{See Comment 46-1}
***{Below is Page: 46 }***
Chapter Two
Homo-occultism
*** {start comment 46-1}
This section is best prefaced by the
concluding paragraph of The Occult Roots of
Nazism, the 1992 book by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke,
a genuine scholar at Oxford University. The book
is much quoted by the Pink Swastika authors, yet
they themselves write the sort of crypto-history
that Goodrick-Clarke condemns:
"Books written about Nazi occultism between
1960 and 1975 were typically sensational and
under-researched. A complete ignorance of the
primary sources was common to most authors and
inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each
newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature
existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts'
concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi
links with the East, and Hitler's occult
initiation. But the modern mythology of Nazi
occultism, however scurrilous and absurd,
exercised a fascination beyond mere entertainment.
Serious authors were tempted into an exciting
field of intellectual history: Ellic Howe,
Urania's Children (1967, reissued as Astrology and
the Third Reich, 1984) dealt with the story of
Hitler's alleged private astrologer, and James
Webb devoted a chapter to 'The Magi of the North'
in The Occult Establishment (1976). By focusing on
the functional significance of occultism in
political irrationalism, Webb rescued the study of
Nazi occultism for the history of ideas."
*** {end comment 46-1}
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The story of the occult in world history is also a story of ho-
mosexuality. By occult, we mean the formalized religious ex-
pression of pagan culture as opposed, for example, to the philo-
sophical ideas of Hellenic paganism discussed earlier. We prob-
ably all take for granted the fact that our modern world culture is
dominated by the religions based on the Mosaic law (i.e. Judaism,
Christianity and Islam). In their orthodox forms each of these
religions regards homosexuality as an abomination. But pagan
cultures have no such prohibition. By definition, pagans are people
who are not Jews, Christians or Moslems. In pagan cultures,
homosexuals often hold an elevated position in religion and soci-
ety. When pagan civilizations ruled the world, homosexuality and
pederasty were widely practiced and accepted. Homosexualist
author Judy Grahn writes,
Many aspects of shamanism had homosexual con-
tent, and many of the gods, spirits, and divinities
of the world have been associated with Gayness.
In Tahiti there were special divinities for homo-
sexual worship. The ancient Shinto temples of
Japan display scenes of sexual ritual orgies similar
to those of the Baccanalia of the Romans... the
***{Below is Page: 47 }***
Great Mother Goddess of ancient China, Kwan-
Yin, was worshipped with sexual rites that included
homosexuality. When the Spanish conquistado-
res reached Central America and the Yucatan, they
found a prevalence of Gay priests and sacred stat-
ues and stone sculpture depicting the homosexual
union as a sacred act. In the Yucatan the god Chin
is said to have established sacred homosexuality
and a Gay priesthood serving in the temples just
as was true of the temples of ancient Babylon and
Sumeria(Grahn: 129).
Christian writer George Grant concurs. He writes that "Rome
was a perpetual satyricon. Egypt, Persia, Carthage, Babylon, and
Assyria were all steeped in pederastic tradition. And the ancient
empires of the Mongols, Tartars, Huns, Teutons, Celts, Incas,
Aztecs, Mayans, Nubians, Mings, Canaanites, and Zulus likewise
celebrated depravity, degradation and debauchery" (Grant,
1993:24). In Sexuality and Homosexuality, historian Arno Karlen
writes of homosexual cults throughout the ancient world: "'male
temple prostitutes'--existed among the devotees of Ishtar and
Astarte in Syria, the Albanians and Babylonians, the Canaanite
neighbors of the ancient Hebrews, and in Cos, Crete and Ephesus
in the Greek world" (Karlen:6).
The ancient religion of Baal, familiar to students of the Bible
as the set of beliefs and practices which so often corrupted He-
brew society in history, was one such cult. Worshippers of Baal
"'built for themselves high places and pillars, and Asherim (phal-
lic poles used to honor the goddess of fertility) on every high hill
and under every green tree; and there were also male cult prosti-
tutes in the land'" (quotation from 1 Kings 14 in Karlen:9). The
Baal cult survived into Roman times and figured prominently in
the infamous debaucheries of the Roman emperors in the first
centuries after Christ. Karlen writes,
***{Below is Page: 48 }***
It was in association with such cults that emper-
ors' deviance became most flagrant. Commodus,
who took the throne in 180, appeared in public
dressed as a woman and was strangled by a
catamitic [homosexual] favorite; Hadrian deified
his homosexual lover Antious. But neither matched
Elegabalus, who began his rule at the age of four-
teen in 218, after having been raised in Syria as a
priest of Baal. He entered Rome amid Syrian
priests and eunuchs, dressed in silks, his cheeks
painted scarlet and his eyes made up. Various
Roman historians say that he assembled the ho-
mosexuals of Rome and addressed them garbed as
a boy prostitute; put on a wig and solicited at the
door of a brothel; tried to get doctors to turn him
into a woman; offered himself for buggery while
playing the role of Venus in a court mime; kissed
his male favorites' genitals in public and, like Nero,
formally married one of them. ... Elegabalus erected
in Rome the great phallic asherim which the He-
brew kings had kept trying to purge from their land
(Karlen:62).
{See Comment 48-1}
It is relevant to point out that this time period in the Roman
empire was the Christians' Holocaust. In 64 A.D. Christians were
blamed by Nero for the burning of Rome and were targeted for
extermination. Tens of thousands of Christians suffered unimag-
inable tortures as entertainment for the sadistic homosexual em-
perors of Rome. While there are many differences between the
treatment of Christians in Pagan Rome and Jews in Nazi Ger-
many, the common elements are all too apparent: pagan occult-
ism and homosexuality.
*** {start comment 48-1}
The preceding is a gross exaggeration. The
numbers of Christians ever martyred is far less
than "tens of thousands." Some Roman emperors were
bisexual, but most were totally heterosexual. The
heterosexuals among them were responsible for the
worst persecutions of Jews and Christians. The
worst enemies of the early Christians, as attested
by the writings of the Church Fathers, and as
mentioned by St. Paul in the bible, were not the
bisexual Roman emperors but the homophobic Jews.
*** {end comment 48-1}
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{See Comment 49-1}
As we seek to understand Nazism, it is important to remem-
ber that Judaism and its Christian and Islamic offshoots are fun-
damentally opposed to homosexuality. As we begin to grasp the
relationship between homosexuality and occultism on one hand,
***{Below is Page: 49 }***
and between homosexuals and Nazism on the other, the hatred of
the Nazis for Jews, and to a lesser extent for Christians, may be
more easily explained. The Jews were the people responsible for
the demise of pagan world domination. Their theology (espe-
cially in its Christian form) banished pagan practices, including
homosexuality, to a hidden and often reviled subculture. This is
not to say that anti-Semitism is strictly a result of occult or homo-
sexual influences. There were many cultural manifestations of
this hatred in Europe throughout history without a hint of occult
or homosexual authorship. But at its very root there is a spiritual
element to the Holocaust that suggests that it was, in some re-
spects, vengeance against the people whose moral laws had rel-
egated pagan homo-occultism to obscurity and ignominy.
*** {start comment 49-1}
Anti-Semitism through the ages has been
strongest among the more fundamentalist Christian
sects -- those most stridently homophobic, such as
Southern Baptists and "Identity" churches
associated with the white supremacy movement. The
founder of modern Baptist fundamentalism, William
Bell Riley, was an ardent supporter of Adolf
Hitler before World War II and distributed The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion from his Baptist
Bible school in Minnesota. Today the Orthodox
Church is rabidly homophobic, and it was also
involved in Russia and elsewhere in eastern Europe
in violent anti-Semitism. Persecution of Jews has
usually gone hand-in-hand with persecution of
homosexuals. Unfortunately for the homophobic
authors of The Pink Swastika, one of whom is
himself Jewish, history has for millennia coupled
his people with those he so violently hates as
joint targets of persecution.
*** {end comment 49-1}
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But while Christianity made great strides in limiting pagan
practices, they were not eliminated. It is important to our study
that we recognize that the Nazis were strongly influenced by pa-
gan occult beliefs and, additionally, that homosexuality is funda-
mental to many pagan belief systems. It is also important to rec-
ognize that homo-occultism has remained a part of pagan cul-
tures throughout the centuries up to the present, even though the
global predominance of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic has lim-
ited its acceptance in most modern pagan societies such as China
and Japan. When Jesuit missionaries arrived in sixteenth century
China, for example, they found widespread pederasty (Spence: 220)
which they quickly moved to erase. And Rossman actually com-
pares "the institutionalized pederasty of the privileged warrior class
of medieval Japan's pederastic military structure" to "Nazi soci-
ety" (Rossman:23).
In The Construction of Homosexuality, historian David F.
Greenberg reports on dozens of mostly primitive modern pagan
societies which practice ritual homosexuality, usually pederasty.
These societies are found throughout the world, including Brazil,
New Guinea, Morrocco, sub-Saharan Africa, and Malaysia.
Greenberg writes,
***{Below is Page: 50 }***
In many societies, male homosexual relations are
structured by age or generation: the older partner
takes a role defined as active or masculine; the
younger, a role defined as passive or female... [In
many cases] The homosexual practices are justi-
fied by the belief that a boy will not mature [with-
out these attentions] (Greenberg:26ff).
Thus homosexuality in paganism is not a relic of antiquity but
an ongoing phenomenon. And the prevalence of homosexuals as
occult leaders continues today. In the context of Western culture
this may simply be because homosexuals gravitate to philosophies
which oppose Judeo-Christian morality. But this would not ex-
plain the near universality of homosexual rituals in primitive and
pre-Christian pagan cultures. Homosexualist Laurence J. Rosan
writes that "The priests of these polytheistic or spirit religions... [are]
expected to be "different"-- unworldly, even eccentric, given to
visions, dramatic pronouncements and so on -- an ideal opportu-
{See Comment 51-1}
nity for both male and female homosexuals!" (Rosan:268f). The
Bible, however, offers its own explanation, defining an individual's
homosexuality not as an incidental factor in pagan religion but as
the consequence of "worshipping the creation rather than the
Creator." The Book of Romans, Chapter 1, Verses 18-27 reads
as follows:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because
what may be known of God is manifest in them,
for God has shown it to them. For since the cre-
ation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they
are without excuse, because, although they knew
God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were
thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and
***{Below is Page: 51 }***
*** {start comment 51-1}
This is dangerous ground for the Pink
Swastika authors, who say on page 50 that the
bible defines "an individual's homosexuality not
as an incidental factor in pagan religion but as
the consequence of 'worshipping the creation
rather than the Creator.'"
If this were true, it would suggest that the
issue of homosexuality is bound tightly with the
issue of religious freedom, and that the "choice"
which allegedly leads to homosexual behavior
according to fundamentalist theory is a "wrong
choice" of religion.
Some Bible authorities, such as the
translators of the New American Bible, agree that
homosexuality is the penalty for the error of
idolatry. Thus, homosexuality is not a sin, but a
penalty for sin.
Furthermore, if the wrath of God is the test of
sinfulness, one can only think of the destruction of
the Jewish temple and the annihilation of the Jewish
population in 70AD. The wrath of God was displayed
against those zealots who enforced the Leviticus
death penalty on homosexual acts. Perhaps God doesn't
like homophobia and considers it a grave sin worthy
of his extreme wrath. (This was again suggested by the
great Midwestern floods of 1997. In the Dakotas, where
laws banning same-sex marriage had been passed, flooding
devastated cities. On the same river, but in Canada, which
had given strong recognition to the rights of gay people,
cities were spared the "wrath" of God.
*** {end comment 51-1}
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their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to
be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory
of the incorruptible God into an image made like
corruptible man -- and birds and four-footed ani-
mals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave
them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts,
to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who
exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and wor-
shipped and served the creature rather than the
Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this
reason God gave them up to vile passions. For
even their women exchanged the natural use for
what is against nature. Likewise also the men,
leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in
their lust for one another, men with men commit-
ting what is shameful, and receiving in themselves
the penalty of their error which was due (NKJ).
{See Comment 51-2}
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosphical Society
An examination of the homo-occultic influences on the Nazis
must begin with the Russian-born mystic Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831 - 1891), founder of the Theosophical Society and
a figure who looms large behind some of the defining actions and
beliefs of the Nazi Party. Blavatsky was probably a lesbian, but
perhaps only a "latent" one. She is described as a very "mascu-
line" woman who dominated her many followers, both male and
female (Cavendish:250). She was married twice and maintained
a long association with Theosophical Society co-founder Henry
Olcott, but these were relationships of convenience. Blavatsky
insisted she never had sex with either husband (Meade: 137) and
wrote "There is nothing of the woman in me. When I was young,
if a young man had dared to speak to me of love, I would have
shot him like a dog who bit me" (ibid.:50).
*** {start comment 51-2}
The Pink Swastika author offers not even a
hint from contemporaries of Blavatsky that she
might have been a lesbian, but must make her one
to fit the incredible thesis of The Pink Swastika.
One is reminded of the scurrilous rumors coming in
large part from the Religious Right that U.S.
Attorney Janet Reno is a lesbian because she cared
for her ill mother instead of marrying. There
would be more reason to bring a charge of
lesbianism against Mother Teresa or the many
Catholic saints who never married than against
Blavatsky. Who was more "masculine" and dominating
of her followers than Joan of Arc? Similar
comments apply to Queen Elizabeth I of England and
many other strong women through the ages.
Here's what the Meade says on page 50 that
the Pink Swastika author covers up:
"H.P.B.{Blavatsky} cannot be taken at her
word on the subject of men. In her adult letters,
she liked to present herself as non-sexual --
there are frequent references to her being frigid,
unfeminine and sexless. 'Never -- physically
speaking -- has there ever existed a girl or woman
cooler than I. I had a volcano in constant
eruption in my brain and -- a glacier -- at the
foot of the mountain.' But glacial as she might
have felt at the age of fifty, when those words
were written, it would be a mistake to assume that
she experienced none of the normal adolescent's
yearning for romantic love. In her letters to
Prince Alexander Dondoukoff-Korsakoff, one is
struck by a gushing tone so far removed from her
normal tartness that it suggests she may have
unconsciously regressed to her manner of speaking
in those distant days in Tiflis, when she first
knew the Prince. She is at once flirtatious, coy,
sycophantic, silly, and simpering; she repeatedly
quotes a Russian proverb: 'The prettiest girl in
the world cannot give more than she has.'"
Of the two allegedly sexless marriages,
here's what Meade actually says on page 137:
..."While there is no reason to doubt
Helena's account of her non-sexual marriage to
Blavatsky, it is almost impossible to believe her
relationship with Michael Betanelly was not
physical."
Blavatsky was a public poseur who had an
image to maintain. Her statements about herself
have to be viewed with skepticism. Her biographer
Meade has to be considered an expert on applying
such skepticism, and is more credible than the
Pink Swastika author or anyone else who gullibly
take Blavatsky's words at face value.
*** {end comment 51-2}
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A world famous occultist, Blavatsky founded the Theosophi-
***{Below is Page: 52 }***
cal Society in 1875 in New York, but soon moved her operation
to India where she wrote an influential occult book called The
Secret Doctrine in 1888. In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky ex-
pounds the Theosophical theory of creation; a seven-step pro-
gression of human evolution in which successive "races" evolve
from a lower to a higher form of life. She calls these stages "root
races" and identifies our current "root race" as the fifth of seven
-- the Aryan race -- which follows the fourth race, known as the
Atlantean. Blavatsky used a variety of esoteric symbols in the
book, including triangles and swastikas. She claimed to be the
chosen spokesperson for two "exalted masters who communi-
cated telepathically with her from their secret dwelling place in
Tibet (Goodrick-Clarke: 18ff).
In 1884 the first German Theosophical Society was estab-
lished. Despite its ludicrous tenets, Theosophy became extremely
popular in Germany and Austria. Its Aryan racist elitism appealed
to the growing number of ethnic Germans whose Volkisch, or
nationalist, sentiments demanded a reunited Germany. Accord-
ing to Blavatsky, the Aryans were the most spiritually advanced
people on earth, but the Jews had a "religion of hate and malice
toward everyone and everything outside itself." This was a mes-
sage tailor-made for Nazism.
{See Comment 52-1}
Before she died in 1891, Blavatsky chose her British disciple
Annie Besant to be her successor. Besant, who had been a devout
Christian before meeting Blavatsky became a dedicated occultist
afterward. James Webb writes,
Mrs. Besant's extraordinary transformations from
Anglican minister's wife through birth-control pro-
pagandist and labor leader to Theosophist
... are ... well known. .. Arthur Nethercot, her biog-
rapher, suggests an element of the lesbian in the
rapid domination of Mrs. Besant by H. P. Blavatsky
(Webb:94).
*** {start comment 52-1}
It's absolutely false to give the impression
that Blavatsky turned Besant away from
Christianity. Shortly after her marriage to
Reverend Besant, Annie had stopped being a
Christian, and had become, in succession, a
skeptic, a theist, and an atheist. That was many
years before she knew of the existence of
Blavatsky. Annie's friends in free-thinking and
atheistic societies were upset when she converted
to Blavatsky's occultism, so it would be more
accurate to say that Blavatsky converted her from
an atheist to a believer. The Pink Swastika author
would know this if he had read Nethercot instead
of merely lifting a juicy quote from the book.
The Theosophical Society was not some sort of
homosexual cabal. Homosexual Oscar Wilde declined
to join, and the membership in general was from
the "uppercrust" of British heterosexual society.
(See comment 3-3 above, which mentions such famous
heterosexual members as Albert Einstein, Thomas
Edison, and baseball inventor Abner Doubleday.)
*** {end comment 52-1}
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***{Below is Page: 53 }***
{See Comment 53-1}
"She addressed Annie in suspiciously fulsome and endearing
terms," writes Nethercot, "'Dearest,' 'My Dearest,' 'Dearly Be-
loved one,' and signing herself 'Very adoring.'" Nethercot also
reports that "she dispatched missives to Annie.. and addressed
them to 'My Darling Penelope' from "Your...female Ulysses"'
(Nethercot:306).
** {start comment 53-1}
The attentive reader will note the above with
suspicion. The suspicion of lesbianism is cited
(if the citation is accurate) from Webb, but not
from Nethercot. The quote from Nethercot doesn't
include that accusation, but only quotes from
Blavatsky. Strange the Pink Swastika author has
done this, for only two pages later Nethercot says
"The lesbian overtones of the situation in 1889-91
cannot be overlooked." Had the author actually
read Nethercot instead of merely searching for
juicy quotes, this would have added considerable
weight to his allegation. Of course the problem is
that Nethercot studied the life of Besant, not
that of Blavatsky, and is no expert on her. In any
event, whatever the inclinations of Blavatsky, the
many men in Besant's life, her loves, both
fulfilled and not fulfilled because she was unable
to divorce Reverend Besant, attest to her
heterosexuality.
*** {end comment 53-1
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{See Comment 53-2}
Besant's "mentor and partner" in running the Theosophical
Society was Charles Leadbeater, whom Webb describes as "that
type of mildly homosexual clergyman who is as familiar now as he
was then" (Webb:95). But Leadbeater's homosexuality was not
"mild" enough to keep him out of trouble. "From his early days
as a Hampshire curate until the close of his life," writes Webb, "he
seems to have had an incurable taste for young men" (ibid.:95).
At one point Leadbeater claimed to have discovered the new
Messiah -- the returned Christ -- in the person of a young Indian
named Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti gained international
acceptance among followers of the Theosophy as the new Savior.
The boy's father nearly ruined the scheme for the Theosophists,
however, when he accused Leadbeater of corrupting his son.
"There was... small doubt that Leadbeater had been up to his old
tricks again" (ibid.: 102).
*** {start comment 53-2}
Meade speaks of another incident on page 444,
in recounting Leadbeater's return from Ceylon to
serve as theosophic tutor to the son of Alfred
Sinnett, president of the London Theosophical
lodge. "Leadbeater must have realized he had
captured Sinnett's interest because he felt
confident enough to demand a condition for his
return; he wanted to bring with him a fourteen-
year-old Cingalese boy, C. Jinarajadasa, whom he
described as his protege, but who, as he would
later confide to Annie, was actually his
reincarnated younger brother Gerald, who had been
murdered by bandits in South America in 1862. It
was rumored that Leadbeater practically kidnapped
the boy, whose father had pursued him to the
steamer, took him home at gun point, then relented
and allowed him to sail. Although Jinarajadasa
himself described the story as ridiculous and
implausible, the rumor persisted."
Whatever Leadbeater's relationship with
Jinarajadasa, his father had him home and could
have kept him home, but saw fit to let him go to
England with Leadbeater.
Nethercot, in volume 2 of his biography of
Annie Besant, discusses Leadbeater at length on
pages 84-98. Leadbeater was accused of teaching
some boys how to masturbate, and the evidence
suggests he did. In 1906, when these incidents
surfaced, the Theosophical Society's leaders held
a meeting and asked him to answer the charges. He
defended himself claiming he was only teaching
masturbation to prevent the boys from doing worse
things. ("Boys" refers to teenagers in the age
range 14-17.) The leadership suggested he resign
from the society, and he did. There doesn't seem
to have been any suggestion that he had oral or
anal sex with them.
Leadbeater's expulsion occurred while Colonel
Olcott, who had been Madame Helena P. Blavatsky's
co-worker and had helped her found the Theosophic
Society, was President. Within a couple years,
after Olcott's death, Annie Besant, the new
leader, reinstated Leadbeater after his assurances
that he repudiated his earlier behavior and was
accepted by the membership. A large number of
dissenters, particularly in England and America,
quit the group as a result.
That Leadbeater was pressured by Colonel
Olcott to resign as soon as his conduct was
uncovered shows that the Theosophical Society was
not the homosexual conspiracy the Pink Swastika
author tries to insinuate it was. It was made up
of average heterosexuals who had an abhorrence of
homosexual activity. On Leadbeater's reinstatement
he moved to India to work with Annie Besant.
*** {end comment 53-2}
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Under Besant and Leadbeater, Theosophy attracted an even
greater following. The writings of both Besant and Leadbeater,
as well as Blavatsky, were translated and published in Germany.
An 1892 periodical, Lotus Blossoms, featured Blavatsky's writ-
ings and "was the first German publication to sport the theosophical
swastika upon its cover" (Goodrick-Clarke:25). As time went on
numerous other Theosophy-based occult groups formed in Ger-
many and Austria. Several of these groups would provide the
philosophical framework for Nazism.
***{Below is Page: 54 }***
Guido von List and the Armanen Order
Guido von List (1848-1919) was the first to combine German
nationalism with the occult teachings of Theosophy. A bitter
critic of Christianity, especially Catholicism, List had converted
to Wotanism (worship of Wotan, the ancient German god of
storms) as a young teenager. Years later List "became a cult fig-
ure on the eastern edge of the German world. He was regarded
by his readers and followers as a bearded old patriarch and a mys-
tical nationalist guru whose clairvoyant gaze had lifted the glori-
ous Aryan and German past of Austria into full view from be-
neath the debris of foreign influences and Christian culture"
{See Comment 54-1}
(Goodrick-Clarke:33).
Although twice married, List was almost certainly a bisexual.
His closest friends and associates included Jorg Lanz von
Liebenfels and Harald Gravelle, both homosexual occultists.
Gravelle, a leading Theosophist in Germany, also contributed to
the pederast journal, Der Eigene. In 1908 List formed the Guido
von List Society in part to promote his Ariosophist research and
writings, which by this time had become viciously anti-Semitic
(ibid. :43).
*** {start comment 54-1}
Goodrick-Clarke is not a reference for the
above paragraph, and says nothing about anything
in it in the place cited. On page 42 he states
that Liebenfels was a friend of List. On page 43,
Harald Arjuna Graevell van Jostenoode is
mentioned, not as a "friend," but merely as one of
a group of over fifty individuals who signed a
declaration of support for founding a society
named after List, the "Guido von List Society."
Goodrick-Clark says nothing whatever about the
sexual fantasies of the Pink Swastika author, nor
about alleged anti-Semitism on List's part.
*** {end comment 54-1}
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List's occult activities ranged across a wide spectrum. He
was an expert on the Rune alphabet and wrote several books on
the subject. He was particularly infatuated with the dual light-
ning-bolt symbol that would later become the designation for the
SS. (J. S. Jones: 125). He was also a self-styled occult master,
claiming to be "the last of the Armanist magicians who had for-
merly wielded authority in the old Aryan world" (Goodrick-
Clarke:33). But List was also involved in Hindu Tantrism, a form
of black magic that incorporated deviant sexual rituals (J.S.
Jones: 124). As described in Cavendish's Man, Myth and Magic,
Tantrism is a religion in which "there are a number of rites which
are regarded as essential... group sexuality, adultery, incest and, in
the higher planes, intercourse with... demons... Perfection is gained
by satisfying all of one's desires" (Cavendish:2780).
In 1911, List formed an elitist occult organization called the
***{Below is Page: 55 }***
Hoher Armanen-Orden ("Higher Armenen {sic} Order"). The HAO
was a hierarchical priesthood in which he was Grand Master. List
claimed this cult was the surviving remnant of an ancient order of
priest-kings called the Armanenschaft ("Armanen Order"). This
group was the source of List's greatest influence on the Nazis.
Goodrick-Clark writes,
List's blueprint for a new pan-German empire
[based upon a revival of the Armanenschaft was
detailed and unambiguous. It called for the ruth-
less subjection of non-Aryans to Aryan masters in
a highly structured hierarchical state. The qualifi-
cations of candidates [for positions in the new so-
cial order]...rested solely on their racial purity... But
List went further still, anticipating the mystical elit-
ism of the SS in Nazi Germany...List's ideal was a
male order with an occult chapter (Goodrick-
Clarke:64f.).
Not only is List's design strikingly similar to the later plans of
Heinrich Himmler for the SS-controlled state, but it is also remi-
niscent of the Brand/Friedlander philosophy of militaristic male
supremacy.
{See Comment 55-1}
Although the Armanen Order was never a large organization,
its membership included high-ranking members of Austrian soci-
ety (ibid. :233n.). One individual in particular would turn out to
be very important to the rise of Nazism: Adolf Hitler himself.
After the fall of the Third Reich, a book written by Guido von List
was found in Hitler's private library. On the inside cover was
written the inscription: "To Adolf Hitler, my dear brother in
Armanen" (J.S. Jones: 124; Waite, 1977:90).
*** {start comment 55-1}
What the Pink Swastika author doesn't relate
is the rest of Waite's comment on the book
inscription, which is "Armanen, as we are about to
see, was List's special term for a racially elite
ruling class." So Waite says nothing to support
the idea that Hitler may have been an active
member of the society. (See also comment 3-2
above.)
*** {end comment 55-1}
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***{Below is Page: 56 }***
Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Ariosophy
{See Comment 56-1}
If any occultist can be said to have had more influence on
Hitler and the Nazis than List it would be Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels
(1874-1954). Lanz was a former Cistercian Monk who had been
thrown out of the order "for carnal and worldly desires" (Sklar: 19)
Since the Cistercian Order was a closed, all-male monastery, it is
assumed that Lanz' indiscretions were of a homosexual nature. It
was through Lanz that Hitler would learn that most of his heroes
of history were also "practicing homosexuals" (Waite, 1977:94f).
After being expelled from the monastery, Lanz formed his own
occultic order called the Ordo Novi Templi or the Order of the
New Temple (ONT). The ONT was an offshoot of the Ordo
Templi Orientis or Order of the Temple of the East, which, like
List's organization, practiced tantric sexual rituals (Howard:91).
*** {start comment 56-1}
Howard doesn't say that the ONT was an
offshoot of the OTO. He says Guido von List had
"tenuous connections with two occult
fraternities..." the OTO, founded by two German
Freemasons, Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss, and
the ONT, founded by Liebenfels.
The above is another example of how the Pink
Swastika author selects material from sources
which support his homosexual thesis while ignoring
information from sources that don't support it. He
has elsewhere cited The Occult Roots of Nazism by
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, yet he ignores it on the
subject of Lanz's sexuality. On page 92 Goodrick-
Clarke says:
...."After a period of tension and
unhappiness arising from his desire for physical
and intellectual freedom, Lanz renounced his holy
vows and left Heiligenkreuz on 27 April 1899 (aet.
24). His departure was viewed in a different light
by the Abbey authorities. The register refers to
his 'surrender to the lies of the world and carnal
love.' ....He is also supposed to have married
upon leaving the order. Such an action would have
compelled the renunciation of his vows and might
explain the otherwise enigmatic reference to
'carnal love'.
"Henceforth Lanz was free to develop his own
religious ideas."
Goodrick-Clarke gives a German reference for
the supposition that Lanz married. Those knowing
anything of Lanz's unorthodox ideas will
appreciate that they were sufficient reason for
him to part ways with the Catholic Church, and
that sex of any type needn't have played a part in
his departure -- homosexual acts least of all, for
they could easily have been covered up, whereas a
desire to marry a woman could not.
Lanz's departure seems to have been
voluntary, and it can't be said that he was
"expelled." In later years he collaborated with an
academic from the abbey in publishing an edition
of Hebrew scripture. Goodrick-Clarke says this
"suggests a certain standing among theologians and
a reconciliation with the establishment at
Heiligenkreuz."
The Pink Swastika author misquotes Waite
about "most" of Hitler's heroes being homosexuals.
Waite actually says "so many of his heroes."
Furthermore Waite indicates that Lanz didn't have
a positive attitude toward homosexuality:
"Hitler's concern about homosexuality was shared
by Lanz, who concluded in a pamphlet of 1911 that
homosexuality is caused by 'Odylic' influences and
'over-exertion of the brain.'" Clearly, Waite
suggests that Lanz regarded homosexuality as an
abnormal, pathological condition.
Lanz's ONT had as one of its rules that
members were "expected to contract eugenically
proper marriages." (The purpose was to regenerate
the Aryan race.) (Goodrick-Clarke page 110.)
After Hitler took power, the ONT was
officially dissolved by order of the Gestapo
(Goodrick-Clarke page 197).
*** {end comment 56-1}
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{See Comment 56-2}
Both orders were modeled on the Knights Templars, a milita-
ristic monastic order founded in 1118 A.D. to fight in the Cru-
sades (Goodrick-Clarke:60). Following the crusades, the Templars
returned to Europe, but did not demobilize. Instead its members
established monasteries which became centers of trade and influ-
ence. In the early 1300's the Knights Templars were condemned
by Pope Innocent III for homosexual perversion and occultic prac-
tices. They were brought to trial and disbanded by King Philip
the Fair of France. Igra writes,
[Homosexuality's] morbid history in the German
blood dates from the time of the Teutonic
Knights... Their personal lives were as infamous as
the more widely publicized infamies of their brother
Knights, the Templars. These latter became so
corrupt that they raised the practice of their cardi-
nal vice [homosexuality] into a religious
cult. There were innumerable public trials where
the most revolting details were brought to light
(Igra: 18).
*** {start comment 56-2}
The above again uses selective quotes to give
a false impression. Amazingly, the Pink Swastika
author gives false information about the Templars
even though he quotes the very same page -- 60 --
on which Goodrick-Clarke says "The order
{Templars} subsequently became the victim of a
slanderous campaign mounted by the King of France,
who coveted their wealth and influence within his
realm. He accused the Templars of satanic
practices, certain perversions and blasphemies,
including the worship of a huge idol fashioned in
the shape of a human head. Because of these
alleged calumnies the order was ruthlessly
suppressed and its leaders burnt in 1314. Despite
the probable falsehood of the charges against
them, the historical record surrounded the memory
of the Templars with a mysterious and heretical
aura."
*** {end comment 56-2}
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***{Below is Page: 57 }***
On Christmas day, 1907, many years before the swastika would
become the symbol of the Third Reich, Lanz and other members
of the ONT raised a swastika flag over the castle which Lanz had
purchased to house the order (Goodrick-Clarke: 109). Lanz chose
the swastika, he said, because it was the ancient pagan symbol of
Wotan (Cavendish: 1983). Wotanism, incidentally, was claimed
by List to have been the national religion of the Teutons (Goodrick-
Clarke:39).
{See Comment 57-1}
The journal of the ONT was called Ostara, named for the
female counterpart to Wotan in the pagan German's pantheon.
Some of the titles of Ostara pamphlets included "The Dangers of
Women's Rights and the Necessity of a Masculine Morality of
Masters," and "Introduction to Sexual-Physics, or Love as Odylic
Energy." Lanz claimed homosexuality was the result of "Odylic"
influences (Waite, 1977:93f.). Lanz hated women, writing that
"the soul of the woman has something pre-human, something de-
monic, something enigmatic about it" (Rhodes: 108). He blamed
Aryan racial impurities on promiscuous women who were copu-
lating with "men of lower races."
*** {start comment 57-1}
It's wrong to say Lanz "hated" women. Saying
the quoted things about them doesn't imply hatred.
Rhodes simply says he had a "curious antifeminist
bias." Since Lanz had been a Catholic Monk,
perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise. He held the
anti-feminist views that are typical of religious
fundamentalists today who hold that women have a
place in society subservient to men. One thinks,
for example, of the new all-male fundamentalist
group of the 1990s, the "Promisekeepers" -- not
quite in the league of Lanz's Templars on
eccentricity, of course, but far greater in
numbers. There are many other modern religious
groups in which the sexes are segregated, and many
churches teach that certain activities are not
appropriate for women.
*** {end comment 57-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Lanz' occult philosophies, which he dubbed Ariosophy (Aryan
Theosophy), were an enlargement upon the ideas of Guido von
List. To the foundation of Theosophy and German nationalism,
Lanz added the popular theme of social Darwinism, as promoted
by Ernst Haeckel and the Monist League. Haeckel is famous
today for his debunked theory that "ontogeny recapitulates phy-
logeny," the idea that the unborn young of all species pass through
distinct embryonic stages that recapitulate the evolution of the
entire species. But in pre-Nazi Germany, Haeckel was famous
for his application of Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest"
to human society. Cambridge historian and London Times jour-
nalist Ben Macintyre writes,
The German embryologist Haeckel and his Mo-
nist League told the world, and in particular, Ger-
many, that the whole history of nations is expli-
cable by means of natural selection: Hitler and his
***{Below is Page: 58 }***
twisted theories turned this pseudo-science into
politics, attempting to destroy whole races in the
name of racial purity and the survival of the
fittest... Hitler called his book Mein Kampf, "My
Struggle," echoing Haeckel's translation of
Darwin's phrase "the struggle for survival"
(Macintyre:28f.).
Lanz's Ariosophy would fuel the imaginations of the Nazi elite,
despite (or perhaps because of) its lunatic qualities. "Lanz fulmi-
nated," writes Goodrick-Clarke, "against the false Christian tra-
dition of compassion for the weak and inferior and demanded that
the nation deal ruthlessly with the underprivileged" (Goodrick-
Clarke:97). Waite reports that Hitler was an avid fan of Ostara
and developed his anti-Semitic philosophy with the help of racist
pamphlets published and distributed by Lanz and Guido von List.
[Hitler, quoted from Mein Kampf] bought some
anti-Semitic pamphlets for a few pennies. These
pamphlets, which were so important to the forma-
tion of Hitler's political thinking, were distributed
by a virulently anti-Semitic society called the List-
Gesellschaft. The tracts were written by two now-
forgotten pamphleteers, Georg Lanz von
Liebenfels (1872-1954) and Guido von List (c.
1865-1919).Of all the racist pamphlets available
to Hitler during those years, only those written by
Lanz and List set forth in explicit detail the ideas
and theories that became unmistakably and char-
acteristically Hitler's own. Only they preached the
racial theory of history which proclaimed the holi-
ness and uniqueness of the one creative race of
Aryans; only they called for the creation of a ra-
cially pure state which would battle to the death
the inferior races which threatened it from with-
out and within; and only they demanded the politi-
***{Below is Page: 59 }***
cal domination of a racial elite led by a quasi-reli-
gious military leader. Hitler's political ideas were
later developed and reinforced in racist circles of
Munich after the war in 1919-1923, hut their gen-
esis was in Vienna under the influence of Lanz and
List (Waite, 1977:91).
In 1958 Wilhelm Daim, an Austrian psychologist, published a
study of Lanz entitled Der Mann der Hitler die Ideen gab ("The
Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas"). In the book, Daim recounts
that Lanz had met Hitler in Vienna when the latter was 20 years
old. Hitler often visited occult bookstores and he used his con-
tacts in some of them to locate Lanz after having trouble finding
back issues of Ostara. While he was destitute in Vienna, Hitler
"hotly defended Liebenfels' ideas against skeptics" writes Snyder
(Snyder:211). In 1932, twenty-three years after that fateful meet-
ing, Lanz wrote: "Hitler is one of our pupils...you will one day
experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victori-
ous and develop a movement that makes the world tremble"
(Cavendish: 1983). This proclamation, however, did not sit well
with der Fuehrer, and he had Lanz's writings banned in 1933
(Snyder: 211).
Lanz' Ostara was a focal point of racist and occult figures in
Germany. In Ostara Lanz proposed that "unsatisfactory" racial
types be eliminated by abortion, sterilization starvation, forced
labor and other means. He also recommended Aryan breeding
farms where a master race, destined to control the world, could
be hatched (Cavendish: 1983). Heinrich Himmler would later cre-
ate such a breeding colony (called Lebensborn) during the Third
Reich. The close similarity of Lanz' prescription for the elimina-
{See Comment 60-1}
tion "inferiors" to the views of Benedict Friedlander suggests
the possibility of a relationship between the OT and the Com-
munity of the Special. one link was Harald Gravelle, a homo-
sexual member of the Guido von List Society who wrote for both
Ostara and Der Eigene (Steakley:67n.34). Gravelle was the prin-
ciple theosophist of Lanz's acquaintance, with the exception of
***{Below is Page: 60 }***
Guido List" (Goodrick-Clarke: 100).
Although he was not directly connected to the ONT, another
link between the Community of the Special and the occultists was
the astrologist, Dr. Karl Gunther Heimsoth. Heimsoth, a homo-
sexual friend of Ernst Roehm, was one of the earliest Nazis. He
wrote a book titled Charakter Kunstellation which was devoted
entirely to the horoscopes of homosexuals (Rector: 81); he was
also a contributor to Der Eigene. Heimsoth is remembered for
coining the term "homophile" (Oosterhuis and Kennedy: 188),
which remains a common American synonym for homosexual.
*** {start comment 60-1}
Of Graevell, Goodrick-Clarke writes "In July
1906 Graevell wrote an Ostara number, in which he
demanded the return of the Habsburg crown jewels
to the German Reich. This claim symbolized a
potent millenarian hope of contemporary Austrian
Pan-Germans." That doesn't seem like a homosexual
link to anything.
Rector's text suggests that Heimsoth, while
possibly an early Nazi, didn't seem to know Roehm
in the early days, for Roehm supposedly sent him a
letter, likely in 1924, "You are obviously skilled
at judging horoscopes. Could you not have a look
at mine...? Then I might learn what sort of person
I am.... I suppose that I am homosexual." Rector
says Heimsoth was a homosexual and was murdered in
the Roehm purge in 1934.
*** {end comment 60-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
The Thule Society
{See Comment 60-2}
In 1912, various followers of List and Lanz formed an organi-
zation called the Germanen Order. Diverging radically from the
purely philosophic and spiritual focus of the groups that the two
"masters" had formed, the Germanen Order was to take an active
role in fulfilling the goals of Ariosophist teachings. "The prin-
ciple aim of the Germanen Order," writes Goodrick-Clarke, "was
the monitoring of the Jews and their activities by the creation of a
center to which all anti-Semitic material would flow for distribu-
tion" (Goodrick-Clarke: 128). Only Aryans of pure descent were
allowed to become members. The first World War disrupted the
organization, but in its aftermath the chapters of the Order began
to engage in direct action against those they considered to be
their enemies. After the war the Order began to be "used as a
cover organization for the recruitment of political assassins
(ibid.:133) during the time when numerous public figures of the
Wiemar {sic} Republic were killed.
In 1917, because of the association of the Germanen Order
with political terrorism, its Bavarian chapter changed its name to
the Thule Society "to spare it the attentions of socialist and pro-
Republican elements" (ibid.:144). The Thule Society retained
many of the bizarre occult theories originated by Blavatsky and
*** {start comment 60-2}
The above is obviously self-contradictory and
pure fabrication. The Weimar Republic did not
exist in 1917, and thus there was no "political
terrorism" against it by the Germanen Order to
motivate a name change. The facts are quite
otherwise. As Goodrick-Clarke says, the Germanen
Orden held right-wing meetings, and the term Thule
Society was adopted in 1918 as a cover name. There
was a split in the Germanen Order in 1916. It was
more or less dormant until the end of the war.
Only the Munich chapter of the break-away faction
adopted the Thule name, and it wasn't necessarily
the branch involved in political assassinations.
The head of Thule, Rudolf Glauer, who adopted
the name "Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf," was
twice married and originally joined the Germanen
Order in response to an advertisement inviting
"fair-haired and blue-eyed German men and women of
pure Aryan descent to join the Order." He left the
organization in 1919, and later left Germany,
returning in 1933. He fell into disfavor with the
Nazis, who briefly interned him in 1934. He then
left for Turkey, where he committed suicide at the
end of WW II.
*** {end comment 60-2}
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***{Below is Page: 61 }***
"had close ties to Crowley's organization" (Raschke:339). His-
torian Wulf Schwarzwaller writes,
Briefly, the creed of the Thule Society inner circle
was as follows: Thule was a legendary island in
the Far North, similar to Atlantis, supposedly the
center of a lost, high level civilization. But not all
secrets of that civilization had been completely
wiped out. Those that remained were being
guarded by ancient, highly intelligent beings...The
truly initiated could establish contact with these
beings...[who could endow the initiated with su-
pernatural strength and energy. With the help of
these energies of Thule, the goal of the initiated
was to create a new race of supermen of "Aryan"
stock who would exterminate all "inferior" races
(Schwarzaller:66f.).
{See Comment 61-1}
The leader of the Thule Society was a man named Rudolf von
Sebottendorf but its chief organizer was Walter Nauhaus, a former
member of the Wandervogel (Goodrick-Clarke: 143). Members
of the Thule Society who figure prominently in the rise of Nazism
included Hans Kahnert, Dietrich Eckart and Rudolf Hess. In 1919
Kahnert founded Germany's largest "gay rights" organization, the
Bund fur Menschenrecht ("Society for Human Rights") which
counted SA Chief Ernst Roehm among its members (J.
Katz:632n94). Eckart, meanwhile, was a founding member of
the German Worker's Party and became Adolf Hitler's mentor
(Shirer:65). Like Hitler, Eckart was a subscriber to Ostara (J. S.
Jones:30l, n.91).
*** {start comment 61-1}
The above is a false attribution to Goodrick-
Clarke, who doesn't associate Nauhaus with the
Wandervogel but says he spent his leisure time as
a youth rambling about the countryside with a
"voelkisch {nationalist} youth group."
Neither Katz nor Goodrick-Clarke are sources
for the allegations of Thule membership. On the
Contrary, Goodrick-Clarke specifically states (
page 221) "While Eckart and Rosenberg were never
more than guests of the Thule during its
heyday...." Dietrich Eckart and Alfred Rosenberg
attended some Thule activities as guests, but
never as members. On page 149, Goodrick-Clarke
notes that in 1918 future prominent Nazis
Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenberg, Dietrich
Eckart, and Rudolf Hess were among guests of
Thule. In the absence of a reliable citation, it
is questionable whether any of those mentioned by
The Pink Swastika author actually belonged to
Thule.
*** {end comment 61-1}
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{See Comment 62-1}
Eckart is said by some to have been involved in Tantric occult
sex rituals "similar to Crowley's," and even to have initiated Hitler
into such activities (Raschke:399). While the reliability of the
original source for this information has been questioned, perver-
sion of this type would be consistent in the profile of someone
whom Hitler had chosen to be close to -- as we will see later when
***{Below is Page: 62 }***
we examine Hitler's life in more detail. We do know that Eckart
was one of the most enthusiastic followers of Otto Weininger, a
leading homosexual supremacist whose theories denigrated women
(Igra: 100). There is no question at all that Eckart was instrumen-
tal in Hitler's early successes. "With Eckart as his mentor," writes
Schwarzwaller, "the gauche and inhibited Hitler -- the unsuccess-
ful painter, former PFC, who had not even been promoted to cor-
poral because of '[l]ack of leadership qualities,' quite
suddenly.. became an outstanding organizer and propagandist"
(Schwarzwaller: 68).
*** {start comment 62-1}
As said earlier, Schwarzwaller has no notes
or references and can't be regarded as a serious
source of information. What's interesting is what
the Pink Swastika author left out of the quote:
"There can be no doubt that Eckart - who had been
alerted to Hitler by other Thulists - trained
Hitler in magic techniques. He saw that there was
an untrained potential in him and wanted to shape
it. With Eckart as his mentor…." In other words,
if we are to believe Schwarzwaller, Hitler's rise
to power was achieved through the use of Black
Magic, and that explains how "the gauche and
inhibited" Hitler could become such a powerful
speaker and swayer of audiences. But of course the
author of The Pink Swastika couldn't allow a
suggestion that magic works.
A reliable source on Hitler's military career
that agrees with others is Waite (1977) pages 200-
205, "Hitler as War Hero." (See the bibliography -
- Waite is often quoted for other purposes by the
Pink Swastika author.) Waite says "There is no
evidence of his {Hitler's} 'bucking' for a
noncommissioned officer grade or for a transfer.
He liked his job." The insinuation of
Schwarzwaller is that Hitler was unable to gain
promotion, whereas Waite's understanding is that
he never tried. Thus, the above is a
misrepresentation. The particular paragraph in
Schwarzwaller opens "There can be no doubt that
Eckart -- who had been alerted to Hitler by other
Thulists -- trained Hitler in magic techniques. He
saw that there was an untrained potential in him
and wanted to shape it. With Eckart as his
mentor...." As for the "magic," the immediately
preceding paragraph in Schwarzwaller is a
discussion of "white" and "black" magic and C. G.
Jung's opinion of it. It's rather strange that the
fundamentalist authors of The Pink Swastika use as
an authority a man who attributes Hitler's powers
to the successful mastery of magic -- of course
they hide this part of the discussion, their
fundamentalist religion not particularly willing
to admit that magical powers "exist."
Hitler was wounded twice, being gassed the
second time, in 1918, and received both the Iron
Cross and the Iron Cross First Class for his
heroic exploits. He was one of rather few soldiers
to be awarded the latter. It, more than anything,
was responsible for his successful political
career. He had relocated from Austria to Germany.
He had shirked service in the Austrian military
but eagerly enlisted in the German Army. His major
liability in Germany was his Austrian origin. The
Iron Cross First Class changed all that, for
Germans no longer regarded him as a mere Austrian.
In one of the supreme ironies of history, Hitler
received that all-important medal because of the
recommendation of his regimental adjutant, Hermann
Gutmann, a Jew.
*** {end comment 62-1}
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Like Roehm and Lanz, Eckart claimed credit for "creating"
Hitler. In 1923, shortly before his death, Eckart wrote to a friend,
"Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it will be to my tune. We have
given him the means to maintain contact with them (meaning the
"masters"). Don't grieve for me for I have influenced history
more than any other German" (ibid. :69). Though he would later
ridicule many of the occultists and their ideas, Hitler dedicated his
book, Mein Kampf, to Eckart, and at one time called Eckart his
"John the Baptiser" (ibid. :70).
{See Comment 62-2}
The Thule Society member who would rise the highest in Nazi
circles, however, was Rudolf Hess. Hess, a homosexual who
was one of Hitler's closest friends, eventually became the Deputy
Fuehrer of the Nazi Party. In addition to his involvement with the
Thule Society (Toland: 124), Hess belonged to yet another off-
shoot of the Theosophical cult. It was an organization called the
Anthroposophical Society, formed in 1912 by Rudolf Steiner.
Steiner was a former leader of the German Theosophical Society
who split with the group following their "discovery" of the new
"messiah." Hess was also a firm believer in astrology (Howe: 152).
*** {start comment 62-2}
Hess was married and many will remember his
son's efforts for years after the end of World War
II to get him released from Spandau prison. The
"Toland" work seems missing from the Pink Swastika
bibliography, and thus can't be checked.
While the author neglected to include Toland
in the bibliography, Waite (1977) refers to
Toland's 1976 Adolf Hitler. Waite says "Another
unreliable 'memoir' has caused further
misconceptions about Hitler's life. John Toland
used this spurious source for his biography... a
250 page type-script entitled "My Brother-in-Law
Adolf" and written about 1940 by Brigid Dowling
Hitler." Waite calls most of her "memoir" an
invention.
William Shirer, the journalist whose "The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" has become a
popular classic, is no friend of homosexuality and
doesn't hesitate to denigrate Ernst Roehm for it.
It's hard to believe that Shirer would not have
mentioned homosexuality in the cases of Hess and
Eckart if he had had any reliable indication of
it. He refers to Eckart as one who had "...led
...the bohemian vagrant's life, become a drunkard,
taken to morphine and, according to { journalist
Konrad} Heiden, been confined to a mental
institution..." but he never charges him with
homosexuality.
Other responsible authors also omit these
wide-ranging charges of homosexuality, saying at
most that people in some cases made jokes or
spread rumors, as about Hess.
The Howe reference is another of the Pink
Swastika author's famous fabrications. The only
mention of Hess on page 152 is "Hofweber was a
close personal friend of Rudolf Hess. According to
Herr Goerner, Hofweber regularly sent copies of
Krafft's bulletin to Hess." Now Krafft was a man
interested in astrology who published an "Economic
Bulletin" which Howe says contained "a surprising
mixture of straightforward economic and political
information, cosmic speculation, and articles on
topics that happened to be of interest to him…Any
casual reader would probably not have been
immediately aware that the document in his hands
had come from an astrological stable." So Hess
might have had no idea that the things mentioned
by Howe on page 152 and preceding pages had
anything to do with astrology. That's a far cry
from the claim that Howe said Hess was a "firm
believer" in astrology.
In other places in Howe's book there is
mention of rumors that circulated at the time that
Hess might have had some interest in astrology,
but they're unreliable, and Howe says some of the
material has to be taken "with a pinch of salt."
There's nothing anywhere in Howe that would
support the claim that Howe stated Hess was a
"firm believer" in astrology.
*** {end comment 62-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 63-1}
Eckart and Hess were not the only members of the Thule So-
ciety who influenced Hitler. Waite writes,
In describing his initiation into politics at Munich
in 1919, Hitler stressed the importance of a little
pamphlet entitled "My Political Awakening"
[written by] a sickly fanatic called Anton
***{Below is Page: 63 }***
Drexler. . Drexler was an adjunct member of the
Thule Society, the most influential of the many
racist anti-Semitic groups spawned in Munich dur-
ing the immediate postwar period.. By the time of
the revolution of 1918, the society numbered some
1500 members in Bavaria and included many of
Hitler's later supporters. Hitler himself it is re-
ported "was often a guest of the Society"... The
actual German Worker's Party -- which was to
become the mighty Nazi movement.. differed very
little from the discussion groups and activities of
the Thule Society or the other racist groups to
which all the founders belonged. (Waite,
1977:115).
*** {start comment 63-1}
Drexler was not a sickly fanatic, but a
railway mechanic. He was not a member of Thule,
the "adjunct" being somewhat confusing. As
Goodrick-Clarke pointed out, Waite, writing in
1977, would unlikely have had reliable sources on
Thule and similar groups. Thule supporters were
drawn principally from lawyers, judges, university
professors, and others of the "upper crust." Karl
Harrer was given the task of trying to spread
Thule's nationalist ideology to the working
classes by forming a workers' ring. Drexler was
the most active member of this discussion group,
which drew fewer than seven people to its weekly
lectures. In December, 1918, Drexler urged the
tiny band to form a political party, which was
done on January 5, 1919. On September 12, 1919,
Hitler attended a meeting of the party in the
capacity of spy for the German Army.
The better researched work of Goodrick-Clarke
doesn't mention Hitler as a guest of Thule.
Moreover, his account of the founding of the
worker's circle and the party is quite different
from Waite's, and likely more reliable. Waite is
simply wrong in much of what he says that involves
Drexler. (The humble railway worker would have
been odd company for Thule's lawyers, judges,
professors, aristocrats, industrialists, doctors,
scientists, and rich businessmen.
*** {end comment 63-1}
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{See Comment 63-2}
Yet another prominent Nazi who was strongly influenced by
the German occult movement was Heinrich Himmler. Himmler
maintained a close relationship with a prominent occultist named
Karl Maria Wiligut, who became known as the "Rasputin of
Himmler" (Goodrick-Clarke: 177). It is not clear if this designa-
tion is meant to imply that Wiligut shared the infamous Russian's
penchant for sexual licentiousness. Wiligut claimed to have a gift
of clairvoyant "ancestral memory," certainly quite useful to the
racial purists of the Nazi Party who were concerned with proving
their own Aryan heritage. Wiligut was responsible for designing
the Death's Head ring worn by members of the SS.
*** {start comment 63-2}
Contrary to the above, it is very clear in
Goodrick-Clarke what the nickname "Rasputin"
referred to. Rasputin frustrated the Russian
bureaucracy by being able to influence Tsar
Nicholas to countermand policies advocated by
government ministers. In just that way, Wiligut
could influence Himmler to overrule the sensible
decisions of the bureaucracy of the SS. Goodrick-
Clarke devotes a whole chapter to the issue, and
the Pink Swastika author either didn't read it,
doesn't know anything about Rasputin, or is being
deceptive.
*** {end comment 63-2}
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Under Himmler, the SS became a veritable occultic order.
Christian names of SS soldiers were replaced with Teutonic names,
and all members were required to maintain the strictest secrecy
and detachment from the rest of society (Sklar:100). In later years
Himmler spent vast sums of money on esoteric research projects
such as an expedition to Tibet "to look for traces of a pure Ger-
manic race which might have been able to keep intact the ancient
Nordic mysteries" (ibid.: 102).
Himmler may well have been a homosexual (one source is
cited later in the book), however, his neurotic obsession with se-
***{Below is Page: 64 }***
crecy largely shielded him from disclosure of his private life. He
did, however, foster the cult of the mannerbund among his men.
Some report that SS special forces training required recruits to
soap each other's bodies during showers to establish mutual de-
pendency (Reisman, 1994:3). Later, Himmler would make empty
threats against homosexuals in public pronouncements, but it is
clear that he was completely comfortable being part of Adolf
Hitler's clique of pederasts.
In any case, we can see that the occult roots of the Nazi Party
ran deep into German history. We can also see that many of the
leading occult figures responsible for this legacy were homosexu-
als. From ancient pagan roots, through Blavatsky, to List and
Lanz, and to Hitler himself, the evolution of homo-occultism gave
the Nazis their theories of an Aryan Master Race and their justifi-
cation for the vicious extermination of "inferior" life.
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