The Bizarre and Disturbing Origins of the Nazis
How the Occult Pagan Roots of Nazism almost Destroyed the West
Written by Gyopo Seraph.
Edited by Rev Laskaris.
Part one: Hiroshima
In 1945, United States General George S. Patton, shortly after the victory of the Allied forces over fascism in Europe, was quoted as saying, “We fought the wrong enemy.”
There is, in fact, little to no evidence that Patton ever said these words. Patton was no stranger to offensive remarks and actions, being a well-known disciplinarian towards his men and not known for his affection towards Russians, but there exists little definitive proof that he ever said those exact words.
Patton claimed to be a devout Christian, and through his consistent attendance at church and incessant quoting from the Bible, one can see his faith was likely strong.
There is, however, a side of Patton not known to many besides enthusiasts of history. Patton was a staunch believer in reincarnation, a concept relatively foreign to Christianity. Though a lifelong Episcopalian Christian, he read voraciously and often drew from other texts. He allegedly read both the Muslim Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu text that describes many integral parts of Hindu belief. Patton himself believed that he was a reincarnated soul who had participated in multiple historical events. He would often tell his colleagues of his time as a Roman soldier during the sack of Carthage, or his time in the Grande Armée of the French Empire under Napoleon.
One notes his perspective of faith through his view on prayer. “Prayer,” he said, “is like plugging in to a current whose source is in heaven.” Prayer “completes the circuit. It is power.”
After the war, Patton issued General Order 9, in which he thanked his Third Army for their valor in the war and for having inflicted 500,000 casualties. There is no proof he ever made a snide remark about fighting the wrong enemy. Nevertheless, nearly one hundred years later, this quote is emblazoned on the front cover of the Neo-Nazi film "Europa the Last Battle," complacently sitting at the top as if it were some proof that America and the Western Allies were wrong for fighting the Nazis all along.
This quote is referred to as the "smoking gun" behind the Allies’ true intentions during World War II by many rhetoricians and so-called history buffs. Rightfully so, it is often dismissed as nothing more than either right-wing rubbish or radical leftist word-salad. However, one must be careful not to disregard the quote in its entirety, for even the sentiments of the small men of history, including those of Patton, reflect certain truths about the world they lived in.
His words reproduce a certain geopolitics that rings true even to this day. Despite decades of cover-ups, what is real cannot be lost forever—it arrives to us from underground. Its pervasiveness seeps into the very fabric of our political existence and binds us to its destiny.
What are the true origins of the Nazis? Where do their ideological roots lie? Who sponsored their rise to power?
The answers to these questions have been covered up for decades by those attempting to mask the true ideological and religious origins of the ruling class of the West.
In 1920, an ex-sergeant of the now mostly (formally) disbanded German Army, Max Amann, introduced Adolf Hitler, who was mostly unknown at the time [1].
Max Amann was a member of the Thule Society, or in German, Thule-Gesellschaft, a closed-door group of like-minded individuals and pseudo-intellectuals who diverged from a movement known as Theosophy to pursue their specifically German form of the movement's teachings [2].
Theosophy, headed by the Theosophical Society, is a movement of ideas (though often called a religion) consisting of occult and esoteric concepts that bring together several elements of Gnosticism, Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, Hinduism, and generally orientalist ideas. It was formed as a reaction to the rationalist movements born out of the Enlightenment in the 19th century, a rejection of modern utilitarianism, and more specifically, a firm belief in the significance of humanity in relation to the cosmos. To be clear, however, it was not a belief in the import of man in his living being, but a rejection of humanity and human history as born of real and significant circumstances in favor of perceiving humanity as a substance disconnected from such living being.
Indeed, Theosophists are staunch believers in humans as animals, as they view all "living beings" as part of an interconnected universe that provides no meaningful distinctions between plants, animals, humans, or even rocks. In Theosophy, there is no such thing as contradiction [3].
Theosophy found fertile ground upon which to grow and spread its ideas in the German-speaking world, particularly in Austria. In the intellectual and noble circles of Vienna, Theosophy, and its counterpart, Ariosophy, flourished. In the ethnically divided and rapidly urbanizing capital of the Habsburg Empire, the concepts of Theosophy took immediate hold over many middle and upper-class citizens through literature, for its fantastical portrayal of the ancient 'Germanic' past. Particularly, Theosophic, or rather Ariosophic, literature emphasized the supremacy of the pagan or pre-Christian past, glorifying certain figures and proclaiming them to be members of a secretive caste of 'priest-kings', whose descendants would carry on the tradition of pagan faith and rituals, and, according to the Ariosophists, still exist to this day.
Austria was particularly susceptible to the sway of the Ariosophists due to its immense difficulties entering into the modern age. A German-speaking populace feeling left behind by rapid industrialization, the defeat of the Empire at the hands of Prussia, and the formation of the dual-monarchy system in 1867, which was the antecedent of perceived feelings of German discrimination, most especially in Bohemia [2], created the necessary ingredients for Ariosophy’s rise.
The Thule Society was one of the foremost German organizations pushing the Ariosophic idea at the end of World War One. Led by a man called Rudolf von Sebettendorf, its headquarters were in Munich and had members or known affiliates in a wide range of industries and organizations, most importantly the formally disbanded German Army [1] [4].
In "The Occult and the Third Reich" by Jean-Michel Angebert, the following is said about their organization.
By the eve of the war of 1914, some hundred or so lodges were already to be found across the length and breadth of Germany, counting several thousand members. Of course, the entire organization remained secret.
In fact, the Thule Society was originally only a single branch of the much larger and far more unknown organization called the Germanenorden. The Germanenorden was part of a wide variety of esoteric groups and cults that dotted Europe throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them were groups such as the British Golden Dawn and their related German organization, the Vril Society, which took its practices from the teachings of French writer Louis Jacolliot, who was inspired by his travels to India while working for the Diplomatic Corps. Jean-Michel Angebert has this to say regarding Vril:
Jacolliot sees the principle of all human activity of a transcendental nature in the Vril, a tremendous reserve of energy of which man uses but the tiniest part.
The esoteric Vril religion still holds some influence in parts of India to this day, where its followers bow to the rising sun in temples emblazoned with swastikas.
The Vril Society, Golden Dawn, Germanenorden, and others were centers of anti-modern and esoteric thinking that held sway over many intellectual circles across Europe. One of their recruits was a certain Karl Haushofer. He was born in 1869 to his father Max Haushofer, who was the author of the infamous poetic trilogy Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). During Karl Haushofer’s time in the German army in the early 1900s, he was sent with several other officers on a study trip to Japan where he first encountered Buddhism. He would make several consecutive trips to Japan and to India, where he spent the majority of his time studying Buddhism [5].
After the war, Haushofer left the defeated German army and joined the ranks of academia, where he was praised for his extensive writings on the Orient and was made an associate professor at the University of Munich. It was there that he met Rudolf Hess, then a student at the same university. Their close friendship and strong sense of political camaraderie led to Haushofer joining Epp’s Free Corps Oberland, which was under the payroll of the Thule Society. [6] It was at this moment that his political career began, as soon thereafter, he was one of the first members of the newly formed German Workers’ Party (DAP) under the leadership of Anton Drexler, a locksmith.
Anton Drexler was quite literally chosen for the job. He and his party were under the payroll of the Thule Society. The original plan was that a member of the Thule Society, Karl Harrer, was supposed to have formed the party, but he and his colleagues were inept at connecting to the political interests of the workers. In a time when Germany was in constant turmoil and class tensions were at an all-time high, it would not be prudent to allow such members of the upper middle class or upper class to be the face of a new political movement. It required a man who was both highly ideologically motivated and politically palatable. Drexler was both [7].
From the very beginning, one can easily see how totally separated the Thule Society and other Theosophic/Ariosophic organizations were from ordinary people. One might think this simply a symptom of a more general issue plaguing all intellectual circles, that being the reality that intellectuals generally have scant contact with or know generally about the working class. This is a somewhat reasonable conclusion to come away with after merely skimming the surface, but a deep dive into what exactly Theosophy is, where it came from, and who propagates it, must happen, lest we fall into the trap of forming conclusions without first conducting a thorough analysis.
What is Theosophy?
“Our goal is not to restore Hinduism, but to sweep Christianity from the surface of the earth.”
Madame Blavatsky
In 1831, a young girl named Helena Blavatsky was born in Ukraine, Russia, to her mother Helena Andreyevna Hahn von Rottenstern and father Pyotr Alexeyevich Hahn von Rottenstern. Helena Blavatsky’s full name was Helena Petrovna Hahn von Rottenstern. The ‘von’ is important; in much of Central and Eastern Europe, it denotes nobility. Helena Blavatsky was of such nobility. Her father Pyotr was part of the long line of the German-descended Hahn aristocratic family. Her mother Helena Andreyevna was part of an arguably more prestigious line, the House of Dolgorukov [8].
Growing up, Helena Blavatsky was raised like most other noble children. She was taught French, English, art, and music. Her father, Pyotr, was constantly working away from his family, so Blavatsky and her mother spent the majority of their time separated from him. Meanwhile, her maternal grandfather, Andrei Fadeyev, was posted to be the trustee for the Kalmyk people of Central Asia in Astrakhan, who were Buddhists.
Helena Blavatsky and her family accompanied Fadeyev to Astrakhan, where she had her first encounter with Buddhism. She also befriended a Kalmyk leader named Tumen. It was during this period that Blavatsky described in her memoirs the first appearance of a mysterious man who would come to her in times of need. These visions she had would later be confirmed by later experiences [9].
When Blavatsky’s mother died of tuberculosis in 1842, Blavatsky and her siblings moved in with their grandparents in Saratov. She continued to holiday in Astrakhan, learning how to ride horses, speak Tibetan, and becoming engrossed in Buddhism. She alleged that her maternal great-grandfather also happened to own a large library full of books on mysticism and esotericism. According to her, this was the beginning of her education on the subject. Why did her great-grandfather, Prince Pavel Vasilevich Dolgorukov, have such a library? The reason is that he, like many others of the Dolgorukov family, was a Freemason [11]. This is a common theme throughout the tradition and adherents of Theosophy and its descendants, as we shall see.
In 1848, Blavatsky’s life story began its wild debut. She began her travels in Asia Minor, where she allegedly met a self-described Coptic magician named Paul Metamon, who was also described as a ‘conjurer’ of sorts. [12] With Paul by her side, she visited many places in the East, including Egypt and Greece. However, with her money running short, she was forced to return to Europe and, in 1851, moved to England where she taught piano lessons for a living. While in London, she would commingle with and learn from several ‘spiritist’ circles, becoming friends with the famed Italian revolutionary Mazzini.
“Mazzini proclaimed that Christianity was in ruins and a new religious force was needed to fill the void of skepticism.” [13]
In that same year, a special mission from Nepal arrived in London. Upon meeting this delegation, Blavatsky claims to have seen the mysterious benefactor who had appeared in her visions since childhood. This protector was named 'Mahatma Morya' (also spelled 'Maurya'). Blavatsky claims that Morya had carefully protected her all her life to help her fulfill a revealed destiny [14]. What this destiny was to be will become apparent later on.
What happened next is the subject of debate. Helena Blavatsky alleges that this meeting was the catalyst for her several-year-long retreat into the farthest reaches of Nepal and Tibet. However, modern scholarship, most prominently René Guénon, strictly denies the possibility of this event given the fact that entrance into Tibet was expressly forbidden for Europeans at the time. Regardless, Blavatsky was shown to have immense interest and knowledge in Tibetan Buddhism and apparently learned an ‘ancient language’ that only the oldest priests used called ‘Senzar’ [15].
Blavatsky’s writings are theorized to be written in part or in whole by Mahatmas, which means ‘master’ in English. These ‘masters’ are allegedly part of a long line of mystics and wise men who kept ancient traditions and the secrets of the history of the world away from the rest of the globe. Blavatsky alleges she learned under these Mahatmas for decades in order to become enlightened. She also alleges that the Mahatmas are themselves several hundred years old.
In 1858, Blavatsky returned to Russia, and in 1863, she traveled throughout Europe again, meeting several figures of note, including Victor Michal, a self-described magnetizer, spiritist, and well-known Freemason. Victor Michal would be the one to ‘develop’ Blavatsky’s ‘mediumistic faculties’ [16] [17].
In 1873, Blavatsky took a boat and arrived in New York. Later, she claimed that she was controlled or 'guided' by a spirit named John King, a popular name used by many self-titled mystics and mediums at this time, suggesting a common inspiration. She also claimed that she was 'sent' to America by the 'Mahatmas' to meet a man named Olcott, though this claim is dubious. It is far more reasonable to state that she was introduced to Olcott and other American mystics and Freemasons by her contacts with journalists and other mystics she had already encountered in her travels, notably George H. Felt, who was a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a British Occult Society that was the first to popularize spiritualism in America during the late 19th century, and Olcott himself was a frequent member of Freemason Lodges within the United States [18].
It was these men and Blavatsky, along with others, who would, in October 1875, found the ‘Spiritualist Investigations’ society. It was not until an extremely wealthy benefactor named Henry J. Newton proposed the name of the group be changed to something that personally pleased him more that the organization would later be renamed the ‘Theosophical Society’.
Among the members of the new Theosophical Society were, of course, Olcott and Felt, with Olcott being president and Felt being vice-president along with Dr. Seth Pancoast. Blavatsky concerned herself with the rather humble position of secretary. Along with these men were notables such as William Q. Judge and Charles Sotheran, a prominent leader of American Freemasonry [19].
The Theosophical Society would continue to be intertwined with multiple other occultist and spiritualist societies all over the globe, not just the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. One of these would be the Arya Samaj, an Indian association founded by the sanyasi (ascetic) Dayananda Saraswati, a prominent believer in the Vedic teachings and later an instrumental leader in the ‘India for Indians’ independence movement [20].
As part of their goals, the Arya Samaj is described by René Guénon as "proceeding from a ‘reforming’ spirit quite comparable to Western Protestantism. Was not Dayananda Saraswati called ‘the Luther of India’?" [21] [22]
From the very start, Theosophy and the Theosophical Society were closely intertwined with Freemasonry and other esoteric movements that dotted Europe and America. With special attention placed upon Buddhism and Hinduism, the orientalist origins cannot be ignored. Also of note is the class makeup of these secret societies. Blavatsky is merely one example of the aristocratic and financier origins of nearly all members of these organizations. Having directly descended from the ruling class in one way or another, these groups were and continue to be financed directly out of the pockets of wealthy individuals with free cash and time to spare. As we will continue to see, Theosophy and its descendant organizations were heavily inspired by Hindu notions of class, and more importantly caste.
In Madame Blavatsky’s first written work, Isis Unveiled, she details the fall of Western civilization to rampant materialism and rationalist culture. She drew heavily upon the ideas and discoveries of English author and anointed knight Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote several novels about ancient Egyptian cults and beliefs. Some of his works included The Last Days of Pompeii, which detailed the ancient Isis cult of Rome, and The Coming Race, which concerned itself with occult and esoteric knowledge of various hidden fraternities. These kinds of novels invoked a rich fascination in the minds of 19th-century denizens, and therefore the books sold very well.
In this respect, one can view Theosophy as primarily inspired by works of English occult fiction. It was not until the Theosophical Society moved operations from New York to Madras, India that the organization would establish a more rigid and stable set of beliefs. It was here, in 1888, that Blavatsky would write and publish the foundational Theosophic text The Secret Doctrine, substituting the earlier Egyptian occult stories with primarily Hindu influences and drawing heavily upon a piece of work called the ‘Stanzas of Dzyan’, which Blavatsky claimed to have seen in a hidden Himalayan monastery [23].
“Lucifer represents life, though, progress, civilization, liberty, independence. Lucifer is the Logos, the Serpent, the Savior.”
Helena Blavatsky, the Secret Doctrine
The Secret Doctrine is the most important piece of Theosophical literature. To this day, it serves as the ideological and spiritual foundation for not just Theosophy, but the multitudes of occult organizations that would spawn out of the Theosophical Society. It is also clearly heavily influenced by Eastern religious tenets such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
The Secret Doctrine describes the universe as operating in a cyclical fashion. It claims to track the activities of God from the beginning to the end that has yet to come, or rather, has already come and will come again. The universe is described as an unending process of birth, death, and rebirth, with seven ‘rounds’ that it passes through in this cycle of death and reincarnation. The universe is claimed to experience a ‘fall from grace’ in the first four rounds and a subsequent redemption over the next three. In the ‘end’, the universe collapses in on itself and returns to the ‘source’, or the primordial state [24].
The Secret Doctrine is divided into several volumes. In the second volume, Anthropogenesis, Blavatsky attempts to relate mankind to the cycles and structure of the universe. Blavatsky begins by asserting that mankind is in reality far older and much more ancient than the science of the time would have the public believe, and in fact, played and continues to play an instrumental role in the rise and fall of the universe and the passing of its cycles.
Blavatsky claims that each of the seven cycles of the universe corresponds with the rise and fall of seven ‘root-races’, with the first four root-races becoming increasingly part of the material world and therefore falling into darkness, with the gnostic theme of the Fall from Light and into Darkness being used quite heavily. [25]
Then, beginning with the Fifth cycle, the root-races would progressively ‘ascend’ to superior forms, or superior races. At the time of The Secret Doctrine’s publishing, Blavatsky claimed that the present time was the Fourth stage of the universe, with the current iteration of humanity being the Fifth root-race. In effect, what Blavatsky was stating was that the future ahead was a time of spiritual rebirth for humanity, where the advanced races would “once more” begin their ascent to enlightenment. She went on at length about how the previous ‘pure’ root-race, which was alleged to have descended from the ancient and mythical Kingdom of Atlantis, was the current age’s next step towards enlightenment and ‘progress’ (as much as ‘progress’ can mean within Theosophy). The name of this race was the Aryans. Contrasted with the Aryans were those who interbred with ‘lesser’ beings and species and descended from the third root-race, the Lemurians. These Lemurians were purported to originate from a sunken continent in what is now Madagascar. In this manner, the Aryans were given supreme importance in the movement of the cosmos and were crucially interlinked with the cycles of the universe. [26]
The cycles of the universe were of supreme importance to The Secret Doctrine’s teachings. As such, symbols that represented cyclical death and rebirth were given sacred and infinite significance. Above all stood the symbolic Wheel of Time, and related to it, the Swastika. The Swastika was of such importance that the Theosophical Society made it a defining feature of their organization’s logo. Other such cyclical elements, such as the snake eating itself, are also considered sacred symbols by Theosophy.
Other occult organizations used the swastika as religiously as the Theosophical Society. As an example, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor would sign all documents using the symbol instead of their own signature. [19] One must also account for her inclusion of American Spiritualism in The Secret Doctrine as part of a wide number of influences that continue to define Theosophy and its descendants to this day. The Native American symbol of the Medicine Wheel is not only shaped similarly to the Hindu wheel but is also integrated into Theosophic belief. [29]
Keep in mind that The Secret Doctrine was written far before the establishment of Ariosophy, yet, the major tenets of Ariosophy itself were in effect already written into the bones of it before its creation. Direct influences and ideas from Theosophy can be easily detected in Ariosophy, as we will discuss later on. No matter how much the Nazis attempted to publicly distance themselves from their roots, their beliefs were fundamentally theosophic at their core.
Theosophy also places extreme importance and emphasis upon hierarchies, not just racial ones. Borrowing much from the Hindu caste system, Blavatsky asserted that the fifth root-race, the Aryans, were to be ‘instructed’ by an ancient order of Mahatmas, or ‘Masters’. One of these masters has already been mentioned here, that being Mahatma Morya, with whom Blavatsky received her early ‘insights’ and instructions. The other Master, Koot Hoomi, who had apparently lived through 800 lifetimes, also allegedly resided in the same temple that Blavatsky claims has stood for thousands of years, waiting to give aid to the next root-race. It was from Koot Hoomi that Blavatsky would begin the process of receiving the majority of her discoveries [27] [31].
Ariosophy would expand upon this, and as we will later note, gave similar, if not more significant, importance to ancient German Priest Kings who kept the flame of the old pagan traditions alive into the present day [28].
Do Theosophists believe in a God? Theosophic views about Christianity can be confusing, and their claims vague, especially since most, if not all, Theosophists state they generally believe in God. In the Secret Doctrine, there is a continued back-and-forth over whether or not a God exists, but an in-depth analysis of their views reveals their true intentions.
Blavatsky detailed the Theosophic view of God in The Secret Doctrine as an omnipresent, eternal, and boundless entity who works through an ‘instrument’ known as Fohat, a deity described by her as “one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric Cosmogony”. Indeed, the entire cosmic structure was believed by Blavatsky to be upheld by Fohat, “a universal agent employed by the Sons of God to create and uphold our world” [30].
The way this entity interacted with the universe was purported to be through the phenomena of electricity and solar energy, the ‘objectivized thought of the gods’, in line with much of the age’s views on vitality and electro-therapy [26].
Blavatsky states in The Secret Doctrine that God, as a concept, is “‘Supreme’ as CAUSE, not supreme as effect. Parabrahm is simply, as a 'Secondless Reality,' the all-inclusive Kosmos -- or, rather, the infinite Cosmic Space -- in the highest spiritual sense, of course.” [25].
Blavatsky's writings in The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled exhibit hostility towards Christianity. In The Secret Doctrine, she writes, “The esoteric pearl of Christ's religion degraded into Christian theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting shell to be born in and evolved from”. Per Faxneld, a scholar from Stockholm University, addresses her writings as “very hostile towards Christianity as an organized religion, though not towards the true esoteric core she claimed it (like all other major religions) possessed” [30] [32].
While hostile towards the Church as a structured religion, Theosophy was remarkably open to all forms of faith - as long as they held the same esoteric line that they did. What is most intriguing about Theosophy is the lengths their adherents will go to in order to incorporate the entirety of the world’s faiths and beliefs into a single structure that conforms to the ideal of a cyclical universe, where every living and nonliving being is metaphysically attached to each other and to ‘source’, or God/the gods.
“And, not least, Theosophy proposed a new, no longer anthropomorphic image of God, asserting that all was “That” and that That could be directly contacted and even realized, for that That was the living Presence in the soul.”
Georges van Vrekem
The popularization of Theosophy came about by no accident. In the period of the mid to late 19th century, a wave of anti-positivism swept Europe and America. In the latter, this was characterized by a surge of religious and proto-communistic practices that expressed themselves in the relatively empty land to the West, which the United States had conquered just a few years prior. In Europe, on the other hand, this took the form of the first socially conscious movements that would later develop into a multitude of things, including proto-socialist thinking, religious revival, and of course, Theosophy and its sister and descendant ideologies and beliefs. [33] Through this, we can see the clear reasoning behind the popularity of occult and esoteric thinking as a reaction to the rapidly changing and industrializing world. [27]
Nowhere were these changes felt more than in Austria-Hungary, an Empire split not just in two ways, but nearly a dozen, with as many cultures and tongues as there were opinions and political dissidents within.
A country held back by time, the Habsburg Empire, later the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was stuck in rampant parasitical feudalism in the countryside and brutal urbanization and modernization in the cities. Vienna, the capital of the Empire, was the focal point for these tensions, and a plethora of famous writers and theorists found a welcome home in the pungently claustrophobic atmosphere of Vienna’s many coffee shops.
In Germany, too, Theosophy found a fertile ground to begin proliferating its ideas. In July 1884, the first German Theosophical Society was founded by Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden in Elberfeld. To expand their connections, by this time Blavatsky and her associate Olcott had left India (this was due to claims of ‘charlatanism’ by the local officials). Schleiden was himself a very well-off man, having worked for the colonial office in Hamburg and spent much time managing a parcel of land in West Africa. Among the German political scene, he was a prominent figure who consistently voted in favor of German colonial expansionism. [35] After the Theosophical Society’s official expulsion by the Madras officials and the London Society for Psychical Research, Blavatsky and the rest of the society moved to London, where she would find multitudes of eager students from among the upper class of Victorian society. [34]
Within Germany, the rise of spiritualism took on the name of Lebensreform, or in English, ‘Life Reform’. In a sense, what the spiritualists hoped to accomplish was to totally revitalize and rebirth the German people through the way of mysticism and the occult. Germany, a nation so totally divided for centuries, was one of the latest of the Western European countries to the nationalist fervor that was being increasingly powerful with each passing year on the continent. While France, Britain, and Spain had all been rocked by its momentous passing, the German people had yet to unify until the latter end of the 19th century - but even this was unsatisfactory to many within Germany. Theosophy, therefore, spread like wildfire among the upper and middle-class elements within the region, who sought a real basis for their national existence.
Franz Hartmann, a doctor from Donauwörth, was the spearhead of Theosophy’s popularization in his home country. Having spent many years abroad in America, studying American spiritualists like Kate Wentorth and Mrs. Rice Holmes, he sought truth in the way of the occult. Upon reading Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, he immediately sought out the author herself and joined her ranks in Madras. During Blavatsky and Olcott's journey to Europe, Hartmann would even temporarily take on the role of acting president in their absence.
Having written and published several books in both America and Europe regarding the later Rosicrucian way of thinking, he founded a Lebensreform sanatorium near Salzburg after returning to Europe from India. In 1885, he began to spread his Eastern mystical thinking to the rest of Germany, and in 1889, with the aid of Countess Constance Wachtmeister (a close friend of Blavatsky), he created a theosophical lay-monastery at Ascona (modern-day Switzerland). The selection of Mount Monescia in Ascona for his base of operations was no mistake, as it had been the location of many anarchist experiments.
“Henry Oedenkoven from Antwerp, the pianist Ida Hofmann from Montenegro, the artist Gusto and the ex-officer Karl Gräser from Transylvania. United by a common ideal they settled on the "Mount of Truth" as they renamed Monte Monescia. Draped in loose flowing garments and with long hair they worked in the gardens and fields, built spartan timber cabins and found relaxation in dancing and naked bathing, exposing their bodies to light, air, sun and water. Their diet excluded all animal foods and was based entirely on plants, vegetables and fruit. They worshiped nature, preaching its purity and interpreting it symbolically as the ultimate work of art: "Parsifal's meadow", "The rock of Valkyrie" and the "Harrassprung" were symbolic names which with time were adopted even by the local population of Ascona who had initially regarded the community with suspicion.” [36]
Hartmann worked on translating various Hindu and Theosophic texts into German and dispersed these publications all around the country. His periodical, Lotusblüthen, was the first German publication to display the swastika (or Hakenkreuz) on its front cover. Among his and his associates' translated works were also the writings of Blavatsky’s successors, original works by Hartmann himself, the Tao-Te-King, the Tattwa Bodha, and the previously mentioned Bhagavad Gita, which US General Patton had himself read, and purportedly, could quote from on the spot [37] [38].
Theosophy, simply put, is a fusion of Gnostic Abrahamic belief, western esotericism, and a mix of Hindu faith and Buddhist ideas. While not outright hostile to other forms of faith, as they believe all faiths to have some ‘truth’ to them, it isn’t a true sublation of any of them. They attempt to integrate the world’s faiths into one holistic structure. Theosophy is also inherently anti-working class and anti-peasantry, as we have previously seen in their preference for caste structures and the leadership of nations under a more-or-less immortal caste of pure-blooded aristocracy.
Theosophy’s influence would cover nations and span whole continents. After the publication of The Secret Doctrine, club after club dedicated to studying Theosophy would form, and many of these organizations would fight amongst each other over minute details regarding ‘scripture’ and procedure. Despite Blavatsky’s intense ‘study’ and work that went into the writing of The Secret Doctrine, the book itself is riddled with contradictory statements and outright fabrications. Its confusing literary structure also does it no justice when it comes to cohesion. Therefore, it only makes sense that the Theosophical Societies that would form in the wake of its publication would be incessantly fighting amongst themselves. This will prove to be a common theme among Theosophy and its descendants, as we will see.
Ariosophy - the Ancestors of Nazism
“Man is and remains an animal. Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal.”
Joseph Goebbels
In Vienna, as theosophical thinking took root, a young man by the name of Guido List was growing up just east of the city in the town of Bezirk. Though nominally part of a middle-class upbringing, his parents made sure to give him the finest sense of aristocratic sensibility. At a young age, his father hired a painter to paint a portrait of the young List. In his youth, Guido List was a fanatic for all things sporting. Rowing, alpinism, horseback riding, everything related to the outdoors, List was obsessed with it. Sport had become a sort of ‘communion’ for him between himself and nature, the elemental realm of the streams, forests, and mountains.
In his youth, List was brought to an underground catacomb by his parents. Left alone for a while, he claimed he knelt before an ancient altar and swore to build a temple to Wotan after he had reached adulthood, regarding this altar to be an old pagan, pre-Christian shrine to the Germanic gods. Later in his life, he would claim that this moment was the event of his conversion [39].
“When I am grown, I shall build a temple of Wodan!” [40]
Guido von List
When undertaking his nature excursions, he preferred solitude, though he was not averse to the company of friends and acquaintances. In June of 1875, he and four friends took the day off work and rowed down the Danube River that cut across Vienna. Downstream of the capital, they arrived at the ancient Roman town of Carnuntum, whereupon they camped in the ruins. Going well into the night carousing and drinking, List was lost in a sort of religious ecstasy there, as it was the 1500th anniversary of the Germanic victory over the Romans. Celebrating this, List and his friends built a fire and a burial of eight wine bottles in the shape of a swastika underneath the arch of a Pagan gate named Heidentor. [41] Later, when Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazi genealogist Elsa Schmidt-Falk gave an account of Hitler trying to find and unearth this Swastika after Austria was annexed into the new German Reich [42].
List regarded nature as an escape from modernity. Vienna was, as he saw it, a putrid collection of smokestacks, immigrants, the poor, all driven by an endless pursuit of money. His sentiments were not uncommon for the time, though the degree to which he took his conclusions was, at that time, unheard of.
An artful man and a rabid reader, very early in life List began his work in authorship. In his youthful writings, List expressed an implied degree of belief in the polygenesis of races but was not explicitly racist until later in his life. He was part of various Alpine associations and frequently spent time with proto-hippies who called themselves Wandervögel (Wandering Birds) and who passed the days in communion with nature [43].
Austria was not the only place in Europe in which this fascination with a rejection of modern Victorian industrial society was popular. In fact, in a somewhat ironic twist, Britain had become an epicenter for the end-of-century obsession with paganism and the subversion of ‘respectable’ society. For the British and many others in Europe, Neopaganism was a conduit to a society free from the ills of modernity and industrial-grade suffering through the continued research of the mythologized past and the rolling back of newly developed social customs and scientific advancements. A rejection of the world as such was described by List as a journey in which “One must flee those places where life throbs and seek out the lonely places untouched by human hands in order to lift the magic veil of nature” [44].
Often in the writings of those caught up in the ‘Flight From Reason’, there is a deep interest in all things folklore, medieval, and rustic. Not respect, but rather a placid interest in the peasantry, was also common in the writings of List and other occult writers of his time. List was much more interested in understanding the origins and conceptualized destinies of distinct races. In understanding the disparate races of the earth, List hoped to uncover pathways towards self-knowledge (otherwise known as Gnosis) and connection with the universe.
“In the long run no people can be forced to feel, think and to act in ways other than those made possible by the characteristics of their inborn folk-soul.”
Guido von List
Defining a people, or more specifically a race, on metaphysical terms is what truly ties together the writings of List with the works of Blavatsky, and later, it is the only element that gives a meaningful basis to Nazism in Germany. List was propelled into the spotlight after his publication of Carnuntum, a fictional novel that pushed the ideas of his occultism and opened a window into the mythologized ‘Teutonic’ past. Georg Ritter von Schönerer, an influential Pan-German leader in Vienna, helped to disseminate the ideas of Pan-Germanism to an unwelcome Viennese court, and his charismatic presence in the circles of Vienna led many of his followers to address him as Führer, or leader. [45] The rise of German nationalism in Austria was unwelcome precisely because of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s multiethnic, dynastic, feudal structure, which ironically led many in List’s following, including List himself, to despise it and the religious institutions which underwrote much of its structure.
Guido List became Guido von List in 1907. List himself submitted requests in the Viennese address book to reflect this change, citing his grandfather as being descended from Styrian aristocracy. Though the government initially rejected his claim, List’s supporters in parliament, namely Rudolf Berger, protested against the action, eventually leading to the issue being tabled and his claim respected. In 1905, members and supporters of the Guido von List Society (which had up until this point been the publisher and distributor of List’s widely acclaimed works) signed an announcement declaring support for the organization that had the signatures of some fifty influential and respected people in the empire. Among the names were the anti-Semitic Mayor of Vienna, members of the German Language Club, editor of the Marburger Zeitung, an adamantly pan-Germanist lecturer at Darmstadt University, Baron von Witkenberg who was a compiler of several anti-Semitic directories, an army officer and editor of the popular Stein der Weisen, multiple völkisch authors, a chairman of the powerful German Nationalist Commercial Employees Association, and Franz Winterstein who was a member of the anti-Semitic German Social Party in Kassel. Additionally, several theosophists also appeared in the signatures, including an editor of theosophical literature in Weimar, Hugo Göring; a theosophical author at Heidelberg, Harald Arjuna Grävell von Jostenoode; Max Seiling, an influential theosophical and occultist writer in Munich, and Paul Zillman, editor of the Metaphysische Rundschau and the master and founder of an occult organization located in Berlin [46].
All things considered, List’s backers and supporters came from all parts of the middle and upper class, most of whom were deeply invested in some form of pagan study, occultism, and more broadly, German pan-nationalism and antisemitism. In the ranks of the Guido von List Society, we find a host of occult and theosophic figures. Our friend Franz Hartmann, who we remember as an avid reader of Blavatsky’s works and even the one-time temporary president of the Theosophical Society, appears within the ranks of Guido von List’s organization. Others include the theosophic writer Arthur Weber, the occult novelist Karl Hilm, the theosophical thinker General Blasius von Schemua, a prominent figure in the vegetarian and mystical Mazdaznan cult leader Karl Heise, and the entire membership of the Vienna Theosophical Society. Its founding was mostly financed by the Wannieck family [47].
List became famous not just in Vienna or Austria, but throughout most of Western Europe. From France to Germany, his writings and the works of his followers and colleagues, like Franz Hartmann, reached levels of renown yet unknown in the occult world. Newspapers in Berlin, such as Der Tag, praised his studies, as did papers in Paris. Dozens more would join the ranks of the Guido-von-List Gesellschaft every year due to the publicity given to him and the prestige of his works. Many in Europe proclaimed him as having achieved the ‘rediscovery of ancient Aryan wisdom’.
In fact, nothing List wrote was particularly new to the occult and theosophic world. His ability to shape a narrative, however, and the manner in which he neatly fit theosophic principles into a particularly German context, was new and fascinating to many intellectual circles within Europe. The mythologized Teutonic past, with its line of ancient pagan Priest-Kings, tantalized the German middle class with its escape from the drudgery of daily modern life. Most of his spiritualist theories and ideas were more or less directly derived from Blavatsky and others’ works, but it was this integration that enabled him to rise to fame in a country rocked by the worst excesses of late 19th and early 20th-century industrial modernity. While nationalist sentiment was powerful within Germany proper, it was in Austria where the confluence of German nationalism, agrarian sentimentality, and ethnic conflicts created the correct conditions for Vienna to be the birthplace of the Armanist and Wotanist movement. George L. Moss, a German-American historian, observed that “This longing for self-identification... was accompanied by a contradictory urge to belong to something greater than oneself... since existing social conditions were bewildering and oppressive, romantics sought to find the larger, all-encompassing unity outside the prevalent social and economic condition of man.” [48]
Wotanism was integral to List's ideas. The clear influence from Theosophy can also be found in his writings. List regarded the universe as a constant cycle of birth, being, death, and rebirth. He took the cyclical nature of the rotation of the planets, the seasons, and the growth and decay of living things as proof of this concept. Man was seen as an indispensable part of the cosmos and thus burdened with the responsibility to live in accordance with Nature. Following this line of logic, a close metaphysical and mystical attachment with one’s race was a fundamental principle of List’s philosophy. Two pillars formed the basis of his doctrine: the power of the individual spirit, and sanctuary within Nature.
List drew inspiration from sources other than Isis Unveiled. To construct (or reconstruct) his pagan gnosis, he drew heavily from the writings of Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth, who wrote and published extensive books on the subject of sexology. Sebaldt’s Wanidis and D.I.S. Sexualreligion were two such influences for List. Dealing with the supposed sexual-religion of the mystical Aryans, they described and gave instructions for maintaining the purity of the Aryan race. Sebaldt also published the five-volume text Genesis, which dealt with similar topics, focusing on eroticism, Bacchanalia, libido, and mania intertwined in a racist, sexological perspective. Such topics were a fundamental part of List's beliefs.
Esotericism (Armanism) versus Exotericism (Wotanism) was distinguished by unique religious doctrine. The former concerned itself with the information reserved for the in-group upper-class elites, mostly the mysteries of gnosis. The latter took the form of old folk tales, popular myths, and stories which were purposefully reserved for members of the lower class. Armanism therefore constituted the knowledge previously mentioned regarding sexology, which List extensively wrote about in his Weltanschauung. The Wotanist Priesthood, which List had introduced in the early 1890s, had now transformed into the Armanenschaft, denoting its esoteric correlation. This was a direct one-to-one version of The Secret Doctrine’s hierophants. In List’s book The Rite of the Ario-Germans, one notes its extremely pungent theosophical scent. List would take entire ideas and concepts from it and place them in this book, including its views on the birth of the universe being a ‘divine respiration’, the primal fire (represented by the swastika and its variations) being the source of Fohat’s energy, and of course the stages of the universe. List went to great lengths to ensure that the Ario-Germans, which he now referred to as a race and not a people, would fit neatly into Blavatsky’s concept of the fifth root-race [49].
In The Picture-Writing of the Ario-Germans, List also describes a theosophical cosmology that, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same as Blavatsky’s concept of the three Logoi and four elemental cycles of the universe. To tie it into his Armanist ‘philosophy’, he would identify the first four rounds as being the mythological pagan realms of Muspelheim, Asgard, Wanenheim, and Midgard. He would also rearrange Blavatsky’s own mythos into Norse paganism, drawing connections between Lemurians, Hyperboreans, Atlanteans, and the fifth root-race to Norse pagan realms, beasts, and mythologies. The Armanenschaft, or priest-kings, were in List’s fantasy a highly secretive order of wise men, similar to theosophy’s own wise men. List identified three main classes within ancient German society: Ingaevones, the agricultural class which consisted of peasants, the Hermiones, the intellectual class, and the Istaevones, the military class. List called these three groups ‘estates’. In his mind, the Hermiones, the intellectuals, were those priest-kings. According to him, in the ancient Germanic past, it was the priest-kings, or Armanenschaft, that controlled all sectors of government and education within society. Given their alleged wisdom and insights to the gnosis, their positions were seen as all-mighty and absolutely sacred. There was no such thing as class mobility in List’s mind, as the intellectual estate was to have administered and controlled who was allowed to partake in the so-called enlightenment of the gnosis.
The structure of this fantasy government borrowed much from the way Freemason societies constituted themselves, having three ‘grades’ by which one who was selected by the priesthood would rise through the ranks to achieve further enlightenment. Such enlightenment would have been facilitated through the sharing of secret codes and knowledge which could not be expressed through language. Occult phrases such as ‘the lost master-word’, ‘the unutterable name of God’, and ‘the philosopher’s stone’ were taken directly from a milieu of cabalistic and occult organizations throughout Europe. We can therefore conclude that List’s model of an ancient and perhaps future priesthood would be one inspired by and directly taken from Freemasonry’s own structure.
Therefore, the reason for List’s adoption of Von List can be revealed as a further perpetuation of his idea that the Armanenschaft was not destroyed, and in fact, continued to exist up until the present day, passing down the occult and hidden wisdom of the fantastic ancient Germanic past. List identified with these men, and so did his followers, who proclaimed him to be in direct continuity with the supposed priest-kings. Having disappeared into secret closed-doors groups and organizations within Germany itself, List anticipated the reemergence of the Armanenschaft and prepared doctrines and plans for a revival of the ancient Germanic state.
List created the blueprints for this new Germanic Reich and went into great detail to do so. Non-Aryans were to be subjected to the status of slaves in subordination to the Aryans, who were themselves to be restricted by a highly hierarchical caste system with little or no social mobility. Qualifications for moving up or down in the system would be determined by their racial purity. All those with completely pure Aryan blood were to be released from all forms of wage or physical labor, serviced by the lower classes as a special elite. Only those of pure Ario-German blood would be able to acquire any sort of social freedoms and the privilege of citizenship. In a sense, a new feudalism would be developed, with a supporting arrangement of estates of land parceled out to the Aryan race, with armies of non-Aryan slave laborers forced to resign themselves to working the fields. Readers may note the extreme similarities of this vision to what the Nazis later would write of their own accord, most certainly taking inspiration, if not directly transmitting the ideas, from List’s writings. The mystical elitism of the Armanenschaft class would also not be forgotten, with the structure of this fantasy Ario-Germanic society being modeled off of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As Goodrick-Clarke eloquently explains:
This occult system of ten grades of successively higher initiation into gnostic mysteries served as the basis of the new order. In List's scheme, the two lowest grades denoted the individual and his family,which were in turn subordinate to five specified levels of Armanist authority. Above these there existed three supreme grades, whose absolute authority corresponded to the analogous location of the three highest sefiroth on the Tree 'beyond the veil of the abyss'. According to List, the eighth grade comprised the higher nobility, while the ninth was occupied only by the king and his immediate circle. The tenth grade symbolized God. List emphasized the mystical equivalence of the ascending and descending grades and interpreted the traditional cabbalistic motto 'As above, so below' to mean that the Aryan is a god man. This application of the Tree to a political hierarchy thus located the seat of authority in a sacred zone. While ancient Germanic society was claimed to have been a theocratic state, so the new order was to comprise a special elite, whose power was holy, absolute and mysterious. List's ideal state was a male order with an occult chapter.' The similarities with Himmler's plans for an SS order-state are striking. [50]
Guido von List passed away in 1919 at the age of seventy. He had lung inflammation exacerbated by food shortages in Vienna. Prior to his death, he had predicted that World War I, which had begun just a few years before, would usher in the triumph of the Germanic Empire he had dedicated his life to hypothesizing, but he was ultimately proven wrong. He died at the house of Eberhard von Brockhusen, an important patron of the List Society who lived near Berlin. His obituary was written by Philipp Stauff and published in the Münchener Beobachter, whose main editor was Rudolf von Sebottendorf. Later, this same newspaper would become the Nazi Party’s biggest media outlet and remain the party’s most widely distributed newspaper until its destruction in 1945 [51].
The Thule Society
“Thule people were to whom Hitler first came, and it was Thule people who joined him in the beginning.”
Sebottendorf, Bevor Hitler kam
List’s legacy would have far-reaching consequences. His writings and institutional influence would be passed down through three major routes. Völkisch groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, already heavily inspired by List’s writings, would continue to disseminate his ideas within the German-speaking regions of Europe. The ‘chauvinistic mystique’ of the Listian ideology catered to their worldview, which, as previously discussed, was in reactionary opposition to the advancing progress of bourgeois industrial capitalism that had already transformed much of Europe. Of these groups, by far the two most important were the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden, of which the Germanenorden is the most critical for preserving List’s reactionary legacy, as it would later give birth to the subject of our attentions, the Thule Society.
The other channel of transmission was a mysterious individual known as Tarnhari, who claimed he was a reincarnated ancient Germanic King and confirmed List’s writings based on the evidence given to him in dreams. Tarnhari would later be especially close to Dietrich Eckhart, Hitler’s early mentor, and gave inspiration to writers such as Ellegaard Ellerbeck, who published a series of books that drew entirely from Tarnhari and List’s writings. Tarnhari’s contribution to the spread of Armanism enabled the religion’s name to become a household word by the time of the Nazi party’s rise.
The last mode by which List’s ideas were passed on was through a series of astrologers, rune casters, and Armanist writers, who created a vast body of work that detailed armanist-arisophical lore that became the basis of SS rituals and traditions. These runological occultists would later come into close contact with Heinrich Himmler and gave him direct advice on how to run his new cabbalistic secret-society organization [52].
For our purposes, tracing the passage of the Armanist worldview that transfigured itself into the Nazi party will require a focus on the first of these routes, namely the Germanenorden.
As previously mentioned, Rudolf von Sebottendorf was the editor of the Münchener Beobachter. While most of his writings were fairly standard Nazi propaganda, his book Bevor Hitler kam (Before Hitler Came) is of supreme importance to us in our search for the true history of the Nazi Party that emerged after the end of World War I.
Before even the first World War, however, there was the Germanenorden. Sebottendorf attributes the very first beginnings of the ‘German reawakening’ and subsequent pushback against Judaism to a man named Theodor Fritsch [53].
Fritsch was born in Saxony in 1852 to a peasant family. After developing the skills and experience necessary to become an expert milling engineer in Wiesenau (near Leipzig), he became very active in the local Miller’s league. His new guild was created to defend against what he saw as threats to small businesses by large corporations and factories. As a guild member himself, he would have experienced these perceived threats very directly. However, without much of a formal literary education or worldly education at all, he attributed these threats to being spawned by Jewish foreign influence. Foreign, because he saw the Jews as ‘racial aliens’ and described their attacks on Aryandom. In an attempt to build further political power within the Reich, Fritsch began writing a small pamphlet for some three hundred individuals called the Hammer in 1902. By 1905, his readership had expanded to more than three thousand people who began to organize themselves into Hammer-Gemeinden (Hammer Groups). These groups were closely associated with Lebensreform.
Sebettendorf notes that Fritsch’s contribution to Nazi belief began primarily with his unique scientific perspective, though this is partially incorrect. While Fritsch was eventually to found the predecessor to the Thule Society, his writings were heavily inspired by other authors in Austria who were contemporaries of List. In this way, Fritsch’s contributions to Arisophic ‘theory’ were anything but unique. Nevertheless, Sebettendorf’s point is true: Fritsch managed to synthesize List’s more mystical elements of Ariosophy and give it a ‘scientific’ basis (mostly in the form of skull measurements and the like) [54].
Just a few years before the outbreak of World War I, Fritsch organized a meeting between himself and twenty of the most prominent Ariosophists, anti-Semites, and pan-Germanists in the country. Karl August Hellwig and Hermann Pohl were two such men. Hellwig had been a member of the List Society since 1908 and was chosen to lead the Reichshammerbund, which was to confederate all the Hammer Groups into a single entity. This would be the face of the Ariosophic movement in Germany, the exterior. Hermann Pohl, on the other hand, would be appointed to lead the Germanenorden, a twin organization that would serve as the movement’s secret fold. [55] Already, we can see the influences of List’s ideas in the formation of political groups, with one being the exoteric organization and the other being the esoteric component. The Germanenorden, as we will see, would be far more important to the future of Germany, as the Reichshammerbund quickly ran into difficulties in recruiting despite extensive canvassing and pamphlet distribution. [56]
Sebettendorf takes the time to point out how the beginnings of the Ariosophic movement in Germany, through the form of the Germanenorden, were in response to the communist International, and not of any repulsion of global finance capital (this is instead substituted for the Jews) or even anti-German geopolitical movements. He also begins to describe the objectives of the movement and requirements for membership. Any prospective member of the Germanenorden was to be of ‘pure’ racial blood going back as far as three generations. This was to prevent ‘infiltration’ of the order. Women were also not allowed. ‘Special importance’ was to be put upon the ‘propaganda of racial science’, as according to him, the experiences made in the natural world and the study of it were to be directly applied to man. It was to be shown that the root and essential cause for all disease and suffering was to be squarely blamed upon the mixing of races, or ‘racial corruption’. [57]
The Germanenorden lodges were structured in a way very similar to that of Freemason lodges, in accordance with Listian tradition and thought. The rituals that took place were also of note. The following is a summary of a document called "An die Einführung in den Untergrund," which describes the lowest initiation ritual for novices into the order:
“While the novices waited in an adjoining room, the brothers assembled in the ceremonial room of the lodge. The Master took his place at the front of the room beneath the baldachin (a cloth canopy fixed above a throne or altar) flanked on either side by two Knights wearing white robes and helmets adorned with horns and leaning on their swords. In front of these sat the Treasurer and Secretary wearing white masonic sashes, while the Herald took up his position in the centre of the room. At the back of the room in the grove of the Grail stood the Bard in a white gown, before him the Master of Ceremonies in a blue gown, while the other lodge brothers stood in a semicircle around him as far as the tables of the Treasurer and Secretary. Behind the move of the Grail was a music room where a harmonium and piano were accompanied by a small choir of 'forest elves'. The ceremony began with soft harmonium music, while the brothers sang the Pilgrims' Chorus from Wagner's Tannhauser. The ritual commenced in candlelight with brothers making the sign of the swastika and the Master reciprocating. Then the blindfolded novices, clad in pilgrimage mantles, were ushered by the Master of Ceremonies into the room. Here the Master told them of the Order's Ario-Germanic and aristocratic Welananschauung, before the Bard lit the sacred flame in the grove and the novices were divested of their mantles and blindfolds. At this point the Master seized Wotan's spear and held it before him, while the two Knights crossed their swords upon it. A series of calls and responses, accompanied by music from Lohengrin, completed the oath of the novices. Their consecration followed with cries from the 'forest elves' as the new brothers were led into the grove of the Grail around the Bard's sacred flame.” [58]
An astute reader may notice that none of these rituals have anything to do with Christianity or the so-called Catholicism that the Germanenorden claimed to share common interests with.
It is an interesting point, therefore, that the successors to the Germanenorden, the Thule Society, would find their initial roots in Munich, Bavaria. Bavaria is noted for being one of the most Catholic parts of Germany with strong ties to the Catholic church in Rome and a history of that association that goes back a thousand years.
The outbreak of World War I would cause the breakdown of the Germanenorden. With many of their members (Sebettendorf claims as much as 95 out of 100) joining up with the army, and one of the main goals of the Hammerbund (the realization of German unity and national fervor), it seemed that the usefulness of these two sister societies had been fully used up [59]. That is, until Germany lost the war.
Sebettendorf, rather unsurprisingly, blames the loss of Germany in the First World War on the Jews and Communists. He claims that the Social Democrats had been infiltrated by the Jews, and that all War Societies had indeed experienced the same sort of “infection”. He blamed the Jews and their supposed Social Democrat subordinates for various sailors' and workers' strikes in 1917 and 1918, which had been in response to the German admiralty planning on sailing the entire fleet into a suicide mission without approval of the German government, with the latter being a response to the cutting of wages and significant shortages in food and energy caused by the Imperial German government’s expensive and ultimately pointless war [60] [61].
Regardless, after the war, Germany had entered into complete political turmoil. A famine in Germany that cost the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people had crippled its people’s will to support the monarchy, causing a revolution led mainly by the Social Democratic party (SPD). The horrid conditions caused by the German monarchy’s war (the war that List himself had predicted was to bring about the next epoch of Aryan rule over the world) caused the threat of a communist revolution to grow with every hour. To prevent the rise of a working-class-led government that was brewing in Bavaria, and eager to appease Western capital, Philipp Scheidemann announced the creation of the Weimar Republic in November 1918. This was a compromise between the existing establishment, mainly heavy and light industry, and the agriculturally-based Junkers, with the Social Democrats, who claimed to represent the working class movements that had effectively put a stop to the war, though even the Right in Germany at the time knew this was false [64].
The self-styled aristocrat "Baron" Rudolf "von" Sebettendorf, whose real name was Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, joined the Germanenorden in 1916, just before the end of the war. His first contact was with Hermann Pohl, and he gradually became an integral member of the Order. He conducted dozens of meetings, had an innumerable number of contacts within the group, and grew to become a trusted ally of Pohl. He was eventually selected as Master of the province of Bavaria. [65]
In an attempt to protect the Order’s meetings within Bavaria from socialist and other hostile elements, the local group used the cover name Thule Society. Thule in English refers to mythical, uninhabited islands within the North Sea and was the site of many Listian and völkisch myths regarding Hyperborea.
The immediate aftermath of the chaos of the First World War had resulted in various uprisings throughout Germany, most notably within Bavaria itself, where the Thule Society had made its headquarters. The speed at which a socialist government had managed to assume power within Bavaria shocked Sebettendorf so much that he organized a "musical rehearsal" in one of the Thule Society's rooms, where he gave the following speech: [66]
Yesterday we experienced the collapse of everything which was familiar, dear and valuable to us. In the place of our princes of Germanic blood rules our deadly enemy:Judah. What will come of this chaos, we do not know yet. But we can guess. A time will come of struggle,themostbitterneed, a time of danger...As long as I hold the iron hammer, I am determined to pledge the Thule to this struggle. Our Order is a Germanic Order, loyalty is also Germanic. Our god is Walvater, his rune is the Ar-rune. And the trinity: Wotan, Wili, We is the unity of the trinity. The Ar-rune signifies Aryan, primal fire, the sun and the eagle. And the eagle is the symbol of the Aryans. In order to depict the eagle's capacity for self- immolation by fire, it is coloured red. From today on our symbol is the red eagle, which warns us that we must die in order to live. [67]
During the Bavarian Socialist Republic’s short-lived existence, the forces of reaction managed to defeat the socialists in the Battle for Munich. In the chaos, some soldiers lined up certain members of the German and Russo-German aristocracy and shot them against a wall. This enraged the members of the white army, which proceeded in a terrible barbaric campaign against the local populace, condemning many innocents to death due to alleged communist leanings. Regardless, the event was foundational for Sebettendorf and the Thule Society, which tirelessly agitated throughout Bavaria’s socialist rule. Aided by Conservatives, Social Democrats, and the Freikorps, a loose band of veterans organized to fight back against the tides of revolution, the central government managed to suffocate the socialist republic in its cradle. The Freikorps, interestingly, may have its roots within the Thule Society itself. In November 1918, the Thule Society paid for the construction of the Thule Combat League, transforming the Thule rooms into a genuine barracks to house them. Sebettendorf even managed to leverage the Thule society’s connections to the central government and aristocracy, along with their newfound military strength to bring down the Bavarian Socialist Republic. There was even a plot to capture the republic’s then-president, Eisner, but this ultimately failed. [68]
At the same time, the Thule society focused its efforts on distributing anti-Semitic pamphlets to massed crowds during Bavaria’s tumultuous 20s. This time was one of complete chaos and a widening gap between the lower and upper classes brought upon the country by the end of the war. The Thule Society was perhaps one of the only conservative groups within Germany at the time that recognized the danger to the establishment that this gap was causing. [69] Because they were aware of the threat that the working class presented to the upper class, the Thule Society resolved to appeal to the German lower class. The appeal was published in the Allgemeine Ordens-Nachrichten No. 15, Iulmond des Einbulwinters 1918/19 by the Germanenorden, announcing the formation of the German Workers Party:
Here change and finally to create real freedom for the German people is to form a German Socialist Party. German national and socialist. [70]
This marked the date at which the predecessor party to the National Socialist Party was founded. Anton Drexler, as previously noted in the introduction to this essay, was selected as the leader of this party for his working-class upbringing and palatability for working-class audiences. Of course, Anton Drexler was merely the face of this new political movement; the real organizer behind the creation of the German Workers Party was a man named Karl Harrer, who was a full-time member of the Thule Society. [71]
The Thule Society undoubtedly had its hands in the party’s coffers, but as an ‘esoteric’ organization themselves, they saw little reason to push for outward publicity. The majority of the Society’s funds were directed towards subsidizing the Freikorps Oberland, which was under their payroll. Later, men such as Karl Haushofer would join the party through this route. [6]
In September of 1919, just a few months after the founding of the party, a younger Adolf Hitler would be sent on an ‘espionage’ mission for the German Army to spy upon the group’s meetings due to the central government’s fears of right-wing and separatist groups that could challenge their power. During the meeting, a man named Baumann was giving a speech advocating for the separation of Bavaria from the rest of Germany, and upon hearing this, Hitler angrily stood up and began a speech attempting to refute his arguments. After finishing, he stormed out of the conference, with Anton Drexler chasing him down as he left. Drexler handed Hitler a small pamphlet and encouraged him to join the party. Before Hitler could give it much consideration, he received in the mail a postcard telling him that he had been accepted as a member. Though initially against the idea of joining a pre-existing party (he had wanted to build a new one from scratch), he attended one of their committee meetings and two days later signed up as a member. [72]
The Rise of the Nazis - Conclusion to Part One
The eventual creation of the National Socialist party was, as we have seen, a tumultuous birth. Such a chaotic and poorly-sourced history leads many down the path of Nazi exoneration, including many in Europe and even the United States who praise the Nazis as having been the last ‘saviors’ of European culture, tradition, and religion.
But one only has to look at the real history of those who would produce the Nazis - a history completely and utterly immersed in an orientalist Hindu occult led by a schizophrenic Ukrainian-born Russian woman who wrote her polemics based on fictional fantasy novels written in Britain. She set up her Freemason-inspired community of fellow pagan adepts in New York City and throughout Europe, inspiring a man named Guido List, who so hated his origins as a middle-class manager that he and his followers would adopt aristocratic monikers such as “von”. List predicted a war that Germany would in actuality lose as a great spiritual conflict that would herald in a German golden age. It is a ‘philosophy’ that believes in the cyclical nature of a pointless universe, one where the events that take place are merely infinite reproductions of universes that have preceded and will succeed it. It posits that men are not masters of their own destiny, but rather fall in line with a reified picture of ‘Nature’, where God is defiled and Lucifer is quite literally claimed to be a progressive force in history. It’s a belief system that is obsessed with feminine sexuality, where its adherents continuously push for unlocking the ‘ancient secrets’ of sexual power. It believes that an importation of the Hindu caste system into Europe and the rest of the world, under the guidance of mythical five-thousand-year-old “Masters”, is simply the realization of the ideal society for a made-up race of Aryans, which while no one can agree which race specifically they are, they are undoubtedly the ruling classes of Europe and America. Those who hold the purse strings to the world’s debt and are in command of all the nations of the world belong to an ancient tradition of mystical ‘priest-kings’, those who would know all the secrets of the world while leaving the peasant class to toil and work in de-facto slavery for the rest of history. It is a childish reaction to the advances of the industrial revolution and now modernity. Modernity, because we are now facing and have been facing the same invasion of our societies by the Theosophists ever since the end of World War II. The New Age Movement itself is merely an offshoot of the Theosophical Society, which borrows many of the ideas of Theosophy and spreads its influence into nearly every corner of Western culture and political thought. [73]
It is this confluence of Freemasonry, orientalism, the occult, and feudal nostalgism that produced the Nazi party. Not a single part of Nazism is traditional to any portion of European or American culture. Nazism was, ideologically speaking, merely a vessel for the export of Theosophy.
In our next article, we will cover the economic reasons behind the Nazi’s rise: their early backers, how they took power, and who they took power for. This will be the final piece of the puzzle in unlocking the real history of the Nazis, and of the West.
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Goodrick-Clarke, N. (2019). OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM : secret aryan cults and their influence on nazi ideology Pg 142
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I haven't read this in its entirety but let me say something: occultism and secret cult/religion feels something like that you could trace back to the day of temple economy.
When the priest turned their occupation to hereditary caste, such secrecy to hold their power over the temple was not necessary. But when Abrahamic religions came and it's mandated by God himself that His words needs ro be spread around, this secrecy becomes difficult. So the elites formed secret sects and practice occultism to keep the knowledge of power (aka knowledge pertaining to the relation of production) among themselves. This is why occultism is so rampant in the West.
I see occultism and secret religion as a negative dialectical opposite of Abrahamic religions. The former gatekeep its knowledge of truth among its approved caste member while the latter seeks to spread the truth to the universal masses.
Absolutely riveting. Couldn’t put it down. And lucky for me I picked it up too… lately i’ve been leaning closer & closer towards nazism myself (and for the same reasons identified here : ‘nostalgia’ for a past that never was, resentment of jews who may or may not control all of the world’s money but certainly have an enviable knack - as a people - to both adapt & thrive in changing times whilst remaining unchanged themselves, gnostic teachings making at least as much sense as Christianity…
I’m still a bit anti-jew after reading this but at least I now know nazism was equally elitist if not more so.
Then again… does it matter how something starts & who starts it? Yes. Yes I think it probably very much does lol