Ten Precursors to Esoteric National Socialism
Intro
The 20th century has been characterized by many historians as an exhibition of horrors perpetrated by a host of totalitarian world leaders.
Among the usual nominees for the “worst of the lot” are: Khmer Rouge kingpin Pol Pot, Ottoman vizier Talaat Pasha, Indonesian military dictator Suharto, Bosnian-Serb General Ratko Mladić, and Ugandan autocrat Idi Amin.
Although numerous others could – and perhaps should – be listed, unfailingly, at the top of this list, one finds Communist “Chairman,” Joseph Stalin and (of course) German Führer, Adolf Hitler.
In videos such as “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults” …
…and “10 Occultist Spies,” …
…we have alluded to some of the (perhaps surprising) connexions between Marxism – and its myriad varieties – and the occult. The phenomena deserve their own video. So, stay tuned!
But in this presentation, slated for two parts, we will take a closer look at the latter case, and sketch an answer to the question, was there an esoteric or SynchroMystic foundation to National Socialism?
Fun fact: The slang word Nazi was coined by German Communists in the 1920s as a derogatory – and supposed – acronym for a longer phrase.
Namely, the political description “National Socialist,” which was (of course) the first part of the full name National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
But if we were dealing with a true acronym in the usual sense, it would be something more like N-A-S–O, rather than N-A-Z-I. And we’d be saying /NAH-zoh/ rather than /Nah-tsee/.
In truth, “Nazi” is only an abbreviation for the seemingly innocuous word National. It leaves off the word “socialism” altogether. Socialism was crucial to the NSGW party. So…what gives?
While it’s true that, in the vast majority of early-twentieth-century circles, the word “National” was entirely politically neutral, this was not the case for Communists! We can get an intuitive “fix” on the situation merely by looking at the name of the Soviet-controlled organization against which Germany claimed to be contending. Of course, I’m referring to the “Comintern” – or Communist International. It sprang up in 1919 and self-professedly would stop at nothing short of world domination. Literally.
To be clear: Communists didn’t have a problem with German “Socialism.” Far from it! According to orthodox Marxism, socialism is a vital transitional stage between capitalism and pure communism. Instead, then – as now – Communists were opposed to any and all forms of Nationalism. Germany’s cardinal sin, then, was nationalism – hence, “Nazi” became a swear word.
But, this datum has been flushed down George Orwell’s proverbial “Memory Hole.” And the resultant picture of history has become distorted.
To try to recover a truer picture, we must glance further back – to the 19th century. There, we find a veritable powder keg that, when ignited by the spark of ambition, sets the world ablaze. Our main focus will be on several counter-currents formed in opposition to Enlightenment and Darwinian versions of deterministic materialism. But, to round things out, we’ll briefly tackle materialist trends as well.
Concerning the former, in France, Alphonse Louis Constant became a major figure in what is now described as the “Nineteenth-Century Occult Revival.”
Better known as Éliphas Lévi, whom we profiled in “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,” Constant became “…the narrow channel through which the whole Western tradition of magic flowed to the modern era.”
In Germany, a strain of Romanticism, going back to philosophers and litterateurs like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, built to a crescendo in the immersive, musical theatrics of Richard Wagner. For his part, Wagner drew heavily upon – and brought into vogue – portions of both Germanic mythology and the legendary King Arthur.
Similar streams existed in England. For instance, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn cross pollinated Freemasonry and “ceremonial magic.”
On the literary front, Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a 19th century British parliamentarian and statesman, wrote several novels that, believe it or not, exerted a tremendous impact in occult circles. One of the most famous of these, published in 1871, was originally titled The Coming Race. Now typically referred to as Vril, it posited the existence of quasi-angelic beings secretly existing in the center of the earth.
The storyline would eventually issue in the claim, for example, by researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their 1960 bombshell book, The Morning of the Magicians, that a group of high-level German occultists were working in tandem with the Golden Dawn to find and exploit a mysterious energy known as the “Vril Force.” In the context of the lore, this “…was understood to be an enormous reservoir of energy in the human organism, inaccessible to non-initiates. It was believed that whoever became the master of the Vril force could …enjoy the total …[control] over all nature.”
Some writers further connected the “Odic Force” postulated by Baron Carl Reichenbach (and named after the Germanic god Odin). If these forces actually existed (they reasoned), then – just perhaps – some of us have become proficient with them.
Thus, some authors began to develop the idea that history is being controlled by a group of magical adepts who had done just that. In many versions of this tale, various “Ascended Masters” operate from a well-hidden subterranean layer (possibly under the Himalayan Mountains in Tibet). Finding these secret chiefs – and allying with or learning from them – became a major preoccupation of certain influential men in the National Socialist Party.
A lot of this speculation may be traced to a Russian-born mystic with an alleged penchant for plagiarism.
The Top Ten
1 — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
We have already profiled “Madame” H. P. Blavatsky twice: once in the previously mentioned “Top 10 Occultists,” …
…and again in “10 Arcane Words,” where we sketch the basic contours of “Theosophy,” the philosophical-spiritual system with which she is most identified.
In sharp contrast with others (one of which we’ll get to momentarily), Blavatsky was known for her opposition to the evolutionary schema propounded by Charles Darwin and his many fawning admirers.
This was not because she opposed evolutionary thinking per se. On the contrary, one of the distinguishing features of Blavatskian Theosophy was its introduction of evolutionary progression to the Eastern concepts of karma and the “reincarnation of souls.” This resulted in a species of Esoteric Buddhism, to borrow the terminology of her Theosophical ally Alfred Percy “A. P.” Sinnett. No, what Blavatsky took issue with was Darwin’s materialism. In its place, and in such works as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, she proposed a sophisticated blend of occultism and science.
At least, it appeared erudite to supporters of her Theosophical Society. Since at least 1895, critics – such as William Emmette Coleman and René Guénon – have produced compelling documentation of her many unacknowledged quotations from preëxisting esoteric sources.
Nevertheless, Blavatsky’s syncretism influenced numerous people, like Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink, whose best-selling 1915 novel, The Golem, popularized the recurring Jewish-Kabbalistic legend of a Frankenstein-like creature animated by magic.
Blavatsky also influenced nineteenth-to-twentieth-century German doctor and occultist Franz Hartmann. Hartmann, whom we will encounter repeatedly, would go on to promote alchemy, astrology, magic, and Rosicrucianism. All this culminated in his co-creation – with fellow occultists Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss – of the erotically charged Ordo Templi Orientis.
For these golem- and magia-sexualis angles, see “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
On Reuss’s entanglements with the Prussian secret police, see “10 Occultist Spies.”
That Blavatsky was herself either a British or a Russian spy (or, perhaps, both!) was a possibility floated by esoteric scholar Kenneth Paul Johnson in his 1994 book, The Masters Revealed.
It’s held against Blavatsky, however, that (in her evolutionary musings) she magnified Sinnett’s notion of “root races.” The ponderous – and speculative – anthropology cries out for a suitably in-depth treatment. Since we can’t justify the digression now, we’ll simply tease the viewer by remarking that the fifth such race caused quite a stir in National-Socialist circles.
You see, she used the term Aryan, with a lot of the connotations and appurtenances that would have made any true-blooded Hitlerjugend sieg heil!
2 — Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
To get a more complete picture of the cultural and intellectual milieu out of which National Socialism sprung, it is necessary to shift, momentarily, into a materialistic gear. For that, we’ll turn – for number two – to the late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century naturalist and zoologist Ernst Haeckel
Whereas Thomas Huxley had been “Charles Darwin’s Bulldog” on the British Isles, in Germany, the chief popularizer of the new evolutionary theory was Haeckel.
His most famous – and controversial – contribution to Darwinism was the so-called “Biogenetic Law.” This is summarized in the jargon-laden aphorism “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” On Haeckel’s view, embryos literally retrace their species’ evolutionary history as they develop. The idea is now widely rejected.
But before its retirement, the picture inspired numerous thinkers. Not least was the famed – and gnostically inclined – Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung.
Jung’s notions of “archetypes” and the “collective unconscious” posited psychological analogs of Haeckel’s “recap” theory. In Jungian terms, your mental development harkens back to humanity’s earliest origins.
Of course, as we pointed out in “10 Gold-Making Alchemists,” …
…Jung had also been inspired by the sixteenth-century Belgian hermeticist and Paracelsian physician, Gerhard Dorn. And these interests led him to spiritualism, synchronicity, and other esoterica.
And then there’s the much-admired polymath Rudolf Steiner, founder of “Anthroposophy,” about whom we hope to have more to say in a forthcoming video. Steiner was also taken with Haeckel’s philosophy.
In these ways, Haeckel helped mold the twentieth-century mindset in several noteworthy respects. This is clearest in his native Germany, where social-Darwinism became especially influential.
Although various National-Socialist thinkers would apply Haeckel’s thought in ways not necessarily approved by the old man himself, the ordering of people into categories of racial inferiority and superiority are correlates of his evolutionary postulates.
Still, despite his impact upon bona fide esoterics – like Jung and Steiner – Haeckel was (arguably) broadcasting on a decidedly materialistic frequency.
3 — Guido von List
But, like Blavastky, many Germans were repulsed by the Darwin-Haeckel sort of materialism. And some attributed it – and its associated atheism – with a foreign worldview that was fatal to the German soul. Among those who took this view was Guido von List, number three.
The Austrian occultist and writer became an influential spiritual leader within the so-called Völkisch movement, a not-entirely-helpful label for some of the diverse conservative, populist-leaning currents that developed in Germany especially after 1890. The trend had numerous characteristics.
One was the tendency to attribute great significance to folklore. So, after immersing himself in Teutonic mythology – especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic collection known as the Edda – List was impelled to lobby for the restoration of the worship of the traditional Germanic god, Wotan. Naturally, List’s view was straightaway labeled Wotanism.
A contemporary incarnation of this was mentioned by Rolling Stone in an article on the “Capitol Riot.”
For our commentary, see the dedicated video.
Of course, the Norse equivalent to Wotan – the previously mentioned Odin – was played by the now familiar Anthony Hopkins in numerous, recent Thor movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
List believed that “national greatness” was bound up with, and would only be recovered by, embracing “the wisdom of the ancients.” This commitment situated him within the broader landscape of what is now called “Heathenry” or “Neopaganism.”
It also placed his mysticism under the umbrella of something called Ariosophy. The word literally means “Aryan Wisdom.” Though…
List himself “called his doctrine Armanism after the Armanen, …a [hypothetical] body of priest-kings in the ancient Aryo-Germanic nation.” He formulated his doctrines “in 1902”, via “a mystical revelation.”
That year, List underwent an operation on his eyes. The procedure left him in “virtual blindness” for months. Similarly to fabled “blind seers” – such as Phineus and Tiresias, whom we mentioned (for example) in “Be My Valentine” – …
…List reported having flashes of spiritual insight into mytho-history. This enabled him to unlock what he termed “The Secret of the Runes.”
“Runes” are the written characters that preceded the Latin alphabet for speakers of ancient Germanic languages. They’re often imbued with mystical importance and connected with divination.
As it happens, the Catholic Cistercian religious order created – or inherited – a runic cipher system around the thirteenth century. Details would take us too far afield, presently.
Suffice it to say that Cistercian numerals figure into more than one legend – including a theory that the Holy Grail ended up in the United States of America.
In any case, who was said to have pored over List’s runology book shortly after its publication? None other than Adolf Hitler.
The future Führer’s interest is explicable, some think, due to List’s supposed prediction about the rise of a divinely ordained Aryan King. This heroic figure would “inaugurate …[a] thousand-year reich,” beginning around 1932 – precisely when Hitler was gearing up for his explosive rise to power.
And List’s impact persists to this day. Some incarnations of “Odinism” still incorporate aspects of his runology, as is apparent, for example, in the work of American occultist Stephen E. Flowers, a.k.a. “Edred Thorsson.”
But, closer to his own time, List’s legacy was carried forward through the Guido von List Society. Founded in 1908, its upper echelon included the industrious Philipp Stauff, who was also a high-ranking member of the group started by our next figure[, number four.]
4 — Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels
The Austrian mystic and racialist born Adolf Josef Lanz had spent time as a Cistercian monk before changing course. No word on whether he was privy to Cistercian runology or the Grail’s whereabouts.
But, shortly after his stint in Holy Cross Abbey, smack in the Vienna Woods, he pursued the more völkisch occupation of Arisosophy, which word he coined. As a broad and general concept, it was less a system of doctrine and more a generalized commitment to a sort of race-based mysticism.
In Liebenfels’ case, the crucial beliefs – initially termed “Theo-Zoology” – reflected a form of Manichæist dualism “in which Aryans and non-Aryans were …locked in a [mortal] battle for world dominion.” Theo-Zoological anthropology had it that the earliest Aryans lived near the North Pole. Through injudicious interbreeding “with ‘dæmon’ races,” however, these aboriginal polar inhabitants “lost …[their innate] superhuman powers” – the “electron of the gods.” All was not lost, however.
These capacities were recoverable due to the intercession of an “Aryan Christ.” This potential had been long obscured by Jewish theological accretions. But the “True Gospel” was faithfully preserved and transmitted by a handful of Gnostic sects and military-religious orders, such as the Knights Templar.
For a quick introduction to Gnosticism, see “Gnosticism Explained in 5 Minutes.”
To this end, from his headquarters in an old ruined castle that he dubbed “Burg Werfenstein,” von Liebenfels founded (in 1907) the Ordo Novi Templi, or “Order of New Templars.”
In line with his idea of a “‘restored’ gospel,” he “developed a New-Templar liturgy and ceremonies” – just as Aleister Crowley would later do for the so-called “Gnostic Catholic Church.”
Starting in 1905, von Liebenfels published a magazine dedicated to Ariosophy. Titled Ostara, it was named after the Teutonic “spring goddess” and made an archaic reference to the vernal equinox.
Again, some of this may have interesting intersections with Crowley – whom we have profiled several times, such as in “Top 10 Occultists” …
…and “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults” …
The self-styled “Great Beast 666” likewise involved himself in a quasi-Templar organization (the Ordo Templi Orientis) and, in 1908, he began printing a similarly titled newsletter (The Equinox).
Remarkably, no less a personage than Adolf Hitler was said to have been “among …[the] regular readers” of Liebenfels’ Ostara.
Legend even has it that the “young Hitler might have visited Lanz [in person] around 1909.” Whatever the truth of such stories, they eventually led chroniclers to nickname von Liebenfels’ The Man Who Gave Hitler the Ideas. But having “ideas” is one thing. Having the machinery to put them into practice is another.
Enter our next figure, number five.
5 — Theodor Fritsch
Around 1910, this German journalist and publisher created the Germanenorden, or “Teutonic Order.” Its aim was to “monitor Jewish and revolutionary-anarchist and socialist activity” and to carry out “clandestine operations” against those whom it designated national enemies.
Essentially, Fritsch’s Germanenorden constituted “an armed Armanen underground.”
Similarly to Liebenfel’s Order of New Templars, and to List’s High Armanic Order, it dressed up its “ceremonies …[with] elements borrowed from …Norse mythology, Masonry, and [the much-revered composer Richard] Wagner.” The Masonic connexion has a caveat. We’ll wait until Part 2 to register it.
Here, I’ll simply appeal to an analogy. The Catholic Knights of Columbus also “drew inspiration” from Masonry. E.g., they initially adopted a system of three “degrees” – later expanded to four. But, according to the Knights’ founder, Fr. Michael McGivney, this approximation of masonic initiation was intended to attract members and so “…to prevent people from entering…” Freemasonry properly so-called.
Similarly with the Germanenorden. Of special significance is the fact that the Germanenorden’s “official emblem” was the now-infamous Hakenkreuz, the “hooked-cross” symbol better known as the Swastika.
Tho, the aforementioned Guido von “…List is known as the [original] popularizer of [this]… [quasi-Messianic] symbol …” – which (supposedly) represented “an ‘invincible’ Aryan Savior.”
Eventually, the Germanenorden splintered. One half, loyal to Fritsch, was led by Eberhard von Brockhusen. A second branch, under the direction of Hermann Pohl, was eventually converted into the German Order of the All-Father of the Holy Grail.
Once again, we owe to Hollywood – and its Marvel Cinematic Universe – the reintroduction of references to the god Odin as All-Father.
Shortly, however, the now-forgotten Pohl would be accompanied – and, in fact, upstaged – by our next occultist. Born Alfred Rudolf Glauer, he is better known as …
6 — Rudolf von Sebottendorff
As noted, Sebottendorff spun out of Theodor Fritsch’s orbit. In fact, Sebottendorff claimed to have been “initiated” by Frtisch. Even by the standards of this list, he was a strange character. A convinced alchemist and astrologer, Sebottendorff was also a habitué of the German Theosophical Society.
He also wrote on Rosicrucianism, …
which we have mentioned tangentially in several videos, including “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
Anticipating later writers such as Manly Palmer Hall, Timothy Hogan, and Robert Lomas, Sebottendorff made the curious claim – also the title of his 1924 book – that the “The Practice of Ancient Turkish Freemasonry” was “The Key to Understanding Alchemy.”
We regret lacking time to bring in the myriad crypto-political connexions arising out of this Turkish angle. Interested viewers should note that we briefly touched on some of these in “10 Occultist Spies.”
In fact, Sebottendorff’s Wikipedia article asserts that he too had possibly been “…an agent of the German military intelligence in neutral Istanbul during the period 1942-1945, while apparently also working as a double agent for the British military.”
Coincidentally or not, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s principal English disciple, John G. Bennett, had also been associated with military intelligence in Turkey.
Similarly, U.S. spymaster Allen Welsh Dulles had likewise been stationed in Istanbul before his tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency. While we’re distracted from Sebottendorff anyway, we may as well report that, according to biographer Peter Grose, Allen Dulles had a tête-à-tête …
…with then-chancellor Hitler – in 1933. I’m sure there’s nothing at all suspicious in the fact that a future CIA insider met with Adolf Hitler on the literal eve of the latter’s total domination of the German political machine.
As to what the meeting was about, we’re left to guess. You see, the chief spook, “who never missed an opportunity to tell a good story,” felt that whatever happened was so secret that he allegedly felt compelled to withhold details even from lifelong colleague Richard Helms.
As for Sebottendorff, he actually lived in Turkey for many years. While there, he was introduced to the Jewish mystical Kabbalah as well as to Sufism, which is a Gnostic version of Islam.
Sebottendorff is mainly remembered as the prime mover of the now-conspicuous Thule Society, a militant – and allegedly occult-minded – offshoot of the Germanenorden.
For those not in the know, “[t]he legend of Thule is as old as the Germanic race. It was supposed to be an island that had disappeared somewhere in the extreme north. …Like Atlantis,” with whose mythology it dovetails, “Thule was thought to have been the magic center of a vanished civilization.”
It’s worth noting that the Thule Society was headquartered in München. You may recall that, from the standpoint of creeping Marxist-Leninism, Munich (as we say it in English) was at the time in the proverbial belly of the beast. In fact, it was likely only in virtue of a Thule-led guerilla campaign that the “Communist Republic of Munich” (also referred to as the “Bavarian Soviet”) was as short-lived as it was.
Several decades later, Zionist partisans (including future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) would emulate the Thule’s success (without crediting it, of course) to subvert the British-controlled government in Mandatory Palestine.
In any event, “[t]he Thule Society had an upper-class orientation” – not unlike the Armanist branch of Ariosophy. “To attract the working class for the Aryan cause, Thulean initiates in 1918 launched the …German Workers’ Party[.] [I]n 1920, …[this was] reorganized …into the NSDAP …, or National Socialist German Workers’ Party…” by Adolf Hitler.
It was by way of the Thule Society that the swastika found its way onto the emblem of the NSDAP, colloquially – if inaccurately, as we have noted – designated the “Nazi Party.”
Although Hitler himself may never have been in tow, Thule meetings throughout the late 1910s and early 1920s routinely hosted theorists like Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg, about both of whom we will have much more to say in Part 2.
Probably for these reasons, in 1933, Sebottendorff “…published a book entitled …‘Before Hitler Came’ …, in which he claimed that the Thule Society had paved the way for the Führer.”
However, Sebottendorff himself fell out of favor. The circumstances of his death are unknown. According to some reports, his lifeless body was discovered floating in the Bosphorus River in May 1945. Others claim that he had escaped arrest warrants and fled to Mexico, where he died at an unknown time. The latter is reminiscent of American journalist Ambrose Bierce, over three decades before. Stephen Flowers conveys a report that Sebottendorff didn’t die until December 10, 1965 – in Turkey.
Fast forward to 1960. A French journalist named Louis Pauwels co-authored the astonishing book The Morning of the Magicians, along with one Jacques Bergier. Born Yakov Mikhailovich Berger, Bergier’s background supposedly included training in Talmud and Kabbalah, obtaining a degree in chemical engineering, working in the field of atomic physics, and participating in the French resistance. All this amounted to an interest in alchemy, twentieth-century style, with all its visions of nuclear transmutation and cold fusion. And it yielded two further outcomes.
Firstly, according to his 1978 New York Times obituary, and curiously in line with the spy-related undercurrent of our present topic, Bergier “became a part-time consultant for French intelligence…”.
Secondly, and more prominently, he cultivated a longstanding interest in “science fiction” or, more specifically, with “…the borderland between science and speculation”.
On that wavelength, he and Pauwels advanced the thesis that “…it was under the influence of [shadowy geopolitical theorist] Karl Haushofer that the …[Thule Society] took on its true character of a society of Initiates in communion with the Invisible, and became the magic center of the Nazi movement.” For more on this, watch for the release of Part 2 of this study!
7 — Alfred Schuler
Alfred Schuler, number seven, was one of the charter members of the occult-oriented, and provocatively named, “Cosmic Circle” which – for a time – operated in the previously discussed city of Munich.
The Munich circle overlapped with the “George-Kreis” that revolved around poet Stefan George. Schuler evidently encouraged George (and his Jewish publisher, Georg Bondi) to place a hakenkreuz on the cover of his literary magazine. Thus, along with Guido von List, Schuler was one of the first people to seriously investigate the swastika that we first mentioned in conjunction with Theodor Fritsch’s Germanenorden.
In a study prepared for the U.S. National Museum (which later became the Smithsonian Institution), Thomas Wilson calls “The Swastika …The Earliest Known Symbol” – a sentiment echoed by The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols (under the relevant entry).
The swastika is also “[o]ne of the …most widely spread… symbols in existence…” It can be found throughout Asia in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and other streams of Eastern religion.
Much the same design is locatable throughout the Americas as well.
And, of course, it supposedly also has ancient roots in Europe, where – for example – some have identified swastikas in the iconography of the Celts and Etruscans.
In short, the symbol – in various forms and permutations – spans the globe.
It even shows up in Ancient Greek art where one such insignia is constructed by conjoining four capital gammas. This symbol – the tetragammadion – is lexically similar to the primo Kabbalistic sigil known as the Tetragrammaton, which represents a magical power-formula, as discussed in “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
Not entirely unlike the Pentagram, which can be drawn “point up” or “point down,” …
…the swastika is said to possess benevolent or malevolent properties depending upon whether it is “spinning” clockwise or counterclockwise.
According to Pauwels and Bergier, “[t]he earliest known specimen of the swastika is supposed to have been found in Transylvania, dating from the end of the Polished Stone Age” or Neolithic Period.
As we pointed out in our video on the “Stone of Destiny,” the current British king, Charles III, has openly bragged about his ancestral relationship to bloodthirsty, fifteenth-century Transylvanian warlord Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was the real-life inspiration for Dracula and its numerous spinoffs of the vampire legend.
We would also be remiss if we neglected to observe that the swastika was a favorite of Russia’s last empress, Alexandra Feodorovna. She supposedly even hand scrawled the symbol on a window in the Ipatiev [ee-POT-ee-if] House, where she was under arrest, right before her murder by Bolsheviks.
The swastika’s resurrection in Germany preceded, and fed into, the myriad rivulets that converged to create National Socialism. And it is from this standpoint, also, that Schuler is an intriguing fellow. Among his many influences were French magicians Éliphas Lévi and Gérard Encausse (or “Papus”).
As stated earlier, Lévi is so pivotal, we’ve profiled him in several videos, including “Top 10 Occultists.” According to Lévi, a “Transcendental Magician” is a person who has learned to harness an Odic-like force called the “Astral Light.”
We discuss – and identify – Lévi’s own now-largely-forgotten Kabbalistic teacher in “10 Secret Adepts.”
Suffice it to say that Lévi’s occultism was steeped in ceremonial magic, Kabbalah, and tarot. But it was partially through Schuler – and others in the “Cosmic Circle” – that these elements made their way into German esotericism. Schuler never joined the National Socialists – in fact, he died in 1923. But he did link Lévi’s astral-magic with the Völkisch notion that the magical “light” was carried through the blood. The purer a person’s blood, the more potent a magus he or she can become.
The belt of transmission also involved the seemingly ever-present Theosophical Society. For instance, in Adyar, India, Madame Blavatsky was associated with future Ordo-Templi-Orientis co-founder Franz Hartmann. Hartmann is also listed as having exerted an influence upon Schuler – two ceremonial magicians mixing in gnosticism and neopaganism.
8 — Wilhelm Teudt
Teudt’s background lay in German Protestantism. Especially during the nineteenth century, Germany became a breeding ground for liberal Christianity. Usually credited to Friedrich Schleiermacher, this tradition denies the miraculous and (at best) relegates Jesus to the status of a first-century guru.
One facet is so-called “Higher Criticism” which demoted the Bible from the “word of god” to a mere sectarian collection of near-eastern folklore. Early on, bible criticism was dominated by several distinguished Germans, such as Karl Heinrich Graf, David Strauss, Wilhelm Vatke, and Julius Wellhausen.
But it also included New Testament scholar Ferdinand Christian Bauer. Bauer’s stomping ground had been the liberal University of Tübingen, where Wilhelm Teudt later received some of his training as a cleric. Bauer’s main theory had been to suppose that early Christianity just was a Hegelian synthesis of competing Jewish and Gentile influences.
Besides this postulated antipathy, liberal Protestantism tended towards anti-Catholicism.
By the time of his most productive period, Teudt seems to have more or less renounced any prior commitment to Christianity, liberal or not. He turned instead to esoteric archaeology. Teudt was especially obsessed with an inexplicable and massive sandstone rock formation located in Teutoburg Forest. Known as the Externsteine, it is sometimes called the “German Stonehenge.”
It was supposedly in this area, that “[a]n ancient cult of light worshippers began the practice of hewing chambers out of the rocks and performing rituals…”.
Similarly to various students of other prehistoric monuments, Teudt supposed that the Externsteine had been “an ancient observatory, dating back to pagan times.” Of course, much the same story is sometimes told about the previously named Stonehenge – which, coincidentally or not, together with the Externsteine (and the City of London), sits along the fifty-first degree of north parallel latitude.
Teudt’s investigations into this anomalous area led him to identify the mystical location as “the height of a system of straight pathways [he] called …‘holy lines.’”
Virtually simultaneously, “…German regional planner Dr. Josef Heinsch was studying …the alignment of ancient churches with …[various] ‘Holy Hills’ …”. Viewers may be reminded of the work done by British inventor and photographer Alfred Watkins, whose theorizing about sacred sites in England led him to develop the analogous notion of “ley lines.”
Esotericist John Michell would embellish Watkins’ ideas and combine them with other aspects of “sacred geometry” and “earth mysteries” – for example, in his 1969 book, The View Over Atlantis.
Although we won’t expand on this, here, I’ll simply say: Remember these themes for Part 2!
Some contemporary researchers, have likened these conjectural lines – and the sacred sites they allegedly connect – to terrestrial equivalents of acupuncture points on the human body.
There is the further, obvious synchronicity of Heinsch, Teudt, and Watkins all concurring. Keep in mind that, according to Time-Life Books at any rate: “None of these investigators was aware of the work of his contemporaries.” Amazing! On this note, permit us a brief digression.
Interlude: Friedrich Nietzsche
In 1889, Nihilistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche published his volume “Twilight of the Idols.” The title was a take off of “Twilight of the Gods,” the final installment of Richard Wagner’s epic “Ring Cycle.” Nietzsche’s corruption of the phrase was a jab against Wagner, his former friend and mentor.
Wagner’s own title is a reference to Ragnarök. In Teutonic mythology, Ragnarök designates a final, cataclysmic theomachy resulting in the destruction – and then renewal – of the world. The director known as “Taika Waititi” explicitly incorporated this theme into his 2017 movie, Thor: Ragnarok.
A more implicit – and less clumsy – incorporation of these mythological themes was woven into Francis Ford Coppola’s 1978 meditation on the psychology of war, Apocalypse Now. In a haunting scene, sound engineer Walter Murch sonically immerses audiences in Wagner’s unforgettable “Ride of the Valkyries” as a squadron of American helicopters turns a Viet-Cong-controlled village into a bullet-riddled waste.
In his iconoclastic work, Nietzsche asserted that “[g]reat human beings are necessary…”. He seemed to suggest that the “Spirit of the Age” itself caused certain ideas and movements to burst into history – almost mechanically – due to the accumulation of some sort of socio-philosophical “energy”.
Thinking of the unconscious convergence of Wihelm Teudt and Alfred Watkins, was there something in the twentieth-century mode of sensibility that demanded this exploration of Vril-like “earth energies”?
Or, should I say of these chthonic powers? After all the Cthulhu Mythos of fantasy-horror writer Howard Phillips “H. P.” Lovecraft was arguably broadcasting on these frequencies as well.
Of course, Nietzsche wasn’t an occultist. For him, these forces weren’t “magical,” per se. Probably, the closest approximation would be to say that they are artistic forces. – but, not in the narrow sense of museum exhibits. In his 1872 The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche defined “art” as the compulsion “to transform [something] into perfection” and, essentially, to bring the world into conformity with will.
Here, Nietzsche followed Arthur Schopenhauer. In his monumental World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer emphasized human volition. For these thinkers, there’s a certain way of living that constitutes an artistic use of one’s will. In fact, in many ways, this notion anticipated Aleister Crowley (who later predicated his quasi-religion of “Thelema” on this near-deified conception of human will).
Schopenhauer also arguably paved the way for H. P. Blavatsky (and subsequent generations of Western occultists) by drifting toward philosophical Buddhism. But…
Schopenhauer was dubbed the “philosopher of Pessimism” for good reason. He thought the universe’s central principle was aimless, blind will, and that art was the only liberation or relief one could hope for.
Nietzsche would elaborate upon this increasingly bleak, explicitly anti-Christian, and utterly naturalized worldview orientation. His declaration of the “death of God” shattered the traditional conception of ethics. In its place, Nietzsche elevated a naked, Schopenhauerian Will to Power.
Far from being confined to the Ivory Tower, these ideas were stirringly depicted by German film director Leni Riefenstahl, most obviously in her 1935 tour de force “Triumph of the Will.”
In simplest terms, only a select few – the Übermenschen, or “Super-Men” – displayed the fortitude to go Beyond Good and Evil and create their own, radically individualistic, systems of values.
This mindset was dramatically and tragically illustrated by Alfred Hitchcock in his classic 1948 psychological thriller Rope. Ironically, Rope applies Nietzschean themes to a case study inspired by real-life crime in which two Jewish university students – Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb – murdered a teenage Jewish boy named Bobby Franks.
All this to say that even if Nietzsche himself wasn’t overly enthusiastic about some of the tendencies that resulted in German National Socialism, it’s undeniable that he helped lay the groundwork.
Legal theorist Carl Schmitt, economist Werner Sombart, historian Oswald Spengler, and sociologist Max Weber – among many others – owe Nietzsche a huge intellectual debt.
Indeed, considering Nietzsche’s impact on Judeo-Catholicism (via people like Martin Buber and Max Scheler); on the philosophy of Existentialism via Martin Heidegger (as well as Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre); on psychoanalysis (through Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung); not to mention on the political scene (e.g., in Leo Strauss’s “Neo-Conservatives”) – it’s tempting to say the entire 20th century is Nietzschean. Anyone using phrases like “power politics” and “value theory” bears this out.
9 — Friedrich Eckstein
Although his name is little-mentioned today, Friedrich Eckstein, number nine, was a well-known figure in “artsy” and occultic circles in Germany before the Second World War.
At one time or other, his admirers and companions included such celebrities as composers Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolff; poets Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke; Communist majordomo Leon Trotsky; and psychoanalytic pathfinder Sigmund Freud.
Eckstein was also friends with novelist Arthur Schnitzler, who wrote the Dream Story adapted by famed director Stanley Kubrick into the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut – …
…which we mentioned in the introduction to “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
One of Eckstein’s most devoted disciples was Golem-novelist Gustav Meyrink, whom we named when discussing H. P. Blavatsky.
Meyrick went on to write several other occult-themed stories, including Walpurgisnacht.
Walpurgis Night, has been long-asserted to have primordial associations with witchcraft. It occurs on April 30th and is frequently conjoined with Beltane – or “May Day” – on the calendar of pagan holidays.
Of course, Anton Lavey founded the “Church of Satan” on April 30, 1966 in San Francisco, California.
Coincidentally or not, Adolf Hitler’s official date of death – presumably via suicide in his Führerbunker – is recorded as April 30, 1945.
In any case, Eckstein traveled seeking esoteric knowledge. In 1884, he met Blavatsky – as well as other Buddhist – er, excuse me, Theosophical – leading lights such as Henry Steel Olcott and A. P. Sinnett.
A few years later, he corresponded with British socialist and suffragette Annie Besant, who largely took over theosophy after Blavatsky’s death.
Eckstein was also associated with Edward Maitland, a London-based occultist who, along with feminist and Theosophist Anna Kingsford, started a group called the Hermetic Society. Besides his encouragement of esotericism in “Albion,” one mystical name for England, Eckstein apparently helped to combine several lines of occultism into German Ariosophy.
For example, he was captivated by ancient mysticism and waxed nostalgic about the Jewish Essenes and the Knights Templar, possibly because of the significance he felt these might have for a revisionist form of Gnostic-flavored Christianity.
And he was partial to Neoplatonism. Since we have summarized this in a five-minute overview, …
…as well as in an hour-long “deep dive,” we won’t go into any details, here.
Though his name may have receded into the shadows, Eckstein had a pronounced effect upon the thinking of Ordo-Templi-Orientis co-founder Franz Hartmann, whom we bumped up against already.
Perhaps the most illustrious esoteric student to have emerged from Eckstein’s circle was founding Anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner.
Eckstein, along with Hartmann and Marie Lang – Austrian feminist and Theosophist – introduced Steiner to “oriental thought, medieval mysticism, Neo-Platonism, and the Cabala…”. In other words, Eckstein was among the group that set Steiner on his path.
We anticipate profiling Steiner – along with Edgar Cayce, Dion Fortune, and others – in an upcoming video tentatively titled “Top 10 Twentieth-Century Occultists.” So…stay tuned!
The Eckstein-run Theosophical group in Vienna was greatly affected by Richard Wagner’s 1880 treatise Religion and Art. “Wagner called for Art’s return to its high vocation of symbolically expressing divine truth, and he announced his program to redeem the world from materialism by the practice of symbolically conceived music.” The Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean notes are unmistakable.
Of course, Jewish critics have decried Wagner for another publication — “…Judaism in Music [published] in 1850 …and reissued …in 1869…”. In the essay, written at least partially as a return volley fired against the caustic critic Edouard Hanslick, Wagner essentially claimed that Jewish-produced music was irreducibly commercial in its ambitions. He argued that this diminished – or entirely undermined – any pretensions it had to be deeply moving or purely artistic.
Regardless of the merits or demerits of Wagner’s analysis, it is well-established that it impressed Adolf Hitler, who “…forged close ties to the Wagner family in the 1920s.” According to Theodor Adorno, Wagnerian opera helped to inspire Hitler’s mindset.
Of course, Adorno was part of a group of Marxist sociologists called the “Frankfurt School.” Unwelcome in Germany, Adorno decamped for the U.S. where he worked on a Rockefeller-Institute-funded project for analyzing the effectiveness of radio propaganda. But that’s a story for another time.
In any event, Adorno-type criticisms have resulted in “…an unofficial ban on live performances of Wagner in Israel…” that persists to the present day.
This is awkward since Eckstein, who was born Jewish, was unquestionably a Wagnerite.
It was the stuff of legend that when Wagner staged his Arthurian epic Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882, Eckstein had walked there “in sandals, like Tannhäuser,” a thirteenth-century German poet, who had himself been the subject of a Wagnerian production in 1845.
Finally, Eckstein helped revive interest in Pythagoreanism, as evidenced by his dual penchant for mathematics and vegetarianism – which latter commitment was shared by Kingsford and Maitland. And, indeed, the maestro Wagner is also said to have championed the dietary practice – at least, in principle!
…as did …Adolf Hitler himself! – reportedly fairly consistently. Of course, this is much to the consternation of today’s crop of liberal pundits, who vociferously abjure the association.
For more on Pythagoras, whom Freemasons fondly recall as their “ancient friend and brother,” see our dedicated video. But, speaking of Pythagoras, let’s look at our final precursory figure, number ten…
10 — René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz was an Alsatian-born archaeologist who is best-remembered for having applied recondite principles of Pythagorean numerology to the field of Egyptology.
Specifically, he pioneered the study of esoteric archaeology and theorized that supreme power nodes – such as the Temple of Luxor – embodied elements of “sacred geometry.”
Firstly, this convinced him that “medieval masons had …roots in ancient Egypt” – an idea also found (sometimes in modified forms) in writers such as Frank C. Higgins, Gerald Massey, and Manly P. Hall.
Secondly, taking a page from the ancient hermeticists, who believed in arcane correspondences between the “macrocosm” of the universe and the “microcosm” of the human being, he argued that the monuments of Egypt displayed a secret anatomical structure.
Schwaller thus blended the arcana of fabled alchemy with the pervasive Theosophy of – who else? – Madame Blavatsky.
In fact, Schwaller’s interest in the hermetic proto-science was so intense – and his apparent mastery so profound – that he has occasionally been advanced as the real-life adept who, under the nom de plume “Fulcanelli,” wrote the supposedly magisterial volume The Mystery of the Cathedrals.
Whether he was merely a fellow traveler with Fulcanelli, or the illusory genius himself, he was next linked to the “Brothers of Heliopolis.”
For more on these currents, see “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists.”
We also note that Schwaller allegedly spent time in the city of Palma, on the SynchroMystically interesting Island of Mallorca, which was among those profiled in our “Mystery Mediterranean.”
Gary Lachman sees Schwaller as having been influenced by the “new physics” springing from Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein, and Hermann Minkowski as well as Quantum Mechanics, as articulated by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and others.
Incidentally, since its formulation, this “new physics” has taken on a veneer of New-Age religiosity.
Principles such as “complementarity,” “relativity,” and “uncertainty” suggested to people such as Schwaller that humans needed to “stretch …[their] minds beyond … ‘either/or’ …logic” and build a metaphysics around the notion of “opposites.”
This principle goes some distance toward explaining Schwaller’s attraction to alchemy. After all, one of that discipline’s well-known – albeit cryptic – maxims is the phrase conjunctio oppositorum, or the “union of opposites.” Additionally, this commitment enlarged or played upon two tendencies.
One was the popular slide toward broadly Buddhist-Hindu ways of thinking.
In folk philosophy, one often hears a contrast between “Western reasoning” (which is supposedly the exclusivist, either-or variety) and “Eastern reasoning” (which is presented as inclusivistic and both-and).
As to whether the adoption of so-called “Eastern logic” assumes or necessitates an either-or rejection of “Western logic,” many enthusiasts are at a loss.
Another trajectory was the reappearance of organized Gnosticism – for example, via the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and its dizzying array of offshoots. The connexion, here, is the typical Gnostic picture of reality, which consists of a convoluted hierarchy of nested pairs called “syzygies.” What’s a “syzygy,” you ask? It’s a conjunction of opposites, of course!
Regardless, all this climaxed, in 1919, with the creation of a mystical-political society that just may have counted Adolf Hitler’s future deputy, Rudolf Hess, as one of its members.
Schwaller’s association was called, in English, “The Watchers” – a name curiously shared with “…a group of fallen angels described in biblical apocrypha, who mated with women, giving rise to a race of hybrids known as the Nephilim—called giants in the Book of Genesis [chapter] 6 …[verse] 4.”
Musicologist and occult researcher Joscelyn Godwin couldn’t help drawing a line – however tentatively – between Schwaller’s group and the Thule Society.
Finally, an intriguing sidelight is the “uniform” Schwaller “designed for himself and his disciples.” You see, it “…was subsequently adopted by the SA” – that is, the Stürmabteilung, or “Storm Troopers.”
This section was “the forerunner of the SS” – or Schutzstaffel (“Protection Squadron”) – and “were instrumental in [Adolf] Hitler’s rise to power.”
Of course, Schwaller wasn’t alone in this. In a 2011 article subtitled “Hitler’s Tailor?” and appearing in the left-leaning Huffington Post, we read that Hugo Boss and his “company made uniforms for the Wehrmacht (armed forces), SS (security forces) and Hitler Youth.”
Finally, although we have yet to discover any heavy-duty, mainstream hit-piece directed at them, there’s also the Dassler brothers, Adolf and Rudolf. They founded a shoe company together in 1919 and both dutifully joined the NSDAP – from its earliest days right up through the conclusion of World War II. During so-called “Denazification,” however, “Adi” and “Rudi” opted to curry favor with the “Allied” occupation by denouncing one another. By 1948, their jockeying led to the complete dissolution of Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory and prompted the creation of the rival manufacturers Adidas and Puma.
Outro
Of course, we’ve only scratched the surface here. In future presentations we may pursue tantalizing leads such as the occult lineage of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken. Better known as Bô Yin Râ, the German spiritual teacher was singled out by Rudolf von Sebottendorff as the exemplar of “pure Aryan religion …in his day.”
It’s not entirely clear how much of this is detectable in the thought of contemporary “alt-religious” sensation Eckhart Tolle. But the latest in a string of self-appointed – and German-born – gurus (his real name, after all, is Ulrich Leonard Tölle and he hails from North Rhine-Westphalia) has been poring over Bô Yin Râ’s volume’s since he was a teenager.
Celebrities aside, the rise of German National Socialism, like any other aspect of world history, is a complex thing. As such, it defies any over-simplistic reduction – whether tidy or untidy – to a single factor. Unsurprisingly, there are many additional, powerful precursory elements that could be identified beyond the scattered esoterica we have amassed. Various ethical and theological reassessments – like those we traced to Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche – were taking shape against an increasingly “scientistic” backdrop where the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin was fast supplanting Creation mythology.
We shouldn’t forget that “Eugenics” and “Social Darwinism” – articulated first by Englishmen like Francis Galton, Thomas Malthus, and Herbert Spencer – were informing civic policies all over the globe. Along with the occult framework we canvassed, this roiling socio-cultural stew would ultimately coalesce and be incorporated into the political doctrines of German National Socialism.
In our follow-up segment, we propose to examine ten (10) further individuals, many of whom – like the above-named Rudolf Hess – were card-carrying National Socialists and in whom these trends crystallized. So… stay tuned!
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