degenerated in the process, while the Aryans remained pure. A code of law rules civilized people, the Code of Manu, name of the divine ruler in India, while in Egypt he was called Menes, Mosses among the Hebrews, and Minos in Crete. According to Jacolliot, Jesus Christ is but a recent reconstruction of an old indo-aryan tradition, that of Iezeus-Christna. Jesus of Nazareth is only a different characterization of the same personage. North of Europe a magic civilization has existed for millennia and its name is Thule. The superior beings of Thule live in huge caverns in the entrails of the earth. They possess an extraordinary source of magic energy: the Vril. The theme of the Vril is exalted in most of Jacolliot's writings. Vril is an energy latent in man, but he utilizes only a fraction of it. It is the source of divinity, the source of the coming superman. He who discovers it and masters its use acquires great powers. He can become a master of men. In many of his works, particularly in Les Fils de Dieu, and in Les Traditions indo-européenes, Jacolliot affirms that he discovered the existence of Vril among an Indian sect: the Jains, still active in the regions of Mysore and Gujerat, and counting millions of adepts. The discovery of Vril by Jacolliot created extraordinary interest among European intellectuals, avid of knowledge about traditional oriental wisdom. Inspired by his writings a group of Rosicrucians from Berlin founded, by the end of the 19th century, the Vril Society to divulge the writings of the French master. Jacolliot's ideas were introduced in England by S. L. Matthews at the Golden Dawn Society, of which he was the Great Master.
Helena Blavatski, the foundress of the Theosophical Society, describes this force as an aether stream that in 1872 could be transformed into a physical force only by the Englishman John W. Keely, an ‘initiate of Nature’, through a mechanical device, an ability that apparently had been rescinded by the spirit side due to the threatened abuse of it on Earth. Rudolf Steiner, the initiator of the Anthroposophical Movement, at the beginning of the 20th century describes this Vril power as ‘aether of life’ and named its abuse as the cause of the destruction of Atlantis. In his mystery plays Rudolf Steiner recalls the fate of John W. Keely in the figure of Dr. Strader. In the last scene of the last play Dr. Strader becomes the fulcrum for the New Age. To whit: Only when the laboratory table becomes the altar, when from the fruits of the materialistically dominated ‘natural science’ evolves a moral ‘Science for Nature’, the New Age may unfold. It is said that in the 1920s the Austrian Karl Schapeller had conducted successful experiments with Vril that he called “fiery aether“, but had remained without success due to the danger of economical misuse. – This Vril Technology apparently was taken over and further developed in secret up to operability by the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft ‘Das kommende Deutschland’ (The Reich’s Study Group ‘The Coming Germany’) that some think is the legendary Vril-Gesellschaft (Vril Society).
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Many neo-Nazi groups continue to pursue these topics with devotion. But under it all was the invisible presence of "Unknown Superiors" (Angeberts, quoting Rudolf Olden, Hitler the Pawn, written 1936. Rauschning used the same term) who taught Hitler himself and who were assumed by his associates to endow him with his uncanny hypnotic power.
Concerning Hitler's relationship with these Unknowns, there is not much known besides his reference to a guiding voice of "Providence". However, we do have a vivid account related by an unnamed associate of Hitler to Rauschning (both were not sure what to make of it), in which Hitler wakes up in the middle of the night in total panic at some unseen visitation: "Hitler was standing there in his bedroom, stumbling about, looking around him with a distraught look. He was muttering: 'It's him! It's him! He's here!' His lips had turned blue. He was dripping with sweat. Suddenly he uttered some numbers which made no sense, then some words, then bits of sentences. It was frightening. He used terms which were strung together in the strangest way and which were absolutely weird. Then, he again became silent, although his lips continued to move. He was given a massage and something to drink. Then all of a sudden, he screamed: 'There! Over there! In the corner! Who is it?' He was jumping up and down, and he was howling." (Rauschning) [Whatever the reader may conclude about the Unknown Superiors, whether a figment of a sick mind or real entities, please remember that both Nazi cosmology and NA religion view(ed) them as real and independent beings - and also as extensions of one's own untapped divinity. No provision is made in either system for the possibility of ascended beings who first seduce their channels and then torment them. Yet stories similar to the above are not uncommon in NA circles. From those who leave the New Age after such an experience, the verdict is uniform: the Guides are clever deceivers with evil motives. For those who stay, the solution is to blame oneself for the "bad trip" and blindly dive in deeper; this was apparently Hitler's choice.]
Hitler's personal devotion to occult principles was proven ultimately by his self-inflicted death. His choice of April 30 for his suicide may well have been meant as a sacrifice; it was the eve of Beltane (known in Germany as Walpurgisnacht), identified on popular Wiccan websites as a Druid feast in honor of the deity Bel. In witchcraft, this "power-point" day is regarded as a "great Sabbath" equal in potency to Halloween. According to Wiccans, Bel is derived from the Canaanite Baal; but Helena Blavatsky goes farther in The Secret Doctrine (Vol.2), reconstructing an astrological trinity of Bel/Baal (sun-god, father), Christos (Mercury, son) and Lucifer (Venus, holy spirit). ore on the Lucifer connection in "Gods of the New Age"] As for Hitler's suicide itself, this was not a cowardly act from an occultist viewpoint, but rather an honourable practice known among the Druids, as well as among the Cathari "Perfects", those medieval guardians of the Grail, who called it the rite of "Endura". A curious requirement of the "Endura" was that it was always to be done by pairs of intimate friends, a detail known by the Nazis (Angebert) which makes sense of Hitler's joint suicide with his new wife Eva Braun. His associates Karl Haushofer and Göbbels also killed themselves in ceremonial fashion along with their wives. (Angebert)
Hitler and Christianity
Not only did Hitler regard Christianity as a defective, failed enterprise, he saw himself as replacing both its God and its Christ. At one of the huge Nuremberg rallies hung a gigantic poster of himself, with the caption stolen from the Christian gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." German youth were indoctrinated from infancy to pray to Hitler, who they were taught was sent from heaven to protect them. (Sklar) Nazi-approved sermons in German churches proclaimed, "Adolf Hitler is the voice of Jesus Christ." And lest some readers [especially Jews] should conclude from this that Nazi Christians viewed Hitler as the mouthpiece of the New Testament Jesus, the statement is clarified to leave no doubt:
If Jehovah has lost all meaning for us Germans, the same must be said of Jesus Christ, his son.... He [Jesus] certainly lacks those characteristics which he would require to be a true German. Indeed, he is as disappointing, if we read the record carefully, as is his father [the G-d of Israel according to Christian tradition].
~What the Christian Does Not Know About Christianity, quoted by Sklar
In Hitler's words, Christianity "only added the seeds of decadence such as forgiveness, self=abnegation, weakness, false humility and the very denial of the evolutionary laws of survival of the fittest [social Darwinism]," and would obviously be a handicap to the new species which he was personally commissioned by the "masters" to see properly birthed and nurtured. But Hitler perceptively placed the ultimate blame where it is due:
Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision.... There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense. The new man would be the antithesis of the Jew.
Nietzsche likewise considered the Christian Bible nearly worthless because of its Jewish origin:
In Christianity, seen as the art of sacred lying, we're back with Judaism.... The Christian is but a Jew of more liberal persuasion.
~Antichrist
Compare with the NA view of how Judaism "defiled" Christianity.
In this context, antisemitism was not a starting point for the inner Nazi society as it was for the masses; Jew-hatred was the inevitable result of absorbing these bedrock occult teachings.
Hitler and the Mufti
And what about Islam, the third monotheistic religion? While Hitler ranted against Christianity and Judaism, expressing "a violent feeling of anger at the idea that some Germans were able to be taken in by theological doctrines devoid of any depth," he contrasted these hated teachings with "those of Confucius, of Buddha and of Mohammed" which provided spiritual "sustenance". (Angeberts) In this context, Hitler's friendship with Haj Amin al Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem - which included asylum in 1941, the honorary rank of SS Major and an acceptable racial "genealogy" - can be understood as more a sign of respect than political expedience. There were even cases of Nazis relocating to Arab countries and converting to Islam. In this opinion, Hitler had the backing of the Thule Society, whose founder Sebottendorf praised Islam for having a "vitality greater than that of Christianity" which flowed "from a torrent which nourished everything" - that same "thread of lost knowledge" which was the goal of the Nazi quest. (Angeberts) [This raises other ideas for why Hitler's Mein Kampf is so popular among some Moslems; besides the expected political admiration for brute force, there may also be a consensus of spiritual worldviews.]

The Nazi Mentality - Group Mind
The Nazi goal was group-think, or the eradication of private conviction and dissent. As stated above, the "burden" of free choice and decision-making could be entrusted only to the few with the enlightenment and courage to implement the new age without flinching. For the masses, it was enough that they submit to the leadership, which would weld them into one entity through a common psychic experience. [Today this would be called a guided group "light experience", practiced by most NA channelers on their followers.
[Eerily, this group-think is the stated goal and the practical outcome of the UN-sponsored World Core Curriculum, as well as the American OBE (Outcome Based Education) which incorporates the WCC into US public schools. Alice Bailey disciple Robert Muller, author of the WCC, presents planetary group-think as the proper goal for all enlightened individuals. The first principle of the WCC Manual clearly states that "the group idea, group good and group understanding" are to "replace all limited, self-centred objectives, leading to group consciousness". The UN Global Governance Commission goes farther, branding "some assertions of particular identities" as nothing less than "intolerance", a cardinal sin in the New Age. (See the massive report by the Commission on Global Governance, "Our Global Neighbourhood", and search for the "Core Value" of "mutual respect".) Obviously, someone at the top will have to bear the "burden" of dictating the parameters for group-think. Yet the question of who will wield this immense power over the rest of mankind, and whether they might abuse it, is never brought up - seemingly not worth troubling ourselves about. The New Age global forum known as "Planetary Initiative for the World We Choose" is an example of those who have donned the mantle of choice for the group, as is the "State of the World Forum", but as usual the question is never answered how the "We" who "choose" were themselves chosen.]
Hitler's contention that free will is a burden to the masses was confirmed by the popular reaction. Said one young Nazi to the press in the glory days of the Reich: "We Germans are so happy - we are free of freedom." (Sklar) For many, it was a relief not to be saddled with personal convictions and responsibility for what was happening, as a perceptive professor reflected after the war: "I suppose we were grateful. Who wants to think?" (see They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer)
On the other hand, cultivation of personal will and initiative is a noble duty incumbent on the high-level occult initiate destined to lead the pliant, group-conscious new humanity. Hitler was obsessed with the potential of the human will. So was Helena Blavatsky: "...that mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yogi training, remains dormant in 999.999 men out of a million." (Sklar) It was likely this fascination which lay behind the title of that definitive Nazi propaganda piece in 1934, The Triumph of the Will. [The reader will remember that "Will" is not a mere human effort but is deified in NA as an attribute of Sanat Kumara.] A German youth interviewed by a French writer in 1937 explained the Nazi triumph of will not in militaristic but in gnostic terms: "I am studying the conception of the world.... We refuse to think and to be; we refuse to stand by helplessly under the determinism of the so-called laws of matter. What we want is inside, an inner structure.... We shall not let anyone stop us from building before God and before men that which must be built!" The writer then remarked on the similarity of Nazi sentiment to the (as he thought) extinct French Templar philosophy. (Alphonse de Chateaubriant, quoted in Angeberts)
New Age Leaders Commenting on the Nazi Experiment
And what is the opinion in the NA community to this infamous historical figure who so closely resembles them? Ambiguous, to say the least. When pressed to comment publicly about Nazism, most will say the politically correct thing and applaud the fact that "the monster" Hitler failed. [It takes a bit of sleuthing to find out what they say to one another.]
New Age references to Hitler are sometimes veiled in positive generalities. Examples are Alice's husband Foster Bailey, and David Spangler, a Findhorn leader (a NA community in Scotland where the goat-god Pan is worshiped). F. Bailey tactfully does not name Hitler but describes a disciple who tried to put the Plan of the New Age gods into action "on a regional scale in the Rhine River valley" (Running God's Plan). Spangler, dedicated to "anchor the Plan on earth" by establishing other NA communities like Findhorn, distances the New Age Aryans from Nazi Aryans only in that the "blond, blue-eyed Germanic race which Hitler spoke of" was unnecessarily narrow - the Aryans "are actually a more wide-ranging and ancient super-race". (quoted by Constance Cumbey, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow) As an avowed disciple of Bailey and Blavatsky, he can be assumed to hold the same views about need to safeguard the "purity" of the Aryan race.
Then there is the schizoid response to Hitler - condemning his brutality while justifying his philosophical premises. This describes Alice Bailey (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy II), who called Nazism a "peculiarly distorted blend of Fascism and Communism", yet included it in "the great world ideologies" birthed by the "Shamballa force" (a flow of energy from the Hierarchy directed at the world). Says Alice, "The objective [of the Hierarchy] was to stimulate the free will of the masses; the result upon them has been relatively good." And what prompted the "masters" to trigger these beneficial ideologies, including Nazism? "It was the acuteness of the situation and the wide extent of the cleavage." Which cleavage is that? "The cleavage between the two groups... the forces of materialism and... the energy of light." The forces of materialism are known to Bailey as the "Dark Forces", which "work to preserve that which is ancient and material... and feed... separateness." The Jews' insistence on retaining their chosen-people identity "made it possible for the forces of separativeness and hate to use the Jewish race"; therefore, the Jews are the tools of the Dark Forces. (Externalisation II) Here it took a bit of effort to piece the picture together, but later Bailey is more outspoken: "Hitler, who lifted a distressed people upon his shoulders; Lenin, the idealist; Stalin and Franco are all expressions of the Shamballa force and of certain little-understood energies.... We call these people dictators, demagogues.... But all these leaders are... being used to engineer great and needed changes and to alter the face of civilisation." (Externalisation II) So then, according to this channeler whose teaching is energetically promoted by the UN, Hitler was empowered by the Hierarchy to continue the ancient and honorable War against Darkness, personified by the Jews -- precisely what Hitler himself claimed.
It is no wonder, then, to find New Age factions which openly applaud the Third Reich. Savitri Devi Mukherjee, a French convert to Hinduism who became an influential mystical leader in the West, firmly believed that Hitler was an "avatar" (divine manifestation), a being in natural harmony with the Hindu tradition. She considered him the embodiment of twin mystical light sources, "the sun and the lightning." [See Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke] Devi's book about her human idol (The Lightning and the Sun) bears the dedication: "To the god-like Individual of our times; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times; both Sun and Lightning: ADOLF HITLER, as a tribute of unfailing love and loyalty, for ever and ever." [capitals in original. It is likely that the tribute, "the Man against Time", referred to Hitler's reversal of the Swastika's direction from the Hindu orientation which symbolized harmonic movement with the sun, to the opposite direction, that is, against time.] Devi, now deceased, still has a following in India, known as the "Hindutva" movement.
Naturally, Devi's book is heavily promoted by neo-Nazis such as Canadian Ernst Zündel, as are her tapes, "for serious students of the occult". Zündel himself follows the time-honoured Nazi obsession with occult and psychic phenomena, particularly UFOs. Another major neo-Nazi centre in New Zealand offers a book catalogue which contains as many titles on the occult as on politics - dealing with runes, Atlantis, Norse religion, magicians, and Hitler-as-god.
The best personal example of neo-Nazi ideology merged with NA thought is David Icke, former BBC commentator turned Green Party activist and "son of the godhead" guru, whose seminars are crowded with NAers and neo-Nazis alike. Likewise the British magazine Rainbow Ark and the Australian periodical Nexus, which Icke recommends to his followers. (For a good overview of Icke, see "From Green Messiah to New Age Nazi", Left Green Perspectives, Jan. 1996.) [Note the quotes by Icke, many of which are almost verbatim Bailey teachings.] Also worthy of mention is the "New Acropolis", ostensibly a NA philosophy club to outsiders, but a Fascist group known by insiders to be imitating the Third Reich.
Reasons for Hitler's failure to usher in the new humanity are given by various NA sources: he was premature; he did not coordinate with the "Hierarchy" but tried to build a rival power base [see below for confirmation]; his vision for mankind wasn't global enough; he was blocked by the "old order". If any of Hitler's NA critics detected any weakness in him toward the Christianity which they are working to eliminate, they have yet to mention it.
[Here it's appropriate to speculate why prominent New Agers in recent decades have refused to follow the Baileys (and by implication the spirit guide "DK") in rationalizing the Nazi war on the Jews. On the contrary, many are hard at work to perpetuate the memory of Nazi brutality in the Holocaust, even emphasizing their savage treatment of the Jews. There are two possible explanations: (1) The high-profile NAers are not necessarily high-ranking NAers, particularly in the entertainment industry - they may be uninformed about the NA doctrines of human evolution and Jewish karma, and honestly believe that New Age thought could never sanction Nazi anti-Semitism. (2) High-ranking NAers, who know the true roots of Nazism, are promoting the evil of the Nazi-brand Final Solution in order to more effectively contrast the benevolence of their own Solution - something like the "good cop / bad cop" strategy where two interrogators pretend to be on opposite sides to manipulate the suspect into trusting the "good guy" to protect him from the "bad guy". Or call it reverse camouflage: next to pitch black, grey can look fairly white.]
The "Missing" Link: The Thule Society
The same year Hitler had his New Age revelation, Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an avid fan of Helena Blavatsky, founded the "Thule Society", a spiritist group which borrowed heavily from HPB's The Secret Doctrine. Thule in occultic, Greek and Viking lore was the capital of an ancient ice-island called Hyperborea (known in Hindu legend as the "White Isle"), inhabited by superhumans with psychic powers who eventually founded the Aryan race. After an unexplained disaster, survivors of Hyperborea took refuge first in the "West" [meaning west of India, perhaps Babylon?], then in the Gobi desert, and later in Tibet; their spirit mentors retreated to a hidden spiritual center called "Asgard" (variously located in space or in a subterranean city). [Fans of the TV series "Stargate" will recognize this as the name of the benevolent alien race which offers hidden knowledge to the SG-1 team in times of need.] In Scandinavian myth, Asgard was the abode of the gods, connected with earth by a rainbow bridge. (Angebert) These beings, headed by one known in Hindu/Buddhist tradition as "the Lama of lamas" or "King of the world", can only be contacted on the spiritual plane. The symbol of this "Master" is the swastika, "symbol of the central power of the gem of Heaven". (Angeberts, p.96, quoting J. Marques-Riviere, In the Shadow of the Tibetan Monastaries) [Note the similarity to the NA history of the "White Lodge" retiring to "Shamballa". I would also guess that the "gem of Heaven" is a symbolic reference to Lucifer's stone, or the Grail.] The Thule mythology was apparently embraced long before the Thulists by Nietzsche, who began his final work, Antichrist, with the words: "Let us see ourselves for what we are. We are Hyperboreans." (Angebert)
The goal of Thule members was to break the barrier of the "small self" - consisting of physical reality and (upon promotion to their inner circle) moral constraints - so as to merge with the "divine self" in the unseen spirit realm. (Sklar) That in turn allowed the initiate to reach the "universal energy fields" (Carr) which would "awaken the sleeping powers within" and access superhuman psychic abilities which had once belonged to the proud Aryan race. Attainment to this new level would lead to their thousand-year mastery over the earth. Thulist powers were embodied in pagan deities, specifically Woden/Woton; their symbols were the swastika (an ancient "rune" symbolizing the sun, the moving wheel of life and the process of transmutation) and the red eagle (which Sebottendorf defined as the symbol of the death-to-life experience - Sklar). Thule discipline required blind, unquestioning obedience to the enlightened master in whatever he may ask, which would create conditions for personal transformation. (Sklar) Sebottendorf called this the "Führerprinzip" ("the Führer principle"), and he concocted a formal response by which to salute such a god-man: "Sieg, Heil!" ("Glory, Hail!") (Sklar) Thule initiates fervently awaited someone worthy of that title to whom they could submit. When Hitler joined the Society, Thule member Dietrich Eckart prophesied that the day had come; he began introducing him in Munich occult circles as "the long-awaited saviour". To Alfred Rosenberg he said: "I believe in Hitler; above him there hovers a star." (Sklar) Eckart was following his own mission revealed to him in a séance: that when "Lord Maitreya" [none other!] would soon make his appearance as a German messiah to "lead the Aryan race to final victory over the Jews", he, Eckart, was charged with the responsibility of "nurturing" him. (Carr)
The Thule Society considered the Jew ("Juda") their cosmic enemy. As early as 1920, Sebottendorf advocated a "Final Goal" of "cleaning out the Jews once and for all", using "the most ruthless measures, including Sammellager [concentration camps] and sweeping out the Jewish vermin with an iron broom." (Sklar) [Readers will recognize the same terms made infamous by later Nazi propaganda.]
Thule did not stop with a war of words, however. Society members were implicated in the assassination of then-President of Bavaria, a Jew named Kurt Eisner. When police arrived to arrest suspects, Sebottendorf threatened to ignite an anti-Jewish pogrom. Whether due to expedience or to Thule's wealthy backers, law-enforcers backed down. (Sklar) One year later (1919), the Thule Society established a political arm, the NSDAP, an acronym for the rather cumbersome name later shortened to the "Nazi" party. Sebottendorf wanted the new party run by his "Führer principle", but he was overruled in favor of elected leaders. Shortly thereafter, Thule absorbed several beleaguered occult groups such as the Germanen Orden. Interestingly, Sebottendorf attacked certain kindred groups, specifically Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophists and the Freemasons - denouncing the former as a corrupted version of the truth, and the latter as Jew-ridden. [Since there was little actual difference in doctrine, the likely motive was either to discredit Thule's closest occult competitors, or to eliminate those considered too "weak", that is, too compassionate to carry out the necessary purge for the new humanity. Hitler later adopted the same strategy - see below.] Thule also joined forces with the "Free Corp", a paramilitary group comprised of demobilized soldiers who knew no other life. When the Thule Society finally disbanded, the NSDAP and Free Corp (by now known as the Storm Troopers) continued, marching under the Thule sign of the swastika.
Why would Nazis attack fellow-occultists?
According to research (see Adolf Hitler, The Occult Messiah, Gerald Suster), Hitler was devoted to Theosophy and kept a copy of Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine by his bedside. Yet from the 1920s, his thugs ruthlessly attacked and killed adherents of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasons and others who shared the same occult doctrines. He banned their groups from the Third Reich, and publicly denounced occultists Rudolf Steiner and Aleister Crowley. He ignored astrologers, séance mediums, fortune tellers and similar groups, until 1942 when they also were banned. This has led historians to assume that Hitler was simply anti-occult, a conclusion that fails to explain all the evidence to the contrary.
The Nazi relationship to the Thule Society in particular begs for an explanation. By 1933, when occultist Sebottendorf sought to revive Thule, he found himself roundly rejected by the Nazi party he had nurtured. He retaliated by writing a book, Bevor Hitler Kam (Before Hitler Came), claiming credit for Thule's role in launching Hitler into leadership. The book was apparently popular and sold well, until the Nazis confiscated all available copies and sent the author into enforced retirement. Thus Nazi origins in the occultic Thule Society, as well as Nazi plagiarism of many Theosophical and Thule terms, were buried; to this day they remain relatively unknown to many students of the Holocaust.
One explanation is camouflage. Hitler seemed determined to keep his occult roots hidden from the general public; the groups and individuals he targeted for early elimination were those who knew of those roots and who might expose him (thereby challenging his control of the "Plan"). This would explain why the Nazis burned every available copy of Sebottendorf's book which proclaimed those roots, and why Rudolf Hess's defection to the West in 1941 prompted Hitler to outlaw all remaining occultists in the Third Reich, such as astrologers, mediums and even parlour magicians. (Carr)
Such actions can be also be understood as attempts to eliminate competition. Hitler recognized occultic power in each of the banned groups which could compete with his own occult enterprise, and eliminated them from the field. He considered Steiner a particular threat, making him the first target. [According to Angebert, Steiner was an avowed practitioner of "white magic" who viewed Hitler as a tool of "black magic" . Since they both believed they manipulated the same Force, this equality would have suggested to Steiner the possibility of thwarting Hitler, a direct threat which Hitler in turn would have recognized.] This would make sense of the fact that he confiscated (rather than burned) all the books of the outlawed groups, and is the only explanation for his treatment of the Thule founder to whom he owed so much. Heinrich Himmler confirmed this when he defended the official Nazi policy banning astrology:
We cannot permit any astrologers to follow their calling except those who are working for us.
~SS astrologer William Wulff, Zodiac and Swastika, quoted by Sklar
While Himmler fell back on the traditional esoteric rationale, "It is not for the broad masses", who would misinterpret the occult secrets, the fact that recognized adepts were also disenfranchised betrays more of an attempt to clear the field.
Hitler did make one exception, however; his 1942 law banning secret societies and confiscating their assets specifically exempted the "old Prussian" Freemason lodges, otherwise known as the Bavarian Illuminati. This group followed the Nazi racial purity ideal far more closely than the "humanitarian Freemasonry" (as Angebert distinguishes the different streams), and in fact the Bavarian sect shared Hitler's disdain for the other branches of Freemasons, not to mention for the Jews as well. [This would imply another reason why Steiner and the Freemasons, as "humanitarian" strains of occultism, were ruthlessly attacked by both Thulists and Nazis: they were considered too compassionate to do what was needed to usher in the New Age.]
Gnosticism had another, lesser-known influence on Nazi religion, which also appears in New Age thought: the Jewish God (as they mispronounce it, "Jehovah") is not the Most High and only God, but a "demiurge" pretending to be such. Blavatsky agreed that the Gnostics "were right in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of lower, material and not very holy denizens of the invisible world." (quoted in Sklar) (For more evidence on the Gnostic roots of New Age, see Stephan Hoeller's The Hermetic-Gnostic Roots of Theosophy, sold on tape by the Theological Society.) In Blavatsky's understanding, "only angels of a low hierarchy" could have created "those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our globe." [Not shy about contradicting herself, Blavatsky also identified the Jewish God as Cain, son of Eve by Satan.] The "moral wretchedness" referred to is Jewish enjoyment of everyday life (everything from meals to sex) and their continual thanksgiving for every material blessing. This attitude was feared and hated by the Gnostics, who considered the body and the physical world a prison which the mind must reject and transcend through meditation and magical rites, and escape to the "real" or spiritual world. The "spiritual wretchedness" is the Jewish "Old Testament", rejected by Gnostics as evil, which teaches that the Creator of heaven and earth is the Most High God. Since materialism is evil, and "Jehovah" created the physical world, He must be evil as well: not merely a usurper of the title "God", but in fact Satan. [For more details, see the "Gods" section.] The Jews who persist in spreading their teachings (in their Bible) are the tools of Satan, and their influence in the world is deadly to human souls. Hitler reiterated this Gnostic doctrine: "The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god. He must have come from another root of the human race." (Sklar) [compare with Bailey's similar assessment] Hitler was also known for his severely simple lifestyle, voluntarily shunning material pleasures, physical appetites and a meat diet - all classic Gnostic elements of "purification from the world".
The NA cosmology placing the Jews in alliance with cosmic Evil neatly reinforced the Nazi pursuit of racial purity: not only was the Aryan race threatened with defilement on a genetic level, but on a spiritual level as well. Both NA and Nazism clearly borrowed from the Zoroastrian teaching (originating in Persia in the 6th c. BCE and experiencing a comeback through NA endorsement) and the Cathari, both of whom taught that Moses was an evil magician who received his law from "the god of Darkness", and that this "Devil caused the Deluge". (Angebert) The Gnostic themes of the Grail quest and the cosmic struggle between Light and Darkness were portrayed in Richard Wagner's Parsifal, a favorite opera of Hitler. Being an occult initiate, Hitler was aware of the Gnostic message behind "the absurd externals of the story [Parsifal], with its Christian embroidery... [the real message was] pure, noble blood, in [whose] protection and glorification the brotherhood of the initiated have come together." (Sklar) Gnosticism also clarifies some otherwise unintelligible proclamations, like those by Nazi apologist Alfred Rosenberg: "The earth-centred Jew lacks a soul"; and "[The continuing existence of the Jew] would lead to a void, to the destruction not only of the illusory earthly world but also of the truly existent, the spiritual." These statements, and also his insistence that "The denial of the world needs... to grow so that it will acquire a lasting predominance over affirmation of the world," (Sklar) only makes sense to a Gnostic. [The Theosophy studied by Rosenberg as a Thulist was his likely source - see similar statements.]
Other New-Age Threads Preserved in Nazism
Reichs Gnosticism had another, lesser-known influence on Nazi religion, which also appears in New Age thought: the Jewish God (as they mispronounce it, "Jehovah") is not the Most High and only God, but a "demiurge" pretending to be such. Blavatsky agreed that the Gnostics "were right in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of lower, material and not very holy denizens of the invisible world." (quoted in Sklar) (For more evidence on the gnostic roots of New Age, see Stephan Hoeller's The Hermetic-Gnostic Roots of Theosophy, sold on tape by the Theological Society.) In Blavatsky's understanding, "only angels of a low hierarchy" could have created "those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our globe." [Not shy about contradicting herself, Blavatsky also identified the Jewish God as Cain, son of Eve by Satan.] The "moral wretchedness" referred to is Jewish enjoyment of everyday life (everything from meals to sex) and their continual thanksgiving for every material blessing. This attitude was feared and hated by the gnostics, who considered the body and the physical world a prison which the mind must reject and transcend through meditation and magical rites, and escape to the "real" or spiritual world. The "spiritual wretchedness" is the Jewish "Old Testament", rejected by gnostics as evil, which teaches that the Creator of heaven and earth is the Most High God. Since materialism is evil, and "Jehovah" created the physical world, He must be evil as well: not merely a usurper of the title "God", but in fact Satan. The Jews who persist in spreading their teachings (in their Bible) are the tools of Satan, and their influence in the world is deadly to human souls. Hitler reiterated this gnostic doctrine: "The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god. He must have come from another root of the human race." (Sklar) [compare with Bailey's similar assessment] Hitler was also known for his severely simple lifestyle, voluntarily shunning material pleasures, physical appetites and a meat diet - all classic Gnostic elements of "purification from the world".
The NA cosmology placing the Jews in alliance with cosmic Evil neatly reinforced the Nazi pursuit of racial purity: not only was the Aryan race threatened with defilement on a genetic level, but on a spiritual level as well. Both NA and Nazism clearly borrowed from the Zoroastrian teaching (originating in Persia in the 6th c. BCE and experiencing a comeback through NA endorsement) and the Cathari, both of whom taught that Moses was an evil magician who received his law from "the god of Darkness", and that this "Devil caused the Deluge". (Angebert) The gnostic themes of the Grail quest and the cosmic struggle between Light and Darkness were portrayed in Richard Wagner's Parsifal, a favorite opera of Hitler. Being an occult initiate, Hitler was aware of the gnostic message behind "the absurd externals of the story [Parsifal], with its Christian embroidery... [the real message was] pure, noble blood, in [whose] protection and glorification the brotherhood of the initiated have come together." (Sklar) Gnosticism also clarifies some otherwise unintelligible proclamations, like those by Nazi apologist Alfred Rosenberg: "The earth-centered Jew lacks a soul"; and "[The continuing existence of the Jew] would lead to a void, to the destruction not only of the illusory earthly world but also of the truly existent, the spiritual." These statements, and also his insistence that "The denial of the world needs... to grow so that it will acquire a lasting predominance over affirmation of the world," (Sklar) only makes sense to a Gnostic. [The Theosophy studied by Rosenberg as a Thulist was his likely source - see similar statements.]
Other New-Age Threads Preserved in Nazism
Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler first entered the Thule Society orbit as a fighter in the Free Corp, by which time he was already a devoted occultist. He was especially fascinated with reincarnation and karma (individual and racial); he became convinced that he was the reincarnation of King Heinrich I the Fowler (10th c), who spoke to him in his sleep. (Sklar) He was similarly obsessed with legends of the medieval order of Teutonic knights (a secret brotherhood which required Germanic racial purity for eight generations), the meaning of ancient Nordic runes, the Hindu/Buddhist idea of sacrificial detachment from the consequences of daily life, and the precepts of the Kautilya Arthasastra, a cynical, amoral Hindu philosophy utilizing deceit. (Sklar) When he was given command of the SS, he moulded his Black Guards after a combination of all these. He required his officers to read the mystical research of SS Colonel and Ahnenerbe member Otto Rahn: Crusade Against the Grail (1933) and Lucifer's Court in Europe (1936). [Both are available in German and French only, far as I know.] Himmler's nickname, the "Black Jesuit", stems from his slavish imitation of the (equally secretive) brotherhood of Jesuit priests, whose literature he avidly studied (Sklar citing Nuremberg Trials witness Walter Schellenberg). He made use of the time-honoured Jesuit practice of "spiritual Exercises" - intensive visualization to create personal and group reality. (Sklar) [The explanation that visualization is not a powerful, time-honoured occult manipulation of others, but merely a new psychological self-help exercise, is promoted only to deceive the few who still have scruples against occult practices.]
Himmler, like his Thule fellows and like most NAers today, denied the existence of objective reality. Not surprisingly, he went on to advocate "freeing" science to pursue research unhampered by notions of provable truth - especially science dealing with ancient origins. [Leading evolutionists are only recently beginning to admit that their research is similarly "free" of objectivity, even proposing that Darwinism might be better classified as philosophy or myth than as science] This attitude was shared by the Nazi leadership, and led their rejection of valid astronomy and physics in favour of occult-based pseudo-theories such as the "doctrine of eternal cosmic ice" concocted by Hans Hörbiger, a mechanical engineer. It was Dietrich Eckart who introduced his protégé Hitler to Hörbiger's work, and its similarity to Thule mythology on new ages birthed from ice was immediately recognized. Hörbiger himself declared war on "objective science" as "a pernicious invention" (Angebert), advocated substituting the "uselessness" of mathematics with a mystical "knowing" of the universe, and targeted Albert Einstein as an archenemy (emphasizing the latter's Jewish origin no less than his pernicious scientific work). Hörbiger's cause was taken up by the Hitler Youth, and later by the SS Ahnenerbe, and Storm Troopers became fanatic supporters who disrupted meetings of conventional astronomers with shouts and threats. (Sklar) It was Hörbigerian weather forecasting (continuing after his death in 1931) that fixed 1941 as a mild winter, convinced the Nazis to leave behind heavy winter gear for the invasion of Russia, and sent them into a record-breaking cold front which marked a turning point in the war. Even after the disaster, no one admitted the bankruptcy of Hörbiger's theory. (Amazingly, works praising his theories continued to be published as late as 1952 - see Angebert. On the contrary, Hitler blamed the German people for the defeat in Russia:
The nation has proved itself weak, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who remain after the battle are of little value; for the good have fallen.
~Sklar
[This follows the pattern of the "ascended masters" themselves, who invariably blame their devoted servants when things go wrong.]
True to Hitler's vow, "We shall wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race" (Sklar), SS soldiers underwent occult initiations and ceremonies, to replace their Christian faith and names with ancient Germanic names and worship rites (Hitler being their incarnate deity), and to harness latent spiritual forces believed to reside in the Aryan psyche. (Sklar) [This was not an abrupt change, since these SS candidates had grown up in 1920s Germany, where the occult, psychic phenomena and paganism were quite trendy. Presumably their parents, school teachers, civic leaders and other role models had already contributed to the next generation's conditioning by their own immersion in Eastern mysticism and spiritism. The implications for today's youth, who are being raised on an even more potent and invasive brew of the same, are unmistakable.] Secrecy, a total dedication that erased all other loyalties, unquestioning obedience, isolation from 'common society', a sense of self-sacrifice, a place in an exalted and ancient line of "guardians" [as the black-cloaked, Force-wielding Jedi Knights were described in "Star Wars"], and a strict observance of hierarchal status were the methods of fostering unity - all of them borrowed from occult societies.
But under it all, the abject fear was instilled in SS men of being found unworthy of their exalted status, especially through the sin of independent thinking. The group-think to which they had been subjected since early childhood sank to new depths to minimize the chances of such a mishap. A required achievement for SS candidates was Kadavergehorsam, or "dead-body [unfeeling, robotic] obedience". In merciless drills, they were trained to disregard their own emotions and consciences by performing acts of brutality on self and others usually associated with satanic cult rituals. (See descriptions in Sklar) (Such practices in Satanism are meant to produce an altered state of consciousness and, as they believe, to channel the natural horror response into psychic energy which empowers spells.) In the resulting numbness, they could carry out the most horrific orders without thinking, and walk among sickening sights without flinching. Himmler firmly believed in the holiness of this ultimate devotion, in which the SS suffered and sacrificed more than their victims. For him, the unsung "glory" of the SS was "to have stuck it out... and to have remained decent fellows." As for Himmler himself:
I try to reach a compromise in my own life; I try to help people and do good, relieve the oppressed and remove injustices wherever I can. Do you think my heart is in all the things which have to be done simply from reasons of state?
The extreme sacrifices of the SS, he said, were required in part by German racial Karma; an individual "oughtn't to think of himself". (Sklar) [Undoubtedly, many NAers will view themselves in precisely the same light when they are required to take part in necessary future purges. The view is already prevalent in NA that individual human rights must give way to humanity's rights, and this includes inflicting pain as well as enduring it.] It was also German Karma, Himmler said, that they be "saved" by "a figure of the greatest brilliance" - meaning not Hitler, but the spirit "incarnate" in him and possessing him. (Sklar)
An inner circle of SS officers took on the roles of Teutonic knights, complete with coat-of-arms, and met regularly at Himmler's Wewelsburg Castle for deep meditation, week-long visualization sessions (Sklar) and contacts with disembodied spirit masters. The very insignia of the SS was loaded with occult meaning; the twin lightning bolts were an ancient Nordic power rune. [Savitri Devi also focused on the imagery of twin cosmic light sources in her adoration of Hitler.] The Ahnenerbe branch of the SS invested huge sums in trips to Tibet to search for an ancient Aryan clan, (Angebert) and exhaustive efforts were made to harness supernatural powers for the Nazi war effort: everything from pendulum divination and ESP to yoga and Zen Buddhism was investigated. (Sklar) Himmler was certain that his British adversaries were doing the same kind of research, and possibly with more success. (In reality, the British were aware of the high regard Himmler and others had for astrology, and commissioned astrologer Ludwig von Wohl to predict what kind of advice they were getting from Nazi stargazers.) Hitler's strict vegetarianism was a matter of principle because of reincarnation of souls into animal bodies. (This was not only Hindu and Buddhist belief but Cathar as well - Angebert) In fact, Nazis were seen to show great respect for animal life even while slaughtering human beings (. [This peculiar devaluation of humans below animals is a pillar of Hindu life as well, where the sacred cows and cobras of India fare far better than the luckless human born to a low caste. In the West animal rights are threatening to eclipse human rights as well, reflected in the "Earth First" mentality.]
Yet another ancient belief adopted by the Nazis was the dualist cycle of the universe - a cosmos full of energies at polar opposites carrying on a continual battle, colliding to bring temporary balance and transmuting to a higher state of being, evolving into a new polarization, renewed battle, and on endlessly. Fire and Ice, Light and Darkness, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, the human races all followed this spiral path. Each "new world order" could not proceed without the destruction of the "old order"; therefore destruction is as healthy as the following restructure. This cosmology was shared by many cultures: the Zoroastrians of Persia (who greatly impressed Nietzsche), the Hindu writers of the Veda, the Greek Gnostics (particularly Pythagoras, who carried the concept from Egypt), the Manachaeans (gnostic Christians), the Cathars, Nordic legends (Angebert) and Germanic lore transmitted mostly through Wagner. It is also a pillar of Theosophical teaching and of Alice Bailey, who clearly approved of Hitler's role in destroying the old order and "establishing of a new world order", as Hitler described it in Bailey's own words. (Angebert)
A tactic especially interesting to Jews which was shared by both Nazism and NA is faulting the Jews for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. Like Hitler, no NA leaders accept Jesus’ claims as recorded in the New Testament, yet they make much of the fact that the Jews did not either. While Hitler drew on Martin Luther's vitrolic condemnation of the Jews for stubbornly rejecting Jesus, Alice Bailey simply adds this rejection to her tally of the Jews' karmic debt: "Christ came to bring an end to the Jewish dispensation which should have climaxed and passed away as a religion... In the rejection of Christ as the Messiah, the Jewish race has remained symbolically and practically in the [astrological] sign of Aries, the Scapegoat [actually Aries is a ram, as noted elsewhere in her book, but the purpose for this "mistake" is self-evident]... they will repeat their ancient sin of non-response to the evolutionary process. They rejected that which was new and spiritual in the desert [by making the golden calf at Sinai]; they did it again in Palestine 2000 years ago; will they do it again, as opportunity is offered to them?" (Alice Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ)
[Here we have a masterful "Catch-22", for if the Jews reject Maitreya as a false messiah, they will "remain the Scapegoat" and be removed from the new humanity as they deserve. If they accept him, they will accept his assessment that past karma requires their annihilation - first spiritual erasure and then physical death. The only question is whether they will go out in submission or in rebellion, but go they will...]
Knowing that Christians are susceptible to such reasoning, today's NAers have become adept at using "Christian" arguments against the Jews. Christians coming from an environment that never mentioned Alice Bailey will recognize the eerie similarity of Bailey's quote above to the widespread Christian doctrine known as "Replacement Theology", the belief that the Jewish dispensation ended with Christ and that the failure of Jews to accept him cost them their place as G-d's chosen people. But the Christian linkage is maintained on the NA side for its PR value only; it rallies support among Christians for their own goals, while they work for the end of both the Jews and the Christians, as did Hitler. [A case can be made that the very existence of this as a "Christian" theology may be due to NA infiltration into Christian leadership. Only someone who is indifferent to the survival of Christianity could support such a belief, because if Replacement happened to the Jews, there is no guarantee that it won't happen next time to the Christians! Precisely the argument that NA uses.]
Besides all the above common ground, there is universal reverence in NA and Nazism for Tibetan Buddhism. Blavatsky and other Theosophists considered the Tibetan Himalayas the home of the Hierarchy themselves. According to some opinions, Hitler sent SS officers to the Himalayas not only to seek out the source of the Aryan race, but if possible to make contact with "Asgard" and consult directly with the "ascended masters". A colony of Tibetan Buddhists flourished in Berlin (Angebert). The translator of Angebert's work, Lewis Sumberg, notes that the Russian troops entering Berlin in May 1945 found "the corpses of a thousand men of Himalayan origin, in German uniform, but carrying no papers or identification." [One wonders what today's Dalai Lama might be conveniently forgetting in relation to his community's Nazi affiliations, each time he proclaims the Tibetan Buddhist's identification with the suffering of the Jews.]
A virtually unknown component in Nazism is the glorification of homosexuality as a path to higher consciousness and superhuman power. In accordance with widespread occult practice dating back to the Greeks, promotion in the SS brotherhood was conditional on adopting "warrior" or super-masculine homosexuality. The homosexuals who were despised and were sent to the camps were exclusively the effeminate kind. [See The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, Scott Lively & Kevin Abrams, on line via the Web. I recommend an annotated version, an interesting blend of the original, somewhat flawed text with a reader's hostile comments; the end result is a welcome correction of minor points and an unintentional confirmation of the authors' main contentions.] It is interesting to note the rising popularity of "warrior" images in entertainment (both male and female-Amazon types) which combine occult powers with subtle homosexual or anti-heterosexual attitudes. [A good, blatant example is the cheesy "Xena" TV series newly arrived on Israeli TV - read the character histories.]
Nazi and American Eugenicists Working Together
The agreement among eugenicists from these two vastly different societies (for more details, see the eugenics section) reveals yet another thread borrowed from ancient occult-based societies both in the East (India) and West (classical Greece). While the Nazis were open about the necessity of "blood purity" to elevate the human race, Americans were more circumspect, veiling their goal of "racial thoroughbreds" in more acceptable social/humanitarian terms - undesirables in the U.S. were ostensibly targeted because they were "uneducated and poor", not because they were racially inferior. The Nazis understood the restrictions to which their U.S. colleagues were subjected and did not protest. They closely followed the writings of Madison Grant, associate of American Birth Control League director Stoddard, who advocated the ancient Spartan practice of infanticide as a natural weeding-out process. The Nazis publicly thanked both Grant and Stoddard for "awakening in Germany the movement for the preservation and increase of the Nordic race." The U.S. League likewise took a great interest in ongoing Nazi developments, and published an article in May 1933 entitled "Eugenic Sterilization, an Urgent Need", by Ernst Rudin, Director of Genetic Sterilization and founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. A group of American eugenists sat as guest judges in the German "eugenic courts" in the 1930's, and returned with highest recommendations:
The [Nazi] sterilization law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.
~Lothrop Stoddard, 1940, after spending 4 months in Germany
[For excellent source material, see Professor Stefan Kuhl's The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, & German National Socialism]
Never in a Vacuum...
Countless historians and sociologists have tried to analyze how Nazism became the new value system for a civilized, humanistic people seemingly overnight. The fact is that Nazi doctrine was introduced to an entire generation of Germans raised on magic, cosmic mythology, medieval lore, tales of secret guardians of the Ancient Wisdom and mystical god-men. The titles being published and devoured were reminiscent of today's blockbuster movies in the science fiction, mythology and "world disaster" genres: Ulysses' Bow, The Great Dream, The Seventh Ring (an actual end-of-the-world novel), The Star of the Alliance. (See Angebert for a list of German bestsellers between 1896 and the 1930s.) Astrology, Theosophy, experiments in "animal magnetism", clairvoyance and other ESP, combinations of "white" sorcery and science, séances, and other occult pursuits were widespread and trendy. Some were involved purely for entertainment or psychological manipulation, but others took it quite seriously as a door to enlightened knowledge and spiritual power. The reasons for this stampede away from reason and into mysticism have been attributed to a complex environment: the upheaval in German society and economy, an inner emptiness and fatalism which stifles personal initiative, an erasure of moral and spiritual boundaries which leaves youth with nothing to believe in and nowhere to belong, disintegration of traditional family authority, a social devaluation of personhood which makes one ashamed of having private values and goals at variance with the group. (Sklar, p.150) [I would propose that all these conditions are not the cause for the abandonment of rational thinking, so much as the result of a society accepting theosophical principles like Karma and Group Mind.]
What happens then is inevitable. Out of the chaos and apathy (the destruction of the old order) rises a mass movement (a new order). It feeds on the loss of individual thinking, but in return promises a secure, responsibility-free place in the Group Mind where thinking is done for you. It removes all rights to family autonomy, but guarantees a lifelong brotherhood; outlaws all religions except its own, but provides ego-friendly answers for all life's questions. It requires you to die, but offers a Supreme Opportunity to give up your life with honor and dignity, and a sense of intrinsic value as a tiny cog in the Vast Plan. It's better than being lost and lonely. And after all, there is no real death, nor is there any particular reason to hang onto this life; why not pay the karma sooner than later? At the head of the movement is an enlightened individual who apparently has a direct connection with that which the whole society has been seeking: Asgard, home of the Hierarchy across the Rainbow Bridge. And he declares that the time has come for the new humanity, for a return to our long-lost god consciousness, and he has been "overshadowed" and sent to guide us there. Only first, there is a "virus" that must be removed from the body of humanity so that it does not endanger the pure "seeds". And now you have a Cause to fight for - a personified yet dehumanized Darkness on which to vent your righteous rage as Sons of Light.
[Thus a whole generation of German youth was prepared to receive a NA messiah and obey his every command. How did it happen that a vulnerable society at its lowest point had the misfortune to cross wires with a loser, an obscure little man, and inexplicably welcomed him hysterically as an "avatar" - a divine channel? And how did he proceed to turn the "Shamballa force" loose across a continent and rip through the Jewish community, with millions to help him and no one to stop him? Was it just a ghastly conjunction of random social trends? If so, we are witnessing an eerie repeat coincidence - the same occultic atmosphere, and another mass movement based on the same foundations, calling for unity against the same "virus". This time it is on a far wider scale and has a global media-driven culture to accelerate its spread. At this point, the movement appears to be securely entrenched; only its "avatar" is lacking. And all this within two generations of the last nightmare encounter. The evidence suggests that we should not only acknowledge the familiar face of this movement, but stop viewing it as a "repeat" and recognize it as a continuation of something that never really went away. Nazi mysticism is a term used to describe a quasi-religious undercurrent of Nazism; it denotes the combination of Nazism with occultism, esotericism, cryptohistory, and/or the paranormal. It generally ascribes a religious significance to the person of Adolf Hitler and his doctrine. The Nazi UFOs can by some be attributed to the increased sightings of flying saucer craft and other UFO's in the post World War II to present world. One interesting note is the first published alien abduction Barney Hill case described his abductors as Nazis. The Nazi party actively discouraged certain mystical secret societies, in fact interning, and sometimes executing, a number of high-ranking mystics in Europe, particularly members of the Freemasons and Rosicrucians. It is said that Aleister Crowley and Gurdjieff sought contact with Hitler, but actual contact is unconfirmed. Hitler would later go on to reject many German mystics, openly ridiculing them, particularly practitioners of Freemasonry, Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Artur Dinter In 1927 Hitler fired the Gauleiter of Thüringen, Artur Dinter, from his function because he wanted to make too much a religion of Aryan racial purity. In 1928 Dinter was expelled from the party when he publicly attacked Hitler about this decision. Mysticism in modern Neo-Nazism Modern Neo-Nazism has links to Ásatrú. Mystic influences often appear in modern Nazi music, particularly references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus. On the other hand, many northern European polytheist organisations and groups have stated clearly that Neo-Nazism and its Ásatrú connections are certainly not to be considered what is common or ‘mainstream’ with their adherents. Organisations such as the Theods, the Ásatrúarfélagid, and the Viðartrúar are particularly notable in their disavowal of any connections. Nazi mysticism and modern pseudoscience The writings of Miguel Serrano, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, and other proponents of Nazi Mysticism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about reptilian humanoids, hollow earth civilizations, and shadowy new world orders. In his book Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin discusses pseudoscientific theories regarding surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. Arktos is notable for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translation. Godwin and other authors including Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have also discussed Hitler’s purported Antarctic reptilian companions (sometimes seen to be Hyperboreans) as well as the connections between Nazi Mysticism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases. The Thule Society (including some of their most known members) plays an important role in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. The Island of Thule is an important location in the Silver Age Sentinels superhero role playing game and collections of short stories based upon the game. It was raised from the Atlantic Ocean by Kreuzritter (“Crusader”), a Nazi superhuman who wears a mystical suit of armor made by a long-disappeared Aryan culture. A fictional division of the Ahnenerbe, the Karotechia, has a prominet place in the mythology of the Delta Green setting for the role playing game Call of Cthulhu, and stories based upon the setting. In it, the survivors of the Karotechia, a group founded to study occult tomes and conduct magical research, live on in South America, training sorcerers and cultists to found the Fourth Reich, all under the sway of Hitler's ghost (actually Nyarlathotep in disguise). Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. The German people, especially the youth, have learned once again to value people racially-they have once again turned away from Christian theories, from Christian teaching which has ruled Germany for more than a thousand years and caused the racial decay of the German Volk, and almost its racial death.
One point missed by many people is that the Nazis were nominally Christian. Any Fascist movement gathers strength on its populism- and the Nazis had to at least go along with Christianity.
The truth is somewhat more complex. Most of the high ranking Nazi leaders despised Christianity in large part because it sprain from Judaism. Their goal once they won the war was to return Germany to its pagan roots and jettison the Christian baggage.
Other theories involve Hitler having escaped to the Antarctic, where he joined with a subterranean dinosauroid master race[ 1], with whom he now travels inside UFOs underground, generally beneath the South Pole or throughout the center of the hollow earth, but sometimes to a Nazi moon base as well.
Modern organisations or related philosophies include Ariosophy, Armanism, Theozoology, Armanenorden, Artgemeinschaft, and Esoteric Hitlerism.
Nazi mysticism is a völkisch movement initiation with roots in the Thule society and theosophy, as well as the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau. Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels were important figures early on, with significant events after World War II being the Artgemeinschaft of Jürgen Rieger and the Armanenorden founded by Adolf Schleipfer in 1976.
High ranking Nazi officials such as Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, and R. Walther Darré are known to have been interested in mysticism and the paranormal. Hitler himself seems to have had considerably less interest in this topic.
The concentration of Esoteric Hitlerism is on the Nazis’ race-specific pre-Christian “pagan” (including Hindu) mythologies, and the inclusion of Adolf Hitler in the network of these mythologies.
The role played by mysticism in the development of Nazism and its ideals was identified by outsiders at least as early as 1940, with the publication of Lewis Spence’s Occult Causes of the Present War. Incidentally , Spence accurately identified a pagan undercurrent in Nazism (for which he largely blamed Alfred Rosenberg), though some of his other conclusions--such as connecting Nazism to the Illuminati, and automatically equating paganism with "satanism"--are perhaps less credible.
Central beliefs
The origin of the Aryan race, the Teutons generally, and the Germanic peoples specifically, the putative superiority of said Aryans over other races, and what they claimed were the unique circumstances of their origin, are all key concepts.
Various locations, such as Atlantis, Thule, Hyperborea, Shambhala and others are suggested as the precise location of this original society of Übermenschen.
Another key belief is that this Herrenrasse (master race) had been weakened through interbreeding with those they thought of as untermensch or “lesser races”.
Early influences
Theozoology
In 1905 Lanz von Liebenfels published a fundamental statement of doctrine titled Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron (Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electrons of the Gods). The author claims that “Aryan” peoples originate from interstellar deities who bred by electricity, while “lower” races were a result of inbreeding between apes and humans. Like much of Nazi mysticist propaganda, the book relies on a somewhat lurid sexual imagery, decrying the abuse of white women by ethnically inferior, but sexually active, men. Thus, von Liebenfels advocates mass castration of racially “apelike” or otherwise inferior males. This was in fact acted out during the Nazi era “purification”.
Ariosophy
The term “Ariosophy” (occult wisdom concerning the Aryans) was coined by Lanz von Liebenfels, founder of the Order of the New Templars, in 1915 and replaced “Theozoology” and “Ario-Christianity” as the label for his doctrine in the 1920s. It is generally used to describe Aryan-racist-occult theories.
Armanism
Guido von List called his doctrine “Armanism” (after the ‘Armanen’, supposedly the heirs of the sun-king, a body of priest-kings in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation). Armanism was concerned with the esoteric doctrines of the gnosis (distinct from the exoteric doctrine intended for the lower social classes, Wotanism).
According to The History Channel's "Decoding the Past" episode "The Nazi Prophecies" Guido von List was the founder of Ariosophy.
The Thule Society
In 1915, Pohl was joined by Rudolf Glauer. Glauer, also known as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf, came to Germany with a Turkish passport and was a practitioner of sufi meditation and astrology. Glauer is known to have been an admirer of Guido von List and the rabidly anti-semitic Lanz von Liebenfels. Glauer was a wealthy man (the source of his wealth is unknown) and quickly became a grand master of the Bavarian Order in 1918. Later that year, he founded the Thule Society with Pohl’s approval.
The Thule Society had a number of highly positioned individuals in the Nazi party, although Hitler himself never became a member. However, it was a member of the Thule Society, dentist Dr. Friedrich Krohn, who chose the swastika symbol for the Nazi party.
Perhaps the most significant Thule influence on Hitler came from Dietrich Eckart. Eckart was the wealthy publisher of the newspaper Auf gut Deutsch (In Plain German). He was a committed occultist as well as a member of the Thule Society’s inner circle. He is believed to have taught Hitler a number of persuasive techniques (some possibly mystical in nature). So profound was the influence, that Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was dedicated to Eckart.
The Vril Society
The Vril Society, or Luminous Lodge, has no documented activities until 1915, but is believed to have been founded by General Karl Haushofer, a student of Russian magician and metaphysician Gergor Ivanovich Gurdyev (also known as George Gurdjieff).
In Berlin, Haushofer had founded the Luminous Lodge or the Vril Society. The Lodge’s objective was to explore the origins of the Aryan race and to perform exercises in concentration to awaken the forces of “Vril”. Haushofer was a student of the Russian magician and metaphysician George Gurdjieff. Both Gurdjieff and Haushofer maintained that they had contacts with secret Tibetan lodges that possessed the secret of the “Superman.” The Lodge included Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Himmler, Göring and Hitler’s subsequent personal physician Dr. Morell. It is also known that Aleister Crowley and Gurdjieff sought contact with Hitler. Hitler’s unusual powers of suggestion become more understandable if one keeps in mind that he had access to the “secret” psychological techniques of Gurdjieff which, in turn, were based on the teachings of the Sufis and the Tibetan lamas and familiarized him with the Zen teaching of the Japanese Society of the Green Dragon. —Louis Pauwels, author of the book Monsieur Gurdjief where some feel the account of Haushofer’s study with Gurdjieff originates, later recanted many things from his book, however.
Some, however, argue that no such Vril Society ever existed, or that such a society had no impact on Nazism: It is not mentioned in the extensive biography of Hitler by Ian Kershaw, nor in the one by Alan Bullock, nor the biography of Hermann Göring by Werner Maser, nor the book about the history of the Schutzstaffel (SS) by Heinz Hoehne.
General Karl Haushofer
General Karl Haushofer was a university professor and director of the Munich Institute of Geopolitics, as well as an avid student of Gurdjieff. He is believed to have studied Zen Buddhism and initiated at the hands of Tibetan llamas. Further, he worked closely with Hitler while he was imprisoned and working on Mein Kampf. Haushofer claimed to have had contact with secret Tibetan Lodges that possessed the secret of the “Superman”, an idea that would become central to the decision of the Nazi party to embrace an extreme form of the eugenics movement.
Hitler's WWI Experience
Hitler claimed that during his time served in WWI that he had a religious awakening, specifically around when he was temporarily blinded by an enemy gas attack.
Hitler's Odinist Poem
In 1915, while serving in the German Army on the Western Front, Hitler wrote the following esoteric poem mentioning the pre-Christian Germanic deity Wotan:
Ich gehe manchmal in rauhen Nächten
Zur Wotanseiche in den stillen Hain,
Mit dunklen Mächten einen Bund zu flechten -
Die Runen zaubert mir der Mondenschein.
Und alle, die am Tage sich erfrechten,
Sie werden vor der Zauberformel klein!
Sie ziehen blank - doch statt den Strauß zu flechten,
Erstarren sie zu Stalagmitgestein.
So scheiden sich die Falschen von den Echten -
Ich greife in das Fibelnest hinein
Und gebe dann den Guten und Gerechten
Mit meiner Formel Segen und Gedeihn.
Which can be translated as:
I often go on bitter nights
To Wodan's oak in the quiet glade
With dark powers to weave a union -
The moonlight showing me the runic spell
And all who are full of impudence during the day
Are made small by the magic formula!
They draw shining steel - but instead of going into combat,
They solidify into stalagmites.
Thus the wrong ones separate from the genuine ones -
I reach into a nest of words
Then give to the good and fair
With my formula blessings and prosperity.
Esoteric Hitlerism
The founder of Esoteric Hitlerism was Heinrich Himmler, who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by Aryan (and not just Germanic) racialism and Germanic Odinism. Himmler has been claimed to have considered himself the spiritual successor or even reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler. Having set up special SS rituals for the old King & returning his bones to the crypt at Quedlinburg Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg castle decorated in commemoration of him.
Prayer to Hitler
In Nazism, Adolf Hitler was occasionally compared with Jesus, or revered as a savior sent by God.
A prayer recited by orphans at orphanages runs as follows
Führer, mein Führer, von Gott mir gegeben, beschütz und erhalte noch lange mein Leben
Du hast Deutschland errettet aus tiefster Not, Dir verdank ich mein täglich Brot
Führer, mein Führer, mein Glaube, mein Licht
Führer mein Führer, verlasse mich nicht
This translates roughly as:
Leader, my Leader, given to me by God, protect me and sustain my life for a long time
You have rescued Germany out of deepest misery, to you I owe my daily bread
Leader, my Leader, my belief, my light
Leader my Leader, do not abandon me
Julius Evola
Julius Evola, an occultist with radical right-wing political views, though he was never directly tied to either Italian Fascism or Nazism, tried to move Mussolini towards paganism (and away from concord with the Vatican). His influence on Nazi mysticism has been much greater in the postwar years than it was while the Nazis and fascists were in power, influencing various National Socialist organizations.
Savitri Devi
With the fall of the Third Reich, Esoteric Hitlerism took off as Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, was now able to be deified. Savitri Devi was the first major exponent of post-war Esoteric Hitlerism and connected Hitler’s Aryan ideology to that of the pro-independence Indians (specifically Hindus) 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 the Tibetans). Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history, and called Hitler an avatar of Vishnu (Kalki) and the “Man against Time,” 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 forestalling his vision from fruition--a combination of the best traits of Akhenaton (a visionary, but ineffectual) and Genghis Khan (violent, but selfish).
Miguel Serrano
The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat. He wrote both The Golden Ribbon--Esoteric Hitlerism and Adolf Hitler, The Last Avatar.
He believed 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) in a last battle and inaugurating a Fourth Reich.
He also connected the Aryans and their Hyperborean gods to the Sun and the Allies and the Jews to the Moon, and also 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 in their seemingly cruel deeds.
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe Society, the ancestral heritage branch of the SS (also called by some the Nazi Occult Bureau) was dedicated primarily to the research of proving the superiority of the Aryan race but was also involved in occult practices. Founded in 1935 by Himmler, the Society became involved in searching for Atlantis and the Holy Grail (and is believed to be the basis for the Nazi archaeologists in the Indiana Jones series of movies).
Research and expeditions
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. Mystical organizations such as the Thule Society, Schwarze Sonne, Vril Society and others were created, usually connected with elite SS corps, and adopting specific rituals, initiations and beliefs.
Expeditions in Tibet, Nepal, Greece, the Arctic, and Neuschwabenland in Antarctica were organized in the search for the mythical “Aryan” nation of Hyperborea, whose capital, Ultima Thule was supposedly built by the extraterrestrial ancestors of the “Aryan races” who came from the star Aldebaran, according to some of the “Aryan” theories.
A German expedition to Tibet was organized in order to search for the origins of the Aryan race. To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger make face masks and skull and nose measurements.
Similar expeditions were organized in the pursuit of semi-mythical objects believed to bring power or granting special powers to their owner, such as the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny.
SS Rocket Technology
The flying saucer (Flugscheibe) and rocket craft models are said to have been produced by the SS Military Technical Branch E-IV of the Nazi military science division. The following is a synopsis of those claims:
The first of such crafts was designed by Viktor Schauberger who modelled the Repulsin A & B which were discoid crafts that functioned on a vortex motor.
Examples of Repulsin A craft and Repulsin B craft:
The Rudolf Shriever Flugkreisel (Flight Gyro), a disc-shaped aircraft (with 5 kerosene jet engines) was first produced in 1943 as an interplanetary exploration vehicle. It had a diameter of 60 metres and stood 45 metres high, as well as containing 10 levels for crew compartments.
Later the Richard Miethe Flugscheibe (Flight Disc) prototype (with the Schauberger vortex motor) was designed in April 1944 as a rocket craft built to 15 and 50 metres of diameter. It closely resembled what would be considered today as the common shape of a UFO.
Suppression of secret societies
The Manga series Hellsing features the Millennium, a Reich of the Nazis which was to have survived for a thousand years. This organization is heavily mystical, including among its number those who are Werwolf and a battalion of vampires known as the Letzte (“Last”) Battalion. The stated objective of Millennium is the pursuit of absolute war. It is led by a former SS officer.
Quotes
The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian; he views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race.
~Josef Göbbels, in his diary, December 28, 1939.
~Hitler 1941
~Heinrich Himmler May 22, 1936 at a speech in Brocken, Germany.
11/15/2002 Gothic is a way of dressing, a taste in music, a style. But in Germany - at the extreme fringes - it has also become the point at which neo-Nazism and Satanism meet Links between Nazism and esoteric and occult movements are nothing new. Hitler, rejecting Christianity, embraced instead the paganism of the early Germanic tribes. Their beliefs, both real and imagined, offered a basis on which any number of sinister concepts could be superimposed. The process reached its apogee at Schloss Wewelsburg, near the town of Paderborn. Though the present-day castle dates from the late 16th century, records suggest that there has been a fortress on the site since the days of the Huns, more than a thousand years earlier. The surrounding landscape is wooded, often misty, and interspersed with giant, weirdly-shaped rocks. The castle and its environs were ideally suited to the purpose for which Heinrich Himmler rented them in 1934 - that of providing the officers of his elite corps, the SS, with an education in the supposed pagan mysteries underpinning National Socialism. Though it does not make much of an impact at election time, the far right remains a disturbing undercurrent in German life: sufficiently disturbing for the federal government to have launched an all-out drive against the neo-Nazi fringe two years ago (including the attempt to ban the NPD). "The problem with the far right in Germany is not that its members are particularly numerous, but that they are readier than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe to resort to violence," said a senior intelligence officer who asked not to be named. That point was driven home by a string of savage attacks in early 2000, culminating in the beating to death of a Mozambique-born German citizen in Dessau. The far right is especially pervasive in the formerly communist east where unemployment is high and where, after the war, there was not the same painful reckoning with the past as in the west. Despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that there are fewer immigrants in the former GDR, surveys also show that racist attitudes are more prevalent there than in the cosmopolitan west. One possible reason why the degree of support for the far right does not show up in election results is that the most extreme rightwingers will have nothing to do with the democratic process and abstain. This is particularly true of those connected with the so-called Kameradschaften which form a network of mutually independent, neo-Nazi secret societies. Each may have no more than 10 or 15 members, but around them is a wider circle of associates and sympathisers. Indeed, the secretive and hierarchical world of the German far right mirrors that of many occult communities. On several occasions since the fall of the Third Reich, evidence has surfaced of connections between the far right and Satanism, however, they have been limited to individuals or, at most, small groups. But in the past five years, an entirely new phenomenon has developed: a mass youth culture in which neo-Nazi ideas and symbols have merged with the Gothic scene. This movement can be traced back to 1993, when Roland Bubik, widely regarded as the leading thinker of the German extreme right, wrote a seminal article for the magazine Junge Freiheit. Entitled "Culture as a question of power", it argued that "new possibilities or influencing people are arising in the area of communications networks. In particular, the entertainment industry... has an immense influence that until now has gone unremarked." Within a couple of years, Bubik's partner, Simone Satzger, was stating as fact, in a collection of essays edited by Bubik, that the far right's strategy was "to open up contemporary cultural and political phenomena to use them for our own purposes". Since the mid-1990s, Germany's neo-Nazis have attempted to penetrate several youth scenes, including techno, but it is with Goths that they have had their greatest success. The Gothic movement may be on the wane in Britain and many other countries around Europe, but in Germany, where its adherents are known as Gruftis (from the German word for "crypt"), they constitute a vast group. It is particularly strong in the former GDR. East Germans are still reeling from the fall of communism, and the young in particular seem to be searching for new values to fill the gap left by a creed that was as much a religion as an ideology. "The concentration of Goths in Germany is much higher than in other European countries," says Stephan Tschendal, who edits an online Gothic magazine. He estimates that between 5% and 7% of all young Germans between the ages of 12 and 25 are Goths, an overall population of at least 650,000. Many of them are doing no more than making a fashion statement, or registering a protest against the drabness and conformity of modern adult life. Devil-worshippers exist only on the extremist fringe. But in two specific areas of the Gothic scene - the areas in which the neo-Nazis have had the greatest success in infiltrating their ideas - Germany's intelligence officers believe there is genuine cause for concern. One of these is "neo-folk"; the other is black metal, the dark variant of heavy metal. In a darkened hall in the centre of Leipzig, blue lights play on the smoke billowing out from under a stage where Darkwood, a three-piece neo-folk band, play placid, lilting, slightly weird music. The band's gig forms part of an annual, three-day Gothic festival, which this year attracted some 17,000 people from all over Europe to Leipzig. Churches in the city that had been asked to host concerts refused to do so, citing the risk that Satanists could assemble on consecrated ground. About half the crowd at the gig are typical Goths, but the rest look as if they have wandered in from a Nuremberg rally. There are men wearing high, heavy boots and black military-style shirts and trousers. There are women, also wearing boots, with calf-length skirts and white shirts with a symbol on the right arm that resembles a badge of rank. Everywhere, there are leather cross-straps, forage caps and 1930s-style shorts. As its name implies, neo-folk draws on the musical heritage of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other protest singers of the 1960s and 1970s. Some German groups dig further back into the past, updating and reworking traditional folk tunes. The acoustic guitar is central to its music, which also features flutes, cellos and violins. Yet neo-folk is anything but folksy. Punk has had an influence on its evolution and much of the music could be described as industrial. Unusually extensive percussion sets are typical of the genre. Another characteristic is that gentle melody-making can all of a sudden give way to something much more visceral: the lead singer of Darkwood seized hold of a pair of heavy drumsticks and beat out an intimidating tattoo on a bass drum. It was like Japanese Kodo drumming, but with the rhythms of a Prussian parade ground. The drumming rose in a crescendo, then ended as abruptly as it had begun, prompting the loudest cheers of the night. The Leipzig festival was launched in 1991, soon after German reunification, and has helped turn the city into the Gothic capital of Europe. Like neo-Nazis, Goths are drawn to its Völkerschlachtdenkmal, one of the strangest and most intimidating monuments to be found anywhere in Europe. A vast, stepped pyramid towering over a lake on the wooded fringes of the city, it resembles a Mayan temple. The Völkerschlachtdenkmal was inaugurated in 1913 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig 100 years earlier. But since German reunification, it has become a favoured rallying point for the far right. How close, really, are the links between Gothic - or, specifically, neo-folk - culture and the German far right? Unquestionably, there is an element of sheer, apolitical mischief: it is not easy for the sons and daughters of the generation of 1968 to find a way of shocking their parents, but dressing up in vaguely neo-Nazi garb should do the trick. The organisation charged with protecting Germany from a Nazi revival is the Verfassungsschutz, a body roughly equivalent to Britain's MI5. Reinhard Boos is its director in Saxony, the state in which Leipzig lies, and so has a special interest in gauging the threat posed by far right penetration of the Gothic scene. "I think the truth is in between," says Boos. "Things are not going well for the far right," argues Wolfgang Hund, an educational scientist and the author of several books on the occult. Boos believes that recruitment is not, in fact, the far right's primary aim. The threat posed by the infiltration of the Gothic scene is, he believes, subtler. Solveig Prass and her colleagues in Leipzig, who talk regularly to DJs and others, have been keeping a running estimate of how much of the Goth scene is under the influence of the far right. Through the Gothic scene, the far right can obtain access to the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people throughout Europe. If they can be taught to accept certain beliefs and symbols as normal, then the extreme right will have made significant progress towards achieving what Schobert argues is a key, medium-term goal:
Flirting With Hitler
The Gothic scene is not to be confused with rightwing extremism. But there are some groups that use symbols which refer to rightwing extremism and they do it mainly for provocation. Very, very few of them do it to support rightwing groups. On the other hand, the rightwing extremists know that there are people who can be useful to them, so some of them try to win them over for their own aims. It is not a plan by a few [people] that is carried out in a clear, structured way. Those who think it is a good idea do so of their own accord.
They are under pressure from all sides and they are looking for allies... They are looking for foot soldiers in the ranks of disoriented youth - human raw material for any Pied Piper who comes along.
We take it seriously because it opens people's heads to extreme rightwing thought.
The link was first noticed in the mid-1990s. At that time, it was estimated that the overlap was about 5%. Two years ago, we put it at 7-8%. Now, our estimate is 9%.
Alfred Schobert, a lecturer at the Duisberg Institute of Language and Social Research, took a similar view in his 1998 academic investigation into the infiltration of the Gothic scene by the far right:
It is not about recruiting in the short term. It is about [producing] an overall reversal that picks up on and distorts the prevailing mood.
The removal of the taboos that attach to Nazi symbols and racist-nationalist ideology.
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