Nazi and American Eugenicists Working Together

The agreement among eugenicists from these two vastly different societies reveals yet another thread borrowed from ancient occult-based societies both in the East (India) and West (classical Greece). While the Nazis were open about the necessity of "blood purity" to elevate the human race, Americans were more circumspect, veiling their goal of "racial thoroughbreds" in more acceptable social/humanitarian terms - undesirables in the U.S. were ostensibly targeted because they were "uneducated and poor", not because they were racially inferior. The Nazis understood the restrictions to which their U.S. colleagues were subjected and did not protest. They closely followed the writings of Madison Grant, associate of American Birth Control League director Stoddard, who advocated the ancient Spartan practice of infanticide as a natural weeding-out process. The Nazis publicly thanked both Grant and Stoddard for "awakening in Germany the movement for the preservation and increase of the Nordic race." The U.S. League likewise took a great interest in ongoing Nazi developments, and published an article in May 1933 entitled "Eugenic Sterilization, an Urgent Need", by Ernst Rudin, Director of Genetic Sterilization and founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. A group of American eugenists sat as guest judges in the German "eugenic courts" in the 1930's, and returned with highest recommendations:

The [Nazi] sterilization law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.

~Lothrop Stoddard, 1940, after spending 4 months in Germany

[For excellent source material, see Professor Stefan Kuhl's The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, & German National Socialism]

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 Angebert 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, séances, 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.]

What happens then is inevitable. Out of the chaos and apathy (the destruction of the old order) rises a mass movement (a new order). It feeds on the loss of individual thinking, but in return promises a secure, responsibility-free place in the Group Mind where thinking is done for you. It removes all rights to family autonomy, but guarantees a lifelong brotherhood; outlaws all religions except its own, but provides ego-friendly answers for all life's questions. It requires you to die, but offers a Supreme Opportunity to give up your life with honor and dignity, and a sense of intrinsic value as a tiny cog in the Vast Plan. It's better than being lost and lonely. And after all, there is no real death, nor is there any particular reason to hang onto this life; why not pay the karma sooner than later? At the head of the movement is an enlightened individual who apparently has a direct connection with that which the whole society has been seeking: Asgard, home of the Hierarchy across the Rainbow Bridge. And he declares that the time has come for the new humanity, for a return to our long-lost god consciousness, and he has been "overshadowed" and sent to guide us there. Only first, there is a "virus" that must be removed from the body of humanity so that it does not endanger the pure "seeds". And now you have a Cause to fight for - a personified yet dehumanized Darkness on which to vent your righteous rage as Sons of Light.

[Thus a whole generation of German youth was prepared to receive a NA messiah and obey his every command. How did it happen that a vulnerable society at its lowest point had the misfortune to cross wires with a loser, an obscure little man, and inexplicably welcomed him hysterically as an "avatar" - a divine channel? And how did he proceed to turn the "Shamballa force" loose across a continent and rip through the Jewish community, with millions to help him and no one to stop him? Was it just a ghastly conjunction of random social trends? If so, we are witnessing an eerie repeat coincidence - the same occultic atmosphere, and another mass movement based on the same foundations, calling for unity against the same "virus". This time it is on a far wider scale and has a global media-driven culture to accelerate its spread. At this point, the movement appears to be securely entrenched; only its "avatar" is lacking. And all this within two generations of the last nightmare encounter. The evidence suggests that we should not only acknowledge the familiar face of this movement, but stop viewing it as a "repeat" and recognize it as a continuation of something that never really went away.

THE THULE SOCIETY & NWO


One point missed by many people is that the Nazis were nominally Christian. Any Fascist movement gathers strength on its populism- and the Nazis had to at least go along with Christianity.

The truth is somewhat more complex. Most of the high ranking Nazi leaders despised Christianity in large part because it sprang from Judaism. Their goal once they won the war was to return Germany to its pagan roots and jettison the Christian baggage.

Nazi mysticism is a term used to describe a quasi-religious undercurrent of Nazism; it denotes the combination of Nazism with occultism, esotericism, cryptohistory, and/or the paranormal. It generally ascribes a religious significance to the person of Adolf Hitler and his doctrine.

Other theories involve Hitler having escaped to the Antarctic, where he joined with a subterranean dinosauroid master race, with whom he now travels inside UFOs underground, generally beneath the South Pole or throughout the center of the hollow earth, but sometimes to a Nazi moon base as well.

Modern organisations or related philosophies include Ariosophy, Armanism, Theozoology, Armanenorden, Artgemeinschaft, and Esoteric Hitlerism.

Nazi mysticism is a völkisch movement initiation with roots in the Thule society and theosophy, as well as the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau. Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels were important figures early on, with significant events after World War II being the Artgemeinschaft of Jürgen Rieger and the Armanenorden founded by Adolf Schleipfer in 1976.

High ranking Nazi officials such as Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, and R. Walther Darré are known to have been interested in mysticism and the paranormal. Hitler himself seems to have had considerably less interest in this topic.

The concentration of Esoteric Hitlerism is on the Nazis’ race-specific pre-Christian “pagan” (including Hindu) mythologies, and the inclusion of Adolf Hitler in the network of these mythologies.

The role played by mysticism in the development of Nazism and its ideals was identified by outsiders at least as early as 1940, with the publication of Lewis Spence’s Occult Causes of the Present War. Incidentally , Spence accurately identified a pagan undercurrent in Nazism (for which he largely blamed Alfred Rosenberg), though some of his other conclusions--such as connecting Nazism to the Illuminati, and automatically equating paganism with "satanism"--are perhaps less credible.

Central beliefs

The origin of the Aryan race, the Teutons generally, and the Germanic peoples specifically, the putative superiority of said Aryans over other races, and what they claimed were the unique circumstances of their origin, are all key concepts.

Various locations, such as Atlantis, Thule, Hyperborea, Shambhala and others are suggested as the precise location of this original society of Übermenschen.

Another key belief is that this Herrenrasse (master race) had been weakened through interbreeding with those they thought of as Untermensch or “lesser races”.

Early influences

Theozoology

In 1905 Lanz von Liebenfels published a fundamental statement of doctrine titled Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron (Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electrons of the Gods). The author claims that “Aryan” peoples originate from interstellar deities who bred by electricity, while “lower” races were a result of inbreeding between apes and humans. Like much of Nazi mysticist propaganda, the book relies on a somewhat lurid sexual imagery, decrying the abuse of white women by ethnically inferior, but sexually active, men. Thus, von Liebenfels advocates mass castration of racially “apelike” or otherwise inferior males. This was in fact acted out during the Nazi era “purification”.

Ariosophy

The term “Ariosophy” (occult wisdom concerning the Aryans) was coined by Lanz von Liebenfels, founder of the Order of the New Templars, in 1915 and replaced “Theozoology” and “Ario-Christianity” as the label for his doctrine in the 1920s. It is generally used to describe Aryan-racist-occult theories.

Armanism

Guido von List called his doctrine “Armanism” (after the ‘Armanen’, supposedly the heirs of the sun-king, a body of priest-kings in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation). Armanism was concerned with the esoteric doctrines of the gnosis (distinct from the exoteric doctrine intended for the lower social classes, Wotanism).

According to The History Channel's Decoding the Past episode "The Nazi Prophecies" Guido von List was the founder of Ariosophy.

The Thule Society

In 1915, Pohl was joined by Rudolf Glauer. Glauer, also known as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf, came to Germany with a Turkish passport and was a practitioner of sufi meditation and astrology. Glauer is known to have been an admirer of Guido von List and the rabidly anti-semitic Lanz von Liebenfels. Glauer was a wealthy man (the source of his wealth is unknown) and quickly became a grand master of the Bavarian Order in 1918. Later that year, he founded the Thule Society with Pohl’s approval.

The Thule Society had a number of highly positioned individuals in the Nazi party, although Hitler himself never became a member. However, it was a member of the Thule Society, dentist Dr. Friedrich Krohn, who chose the Swastika symbol for the Nazi party.

Perhaps the most significant Thule influence on Hitler came from Dietrich Eckart. Eckart was the wealthy publisher of the newspaper Auf gut Deutsch (In Plain German). He was a committed occultist as well as a member of the Thule Society’s inner circle. He is believed to have taught Hitler a number of persuasive techniques (some possibly mystical in nature). So profound was the influence, that Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was dedicated to Eckart.

The Vril Society

The Vril Society, or Luminous Lodge, has no documented activities until 1915, but is believed to have been founded by General Karl Haushofer, a student of Russian magician and metaphysician Gergor Ivanovich Gurdyev (also known as George Gurdjieff).

In Berlin, Haushofer had founded the Luminous Lodge or the Vril Society. The Lodge’s objective was to explore the origins of the Aryan race and to perform exercises in concentration to awaken the forces of “Vril”. Haushofer was a student of the Russian magician and metaphysician George Gurdjieff. Both Gurdjieff and Haushofer maintained that they had contacts with secret Tibetan lodges that possessed the secret of the “Superman.” The Lodge included Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Himmler, Göring and Hitler’s subsequent personal physician Dr. Morell. It is also known that Aleister Crowley and Gurdjieff sought contact with Hitler. Hitler’s unusual powers of suggestion become more understandable if one keeps in mind that he had access to the “secret” psychological techniques of Gurdjieff which, in turn, were based on the teachings of the Sufis and the Tibetan lamas and familiarized him with the Zen teaching of the Japanese Society of the Green Dragon.

—Louis Pauwels, author of the book Monsieur Gurdjief where some feel the account of Haushofer’s study with Gurdjieff originates, later recanted many things from his book, however.

Some, however, argue that no such Vril Society ever existed, or that such a society had no impact on Nazism: It is not mentioned in the extensive biography of Hitler by Ian Kershaw, nor in the one by Alan Bullock, nor the biography of Hermann Göring by Werner Maser, nor the book about the history of the Schutzstaffel (SS) by Heinz Höhne.

General Karl Haushofer

General Karl Haushofer was a university professor and director of the Munich Institute of Geopolitics, as well as an avid student of Gurdjieff. He is believed to have studied Zen Buddhism and initiated at the hands of Tibetan llamas. Further, he worked closely with Hitler while he was imprisoned and working on Mein Kampf. Haushofer claimed to have had contact with secret Tibetan Lodges that possessed the secret of the “Superman”, an idea that would become central to the decision of the Nazi party to embrace an extreme form of the eugenics movement.

Hitler's WWI Experience

Hitler claimed that during his time served in WWI that he had a religious awakening, specifically around when he was temporarily blinded by an enemy gas attack.

Hitler's Odinist Poem

In 1915, while serving in the German Army on the Western Front, Hitler wrote the following esoteric poem mentioning the pre-Christian Germanic deity Wotan:

Ich gehe manchmal in rauhen Nächten
Zur Wotanseiche in den stillen Hain,
Mit dunklen Mächten einen Bund zu flechten -
Die Runen zaubert mir der Mondenschein.
Und alle, die am Tage sich erfrechten,
Sie werden vor der Zauberformel klein!
Sie ziehen blank - doch statt den Strauß zu flechten,
Erstarren sie zu Stalagmitgestein.
So scheiden sich die Falschen von den Echten -
Ich greife in das Fibelnest hinein
Und gebe dann den Guten und Gerechten
Mit meiner Formel Segen und Gedeihn.

Which can be translated as:

I often go on bitter nights
To Wodan's oak in the quiet glade
With dark powers to weave a union -
The moonlight showing me the runic spell
And all who are full of impudence during the day
Are made small by the magic formula!
They draw shining steel - but instead of going into combat,
They solidify into stalagmites.
Thus the wrong ones separate from the genuine ones -
I reach into a nest of words
Then give to the good and fair
With my formula blessings and prosperity.

Esoteric Hitlerism

The founder of Esoteric Hitlerism was Heinrich Himmler, who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by Aryan (and not just Germanic) racialism and Germanic Odinism. Himmler has been claimed to have considered himself the spiritual successor or even reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler. Having set up special SS rituals for the old King and returning his bones to the crypt at Quedlinburg Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg castle decorated in commemoration of him.

Prayer to Hitler

In Nazism, Adolf Hitler was occasionally compared with Jesus, or revered as a savior sent by God.

A prayer recited by orphans at orphanages runs as follows:

Führer, mein Führer, von Gott mir gegeben, beschütz und erhalte noch lange mein Leben
Du hast Deutschland errettet aus tiefster Not, Dir verdank ich mein täglich Brot
Führer, mein Führer, mein Glaube, mein Licht
Führer mein Führer, verlasse mich nicht

This translates roughly as:

Leader, my Leader, given to me by God, protect me and sustain my life for a long time
You have rescued Germany out of deepest misery, to you I owe my daily bread
Leader, my Leader, my belief, my light
Leader my Leader, do not abandon me

Julius Evola

Julius Evola, an occultist with radical right-wing political views, though he was never directly tied to either Italian Fascism or Nazism, tried to move Mussolini towards paganism (and away from concord with the Vatican). His influence on Nazi mysticism has been much greater in the postwar years than it was while the Nazis and fascists were in power, influencing various National Socialist organizations.

Savitri Devi

With the fall of the Third Reich, Esoteric Hitlerism took off as Hitler, who had died at the end of the war, was now able to be deified. Savitri Devi was the first major exponent of post-war Esoteric Hitlerism and connected Hitler’s Aryan ideology to that of the pro-independence Indians (specifically Hindus) such as Subhas Chandra Bose. For her, the Swastika was an especially important symbol, as it symbolized the Aryan unity amongst the Hindus and Germans (and was also a symbol of good fortune for the Tibetans). Devi integrated Nazism into a broader cyclical framework of Hindu history, and called Hitler an avatar of Vishnu (Kalki) and the “Man against Time,” having an ideal vision of returning his Aryan people to an earlier, more perfect time, and also having the practical wherewithal to fight the destructive forces forestalling his vision from fruition--a combination of the best traits of Akhenaton (a visionary, but ineffectual) and Genghis Khan (violent, but selfish).

Miguel Serrano

The next major figure in Esoteric Hitlerism is Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat. He wrote both The Golden Ribbon--Esoteric Hitlerism and Adolf Hitler, The Last Avatar.

He believed that Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews) in a last battle and inaugurating a Fourth Reich.

He also connected the Aryans and their Hyperborean gods to the Sun and the Allies and the Jews to the Moon, and also had a special place in his ideology for the SS, who, in their quest to recreate the ancient race of Aryan god-men, he thought were above morality and therefore justified in their seemingly cruel deeds.

Ahnenerbe

The Ahnenerbe Society, the ancestral heritage branch of the SS (also called by some the Nazi Occult Bureau) was dedicated primarily to the research of proving the superiority of the Aryan race but was also involved in occult practices. Founded in 1935 by Himmler, the Society became involved in searching for Atlantis and the Holy Grail (and is believed to be the basis for the Nazi archaeologists in the Indiana Jones series of movies).

Research and expeditions

A great deal of time and resources were spent on researching or creating a popularly accepted “historical”, “cultural” and “scientific” background so the ideas about a “superior” Aryan race could prosper in the German society of the time. Mystical organizations such as the Thule Society, Schwarze Sonne, Vril Society and others were created, usually connected with elite SS corps, and adopting specific rituals, initiations and beliefs.

Expeditions in Tibet, Nepal, Greece, the Arctic, and Neuschwabenland in Antarctica were organized in the search for the mythical “Aryan” nation of Hyperborea, whose capital, Ultima Thule was supposedly built by the extraterrestrial ancestors of the “Aryan races” who came from the star Aldebaran, according to some of the “Aryan” theories.

A German expedition to Tibet was organized in order to search for the origins of the Aryan race. To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger make face masks and skull and nose measurements.

Similar expeditions were organized in the pursuit of semi-mythical objects believed to bring power or granting special powers to their owner, such as the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny.

SS Rocket Technology

The flying saucer (Flugscheibe) and rocket craft models are said to have been produced by the SS Military Technical Branch E-IV of the Nazi military science division. The following is a synopsis of those claims:

The first of such crafts was designed by Viktor Schauberger who modelled the Repulsin A & B which were discoid crafts that functioned on a vortex motor.

Examples of Repulsin A craft and Repulsin B craft:

The Rudolf Shriever Flugkreisel (Flight Gyro), a disc-shaped aircraft (with 5 kerosene jet engines) was first produced in 1943 as an interplanetary exploration vehicle. It had a diameter of 60 metres and stood 45 metres high, as well as containing 10 levels for crew compartments.

Later the Richard Miethe Flugscheibe (Flight Disc) prototype (with the Schauberger vortex motor) was designed in April 1944 as a rocket craft built to 15 and 50 metres of diameter. It closely resembled what would be considered today as the common shape of a UFO.

The Nazi UFOs can by some be attributed to the increased sightings of flying saucer craft and other UFOs in the post World War II to present world. One interesting note is the first published alien abduction Barney Hill case described his abductors as Nazis.

Suppression of secret societies

The Nazi party actively discouraged certain mystical secret societies, in fact interning, and sometimes executing, a number of high-ranking mystics in Europe, particularly members of the Freemasons and Rosicrucians.

It is said that Aleister Crowley and Gurdjieff sought contact with Hitler, but actual contact is unconfirmed. Hitler would later go on to reject many German mystics, openly ridiculing them, particularly practitioners of Freemasonry, Theosophy and Anthroposophy.

Artur Dinter

In 1927 Hitler fired the Gauleiter of Thüringen, Artur Dinter, from his function because he wanted to make too much a religion of Aryan racial purity. In 1928 Dinter was expelled from the party when he publicly attacked Hitler about this decision.

Mysticism in modern Neo-Nazism

Modern Neo-Nazism has links to Ásatrú. Mystic influences often appear in modern Nazi music, particularly references to artifacts such as the Spear of Longinus. On the other hand, many northern European polytheist organisations and groups have stated clearly that Neo-Nazism and its Ásatrú connections are certainly not to be considered what is common or ‘mainstream’ with their adherents. Organisations such as the Theods, the Ásatrúarfélagid, and the Viðartrúar are particularly notable in their disavowal of any connections.

Nazi mysticism and modern pseudoscience

The writings of Miguel Serrano, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, and other proponents of Nazi Mysticism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about reptilian humanoids, hollow earth civilizations, and shadowy new world orders. In his book Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin discusses pseudoscientific theories regarding surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. Arktos is notable for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translation.

Godwin and other authors including Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have also discussed Hitler’s purported Antarctic reptilian companions (sometimes seen to be Hyperboreans) as well as the connections between Nazi Mysticism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases.

The Thule Society (including some of their most known members) plays an important role in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie.

The Island of Thule is an important location in the Silver Age Sentinels superhero role playing game and collections of short stories based upon the game. It was raised from the Atlantic Ocean by Kreuzritter (“Crusader”), a Nazi superhuman who wears a mystical suit of armor made by a long-disappeared Aryan culture.

A fictional division of the Ahnenerbe, the Karotechia, has a prominet place in the mythology of the Delta Green setting for the role playing game Call of Cthulhu, and stories based upon the setting. In it, the survivors of the Karotechia, a group founded to study occult tomes and conduct magical research, live on in South America, training sorcerers and cultists to found the Fourth Reich, all under the sway of Hitler's ghost (actually Nyarlathotep in disguise).

The Manga series Hellsing features the Millennium, a Reich of the Nazis which was to have survived for a thousand years. This organization is heavily mystical, including among its number those who are Werwolf and a battalion of vampires known as the Letzte (“Last”) Battalion. The stated objective of Millennium is the pursuit of absolute war. It is led by a former SS officer.

Quotes

The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian; he views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race.

~Josef Göbbels, in his diary, December 28, 1939.

Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society.

~Hitler 1941

The German people, especially the youth, have learned once again to value people racially-they have once again turned away from Christian theories, from Christian teaching which has ruled Germany for more than a thousand years and caused the racial decay of the German Volk, and almost its racial death.

~Heinrich Himmler May 22, 1936 at a speech in Brocken, Germany.


Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. New York: New York University Press, 2002

Black Sun by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is about the proliferation of fascist ideology in post-war culture, especially since 1990. Goodrick-Clarke (Hitler's Priestess, The Occult Roots of Nazism) is no stranger to this unsavory topic of contemporary Hitler cults that mix revisions of Theosophy (Ariosophy), Satanism, Hinduism, and racism.

The author, one of the best historians of the roots of Nazism and its post-war tentacles, weaves in and out of occult beliefs and myths without falling prey to exaggeration or fascination. He begins his survey with the origins of American neo-Nazism and takes us through the labyrinth of extreme right-wing groups in Europe and the United Kingdom that include black-metal bands as well as active anarchist movements. He describes the most influential leaders and writers, from George Lincoln Rockwell to Julius Evola, Savriti Devi, Wilhelm Landig, and Miguel Serrano. Black Sun ends with a chapter about conspiracy beliefs and the New World Order. Here, Goodrick-Clarke describes the neo-fascist fear of a liberal, Jewish, Illuminati network that includes aliens in spaceships, with Jan van Helsing and Bill Cooper (Behold a Pale Horse) as two of the prominent although nutty theorists.

The book’s title reflects a favorite symbol among neo-fascists who often fail to find common ground in a patchwork movement of anarchists, occultists, and arch-conservatives who today avoid overt use of the tainted Swastika. The cover features a black sun disk with a Sig rune slash underneath. The author tells us that some Nazi pilots toward the end of the war in 1945 painted the black sun symbol on their aircraft. The black sun had significance as the primal source of life and power, harking back to Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, which proto-Nazis mined for esoteric information. Erich Halik, a Swiss engineer and a member of the Vienna circle of Fascists surrounding Wilhelm Landig (1909-1997), was the first to link the “Black Sun” roundel insignia with the esoteric SS. “The alchemical metaphor of sol niger [black sun] was said to represent occultation, blackening, a sinking into the mystery of self-discovery,” writes Goodrick-Clarke.

Neo-fascists have blurred the lines between their agendas and those of the New Age movements that also wish to transform the self and the world with magic, self-realization, and global transformation. What distinguishes most fascist groups is their Futuristic (i.e., Filippo Marinetti’s Futurism, which had great effect on Mussolini) bent to turn to war and violence as purifying agents of change before a better world can arise from the ashes, Phoenix-like. The belief is that the “Supermen” of the white race will remain to rule. Goodrick-Clarke mentions that Charles Manson and his followers also believed in violence and a race war as a way to a more perfect world.

In the chapter, “White Noise and Black Metal,” we learn that radical, hard-core rock music bands that include Slayer, Satanel, Venom, Mayhem (and more than 60 others in Germany alone) have developed a significant following of skinhead and fringe radicals who revere variations of Nazi philosophy. The author connects the two 18-year-olds who slaughtered 12 students and one teacher in 1999 at Littleton, Colorado to neo-Nazis. The killers chose 20 April, Hitler’s birthday. Their favorite singer was Marilyn Manson, a transvestite, shock rocker who combines elements of Charles Manson, Goth style, and idiosyncratic depravity on stage. One of Marilyn’s songs is “Anti-Christ Superstar,” which reflects neo-Nazi revulsion for weak Christians who would turn the other cheek. A new wave of white power, shock rock appeared in the final decade of the twentieth century in Norway, headed by Euronymous and its demented lyrics. “Very shortly (early 1990s) these fantasies of slaughter and apocalypse were followed by genuine mayhem with suicides, feuds, and murders,” reports the author.

More interesting are chapters about the influential theorists:

• Savriti Devi (1905-1982, aka Maximiana Portas), who wrote extensively about her theories of Aryan origins in an ancient Arctic culture. Devi borrowed heavily from B. G. Tilak, who wrote The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903). Devi, a Hilter devotee who saw him as an Avatar in the Vedic model, is influential among current white-power radicals, despite her Hindu leanings. Goodrick-Clarke wrote an extensive study of Devi in his book Hitler’s Priestess: Savriti Devi, the Hindu-Aryan, Myth and Neo-Nazism.

• Miguel Serrano, who developed an esoteric Hitlerism with more anti-Semitic mythology. Serrano borrowed heavily from Gnostic myth to create a sinister agenda throughout Jewish history. “For Serrano, the Jew is but the concrete manifestation of the antagonist in a cosmology structured by the battle of opposing archetypes.”

• Francis Parker Yockey (1917-1960), who committed suicide while in FBI custody after a career as a neo-fascist agent throughout America. Yockey wrote Imperium (1948), a voluminous account of Western heritage that approves of anti-Zionist efforts.

From the retrospect viewpoint of a potential authoritarian future in 2020 or 2030, these Aryan cults and esoteric Nazism may be documented as early symptoms of major divisive changes in our present-day Western democracies.” 9/11 and the Islamic militant attack on New York City are another symptom of a “clash of civilizations” with a continuance of the hatred for Jews and Western, Christian cultures.

There is a persistent dark or shadow side of our humanity that, for whatever reason, chooses to destroy what it dislikes rather than attempt to resolve the differences.