Temple of Set Reading List: Category 14
Fascism, Totalitarianism, and Magic
Reprinted from: "The Crystal Tablet of Set" (c) Temple of Set 1989 CE Weirdbase file version
by TS permission by Michael A. Aquino, Ipsissimus VI* Temple of Set
This is a very potent, controversial, and dangerous area of magic, whose implications are rarely examined, understood, or appreciated by the profane [which is just as well]. Much of the data concerning it derives from Nazi Germany, whose character as a state based upon magical rather than conventional principles goes a long way towards explaining the "peculiar" fascination which that episode continues to exert on students of history and political science. Many of the techniques pioneered or perfected by the Nazis continue to be used/abused - generally in a superficial and ignorant fashion - by every country of the world in one guise or another.
The magician who can recognize and identify these techniques and the principles behind them can thus control or avoid their influence as desired. 14A. "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" by Wilhelm Reich. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1970. (TS-3)
MA: "The controversial Reich examined both the Nazi and the communist elements of Germany, found them wanting, and was roundly denounced by them in return. This book exposes their use of mass movements and mob psychology as a sexual substitute, and their repression of 'innocent' sex as a deliberate political technique [compare #14E]. This manipulation of expression and repression is applied to other social phenomena as well - such as certain organized religious bodies. A lucid and hard-hitting study.
A biographical profile of Reich is presented in #6N, Appendix 75 - 'The Frankenstein Legacy'." 14B. "The Occult and the Third Reich" by Jean-Michel Angebert. NY: Macmillan, 1974. (TS-3) (OT-3)
MA: "This book contains sections on the Grail (both Christian and pagan), traditions concerning Atlantis and ancient initiatory societies, the theories of Nietzsche and Wagner, Nazi mysticism, and the Catharist tradition. Well footnoted.
The almost fantastic subject material tends to make the author's objectivity suspect, but on close examination his argument is grounded in responsible research. On the other hand Otto Rahn, the young German mystic whose theories are advanced in this book did not hold the alleged high rank in the SS, nor commit suicide because of politico/mystical reasons. He was an Unterscharfuehrer (sergeant) who killed himself after being expelled from the SS because of his sexual preferences." 14C. "The Grail Legend" by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970. (TS-4) (OT-1)
MA: "Another book for the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology [see also #19K], this impressive study treats all major historical versions of the Grail legend, identifies their common features, and evaluates their significance.
The definitive work on the Grail. See also #6N, Appendix 36 - In Quest of the Unholy Grail." 14D. "The Spear of Destiny" by Trevor Ravenscroft. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973. (TS-3) (OT-3)
MA: "The chief merit of this book lies in its profile of the metaphysical and occult-society concepts and movements that influenced pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany. Read critically but thoughtfully. Since it is heavily footnoted to Theosophical Society (Blavatsky) and Anthrosophical Society (Steiner) sources, this book cannot be considered factually reliable." 14E. "1984" by George Orwell. NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949. (TS-3)
MA: "Orwell's classic portrait of a 'negative utopia', with many features adapted from Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia - but also a satire of socialist trends in postwar Britain.
Many features of Orwell's imaginary society may be increasingly applied to actual ones today. The shape of things to come?" 14F. "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943. (TS-5) (OT-3)
MA: "Everyone knows that this is 'the most evil book ever written', but few have taken the time to actually read it, hence cannot really explain why. Further complicating the situation is Hitler's interspersion of political philosophy (interesting) with emotional tirades (not so interesting). Look for the discussions concerning the selection of leaders, control of the masses, and the justification for human social organization. You may be surprised at what you discover.
Keep in mind that this book was written not as a historical memoir, but rather as a propaganda device to lend an image of philosophical substance and coherence to the still-fledgling and somewhat [due to Hitler's incarceration in prison at the time of MK's writing] disorganized Nazi Party. A far more revealing 'Hitler Memoir' is #14K." 14G. "Hitler: Legend, Myth, & Reality" by Werner Maser. NY: Harper & Row, 1971. (TS-3)
MA: "As time passes, biographical profiles of Hitler become increasingly more objective. This is probably the most useful one currently in print, which Colin Wilson calls 'the most important document on Hitler so far published'. It is noteworthy for its focus on the man rather than on the political official [for the political official see #14H]. If you are going to take a look at Hitler's own writings and statements (#14F/K/L), read this first for perspective." 14H. "The War Path" (NY: Viking, 1978) and Hitler's War (2 volumes) (NY: Viking, 1977) by David Irving. (TS-4)
MA: "1933-39 (WP) and 1939-45 (HW) through Hitler's eyes. An impressive work of research that will show you peacetime Nazi Germany and World War II as you've never seen them before. Sound scholarship, objective evaluation." 14I. "The Bormann Brotherhood" by William Stevenson. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. (TS-3)
MA: "Around VI-VII the pursuit of underground Nazi- survivalist organizations was all the rage, and there was a flurry of Bormannism, ODESSA films/novels, etc. This little book was sort of overwhelmed in the general stampede, but it didn't deserve to be. A cold, clear, fact-packed study of the post-World War II survival of the original Nazi hierarchy." 14J. "Three Faces of Fascism" by Ernst Nolte. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963. (TS-4)
MA: "This is a political science text analyzing 20th- century fascist movements in France, Germany, and Italy. The observations concerning the metapolitical implications of the philosophy are among the most profound yet voiced.
The analysis of the failure of the French movement is as instructive as that of the successes of the German and Italian movements. It is interesting to contrast Nolte's assessment of fascism with Hitler's [as set forth in #14F]." 14K. "Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944" by H.R. Trevor-Roper (Ed.). NY: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953 [simultaneously published in England as "Hitler's Table Talk" by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London]. (TS-5) (OT-3)
MA: "Martin Bormann was sufficiently fascinated by Adolf Hitler's private conversational comments on various topics that he persuaded Hitler to allow them to be stenographically recorded. After 1945 the transcriptions were found among Bormann's private papers and were ultimately compiled and published by Professor Trevor-Roper (who also edited and published the final entries of Dr. Goebbels' diaries). Hitler's conversations cover an astonishingly broad spectrum of topics - organized religion, metaphysics, dogmatism, Voltaire, origins of the human race, aesthetics, Egyptian & Greek culture, Hoerbiger's cosmology, genius, philosophy of law, superstition, mental diseases, etc. An impressive look into the mind of an individual whom the postwar world has been conditioned to dismiss as a crude, criminal, and unintrospective thug. Read, then judge for yourself." 14L.
"The Voice of Destruction" by Hermann Rauschning. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1940. (TS-5) (OT-3)
MA: "Rauschning was a regional party leader (Gauleiter) of the early Nazi Party who was a confidant of Hitler's during 1932-34. At first so impressed with the F~hrer's private statements that he took extensive and immediate notes, he later took fright and bolted to Paris. In 1937-38 he wrote a theoretical condemnation of Nazism entitled The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (NY: Alliance Book Corporation, 1939).
It seemed so alarmist that few took it seriously - until World War II broke out. Then Rauschning was able to publish these transcripts and analyses of Hitler's conversations. Topics include: Aristocracy, Antichrist, barbarism, ethics of war, a new social order, the Human Solstice, Black & White Magic, and the mystical elements in Obersalzburg. Most of the material for Nazi occultism quoted and alluded to in #4B came from this book. It was generally regarded as so "weird" as to be spurious until after the war, when the #14K material came to light and substantiated it." 14M. "Hitler's Secret Sciences" by Nigel Pennick. Suffolk: Neville Spearman, 1981. (TS-4) (OT-1)
MA: "The esoteric section of the German Nazi SS was not the Sicherheitsdienst [as alleged in #6L] but the Deutsche Ahnenerbe (German Ancestral Heritage Organization). Most histories of the SS concern themselves with the better-known organizations and activities of the Black Order, mentioning the Ahnenerbe only in passing.
This is one of the first books to discuss it in any detail. Again there is a lot of #14B/C/D material, but it is all relevant and coherently organized. This is a concise (177 pages), fact-packed book bolstered by a strong bibliography of rare and unusual publications and periodicals. If you are seriously interested in the Ahnenerbe, and are fluent in highly-technical German, see Kater, Michael H., "Das 'Ahnenerbe' der SS 1935-1945: ein Betrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches" (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974). [The complete archaeological, magical, and administrative records of the Ahnenerbe are contained on microfilm rolls #120-211, Microcopy T-580 (10-135-4) in the National Archives Building of the United States, Washington, D.C.
These papers have never been sorted, indexed, and annotated in detail, but the Order of the Trapezoid has compiled a working index with brief annotations pending a more thorough study. Initiates of the Order who may be traveling to Washington and wish to examine that microfilm are invited to contact the Temple office for a copy of the index.] [See also #5H.]" 14N. "The Passing of the Great Race" by Madison Grant. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. (TS-5)
MA: "You can still find #14F in print, because it's a good whipping-boy for sanctimonous finger-waggling. It is less easy to find the books from 'our side' that argued along similar lines.
This is [was!] one of the more famous, and you may still uncover an occasional copy in the back room of a used-book store or in the darkest corners of obscure libraries. Grant was not exactly a nonentity or lunatic-fringe fanatic. He was Chairman of the New York Zoological Society, Trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, and a Councilor of the American Geographical Society. In this book [by a prominent publisher] he argues a forceful case for a European race history that would have done credit to Hitler and Rosenberg. The most interesting aspect of this book is that only a very few years ago it was accepted as a respectable contender in the academic/scientific community. After World War II it was, in Orwell's terms, guilty of Crimethink and thus condemned to be an Unperson.
There is a lesson to be learned here concerning the durability and invulnerability of 'established scientific fact' when it becomes politically or socially inconvenient. I hereby suggest that you make up your own mind as to whether the book is convincing. After all, I wouldn't want to get in trouble for even appearing to endorse it." 14O. "Race and Race History and Other Essays" by Alfred Rosenberg (Robert Pois, Ed.). NY: Harper & Row (Harper Torchback #TB-1820), 1974. (TS-5)
MA: "Extracts from the major race-history writings of the Nazis' 'official philosopher' - with a finger-waggling introduction, of course. It is O.K. for this book to be in print; it has the appropriate editorial condemnation. [See also #14S.]" 14P. "Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power" by Robert Strausz-Hupe. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1942. (TS-4)
MA: "The study of international relations on the basis of power politics is academically known as political realism (Realpolitik), and before reading #14P you might want to flip through the bible of this school, Hans Morgenthau's "Politics Among Nations", for a general familiarity with its principles.
In 1926 and 1928 Oswald Spengler published his powerful indictment of contemporary Western civilization, "The Decline of the West", and this made a great impression on a German General named Karl Haushofer. Haushofer became a professor who gained increasing fame in Germany as the master-theoretician of 'Geopolitics', being a part-political, part-geographic, and part-mystical rationale for aggressive state expansionism. Haushofer was considered by many to be the evil genius behind Hitler's 'blood and soil' and 'living- space' programs.
He wrote no single, coherent text of his philosophy. This book was commissioned in order to explain Geopolitics to a still- uncomprehending U.S. diplomatic community, and it does a good job. Geopolitical thinking was out of favor in the West until reintroduced by Henry Kissinger (a Morgenthau enthusiast), but it has always been the lynchpin of Eastern (Soviet/Chinese) foreign policy. Strausz-Hupe summarizes: 'World policy evolves towards several continental systems, and technology accentuates the strategic importance of large, contiguous areas.
Thus the era of overseas empires and free world trade closes. If this reasoning is pushed to its absolute conclusion, the national state is also a thing of the past, and the future belongs to the giant state. Many nations will be locked in a few vast compartments. But in each of these one people, controlling a strategic area, will be master of the others.'" 14Q. "Wewelsburg 1933 bis 1945: SS Kult- und Terrorstaette" by Prof. Dr. Karl Hueser. Paderborn: Verlag Bonifatius Druckerei, 1982 (German language edition only). (TS-5) (OT-5)
MA: "The definitive documentary study of the role of the Wewelsburg Castle in the mythological and Black Magical practices of the SS.
This is a historical, not an 'occult' publication; in the first few paragraphs it easily discounts the fanciful, ignorant accounts of the Wewelsburg such as appear in #14B/D/N/R, etc. Here is bedrock: bewildering to some, but a Gate to the Order of the Trapezoid." 14R. "Hitler: The Occult Messiah" by Gerald Suster. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1981. (TS-3)
MA: "This is a short (200-page) hardcover book which brings together most if not all of the occult speculations concerning Nazi Germany, with a reasonable degree of footnoting.
Hence it is included here as a good introductory survey of the field. Extensive quotations from Crowley and an 'AEon of Horus' theme throughout the text expose the author's Thelemite bias." 14S. "The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology" by Robert Cecil. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1972. (TS-4) (OT-3)
MA: "The best biography and critical analysis concerning Alfred Rosenberg, 'official philosopher' of the Nazi movement. Much of the material otherwise in existence concerning Rosenberg is suppressed by the Soviet Union, while previous Western biographies and editions of his memoirs were crudely edited to portray him as more of a monster than a human being, much less a philosopher. Nevertheless Cecil is no apologist for Rosenberg, bringing out his weaknesses as well as his strengths.
This book also describes the ideological background and climate of Nazi Germany as a whole, and summarizes the main arguments of Rosenberg's "Myth of the Twentieth Century". [A 1982 English translation by Vivian Bird of Rosenberg's "The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual Confrontations of our Age" is available from Noontide Press, 1822-1/2 Newport Blvd. #183, Costa Mesa, CA 92627, USA.][See also #14O.]" 14T. "Metapolitics from the Romantics to Hitler" by Peter Viereck. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941. (TS-4) (OT-1)
MA: "This is quite simply the definitive history and analysis of the Germanic mystical and magical tradition as it has been applied to society and politics.
No other political analysis of Nazi Germany compares with it, and an understanding of the Nazi phenomenon is impossible without it. Major sections deal with Romanticism, life-worship, Kultur, dynamism, Wagner, Chamberlain, Fichte, Hegel, Rosenberg, and Hitler." 14U. "For Freedom Destined: Mysteries of Man's Evolution in the Mythology of Wagner's "Ring" Operas and "Parsifal"" by Franz E. Winkler. Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press, 1974. (TS-4) (OT-1)
MA: "The definitive study of the magical and philosophical aspects of the "Ring" and "Parsifal" operas. From the book: 'When we think of the origin of man, we insist illogically on confusing the history of his purely biological being with the history of his spirit; the latter defies any attempt at investigation by methods we now call scientific.
Darwin and his followers deal with the emergent evolution of visible man, while on the other hand religion and mythology deal with the evolution of his invisible soul. In his cycle of the "Ring" and "Parsifal", Wagner uses the magic power of music, words, and scenery to open man's heart to the history of the hidden essence of his own self, and to the changing forces that are active behind the sensory phenomena of man and Earth.'" 14V. "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. NY: Harper & Row, 1951. (TS-3) (OT- 3)
MA: "Hoffer's thoughtful study of the mind of the fanatic and of the various media through which such a mind attempts to fulfill itself - religious, political, or social.
It is particularly instructive to compare Hoffer's theses with the experiences of Hitler, Himmler, and Rosenberg as treated elsewhere in this reading-list category. The book's strong point is Hoffer's famed common-sense, but this same feature is also its weak point, because it is obvious that Hoffer is not aware of [or does not understand] the principles discussed, for example, in #14T." 14W. "Astrology and the Third Reich" by Ellic Howe. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1984. (TS-3) (OT-3)
MA: "A historical study of astrological beliefs in Western Europe since 1700, with special emphasis on German astrology during 1919-1930 and in Nazi Germany.
A revised and expanded edition of Howe's earlier "Urania's Children", this book also presents and critiques basic astrological theory and explores the Lesser Magical use of astrology as a psychological warfare device during World War II. Howe, in addition to being the author of #10F and a contributor to #4E, served in Britain's Political Warfare Executive during World War II." 14X. "The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935" by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1985. (TS-3) (OT-3)
MA: "This new and very scholarly book fills a crucial need in the study of 20th-century Germanic occultism, namely a detailed and non-sensationalistic account of Guido von List's Armanenschaft, Joerg Lanz von Liebenfels' Order of New Templars, and Rudolf von Sebottendorff's Thule Gesellschaft. Also profiled is SS-Oberfuehrer Karl Wiligut, occult counselor to Heinrich Himmler and architect of such projects as the Wewelsburg restoration and the SS-Totenkopf ring. This book is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis at Oxford."