http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psy-op/message/4968
Dispelling the Nazi curse on Germanic Paganism
by John C. Mayer, M.A.

I am a Germanic Wiccan. That does not mean that I am a fascist or a
racist. Like other Pagans called to a Germanic path, I am tired of
having to deal with the effects several common misconceptions about
my tradition despite the dramatic growth Paganism in the fifty years
since the end of the second world war.

Historically and mythologically Nazism wasn't Pagan. Before it can be
understood how the NAZI phenomenon originated and why it is still
confused with Germanic Paganism, it is necessary to examine the
European zeitgeist (world views) of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. By 1800 the European continent had experienced
centuries of religious intolerance which lead to the slaughter of
countless alleged "heretics," the debasement of women to the status
of chattel, and rampant anti-Semitism since the time of the crusades.
By the time of the Protestant reformation, it was a common belief
among white European Christians that they has replaced the Jews
as "God's Chosen People". As new lands were discovered in the
fifteenth century, this ideology lead to the displacement and all out
slaughter of countless native peoples with the colonization of Asia,
Africa, and especially the Americas.

The nineteenth century was a period of tremendous changes. The bloody
revolution in France, and the Napoleonic wars which followed, were
but the first of many political upheavals which threatened to topple
a world order to which so many had become comfortable. Monarchy began
to give way to democracy, and several new political and social
movements spread throughout the western world including Socialism,
Anarchism, Feminism, and organized labor. The overall feelings of
fear and uncertainty which marked this period in history were further
complicated by the discoveries of modern science and the publication
of the Theory of Evolution which even threatened the validity of
Judeo-Christian faith. Additionally, Europe's rapid industrialization
and the rise of commercialism was threatening to destroy both small
business based urban economies and the centuries-old rural way of
life.

The Romantic movement of the early 1800's was but one of many
reactions to these socio-political changes. Romanticism taught that
humanity's suffering stemmed from the corruption of civilized society
and that only through a return to the sanctity of nature could the
human race redeem itself. An important influence of this movement was
a renewed interest in "pre-civilized" and rural mythologies which was
also fostered by the increased exploration of far off exotic lands
and the new science of archeology. Millennial thinking was yet
another reaction to the uncertainties of the period with various
individuals and groups predicting both cataclysms and new ages
occurring as the year 2000 approached. Finally, as in other periods
of tremendous change, occultism and an interest in Eastern
philosophies increased as many attempted to find replacements for
those conventional religious beliefs which no longer felt valid. In
America, Spiritualists attempted to contact the spirits of the dead
while many Europeans embarked in pilgrimages to such places as India
and Tibet.

Probably the most famous spiritual visitor to the Orient was the
Russian-born mystic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. As the founder
of the Theosophical movement, Blavatsky promoted a mixture of both
Eastern and Western Occult philosophies which led to a revitalized
interest in such subjects as reincarnation and astrology. In her book
The Secrete Doctrine she claimed to have visited a Tibetan monastery
where she was shown a secret text which revealed both the mysteries
of the universe and the destiny of the human race. According to
Blavatsky, the cosmos was engaged in a cyclical process of creation
and destruction which involved progressions through states of chaos,
base matter, and darkness evolving into a state of spirit, light and
harmony. Blavatsky's book discussed a universe which developed
through cycles marked by seven stages of cosmic creation, each with
its own corresponding stage of human evolution called a "root race."
Blavatsky believed that the current stage in human evolution, the
Aryan root race marked a pivotal point where collective consciousness
shifted away from material corruption to a state of spiritual
enlightenment. The symbol Blavatsky linked to this stage in
humanity's development was that of the swastika which was frequently
used as decoration on the covers of Theosophical publications in
Europe and America.

The swastika was a popular spiritual symbol found throughout Europe,
Asia, The Near East, and even the Americas. It was associated with
the sun, the life-force, cyclical existence, good luck, and
enlightenment. In Northern Europe, the swastika decorated sword hilts
for luck in battle, and cremation urns as symbolic of the
transformative powers of fire. This symbol was also found decorating
the cover of Rudyard Kiplings's book, Stories of India and during the
first world war it became the logo for the British War Savings
Committee which sold defense bonds. In the 1930's it became a popular
symbol for the neo-Druidic movement, and swastika kilt pins were
popular in Scotland, based on the inscriptions found in a Pictish
cave. Swastika jewelry was also popular in the United States, and in
the 1920's the Swastika Realty Company sold houses in Denver. As a
good luck charm, this symbol played a similar role that of rabbits
feet, quartz crystals, and in recent times angels.

Nineteenth century Germany was a nation in search of itself. For
centuries a loose confederation of independent states, by 1871 it had
quickly gravitated toward a unified state seeking its place among the
great world powers. German nationalism began in the late eighteenth
century with the pre-romantic Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress)
movement which had expressed the common identity of all Germans as
evidenced by common themes in art, folk-music, customs and
literature. Perhaps as an expression of the collective desire for
stability in an era of growing uncertainty, a number of strong Pan-
Germanic nationalist Volkish movements developed in the years
immediately following the Napoleonic wars. The popular German
philosopher Georg Hegel, in his doctrine of the "Collective Mind"
stated that history existed as an series of developments toward a
perfect "Absolute Idea", and that the evolution of the human spirit
could be illustrated best by the achievements of people of Germanic
ancestry (citing such examples as Theodric, Charlemagne, Martin
Luther, and Frederick the Great). According to Hegel, the "Absolute"
or "Whole," the true reality, was best represented by the German
state and that its purest form was Prussia under the absolute
Hohenzollern monarchy. In Hegel's philosophy, which served as the
basis for both Bismark's German empire and the later NAZI regime, the
function of the individual was in the maintenance of the independence
and sovereignty of his/her native state and, if necessary, through
the sacrifice of war. Nations struggled against one another for
survival in the same manner as species did in an eco-system and
therefore their actions could not be judged legally or morally.

The New German state sought its own mythology in the legends of its
pre and post Christian past. The Grimm Brothers' collection of German
folktales became an immediate best seller as did Jacob Grimm's four
Volume work, Teutonic Mythology.

The new mythology reached its zenith with the composition of Richard
Wagner's operas Der Ring des Nibelungens and the medieval tale
Parzival In the four part Ring cycle, Wagner created a truly modern
myth combining the stories found in the Icelandic Eddas with the
medieval Saga of the Volsungs and the collection of German tales
called the Nibelungenlied. These operas also contain the very
Christian themes of guilt and self sacrifice for a greater good which
appealed strongly to their Victorian audience.

One of the greatest influences on the doctrines of Nazism were the
new sciences of genetics and evolution as applied to the human
species. As early as 1853, a paper titled Essay on the inequality of
the Human Races was published in France by the biologist Joseph
Arthur. In the 1860's, Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton was
the first to popularize the ideas of eugenics and "racial hygiene"
which spread quickly throughout Europe and the United states. By the
end of the century many eugenicists advocated measures for the
protection of race such as forced sterilization of alcoholics,
tuberculosis victims, syphilitics, bankrupts, and the mentally
retarded, as well as financial bonuses for each child produced
by "persons of worth." In the 1930's, the cover of a British
eugenicist journal The Superman bore the image of the swastika.

In Germany, a biological justification for racial purity and white
supremacy was popularized by the physician turned zoologist Ernst
Haeckel. In 1862, Haeckel began to lecture throughout Germany on the
Theory of Evolution which he believed to represent a new philosophy
of mankind. He called this new philosophy Monism in order to
distinguish it from the dualistic belief systems which separated
humanity from nature and the animal kingdom. According to Haekel's
philosophy, humans were highly developed animals which possessed no
soul or divine sanction. Because the human race was simply a part of
nature, human relationships, including the interactions of nations
and states, were subject to the same laws of "survival of the
fittest" that governed the development of biological organisms.
Haeckel, like his philosophical predecessor Hegel, believed Germany
to be a superior culture and that its survival was dependent on the
maintenance of its individuality. To this end, he advocated the
separation of humanity into separate groups according to variables
such as color and intelligence. He theorized that the greatest racial
differences existed between Germans and Africans, especially Bushmen
and Pygmies. This belief reflected the illustrations found in many
Victorian textbooks on evolution which showed the drawing of an ape,
followed by one of a black African, and lastly, a well-groomed white
male European.

Haeckel believed that free-will was detrimental to both nation and
race, hence he advocated an education system which emphasized
science, physical fitness and submission to group authority. The
individual, according to Haeckel, was no more important than the
single cell, thousands of which might be sacrificed daily for the
survival of the organism. In 1906, Haeckel founded an organization
called The Monist League whose membership included eugenicists,
biologists, theologians, literary figures, politicians, and
sociologists. In five years this organization listed over six
thousand members in forty two cities in both Germany and Austria.
Members of this league included the Nobel prize winning chemist
William Ostwald, the Volkish anthropologist Otto Ammon who once
declared that "Darwinism must become the new religion of Germany",
Alexander Plotz who advocated a national board to screen all would-be
parents, and Theodore Fritsch who proposed the building of selective-
breeding communities. After the first world war, Fritsch became the
ideological guide of a youth movement called Artamarzen after an
alleged "Aryan" deity. Among the charter members of this organization
were Rudolph Hess and Heinrich Himmler.

Ernst Haeckel was the first theorist to use the term Aryan in a
racist context. In his day, the term had been utilized by linguists
as the name for the theoretical root language for all Indo-European
tongues. Haekel used these theories of language to strengthen his
arguments by stating that the "Mongrelized" languages which had
theoretically developed from "Aryan" paralleled the degeneration of a
pure Caucasian race caused by inter-marriage' with non-Aryan peoples.
(The actual Aryans were a collection of Indo-European tribes which
invaded Northern India in the second Millennium BCE. The Indo-
Europeans were known to have inter-married with the various peoples
they encountered during their expansions well before the time of
the "Aryan" invasions.). Haeckel's writings were the scientific
inspiration for the spiritualized racism of Madame Blavatsky.

As many Europeans sought justification for their racial and political
beliefs in science, so others looked to occult spirituality.
Theosophy spread quickly throughout Europe in the 1890's and early
1900's along with many other occult philosophies. At the turn of the
century Theosophical doctrines were combined with Volkish nationalism
to form a new racist occultism called Ariosophy, whose origins can be
traced to Austria in the years following German unification. Due to
the political tensions of this period, including the effects of the
Austro-Prussian war of 1866, the Germans living in the Austrian
empire were excluded from the new Germany and were feeling alienated
in an environment of growing Slavic influence. German cultural
societies began to form in Austria, the largest of which was the
Germanan Bund (German Federation) whose membership exceeded one
hundred thousand. Activities in these societies, designed to promote
cultural unity, included lectures on history and mythology, song
festivals, and elaborate pageants celebrating various historical
events. The first of the Great Ariosophists and a celebrity amongst
these organizations was the Austrian mystic Guido Von List.

Guido Karl Anton List was a native of Vienna, born in 1848 and the
son of a prosperous leather merchant. He originally worked in his
family business while pursuing in his spare time an interest in
mountaineering and local folklore. In the 1870's he began to pursue a
career as a writer, first in mountaineering journals and later in
several of the volkish newspapers which were becoming popular at the
time. Over the next twenty years List expanded his talents to the
writing of folklore anthologies, novels, poetry, and drama. His
popularity among pan-German societies was cemented with the 1881
publication of his historical novel Carnuntum about the cultural
struggle of native Germans against the Romans in the 4th century
C.E.. In 1902 List underwent surgery for cataracts and spent eleven
months in virtual blindness. It is during this period that he claimed
to have received inspirational visions into the secrets of the pre-
Christian Runic alphabet. List created an eighteen character Rune-row
(called the Arman Futhark) based upon a collection of obscure spells
found in the Eddic poem; Havamal . This alphabet was claimed by List
to be the original runes of the ancient Germans despite contradictory
archeological evidence. In 1903 he submitted his ideas to the
Imperial Academy of Sciences, which rejected his manuscript without
comment. Despite this setback however, his theories on runeology and
the geomancy of Austrian landmarks (also based upon his own psychic
impressions) were welcomed without question by the same Volkish
nationalists among whom he was already famous. Between 1903 and 1907
he began to use the noble title of "von" in his name, probably as an
attempt to appeal to a more aristocratic audience. In 1908, von List
published his most famous work The Secret of the Runes, which
outlined his theories which linked the runes and other pre-Christian
Germanic symbols, including the swastika, to the designs of medieval
architecture and heraldry.

The publication of von List's "Secrets" led to the founding of two
occult organizations; the Guido von List Society devoted to
historical research, and the Arman Order which explored both magick
and ritual. Von List's occultism was a mixture of Germanic
revivalism, Blavatsky's Theosophy, and the Hermetic Arts. According
to List, the magick and wisdom and magick of the Germanic god Wotan's
cult was preserved by a class of priest kings called the Arman who
became a secret underground movement after Europe's conversion to
Christianity. The secrets of the Arman continued to exist in the
various medieval chivalric orders (including the Knights Templar),
the royal and noble houses of Europe, in alchemy, the secret
societies of Rosecrucianism and Free Masonry, and in Cabalalism which
he believed that the Jews had corrupted. Von List believed that the
Arman possessed inherent psychic and magickal abilities which could
be revived in their descendants who existed in the royal and noble
families of Germanic ancestry, especially the Habsburgs whom he
prophesied would someday rule over a renewed Germanic Empire. Before
his death in 1919, Von List wrote that the great world war was the
final chaos to take place before the rise of a new Germanic
millennium.

It was from the work of Guido von List that the modern runic revival,
which is stronger than ever today, originated. Though von List was
rather anti-Christian in his writings and might even be classified by
today's standards as Neo-Pagan, the most radical religious
conversions made by his followers was from Catholicism to
Protestantism. This was due to the Catholic Church's frequent
appointment of Slavic priests to Austrian parishes whose membership
were predominantly German. The dominant movements of Ariosophy in
fact reflected an attempt to construct a Germanified form of
Christianity rather than a revival of pre-Christian Paganism. In some
cases Wotan and his brothers Vili and Ve were linked to the triune
Christian god, but Christianity was regarded to be just as important
to the spiritual evolution of the Aryan race as anything which
preceded it.

Another important Ariosophical movement in the early twentieth
century was created by the former Cistercian monk Georg Lanz, a self-
stylized Austrian aristocrat who went by the title of "Lanz von
Liebenfels". Von Liebenfels combined the racist science of Haeckel
with the occultism of Blavatsky and von List to create a white
supremacist religion whose ideologies are still being taught in such
organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. Christian duality (the struggle of
light and dark, good and evil) according to von Liebenfels was the
struggle for survival between the divine Aryan race and those
of "untrue blood". In his belief-system called Theozoology, the Ario-
Germans were the creation of the powers of spirit and light, and the
biblical "fall of man" was symbolic of this race's interbreeding with
a lesser species, specifically African Pygmies. According to von
Liebenfels, the pre-Christian Pagan fertility cults were actually the
attempts of inferior races to breed the perfect "love-pygmies"
through race-mixing for the purpose of "deviant" sexual activity. One
of the sources for this theory was the recent discovery of several
Mesopotamian stone carvings which depicted creatures that were
composites of both men and animals. Von Liebenfels, like von List,
believed that the original Aryans possessed great magickal powers and
that through racial segregation and selective breeding these powers
could again be revived. The Crucifixion of Christ was believed by Von
Liebenfels to have been symbolic of a non-Aryan conspiracy against
such an attempt for Aryan purification in ancient times, and the
crusades were likewise a movement of Aryan revival. Additionally, the
legends of the quest for the Holy Grail were in the same fashion
symbolic of the Aryan races struggle toward perfection. Von
Liebenfels founded an organization called the Order of the New
Templars which would serve as a model for Heinrich Himmler's SS. Von
Liebenfels advocated, along with selective breeding, polygamy among
genetically superior males, and the sterilization, enslavement, and
elimination of persons deemed to be of undesirable stock. Though the
membership of the New Templars never exceeded 300 brothers at any
given time, and was eliminated by the NAZI Gestapo in 1942, its
magazine Ostara was widely circulated throughout Germany and Austria
and may even have been read by a young struggling artist by the name
of Adolph Hitler.

List and Lanz's ideas spread from Austria to Germany and were
incorporated in small organization which called itself the
Germanorden.. The Germanorden existed as a germanized fraternal
organization similar to Free Masonry whose members were required to
undergo an intense racial purity examination prior to initiation
(including examination by a phrenologist). This organization all but
died out by the close of the first world war, except for a branch in
Bavaria which developed into the now infamous Thule Society

The Thule society was founded in post-war Munich by the Germanorden
member Rodolpf Glauer, who was yet another self-styled aristocrat who
called himself "Baron Rudolph von Sebottendorff". Sebottendorff
(Glauer) had traveled extensively through the Middle East in his
youth and despite his ariosophical leanings never lost his interest
in Sufi mysticism. The name "Thule" was originally adopted by his
branch of the Germanorden to divert attention from its obvious right-
wing activities in opposition to the Bavarian Socialist revolution of
1918. Thule's symbol was a curved armed swastika superimposed over a
long dagger and its membership included many rich and influential
Bavarians. Society members gathered at Thule's headquarters for such
events as "music rehearsals" which were actually covers for counter-
revolutionary activities against Munich's Bolshevik government. The
Thule society in its heyday hid counter-revolutionaries from the
socialist authorities, financed para-military groups, and helped in
the stockpiling of weaponry. Following the successful coup against
the Socialists. The Thule Society, contrary to the insinuations of
later authors who would claim the existence of a Thule-Nazi occult
conspiracy, gradually died out and was disbanded in 1925 due to lack
of interest.

Thule did however, play a minor role in the founding of the Nazi
party. In 1918, Sebottendorff attempted to extend the nationalist
ideology of Thule to the working classes and entrusted Karl Harrer, a
Munich sports writer, with the task of forming a worker's discussion
group. This group, designed to lure workers away from Socialist
activity, met weekly through the winter of that year with only three
to seven active members. Still its most active member, Anton Drexler,
desired that this organization be formed into a new political party
and on January 5, 1919, the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (The German
Workers Party or DAP) was founded in the Furstenfelder Hof Tavern.
Drexler was the party's first chairman and he quickly recruited
members from the locomotive works where he was employed. Adolph
Hitler first encountered the DAP when he was sent as an army spy to
investigate the party's activities. By November 1919 he had joined
the organization and began to lecture to large crowds which gathered
in the beer halls of Munich. By January 1920 Hitler had assumed the
full leadership of the party and its original founder Harrer had been
encouraged to resign, thus ending any association the organization
might have had with Thule. A month later, the Party's name was
changes to the National Socialist German Worker's Party. The Swastika
flag was formally adopted by the party on May 20, 1920 after Hitler
insisted on a party banner that looked more dramatic than red flag of
the Socialists. The design was submitted by a dentist from Starnberg
who had originally used it a logo for his own defunct political
party. Though different forms of the swastika were used throughout
the NAZI era, Hitler preferred the straight armed anti-clockwise form
purely for aesthetic reasons. Despite its early links to Thule, the
original DAP party line was predominantly one of extreme political
and social nationalism, and not based on the principles of Ariosophy.
The ambitions of Adolph Hitler in Nazism's early days were to change
its organization from that of a debating society to a political party
of mass appeal. In Mein Kampf, Hitler would later condemn the Ario-
German occultists of his day as ineffectual fighters in the battle
for German supremacy.

The appeal of Nazism was strongest among the lower middle classes who
were hit hardest by the destruction of the German economy at the end
of the first world war, and who feared most the rise of feminism,
socialism, and the questioning of traditional morals in the 1920's.
In a time of national defeat and increasing uncertainty, Hitler and
the Nazi party promised law and order, national pride, employment for
those out of work, and, like today's right-wing politicians, a return
to traditional values. The Nazi's took full advantage of the
predominant feelings of racism, and offered the Jews to the masses as
a scapegoat to blame for their problems. For many war veterans who
missed the comradeship of the trenches, membership in Nazi
organizations such as the Storm Troopers (SA) provided an environment
free from alienation. The ritualistic pageantry of Nazi rallies were
similar in nature to the patriotic worship of the state which
developed in the same period in Stalinist Russia and, later, in the
China of Mao Tse Tung. As the Nazis co-opted the resolution of
collective fears into their ideology, they also adopted a number of
already popular symbols which included the runes and the swastika.
For the failed artist who was Adolph Hitler, Germany became his
canvas: for the boy who was physically abused by his father, the
party became his adopted family; for the young man who had trouble
drawing the human figure, there was the attempt at creating a master
race; for the student who was a failure in an urban school; a new
curriculum was designed emphasizing physical fitness; to the man who
idealized his mother, yet feared his own sexuality, there was the
cancellation of women's rights and the rewarding of prolific mothers;
and for the soldier in a defeated army, there existed the promise of
world domination. Hitler stated in one of his speeches; "We do not
want to have any other god, only Germany!"

Ariosophy was therefore a symptom of the socio-political conditions
which preceded Nazism, but it was never more than a peripheral
influence. The strongest tie to Ariosophy can be found in Heinrich
Himmler and the SS. Himmler was a student of occult mysticism, and as
already stated, designed his elite military organization after
Lantz's New Templars. Another major influence on Himmler was the self-
proclaimed psychic and magician Karl Maria Wiligut whose clairvoyant
insights greatly influenced Himmler's decisions and therefore SS
policy. Wiligut rose quickly to the rank of brigadier general, but
was quickly retired in 1939 when it was leaked that he had been
certified insane as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1924 and
institutionalized for a three year period. A particular branch of the
SS where Wiligut had tremendous influence was the historical research
called the Ahnenerbe which sponsored a number of archeological
expeditions in regions ranging from Greece to South America. The
conclusion of these often pseudo-scientific digs was that all of the
world's great civilizations were of Aryan origin and that the runes
were the earliest form of written language. The political
justification behind the Ahnenerbe expeditions was that the presence
artifacts (both real and fabricated) of alleged Germanic origin were
justification for a region's absorption into the Greater German
State. Still, Hitler seems to have been anything but thrilled by
Himmler's obsession with ancient history. He was quoted by Albert
Speer, his chief architect as saying: "Why do we call the whole
world's attention to the fact that we have no past? It's bad enough
that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers
were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up
these villages of mudhuts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone
axe he finds." It was Himmler's SS archeological expeditions which
inspired Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Despite the strong racist currents in Europe during this time period,
there were still many Germanic occult movements that were quite
benign in nature. One which is especially worth mentioning was the
neo-romantic Liebensreform (life reform) movement which originated in
the 1870's in response to Germany's rapid industrialization.
Liebensreform advocated a back-to-nature life style which lead to the
establishment of the first nudist retreats in the 1880's. Followers
of this movement believed in both the natural beauty of the human
body and the need for people to return to nature in order to cleanse
themselves of the corruption of industrialized society. Liebensreform
also promoted tolerance for alternative lifestyles, equal rights for
women, herbal medicine, vegetarianism, the establishment of
agricultural communes, and the revival of solstice celebrations. It
was from Liebensreform that Gay Rights movement in Europe first
originated. Despite the co-opting of quite secularized Solstice rites
by the Nazis, Liebensreform was destroyed after the party took power
in 1933. Nudism was banned along with the feminist movement and
homosexuality severely persecuted. Additionally, occultists who
refused to toe the party line were incarcerated and killed along with
other political dissidents. I personally theorize that if left alone,
Liebensreform would have probably evolved into an independent German
neo-Pagan movement. Due to the fact that Gerald Gardner and many of
his early followers were practitioners of nudism, Liebensreform may
still have been at least an indirect influence on the development of
modern Wicca and neo-Paganism.

If the socio-political zeitgeist of 19th and 20th century Europe was
the origin of Nazism and not Ariosophy, then why has the rumor an
occult reich conspiracy persisted? The answer to this question comes
not from any historical event which preceded the establishment of the
NAZI party, but from a post-war fascination with the National
Socialist phenomenon. The question has often been asked: How could a
nation of great scientists, artists, and philosophers also be
responsible for the bloodiest war in human history and the systematic
slaughter of millions? To give a possible answer to this complex
question, an number of individuals have written a number of rather
poorly researched works which give the over simplified answer
that: "They were under a magic spell." (Such theories are certainly
more entertaining than the complexities of economics and politics)
Many of these works including Dietrich Bronder's Before Hitler Came
and J.H. Brennan's Occult Reich create a fictitious Thule Society
which practiced rites of black magic and was supposedly in contact
with a secret mystical order in Tibet. The membership roles of this
sinister occult lodge, despite contradictory evidence, included such
figures as Guido von List, Adolph Hitler, Rudolph Hess, Dietrich
Eckart, Heinrich Himmler, and even Benito Mussolini for good measure.
Von List was living in Vienna and in deteriorating health at the time
of Thule's founding. Hess had attended society meetings as a guest,
as did Eckart, an anti-Semitic volkish playwright who introduced
Hitler to the more privileged social circles of Munich. There is
absolutely no evidence of Hitler and Himmler ever having any
association with Thule, and the allegation concerning Mussolini is
too ridiculous for comment. Rudolph von Sebottendorff attempted in
vain to resurrect Thule after its demise in the 1920's and was
arrested by the Gestapo in 1934 for his boastful claims that the Nazi
party owed its existence to him. He committed suicide in 1945, a
penniless recluse living in Turkey.

Probably the most famous occult conspiracy book is Trevor
Ravenscroft's The Spear of Destiny. Ravenscroft's primary source for
his book was the late Walter Johannes Stein, an Austrian Jew who had
emigrated to England from Germany in 1933 before the establishment of
the Third Reich. Stein, despite the contradictory testimony of close
associates, claimed to have known the young Adolph Hitler during his
lost years in Vienna from 1909 to 1913, and that the future NAZI
leader was deeply involved in occult activities including the use of
the drug peyote. Stein alleged that following the first world war,
Hitler was then ritually groomed for his future position through
rites of Satanic initiation performed by Dietrich Eckart. It is also
argued in Ravenscroft's book that The Spear of Longinus, a religious
relic which was part of the Habsburg regalia and, by legend, the
spear which pierced the side of the crucified Christ, was taken by
the NAZIs in order to magickally insure victory for the German Reich.
It is true that this artifact was taken by the NAZIs, but so were the
national treasures of other countries which were conquered or
absorbed by the Third Reich. Stein's primary method of research was
to peruse the psychic realm instead of his local public library and
as a result, The Spear of Destiny is filled with numerous historical
flaws including descriptions of events which never occurred, and
places which never existed.

The saddest effect of the occult Reich myth is the common myth that
the NAZIs and their pre-Christian ancestors held the same beliefs. It
will probably never be known how many young people called to the
Germanic path were unwittingly lured into neo-NAZI and right-wing
hate groups by the belief that Nazism was a Pagan path. Even in
legitimate Asatru organizations, the debate has continued over the
racial question. Germanic Paganism like other "ethnic" traditions
contains some members which believe that the affinity toward a
cultural mythos is genetically inherited. Conversely, there are many
who disagree with this "metagenetic" concept believing that one's
spiritual tradition is based upon the contents of soul rather than
blood or ancestry. It is important to remember that the ancient
Germanic tribes dwelt in many areas which overlapped lands which were
inhabited by Celts, Slavs, Balts, Finns, and persons of Mediterranean
origin. Additionally, all of these peoples (including the Germans)
migrated to new territories when the realms they inhabited became
over-crowded, and traded with others for the goods they had need of.
Human beings as a species are naturally migratory and there has
probably never been such a thing as a pure race of any kind (for
example, negroid skulls have been unearthed in southern Europe dating
back to the late stone age). Among the Pre-Christian Germanic
peoples, intermarriage was not only common, but highly respected.
There are even accounts of Germans in ancient times marrying Romans.
The Germanic deities also coupled with and married members of the
same race of Giants with whom they also fought battles against. The
mother of the god Thor's sons and heirs, Modi and Magni was the
giantess Jarnsaxa. It therefore seems that the concept of race had no
importance to the Germanic Pagans. Additionally, adoption among the
Germans was an extremely powerful bond, with the adoptee receiving
the same rights and privileges as children with blood ties, including
the family's protective spirits (Disir and Alfar) and ancestral Wyrd,
in addition to name and property. Finally, with the westernization of
the world in the last three centuries, I truly believe that the
Western spiritual heritage (including the Germanic) has become the
heritage of all peoples, and anyone whose soul is Germanic is welcome
in my tradition.

One can search the Eddas and Sagas in vain and never find such
principles as "Blood and Soil," a master race, the purity of blood,
or allegiance to a Fuhrer. There are many other ways in which
historical Germanic Paganism differs greatly from the ideology of
Nazism. First Germanic women were held in great respect and enjoyed
many freedoms in comparison to many of their ancient and medieval
counterparts. They had the rites of property and divorce, there are
accounts of women assuming powerful roles in both religion and
politics, and even the occasional female warrior. Likewise,
homosexuals seem to have held powerful positions in the cults of the
Vanic deities. Contrary to Carl Jung's 1936 essay, the god Wotan,
though an occasional favorite of the Ariosophists, was never
mentioned by Hitler or the other high-ranking Nazis, and this
individualistic wanderer and god of ecstacy, like the other Germanic
deities, would have made a very poor icon for the authoritarian
regime that was Nazism. Finally, like their gods, the ancient
Germanic warriors were individualistic and unregimented fighters and
not the obedient columns of identical soldiers which were idealized
by the NAZIs.

Nazism, like other fascist regimes, was simply the fanatical worship
of the state and its messianic leader. With the exception of a the
adoption of a few pre-Christian symbols and a fictionalized history
of the past, there were no ties linking this movement to the Pagan
Germanic past. Though occult movements existed which reflected some
NAZI ideologies, they simply mirrored the hopes, fears, and
prejudices common in Western society and were not the root cause of
National Socialism. Ariosophy and its doctrines actually had a
stronger basis in Christianity than in any pre-Christian
spirituality. Germanic Pagans today belong to an ever growing and
tolerant spiritual path which is based upon serious historical
research. The NAZI curse which still surrounds the Germanic path can
only be cast aside as those in other traditions discover that our
interests are focused solely upon the Human Race and not with the
mythic Aryans, and it is my hope that this essay helps to dispel the
current misconceptions.

SOURCES

Adler, Margot: Drawing Down the Moon.

Arnold, Bettina: "The Past as Propaganda." Archaeology, Jul/Aug 1992.

Blavatsky, H.P.: The Secret Doctrine.

Bleuel, Hans Peter: Sex and Society in NAZI Germany.

Burke, James: The Day the Universe Changed.

Cooper, J.C.: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols.

Goodrick-Clark, Nicholas: The Occult Roots of Nazism.

Gundarsson, Kveldulf: "Race, Inheritance, and Us.", Mountain Thunder
#5.

List, Guido von: The Secret of the Runes.

Mayer, John: "An Historic Precedent for Modern Wicca.", Connections,
Fall 1995.

Metzner, Ralph: The Well of Remembrance.

Owen, Francis: The Germanic People; Their Origin, Expansion and
Culture.

Ravenscroft, Trevor: The Spear or Destiny.

Roemer, John: "The Controversy of the Occult Reich.", Gnosis #9.

Titus, Smith & Nolan: Living Issues in Philosophy.

Thorsson, Edred: Runelore.

Toland, John: Adolf Hitler.