For those who doubt the infamous effects the machinations of secret societies can have on the world, we need look no further than the greatest holocaust of the 20th century. Dozens of books have been written explaining the mechanisms behind the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, but few of them have focused on the hidden guiding hand of secret societies and the worship of dark, occult forces.
The occult roots of Nazi power have their beginnings as far back as 1887, with the founding of the Rosicrucian-influenced Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn by, among others Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton, author of The Last Days of Pompeii. Lytton was also an acquaintance of the notorious Eliphas Levi, who wrote 'The Coming Race', which describes the mysterious "Vril" force. The name of this magickal energy source, along with other ideas from the book, would be adopted by those developing a new estoeric philosophy in Germany, with occult foundations owing a considerable debt to The Golden Dawn. This shadowy entity became known as the Vril Society.
The Vril might have remained an obscure group of cranks had it not been for another Golden Dawn-related figure. It was the mystical Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, that first put forward the theory of the five 'root races': Polarians, Hyperboreans, Lemurians, Atlanteans and finally...Aryans.
In 1918, a devotee of the esoteric, one Rudolf von Sebottendorff set up the Thule Gesellschaft. Also heavily influenced by the occult and by Blavatsky's Theosophical theories, as well as those of the Anthrosophist Rudolf Steiner -- not to mention racism and anti-semitism -- the Thule Gesellschaft soon came to count among its members Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and other individuals who would later become prominent in the Nazi party. At some point prior to becoming Reichschancellor, Hitler was also schooled in diction by the esotericist and magician Hanussen, who was said to have been a great expert in the art of hypnotism.
The Thule Gesellschaft, then, along with its sister secret society, the Vril would provide the philosophical, intellectual and even spiritual underpinnings of the eventual National Socialist movement, along with a third stream, about to converge. That was the pan-Germanist and esotericist Guido Von List, whose occult, Templar-influenced secret society boasted a membership which included the wealthy and those from the conservative and nationalist circles, as well as the occult community.
These forces were to congeal to form a perfect storm of political, cultural, financial and spiritual forces that would eventually burst into the flame that would consume most of Europe.
Other members of what would become Hitler's inner circle shared his fascination with the occult. Josef Goebbels was a devotee of the prophecies of Nostradamus, while Goring believed passionately in the concept of The Hollow Earth. The Third Reich's premier architect, Albert Speer, was fascinated by geomancy or earth power, and many of his architectural layouts betray his fascination with mystic geometry. And of course, we have already mentioned Rudolf Hess. The imaginative reader can still envision him in the years following the war, the lone inhabitant of the echoing Spandau Prison, locked down like some supremely dangerous comic-book super-villain.
Lastly, there was Heinrich Himmler, perhaps the most evil and twisted of all Hitler's henchmen. As head of the SS, Himmler turned the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritages founded by the mystic Frederick Hielscher in 1935, into the Deutches Ahenerbe SS, a special unit dedicated to locating the Aryan origin of the Nordic race. Among other pursuits, the Ahenerbe conducted a number of expeditions to Tibet, ostensibly to locate the origins of the 'indo-Germanic "Nordic" race, but more importantly to locate the spiritual "power-plant" producer of Vril. Other fixations included a search for the Holy Grail (supported by the explorations of Otto Rahn) and the Spear of Destiny, potent occult talismans which they imagined would render the Third Reich forever undefeatable. Himmler himself was recently revealed to have visited a monastery in the Pyrenees on a quest for the Grail.
For the SS, their occult centre of gravity was located at the fortress of Wewelsburg. The magnificent fortress, dating back to Renaissance times, was expanded and its surroundings manipulated in accordance with principles of sacred geometry such that its layout served as a metaphor for the Spear of Destiny in accordance with the hermetic principle 'as above, so below'.
Behind it all, some detect the hands of the Illuminati, founded in Bavaria in the late 1700s by Adam Weishaupt, and perhaps the most mysterious secret society of all. Certainly, the Rosicrucians have been linked with the Illuminati, as have the Ordo Templi Orientalis (which had relationships and interlocking memberships with the Order of the Golden Dawn) and the Thule Gesellschaft. This possible origin of the secret societies that gave birth to the Nazi cult is troublesome to researchers, not least of which because the Illuminati's presumed links to one of the most infamous secret societies in the U.S. today, Skull and Bones. Most troubling of all is the degree to which links can be drawn between prominent Bonesmen - scions of today's ruling presidential dynasties - can be drawn to the Nazi party (a story for another time).
Not only does this circumstantial evidence add weight to the argument regarding the Illuminati connection, it raises serious questions about whether or not the seeds of a return to power of a similar fascist cult lie dormant in the most sacred halls of power in the U.S. today.
Given the assaults on civil liberties being experienced in the U.S. almost daily, coupled with persistent rhetoric surrounding the New World Order and an equally relentless drive to focus life around 'spirituality', it's a question worth pondering.