The Unholy Grail

The Occult World of the Late Nineteen and Early Twentieth Century........................... 3

A Pawn in a Bigger Chess Match............................................................................................. 12

Conclusion................................................................................................................................... 17

Selected Bibliography................................................................................................................. 18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Unholy Grail

Introduction:

The Occult World of the Late Nineteen and Early Twentieth Century.

The occult will always be with us, as long as one group of people seeks to prohibit another group of people from learning anything, as a means of controlling that group of people, for no matter how good a reason they might have.  This has become quite evident in the cultures that have gone into what makes up Western Culture.  The Roman Catholic Church for example is one such group, when they try to limit the range of scientific inquiry by restricting the free flow of information in that field and in effect stifle any inquiry, unless it was under their aegis and in line with their ideas of what is what.  This was to be taken up later by the Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century.  What it all boiled down to is this knowledge is power at that time, as well as the present.  Those who control knowledge of any kind, especially that knowledge that is considered important in some way to a culture, whether it be scientific, spiritual, or political, or a combination of them, controls the lives and destinies of those people.  By withholding this information people will then make poor and uninformed choices.  This is the way that their choices can be limited and thus the people can be controlled and manipulated to do what the powers that be want, whether these powers be organizations such as a church or a state.  So some people will always seek that knowledge that is forbidden to them for any number of reasons, to gain a modicum of freedom and control over their own lives, the usual reasons are not for such altruistic ideas, but to gain power and control over other people.

The occult is hidden or in some way privileged information.  People become interested in the study of the occult do so for as many reasons as there are people who are interested in the topic.  The reasons for taking up this study are wide ranging.  Some of these reasons are very altruistic, such as personal improvement, spiritual enlightenment, and to help raise the general spiritual level of humanity to a higher mode of consciousness.  These people form what can be loosely termed the White Brotherhood, White Lodges or practitioners of white, good or positive magick.[1]  These groups, like some of the branches of the Freemasons, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Rosicrucians and other such groups, surprising enough are that the majority of the members of the "Old Religion" or Wicca fall into this group as well.  Other people become involved in this study only for the possibility of absolute power and control it offers them.  There is usually a buried revenge motive hidden in this desire to study the black arts as well.  These groups are called the Black Brotherhood, Black Lodges or practice black, evil or negative magick.  Sorcery rarely if ever deals with white magick for its goals are centered on the same reasons the others get into black magick so it tends to be black as well.  That is primarily why you never here of a good sorcerer, but you find good magicians as well as bad in the literature.

The movement of ideas and ideals that made up what was termed in its own time as the romance movement, swept across Europe, England and America.  This movement was an intellectual as well as an esthetic revolt against the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century and the ideals and aesthetics belonging to them as a class.  Out of the Eighteenth Century comes a strong focus on the Classical or rational order as it was developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans and mankind's proper place in it as one who tames and exploits the world and its resources for mankind's benefit alone.  This was considered by some as a Holy mandate because the Bible said, "" and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepth on the earth."[2]  This idea along was justification enough for the colonization and empire building of the European powers in the late Nineteen and early Twentieth centuries.  This idea of extreme rationality appealed very much to the ruling classes of Europe, with the emphasis that was placed on authority, tradition, and the still developing scientific method.  The Classical order was a development of the aristocracy and imposed by them on everyone else whether they wanted it or not.  These ideas were never intended to be applied to the lower classes of the population.  These ideas of Classical order were very much a part of the world of the aristocratic elite of Europe, England and latter America.  The middle class in these countries started their development during the Middle ages and the Renaissance with the creation of new towns and enlargement of the old ones beyond their stone walls.  The middle class became a force in England and else where in Europe in the late Seventeenth century and early Eighteenth.  One of the major points to come out of Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries was the need for harmony and balance.  In the world of the occult the balance is paramount without it you will go mad and it will destroy you without mercy.

The burgeoning middle class did not feel at all closely allied to the ideas of classical thought.  The romance movement was very middle class in its ideas and ideals.  The hallmarks of the romantic movement, were one that the work or the question whether in the visual or fine arts, must express the moral and historical reality or Zeitgeist of a nation along with the ideas of romantic nationalism.  The other is the expression of the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) of the Human soul.  The more the work at hand expressed these ideas, whether it is a work of art for the stage, gallery or the library, of inner turmoil and national spirit the better.

The main problem of expressing the moral and historical reality of a nation was that the reality they wanted was not necessarily what did really happen at the historical time period they had under study, nor were they interested in how they really thought and believed then, it was intended as a loose outline to justify what was happening with in that particular national society at the current time.  This unconscious or conscious thinking permeated all the established liberal arts and the newly emerging branches of Anthropology, Sociology, and History.

This reaction showed up in a number of venues, as in the field of literature, in the examination of national folklore and mythology as having real worth to the people, and not just that of the Greek and Roman.  The fine arts had the Pre-Raphaelites like Dante Gabirel Rossetti and William Morris.  There was a bursting forth of the individual, based in the genera of these nationalistic myths.  These nationalistic myths were based in part on the medieval romances, whether there were those written by Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach or were popular tales of the peasantry.  The Gothic revival was given its voice, with the works of the English poets like Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and her older brother Dante Gabirel Rossetti, or the tales of terror and horror of Edgar Allen Poe and Horace Walpole, that so delighted many Victorians on both sides of the Atlantic.  The German contribution to this growing group was the notion of the Sturm und Drang which was the other of the two main themes in the world of romance.  A sub set of the romance movement, has been termed the neo-gothic revival.  This was applied more to architecture, furniture and the like, as in the so called "academic" style that has covered most college and university campuses in America, Great Britain and else where in the world.  The trend in Christian Church architecture was to make each new church no matter how insignificant it really may be, seem to be a demi-cathedral.  The houses of the time whether designed for them or not, sprouted turrets and battlements.  Failing that the structure was covered with a coat of plaster and veneer over the exterior to create imitation of Tudor half timber or timber framed buildings.  The last legs of the neo-gothic revival can be found in the current furniture styles called Spanish or Mediterranean.  During this time there was a very heady mixture of provable fact and fallacy.  The pseudo-sciences were as popular then as they are today, if not more so.  Because the facts of the matter were harder to get a hold of, if not impossible, then shear speculation would be take for gospel if it came from someone who was seen by the populace as an authority, so that these ideas in part were taken up by reputable scholars of the time.

This was true in the area that is now called Germany.  The romance movement blended thoroughly with the rising middle class in Prussia.  It was a movement that they could make their own.  Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was one of the early voices of the Germany romance movement.  Fichte could be also be called the father of Prussian patriotism and by extension Germany patriotism.  This idea is clearly shown in Reden an die deutsche Nation (Address to the German Nation) written in 1807-1808.

From foreign sources Germany has been infected with self-seeking.  It must be built up again on a loftier moral plane, for which we require a new system of education.  The new education must completely destroy freedom of will.  The pupil must not even hear that our impulses and actions may be directed towards our own interests.  The foreign genius in like a bee; The German spirit is like as eagle; to have character and to be a German undoubtedly mean the same.   [3]

In these lectures he outlined the nature of a Nations true prosperity.  This work was written in Berlin, shortly after Napoleon's victory at Jena on October 14, 1806.  Johann Fichte continued and developed his ideas on the nature of the German state, in his lectures of 1813 on Uber den Begriff des wahrhaften Krieges (On the Idea of a True War.) The major idea to come out of all this was that of the European commonwealth with Germany at its head.  What is happening today with the European Economic Community (EEC) is far different then what could have been imagined then.  Adolf Hitler took many of his ideas from Johann Fichte and other early German patriotic philosophers of the time.

The German or more rightly called Prussian middle class culture drank deep of the romantic movement.  It gave them something good about themselves to believe in.  This is especially needed when their world as they knew it seemed to be disintegrating around them under Napoleon Bonapart's boot heel.  Here was a group of ideas that said that to be Prussian or German was a good thing.  Germany should be the leader of the nations of Europe.  Germany first, all the good ideas are essentially of German in origin.  That such religions as Christianity and Judaism were in essence alien to the German people.  Because the Merovingians by force of arms converted the Germans to Christianity, the nineteenth century Germans historians saw them as essentially French.  The second was the religion of a group of non German peoples that were brought into fill a need in the society for bankers.  This need was created by the Christians.

This fit in neatly, in some instances, to neatly, with the growing idea that was the major part of the Anglo or British Israelite theory, in England and America as well as Germany.  That those of German, Aryan or Anglo- Saxon extraction were the true house of Israel and those of Jewish or Semitic descent today were only weak and poor impostors.

The Anglo Israel or British Israel theory as this group is sometimes called is a group of ideas is based on the premise that the current members of the Caucasian race, that can trace their decent to the Normans, Anglo Saxons, Danes or Goths and the Nordic of Europe, that these people are what was left of the so called "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." How they got to that point is a convoluted and tortuous process at best and a nightmare of pseudo science and illogic at its worst.  For this idea to get a foot hold and then flourish depends on the ignorance and gullibility of the general public much like the ideas of Erik von Denikan and Emmual Velikofsky, in the 1960's.  This theory is based on three general hypotheses 1.  The ignorance of the general public of the early history of their own people, and the world's people as a whole.  2.  The lack of understanding of what is going on in scientific studies in this case, how words used in the current languages developed, and 3.  A strong belief that the Bible (the authorized King James version) is the true word of God.  All three hypotheses were woven into an intricate braid of truth, half truths and pure lies, to the extent that if you were not a specialist in the study of one of the areas you could not tell fact from fiction.

The grabbing at historical and pseudo historical straws that were totally unconnected and unconnectable tid-bits, by many of the proponents of these ideas to prove their point, with no supportive evidence given, in support of this theory that has the remote possibility of being right.  The evidence that is given is vague and nebulas at best such as that it states in the "Spanish Records,[4]" or at worst an appeal to history of a peoples where the evidence for such a history does not exist "according to Irish History"[5] which of course none of these things as Atlantis can be found.  These people have painted for us stirring images and heroic realities out of the shreds and tatters of pseudo history.

Popular philology, incorporated the study of phonetic identities of words to show that the English language was ultimately derived from Hebrew and it was not a member of the Indo Aryan languages at all.  It will be sufficient to define phonetic identity in the term and solely of acoustic "sameness." A prime example of this is the word Medieval, in the current American spelling, pronounced by some people medi " evil and so of course its meaning is that of middle evil.  This is completely wrong.  This idea of acoustic sameness without regards to the word's meaning, origin or development will lead down a blind ally.  This theory for the most part has been abandoned by philologists.

A strict interpretation to certain passages in the King James translation, of the Hebraic text commonly called the Bible that is known also as the Old Testament, this translation dose not convey with any real accuracy meaning of the original text, nor was it really intended to.  This strict interpretation based on this faulty translation is an out growth of the development of Christian fundamentalism of the 1860's.  This was part of what was called the Christian Revival during 1800's.

These people were on the fringe of society and politics of the time, but many of their ideas and their symbols flowed through the German society of the time.  One of these groups the Thule Gesellschaft "Thule Association." Their name was derived from a semi mythical Germanic country some where to the North.  Thule Gesellschaft was founded as an off-shoot of the anti-Semitic Lodge of the ancient Germanenorden "German Order", by the so called Count Heinrich von Sebottendorf who real name was Rudolf Glauer from Dresden.  Glauer was heavily influenced by the writings of the Theosophical Society in particular the writings of Madame Blavatsky especially her Secret Doctrine.  He took her basic thesis and of what the magical conditions might have been like on the mystical island of Atlantis and transported them to the world of Norse mythology.  This idea coupled and supported neatly another popular idea of the time, that is of Ariosophists.    This group formed a font of ideas in the formation of the ideological bases of many groups in post 1918 Munich.  The Thule Gesellschaft espoused nationalism and anti-semiteism under the rubric of the study of literature, mythology, art and history.  The Thule had connections to other such groups across Germany.  The decline of the Thule parallels, the rise of the Nazi Party with a large number of the members of the Thule going over to the Nazis.  This organization used as one of its main symbols the Hakenkreuz or hooked cross.  This was adopted by the Nazis in the summer of 1920.  Goodrick Clark argues in his book the Thule Gesellschaft did not exist in reality but in the as product of modern "Nazi mania." If this group was spurious, Goodrick Clark clamed, then why are there a number of documents pertaining to them in the documents captured by the Allies at the end of the war dealing directly with Thule Gesellschaft?[6]

When you put these ideas into a pot and stir vigorously and you pour out what you get becomes the under lying mess, that was to make up one leg of the structure that was to become the National Socialist Democratic Workers Party in Germany.

 

A Pawn in a Bigger Chess Match

Synopsis of Hitler's background in the Occult

The romantic movement at the time was the heady mix of ideals and ideas, that Adolph Hitler, Alfred Rosenburg and Heinrich Himmler grew up in.

Adolph Hitler joined the Thule Gesellschaft, at the 19 at the invitation of the Christian mystic Detric Echart (1868-1923).  Because he not only had a strong interest in it's Ariosophist ideas, but it applied to his romantic side with its emphases on art and music as a tool to move people.  Though this group he made the acquaintance of a number of people who were part of the membership of some of the more dominate black lodges in Munich and the surrounding area.  He studied history and read copiously in the libraries of Vienna, proving quite effectively that you do not need a university degree to get an education.

Alfred Rosenburg was 18 when he and his wife imigrated from Moscow to Germany in December of 1918, and brought with them one of the most tragic of hoaxes to be played on mankind.  That was The Protocols of the Wise men of Zion.[7]  This book in part was originally written as a French satire against Napoleon III by Maurice Joly entitled A dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu written in 1864, then it was rewritten by the members of the Czar of Russia's secret police using this work and a few others, primarly about 1903.  It appeared as the appendix to the third edition of Sergiei Nilus's book The protocols and world revolution, including a translation and analysis of the "Protocols of the meetings of the Zionist men of wisdom" and it was this edition of the work that Alfred brought to the West.  Alfred Rosenberg was to become the philosopher and the ideologue of the Nazi party.  He published a number of works including the Myth of the Twenty Century, which is tough sledding at best.  He became involved with the occult community in Muchen about 19.

Deutsces Ahnenerbe had its origins in an occult society founded by Friedrich Hielscher in 1933.  It became sanctioned by Himmler in 1935, with Himmler as curator and later incorporated into Ancestral Heritage department in 1939, becoming a full department of the SS under the title R. S. H. A. Reischssicherheitshauptamt, Amt VII.  The Ahnenerbe recruited every occult expert that was left after the Nazi's banned such groups in 1937, as well as historians, archeologists and many other scholars.  This organization was first headed by Hermann Wirth who was a German-Flemish specialist, who wrote Ura-Linda Chronicle who was considered by Himmler to be an expert in Aryan prehistory.  By 193? Hermann Wirth was replaced by SS Colonel Wolfram Sievers, under Sieves the branch grew quickly in to fifty different departments.  Germany spent more money of the Ahnenerbe then the United States of America did on the development of the atomic bomb.  Its activities went all over the map from the strictly scientific, to the practice of occultism, vivisection practiced on prisoners to espionage.  Some of the report topics were:

The strength of the Rosicrucian confraternity,

The symbolism of the suppression of the Irish harp in Ulster,

The occult significance of Gothic Towers,

Etonian top-hat,

The effect of the bells at Oxford on the German radar.

This last may not be so far fetch as it first seems, to study the sound frequencies created by the bells on the sound frequencies created by the German radar.  To see if some how one was able to cancel out the other.  No doubt that more of these documents will show not only some interesting and useful ideas, but some will also be good for a laugh.

Conclusion

What was Left after the War, and What is going on Today

There were two major groups who vied for the crown that had fallen after World War Two, the first was the Nationaldomokratische Partei, Nationaldomokratische Partei Deutschlands, National Democratic Party, known collectively as the N. P. D. and the Sozialistische Reichs- Partei or the S. R. P. .  The N. P. D. was founded by Fritz Thielen in November of 1964.  These parties and others were broken up by the government of what was then Democratic Republic of Germany, almost as fast as they formed, but they do keep on forming.  There is a movement afoot to consolidate all the right wing parties in Germany today, but little substantive material is currently available. 

The Anglo or British Israelites under that name seems to have faded out by the early 1990's only to be reborn as the Christian Identy movement in the United States.

Selected Bibliography

1800-1899.

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. Isis Unveiled. 2 vols., London: Theosophical Publishing Co. Ltd. 1877.

---. Secret Doctrine. 2 vols., London: Theosophical Publishing Co. Ltd. 1888.

Eastlake, Charles E. . A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmams, Green. 1872.

Solovyoff, Vsvolod. A Modern Priestess of Isis. trs. Walter Leaf, London: Theosophical Publishing Co. Ltd. 1895.

1900-1929.

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart . The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. trs. John Lees, 2 vols. London: John Lane. 1911.

Nilus,  Sergiei Aleksandrovich   The protocols and world revolution, including a translation and analysis of the "Protocols of the meetings of the Zionist men of wisdom". Boston, Small, Maynard & company 1920.

1930-1939.

Frey, Arthur . Cross and Swastika. trs. J. Strathearn McNabb, London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1938.

Haider, Carmen "Pressure Groups in Italy and Germany" The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 179(May 1935): 158-166.

Inge, William Ralph "Substiutues for Religion: 4 Fascism" in The Rustic Morlist. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1937.

--- "Substiutues for Religion: 5 Nazisms" in The Rustic Morlist. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1937.

Inge, William Ralph. The Rustic Moralist. New York, NY: G . P. Putnam's Sons, 1937.

Jung, Carl G. "Woton" Neue Schweizer Rundschau (Zurich) n.s. III (March 1936): 657-669.

Kandel, I. L. "Education in Nazi Germany" The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 182(Novwember 1935):153-163.

Kohn, Hans "Intellectual Orgians of National Socialism" in Revolutions and Dictatorships Essays in Contemporary History. 1939 sec ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1941.

Loewenstein, Hubertus Prince "The Totalitarian State in Germany and the Individual" The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 180(July 1935):26-30.

Mann, Thomas "An Experence in The Occult" in Three Essays. trs. H. T. Lowe-Porter, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knoph, 1932.

Schuman, Frederick L. "The Third Reich's Road to War" The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 175(September 1934):33-43.

Sebottebdorff, Rudolf von .Bevor Hitler Kam. Deufuka-Verlag Grassinger & Co,Munich, 1933.

Wells, H. G. "Nazi Religion" Chap. in Fate of man an unemotional statement of the things that are happening to him now, and of the immediate possibilities confronting him. New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Co. 1939.

1940-1949.

Butler, Rohan d" Olier . The Roots of National Socialism 1783-1933. London: Faber and Faber, 1941.

Gross, Feliks ed. European Idologies A Survey of 20th Century Political Ideas. New York, NY: Philosophical Library 1948.

Heiden, Konrad . Der Fuehrer, Hitler's rise to power. trs. Ralph Manheim, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944.

Stampfer, Friedrich "Naziam: Its Spiritual Roots" in European Idologies New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1948.

Spence, Lewis . The Occult Causes of the Present War. London: Rider, 1940.

1950 -1959.

Thompson, Elizabeth M. "Neo-Nazism in Germany" in Editorial Research Reoprts (Feb 20 1953): 123-138.

Weinberg, Gerhart L. Guide to Captured German Documents. Montgomery, AL: Air University 1952.

--- Guide to Captured German Documents, Supplement. Montgomery, AL: Air University 1959.

1960-1969.

Clark, Kenneth . The Gothic Revival. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1962.

Howe, Ellic Astrology: A Recent History Including the Untold Story of Its role in World War II, Walker & Co. New York, 1968.

--- Urania's Children, The Strange World of the Astrologers. 1967.

Jung, Carl G. . Man and His Symbols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. 1964.

Mumford, Lewis "The Revolt of the Demons " The New Yorker 40(May 23 1964): 155-186.

Mosse, George L. "The Mystical Origins of National Socialism" Journal of the History of Ideas 22(1961): 81-96.

--- . The Crisis of German Ideaology: Intellectual Orgians of the Third Reich. New York, NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964.

Pauwels, Louis and Jacques Bergier . The Morning of the Magicians. trs. Rollo Myers, New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1963.

Phelps, Regionald H. " "Before Hitler Came": The Thule Societey and Germanen Orden" The Journal of Modern History 35:3(September 1963): 245-261.

--- "Hitler and the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" American Historical Review 58:4(July 1963): 974-986.

Seznec, Jean. The Survival of the Pagan Gods: the Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art. trs. Barbra Sessions New York, NY: Harper 1961.

Shirer, William . Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1960.

Tauber, Kurt P. . Beyond Eagle and Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945. 2 vols. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967.

Worsnop, Richard L."Neo-Nazism in West Germany" in Editorial Research Reoprts (April 12 1967): 263-280.

1970-1979.

Angebert, Jean Michel . The Occult and the Third Reich. trans. Lewis A. M. Sumberg, New York, NY: Macmillan, 1974.

Lehman, W. P. "Contemporary Linguistics and Indo-European Studies" PMLA 87:5 (October 1972): 976-993.

Nugent, Donald "Satan is a Fascist" The Month (April 1972): 116-119.

Ravenscroft, Trevor. The Spear of Destiny: the Occult Power behind the Spear Which Pierced the Side of Christ. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1973.

Speer, Albert . Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs. New York, NY: Macmillan 1970.

Webb, James The Occult Underground La Salle, Il: Open Court Press, 1974.

---  The Occult Establishment La Salle, Il: Open Court Press, 1976.

1980-1989.

Carr, Joseph . The Twisted Cross. Huntington House, 1985.

Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas . The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935. Wellingbourough, Northamptonshire, Aquarian Press, 1985.

Howard, Michael "Nazism and the Occult Tradition" in The Occult Conspiracy Rochester VT: Destany Books, 1989. pp 123-140.

Sklar, Dusty . Gods and Beasts: The Nazis and the Occult. New York, NY: T. Y. Crowell, 1986.

Suster, Gerald . Hitler, The Occult Messiah. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1981.

1990-to the Present.

Anderson, Ken .Hitler and the Occult. Amherst NY: Prometheus books , 1995.

Fitz Gerald, Michael. Storm-Troopers of Satan: an Occult History of the Second World War. London: R. Hale, 1990.