Secrets of the Swastika
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In order to confer a bridge from the mystic fraternities past to modern occult organizations, we must briefly step back into the Eighteenth century. There are a few societies in this period whose synchronous histories we must consult.
It is important to study and understand the impact of far-right Conservatism and Ethno-Nationalism as the Overton Window shifts away from Centrist Libertarian ideology towards Ethnic Nationalism. These network of movements and Pan-European identity in the U.S. and Europe are the ideologically heir to National Socialism and its mystic origins. National Socialism is an enigma to curious observers. No conventional political or social explanation is sufficient to account for such a phenomenon. An entire system of rituals has risen from seemingly nowhere to enlighten an entire people, and to strike fear that will be remembered unto the ends of time.
Over all of the mysticism, political and social renewal, and military power presides the enigmatic emblem and specter of the swastika. One of the most recognized, maligned, and fear symbols in human history; the swastika looms like a black sun over the rise of National Socialism, itself with origins in mysticism and the occult. The Mystery of the blood and racial memory led a nation into uncanny enlightenment, while the outside world would suffer nightmares for generations to come. The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker’s Party – NSDAP) adopted the Hakenkreuzas their emblem in the summer of 1920. Designing the new flag, Hitler states: “The new flag appeared in public in the midsummer of 1920. It suited our movement admirably, both being new and young. Not a soul had seen this flag before; its effect at that time was something akin to that of a blazing torch.” (Mein Kampf, p.384)
The Industrial Revolution of the Nineteenth Century saw the rise of science and Liberalist Democracies, and the decline of traditional life; of religion in rural areas, the disruption of beauty and order. Disillusioned folk sought a return to Paganistic, non-traditional spirituality and mysticism. Once such curious seeker of arcane knowledge was Russian psychic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky traveled the world and studied in Tibet during the 1850s to 1860s. The self-proclaim Russian telepath and spiritual teacher publishes The Secret Doctrinein 1888. In her voluminous text, Blavatsky revealed the existence of Mahatmas–secret teachers in an Invisible College guiding mankind with esoteric knowledge. These secret masters resided in hidden Tibetan monasteries according to Blavatsky’s research.
Madame Blavatsky claimed esoteric initiation into the sciences and powers of seven ancient symbols; the most potent of these, the swastika. The National Socialist interpretation of the swastika embedded in their social and political reforms was the “Triumph of the Will” – a theme of the 1934 Nuremberg rally. The racial memory, Triumph of the Will, the light of a new order, was all revealed by the Aryan race – custodians of the Invisible College. By 1885 a considerable number of volkisch-cultural leagues were operating in rural Germany and Austria.
The league occupied themselves with the commemoration of figures and cultural events in German and Austrian history, art, literature and mythology, while investing such communal activities as choral singing, gymnastics, and mountain- climbing with volkisch ritual. The following year, the Germanenbund, was founded at Salzburg by Anton Langgassner. The league held Germanic festivals, instituted a national Germanic calendar, and appealed to all social classes to put aside political differences in a common Germanic Volkstum (nationhood). The Austrian Empire regarded such nationalism suspiciously and dissolved the Germanenbundin 1889.
The first German Theosophical Society was chartered in July 1884 by Herr Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) at Elberfeld, where Madame Blavatsky and her chief officer, Henry Steel Olcott, were lodging with theosophical colleagues, the Gebhards. In 1902 Rudolf Steiner was initiated as general secretary of the German Theosophical Society at Berlin. Steiner was a scholar studying Goethe’s scientific journals in Vienna. Steiner published a periodical, Luzifer, at Berlin from 1903 to 1908. Steiner’s mystical Christian inclinations estranged him from the Theosophists, so he chartered his Anthroposophical Societyin 1912.
The Rite of Strict Observance, a series of progressive degrees of Freemasonry, was conferred by the Order of Strict Observance, a Masonic body founded by Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund in 1764. For the purposes identifying philosophic connections to National Socialism, and the NSDAP, we know the Rite appealed to German ethnic pride, attracted the nobility, and was purportedly directed by “Unknown Superiors,” an early allusion to the “Secret Chiefs” mentioned in the Cipher Manuscripts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Rosicrucian groups assimilated Observance Neophytes, after the death of Baron von Hund in 1776. A Convent was held at Wilhelmsbad from 16 July 1782 – 1 September 1783, “resolved anddeclared that the freemasons were not the successors of the Templars, and that the playing at Knights Templars was to be discontinued. A general reworking of the ritual resulted, and, in effect, the Strict Observance ceased to exist.” {Robert Freke Gould, History of Freemasonry, vol V, p. 141. Also see Claude Antoine Thory (1759/05/26 – 1827/10/?), Acta Latomorum, ou Chronologie de l’Histoire de la Franche-Maçonnerie française et étrangère … ouvrage orné de figures. Paris, 1815. vol. i, p. 52.}
The Gold und Rosenkreuzer (German: Golden and Rosy Cross) was founded by alchemist Samuel Richter who published in 1710 Die warhhaffte und vollkommene Bereitung des Philosophischen Steins der Brüderschaft aus dem Orden des Gülden- und Rosen-Creutzes {“The True and Complete Preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone by the Brotherhood from the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross”} in Breslau under his fraternal motto, Sincerus Renatus in Prague as a hierarchical secret society composed of esoteric ciphers, degrees of initiation, and alchemicaltreatises.
Under Hermann Fictuld, the Golden and Rosy Cross reconstituted extensively in 1757 and again in 1777 due to the stress of the War of the Austrian Succession. Gold and Rosy Crossinitiates, coming under the direction of Fratres Johann Christoph von Wöllner and General Johann Rudolf von Bischoffwerder, infiltrated the Grand Lodge Zu den drei Weltkugeln (Three Globes). Because of the shift from Operate to Speculative Free-Masonry, many Free-masons became Rosicrucians and Rosicrucianism was established in lodges across England and Germania.
The rise of Theosophy and meta- physical sciences gave individuals a volkischholistic view of themselves and the Volkstum. These sciences of the mind conferred an Unanimity in a total divine order and, through metaphysics, a means of planning one’s affairs in accordance with their God, or Gods and Goddesses. According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clark, “The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935” {Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press 1985} the terms Wotanism, Theozoology, and Ario-Christianity descriptive of European spiritualist movements. Guido Von List was the first modern writer to combine volkischphilosophy with occultism and Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy.
The writings of Guido Von List specifically his book Carnuntum inspired the volkisch commemorations and spiritual renewal of the Germanenbund. List wrote of psychic and extrasensory visions he had of the past and future, where he claimed initiation by the ancient Teutonic knighthoods. List published his own literary works throughout the 1890s. In 1905 Friedrich Wannieck, Lanz von Liebenfels and dozens of other writers signed the first announcement concerning chartering a Guido Von List Society. A survey of early signatories on the List Society’s charters reveals considerable support for List amongst notable public figures in Austria and Germany.
List’s psychic dreams provided him the drive to rediscover an occultic heritage of a long vanished Pagan-Nordic priesthood, won by suffering a system of ancient knowledge, called Runes. Lanz lists nationalism, Aryan ethno-mysticism, and runic magic as important influences in Ariosophy. Völkisch authors Ellegaard Ellerbek, Philipp Stauff, and Günther Kirchoff,fostered the runic occultism of List (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 155) while Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Siegfried Adolf Kummer (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 160-62) a runic system of initiation.
Researching runic systems from 1891 onwards, Guido von List held that ethnic heraldry derived from a cipher of encoded runes, because heraldic ciphers conveyed a secret heritage in occultform. List was familiar with the cyclical phenomena of space-time, which he studied in Norse mythology and in the theosophical adaptation of the Hindu yugas, or epochs. In 1908, the Wannieck family {Friedrich Wannieck and son Friedrich Oskar Wannieck} officially drew up a charter for the Guido von List Society {Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft} as an occult völkisch organization, designed to finance and publish List’s research (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 42).
The Guido von List Society was financed by prominent personalities in Austrian and German politics, publishing, and occultism. The Hoher Armanen Orden (High Armanen Order) was the inner college of the Guido von List Society. Chartered 1911, its design was a magical order to proliferate List’s deeper runic-based initiations. List called his philosophy Armanism after the Armanen, supposedly an occult priesthood in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation. List claimed that “Armanen” had been Latinized into the tribal name Herminones, mentioned in Tacitus and it translates as “the heirs of the sun-king”; an estate of priests who were organized into a society called the Armanenschaft.
List’s theory of the originating religion of the Germanic tribes was a form of solar worship {similar to ancient Egyptian Atenism}, with its priest-kings (similar to the Icelandic goði) as mythic rulers of ancient Germania. He cited the linguistic distinction between the Indo-Aryan and derivative Germanic protolanguages.
The Theosophical doctrines of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky strongly influenced List, which he conjoined with his own system of German Runic occultism and nationalism. Goodrick-Clarke scrutinizes connections for Ariosophic influences on Hitler and on the Nazi hierarchy, but he concludes, “Ariosophy is a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism.” (1985: 192-202) Less a symptom, Ariosophy and Paganistic spiritual renewal amongst the volk was a motivating factor in the need for a country and people ruined by international Globalist Jewry and Bolshevism to revive a world power under its own organic conditions.
The runic alphabet possesses a deep esoteric meaning; themes of regeneration and sacrifice, heritage and fatherland, fate and divine ascension. List believed these were keys to occult knowledge of ancient Volksgenosse. The runic language would become a new mystic language in the foundations of National Socialism and Volksgemeinschaft. Guido Von List called the swastika, ‘the twice high holy secret of constant generation.’
On Christmas December 25, 1907, a Viennese ex-Cistercian monk, and theologian Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels chartered the Ordo Novi Templi (Order of the New Templars, ONT) an occult order headquartered at Burg Werfenstein, a castle in Upper Austria overlooking the Danube. The professed aim of the Ordo Novi Templi was to synchronize science, art, and religion on a basis of Teutonic consciousness. Lanz and his initiates produced Occult runic rituals to beautify life in accordance with Aryan aesthetics, and to disseminate to the world the Order’s occult teachings that Lanz called Ario-Christianity.
Ordo Novi Templi was the first to use the swastika publicly, displaying on its flag the device of a red swastika facing right, on a yellow-orange field, surrounded by four blue fleurs-de-lys above, below, to the right and to the left. During the rise of the Nazi establishment, the Order declined from the late 1930s, later suppressed by the Gestapo in 1942. After suspending activities in the Greater German Reich, the ONT survived in Hungary until the end of World War II. The Order went underground in Vienna after 1945. In 1958 a former Waffen-SS lieutenant, Rudolf Mund, contacted the remnant initiates and became Prior of the Order in 1979. Rudolf Mund also authored biographies of Lanz and Wiligut. (Goodrick-Clarke 1985, pp. 119, 122)
The Germanenorden {Germanic or Teutonic Order, not to be confused with the medieval German Order of the Teutonic Knights} was a völkischsecret society inspired by List. Theodor Fritsch and German occultists Philipp Stauff {who held office in the List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden’s first leader} chartered the Order in Berlin in 1912. Germanenorden was a clandestine organization attracted the hierarchical establishment of German high society, operating as a sister organization to the mainstream Reichshammerbund.
The Teutonic Order also used as its crest a swastika and operated under a degree structure similar to Masonic Rites. The Germanenorden politically fractured into two groups in 1916 during World War I. Eberhard von Brockhusen became the Grand Master of the traditional Germanenorden. Hermann Pohl, who had held Office as the order’s Chancellor, chartered a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the HolyGrail.
Rudolf von Sebottendorff was an affluent socialite and occultist who joined the Germanenorden under the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. Sebottendorff was a Freemason and a practitioner of Theosophy and astrology; he was also an enthusiast of List and Lanz von Liebenfels’ writings. Convinced that European and Tibetan mystical systems shared an Aryan racial root, the Order’s runic lore mesmerized Sebottendorff who became the Master of the Walvater Order’s Bavarian province in 1917. In Bavaria, Sebottendorff increased membership from an estimated hundred in 1917 to 1500 initiates by the autumn of the following year.
The Ahnenerbe was a Volksgenosse organization that propagandized itself as a “study society for Intellectual Ancient History.” {Kater, Michael; Das “Ahnenerbe” der SS 1935–1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kultur-politik des Dritten Reiches, Munich 1997} Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré chartered the society on July 1, 1935. The function of the Ahnenerbe was to validate the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race and promulgate the published research of the Guido Von List Society, later to conduct experiments and research into eugenics, and conduct archaeological expositions proving that prehistoric and mythic Teutonic races once acting as custodians of the Invisible Schools.
Himmler was appointed as the superintendent of the Ahnenerbe and Wirth the president. Wolfram Sievers was installed as Reichsgeschäftsführer, or General Secretary, of the Ahnenerbe, by Himmler. Wirth resigned from the society at the beginning of 1937. On 1 February 1937, Dr. Walther Wüst was appointed the new president of Ahnenerbe. The organization was assimilated into the greater Nazi Schutzstaffel, the SS, in January of 1939. The Institut für Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung {“Institute for Military Scientific Research”}, conducted extensive medical and scientific research using human subjects most of them interned in concentration camps, became attached to the Ahnenerbe during the Third Reich. It was managed by Wolfram Sievers on the orders of Himmler, who appointed himdirector.
The Thule Society, (German: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum {“Study Group forGermanic Antiquity”}, was a German occult Volksgenosse group chartered at Munich, named after a mythical Teutonic country from Greek legend. The Thule Society originated as a Germanic study group established by Walter Neuhaus, a wounded World War I veteran and art student from Berlin who became a caretaker of pedigrees for the Germanenorden. In 1917, Neuhaus relocated to Munich; and the Thule-Gesellschaft was designed to be a cover-name for the Munich faction of the Germanenorden, but this design transpired differently due to schism.
In 1918, Neuhaus was contacted von Sebottendorff and the two became acquaintances in a recruitment campaign. Sebottendorff eventually adopted Neuhaus’s Thule Society as acover-name for his Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater at its formal dedication on 18 August 1918. The occult focus of Thule-Gesellschaft concerned the mythic origins of the Aryan race. ‘Thule’ (Greek: Θούλη) was a land located by Greco-Roman geographers in the furthest northern provinces. “Ultima Thule” (Latin: “most distant Thule”) is cited by the Roman poet Virgil in his pastoral poems called the Georgics. The Society was dedicated to the triune god Walvater, identified with Wotan in triuneform.
Von Sebottendorff reported that “Thule members were the people to whom Hitler first turned, and who first allied themselves with Hitler. The armanent of the coming Fuhrer consisted-besides the Thule Society itself – of the Deutscher Arbeiterverein, founded in the Thule by Brother Karl Harrer at Munich, and the Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei, headed there by Hans Georg Grassinger, whose organ was the Munchener Beobachter, later the Volkischer Beobachter. From these three sources Hitler created the Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei.” (“Before Hitler Came: The early years of the National Socialist movement” Sebottendorff, 1933)
They identified Ultima Thule, as the capital of ancient Hyperborea, as a lost ancient landmass in the farthest reaches of the north; near Greenland or Iceland. Such ideology derived from speculation by Ignatius L. Donnelly that a lost landmass had once existed in the Atlantic, and that it was the home of the Aryan race, a theory he supported by reference to the distribution of swastika motifs. This theory correlates with Plato’s Atlantis, a theory further developed by Madame Blavatsky.
In April 1919, during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Thule Society members were accused of trying to infiltrate and overthrow the Communist government. On 26 April, the Soviet government in Munich raided the Society’s premises and took seven of its members into custody, executing them 30 April. Amongst members executed were Walter Neuhaus and four social aristocrats including, Countess Heila von Westarp, a young woman who functioned as the groups secretary, and Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. (Goodrick-Clarke 1985, p. 147)
On 5 January 1919 locksmith Anton Drexler, who had developed connections in the Thule Society and socialist labor movements in Munich, established the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), or German Workers’ Party with the Thule Society’s Karl Harrer. Adolf Hitler joined the party in the same year. By the end of February 1920, the DAP had been reconstituted as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Dietrich Bronder {Bevor Hitler kam, 1964} alleged that other members of the Thule became prominent in Nazi Germany: his roll call includes Dietrich Eckhart {who coached Hitler on hisoratory skills and had Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf to him} including Gottfried Feder, Hans Frank, Hermann Göring, Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg.
We trace the origin of the National Socialist rune back through the emblems of the Germanenorden and ultimately to Guido von List. Whatever form the swastika was used as; be it in National Socialist regalia, as military talismans and amulets carried by soldiers, or as state insignias on flags and banners, the esoteric meaning remained the same. Blavatsky and National Socialists see the swastika as a talisman of regeneration and creation. Initiation into the secrets of the swastika by National Socialists unlocked the psychic, and physiological ‘old-Aryan sexual religion’ and a mystical cosmogony. For the first time initiates experienced the immortality of the soul, reincarnation and its karmic determination. All over Germany, and Europe for almost two decades, hung the sign of the mystical destiny of racial memory.
A mystic ritual of initiation into one of the schools of Invisible College describes the pageantry and syncretism of music, light, and spiritual regeneration:
“The ceremony began with soft harmonium music, while the brothers sang the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Wagner’s Tannhiiuser. The ritual commenced in candlelight with brothers making the sign of the swastika and the Master reciprocating. Then the blindfolded novices, clad in pilgrimage mantles, were ushered by the Master of Ceremonies into the room. Here the Master told them of the Order’s Ario-Germanic and aristocratic Weltanschauung, before the Bard lit the sacred flame in the grove and the novices were divested of their mantles and blindfolds. At this point the Master seized Wotan’s spear and held it before him, while the two Knights crossed their swords upon it. A series of calls and responses, accompanied by music from LiJhengrin, completed the oath of the novices. Their consecration followed with cries from the ‘forest elves’ as the new brothers were led into the grove of the Grail around the Bard’s sacred flame. With the ritual personifying lodge officers as archetypal figures in Germanic mythology, this ceremonial must have exercised a potent influence on the candidates.”
