movement with what Guénon called the "Counter-Initiation." But the French
authors have also proposed the thesis that Hitler the "medium" emancipated
himself at a certain point from the "unknown superiors," almost like a Golem,
and that the movement then pursued its fatal direction. But in that case one
must admit that these "unknown superiors" can have had no prescience and very
limited power, to have been incapable of putting a stop to their supposed
medium, Hitler.
A lot of fantasy has been woven on the concrete level about the origin of
National Socialism's themes and symbols. Reference has been made to certain
organizations as forerunners, but ones to which it is very difficult to
attribute any genuine and factual initiatic character. There is no doubt that
Hitler did not invent German racial doctrine, the symbol of the swastika, or
Aryan antisemitism: all of these had long existed in Germany. A book entitled
"Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab" [The man who gave Hitler his ideas] reports
on Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (the title of nobility was self-bestowed), who had
formerly been a Cistercian monk and had founded an Order that already used the
swastika; Lanz edited the periodical "Ostara" from 1905 onwards, which Hitler
certainly knew, in which the Aryan and antisemitic racial theories were already
clearly worked out.
But much more important for the "occult background" of National Socialism is the
role of the Thule Society. Things are more complex here. This society grew out
of the Germanenorden, founded in 1912, and was led by Rudolf von Sebottendorf,
who had been in the East and had published a strange booklet on "Die Praxis der
alten türkischen Freimaurerei" [The practice of ancient Turkish Freemasonry].
Practices were described therein that involved the repetition of syllables,
gestures, and steps, whose goal was the initiatic transformation of man, such as
alchemy had also aimed at. It is unclear what Turkish masonic organization
Sebottendorf was in contact with, and also whether he himself practiced the
things in question, or merely described them.
Moreover, it cannot be established whether these practices were employed in the
Thule Society that Sebottendorf headed. It would be very important to know that,
because many top-ranking National Socialist personalities, from Hitler to Rudolf
Hess, frequented this society. In a way, Hitler was already introduced to the
world of ideas of the Thule Society by Hess during their imprisonment together
after the failed Munich Putsch.
At all events, it must be emphasized that the Thule Society was less an
initiatic organization than it was a secret society, which already bore the
swastika and was marked by a decided antisemitism and by Germanic racial
thinking. One should be cautious about the thesis that the name Thule is a
serious and conscious reference to a Nordic, Polar connection, in the effort to
make a connection with the Hyperborean origins of the Indo-Germans--since Thule
appears in ancient tradition as the sacred center or sacred island in the
uttermost North. Thule may just be a play on the name "Thale," a location in the
Harz where the Germanenorden held a conference in 1914, at which it was decided
to create a secret "völkisch" band to combat the supposed Jewish International.
Above all, these ideas were emphasized by Sebottendorf in his book "Bevor Hitler
kam" [Before Hitler came], published in Munich in 1933, in which he indicated
the myths and the "völkisch" world-view that existed before Hitler.
Thus a serious investigation into Hitler's initiatic connections with secret
societies does not lead far. A few explanations are necessary in regard to
Hitler as a "medium" and his attractive power. It seems to us pure fantasy that
he owed this power to initiatic practices. Otherwise one would have to assume
the same about the psychic power of other leaders, like Mussolini and Napoleon,
which is absurd. It is much better to go on the assumption that there is a
psychic vortex that arises from mass movements, and that this concentrates on
the man in the center and lends him a certain radiation that is felt especially
by suggestible people.
The quality of medium (which, to put it bluntly, is the antithesis of an
initiatic qualification) can be attributed to Hitler with a few reservations,
because in a certain respect he did appear as one possessed (which
differentiates him from Mussolini, for example). When he whipped up the masses
to fanaticism, one had the impression that another force was directing him as a
medium, even though he was a man of a very extraordinary kind, and extremely
gifted. Anyone who has heard Hitler's addresses to the enraptured masses can
have no other impression. Since we have already expressed our reservations about
the assumption that "unknown superiors" were involved, it is not easy to define
the nature of this supra-personal force. In respect to National Socialist
theosophy [Gotteserkenntnis], i.e. to its supposed mystical and metaphysical
dimension, one must realize the unique juxtaposition in this movement and in the
Third Reich of mythical, Enlightenment, and even scientific aspects. In Hitler,
one can find many symptoms of a typically "modern" world-view that was
fundamentally profane, naturalistic, and materialistic; while on the other hand
he believed in Providence, whose tool he believed himself to be, especially in
regard to the destiny of the German nation. (For example, he saw a sign of
Providence in his survival of the assassination attempt in his East-Prussian
headquarters.) Alfred Rosenberg, the ideologist of the movement, proclaimed the
myth of Blood, in which he spoke of the "mystery" of Nordic blood and attributed
to it a sacramental value; yet he simultaneously attacked all the rites and
sacraments of Catholicism as delusions, just like a man of the Enlightenment. He
railed against the "Dark men of our time," while attributing to Aryan man the
merit of having created modern science. National Socialism's concern with runes,
the ancient Nordic-Germanic letter-signs, must be regarded as purely symbolic,
rather like the Fascist use of certain Roman symbols, and without any esoteric
significance. The program of National Socialism to create a higher man has
something of "biological mysticism" about it, but this again was a scientific
project. At best, it might have been a question of the "superman" in Nietzsche's
sense, but never of a higher man in the initiatic sense.
The plan to "create a new racial, religious, and military Order of initiates,
assembled around a divinized Führer," cannot be regarded as the official policy
of National Socialism, as René Alleau writes, when he presents such a
relationship and even compares it, among others, to the Ishmaelites of Islam. A
few elements of a higher level were visible only in the ranks of the SS.
In the first place, one can see clearly the intention of Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler to create an Order in which elements of Prussian ethics were to
be combined with those of the old Orders of knighthood, especially the Teutonic
Order. He was looking for legitimation of such an organization, but could not
obtain it, since these old Orders of Catholicism were openly opposed by the
radical wing of National Socialism. Himmler was also seeking, without the
possibility of any traditional connection, a relationship to the
Nordic-Hyperborean heritage and its symbolism (Thule), albeit without those
"secret societies" discussed above having any influence over it. He took notice,
as did Rosenberg, of the researches of the Netherlander Herman Wirth into the
Nordic-Atlantic tradition. Later Himmler founded, with Wirth, the research and
teaching organization called the "Ahnenerbe." This is not without interest, but
there was no "occult background" to it.
So the net result is negative. The French authors' fantasy reaches its high
point in the book "Hitler et la tradition cathare" by Jean-Michel Angebert
(Paris, 1971). This deals with the Cathars, also called Albigensians, who were a
heretical sect that spread especially in Southern France between the 11th and
12th centuries, and had their center in the fortress of Montségur. According to
Otto Rahn, this was destroyed in a "crusade against the Grail," which is the
title of one of his books. Whatever the Grail and its Grail-Knights had to do
with this sect remains completely in the dark. The sect was marked by a kind of
fanatical Manicheism: sometimes its own believers would die of hunger or some
other cause as a demonstration of their detachment from the world and their
hostility to earthly existence in flesh and matter. Now it is assumed that Rahn,
with whom we corresponded during his lifetime and tried to persuade of the
baselessness of his thesis, was an SS man, and that an expedition was sent on
its way to retrieve the legendary Grail which was supposedly brought to safety
at the moment when the Cathars' fortress in Montségur was destroyed. After the
fall of Berlin, a unit is said to have reached the Zillertal and hidden this
object at the foot of a glacier, to await a new age.
The truth is that there was talk of a commando unit, which however had a less
mystical commission, namely the rescue and concealment of the Reich's treasures.
Two further examples show what such fantasies can lead to when they are given
free rein. The SS (which included not only battle units but also researchers and
scholarly experts) mounted an expedition to Tibet in order to make discoveries
in the fields of alpinism and ethnology, and another one to the Arctic,
ostensibly for scientific research but also with a view to the possible
situation of a German military base. According to these fantastic
interpretations, the first expedition was seeking a link to a secret center of
the Tradition, while the other was seeking contact with the lost Hyperborean
Thule...
