HITLER AND THE HIMALAYAS

The SS Mission to Tibet 1938-39


ALEX McKAY

Of all the exotic images that the West has ever projected onto Tibet, that of the Nazi expedition, and its search for the pure remnants of the Aryan race, remains the most bizarre.

On the nineteenth of January, 1939, five members of the Waffen-SS, Heinrich Himmler's feared Nazi shock troops, passed through the ancient, arched gateway that led into the sacred city of Lhasa. Like many Europeans, they carried with them idealized and unrealistic views of Tibet, projecting, as Orville Schell remarks in his book Virtual Tibet,  "a fabulous skein of fantasy around this distant, unknown land." The projections of the Nazi expedition, however, did not include the now familiar search for Shangri-La, the hidden land in which a uniquely perfect and peaceful social system held a blueprint to counter the transgressions that plague the rest of humankind. Rather, the perfection sought by the Nazis was an idea of racial perfection that would justify their views on world history and German supremacy.

What brings about this odd juxtaposition of Tibetan lamas and SS officers on the eve of World War II is a strange story of secret societies, occultism, racial pseudo-science, and political intrigue. They were, in fact, on a diplomatic and quasi-scientific mission to establish relations between Nazi Germany and Tibet and to search for lost remnants of an imagined Aryan race hidden somewhere on the Tibetan plateau. As such, they were a far-flung expression of Hitler's most paranoid and bizarre theories on ethnicity and domination. And while the Tibetans were completely unaware of Hitler's racist agenda, the 1939 mission to Tibet remains a cautionary tale about how foreign ideas, symbols, and terminology can be horribly misused. Some Nazi militarists imagined Tibet as a potential base for attacking British India, and hoped that this mission would lead to some form of alliance with the Tibetans. In that they were partly successful. The mission was received by the Reting Regent (who had led Tibet since the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933), and it did succeed in persuading the Regent to correspond with Adolf Hitler. But the Germans were also interested in Tibet for another reason. Nazi leaders such as Heinrich Himmler believed that Tibet might harbor the last of the original Aryan tribes, the legendary forefathers of the German race, whose leaders possessed supernatural powers that the Nazis could use to conquer the world.

This was the age of European expansion, and numerous theories provided ideological justification for imperialism and colonialism. In Germany the idea of an Aryan or "master" race found resonance with rabid nationalism, the idea of the German superman distilled from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wagner's operatic celebrations of Nordic sagas and Teutonic mythology. Long before the 1939 mission to Tibet, the Nazis had borrowed Asian symbols and language and used them for their own ends. A number of prominent articles of Nazi rhetoric and symbolism originated in the language and religions of Asia. The term "Aryan", for example, comes from the Sanskrit word arya, meaning noble. In the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu scriptures, the term describes a race of light-skinned people from Central Asia who conquered and subjugated the darker-skinned (or Dravidian) peoples of the Indian subcontinent. Linguistic evidence does support the multidirectional migration of a central Asian people, now referred to as Indo-Europeans, into much of India and Europe at some point between 2000 and 1500 B.C.E., although it is unclear whether these Indo-Europeans were identical with the Aryans of the Vedas.

So much for responsible scholarship. In the hands of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European jingoists and occultists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, these ideas about Indo-Europeans and light-skinned Aryans were transformed into a twisted myth of Nordic and later exclusively German racial superiority. The German identification with the Indo-Europeans and Aryans of the second millennium B.C.E. gave historical precedence to Germany's imperial "place in the sun" and the idea that ethnic Germans were racially entitled to conquest and mastery. It also aided in fomenting anti-Semitism and xenophobia, as Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities did not share in the Aryan German's perceived heritage as members of a dominant race. Ideas about an Aryan or master race began to appear in the popular media in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, E. B. Lytton, a Rosicrucian, wrote a best-selling novel around the idea of a cosmic energy (particularly strong in the female sex), which he called "Vril." Later he wrote of a Vril society, consisting of a race of super-beings that would emerge from their underground hiding-places to rule the world. His fantasies coincided with a great interest in the occult, particularly among the upper classes, with numerous secret societies founded to propagate these ideas. They ranged from those devoted to the Holy Grail to those who followed the sex and drugs mysticism of Alastair Crowley, and many seem to have had a vague affinity for Buddhist and Hindu beliefs.

General Haushofer, a follower of Gurdjieff and later one of Hitler's main patrons, founded one such society. Its aim was to explore the origins of the Aryan race, and Haushofer named it the Vril Society, after Lytton's fictional creation. Its members practiced meditation to awaken the powers of Vril, the feminine cosmic energy. The Vril Society claimed to have links to Tibetan masters, apparently drawing on the ideas of Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophist who claimed to be in telepathic contact with spiritual masters in Tibet. In Germany, this blend of ancient myths and nineteenth-century scientific theories began to evolve into a belief that the Germans were the purest manifestation of the inherently superior Aryan race, whose destiny was to rule the world. These ideas were given scientific weight by ill-founded theories of eugenics and racist ethnography. Around 1919, the   Vril Society gave way to the Thule Society (Thule Gesellschaft), which was founded in Munich by Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, a follower of Blavatsky. The Thule Society drew on the traditions of various orders such as the Jesuits, the Knights Templar, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Sufis. It promoted the myth of Thule, a legendary island in the frozen northlands that had been the home of a master race, the original Aryans. As in the legend of Atlantis (with which it is sometimes identified), the inhabitants of Thule were forced to flee from some catastrophe that destroyed their world. But the survivors had retained their magical powers and were hidden from the world, perhaps in secret tunnels in Tibet, where they might be contacted and subsequently bestow their powers on their Aryan descendants.

Such ideas might have remained harmless, but the Thule Society added a strong right-wing, anti-Semitic political ideology to the Vril Society mythology. They formed an active opposition to the local Socialist government in Munich and engaged in street battles and political assassinations. As their symbol, along with the dagger and the oak leaves, they adopted the swastika, which had been used by earlier German neo-pagan groups. The appeal of the swastika symbol to the Thule Society seems to have been largely in its dramatic strength rather than its cultural or mystical significance. They believed it was an original Aryan symbol, although it was actually used by numerous unconnected cultures throughout history. Beyond the adoption of the swastika, it is difficult to judge the extent to which either Tibet or Buddhism played a part in Thule Society ideology Vril Society founder General Haushofer, who remained active in the Thule Society, had been a German military attache in Japan. There he may have acquired some knowledge of Zen Buddhism, which was then the dominant faith among the Japanese military. Other Thule Society members, however, could only have read early German studies of Buddhism, and those studies tended to construct the idea of a pure, original Buddhism that had been lost, and a degenerate Buddhism that survived, much polluted by primitive local beliefs. It seems that Buddhism was little more than a poorly understood and exotic element in the Society's loose collection of beliefs, and had little real influence on the Thule ideology. But Tibet occupied a much stronger position in their mythology, being imagined as the likely home of the survivors of the mythic Thule race.

The importance of the Thule Society can be seen from the fact that its members included Nazi leaders Rudolf Hess (Hitler's deputy), Heinrich Himmler, and almost certainly Hitler himself. But while Hitler was at least nominally a Catholic, Himmler enthusiastically embraced the aims and beliefs of the Thule Society. He adopted a range of neo-pagan ideas and believed himself to be a reincarnation of a tenth-century Germanic king. Himmler seems to have been strongly attracted to the possibility that Tibet might prove to be the refuge of the original Aryans and their superhuman powers. By the time Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in the 1920s, the myth of the Aryan race was fully developed. In Chapter XI, "Race and People," he expressed concern over what he perceived as the mixing of pure Aryan blood with that of inferior peoples. In his view, the pure Aryan Germanic races had been corrupted by prolonged contact with Jewish people. He lamented that northern Europe had been "Judaized" and that the German's originally pure blood had been tainted by prolonged contact with Jewish people, who, he claimed, lie "in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her people." For Hitler, the only solution to this mingling of Aryan and Jewish blood was for the tainted Germans to find the wellsprings of Aryan blood. It may happen that in the course of history such a people will come into contact a second time, and even oftener, with the original founders of their culture and may not even remember that distant association. A new cultural wave flows in and lasts until the blood of its standard-bearers becomes once again adulterated by intermixture with the originally conquered   race. In the search for "contact a second time" with the Aryans, Tibet-long isolated, mysterious, and remote-seemed a likely candidate.

HANS HÖRBIGER'S COSMIC ICE THEORY

This is the story of a remarkable cosmology 
concocted by an Austrian mining engineer, 
Hans Hoerbiger.

Hoerbiger was not only a mining engineer, he was an amateur astronomer. Often, he would use a small telescope to look at assorted celestial bodies, especially the Moon. According to his account, early in this century, as he was looking at the Moon, he was struck by the apparent brightness of its surface. He had his first "recognition," that what he was seeing was ice, piled up in blocks, producing the brightness and roughness he saw. Some nights later, he had a dream and his second "recognition." He dreamt that he was suspended in space, watching the swinging of a silvery pendulum, which grew longer and longer until it broke. "I knew that Newton was wrong and that the force of gravity stops at three times the distance to Neptune," he concluded. This was the starting point for his Cosmic Ice Theory. This theory he worked out, in collaboration with a schoolteacher named Philipp Fauth, in a giant book called _Glazial-Kosmogonie_.

Recent German book on the role of Hoerbiger's Welteislehre in the "Third Reich."

 Here is what it said: Once upon a time, there was   a supergiant star in the direction of the constellation Columba. A smaller star, dead, water-soaked to the core, fell into it. It was heated up, vaporizing the water, and causing a great explosion. The fragments of this smaller star were spewed out of the supergiant into interstellar space. The water condensed out into ice, forming giant ice blocks. A ring of this ice formed, as well as a small number of solar systems. This ring is known to us all as the Milky Way. Among the solar systems that formed was our own, with many more planets than exist today. 

The Solar System has had a long history of evolution. Interplanetary space is filled with traces of hydrogen gas, which cause the planets to slowly spiral in. Also spiraling in are ice blocks which approach closer than three times the distance to Neptune. The outer planets are large because they have swallowed a large number of ice blocks, but the inner planets have not swallowed nearly as many. One can see ice blocks on the move in the form of meteors, and when one collides with the Earth, it produces hailstorms   over an area of many square kilometers. When one falls into the Sun, it produces a sunspot. It gets vaporized, making "fine ice," which covers the innermost planets. 

The Earth has had several satellites before it acquired its current one. They were once planets, in orbits of their own slightly beyond Earth's, but they were captured one by one over the eons. Once captured, a satellite would slowly spiral in, as the planets are doing toward the Sun, until it disintegrates and becomes part of the Earth's structure. One can identify the rock strata of several geological eras with these satellites. 

The last such episode, the infall of the Cenozoic Moon and the capture of out present-day Moon, Luna, is remembered in the form of countless myths and legends. This was worked out in some detail by Hoerbiger's English follower Hans Schindler Bellamy, though some of it was originally due to Hoerbiger himself.

 Bellamy tells us that, as a child, he would often dream about a large moon that would spiral closer and closer in until it burst, making the ground beneath roll and pitch, awakening him and giving him a very sick feeling. When he looked at the Moon's surface through a telescope, he found its surface looking troublingly familiar. When, in 1921, he learned of Hoerbiger's theory, he found it practically a description of his dream. 

He explained the mythological support he found in such books as _Moons, Myths, and Man_, _In the Beginning God_, and _The Book of Revelation is History_. Mythology, Bellamy tells us, forms a "science of pre-Lunar culture." As the Cenozoic Moon spiraled in, it pulled up the Earth's oceans into a "girdle tide," while the rest of the Earth sank into an ice age. The people were forced into mountainous highlands in such places as Tibet and the Andes. 

The gigantic Moon, pitted and scaly, soon revolved around the Earth six times a day, causing an equal number of eclipses of the Sun and itself. It inspired legends of dragons, battles of gods in the sky, and the Devil. These final days are recorded in the Book of Revelation in the Bible and inspired the idea of _Goetterdaemmerung_, the twilight of the gods.

 Eventually, this moon broke up, and its pieces fell onto the Earth, causing rains of hailstones. As the Earth went back to its old shape, there were gigantic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The girdle tide flowed back over the rest of the Earth, inspiring countless flood legends, including Noah's Flood. Bellamy tells us that he had always wistfully hoped that there is some historical basis for the story of Noah's Flood.

 What followed was a time of peace and tranquility, remembered in a variety of legends, including that of the Garden of Eden. The first chapters of the Book of Genesis tell of the re-creation after that catastrophe. The story of Adam and Eve is, in fact, the story of a Caesarean birth a heroine of the flood had. Somehow, the myth got the sex wrong! Naturally, there was a serpent in this paradise, and it was the capture of the Earth's present-day moon, Luna. When it was captured, it caused more earthquakes and disasters, and sank the continent of Atlantis. 

It is slowly spiraling in, and will one day share the   fate of the earlier moons. He had some interesting responses to the criticism that he inevitably received. When anyone pointed out to him that this or that assertion of his did not work mathematically, he responded: "Calculation can only lead you astray." One recalls that he was an engineer. When anyone pointed out to him that there existed pictures that show that the Milky Way consists of billions of stars, he answered straightforwardly that the pictures had been faked by "reactionary" astronomers.

 He had a similar response to accounts of measurements of the surface temperature of the Moon, which exceeds 100 degrees Centigrade in the daytime. To one critic, he wrote back: "Either you believe in me and learn, or you will be treated as the enemy." Astronomers generally dismissed his views and the following it acquired as a "carnival," though it took some very un-carnival-ish overtones later on.

 Although Hoerbiger's theories have a lot in common with Immanuel Velikovsky's theorizing about the recent history of the Solar System, the scientific community had a much calmer reaction to Hoerbiger's theories than to Velikovsky's, and his publisher was (as far as I could learn) never boycotted. 

His book came out in 1917, during the First World War, and did not attract much attention. But afterward, a mass movement based on the theory appeared. Its members exerted considerable public pressure to get the theory accepted. The "movement" published posters, pamphlets, and books, and even a newspaper, "The Key to World Events." One company would only hire those who declared themselves convinced of the truth of the theory. One astronomer at Treptow Observatory spent half his time answering questions on the theory. Some followers even heckled astronomical   meetings, crying "Out with astronomical orthodoxy! Give us Hoerbiger!" 

Along the way, the name was changed from the Graeco-Latin _Glazial-Kosmogonie_ to the Germanic _Welteislehre_ ("Cosmic Ice Theory"), or WEL for short. 

In the 1930's, the "movement" became more and more pro-Nazi (Hoerbiger died in 1931, so we cannot tell what his opinion would have been). Supporters of the WEL said things like: "Our Nordic ancestors grew strong in ice and snow; belief in the Cosmic Ice is consequently the natural heritage of Nordic Man.", "Just as it needed a child of Austrian culture--Hitler!--to put the Jewish politicians in their place, so it needed an Austrian to cleanse the world of Jewish science.", and "the Fuehrer, by his very life, has proved how much a so-called 'amateur' can be superior to self-styled professionals; it needed another 'amateur' to give us a complete understanding of the Universe."

 Alas, Hitler himself was not enthusiastic about the idea, and the Propaganda Ministry felt obliged to state that "one can be a good National Socialist without believing in the WEL." After World War II, the WEL cult dropped out of sight. But it revived sometime afterwards, and, according to my information, continues to have members in both Germany and England. In the 1950's, a pamphlet supporting the WEL stated that "proof of the theory awaits the conclusion of the first successful   interplanetary flight, a matter in which the Institute is greatly interested." But more recently, some of its supporters have dropped the idea of an icy lunar surface, though they continue to support the view that it was captured and that its capture destroyed Atlantis.

 References: Hans Schindler Bellamy: _Moons, Myths and Man_ Martin Gardner: _Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science_ Willy Ley: _Watchers of the Skies_ Patrick Moore: _Can You Speak Venusian?_

THE WORKS OF GUIDO VON LIST

- The Early Period

Before his mystical "initiation" in 1902 and the subsequent publication of Das Geheimnis der Runen, Guido von lIst had, with the notable exception of Der Unbesiegbare, mainly confiend himself to journalistic and fiction work. His journalism, however, covered a wide range of material. Much of it was concerned with the local antiquities and natural and man-made wonders of the Austrian countryside. But there was also the occasional foray into actual religious or magical ideas, as in "Gotterdammerung" (1893), *26 "Von der Wuotanspriesterschaft" (1893), *27 "Die deutsche Mythologie im Rahmen eines Kalenderjahres" (1894), *28 "Der deutsche Zauberglaube in Bauwesen" (1895), *29 and "Mephistopheles" (1895). *30 These, as well as the natural-mystical assumptions that underlie his interpretations of ancient and natural phenomena, would seem to indicate that a fairly sophisticated system of mystical thinking had been developed by List throughout these early years.

Of course, the major part of List's energies before 1902 were spent in the production of neo-romantic fiction and verse. In this period, basically that between 1888 and 1903, when the last of his major fiction was published, there are essentially two phases.

The first of these, between 1888 and 1895, might be called his novelistic phase. During this time he produced three major novels (including his earlier work Carnuntum ) and two major epic-dramatic poems.

Carnuntum, his first novel was set in the time of the Germanic invasions across the Roman limes in the late fourth century C.E. Historically, Carnuntum was overrun in 374 C.E. by the Quadi, a Germanic tribe. It is an explicit feature of List's historical vision that modern Austria south and west of the Danube was an Urheimat, a primeval homeland, of the Germanic peoples, and that with such ancient invasions the Germans were merely reclaiming territories lost to Roman forces of occupation. *31

Jung Diethers Heimkehr (1894) is set in the same geographical area in the fifth century. It relates the story of a young Markomanni-Quadi warrior who is forced to convert to Christianity (in the hated Roman culture) but who eventually returns to the faith of his fathers - Wuotanism - once he realises the essence of "Christianism." In the same year, Der Wala Erweckung appeared, but apparently it was not performed until 3 November 1895 . In 1895 there also appeared the skaldic sacral drama Walkurenweihe. The year 1895 also saw List's most succesful work of fiction, Pipara: Die Germanin im Casarenpurur (Pipara: the Germanic Woman in the purple of the Caesars). This two-volume work recounts the legendary rise of a Germanic slave to the position of empress in the late third century C.E.

Probably as a result of his marriage in 1899 to the actress Anna Witteck, List devoted his literary efforts almost exclusively to drama between that year and the year of his final fiction publications, 1903. These included Konig Vannius (1899), Sommer-Sonnwend-Feuerzauber (1901), and Das Goldstuck (1903).

The year 1903 also saw the publication of List's Kunstmarchen anthology: Alraunenmaren: Kultur-historische Novellen un Dichtungen aus germanischer Vorzeit (Mandrake-Tales: Cultural-historical Novellas and Poetry from Germanic Prehistory). In this volume List presented original tales and poetry chronologically arranged from the "age of the gods" to the present (in the symbolically autobiographical " Eine Zauernacht, " which recounts his inner experience on that famous visit to Carnuntum in the summer of 1875).

- The Later Period

The spiritual watershed year was, of course, 1902. But it was not until 1908 that the first volume of his eight books of "investigations" appeared. Six of these were published by the Guido von list Society itself in the series called the Guido-von-List-Bucherei (GvLB); the two exceptions were first published by Adolf Burdeke in Switzerland and Leipzig .

Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes; GvLB no. 1, 1908), the work translated here, is both a brief summary of the intellectual world of List, as realised in the years between 1902 and 1908, and an introduction to the rest of his work. The runes became the cornerstone of List's ideology, and no other work so clearly and simply outlines his ideas on them.

Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen (The Armanism of the Aryo-Germanic People; GvLB nos. 2a-2b, 1908 and 1911) is a two-volume set that outlines the great principles of Armanism, its social history and organisation, as well as its cosmological conceptions. The second volume also contains the most pointed use of contemporary racist ideology that List would publish in this series.

Die Rita der Ario-Germanen (The Rita of the Aryo-Germanic People, GvLB no. 3, 1908) represents a mystical delineation of Germanic law, in the cosmic as well as the political realm. The term rita os obviously borrowed from Sanskrit rta or rita, “cosmic order.” This work also contains a fairly detailed account of the “Holy Feme” (or “Vehme”) as it was understood by contemporary volkish occultists.

Dir Namen der Volkerstamme Germaniens und deren Deutung (The Names of the Tribes of the People of Germania and their Interpretation; GvLB no. 4, 1909) represents the application of List's mystical theories concerning Kala (see p.77ff.) to the many tribal names of the Germanic peoples which have survived in Roman histories, etc.

Die Religion der Ario-Germanen in ihrer Esoterik und Exoterik (The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic People in its Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects; 1909 or 1910) is a discussion of the Armanic theories of astrological lore, theology, and numerology.

Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen: Ario-Germanische Hierogyphik (The Pictographic Script of the Aryo-Germanic People: Aryo-Germanic Hieroglyphics; GvLB no. 5, 1910) is one o fList's most unique and fascinating mystical explorations. In this volume he interprets all sorts of graphic signs and symbols – including runes, sigils, and symbolic animals – and then applies his theories to the esoteric symbolism of heraldry. This is the most sophisticated delineation of ideas first presented in The Secret of the Runes (see p. 81ff. of the present text).

Die Unbergang vom Wuotanismus zum Christentum (The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity; 1911) is connected with a central theme in List's thinking: the (more or less) smooth transition between the pagan and Christian religions. This theory (many elements of which are perfectly legitimate) allows for the pagan reinterpretation of Christian customs, festivals, names, and so forth, based on the idea that these tribes were originally heathen (Wuotanist) features that only received a Christian veneer. Thus the pagan ways have, according to List, survived the centuries more or less intact, and are only in need of correct reinterpretation in order to make them living Wuotanist realities again.

It was three more years before List's next, and most comprehensive, study appeared. Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen in ihre Mysteriensprache (The Primal Language of the Aryo-Germanic People and their Mystery Language; GvLB no. 6, 1914) is the encyclopediac presentation of List's complex linguistic theories, based on Kala. This work actually represents the raising of the tradition known as “folk etymology“ to the level of an arcane science comparable to cabalistic number theories. (See P. 69ff. below for a sample of these techniques.)

The disruptions caused by the Great War caused an indefinite delay in the publication of List's last volume of investigations, which was to be entitled Armanismus und Kabbala. In fact, by the time the Master died in 1919 the manuscript had still not been prepared for publication, and so it was never made public. Some rumours have it that the work was stolen, others that it was merely kept secret by members of the HAO. This was to be List's great work of magical correspondences. It would have also further developed the mystical history of the way in which, according to List, Armanen- wisdom found its way into Judaic mysticism and Renaissance humanism. *32

The works of Guido von List continued to be printed, and the Society flourished until the late 1930's, when it fell under the general suppressions exercised by the National Socialist regime of “Greater Germany.” Of course, List's works we read, studied, and collected by the Germanophilic Nazis – most of the copies of List's works to be found in academic libraries in America bear the stamp of the Reichsfuhrer SS Bucherei and /or that of the Ahnenerbe. (For further information on the Ahnenerbe, see fn 50.) It would seem that after the contents of these libraries were confiscated and sent to America they were subsequently distributed among American (especially “Ivy League”) universities.

THE OCCULT MASTER

Late in 1902, List had undergone an operation for cataracts. For eleven months his eyes were bandaged, and in this virtual state of blindness and utter darkness List is said to have been enlightened with regard to the “secret of the runes.” At this time, and by whatever means, List's occult vision did seem to undergo a major synthesis. That the main features of his thought were solidified in this period is witnessed by the fact that he produced his first manuscript on Kala and published an article on his interpretation of glyphs (swastika, triskelion, etc.) in 1903. *20

Between this time and 1908, when Das Geneimnis der Runen was published and the Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft (Guido von List Society) was founded, List's ideas probably underwent their final synthesis. After 1908, it seems “occult wisdom2 flowed freely and constantly from the pen of the Master.

It was between 1903 and 1907 that List first began to use the noble title “von2 in his name. *21 Legitimate or not, it was important for List to distance himself from his middle-class background as his ideas took on a more aristocratic tone – and began to appeal more and more to the aristocratic establishment.

On 2 March 1908 the Guido von List Society was officially founded to support the work of the Master.

Although chiefly founded by the Wannieck family, it was also supported by many leading figures in Austrian and German politics, publishing, and occultism.

All of List's occult research works that were to be published in his lifetime were originally published between 1908 and 1914. Economic restrictions after that time put an end to the production of original works.

The Guido von List society remained the exoteric outlet for List's ideas, mainly in the form of his multivolume “research findings.” However, his work implied a deeper, more practical level as well. For the expression of this aspect, in the form of a magical order or lodge, the Hoher Armanen-Orden (High Armanic Order), HAO, was founded in midsummer 1911. Thus List had formed exoteric and esoteric circles in his organisation. The activities of the esoteric HAO were indeed mysterious. We know that they conducted pilgrimages to what they considered holy Armanic sites, Saint Stephen's Cathederal in Vienna , Carnuntum , etc. They also had their occasional meetings between 1911 and 1918, but the exact nature of these remains unknown. The HAO never really crystallised in List's lifetime - although it seems possible that he developed a theoretical body of unpublished documents and rituals relevant to the HAO which have only been put into full practice in more recent years. *22

An odd chapter in Guido von List's story was opened in November 1911 when he received a letter from a mysterious figure in Germany calling himself Tarnhari. *23 This man turned out to be one Ernst Lautner, who claimed to be a descendant of the ancient Nordic tribe of the Wolsungen (Old Norse Volsungar, the tribe to which Sigurd/Siegfried belonged). He also claimed, however, to be a reincarnation of a chieftain of this tribe. *24 Lautner was also to be instrumental in the spread of List's ideas in Germany .

Throughout the years of World War 1, although nothing new was published by the Master, his reputation and fame grew, and his ideas were becoming more popular than ever. But the war took its toll on the health of the now elderly List. Within a few months after the end of the war, List died while on a visit to his followers in Berlin , on 17 May 1919 . *25 His body was cremated and placed in an urn in his native Vienna .

THE EMERGING MASTER

The time between the publication of Der Unbenesiegbare (1898), List's neo-Germanic catechism, and the year 1902 marked a period of transformation of List from someone known primarily as an artist to an occult investigator, religious leader, and prophet of a coming age.

Concerning the generation of the manuscript for Der Unbenesiegbare there is a story that perhaps demonstrates the growing - if ambivalent – association between mysticism and politics in these circles. In the summer of 1898, a law prescribing religious instruction in Lower Austria secondary schools was being debated. Dr. Karl Lueger, who was later to become the mayor of Vienna and a member of the Guido von List Society, was for the bill, as were the church officials. When he was questioned on this by representative Karl Wolf, Lueger responded “Gebt uns Besseres und wir warden Euch folgen!” (Give us something better and we shall follow you!). It is said that List was deeply moved by this and wrote Der Unbenesiegbare overnight. List took the manuscript to Wolf's office the next day, but the whole idea was eventually rejected by Wolf, as his interests in religion were “just matters of curriculum.” The catechism was printed in an edition of five thousand copies, *19 marking the beginning of List's more practical religious career.

Perhaps the successes he had had with the poetic drama Der Wala Erwechung spurred List to try his hand at more drama, because in the last phase of his conventional literary career this genre predominated. However, to assume that List intended these dramas as mere entertainment would be a mistake. He saw them more as Weihespiele (sacral plays) which had a liturgical as well as didactic purpose. In 1900, he published a pamphlet, Der Wiederaufbau von Carnuntum (The Reconstruction of Carnuntum), in which he called for the establishment of ritual dramas and legal assemblies based on ancient Germanic models.

In August 1899, List married Anna Wittek von Stecky, who had sung the Wala parting his play in 1895. They were married in a Lutheran church – which is also some indication of the decay of the Catholic establishment and general religious dissatisfaction in Austria at that time.

This period acts more as a sort of bridge between List's long artistic phase and his shorter, but highly intense and influential, mystico-magical phase from 1902 to his death in 1919. It is also most likely that during this period (1898-1902) Theosophical ideas as such became more influential in List's worldview. After all, it was not until 1897-1901 that the German translation of The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky appeared. Certainly List would have had Theosophical ideas available to him long before this (perhaps as early as the 1880's), but the evidence of a general lack of Theosophical concepts in Der Unbenesiegbare would indicate that it was of little influence before 1898.

In 1902, by his own accounts, there resulted in his “revelations” concerning the “secret of the runes.”

THE NATIONALIST POET

Carnuntum was published in 1888 and became a huge success, especially among the Pan-German nationalists of Austria and Germany . Its publication brought its author more to the attention of important political and economic leaders of German nationalist movements. In connection with the appearance of Carnuntum, List made the acquaintance of the industrialist Friedrich Wannieck. This association was to prove essential to List's future development.

Throughout this period, List devoted himself to the production of further neo-romanticism prose, such as Jung Diethers Heimkehr (Young Diether's Homecoming) and Pipara, in 1894 and 1895 respectively. The anthology of earlier journalism Deutsch-mythologische Landschaftbilder was published in 1891, and List developed his writing skills in poetic and dramatic genres as well.

List became involved with two important literary associations during these years. In May 1891, the Iduna, bearing the descriptive subtitle "Free German Society for Literature," was founded by a circle of writers around Fritz Lemmermayer. Lemmermayer acted as a sort of "middle man" between an older generation of authors (which included Fercher von Steinwand, Joseph Tandler, Auguste Hyrtl, Ludwig von Mertens, and Josephone von Knorr) and a group of younger writers and thinkers (which included Rudolf Steiner, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, and Karl Maria Heidt). The name Iduna, which was provided by List himself, is that of a North Germanic goddess of eternal youth and renewal. Within the society were two other authors with specifically neo-Germanic leanings: Richard von Kralik and Joseph Kalasanz Poestion. This literary circle was loosely held together by neo-romantic ideas of German nationalism, a sense of "turning within one's self" ( innerliche Wanderung ), antirealism, and anti-decadence. The society was only able to last until 1893, when the dilettantism of the various interests seems to have become too acute. However, in many ways this does seem to have been the springtime of the neo-Germanic movement. *14 Another neo-romantic literary association, the Literarische Donaugesellschaft (Danubian Literary Society), was founded by List and Fanny Wschiansky the year the Iduna was dissolved. *15

It is almost certain that List and Rudolf Steiner knew each other in the early 1890's, since both were being influenced by the first wave of Theosophy and occult revivalism in German-speaking countries at that time. However, there is little chance that either one had too much direct influence on the other. Each of them would become more "Theosophical" in the next decade. List also met the young Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (Adolf Joseph) at this time as well but it would not be until after Lanz had left the Heiligenkreuz monastery in 1899 that any extensive interaction between the two was possible.

By far the most important influence on List's development at this time were those provided by the nationalist and Pan-German cultural and political groups whose attention had been drawn to him by the publication of Carnuntum. These were largely associations of people of German ancestry and language in the multiethnic Austrian Empire, whose aims included the promotion of Germanic culture and language (over that of non-German subjects) and the eventual political union of Austrian Germans with the greater German Empire to the west, that is, Germany proper. *16

Of course such notions were common enough at the time, and List was certainly already firmly in this camp before 1891. Even the "sporting2 associations in which he had earlier begun to be active had Pan-German political aims. However, this period began a more activist phase for List, who had, up until this time, been fairly exclusively "mystical" in his approach. The new phase brought List into close contact with such leading political figures as Georg von Schonerer, an anti-Semitic Pan-German member of the Imperial Parliament, *17 and the powerful publicist and parliamentary deputy Karl Wolf. Both of these men also published newspapers, and List's work appeared in Wolf's Ostdeutsche Rundschau (East German Review) on a regular basis. *18 It might also be speculated that List had as much a "mystifying" effect on the political world as it had a "politicising" effect on his views. This trend would continue with the later advent of the New Templar Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels. But it was List's association with the Wannieck family and their organisation and publishing house, Verein "Deutsche Haus" ("German House" Association), which was to prove most important to List. They published many of his books in this decade and give him a wider outlet for his ideas. In 1892 he delivered a lecture on the ancient Germanic cult of Wuotan to the Verein Deutsche Geschichte (German History Association). Numerous other associations allied with this one proliferated in Austria at this time. Another groupBund der Germanen (Germanic League), sponsored the performance of List's mythological dramatic poem, Der Wala Erweckung (The Wala's Awakening), in 1894. In another performance of this drama in 1895, which was attended by over three thousand people, the part of Wala was read by Anna Wittek, a young actress who later became List's second wife.

Through these years, List became a well-known and respected artist and mystagogue among Austrian German nationalists, and he was to remain a part of the conservative cultural establishment throughout his life.

THE FOLKISH JOURNALIST

This rather comfortable, if self-divided, period in List's life came to an end after his father died in 1877, when List was twenty-nine years old. Neither he nor his mother appear to have had the elder List's keen sense of business, and as economic times became difficult List quit the business to devout himself fulltime to his writing. At this time his writing continued to be of a journalistic kind. Deprived of his ability to travel and wander as he had before, he wrote articles for newspapers, such as the Neue Welt, Neue deutsche Alpenzeitung, Heimat, and the Deutsche Zeitung, which dealt with his earlier travels and mystical reflections on these Loci. Many of these pieces were anthologised in 1891 in his famous Deutsch-mythologische Landschaftbilder. It was also during this period, in 1878, that he married his first wife, Helene Foster-Peters. However, the marriage was not to last through the difficult years of this period.

Given the Pan-German nationalism of the various groups and papers with which List had been associated throughout his career, it seems certain that from a political standpoint he was firmly in their camp. *12

However, the nature of his mysticism at this time seems to have been somewhat more original. Before any influence from later Theosophical notions could have been present, he was continuing on the path of mystical Germanic revivalism. Besides his own intuition - which, given his results, must have been his chief source - he must have been familiar with a variety of non-scientific, neo-romantic works on Germanic mythology and religion popular at the time, *13 and was perhaps also aware of at least a portion of the scientific studies. In any event, many of the uniquely Listian notions seem to have been already solidifying in this early period.

Through these years, List was also working on his first book-length (two-volume) effort, Carnuntum, a historical novel based on his vision of the Kulturkampf between the Germanic and Roman worlds centred at that location around the year 375 C.E.