It is widely suggested that the Nazi Party’s rise to power has been attributed to occult practice and Adolf Hitler’s fascination with the black arts. How did this association develop?

Before its demise in 1945, the National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany had already been linked and co-mingled with occult traditions. Much of the vast literature that has come into print is worthless from a factual point of view due to distortions of fact, fantasy and fabrications however, there is some serious historical scholarship and evidence for Nazi occultism.

While untangling the jumbled web of misinformation regarding the occult dimension of Nazism, it must first be mentioned  that there is not a single scrap of evidence that Hitler or any other Nazi officials were particularly interested in the “Spear of Destiny” as has been popularly suggested for years. At least four Holy Lances existed in Europe during the early part of the present century. Germanic tradition claimed the Hapsburg Lance which had been carried as a talisman in the ninth century by Charlemagne through 47 victorious campaigns and which was capable of endowing its owner with clairvoyant powers was allegedly the interest of Hitler in his youth. However the only evidence Hitler’s real fascination with the Hapsburg Lance lies solely on the testimony of Dr. Walter Johannes Stein in his unpublished memoirs. Before his death, Stein befriended a journalist, Trevor Ravenscroft who using Stein’s notes and conversations fashioned the book, Spear of destiny from which the famous legend of Hitler and the lance came into public attention. Hitler’s actual desire for the lance runs at odds with his actual hatred of the House of Hapsburg who he viewed as traitors to the German race. Never-the-less, the spear and other items of Hapsburg regalia were loaded onto an armored train with an SS guard and were taken across the German border. The items were lodged in the hall of St. Catherine’s Church where Hitler proposed to set up a Nazi war museum. Stein believed that when Hitler had the lance in his possession, his latent ambitions for world conquest began to grow and flourish. Opinion? Speculation? If Hitler was aware of the fate of Charlemagne and others who wielded it as a weapon only to fail and perish when it fell from their grasp, then the legend of Hitler and the spear is marked by a curious synchronicity. After heavy allied bombing in October 1944, Hitler ordered the spear and the Hapsburg regalia moved and buried in a specially constructed vault. Six months later, after American troops became victorious, the vault was raided and the fabled spear was taken into possession by the United States Government. It is historical fact that one hundred miles away, in a bunker in Berlin, Hitler met his fate. Coincidence? Curse? Legend?

Hitler’s “dark lords” however were prominent occultists. Rudolf Hess (the deputy Führer) was a serious occultist and a student of astrology and the Anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS) believed himself to be the reincarnation of medieval king Heinrich I. He was interested in the Pagan side of the Ariosophical movement described below. He would later organize ritual work and occult meditations, (three or four times a year) for SS officers. Even Josef Goebbels, (minister of propaganda), while not a believer in the occult, still used the occult skillfully as a psychological weapon to further the Nazi cause among the German people. In addition, the suggestion that the Nazis were puppets of sinister Tibetan adepts and the claims that they were in contact with superbeings from inside the Hollow Earth are easily relegated to the premise occult folklore rather than any occult practice.

Despite the smoke and mirrors …

There are three points that have been definitively documented and which make it clear that the occult dimension of Nazism cannot be dismissed:

1. The ideology of Nazi Germany was largely borrowed from German and Austrian occult societies involved in Ariosophy, a racist offshoot of Theosophy that emerged around the beginning of the twentieth century.

2. The Nazi Party itself was originally organized as a political arm of the Thule-Gellschaft, a secret society closely connected to the most important German Ariosophical magical order.

3. Important members of the Nazi Party, including Hitler himself, were directly and personally involved in occult studies of one sort or another. – John Michael Greer

Ariosophy …

Definition:  A tradition of racist occultism originating in central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. It favored a belief system that only people from Indo-European or “Aryan” descent were capable of spiritual development. It held that humanity was descended from two different species – Aryan, who were the true human beings and non-Aryans who were soulless animals who only looked human. Interbreeding with non-Aryans caused the original Aryans to lose their supernatural powers that were their birthright so occult training was necessary in restoring these rights.

Setting the Stage …

It can be assessed then that Nazism can be traced to Ariosophy that emerged in Germany and Austria at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the center of it was Austrian writer and occultist Guido von List. List’s writings glorified ancient Germanic tribes and their magical wisdom. This particular wisdom was held by the Armanen, a priestly caste.  List also fancied himself  prophet  and at the end of his life wrote about the die Stärke von Oben, “the strong one from above,” who would appear and  liberate the Aryan race from its Jewish oppressors. List’s followers founded the Guido von List Society which combined German Pagan religion and magic with right-winged political views. A contemporary of List, Austrian Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, a defrocked monk and occultist promoted that modern humanity was a product of interbreeding between Aryan supermen and sexually perverted subhuman dwarves. Lanz von Liebenfels started his own magical order, Ordo Novi Templi (Order of New Templars) which required applicants to pass purity tests. The ONT developed a complex liturgy of rituals devoted to restoring Aryan electrical-psychic powers in its members.

These currents of thought were readily accepted in the German anti-Semetic and nationalist circles before WWI. In 1910, German Ariosophist Herman Pohl started to assemble materials for another occult order, the Germanenorden. It was a secret political movement and part magical society that borrowed heavily from Guido von List’s ideas. There was a schism in 1916 between the occult and political wing of the order but in 1917 Munich, the more occult wing Germanenorden Walvater, under the leadership of Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the order increased seven fold. He gave the order the public alias of Thule-Gelleschaft or the Thule Society. The Thule Society organized a political party, Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, that organized the more conservative sections of the working class  and on September 12, 1919, an Austrian veteran named Adolf Hitler came to the meeting there and engaged in a heated political discussion. He was invited to join. It was believed that List’s “strong one from above” had appeared.

In the early years in his rise to power, Hitler had support of the Thule Society who had connections to wealthy and right wing Bavarians. He was also very acquainted with the occult, oriental religions and astrology. Hitler’s involvement with astrology and prediction has been much debated. Claims that he had powers of precognition which allowed him to forsee the lack of opposition to his invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia may be nothing more than his ability to masterly judge political mood. He  was a regular subscriber to Lanz von Liebenfel’s Ostara magazine. It was Lanz von Liebenfel’s racial ideology and politics that would find their way into Hitler’s future plans. Later, Hitler would become obsessed with map dowsing – swinging a pendulum over a map to find hidden objects.

Black Magician?

Hitler had a charisma to influence others. Was it due to sheer strength of personality? Hypnotic skills? OR was it diabolic magic?

Hitler’s occult mentor was thought to be Dietrich Eckart, an Ariosophical writer and occultist although it has never been proven. Eckart was acquainted with many Thule members but was not a member himself. He helped Hitler polish his act – rhetoric and manners.

The goal of every magician is to gain power over natural forces. A magician who seeks power for his own ends without the wish to serve the higher good is a black magician. According to most magical schools of thought he pays a high price in the end for his pride. He becomes possessed by the spirits he calls upon and is destroyed by them.

According to one of Hitler’s few friends from his early years, his personal power had developed by the time he was 15 years old:

Adolf Hitler stood in front of me and gripped my hands and held them tight … The words did not come smoothly from his mouth as they usually did, but rather erupted hoarse and raucous … it was as if another being spoke out of his body and moved him as much as it moved me. It was not at all a case of a speaker carried away by his own words. On the contrary: I rather felt as though he himself listened with astonishment with emotion to what burst forth from him with that elemental force. – August Kubizek regarding Hitler’s belief of “a mandate which he would receive from the people to lead them from servitude.”

Also according to Kubizek, Hitler spent a great deal of time studying oriental mysticism, astrology, hypnotism, Germanic mythology and other occult aspects. Hitler also contacted Dr. Lanz von Liebenfels of the ONT as described earlier in this article. Of Hitler Lanz von Liebenfels wrote:

“Hitler is one of our pupils … you will one day experience that he, will one day be victorious and develop a movement that will make the world tremble.”

By the onset of the First World War, Hitler developed an unshakeable conviction of his own destiny – as a messenger at the front, he took enormous risk as if he knew fate would not allow him to die just yet. By the end of the war, he had developed that curious impersonal power over those around him that was to serve him well later. Yet, again and again he idea that Hitler was possessed was echoed in the writings of those who knew him.

In his diary for 7 April 1943, Josef Goebbels wrote of Hitler’s effect on a depressed and mentally exhausted Mussolini:

By putting every ounce of nervous energy into the effort he (Hitler) succeeded in pushing Mussolini back onto the rails. In those four days the Duce underwent a complete change. When he got out of the train on his arrival the Fuhrer thought he looked like a broken old man. When he left again he was in  high fettle, ready for anything.

In March 1936, Hitler made a statement that precisely summed up the impressions of those who knew him best:

“I am going the way Providence dictates … with the assurance of a sleepwalker.”

It was as if something else – not his own  mind and soul was in charge of his every action. This ruling spirit, if such it was, was not always kind to its host. Hitler’s frantic, screaming rages, when he would literally froth at the mouth and fall to the floor, are well documented. Even more frightening is the account given by his confidant Hermann Rauschning in his book Hitler speaks:

He wakes up in the night, screaming and in convulsions. He calls for help, and appears to be half paralyzed. He is seized with panic that makes him tremble until the bed shakes. He utters confused and unintelligible sounds, gasping as if on the point of suffocation …

Hitler was not certain at all times of his ‘guiding spirit’s’ intentions. He suffered from a horror of ill omens as is exemplified by the shattering of a silver hammer he used to tap the foundation stone of the House  of German Art in Munich in October 1933. In January 1934, the designer of the building died to which Hitler expressed relief:

“When that hammer shattered I knew at once it was an evil omen. Something is going to happen, I thought. Now we know why the hammer broke. The architect was destined to die.”

Hitler’s policies as Germany approached its collapse tallied exactly with what could be expected of a black magician’s pact with evil powers. The essence of such a pact lies in sacrifice: an orgy of blood and destruction. The date of his demise, April 30, 1945 is too significant to occultists to be a coincidence. It was the day that ends in Walpurgis night – the high feast of the powers of darkness.

Resources:

The New Encyclopedia of the Occult – John Michael Greer

Mysteries of Mind Space and Time