Demon Drones - on the mediums of the Magical Current of Nazism - part 2

In the first post of this series we spoke about connecting the dots between the knowledge gained in the Inner Library and historical facts and events. Both sides of the mirror - inner and outer realms - hold one half of the truth. Only if we join them together can we understand how a current of energy unfolds all the way from Kether to Malkuth.

We then turned to look at two principle catalysts of the magical current of Nazism who are still little known outside of rightwing esoteric or runic circles today, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz. While their work and lives had major influences on the later mythology of Nazism I am convinced that they - like many others who followed - were much more instruments than active protagonists in the magical events that unfolded from 1933 onwards...

In order to conclude this highly abbreviated list of 'gates' for this destructive current to come through let's take a look at two further people...

• Karl Maria Wiligut (1866-1946): Wiligut has been dubbed as the 'Rasputin of Himmler' - a rather lurid title that still paints a fair impression of the strong and continuos influence he had on Himmler. Interestingly by the time Wiligut was introduced to Himmler in 1933 he had already completed most of his working life. At this point Wiligut was 67 of age and had been retired from a highly decorated military career in Austria for 14 years. It was only after his retirement that he intensified his occult studies and became a member of Lanz' previously mentioned 'Ordo Novi Templi'. The interesting aspect about Wiligut - or 'Weisthor' as was his chosen name once he joined the SS - is that he claimed to have direct access to the ancestral memories of his ancient family, the Wiligotis. Thus Weisthor didn't had the need to research any of his claims about primeval events on the Germanic land but directly accessed them in trance via his blood-memory. Well, luckily Wiligut - because such a feature comes handy if no scientific proves at all can be found for your claims: e.g. that Germans didn't descend from apes but from ethereal spiritual beings that descended upon Earth high in the North, that natural disasters led to a destruction of their ancient civilization which in turn forced these pure 'Ur-Race' to migrate South and East where they helped to create the civilizations of Ancient India, Egypt, the Greek and later on the Roman empire... Really? However, marking Wiligut as a complete fraud would oversimplify things and not do justice to the records we can still access today about his activities. E.g. we know about an event when he fell into trance sitting in the back of an SS-car right next to Heinrich Himmler. The car was forced to stop at roadside and Wiligut jumped out still deep in trace. He ran off into the fields, Himmler and the other SS-men right behind him. At a remote point in the middle of nowhere he stopped and started to dig up the ground with his hands. An archeological dig was ordered at this point and indeed relicts of an ancient settlement were found underground... It were events like these that gained Wiligut significant influence over Himmler and made him the person to not only be allowed to design the death-head-ring of the SS but also to be closely linked to the annexation and rebuilding of the Wewelsburg into a formal education and ritual castle of the black SS order. Until today Wiligut remains one of the most arcane persons that deeply influenced the mythology of Nazism. Facts like his committal and incapacitation into an Austrian mental home for several years in Austria stand in stark contrast to the significant role he played in later years as Himmler's personal consultant and a high ranking SS officer.      

• Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945): if we came close to the periphery of the occult centre of Nazism with exploring Weisthor we are entering its epicenter with the figure of Heinrich Himmler. In stark contrast to the other three 'gates of the current' we looked at before Himmler is one of the most well known figures to be responsible for designing, leading and implementing the horrors of the WWII. Holding the highest rank in the SS order as 'Reichsführer' Himmler was the most prominent Nazi leader next to Hitler and less than half a dozen other party executives. To give you somewhat of an understanding of the scope of his responsibility let's quote Wikipedia directly: "As overseer of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (literally: task forces, often used as killing squads), Himmler coordinated the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live, including homosexuals, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, and members of the Confessing Church. Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender both Germany and himself to the Western Allies if he were spared prosecution. After being arrested by British forces on 22 May 1945, he committed suicide the following day before he could be questioned." However, Himmler not only was the engineer of the horrors of the Holocaust and concentration camps, he was also the central gate for all occult influences that fed the current of Nazism. The main medium to focus his efforts on and through which he aimed to 'transform' German society was his black order of the SS or Schutzstaffel. We know from historic evidence that Himmler saw much more in the SS than just a paramilitary organization. For him the SS was directly linked to the tradition of medieval orders of knights and warrior monks and its mission was deeply rooted in metaphysical grounds. Comparing the SS to Catharism - and following the leads of Otto Rahn in doing so - Himmler was convinced of the essential human-breeding ('menschenzüchterische') responsibility of his order and saw a strong requirement to train new members as thoroughly on metaphysics and ideology as on war tactics (Sünner, p.78). The central poles of Himmler's SS order were clan and ancestral cults as well as the pre-Christian world of the Northern Gods and runic lore. In order to mold these elements into a consistent ideology and doctrine Northern myths such as the Icelandic Sagas, the Edda, the story of King Arthur and the Nibelungs were ruthlessly exploited, intentionally simplified, bended and broken in order to fit the artificial ideology of occult Nazism. What is most startling about this, however, is Himmler's strangely complex character itself: The same man that visited a concentration camp to order execution of hundreds of captives in a single blow, that ordered that the campaign into the East to kill at least 30 million inhabitants, would sit down a few hours later to consider subtle details of the rituals and regalia of the SS order, write detailed letters about the design of the visitor centre for site of a Germanic worship or involve himself patiently into the preparation for sanctification games during Germanic holidays. I guess looking closely at Heinrich Himmler, his work and particular way of thinking teaches us one of the most scary insights to be understood: If our convictions are deeply rooted enough, if the needle of our faith is pointing into a single direction stable enough - we will turn blind to the gap between the real-life impact of our actions and the higher goals we pursue. Both deepest cruelty and sincerest love can co-exist, reside side by side in a heart that has turned black in the fires of faith. Belief is the most dangerous power we humans can harvest - or be harvested by. 

I titled this post series 'demon drones' - aiming at a better understanding of the demonic forces that drove the current of Nazism as well as the role some of the leading occult protagonists played in setting it free. In a hive a drone's main function is to be ready to fertilize a receptive queen. Maybe there is something we can learn from drones about the main function of the four people described above? Maybe their purpose was to fertilize a current that was ready to come through, to emerge from the inner realms and disrupt and destroy what had been established before. Maybe their individual actions were small to the extent of being meaningless - like burying bottles in the shape of a swastika in the ashes of a fire... Yet all of them had a place, a single mark to leave for others to follow - until the rivulet turned into a river and the river into a stream. Maybe they all added one drop of water but the stream buried 50 to 70 million people who all had their own dreams of marriage, of children and leading a happy life.

So let's not fool ourselves. Wether we add a single drop or unscrew a whole fire hoarse we all have a choice. Always. We know it from the bold people who resisted the Nazis, who died in revolt and Hitler's failed assassination attempts. It is what sets us apart from all other beings: we are given the power to believe and now we must struggle to control it. Himmler and his occult entourage followed their own faith - until it had completely swallowed them, eaten them alive and only left their walking bodies, their empty shells - unable to recognize the true impact of their actions, numbed icons of fascism.

So if we all have a drop of water to add - which current do we chose?

Demon Drones - on the mediums of the Magical Current of Nazism - part 1

Since I began to study the magical roots of the Nazis in the Inner Library a lot of understanding and insight has come through. Earlier I tried to summarize the essential flow and the unfolding of demonic energy from Malkuth to Kether in my report 'The Bridge'.

What I learned since then, however, is how to align this inner perspective with historical facts. Where the Inner Library holds the wisdom, the inner patterns or essence of history it is our job as humans to reconnect this inner wisdom with the actual events that took place on the material realm... In the inner realms we are given keys to doors that patiently wait for us on the outer realms. It is our job to bridge these worlds and bring both together again. Only then can we look into the mirror from both sides.

For the magical current of the Nazis that means identifying the actual people and places who acted as catalysts or mediums for the demonic energies to come through and materialize. Who was it that threw the first stone and started the (magical) avalanche whose path of destruction we still can see on the German lands today? Whose work provided the dry straw waiting silently for the first sparks to fall and let the world go up in flames?

Well, I guess we all will argue that unfolding an avalanche like WWII takes a lot of stones to be thrown - or a lot of preconditions to align. That is certainly true. There are many European currents of the 19th and even 18th century that lead up to the events emerging around 1900 in Austria and Germany: industrialization, urbanization, democratization and individualization to name just a few. The rise of science and the decline of the church, the emergence of political parties, the fear of communism and rulership of the mob amongst broad layers of society as well as the loss of collective myths, traditions and belief system in exchange for enlightenment, rationale insights and urban 'modern' lifestyles... 

Goodrick-Clarke's 'The Occult Roots of Nazism' paints the full picture of the time and trends that laid the fundament for the Nazis to emerge and build on it. Overflowing with details and quotes I can only recommend his book to anyone interested - as well as Rüdiger Sünner's 'Schwarze Sonne' for all German speakers which is slightly more accessible.    

However, even with all these broad currents carrying entire nations towards WWI and WWII a few people stand out from a magical perspective. Interestingly enough these people tend to be relatively unknown still. Even many Germans - who all spend several years in history classes during elementary school and college to go through the horrors of the Nazi regime repeatedly - wouldn't know these names. And if the occult roots of Nazism have been kept under a blanket of silence for many decades we will understand why once we took a closer look at them: It is so much easier to perceive Nazis as merciless monsters that emerged from the dark of time and were thrown back into it after 1945 than to perceive them as human beings with hearts and minds and hopes like all of us, but who were completely led astray by something much bigger and more concealed than all their magical efforts.

If anything these people acted as 'demon drones' - thinking of themselves as protagonists in a giant play to unfold - where in reality the currents they released was riptides carrying others and themselves like leaves and out into the open sea...

• Guido von List (1848–1919): From what I know it's Guido von List and his works where we first come across the living pulse of what should turn into the mythology of Nazism during later years. What is most interesting is that von List's occult studies all started with a deep appreciation and passion for remote nature: What was supposed to lay the fundament for the mass destruction of entire nations and cities was first encountered in the open forests and fields of Austria... Far from civilization and cities, irrespective of sunshine or rain, snow or storm, on every occasion von List is roaming through the deep forests of Austria in search of forgotten cult places, ancient ruins and mystical contact with his supposedly Germanic ancestors. It's only over time that his remote excursions extend into ritual gatherings joined by friends and like-minded. During a rite at the pagan ruins of Carnuntum wine bottles are buried in the form of a swastika below the ashes of a fire - evoking the 'fire curl' of the god Mundelföri. And von List summons the old gods to return from Valhalla once new wars are raising against the abhorred Romans... It is von List who also publishes the book 'Secret of the Runes' that should become a highly influential source of so called runic and Germanic lore. Just shortly before his death von List frighteningly augurs a new leader to arise even before 1932: "The powerful one from above (...), a divine-mental power source whose onset will be like a spring storm after all the horrors of the present day which we have to experience and which will chase away all the bleak demonic clouds of winter."  (Sünner, p.16, transl. by Acher)

• Adolf Lanz (1874-1954): A friend of Guido von List and equally convinced about a so called 'Aryan-Germanic' reincarnation the Austrian mystic Adolf Lanz plays another key role in contributing both to the body of thought as well as the emerging organization of Aryan occult and racist currents in Austria and Germany. After a short stint as a monk he starts publishing as a freelance 'Mythenforscher' (myth researcher) under the name of Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels. Just like with von List we find a stark tendency in his writings to reduce multidimensional, complex mythical narrations to a superficial yet artificially clear meaning. Deep fractures towards historic as well as scientific facts are naively neglected and overlooked in order to force a molding of ideas, pseudo-historic events and painfully reduced mythical structures to comply and support a preconceived vision of Aryan domination in ancient times. And just as von List's later works Lanz' writings are quickly moving from a resurgence of ancient Germanic gods towards a call to war against the perceived enemies that are blamed to have deformed and ultimately buried the old traditions in the first place. What started as an evocation of gods long asleep increasingly turns into a cry of war - for hate and rage seem to be the seals of the currents awoken... In 1907 Lanz purchases a castle at the river Donau and founds the 'Orden des Neuen Tempel' (order of the new temple). The central theme around which this newly founded temple revolves is the one of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail. And it's here on castle Werfenstein that in a specially prepared temple room self-written rituals are performed, formulas of conjuration are recited and the old gods are invoked in order to wipe out all inferior peoples and enemies... And even though WWII and the founding of the Nazi party is still years away in Lanz' writings form his magazine 'Ostara' we can already find frightening details about how this 'divine wipe out' should best happen: the reader comes across suggestions for forced deportations, castrations, sterilizations, incinerations as well as 'Zuchtmutterklöster' (breeding-mother-monasteries') - all of which should be turned into deadly reality by the Nazis two decades later.   

:: continue with part 2 ::

Abusing Saturn - A Study on the Magical Current of the Nazis

Recently I shared some thoughts about the disproportionally strong Saturnian influence on German Magic over the last century. In particular I stumbled across the realization how severely the Second WorldWar and the Nazi philosophy had influenced not only the German approach to magic but also the German land itself. 

In essence it was a single thought that continuously came back to me...

"Just think of the photos from the bombed cities in Dresden, Munich, Berlin, etc. What if on a spiritual level the rebuilding has never been completed - and all the darkness of these years is still stuck within the land? How much further healing work will it take to restore this country back to the beauty it deserves? "

So over recent weeks I set out to learn more about the state of the German land from a magical perspective. While this work is still ongoing - and will be for a longer while - I also dug in to better understand what exactly had happened during WWII from a magical point of view...

With the kind help of Josephine's works I managed to study on the subject in the Inner Library. That was an intense experience, quite unexpected as so often when we travel outside of our own time and realm... On return I followed up with a Tarot reading and managed to understand the flow the actual energies at work took from from being an initial spark, a raw idea to becoming fully materialized in the horrors we all know about.

After some consideration I decided to make all the knowledge I received public. Of course it may very well be that it is of personal use to myself only - in which case I hope the account can still inspire your own magical investigations. At the same time, however, it might be that some of this information is relevant beyond my personal realm. In which case I hope it can help to deepen our joint understanding as magicians of the forces we can unleash - while miserably failing at understanding their true dynamic and nature.

I called this account 'The Bridge'. Because this is what the magical current of the Nazis essentially established. A bridge between two realms that just worked slightly different from what they had hoped for. As so often in life and magic - the devil is in the detail.

::

Note: as with all the new pages on myoccultcircle.com you can also download the article as a PDF for more convenient offline reading.

Saturnian vs. Venusian Magic

Looking back into 2011 there is a single unexpected realization that stands out for me. It is the stark contrast in most basic approaches to magic between German and British magic over the last century at least. 

Having been brought up in the tradition of German magic it took me more than a decade to realize this simple fact: Where much of British magic revolves around a central pole of workings on the inner realms and bringing through of inner contacts we almost find a complete absence of this concept in the German language tradition.

Let me illustrate this point more clearly: within the works of Dion Fortune, W.G. Gray, Gareth Knight, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and certainly Josephine McCarthy we find a concentration on inner works that is nowhere to be encountered in German magic during the last 100 years. What represents at least one of the core elements in one culture's magical tradition is completely absent in the other. Where in British magic the actual physical ritual only seems to be an expression of inner magic which requires manifestation on the outer realms - it is the most basic physical building block in the world where I come from. 

Mistaking the physical ritual for the actual work you set out to do as a magician is no small mistake to make. And clearly German magicians didn't get caught in this trap entirely. Just like in the British magic literature from 1900 until today we also find in German books long and elaborated explanations of the physical, astral and mental realms (or whichever names the author chose to give them) and how the work of the mage can take effect on and influence all three levels.

However, traveling and working on the inner realms in the language of the inner realms is nothing I ever came across in German magic. Even Pathworking never really made it into the educational books of the tradition I come from. Instead building up your tratak skills, bending candle flames by willpower, torturing your eyes until you see a glimmering hint of an aura and spending countless hours painting pentagrams into the dark of a room with the brush of your index finger are the bricks and mortar laid by a solid German Zelator instead...   

Where is the magic - in controlling the solid
or evoking the subtle?

While all the latter exercises are great - and very common Golden Dawn related - training for an aspiring magician they run an essential risk if learned in isolation. And that is to mistake the tracks you are hunting for the actual animal. 

The risk is to become so self-obsessed with the actual training, with the skills you gain, the mental power they yield and the (self-)control you continuously expand that you start to mistake these powers for the goal of magic itself. The risk is to become so self-absorbed with these early yet important stages of magic that you never move on. Because at some point all the hours you sat quietly in your asana, all the magical techniques you taught yourself, all the mechanisms of astral control you perfected, they turn into metal plates on the armor you created for yourself - which now keep from interacting with the living. 

"The magician uses his faith like the surgeon his scalpel." Many German fellow magicians will have grown up with this (in)famous axiom just like yours truly. Positioning total conscious control as the ultimate goal of the magical process seemed like the only possible road ahead... However, this short saying speaks volumes about the technical approach German magic takes on working with spiritual beings still today. The inner or spiritual realm has been degraded to a hidden bypass for affecting changes on the material realm. It has lost any value or interest in itself, becoming nothing but a medium to change matter in accordance with one's will. 

To me - having been brought up in this tradition magically - there is no difference to the way the scientists treat a monkey in a box, molecules in matter or brain waves of a patient from the way such Saturnian mages treat beings on the inner realms. They thrive of and are driven by a scientific and highly analytical desire for knowledge and control over power. The danger, however, is that this type of magic easily turns into the equivalent of genetic engineering: Both spirits and matter lose their souls, their dignitiy as living beings and the basic right to self-determine their course of actions and way of lives. As magicians of this type we will constantly expand our knowledge and power, and yet always remain utterly isolated. (And no wonder we will need some proper sex magick in the higher degrees to come back to life...)

But let's return to the initial question. Why is it that the magic that emerged from the German circles of Mussallam, Quintscher, Bardon, Gregorius, Spießberger, Duval and ultimately Frater U.D. almost completely lost its inner sight and contact? Why exactly is it that the extensive corpus of German language magic - unpublished even in German still in large parts - is of such an extraordinary technical or Saturnian approach to ritual magic? 

Well, let's use our thinking like a scalpel - or sawed off shotgun to be more honest - and throw out a few hypothesis: 

• It's not only since Goethe that the story of Faust represents the archetype of any magician in German collective consciousness. The uncompromising, relentless strive for knowledge and insight stands as the central motive of the father figure of many German magicians who followed Faust.
• 1928 Eugen Grosche (Gregor A. Gregorius) founded the most influential German speaking magical lodge to this date, Fraternitas Saturnis. Still going mostly unrecognized and overshadowed by the O.T.O in English speaking countries this lodge became the home and breeding ground for most of the German magical literature to be published in the decades to come. As the name of the lodge indicates its members are united by a strictly Saturnian approach to magic (even though the planet Saturn finds its own interpretation and occult analysis in their works).
• Since the early late 19th century we can see an unbroken chain of important women in English magic. However, here is a distinct and embarrassing absence of woman in the German language magical tradition. In the entire era before the 1970s there is not a single native woman to be found who would have left a mark on magic in Germany, Austria or Switzerland.
• From a spiritual point of view the Second World War left Germany as destroyed and concaved on the inner realms as its bombed cities on the surface. Not only was the German Jewish tradition completely irrecoverably and utterly destroyed but so were most of the occult currents that had flown openly in the short period from the late 19th century to the 1930s. It's not unlikely that many inner contacts retreated from the land after this devastating experience. 

Clearly there are many more elements that could be called out here. Just think of the general reputation of Germans as engineers. Maybe we just carried on with what we knew best when entering the inner realms? 

May this as it be; it is the last of the bullet point above that gives me the creeps... Just think of the photos from the bombed cities in Dresden, Munich, Berlin, etc. What if on a spiritual level the rebuilding has never been completed - and all the darkness of these years is still stuck within the land? How much further healing work will it take to restore this country back to the beauty it deserves? 

Well, I always like to close on a positive note. So maybe a first small step away from an entirely Saturnian approach to magic could look like this? Each time we engage in magic we have a choice. We can continue to take a Saturnian approach - just like we might be used to as German magicians. Or we can do something new and chose its opposite; for lack of a better word let's call it Venusian. 

As so often in life it's the bridge between these two poles that will allow new and living forces to come through...