Dispelling the Nazi curse on Germanic Paganism

by John C. Mayer, M.A.

I am a Germanic Wiccan. That does not mean that I am a fascist or a racist. Like other Pagans called to a Germanic path, I am tired of having to deal with the effects several common misconceptions about my tradition despite the dramatic growth Paganism in the fifty years since the end of the second world war.

Historically and mythologically Nazism wasn't Pagan. Before it can be understood how the NAZI phenomenon originated and why it is still confused with Germanic Paganism, it is necessary to examine the European zeitgeist (world views) of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1800 the European continent had experienced centuries of religious intolerance which lead to the slaughter of countless alleged "heretics," the debasement of women to the status of chattel, and rampant anti-Semitism since the time of the crusades. By the time of the Protestant reformation, it was a common belief among white European Christians that they has replaced the Jews as "God's Chosen People". As new lands were discovered in the fifteenth century, this ideology lead to the displacement and all out slaughter of countless native peoples with the colonization of Asia, Africa, and especially the Americas.

The nineteenth century was a period of tremendous changes. The bloody revolution in France, and the Napoleonic wars which followed, were but the first of many political upheavals which threatened to topple a world order to which so many had become comfortable. Monarchy began to give way to democracy, and several new political and social movements spread throughout the western world including Socialism, Anarchism, Feminism, and organized labor. The overall feelings of fear and uncertainty which marked this period in history were further complicated by the discoveries of modern science and the publication of the Theory of Evolution which even threatened the validity of Judeo-Christian faith. Additionally, Europe's rapid industrialization and the rise of commercialism was threatening to destroy both small business based urban economies and the centuries-old rural way of life.

The Romantic movement of the early 1800's was but one of many reactions to these socio-political changes. Romanticism taught that humanity's suffering stemmed from the corruption of civilized society and that only through a return to the sanctity of nature could the human race redeem itself. An important influence of this movement was a renewed interest in "pre-civilized" and rural mythologies which was also fostered by the increased exploration of far off exotic lands and the new science of archeology. Millennial thinking was yet another reaction to the uncertainties of the period with various individuals and groups predicting both cataclysms and new ages occurring as the year 2000 approached. Finally, as in other periods of tremendous change, occultism and an interest in Eastern philosophies increased as many attempted to find replacements for those conventional religious beliefs which no longer felt valid. In America, Spiritualists attempted to contact the spirits of the dead while many Europeans embarked in pilgrimages to such places as India and Tibet.

Probably the most famous spiritual visitor to the Orient was the Russian-born mystic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. As the founder of the Theosophical movement, Blavatsky promoted a mixture of both Eastern and Western Occult philosophies which led to a revitalized interest in such subjects as reincarnation and astrology. In her book The Secrete Doctrine she claimed to have visited a Tibetan monastery where she was shown a secret text which revealed both the mysteries of the universe and the destiny of the human race. According to Blavatsky, the cosmos was engaged in a cyclical process of creation and destruction which involved progressions through states of chaos, base matter, and darkness evolving into a state of spirit, light and harmony. Blavatsky's book discussed a universe which developed throgh cycles marked by seven stages of cosmic creation, each with its own corresponding stage of human evolution called a "root race." Blavatsky believed that the current stage in human evolution, the Aryan root race marked a pivotal point where collective consciousness shifted away from material corruption to a state of spiritual enlightenment. The symbol Blavatsky linked to this stage in humanity's development was that of the swastika which was frequently used as decoration on the covers of Theosophical publications in Europe and America.

The swastika was a popular spiritual symbol found throughout Europe, Asia, The Near East, and even the Americas. It was associated with the sun, the life-force, cyclical existence, good luck, and enlightenment. In Northern Europe, the swastika decorated sword hilts for luck in battle, and cremation urns as symbolic of the transformative powers of fire. This symbol was also found decorating the cover of Rudyard Kiplings's book, Stories of India and during the first world war it became the logo for the British War Savings Committee which sold defense bonds. In the 1930's it became a popular symbol for the neo-Druidic movement, and swastika kilt pins were popular in Scotland, based on the inscriptions found in a Pictish cave. Swastika jewelry was also popular in the United States, and in the 1920's the Swastika Realty Company sold houses in Denver. As a good luck charm, this symbol played a similar role that of rabbits feet, quartz crystals, and in recent times angels.

Nineteenth century Germany was a nation in search of itself. For centuries a loose confederation of independent states, by 1871 it had quickly gravitated toward a unified state seeking its place among the great world powers. German nationalism began in the late eighteenth century with the pre-romantic Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement which had expressed the common identity of all Germans as evidenced by common themes in art, folk-music, customs and literature. Perhaps as an expression of the collective desire for stability in an era of growing uncertainty, a number of strong Pan-Germanic nationalist Volkish movements developed in the years immediately following the Napoleonic wars. The popular German philosopher Georg Hegel, in his doctrine of the "Collective Mind" stated that history existed as an series of developments toward a perfect "Absolute Idea", and that the evolution of the human spirit could be illustrated best by the achievements of people of Germanic ancestry (citing such examples as Theodric, Charlemagne, Martin Luther, and Frederick the Great). According to Hegel, the "Absolute" or "Whole," the true reality, was best represented by the German state and that its purest form was Prussia under the absolute Hohenzollern monarchy. In Hegel's philosophy, which served as the basis for both Bismark's German empire and the later NAZI regime, the function of the individual was in the maintenance of the independence and sovereignty of his/her native state and, if necessary, through the sacrifice of war. Nations struggled against one another for survival in the same manner as species did in an eco-system and therefore their actions could not be judged legally or morally.

The New German state sought its own mythology in the legends of its pre and post Christian past. The Grimm Brothers' collection of German folktales became an immediate best seller as did Jacob Grimm's four Volume work, Teutonic Mythology.

The new mythology reached its zenith with the composition of Richard Wagner's operas Der Ring des Nibelungens and the medieval tale Parzival In the four part Ring cycle, Wagner created a truly modern myth combining the stories found in the Icelandic Eddas with the medieval Saga of the Volsungs and the collection of German tales called the Nibelungenlied. These operas also contain the very Christian themes of guilt and self sacrifice for a greater good which appealed strongly to their Victorian audience.

One of the greatest influences on the doctrines of Nazism were the new sciences of genetics and evolution as applied to the human species. As early as 1853, a paper titled Essay on the inequality of the Human Races was published in France by the biologist Joseph Arthur. In the 1860's, Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton was the first to popularize the ideas of eugenics and "racial hygiene" which spread quickly throughout Europe and the United states. By the end of the century many eugenicists advocated measures for the protection of race such as forced sterilization of alcoholics, tuberculosis victims, syphilitics, bankrupts, and the mentally retarded, as well as financial bonuses for each child produced by "persons of worth." In the 1930's, the cover of a British eugenicist journal The Superman bore the image of the swastika.

In Germany, a biological justification for racial purity and white supremacy was popularized by the physician turned zoologist Ernst Haeckel. In 1862, Haeckel began to lecture throughout Germany on the Theory of Evolution which he believed to represent a new philosophy of mankind. He called this new philosophy Monism in order to distinguish it from the dualistic belief systems which separated humanity from nature and the animal kingdom. According to Haekel's philosophy, humans were highly developed animals which possessed no soul or divine sanction. Because the human race was simply a part of nature, human relationships, including the interactions of nations and states, were subject to the same laws of "survival of the fittest" that governed the development of biological organisms. Haeckel, like his philosophical predecessor Hegel, believed Germany to be a superior culture and that its survival was dependent on the maintenance of its individuality. To this end, he advocated the separation of humanity into separate groups according to variables such as color and intelligence. He theorized that the greatest racial differences existed between Germans and Africans, especially Bushmen and Pygmies. This belief reflected the illustrations found in many Victorian textbooks on evolution which showed the drawing of an ape, followed by one of a black African, and lastly, a well-groomed white male European.

Haeckel believed that free-will was detrimental to both nation and race, hence he advocated an education system which emphasized science, physical fitness and submission to group authority. The individual, according to Haeckel, was no more important than the single cell, thousands of which might be sacrificed daily for the survival of the organism. In 1906, Haeckel founded an organization called The Monist League whose membership included eugenicists, biologists, theologians, literary figures, politicians, and sociologists. In five years this organization listed over six thousand members in forty two cities in both Germany and Austria. Members of this league included the Nobel prize winning chemist William Ostwald, the Volkish anthropologist Otto Ammon who once declared that "Darwinism must become the new religion of Germany", Alexander Plotz who advocated a national board to screen all would-be parents, and Theodore Fritsch who proposed the building of selective-breeding communities. After the first world war, Fritsch became the ideological guide of a youth movement called Artamarzen after an alleged "Aryan" deity. Among the charter members of this organization were Rudolph Hess and Heinrich Himmler.

Ernst Haeckel was the first theorist to use the term Aryan in a racist context. In his day, the term had been utilized by linguists as the name for the theoretical root language for all Indo-European tongues. Haekel used these theories of language to strengthen his arguments by stating that the "Mongrelized" languages which had theoretically developed from "Aryan" paralleled the degeneration of a pure Caucasian race caused by inter-marriage' with non-Aryan peoples. (The actual Aryans were a collection of Indo-European tribes which invaded Northern India in the second Millennium BCE. The Indo-Europeans were known to have inter-married with the various peoples they encountered during their expansions well before the time of the "Aryan" invasions.). Haeckel's writings were the scientific inspiration for the spiritualized racism of Madame Blavatsky.

As many Europeans sought justification for their racial and political beliefs in science, so others looked to occult spirituality. Theosophy spread quickly throughout Europe in the 1890's and early 1900's along with many other occult philosophies. At the turn of the century Theosophical doctrines were combined with Volkish nationalism to form a new racist occultism called Ariosophy, whose origins can be traced to Austria in the years following German unification. Due to the political tensions of this period, including the effects of the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, the Germans living in the Austrian empire were excluded from the new Germany and were feeling alienated in an environment of growing Slavic influence. German cultural societies began to form in Austria, the largest of which was the Germanan Bund (German Federation) whose membership exceeded one hundred thousand. Activities in these societies, designed to promote cultural unity, included lectures on history and mythology, song festivals, and elaborate pageants celebrating various historical events. The first of the Great Ariosophists and a celebrity amongst these organizations was the Austrian mystic Guido Von List.

Guido Karl Anton List was a native of Vienna, born in 1848 and the son of a prosperous leather merchant. He originally worked in his family business while pursuing in his spare time an interest in mountaineering and local folklore. In the 1870's he began to pursue a career as a writer, first in mountaineering journals and later in several of the volkish newspapers which were becoming popular at the time. Over the next twenty years List expanded his talents to the writing of folklore anthologies, novels, poetry, and drama. His popularity among pan-German societies was cemented with the 1881 publication of his historical novel Carnuntum about the cultural struggle of native Germans against the Romans in the 4th century C.E.. In 1902 List underwent surgery for cataracts and spent eleven months in virtual blindness. It is during this period that he claimed to have received inspirational visions into the secrets of the pre-Christian Runic alphabet. List created an eighteen character Rune-row (called the Arman Futhark) based upon a collection of obscure spells found in the Eddic poem; Havamal . This alphabet was claimed by List to be the original runes of the ancient Germans despite contradictory archeological evidence. In 1903 he submitted his ideas to the Imperial Academy of Sciences, which rejected his manuscript without comment. Despite this setback however, his theories on runeology and the geomancy of Austrian landmarks (also based upon his own psychic impressions) were welcomed without question by the same Volkish nationalists among whom he was already famous. Between 1903 and 1907 he began to use the noble title of "von" in his name, probably as an attempt to appeal to a more aristocratic audience. In 1908, von List published his most famous work The Secret of the Runes, which outlined his theories which linked the runes and other pre-Christian Germanic symbols, including the swastika, to the designs of medieval architecture and heraldry.

The publication of von List's "Secrets" led to the founding of two occult organizations; the Guido von List Society devoted to historical research, and the Arman Order which explored both magick and ritual. Von List's occultism was a mixture of Germanic revivalism, Blavatsky's Theosophy, and the Hermetic Arts. According to List, the magick and wisdom and magick of the Germanic god Wotan's cult was preserved by a class of priest kings called the Arman who became a secret underground movement after Europe's conversion to Christianity. The secrets of the Arman continued to exist in the various medieval chivalric orders (including the Knights Templar), the royal and noble houses of Europe, in alchemy, the secret societies of Rosecrucianism and Free Masonry, and in Cabalalism which he believed that the Jews had corrupted. Von List believed that the Arman possessed inherent psychic and magickal abilities which could be revived in their descendants who existed in the royal and noble families of Germanic ancestry, especially the Habsburgs whom he prophesied would someday rule over a renewed Germanic Empire. Before his death in 1919, Von List wrote that the great world war was the final chaos to take place before the rise of a new Germanic millennium.

It was from the work of Guido von List that the modern runic revival, which is stronger than ever today, originated. Though von List was rather anti-Christian in his writings and might even be classified by today's standards as Neo-Pagan, the most radical religious conversions made by his followers was from Catholicism to Protestantism. This was due to the Catholic Church's frequent appointment of Slavic priests to Austrian parishes whose membership were predominantly German. The dominant movements of Ariosophy in fact reflected an attempt to construct a Germanified form of Christianity rather than a revival of pre-Christian Paganism. In some cases Wotan and his brothers Vili and Ve were linked to the triune Christian god, but Christianity was regarded to be just as important to the spiritual evolution of the Aryan race as anything which preceded it.

Another important Ariosophical movement in the early twentieth century was created by the former Cistercian monk Georg Lanz, a self-stylized Austrian aristocrat who went by the title of "Lanz von Liebenfels". Von Liebenfels combined the racist science of Haeckel with the occultism of Blavatsky and von List to create a white supremacist religion whose ideologies are still being taught in such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. Christian duality (the struggle of light and dark, good and evil) according to von Liebenfels was the struggle for survival between the divine Aryan race and those of "untrue blood". In his belief-system called Theozoology, the Ario-Germans were the creation of the powers of spirit and light, and the biblical "fall of man" was symbolic of this race's interbreeding with a lesser species, specifically African Pygmies. According to von Liebenfels, the pre-Christian Pagan fertility cults were actually the attempts of inferior races to breed the perfect "love-pygmies" through race-mixing for the purpose of "deviant" sexual activity. One of the sources for this theory was the recent discovery of several Mesopotamian stone carvings which depicted creatures that were composites of both men and animals. Von Liebenfels, like von List, believed that the original Aryans possessed great magickal powers and that through racial segregation and selective breeding these powers could again be revived. The Crucifixion of Christ was believed by Von Liebenfels to have been symbolic of a non-Aryan conspiracy against such an attempt for Aryan purification in ancient times, and the crusades were likewise a movement of Aryan revival. Additionally, the legends of the quest for the Holy Grail were in the same fashion symbolic of the Aryan races struggle toward perfection. Von Liebenfels founded an organization called the Order of the New Templars which would serve as a model for Heinrich Himmler's SS. Von Liebenfels advocated, along with selective breeding, polygamy among genetically superior males, and the sterilization, enslavement, and elimination of persons deemed to be of undesirable stock. Though the membership of the New Templars never exceeded 300 brothers at any given time, and was eliminated by the NAZI Gestapo in 1942, its magazine Ostara was widely circulated throughout Germany and Austria and may even have been read by a young struggling artist by the name of Adolph Hitler.

List and Lanz's ideas spread from Austria to Germany and were incorporated in small organization which called itself the Germanorden.. The Germanorden existed as a germanized fraternal organization similar to Free Masonry whose members were required to undergo an intense racial purity examination prior to initiation (including examination by a phrenologist). This organization all but died out by the close of the first world war, except for a branch in Bavaria which developed into the now infamous Thule Society

The Thule society was founded in post-war Munich by the Germanorden member Rodolpf Glauer, who was yet another self-styled aristocrat who called himself "Baron Rudolph von Sebottendorff". Sebottendorff (Glauer) had traveled extensively through the Middle East in his youth and despite his ariosophical leanings never lost his interest in Sufi mysticism. The name "Thule" was originally adopted by his branch of the Germanorden to divert attention from its obvious right-wing activities in opposition to the Bavarian Socialist revolution of 1918. Thule's symbol was a curved armed swastika superimposed over a long dagger and its membership included many rich and influential Bavarians. Society members gathered at Thule's headquarters for such events as "music rehearsals" which were actually covers for counter-revolutionary activities against Munich's Bolshevik government. The Thule society in its heyday hid counter-revolutionaries from the socialist authorities, financed para-military groups, and helped in the stockpiling of weaponry. Following the successful coup against the Socialists. The Thule Society, contrary to the insinuations of later authors who would claim the existence of a Thule-Nazi occult conspiracy, gradually died out and was disbanded in 1925 due to lack of interest.

Thule did however, play a minor role in the founding of the Nazi party. In 1918, Sebottendorff attempted to extend the nationalist ideology of Thule to the working classes and entrusted Karl Harrer, a Munich sports writer, with the task of forming a worker's discussion group. This group, designed to lure workers away from Socialist activity, met weekly through the winter of that year with only three
to seven active members. Still its most active member, Anton Drexler, desired that this organization be formed into a new political party and on January 5, 1919, the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (The German Workers Party or DAP) was founded in the Furstenfelder Hof Tavern. Drexler was the party's first chairman and he quickly recruited members from the locomotive works where he was employed. Adolph Hitler first encountered the DAP when he was sent as an army spy to investigate the party's activities. By November 1919 he had joined the organization and began to lecture to large crowds which gathered in the beer halls of Munich. By January 1920 Hitler had assumed the full leadership of the party and its original founder Harrer had been encouraged to resign, thus ending any association the organization might have had with Thule. A month later, the Party's name was changes to the National Socialist German Worker's Party. The Swastika flag was formally adopted by the party on May 20, 1920 after Hitler insisted on a party banner that looked more dramatic than red flag of the Socialists. The design was submitted by a dentist from Starnberg who had originally used it a logo for his own defunct political party. Though different forms of the swastika were used throughout the NAZI era, Hitler preferred the straight armed anti-clockwise form purely for aesthetic reasons. Despite its early links to Thule, the original DAP party line was predominantly one of extreme political and social nationalism, and not based on the principles of Ariosophy. The ambitions of Adolph Hitler in Nazism's early days were to change its organization from that of a debating society to a political party of mass appeal. In Mein Kampf, Hitler would later condemn the Ario-German occultists of his day as ineffectual fighters in the battle for German supremacy.

The appeal of Nazism was strongest among the lower middle classes who were hit hardest by the destruction of the German economy at the end of the first world war, and who feared most the rise of feminism, socialism, and the questioning of traditional morals in the 1920's. In a time of national defeat and increasing uncertainty, Hitler and the Nazi party promised law and order, national pride, employment for those out of work, and, like today's right-wing politicians, a return to traditional values. The Nazi's took full advantage of the predominant feelings of racism, and offered the Jews to the masses as a scapegoat to blame for their problems. For many war veterans who missed the comradeship of the trenches, membership in Nazi organizations such as the Storm Troopers (SA) provided an environment free from alienation. The ritualistic pageantry of Nazi rallies were similar in nature to the patriotic worship of the state which developed in the same period in Stalinist Russia and, later, in the China of Mao Tse Tung. As the Nazis co-opted the resolution of collective fears into their ideology, they also adopted a number of already popular symbols which included the runes and the swastika. For the failed artist who was Adolph Hitler, Germany became his canvas: for the boy who was physically abused by his father, the party became his adopted family; for the young man who had trouble drawing the human figure, there was the attempt at creating a master race; for the student who was a failure in an urban school; a new curriculum was designed emphasizing physical fitness; to the man who idealized his mother, yet feared his own sexuality, there was the cancellation of women's rights and the rewarding of prolific mothers; and for the soldier in a defeated army, there existed the promise of world domination. Hitler stated in one of his speeches; "We do not want to have any other god, only Germany!"

Ariosophy was therefore a symptom of the socio-political conditions which preceded Nazism, but it was never more than a peripheral influence. The strongest tie to Ariosophy can be found in Heinrich Himmler and the SS. Himmler was a student of occult mysticism, and as already stated, designed his elite military organization after Lantz's New Templars. Another major influence on Himmler was the self-proclaimed psychic and magician Karl Maria Wiligut whose clairvoyant insights greatly influenced Himmler's decisions and therefore SS policy. Wiligut rose quickly to the rank of brigadier general, but was quickly retired in 1939 when it was leaked that he had been certified insane as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1924 and institutionalized for a three year period. A particular branch of the SS where Wiligut had tremendous influence was the historical research called the Ahnenerbe which sponsored a number of archeological expeditions in regions ranging from Greece to South America. The conclusion of these often pseudo-scientific digs was that all of the world's great civilizations were of Aryan origin and that the runes were the earliest form of written language. The political justification behind the Ahnenerbe expeditions was that the presence artifacts (both real and fabricated) of alleged Germanic origin were justification for a region's absorption into the Greater German
State. Still, Hitler seems to have been anything but thrilled by Himmler's obsession with ancient history. He was quoted by Albert Speer, his chief architect as saying: "Why do we call the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past? It's bad enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mudhuts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds." It was Himmler's SS archeological expeditions which inspired Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Despite the strong racist currents in Europe during this time period, there were still many Germanic occult movements that were quite benign in nature. One which is especially worth mentioning was the neo-romantic Liebensreform (life reform) movement which originated in the 1870's in response to Germany's rapid industrialization. Liebensreform advocated a back-to-nature life style which lead to the establishment of the first nudist retreats in the 1880's. Followers of this movement believed in both the natural beauty of the human body and the need for people to return to nature in order to cleanse themselves of the corruption of industrialized society. Liebensreform also promoted tolerance for alternative lifestyles, equal rights for women, herbal medicine, vegetarianism, the establishment of agricultural communes, and the revival of solstice celebrations. It was from Liebensreform that Gay Rights movement in Europe first originated. Despite the co-opting of quite secularized Solstice rites by the Nazis, Liebensreform was destroyed after the party took power in 1933. Nudism was banned along with the feminist movement and homosexuality severely persecuted. Additionally, occultists who refused to toe the party line were incarcerated and killed along with other political dissidents. I personally theorize that if left alone, Liebensreform would have probably evolved into an independent German neo-Pagan movement. Due to the fact that Gerald Gardner and many of his early followers were practitioners of nudism, Liebensreform may still have been at least an indirect influence on the development of modern Wicca and neo-Paganism.

If the socio-political zeitgeist of 19th and 20th century Europe was the origin of Nazism and not Ariosophy, then why has the rumor an occult reich conspiracy persisted? The answer to this question comes not from any historical event which preceded the establishment of the NAZI party, but from a post-war fascination with the National Socialist phenomenon. The question has often been asked: How could a nation of great scientists, artists, and philosophers also be responsible for the bloodiest war in human history and the systematic slaughter of millions? To give a possible answer to this complex question, an number of individuals have written a number of rather poorly researched works which give the over simplified answer
that: "They were under a magic spell." (Such theories are certainly more entertaining than the complexities of economics and politics) Many of these works including Dietrich Bronder's Before Hitler Came and J.H. Brennan's Occult Reich create a fictitious Thule Society which practiced rites of black magic and was supposedly in contact with a secret mystical order in Tibet. The membership roles of this sinister occult lodge, despite contradictory evidence, included such figures as Guido von List, Adolph Hitler, Rudolph Hess, Dietrich Eckart, Heinrich Himmler, and even Benito Mussolini for good measure. Von List was living in Vienna and in deteriorating health at the time of Thule's founding. Hess had attended society meetings as a guest, as did Eckart, an anti-Semitic volkish playwright who introduced Hitler to the more privileged social circles of Munich. There is absolutely no evidence of Hitler and Himmler ever having any association with Thule, and the allegation concerning Mussolini is too ridiculous for comment. Rudolph von Sebottendorff attempted in vain to resurrect Thule after its demise in the 1920's and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1934 for his boastful claims that the Nazi party owed its existence to him. He committed suicide in 1945, a penniless recluse living in Turkey.

Probably the most famous occult conspiracy book is Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear of Destiny. Ravenscroft's primary source for his book was the late Walter Johannes Stein, an Austrian Jew who had emigrated to England from Germany in 1933 before the establishment of the Third Reich. Stein, despite the contradictory testimony of close associates, claimed to have known the young Adolph Hitler during his lost years in Vienna from 1909 to 1913, and that the future NAZI leader was deeply involved in occult activities including the use of the drug peyote. Stein alleged that following the first world war, Hitler was then ritually groomed for his future position through rites of Satanic initiation performed by Dietrich Eckart. It is also argued in Ravenscroft's book that The Spear of Longinus, a religious relic which was part of the Habsburg regalia and, by legend, the spear which pierced the side of the crucified Christ, was taken by the NAZIs in order to magickally insure victory for the German Reich. It is true that this artifact was taken by the NAZIs, but so were the national treasures of other countries which were conquered or absorbed by the Third Reich. Stein's primary method of research was to peruse the psychic realm instead of his local public library and as a result, The Spear of Destiny is filled with numerous historical flaws including descriptions of events which never occurred, and places which never existed.

The saddest effect of the occult Reich myth is the common myth that the NAZIs and their pre-Christian ancestors held the same beliefs. It will probably never be known how many young people called to the Germanic path were unwittingly lured into neo-NAZI and right-wing hate groups by the belief that Nazism was a Pagan path. Even in legitimate Asatru organizations, the debate has continued over the racial question. Germanic Paganism like other "ethnic" traditions contains some members which believe that the affinity toward a cultural mythos is genetically inherited. Conversely, there are many who disagree with this "metagenetic" concept believing that one's spiritual tradition is based upon the contents of soul rather than blood or ancestry. It is important to remember that the ancient Germanic tribes dwelt in many areas which overlapped lands which were inhabited by Celts, Slavs, Balts, Finns, and persons of Mediterranean origin. Additionally, all of these peoples (including the Germans) migrated to new territories when the realms they inhabited became over-crowded, and traded with others for the goods they had need of. Human beings as a species are naturally migratory and there has probably never been such a thing as a pure race of any kind (for example, negroid skulls have been unearthed in southern Europe dating back to the late stone age). Among the Pre-Christian Germanic peoples, intermarriage was not only common, but highly respected. There are even accounts of Germans in ancient times marrying Romans. The Germanic deities also coupled with and married members of the same race of Giants with whom they also fought battles against. The mother of the god Thor's sons and heirs, Modi and Magni was the giantess Jarnsaxa. It therefore seems that the concept of race had no importance to the Germanic Pagans. Additionally, adoption among the Germans was an extremely powerful bond, with the adoptee receiving the same rights and privileges as children with blood ties, including the family's protective spirits (Disir and Alfar) and ancestral Wyrd, in addition to name and property. Finally, with the westernization of the world in the last three centuries, I truly believe that the Western spiritual heritage (including the Germanic) has become the heritage of all peoples, and anyone whose soul is Germanic is welcome in my tradition.

One can search the Eddas and Sagas in vain and never find such principles as "Blood and Soil," a master race, the purity of blood, or allegiance to a Fuhrer. There are many other ways in which historical Germanic Paganism differs greatly from the ideology of Nazism. First Germanic women were held in great respect and enjoyed many freedoms in comparison to many of their ancient and medieval counterparts. They had the rites of property and divorce, there are accounts of women assuming powerful roles in both religion and politics, and even the occasional female warrior. Likewise, homosexuals seem to have held powerful positions in the cults of the Vanic deities. Contrary to Carl Jung's 1936 essay, the god Wotan, though an occasional favorite of the Ariosophists, was never mentioned by Hitler or the other high-ranking Nazis, and this individualistic wanderer and god of ecstacy, like the other Germanic deities, would have made a very poor icon for the authoritarian regime that was Nazism. Finally, like their gods, the ancient Germanic warriors were individualistic and unregimented fighters and not the obedient columns of identical soldiers which were idealized by the NAZIs.

Nazism, like other fascist regimes, was simply the fanatical worship of the state and its messianic leader. With the exception of a the adoption of a few pre-Christian symbols and a fictionalized history of the past, there were no ties linking this movement to the Pagan Germanic past. Though occult movements existed which reflected some NAZI ideologies, they simply mirrored the hopes, fears, and prejudices common in Western society and were not the root cause of National Socialism. Ariosophy and its doctrines actually had a stronger basis in Christianity than in any pre-Christian spirituality. Germanic Pagans today belong to an ever growing and tolerant spiritual path which is based upon serious historical research. The NAZI curse which still surrounds the Germanic path can only be cast aside as those in other traditions discover that our interests are focused solely upon the Human Race and not with the mythic Aryans, and it is my hope that this essay helps to dispel the current misconceptions.

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