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THE RAINBOW SWASTIKA
A REPORT TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE
ABOUT NEW AGE ANTISEMITISM
by Hannah
Newman -- freeway@netvision.net.il
http://searchlight.iwarp.com/articles/na_nazism.html#buddhist%20nazis
"Creation is not finished. Man is clearly approaching a
phase of metamorphosis.
The
earlier human species has already reached the stage of dying out....
All
of the force of creation will be concentrated in a new species...
[which]
will surpass infinitely modern man....
Do
you understand now the profound meaning of our National Socialist
movement?"
(Adolf Hitler, quoted by Hermann Rauschning,
_Hitler ma'a dit [Hitler Speaks]_ p.147,
translated
in _The Occult and the Third Reich_, Jean & Michel Angebert,
p.178.)
"You'll think I'm crazy, but listen to me: Hitler will bring
us to a catastrophe.
But
his ideas, once they have been transformed, will acquire a new strength."
(Joseph
Goebbels to his aide-de-camp, Prince Schaumburg-Lippe,
quoted
in Angeberts, p.234)
While most
Jews are sure that Hitler represented the Christian community, his associates knew better. In this section
we see not only that Hitler rejected Christianity, but that there is also ample
research showing that Hitler founded far more than a political regime - the
Third Reich was an occult-based religious movement to usher in the same New Age
examined in this series. [For documentation besides the Angeberts,
see also D. Sklar, _The Nazis and the Occult_; Joseph
Carr, _The Twisted Cross_; Robert G.L. Waite, _The
Psychopathic God - Adolf Hitler_; Gerald Suster, _Adolf Hitler, The Occult
Messiah_; Trevor Ravenscroft, _The Spear of
Destiny_.]
The Nazi
President of the Danzig Senate, Hermann Rauschning (who defected to the Allies and in 1939 wrote
the book quoted above), recorded statements made by Hitler which are
unintelligible except from a NA orientation. [The fact that Rauschning
included quotes which he admitted he did not understand only adds
to the credibility of his testimony, for these often turn out to be occultic references of the kind meant to be understood by
fellow-initiates alone.]
[One of the
best sources I have seen is the Angeberts' book
quoted above. The strength of their work is ironically due to their
positive attitude toward the occult: it appears they rather admire the
"Ancient Wisdom" as expressed in Gnosticism, Catharism
and other esoteric movements, and they trace its threads through history with
nostalgia as well as academic interest. Their far-ranging documentation allows
them to conclusively show that Nazism was/is an initiation into the classical
Gnostic "path of enlightenment", but unlike me
the authors do not fault the "Ancient Wisdom" itself for the infamous
results. On the contrary, "the prime lesson to be learned is that
the practice of occultism and magic is fraught with danger and, therefore, not
to be entrusted to just anyone." (p.160) This book is valuable for its uninhibited look at the many
movements and occultists - including unlikely names like Plato, Nietzsche,
Goethe and Pythagorus - who shared Hitler's dream of
the Holy Grail and a new-age return of the ancient Hyperborean godmen with their "sacred sciences". The English
publisher is MacMillan (1974), McGraw-Hill (1975) in
paperback.]
Hitler
turned against Christianity from his early teens and sought his destiny in the occult.
He later joined with associates who also embraced those teachings, and together
they built a state guided by the same occultic
principles and goals repeated in today's NA. And
no wonder, because he drew on the same esoteric sources as the NAers of today. [How have so many scholars overlooked
this all-important key to understanding the Nazi mentality? In the words
of the Angeberts' English translator, Lewis A.M. Sumberg, nearly all historians missed the "militant
neo-Paganism" and "Gnostic racism" in Nazism "because they
have brought conventional outlooks and methodologies to their examination of an
unconventional phenomenon." (_The Occult and the Third Reich_, p.x) We must either re-assess the Nazi philosophy with
these roots exposed, or be forced to settle for theories which fail to
completely explain Nazi priorities. Its unconventional nature lay in
"magic thought allied to science and know-how" (Angeberts,
p.179) - exactly the hybrid being encouraged today by NA leaders like Peter Russell. Sumberg's observation in 1974 about this blind spot among
historians fell mostly on deaf ears, which makes it more difficult now - but
more urgent than ever - to recognize that not only is Nazism not dead, we are
now surrounded by a "kinder, gentler" version of the same philosophy,
sprouted from the same roots and having the same priorities.]
1. Hitler
and the Occult
According
to available sources (see above), Hitler first made contact in 1909 with other
occultists, the first of these being Goerg
Lanz von Lieberfels
and Guido von List, after coming across their occultic-racist
magazine _Ostara_ in
By 1913, Adolf had passed the novice stage in his occult pursuits.
(Carr, p.95) In 1918 (age 29) he claimed to hear voices announcing that
he was "selected by God to be
Another
occultist to influence Hitler's thinking was Dr. Karl Haushofer,
who was introduced to Hitler in 1924 while the latter
was in Landsberg prison. Haushofer,
a Blavatsky disciple, combined a dubious
"science" called "geopolitics" with Eastern mystical texts
and _The Secret Doctrine_ principles, and claimed to have clairvoyant powers.
It was Haushofer who schooled Hitler in _The Secret Doctrine_. (Carr, p.93) His geopolitical
theories found their way into _Mein Kampf_. (Sklar, p.62) It was also
Haushofer who forged Hitler's alliance with
Hitler, like
today's NA philosophers, firmly believed in the coming of a new species of humanity. Like modern New Agers, he expected them
to be a literal "mutation" of homo
sapiens, achieved by arriving at "higher levels of
consciousness". He also believed that the new humanity would be free of
"the dirty and degrading chimera called conscience and morality," as
well as "the burden of free will" and "personal responsibility"
which should rightly be borne only by the few with the fortitude to make the
awful decisions necessary for the good of humanity. (Sklar,
p.58)
Hitler's
associate, Bernhard Forster (who happened to be Nietzsche's brother-in-law)
related to Hermann Rauschning how Hitler had proclaimed
that he "would bring the world a new religion,... the blessed consciousness of eternal life in union with
the great universal life... when the time came. Hitler would be the first
to achieve what Christianity was meant to have been,
[without] any fear of death [or] the fear of a
so-called bad conscience. Hitler would restore men to the self-confident
divinity with which nature had endowed them." Forster then added his
own opinion: "He drew his great power from intercourse with the eternal
divine nature." (Sklar, p.54-55) [The reader
should note the familiar "cosmic consciousness" vocabulary here, more
appropriate to the founder of a religion than to a political schemer.]
The Nazi
sacred symbols and concepts - the swastika or "gamma
cross", the eagle, the red/black/white color
scheme, and ancient Nordic runes (one of which became the insignia of the SS )
- were all adopted from occult traditions going back centuries, shared by
Brahmins, Scottish Masons, Rosicrucians, Manichaeans
and others. (Angeberts give detailed histories,
p.194-200) The Nazi motto, "One Reich, One Folk, One Fuehrer",
reflected the standard 3-fold power circles of the occult. (See a good example
in Bailey's _Discipleship in the New Age_ II, p.165, where the Great Invocation is to be explained on three distinct levels.) The Reich was the
psychic adepts of the Nazi Party, which would build the bridge between the Folk
(the masses which unite into a cosmic Entity greater
than its parts) and the Fuehrer (the initiates in the elite leadership which
unite with Hitler, the divine incarnation). The outer fringe,
the Folk, are taught what they can handle: blind obedience, group
service, a new history and identity. The Party elite such as the SS are taught
something different: psychic knowledge, tapping into the "Vril Force", self-denial, brotherhood
mission, medieval lore, fearlessness of death. The innermost circle was
privy to the hard-core Gnostic teaching on the Grail, immortality and godhood.
Many neo-Nazi groups continue to pursue these topics with devotion. But under it all was the invisible presence of "Unknown
Superiors" (Angeberts, p.178, quoting Rudolf
Olden, _Hitler the Pawn_, written 1936. Rauschning
used the same term - p.233) who taught Hitler himself and who were assumed by
his associates to endow him with his uncanny hypnotic power.
Concerning
Hitler's relationship with these Unknowns, there is not much
known besides his reference to a guiding voice of "
Hitler's
personal devotion to occult principles was proven
ultimately by his self-inflicted death. His choice of April 30 for his suicide
may well have been meant as a sacrifice; it was the eve of Beltane (known in
2. Hitler
and Christianity
Not
only did Hitler regard Christianity as a defective, failed enterprise, he saw
himself as replacing both its God and its Christ. At one of the huge
In Hitler's
words, Christianity "only added the seeds of decadence such as
forgiveness, self-abnegation, weakness, false humility and the very denial of
the evolutionary laws of survival of the fittest [social Darwinism]," and
would obviously be a handicap to the new species which he was personally
commissioned by the "masters" to see properly birthed and nurtured. But Hitler perceptively placed the ultimate blame where it
is due: "Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like
circumcision.... There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the
scientific sense. The new man would be the antithesis of the Jew." (Sklar, p. 57-58) Nietzsche likewise considered the
Christian Bible nearly worthless because of its Jewish origin: "In
Christianity, seen as the art of sacred lying, we're back with Judaism.... The
Christian is but a Jew of more liberal persuasion." (_Antichrist_, quoted
in Angeberts, p.126) [Compare with the NA view of how Judaism
"defiled" Christianity.] In this context, antisemitism
was not a starting point for the inner Nazi society as it was for the masses;
Jew-hatred was the inevitable result of absorbing these bedrock occult
teachings.
The nurture
of the new humanity included the need to "encourage the growth of a
violent, domineering, intrepid, cruel youth... nothing weak or tender in
it." (Angeberts, p.209, Rauschning
quoting Hitler) This reached its climax in SS training, and it corresponded
to the Nazi view of "pure" Gnostic, Hindu and Buddhist philosophy,
which did not teach compassion and gentleness, but Aryan duty and honor above all (Angeberts,
p.220-221). [This would seem confirmed by the presence of Tibetan Buddhists in
Hitler's
But there was an obstacle to sweeping away the Jew and raising this
cruel new generation, in the person of that "Jew of more liberal
persuasion", the Bible-believing Christian. Knowing
that Christian Germany would not easily accept an open return to paganism,
Nazism attempted to wean the masses from standard Christianity by removing the
Jewish-influenced "negative" parts, that is the Old Testament and
most of the New Testament, imposing gnostic meanings
on key passages, adding colorful pagan legend, and
repackaging it in their 1920 platform as "positive Christianity" (Angeberts, p.202-203). [This term
is freely used today by many groups, some of them fervent NAers
offering the same package to naive Christians, for the same purpose.]
Hitler's vision of returning to "pure" pagan religion was echoed, or more accurately anticipated, by psychoanalyst Carl
Jung in 1923: "We [Germans] need new foundations. We
must dig down to the primitive in us, for only out of the conflict between
civilized man and the Germanic barbarian will there come what we need: a new
experience of God." (Sklar, p.134) When esotericist Jakov Wilhelm Hauer founded the Nordic Faith movment,
Jung urged participation on the part of Germans who were "intelligent
enough not only to believe but to know that the god of the Germans
is Wotan and not the Christian God." ("Wotan", essay by Jung - emphasis his, quoted by Sklar, p.134) The Nazis reciprocated by making Jung
President of the German Medical Society for Psychotherapy in 1933, at which
time he finally found a forum from which to expound a belief he had held since
1918: the need to distinguish between "German" and "Jewish"
psychology. (The Society's Dec. 1933 issue) In his view, such a distinction was
not antisemitic, it was liberating for both Aryans
and Jews. (Sklar 136-137) When the Jews were fleeing
Nazi Germany in ever-increasing numbers, Jung advised his followers in
To remove
the "bad seeds" of Christian (that is, Jewish) thinking, Nazi
preparation of children for the new humanity would be diligent from cradle to
grave, centered around the notion that they were born
to die for their god, embodied in their Fuehrer. The education began
with revised fairy tales teaching
new-humanity principles of heroes struggling and dying to set their race free.
Then group membership started at age 10, followed by continuous reinforcement in group settings for the remainder of their lives, "so
that they shall in no case suffer a relapse, and they don't feel free again as
long as they live," as Hitler bluntly put it. (Sklar,
p.110) There was non-stop activity which required
passive participation, allowing no time for reflection or discussion.
And what did Christian leaders think of
Hitler? Although many Christians eventually bought into "positive
Christianity", apparently there was enough opposition to necessitate an
early purge of that community. Before launching his "final
solution", Hitler made an effort to remove all churches and pastors who
showed the least resistance to policies already in operation. For example, refusal
by a church to sponsor a Hitler Youth chapter was sufficient grounds to close
it down. Leaders whose integrity would not yield to political expediency, who
could not be discredited by scandal, and who had the potential to influence
Christians at large, were imprisoned indefinitely (Dietrich Bonnhoefer
for example). Although Hitler did not close down many Catholic churches,
especially where local support was strong, he vented his rage on Pope Pius XI,
who had issued an encyclical condemning him as "a prophet of nothingness".
("Mit Brennender Sorge",
2a. Hitler
and the Popes
Piux XI and his successor Pius XII have long been subjects of
controversy for their publicly ambivalent statements regarding the Jewish
genocide taking place in their times. However, in the eyes of the Third Reich,
Pius XI had already gone too far with his encyclical, and Nazi General Ludendorf was convinced that Cardinal Eugenio
Pacelli, then the
[It is not
my aim here to evaluate whether Pius XII did or did not do enough to oppose the
Holocaust. There are many published papers which come to conflicting
conclusions, but the prevailing opinion today is that Pius XII failed abysmally
by remaining silent in the face of Nazi genocide. For open-minded readers, I
recommend a documented rebuttal from the Catholic side,
which ironically relies on the research of several Jewish scholars, especially
Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide.
My goal here, however, is to show the disproportionate Nazi response to what
Pius XII did say, and to suggest motives for it.]
In what most
historians consider a vague protest, Pius XII referred to "those hundreds
of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of
their nationality or race, are marked for death or progressive extinction"
(Christmas Message 1942). Vague or not, his message was received loud and
clear by the Nazi leadership. Himmler's deputy Reynhard Heydrich responded with:
"The Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order... He
is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes
himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (quoted
by Lapide, p.137) In
[It can be -
and usually is - argued that Pius XII did not do enough, given his vast
resources and global influence. On the other hand, Lapide
shows that he did substantially more than other leaders who were not caught in
Hitler's hammer-lock, and certainly more than the
[Four points
about "The Deputy" which reflect on the NA-Nazi connection: (1) This play focusing on Pius XII to the exclusion of many
other silent "Deputies" was introduced by playright
Rolf Hochhuth as a "fantasy", yet it has
come to be regarded by many as a definitive "work" on the Holocaust
Pope. In sharp contrast, many students of the Holocaust have never heard of Pinchas Lapide's assessment of
Pius XII, based not on fantasy but on solid research. (2) This belated
initiative to elevate Pius to "war criminal" status did not come from
the Jewish community but from post-Nazi
[But here is
a Point (4), which is perhaps the most telling: One of the earliest records of
Pius XII denouncing the Nazi movement dates back to April 1935, when Pacelli was still a Cardinal: "These ideologues are in
fact only miserable plagiarizers who dress up ancient error in new
tinsel." (address at
3. Hitler
and the Mufti
And what about Islam, the third
monotheistic religion? While Hitler ranted against Christianity and
Judaism, expressing "a violent feeling of anger at the idea that some
Germans were able to be taken in by theological doctrines devoid of any
depth," he contrasted these hated teachings with "those of Confucius,
of Buddha and of Mohammed" which provided spiritual
"sustenance". (Angeberts, p.246) In this
context, Hitler's friendship with Haj Amin al Husseini, Mufti of
Jerusalem - which included asylum in 1941, the honorary rank of SS Major and an
acceptable racial "genealogy" - can be understood as more a sign of
respect than political expedience. There were even cases of Nazis
relocating to Arab countries and converting to Islam. (p.275-276
note 14) In this opinion, Hitler had the backing of the Thule Society,
whose founder Sebottendorf praised Islam for having a
"vitality greater than that of Christianity" which flowed "from
a torrent which nourished everything" - that same "thread of lost
knowledge" which was the goal of the Nazi quest. (Angeberts,
p.165-166) [This raises other ideas for why Hitler's Mein
Kampf is so popular among some Moslems;
besides the expected political admiration for brute force, there may also be a
consensus of spiritual worldviews.]
4. The
Nazi Mentality - Group Mind
The Nazi goal was group-think,
or the eradication of private conviction and dissent. As stated above,
the "burden" of free choice
and decision-making could be entrusted only to the few
with the enlightenment and courage to implement the new age without flinching.
For the masses, it was enough that they submit to the leadership, which would
weld them into one entity through a common psychic experience. [Today this would be called a guided group "light experience",
practiced by most NA channelers on their followers.
See the parallels in the
"Transformation" Section.]
[Eerily,
this group-think is the stated goal and the practical
outcome of the UN-sponsored World Core Curriculum, as well as
the American OBE (Outcome Based Education)
which incorporates the WCC into US public
schools. Alice Bailey disciple Robert Muller, author of the WCC, presents planetary group-think
as the proper goal for all enlightened individuals. The first principle of the WCC Manual clearly states that "the group idea, group
good and group understanding" are to "replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group
consciousness". The UN Global Governance Commission goes farther,
branding "some assertions of particular identities" as nothing less
than "intolerance", a cardinal sin in the New Age. (See the massive
report by the Commission on Global Governance, "Our
Global Neighborhood", and search for
the "Core Value" of "mutual respect".) Obviously, someone
at the top will have to bear the "burden" of dictating the parameters
for group-think. Yet the question of who will wield
this immense power over the rest of mankind, and
whether they might abuse it, is never brought up - seemingly not worth
troubling ourselves about. The New Age global forum known as "Planetary
Initiative for the World We Choose" is an example of those who have donned
the mantle of choice for the group, as is the "State of the World Forum",
but as usual the question is never answered how the
"We" who "choose" were themselves chosen.]
Hitler's
contention that free will is a burden to the masses was
confirmed by the popular reaction. Said one young Nazi to the press in
the glory days of the Reich: "We Germans are so
happy - we are free of freedom." (Sklar, p.152)
For many, it was a relief not to be saddled with
personal convictions and responsibility for what was happening, as a perceptive
professor reflected after the war: "I suppose we were grateful. Who wants
to think?" (see _They Thought They Were Free_,
Milton Mayer)
On the other
hand, cultivation of personal will and initiative is a noble duty incumbent on
the high-level occult initiate destined to lead the pliant, group-conscious new
humanity. Hitler was obsessed with the potential of the human will. So
was Helena Blavatsky: "...that mysterious and
divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to life,
quickened and developed by Yogi training, remains dormant in 999.999 men out of
a million." (Sklar, p.51) It was likely
this fascination which lay behind the title of that
definitive Nazi propaganda piece in 1934, _The Triumph of the Will_. [The
reader will remember that "Will" is not a mere human effort but is deified in NA as an attribute of Sanat Kumara.] A German youth
interviewed by a French writer in 1937 explained the Nazi triumph of will not
in militaristic but in gnostic terms: "I am
studying the conception of the world.... We refuse to think and to be; we
refuse to stand by helplessly under the determinism of the so-called laws of
matter. What we want is inside, an inner structure.... We shall not let anyone
stop us from building before God and before men that which must be built!"
The writer then remarked on the similarity of Nazi sentiment to the (as he thought)
extinct French Templar philosophy. (Alphonse de Chateaubriant,
quoted in Angeberts, p.175)
5. New Age
Leaders Commenting on the Nazi Experiment
And
what is the opinion in the NA community to this infamous historical figure who
so closely resembles them? Ambiguous, to say the least.
When pressed to comment publicly about Nazism, most will say the politically
correct thing and applaud the fact that "the monster" Hitler failed.
[It takes a bit of sleuthing to find out what they say to one another.]
New Age references to Hitler are sometimes veiled
in positive generalities. Examples are
Then there is the schizoid response to Hitler -
condemning his brutality while justifying his philosophical premises. This
describes Alice Bailey (_The Externalisation of the Hierarchy_ II, p.122-127),
who called Nazism a "peculiarly distorted blend of Fascism and
Communism", yet included it in "the great world ideologies"
birthed by the "Shamballa force" (a flow of
energy from the Hierarchy directed at the
world). Says
It is no
wonder, then, to find New Age factions which openly
applaud the Third Reich. Savitri
Devi Mukherjee, a French
convert to Hindusim who became an influential
mystical leader in the West, firmly believed that Hitler was an
"avatar" (divine manifestation), a being in natural harmony with the
Hindu tradition. She considered him the embodiment of twin mystical light
sources, "the sun and the lightning." [See _Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan
Myth and Neo-Nazism_, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]
Devi's book about her human idol (_The Lightning and
the Sun_) bears the dedication: "To the god-like Individual of our times;
the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times; both Sun and
Lightning: ADOLPH HITLER, as a tribute of unfailing love and loyalty, for ever
and ever." [capitals in original. It is likely
that the tribute, "the Man against Time", referred to Hitler's
reversal of the swastika's direction from the Hindu orientation
which symbolized harmonic movement with the sun, to the opposite
direction, that is, against time.] Devi, now
deceased, still has a following in
Naturally, Devi's book is heavily promoted by
neo-Nazis such as Canadian Ernst Zundel, as are her
tapes, "for serious students of the occult". Zundel himself follows the time-honored
Nazi obsession with occult and psychic phenomena, particularly UFOs.
Another major neo-Nazi center in
Reasons for
Hitler's failure to usher in the new humanity are given by various NA sources:
he was premature; he did not coordinate with the "Hierarchy" but
tried to build a rival power base [see below for confirmation]; his
vision for mankind wasn't global enough; he was
blocked by the "old order". If any of Hitler's NA critics detected
any weakness in him toward the Christianity which they
are working to eliminate, they have yet to mention it.
[Here it's appropriate to speculate why prominent New Agers in
recent decades have refused to follow the Baileys (and by implication the
spirit guide "DK") in rationalizing the
Nazi war on the Jews. On the contrary, many are hard at work to perpetuate the
memory of Nazi brutality in the Holocaust, even emphasizing their savage
treatment of the Jews. There are two possible explanations: (1) The high-profile NAers are
not necessarily high-ranking NAers,
particularly in the entertainment industry - they may be uninformed about the
NA doctrines of human evolution and Jewish karma, and honestly believe that New
Age thought could never sanction Nazi antisemitism. (2) High-ranking NAers, who know the true
roots of Nazism, are promoting the evil of the Nazi-brand Final Solution in
order to more effectively contrast the benevolence of their own Solution - something like the
"good cop / bad cop" strategy where two interrogators pretend to be
on opposite sides to manipulate the suspect into trusting the "good
guy" to protect him from the "bad guy". Or call it reverse camouflage: next to pitch black, gray can look fairly white.]
6. The
"Missing" Link: The
The
same year Hitler had his New Age revelation, Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an avid fan of Helena Blavatsky,
founded the "Thule Society", a spiritist group which
borrowed heavily from HPB's _The Secret
Doctrine_. Thule in occultic,
Greek and Viking lore was the capital of an ancient ice-island called Hyperborea (known in Hindu legend as the "White
Isle"), inhabited by superhumans with psychic
powers who eventually founded the Aryan race. After an unexplained disaster,
survivors of Hyperborea took refuge first in the
"West" [meaning west of India, perhaps Babylon?], then in the Gobi
desert, and later in Tibet; their spirit mentors retreated to a hidden
spiritual center called "Asgard"
(variously located in space or in a subterranean city). [Fans of the TV series
"Stargate" will recognize this as the name
of the benevolent alien race which offers hidden
knowledge to the SG-1 team in times of need.] In Scandinavian myth, Asgard was the abode of the gods, connected with earth by a
rainbow bridge. (Angeberts, p.280 note 43) These beings, headed by one known
in Hindu/Buddhist tradition as "the Lama of lamas" or "King of
the world", can only be contacted on the
spiritual plane. The symbol of this "Master" is the swastika,
"symbol of the central power of the gem of Heaven". (Angeberts, p.96, quoting J. Marques-Riviere, _In the Shadow
of the Tibetan Monastaries_) [Note the similarity to
the NA history of the "White Lodge" retiring to "Shamballa". I would also guess that the "gem of
Heaven" is a symbolic reference to Lucifer's stone, or the
Grail.] The
The goal of
The Thule
Society considered the Jew ("Juda") their
cosmic enemy. As early as 1920, Sebottendorf
advocated a "Final Goal" of "cleaning out the Jews once and for
all", using "the most ruthless measures, including Sammellager [concentration camps] and sweeping out
the Jewish vermin with an iron broom." (Sklar,
p.57) [Readers will recognize the same terms made infamous by later Nazi
propaganda.]
Thule Society members or supporters who became key Nazi officials included:
Max Amann (Editor of Nazi Party publications), Hans
Frank (governor of Occupied Poland), Anton Drexler
(founder of the German Workers' Party), Gottfried Feder
(co-founder of the Nazi Party), Karl Harrer (first
chairman of the NSDAP), Rudolf Hess (Hitler's
Minister of State), Dr. Heinz Kurz (SS leader), Feiedrich Krohn (designer of Nazi
insignia), Ernst Roehm (leader of Storm Troopers),
Alfred Rosenberg (Foreign Services chief, propagandist, author of _The Myth of
the Twentieth Century_), Julius Streicher, (Gauleiter of Franconia), and of course Hitler
himself (as a "visiting brother"). [list supplied by Sebottendorf,
_Before Hitler Came_, quoted in Angeberts,
p.169] Dietrich Eckart, a leading Thulist who died in 1923, deserves posthumous Nazi
membership; among his last words was this proclamation: "Follow Hitler! He
will dance, but it is I who will call the tune." (Carr, p.87) Eckart took credit for initiating Hitler into Blavatsky's _Secret
Doctrine_ and for putting him in contact with "the powers"; Hitler
later dedicated _Mein Kampf_
to Eckart.
7. Why
would Nazis attack fellow-occultists?
According
to research (see _Adolf Hitler, The Occult Messiah,_ Gerald Suster), Hitler was
devoted to Theosophy and kept a copy of Blavatsky's
_The Secret Doctrine_ by his bedside. Yet from the 1920s, his thugs ruthlessly
attacked and killed adherents of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasons and
others who shared the same occult doctrines. He banned their groups from
the Third Reich, and publicly denounced occultists Rudolf Steiner and Aleister Crowley. He ignored astrologers, seance mediums, fortune tellers
and similar groups, until 1942 when they also were banned. This has led
historians to assume that Hitler was simply anti-occult, a conclusion that
fails to explain all the evidence to the contrary.
The Nazi
relationship to the Thule Society in particular begs for an explanation. By
1933, when occultist Sebottendorf sought to revive
One explanation is camouflage. Hitler
seemed determined to keep his occult roots hidden from the general
public; the groups and individuals he targeted for early elimination
were those who knew of those roots and who might expose him (thereby
challenging his control of the "Plan"). This would explain why the
Nazis burned every available copy of Sebottendorf's
book which proclaimed those roots, and why Rudolf Hess's defection to the West
in 1941 prompted Hitler to outlaw all remaining occultists in the Third Reich,
such as astrologers, mediums and even parlor
magicians. (Carr, p.88-100)
Such actions
can be also be understood as attempts to
eliminate competition. Hitler recognized occultic
power in each of the banned groups which could compete
with his own occult enterprise, and eliminated them from the field. He
considered Steiner a particular threat, making him the first target. [According
to Angeberts, Steiner was an avowed practitioner of
"white magic" who viewed Hitler as a tool of "black magic"
- p.160. Since they both believed they manipulated the same Force, this
equality would have suggested to Steiner the possibility of thwarting Hitler, a
direct threat which Hitler in turn would have
recognized.] This would make sense of the fact that he confiscated (rather than
burned) all the books of the outlawed groups, and is the only explanation for
his treatment of the
Hitler did make one exception, however; his 1942 law banning
secret societies and confiscating their assets specifically exempted the
"old Prussian" Freemason lodges, otherwise known as the Bavarian Illuminati. This group followed the Nazi racial purity
ideal far more closely than the "humanitarian Freemasonry" (as the Angeberts distinguish the different streams), and in fact
the Bavarian sect shared Hitler's disdain for the other branches of Freemasons,
not to mention for the Jews as well. (p.157) [This would imply another
reason why Steiner and the Freemasons, as "humanitarian" strains of
occultism, were ruthlessly attacked by both Thulists and Nazis: they were considered too compassionate
to do what was needed to usher in the New Age.]
8.
Gnostic-Nazi-New Age Convergence
The one esoteric legend in particular which
captivated the Nazis was the Quest for the Holy Grail.
While popular mythology presents the Grail as the cup Jesus
Christ used at his last supper, occult groups dismiss this materialistic
interpretation as a "blind" to
preserve for initiates the Grail's true meaning: the quest for the divine
bloodline or racial purity (See _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln), which would
bring with it supermortal Knowledge and
immortality. Alternately, the Grail was defined in gnostic symbolic style as the "philosopher's
stone", the "third eye" or the spiritual "crown" of Lucifer which fell from his forehead when he lost his place
in heaven (Angeberts, p.264 note 14). In real terms,
that "seeing eye" is the Knowledge of self-as-god which Lucifer
exhibited, and which he offered mankind in the Garden
of Eden. Hitler saw in Wagner's _Parsifal_ a
detailed parable of the Nazi calling as "a religious brotherhood of templars to guard the Holy Grail, the august vessel
containing the pure blood". (Hitler to Rauschning,
quoted in Angeberts, p.155) The Grail defined here as
the "vessel" refers to the racially pure body which
holds the blood that can absorb god-knowledge. [See more about Wagner's Luciferism in the "Gods" section.] The
racially inherited god-consciousness idea appears in the Gnostic teaching
of a divine lineage descended from Jesus Christ (not a Jew but a Gnostic
initiate) who didn't actually die on the cross, and who achieved a singular
level of Aryan racial purity and corresponding god-consciousness (his Jewish
identity was dismissed as an Oriental fiction). In search of this holy blood which contains the coveted god-knowledge, every member
of the SS was screened for purity of Aryan lineage, and was taught his duty to
father as many racially pure children as possible. Himmler
believed that if conception took place in an Aryan cemetery, the resulting
child would receive the spirit of "all the dead heroes" buried there;
accordingly, lists of Nordic cemeteries were published
in the SS periodical _Das Schwarze Korps_. (Sklar, p.114)
Gnosticism
had another, lesser-known influence on Nazi religion, which also appears in New
Age thought: the Jewish God (as they
mispronounce it, "Jehovah") is not the Most High and only God,
but a "demiurge" pretending to be such. Blavatsky agreed that the Gnostics "were right in
regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of lower, material and not
very holy denizens of the invisible world." (quoted
in Sklar, p.144) (For more evidence on the gnostic roots of New Age, see Stephan Hoeller's
"The Hermetic-Gnostic Roots of Theosophy", sold on tape by the
Theological Society.) In Blavatsky's
understanding, "only angels of a low hierarchy" could have created
"those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our
globe." [Not shy about contradicting herself, Blavatsky
also identified the Jewish God as Cain, son of Eve by Satan.] The "moral
wretchedness" referred to is Jewish enjoyment of everyday life (everything
from meals to sex) and their continual thanksgiving for every material
blessing. This attitude was feared and hated by the gnostics,
who considered the body and the physical world a prison which
the mind must reject and transcend through meditation and magical rites, and
escape to the "real" or spiritual world. The "spiritual
wretchedness" is the Jewish "Old Testament", rejected by gnostics as evil, which teaches that the Creator of heaven
and earth is the Most High God. Since materialism is evil, and
"Jehovah" created the physical world, He must be evil as well: not
merely a usurper of the title "God", but in fact Satan. [For
more details, see the "Gods" section.] The Jews
who persist in spreading their teachings (in their Bible) are the tools of
Satan, and their influence in the world is deadly to human souls. Hitler
reiterated this gnostic doctrine: "The Jew is
the anti-man, the creature of another god. He must have come from another
root of the human race." (Sklar, p.146)
[compare with Bailey's similar assessment]
Hitler was also known for his severely simple
lifestyle, voluntarily shunning material pleasures, physical appetites and a
meat diet - all classic Gnostic elements of "purification from the
world".
The NA
cosmology placing the Jews in alliance with cosmic Evil neatly
reinforced the Nazi pursuit of racial purity: not only was
the Aryan race threatened with defilement on a genetic level, but on a
spiritual level as well. Both NA and Nazism clearly borrowed from the
Zoroastrian teaching (originating in
9. Other
New-Age Threads Preserved in Nazism
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler
first entered the Thule Society orbit as a fighter in the Free Corp, by which
time he was already a devoted occultist. He was especially fascinated with reincarnation
and karma (individual and racial); he became convinced that he was the
reincarnation of King Heinrich I the Fowler (10th c), who spoke to him in his
sleep. (Sklar, p.85) He was similarly obsessed with
legends of the medieval order of Teutonic knights (a secret
brotherhood which required Germanic racial purity for eight generations), the
meaning of ancient Nordic runes, the Hindu/Buddhist idea
of sacrificial detachment from the consequences of daily life, and the precepts
of the _Kautilya Arthasastra_,
a cynical, amoral Hindu philosophy utilizing deceit. (Sklar, p.91) When he was given command of the SS, he molded his Black Guards after a combination of all
these. He required his officers to read the mystical research of SS Colonel
and Ahnenerbe member Otto Rahn: _Crusade Against the Grail_ (1933) and _Lucifer's
Court in Europe_ (1936). [Both are available in German and French only, far as
I know.] Himmler's nickname, the "Black
Jesuit", stems from his slavish imitation of the (equally secretive)
brotherhood of Jesuit priests, whose literature he avidly studied
(Sklar, 86-87, citing Nuremberg Trials witness Walter
Schellenberg). He made use of the time-honored Jesuit practice of "spiritual
Exercises" - intensive visualization to create personal and group
reality. (Sklar, p.88) [The explanation that
visualization is not a powerful, time-honored occult
manipulation of others, but merely a new psychological self-help exercise, is promoted only to deceive the few who still have scruples
against occult practices.]
Himmler, like his
True to Hitler's vow, "We shall wash off the Christian
veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race" (Sklar, p.147), SS soldiers underwent occult initiations and
ceremonies, to replace their Christian faith and names with ancient Germanic
names and worship rites (Hitler being their incarnate deity), and to harness
latent spiritual forces believed to reside in the Aryan psyche. (Sklar, p.100) [This was not an abrupt change, since these
SS candidates had grown up in 1920s
But under it all, the abject fear was instilled in SS men of being
found unworthy of their exalted status, especially through the sin of
independent thinking. The group-think
to which they had been subjected since early childhood sank to new depths to
minimize the chances of such a mishap. A
required achievement for SS candidates was Kadavergehorsam,
or "dead-body [unfeeling, robotic] obedience". In merciless drills,
they were trained to disregard their own emotions and
consciences by performing acts of brutality on self and others usually
associated with satanic cult rituals. (See descriptions in Sklar,
p.96-100) (Such practices in satanism
are meant to produce an altered state of consciousness and, as they believe, to
channel the natural horror response into psychic energy which empowers spells.)
In the resulting numbness, they could carry out the most horrific orders
without thinking, and walk among sickening sights without flinching. Himmler firmly believed in the holiness of this ultimate
devotion, in which the SS suffered and sacrificed more than their victims. For him, the unsung "glory" of the SS was
"to have stuck it out... and to have remained decent fellows." As for
Himmler himself: "I try to reach a compromise in
my own life; I try to help people and do good, relieve the oppressed and remove
injustices wherever I can. Do you think my heart is in all the things which
have to be done simply from reasons of state?" The extreme sacrifices of
the SS, he said, were required in part by German
racial Karma; an individual "oughtn't to think of himself". (Sklar, p.90-91) [Undoubtedly, many NAers
will view themselves in precisely the same light when they are required to take
part in necessary future purges. The view is already prevalent in NA
that individual human rights must give way to humanity's rights, and this
includes inflicting pain as well as enduring it.] It was also German
Karma, Himmler said, that they be "saved"
by "a figure of the greatest brilliance" - meaning not Hitler, but
the spirit "incarnate" in him and possessing him. (Sklar, p.157)
An inner
circle of SS officers took on the roles of Teutonic knights, complete with
coat-of-arms, and met regularly at Himmler's Wevelsburg fortress for deep meditation, week-long visualization sessions (Sklar, p.88) and contacts with disembodied spirit
masters. The very insignia of the SS was loaded with occult meaning;
the twin lightning bolts were an ancient Nordic power rune. [Savitri Devi
also focused on the imagery of twin cosmic light sources in her adoration of
Hitler.] The Ahnenerbe branch of the SS
invested huge sums in trips to
Yet another
ancient belief adopted by the Nazis was the dualist cycle of the universe
- a cosmos full of energies at polar opposites carrying on a continual battle,
colliding to bring temporary balance and transmuting to a higher state of
being, evolving into a new polarization, renewed battle, and on endlessly. Fire
and Ice, Light and Darkness, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, the human races
all followed this spiral path. Each "new world
order" could not proceed without the destruction of the "old
order"; therefore destruction is as healthy as
the following restructure. This cosmology was shared
by many cultures: the Zoroastrians of Persia (who greatly impressed Nietzsche),
the Hindu writers of the Veda, the Greek gnostics
(particularly Pythagoras, who carried the concept from
A tactic
especially interesting to Jews which was shared by
both Nazism and NA is faulting
the Jews for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. Like Hitler, no NA
leaders accept Jesus's claims as recorded in the New
Testament, yet they make much of the fact that the Jews did not either. While
Hitler drew on Martin Luther's vitrolic condemnation
of the Jews for stubbornly rejecting Jesus, Alice Bailey simply adds this
rejection to her tally of the Jews' karmic debt: "Christ came to bring an
end to the Jewish dispensation which should have climaxed and passed away as a
religion... In the rejection of Christ as the Messiah, the Jewish race has
remained symbolically and practically in the [astrological] sign of Aries, the
Scapegoat [actually Aries is a ram, as noted elsewhere
in her book, but the purpose for this "mistake" is self-evident]...
they will repeat their ancient sin of non-response to the evolutionary process.
They rejected that which was new and spiritual in the desert [by making the
golden calf at Sinai]; they did it again in Palestine 2000 years ago; will they
do it again, as opportunity is offered to them?" (Alice Bailey, _The
Reappearance of the Christ_, p.81)
[Here we
have a masterful "catch-22", for if the Jews reject Maitreya as a false messiah, they will "remain the
Scapegoat" and be removed from the new humanity
as they deserve. If they accept him, they will accept his assessment that past
karma requires their annihilation - first spiritual erasure and then physical
death. The only question is whether they will go out in submission or in
rebellion, but go they will...]
Knowing that Christians are susceptible to such reasoning, today's NAers have become adept at
using "Christian" arguments against the Jews. Christians coming from
an environment that never mentioned Alice Bailey will recognize the eerie
similarity of Bailey's quote above to the widespread Christian doctrine known
as "Replacement Theology", the belief that the Jewish dispensation
ended with Christ and that the failure of Jews to accept him cost them their
place as G-d's chosen people. But
the Christian linkage is maintained on the NA side for its PR value only; it
rallies support among Christians for their own goals, while they work for the
end of both the Jews and the Christians, as did Hitler. [A case can be made that the very existence of this as a
"Christian" theology may be due to NA infiltration into Christian
leadership. Only someone who is indifferent to the survival of Christianity
could support such a belief, because if Replacement happened to the Jews, there
is no guarantee that it won't happen next time to the
Christians! Precisely the argument that NA uses.]
Besides all
the above common ground, there is universal reverence in NA and Nazism
for Tibetan Buddhism. Blavatsky and other Theosophists considered the Tibetan
Himalayas the home of the Hierarchy themselves. According to some opinions,
Hitler sent SS officers to the
A virtually
unknown component in Nazism is the glorification of homosexuality
as a path to higher consciousness and superhuman power. In accordance
with widespread occult practice dating back to the Greeks, promotion in the SS
brotherhood was conditional on adopting "warrior" or
super-masculine homosexuality. The homosexuals who were despised and were sent to the camps were exclusively
the effeminate kind. [See _The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party_,
Scott Lively & Kevin Abrams, on line via the Web. I recommend an annotated version, an interesting
blend of the original, somewhat flawed text with a reader's hostile comments;
the end result is a welcome correction of minor points
and an unintentional confirmation of the authors' main contentions.] It
is interesting to note the rising popularity of "warrior" images in
entertainment (both male and female-Amazon types) which combine occult powers with
subtle homosexual or anti-heterosexual attitudes. [A good, blatant example is
the cheesy "Xena" TV
series newly arrived on Israeli TV - read the character histories.]
10. Nazi and American Eugenicists Working Together
The
agreement among eugenicists from these two vastly different societies (for
more details, see the eugenics section) reveals yet another thread borrowed from ancient
occult-based societies both in the East (
11. Never in a Vacuum...
Countless
historians and sociologists have tried to analyze how
Nazism became the new value system for a civilized, humanistic people seemingly
overnight. The fact is that Nazi doctrine was introduced
to an entire generation of Germans raised on magic, cosmic mythology, medieval
lore, tales of secret guardians of the Ancient Wisdom and mystical god-men. The
titles being published and devoured were reminiscent of today's blockbuster
movies in the science fiction, mythology and "world disaster" genres:
_Ulysses' Bow_, _The Great Dream_, _The Seventh Ring_ (an actual
end-of-the-world novel), _The Star of the Alliance_. (See Angeberts, p.253-255 for a list of German bestsellers
between 1896 and the 1930s.) Astrology, Theosophy, experiments in
"animal magnetism", clairvoyance and other ESP, combinations of
"white" sorcery and science, seances, and
other occult pursuits were widespread and trendy. Some were involved purely for
entertainment or psychological manipulation, but others took it quite seriously
as a door to enlightened knowledge and spiritual power. The reasons for this stampede away from reason and into mysticism
have been attributed to a complex environment: the upheaval in German society
and economy, an inner emptiness and fatalism which stifles personal initiative,
an erasure of moral and spiritual boundaries which leaves youth with nothing to
believe in and nowhere to belong, disintegration of traditional family
authority, a social devaluation of personhood which makes one ashamed of having
private values and goals at variance with the group. (Sklar, p.150) [I would propose that all
these conditions are not the cause for the abandonment of rational
thinking, so much as the result of a society accepting theosophical
principles like Karma and Group Mind