Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts

by Bill Yenne

  In his spare time, List also devoted his energy to writing a novel entitled Carnuntum, after the ancient Roman military base located near Vienna and which List liked to visit. In this book, which was not published until 1887, he explored a culture clash between the Romans and his romantically idealistic interpretation of the Völkische Germanic civilization. Having read Tacitus, he was especially proud of the Irminones, the Germans who lived beyond the fringes of Roman civilization.

  Like Heinrich Himmler, Guido List had been raised Catholic, but he came to regard Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, as a perpetuation of the Roman occupation of northern Europe, and the Christian God as a pretender to Wotan’s rightful throne.

  Though he nurtured a fondness for the simple Völkische life of the mountains and rural villages, List found plenty of time to rub shoulders in the circles of Viennese literati, including fellow poets and authors who were riding the crest of the romantic revival of metaphysics and mysticism that characterized the late nineteenth-century New Age movement. List was right at home among these people, especially after the success of Carnuntum, and later works gave him a prominent place in fashionable Völkische circles. Among his other popular works that perpetuated his enthusiasm for Wotanism and Nordic paganism were Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods, 1893), Walkürenweihe (Valkyries’ Initiation, 1895), and Der Unbesiegbare (The Invincible, 1898). In these, he imagined a Völkische utopia while borrowing from Richard Wagner’s celebration of the sacred works of Nordic paganism.

  It was in the 1880s that List also became interested in the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, who, coincidentally, used the term “New Age” in her books. The daughter of a Tsarist military officer, she had been born in 1831 in Ukraine as Elena Petrovna Gan. Because the family traced its origins to German nobility, her name is also seen translated as Helena von Hahn. Like Himmler and List, she grew up with plenty of opportunity to exercise an active imagination. In her case, she became convinced—or at least she successfully convinced others—that she had psychic abilities. However, her youth ended abruptly at age sixteen when she was forced to wed a middle-aged Russian politician named Nikifor Vassilievich Blavatsky, in Armenia. She skipped town after three months of a reportedly unconsummated marriage and spent the next decade traveling the world from Egypt to Mexico, on her father’s dime. During this time, she spent two years living in Tibet, where she was greatly influenced by the same aspects of Buddhist mysticism that would enjoy a revival in Western salons and campuses in the 1960s. In 1873, she arrived in New York, where she made her mark on society. Like List and the gurus of the 1960s, she was soon able to take the mystic beliefs she had come in contact with and adapt them into a sort of cottage industry.

  A popular parlor diversion of the Victorian upper middle class was the seance, in which groups of people gathered in darkened rooms to communicate with spirits. These sessions were led by a medium, or spiritualist, who allegedly had the ability to call forth the spirits from “beyond.” (This practice, a popular drawing room diversion around the turn of the twentieth century, would be revived and repackaged in the 1980s under the name “channeling.”) With her lifelong “psychic gifts” and what she had learned in her travels, Madame Blavatsky became a popular medium on the New York seance scene. Though she was widely criticized as a fraud and a plagiarist, she also had many loyal devotees who supported her and the ideas that she espoused.

  In 1875, she started the Theosophical Society, a spiritualist organization that centered on her quasireligion called Theosophy, a word that blends the terms “theology” and “philosophy.” Having attracted many important and well-heeled followers to Theosophy, she penned a best-selling book, Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Published in 1877, the book referenced religious works from the Bible to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and quoted philosophers and religious figures from Plato to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.

  In 1884, during a visit to Germany, she established a German branch of the Theosophical Society under the direction of a German Colonial Office bureaucrat named Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden. This gave Theosophy a prominent profile among the myriad of movements, schools of thought, and pseudoreligions that were then bubbling in the meeting places of the Austro-Germanic New Age. By this time, List was paying attention. One tenant of Theosophy in particular resonated with List: Blavatsky’s notion of a hierarchy of primordial races of humanity—a hierarchy that Nordic people were at the apogee of.

  The idea that humankind had evolved through multiple evolutionary threads was not new to science—the English naturalist Charles Darwin had summarized evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species—but neither was the idea that some forms of life are inherently superior to others. Obviously this conceit had driven the institution of slavery for hundreds of years. As nineteenth-century anthropologists studied the differences between human races, it became popular in some quarters to suggest that one race of people was superior to another and that this could be demonstrated scientifically. The French aristocrat and novelist Arthur de Gobineau published An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races several years before Darwin published his book, and it became quite influential in conveying the idea that white people were superior. Meanwhile, in Japan, the same doctrine of superiority was being applied to “pure blooded” Japanese.

  Among the various distinct races of humans delineated by early anthropologists was the so-called Aryan race. Today, the Aryan race is usually defined as white northern Europeans, but the term was originally applied more broadly, to the hundreds of ethnicities who speak any of the hundreds of Indo-European languages and dialects. These include the major languages of Europe, as well as those of Iran, northern India, and parts of Central Asia. Those who insist on the term being defined as white northern Europeans would be disappointed to know that the word “Aryan” itself is derived from the term arya, implying nobility, which dates back centuries to India and ancient Hindu and Zoroastrian scriptures.

  The Aryan race was referred to as the “master race.” Initially, “master” may have been applied in the benign scientific sense, as in the phrase “master key,” to imply the Indo-European ethnicity was the source from which other races may have evolved. However, nineteenth-century ethnocentrists were only too willing to translate “master race” as “superior race.” Since, to them, the Aryan race was superior, it naturally followed that Aryans were the master race.

  Originally, anthropologists believed that the Aryan race, like the Indo-European linguistic group, originated somewhere in Central Asia. This concept went along with the idea, expressed by medieval Arabic geographers, that there was a Jabal al-Alsinah, or “Mountain of Tongues,” located somewhere in the Caucasus Mountains.

  However, in the late nineteenth century, the theories of Gustaf Kossinna began to gain some traction, especially in Germany, playing into the hands of Guido von List and other Nordic chauvinists. Born in 1858 in Lithuania, Kossinna was an avid student of Indo-European cultural theory and a professor of archaeology at the University of Berlin. Based on his own excavations of neolithic sites, he placed the origin of a particular form of neolithic Indo-European pottery called “corded ware” in northern Germany, extrapolating that the Aryan race and culture originated there. Specifically, he located this point of origin in the north German state of Schleswig Holstein, near the Danish border.

  Archeological theories, even if flawed or suspicious, carried a great deal of weight because they were based on things that laymen could actually see and touch. Kossinna could point to his excavations and easily assert that concrete artifacts do not lie. Conversely, the artifacts can say whatever the archeologist or his disciples interpret them to say. Later in the twentieth century, archeology would play a key role in Heinrich Himmler’s theories and justification for the primacy of the Aryan race. However, as when he was a child in Landshut, Heinrich’s interest in the artifacts of the past was not that of the archeologist. He cared not for
what could be learned from the past, but rather for what he could draw from his fantasy world and read into the past.

  Another nineteenth-century author whose works perpetuated the myth of Aryan superiority was Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He was an upper-class Englishmen who first became enraptured with Völkisch Nordic culture in the 1860s when, as a teenager, he was sent to the spas of Germany to take a “cure” for his frail health. He remained in Germany and became a rabid proponent of Aryan superiority, authoring the influential (in Völkisch circles) Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), published in 1899. He became a German citizen, a fan of the darker themes of Wagnerian opera, and even married Richard Wagner’s daughter, Eva. Among Chamberlain’s more unique Aryan theories was that Jesus Christ was part of a Nordic colony in the Middle East that was in conflict with the Jews.

  While intellectuals theorized, Madame Blavatsky had gone a step further by turning the idea of racial hierarchy into a quasireligious dogma, placing the Aryans atop a hierarchy of races within the doctrine of Theosophy. The non-Aryans, and hence, the secondary and lesser races within her hierarchy, included such people as Africans, Asians, Australian Aborigines, and Semites. The latter group included the Jews, who had long been the object of distrust, hatred, and ethnic enmity throughout Europe.

  Jews had been blamed for a variety of misdeeds, ranging from the crucifixion of the Jew who started Christianity to the lending of money. In the case of the latter, it was evidently overlooked by anti-Semites that Jews went into banking because of laws precluding them from real estate ownership and other vocational options that were open to non-Jews. Since well before they were famously persecuted in the Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century, Jews had been the target of violence. Though overt state sponsorship of Jewish persecution had faded by the nineteenth century in Western Europe, thousands of Jews in the Russian empire were killed and many more displaced in officially sanctioned pogroms. But while Jews had been disliked and blamed for various societal ills for centuries, what had begun to congeal by the early twentieth century—thanks to men such as Gobineau and Chamberlain—was a “scientific” justification for the belief that Jews were inferior.

  List blended his own Völkische and metaphysical beliefs with the theories of Aryan superiority and a Germanic origin of the Aryan race into a doctrine of Germanic racial and ethnic superiority. This he called Armanism, after the Armanen, the ancient priests who he imagined were endowed with their powers by Wotan himself. This doctrine would later be the groundwork for Himmler’s secret society of initiates.

  In the course of his studies of pagan Nordic lore, List also became especially interested in runes, the ancient alphabets that had originated in northern Europe prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet around the eighth century. Like New Age devotees of the late twentieth century, List and others attached special significance to these old alphabets, believing them to embody magical powers. List also liked the fact the use of runes predated the arrival of Christianity in northern Europe. He imagined that the runes had their roots in the earliest forms of Wotan worship, even though the earliest known runes were more or less contemporary with the Bible’s New Testament. Like the idea of an ancient Armanen priesthood, runes became a foundation stone of List’s Armanen liturgy, providing a vital link between the present and the mystical past.

  There are a number of well-known northern European runic alphabets, some dating back to around the first century. Those in Scandinavia are known as futhark, or, in Anglo-Saxon, futhorc. In Scandinavia and northern Germany, there was originally a twenty-four-character runic alphabet called the Elder Futhark, which was used only by the literate, of whom there was an exclusive few. Again, we find the idea of a select group of initiates with inside information. Later, after the eighth century, a simplified, sixteen-character runic alphabet, called the Younger Futhark, came into use as literacy became more widespread and as the marauding Vikings spread Nordic culture more widely. Even after the acceptance of the Latin alphabet, runic alphabets continued in limited use for several hundred years.

  Despite his attraction to the oldness of runes, List created his own, a new, twentieth-century runic alphabet, which he called the Armanen Futharkh. List claimed these runes were not fabricated by him, but revealed to him, through his “inner eye.” He claimed that the Armanen Futharkh came to him in 1902 during a period of temporary blindness caused by cataract surgery. His insistence that they were from a mysterious time and place gave them an air of legitimacy that they would not have enjoyed if List had admitted that he simply made them up. Just as Himmler was preoccupied with what he could read into archeology, List was interested what he could draw from his fantasy world and read into the Futharks of old, rather than in the Futharks themselves.

  There were eighteen runes on List’s list, sixteen of them based on those of the Younger Futhark, and two others borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. As List explained, the number eighteen was significant because that is the number of projections of light that can be made using the facets of a hexagonal crystal. In tying his Armanen Runes to crystal structure, he anticipated the crystal-healing movement that was briefly popular during the New Age movement of the 1980s. List eventually summarized his runic theory in his book Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), which was published in 1908, the same year he turned sixty.

  Even before the rune book was published, List was considered an elder statesman of the Völkische New Age movement. With this recognition came calls for the creation of a Guido von List Gesellschaft, or Guido von List Society. When the society was officially formed at a ceremony in March 1908, the members included fellow mystics and authors, as well as prominent business leaders such as Friedrich Wannieck and Vienna’s mayor, Karl Lueger. By this time, List had devotees throughout the Austro-German New Age circles, and the Guido von List Gesellschaft attracted members from Berlin to Hamburg to Munich.

  In 1908, List had made the important transition from a lone theoretician to the centerpiece of a movement—or, perhaps we should say, a cult. Within this cult, List created as inner circle inside his circle, a select brotherhood of initiates. They were known, not unexpectedly, as the Hoher Armanen Orden (“Higher Armanen Order”).

  The idea of a formalized circle of chosen elite within the already select organization was hardly new. All major religions have both clerical and lay orders entrusted with certain specified knowledge and responsibilities. Such inner orders also existed in the ancient world and are mentioned by classical historians such as Heredotus, Plutarch, and Pliny the Elder. In modern society, there are also numerous nonreligious fraternal orders and service clubs, ranging from the Masons to the Rotary Club—all with members-only knowledge and the proverbial secret handshake.

  Among the lay orders of Christendom were numerous well-known military orders that had secret wisdom, some of which was purported to be mystical. Of special interest to those interested in closed societies with mysterious, secret knowledge are some of the societies that were organized at the time of the Crusades, Europe’s “holy wars” against the Muslims holding Jerusalem. Notable among these many groups were the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights.

  Guido von List’s Armanen Futharkh Runes

  Fa, the first rune of the Armanen Futharkh, is based on the Fe rune of the Younger Futhark and of the Feoh rune Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. It means wealth and corresponds to the Gothic f, or Faihu.

  Ur is related to the Younger Futhark rune Ur, meaning “rain,” and the Elder Futhark rune Uruz, meaning “wild ox.” It corresponds to the Gothic Urus, the letter u.

  Thurs is related to the Elder Futhark Thurisaz rune and the Younger Futhark Thurs rune, both meaning “giant.” It is similar in shape to the rune Thorn (or Dorn), which means “thorn,” in the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. The rune is identified with the digraph for the phoneme th.

  Os is from the Younger Futhark and possibly derived from “Aesir,” the plural term for the part of
the Nordic pantheon to which both Wotan and Thor belong. In an old Icelandic rune poem, it is stated that Óss is prince of Asgard and lord of Valhalla, identifying him, thus, as Wotan. The rune is identified with the letter a.

  Rit, interpreted as meaning “journey” or “ride,” is a similarly shaped variant of the Elder Futhark rune Raido, the Younger Futhark rune Reid (or Raeid), and the Anglo-Saxon rune Rad. The runes are all identified with the Gothic letter r, which is called Raida.

  Ka is the same as the Younger Futhark rune Kaun, meaning “ulcer.” It is considered an equivalent if the Elder Futhark rune Kaunan, meaning “torch,” although the shape is different. The Anglo-Saxon rune Cen is an inverted Kaun. These runes are all identified with the Gothic letter k, which is called Kusma.

  Hagal is derivative of the Younger Futhark rune Hagal or Hagall, meaning “hail.” The runes for “hail” in the Elder Futhark and Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are Hagalaz and Haegl, respectively, and both are dissimilar in shape to Hagal and Hagall. The runes Hagal and Hagall are identified with the letter h. List and his disciples considered Hagal to be the mother rune in his Futharkh and saw it as representative of a hexagonal crystal. The Anglo-Saxon rune Ior, is similar in shape to List’s Hagal, but it means “eel.”