A further complication is the fact that when American fighter pilots started spotting strange flying objects during the end of WWII, dubbing them “foo fighters,” a persistent rumor spread among Allied fighter pilots that these were some kind of German secret weapon.
After the war, the UFO myth entered the subconscious of the West, with the rumored UFO crash at Roswell and alien abduction stories becoming standard features in modern folklore. And while many of the contemporary myths dramatized by the tremendously successful TV series The X-Files might seem fantastic, the strangest ideas are the ones that people actually seem to believe in. One such notion is that life on earth was to some extent spawned by creatures from another world.
The chief popularizer of the theory that aliens initiated or tampered with human development is the Swiss author Erich Von Däniken. In his opinion, many otherwise inexplicable feats of ancient man (for example, the building of the Pyramids) can be understood by the fact that early men were assisted by extraterrestrial visitors.
While it might be easy to dismiss Von Däniken’s theories of UFOs being “Chariots of the Gods” as nonsense (the number of books that criticize his theories rivals his own prolific production), they are in no way obscure. Däniken has sold more than 54 million books worldwide, and the so-called “Ancient Astronaut” field which he made a household phenomenon has grown into a thriving pseudo-scientific subculture, seemingly tailor-made for an audience reared on hippie and New Age ideas and for whom “open-mindedness” seems tantamount to a willingness to accept anything so long as it has a scent of incense or ancient scrolls.
In his 1976 book The Sirius Mystery, Robert Temple made the curious claim that an African tribe called the Dogon possessed remarkable astronomical insight into the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. This included knowledge about Sirius’s two companion stars, which are entirely invisible to the only optical instrument possessed by the Dogon—the naked eye. If the Dogon, thoroughly isolated from the centers of modern science in their residence 300 km south of Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa, really knew about such astronomical tidbits, it would indeed be baffling. And combined with revelations about Dogon legends that their forefathers were bestowed with wisdom by the entity Oannes, who descended from the stars, the The Sirius Mystery provided a real jolt to the imaginations of its readers. Interest was renewed in 1998 when Temple republished the book, now subtitled “New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago.”
VARG IN PRISON, 2000
While the circumstances that led to the creation of the book are convoluted (as any arguments dealing with ancient astronauts invariably are), at the root of the mystery lie the writings of the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, who did research on the Dogon in the 1930s. Twenty years later, the Frenchmen published their story of how the Dogon had revealed this astronomical knowledge about Sirius (Sigu Tolo in the native language) to them.
But other anthropologists who later visited the area have been unable to find the same astronomical knowledge circulating among the Dogon, and the most realistic hypotheses seem to be that the one Dogon informant who divulged the information to the two Frenchmen either learned his Sirius lore from earlier visitors (of the human variety), or indeed from Marcel Griaule himself, a keen astronomy fan who took along star-charts to help extract information. Either wittingly or unconsciously, the Dogon native might have had this knowledge transferred to him from his interviewer—or else Griaule overemphasized what was passed to him through his interpreter, thus finding exactly what he wanted to. Furthermore, many of the Dogon’s astronomical “facts” are just plain wrong.
In the world of the pop esotericism, however, the fact that claims are exposed as lackluster or even fraudulent often has little bearing on their continuing distribution via the myriad magazines and bookshops that cater to alternative ideas. As such, it is hardly surprising that the idea of gods from Sirius also pops up in Varg Vikernes’s outlook. It should be noted, too, that such a claim may be con-nected to traditions in various occult circles regarding a preoccupation with Sirius—hardly surprising, since it is the brightest (although not the closest) star in our skies.
VARG IN PRISON, 2000
The same year the aforementioned Sirius Mystery was published, Israeli author Zecharia Sitchin released his book The Twelfth Planet. In interviews, Zecharia Sitchin has stated that his “Earth Chronicles” series of books “is based on the premise that mythology is not fanciful but the repository of ancient memories; that the Bible ought to be read literally as a historic/scientific document; and that ancient civilizations—older and greater than assumed—were the product of knowledge brought to earth by the Anunnaki, ‘Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.’ I trust that modern science will continue to confirm ancient knowledge.”
Sitchin was first attracted to this peculiar field of research because he was puzzled by the Nefilim, who are mentioned in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, Chapter Six. There, the Nefilim (also spelled Nephilim) are described as the sons of the gods who married the daughters of Man in the days before the great flood, the Deluge. The word Nefilim is often translated as “giants,” meaning that the Old Testament asserts there were days when giants walked upon the earth. If this sounds a bit like the occult narrative of Varg Vikernes, it only becomes more so when Sitchin claims that the correct and literal meaning of the word Nefilim is “those who have come down to earth from the heavens.” Fallen angels procured the daughters of men as mates, which Sitchin takes to mean that the space-farers mixed their superior DNA with that of primitive mankind, leading to a quantum leap in human genetic and cultural evolution which spawned the blossoming Mesopotamian cultures.
Dr. Michael Rothstein is assistant professor in the Department of History of Religions at the University of Copenhagen. He is an internationally published researcher in the fields of contemporary religions, and is especially interested in the ways people believe in UFOs.
DR. MICHAEL ROTHSTEIN
WHY IS BELIEF IN FLYING SAUCERS SO WIDESPREAD TODAY?
Time changes, and so do humans’ ideas about themselves and the world they live in. The UFO myth was conceived as a response to Cold War fears, but gradually it took on other perspectives as well. Today it represents a modern tale of human intercourse with what is non-human or beyond human (either positively or negatively)—a tale which has been told since the dawn of humanity. Thus ideas of UFOs may be considered a modern representation of ancient religious sentiments expressed in a language suitable for a modern, industrial, space-traveling, Sci-Fi–reading society.
IN YOUR WRITINGS, YOU HAVE ARGUED THAT CENTRAL TENETS OF THE UFO MYTHOS DERIVE FROM WESTERN ESOTERICISM, MAINLY THEOSOPHY AND ITS IDEA OF “HIDDEN SPIRITUAL MASTERS” THAT ENLIGHTEN HUMANITY. DOES THIS MEAN THAT PEOPLE WITH AN ESOTERIC WELTANSCHAUUNG ARE MORE DISPOSED THAN OTHERS TOWARDS AN INTEREST IN UFOS?
Not necessarily, but it surely means that certain interpretations of the alleged UFOs will appear more frequently or naturally to those involved in esotericism compared to others. Individuals such as George King and George Adamski, for instance, had careers as occultists prior to their UFO interest. This lead them to explicitly theosophically inspired understandings of their new field.
IS THERE A SPECIAL CONNECTION BETWEEN NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND UFOS?
In certain ways, yes. Nazism has always had some kind of relation to the occult and certain Nazi groups (often outside the actual Nazi parties) have made a special point out of it. However, this really is fringe stuff. What is more interesting is the fact that UFOs on many occasions have been interpreted as devices developed by Nazi scientists, as German secret weapons. This is, I believe, more interesting than notions of clones of Hitler hiding under Antarctica in huge UFO-related facilities. Nazis are in many ways the demons of the modern world, at least most people find them disgusting and dangerous, and any association between the bewildering UFOs and these groups points to a certain understanding of UFOs as sinister or demonic.
The phenomenon is known throughout history, not least of all in the history of religions. What is important to note is that leaders, ideologists, prophets, etc., actually can do very little to elevate themselves and claim authority unless people are willing to bestow this kind of authority upon them. As long as people wish to believe, they will readily accept authorities that support their beliefs. The phenomenon is not that Von Däniken is able to persuade people of anything. The phenomenon is that people want Von Däniken to provide material for them to believe in. Furthermore, this is not in itself a “far-out” belief. Any belief in things out of the ordinary could be considered “far out”: God, for instance, or the Resurrection of Christ, flying yogis, whatever. People’s minds operate in this way, and it lets them develop coherent worldviews that make the world approachable and intelligible.
VARG VIKERNES SEEMS TO READ THE EDDAS LIKE VON DÄNIKEN READS THE BIBLE, INTERPRETING IT AS MEMORIES IN MYTHOLOGICAL FORM OF HUMAN CONTACT WITH ALIEN GODS. WOULD SUCH A READING BE POSSIBLE WITH MANY OLDER RELIGIOUS TEXTS? FOR INSTANCE, THE VEDIC TEXTS OF ANCIENT INDIA MENTION THINGS THAT CAN BE INTERPRETED AS FLYING VESSELS.
Surely any, and I do mean any, ancient text could be interpreted along such lines. Historically speaking it is nonsense—but most, if not all, religious representations could be termed nonsense when considered from a scholarly point of view. What we see is contemporary interpretations, a radically new exegesis. Religious texts do not carry a complete meaning. Rather, their meaning is created through the process of interpretation, and interpretations vary over the years.
As hinted by Rothstein, one of the most unusual marriages of UFO lore and National Socialism is the idea that the Third Reich is alive and well under the Antarctic ice-cap, keeping watch over the world by means of its flying saucers and waiting for the day to return and free the world from Zionist bankers, communists, and other enemies of the Aryan race. This particular theory fits snugly with a popular older belief alleged to have been held by some Nazis, namely that the earth is hollow.
The most eloquent spiritual representative of such ideas in the present day is the Chilean dignitary and author Miguel Serrano, a former diplomat (to India, Yugoslavia and Austria) who counted both Carl Jung and Herman Hesse among his circle of friends. Serrano authored a number of books in the 1960s and ’70s concerning his yogic pilgrimages across India and personal accounts of magical love rooted in alchemy and allegory. In the late 1970s he began writing a series of texts to delineate his faith of “Esoteric Hitlerism,” which encompasses beliefs regarding the hollow earth and the existence of secret Nazi UFO bases in Antarctica. His book Das goldene Band (The Golden Band) addresses these topics specifically, but since publication in German in 1987 it has been banned as illegal Nazi propaganda by the democratic government of that country. Nevertheless, the book continues to circulate, primarily as a downloadable text file via Internet sites like the “Thule-Netz.” While some commentators might try to dismiss Serrano’s ideas as simply a recruiting technique for more overt political initiatives, they are undoubtedly a sincere expression of his mystical outlook.
Mattias Gardell is a lecturer in religious anthropology at the University of Stockholm. He has studied radical religions extensively, and is the author of a book on the Nation of Islam, Countdown to Armageddon.
His latest research project has involved a year of travelling around North America and interviewing figures involved in the neo-Nazi and Ásatru movements, two milieus that sometimes overlap—and especially so in the case of Varg Vikernes.
MATTIAS GARDELL
SOME ANTIFASCIST COMMENTATORS SEE THE NAZI PREOCCUPATION WITH UFOS AS A TACTICAL MOVE TO SPREAD THEIR POLITICAL MESSAGE INTO CIRCLES THAT SEEM TO SWALLOW VIRTUALLY ANYTHING. HOW CORRECT DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
That is hard to estimate. I know that some propagators of NS ideology, such as Ernst Zündel, would fit that description. His main drive is Holocaust revisionism. He reasons that most people believe the Holocaust took place because the Jewish control over media and education is almost total. To find an audience (outside the National Socialist scene) receptive to his ideas of a “Holohoax” he would need to find free-thinkers who are willing to accept as true knowledge things that most others would reject. And when he finds people who willingly accept as credible the idea that the earth is hollow and populated by a superior race with a high-tech culture that now and then visits the outer-earthers in its flying saucers, then he knows he has found such an audience.
WHY DOES UFO THEOLOGY, IF THAT IS THE RIGHT WORD FOR IT, STRIKE A CHORD WITH PARTS OF THE NAZI OR RACIALIST MOVEMENT, AND HOW COMMON IS UFO THINKING IN THOSE CIRCLES TODAY?
It’s getting more and more common. Fascination with UFOs and theories about extraterrestrial links and/or Aryan extraterrestrial origins date back to the 1940s and 1950s, but they have really made a breakthrough on the scene today.
I think that part of the reason why Aryan revolutionaries are so receptive to these theories is related to the fact that both UFO theologians and white National Socialist racists hold as valid knowledge what is rejected or ridiculed by mainstream society. A believer in one kind of stigmatized knowledge tends to be receptive or open to other kinds of stigmatized knowledge—the fact that it is not accepted as true by the universities and mainstream media is interpreted to mean that it must be something to it. This might—in part—explain why white racists tend to be open to all kinds of alternative medicine, ideas of lost worlds, parapsychology, alternative religions and alternative science, including UFO theologies.
The UFO theories put forth by Varg Vikernes, even if they might seem novel when taken in a heathen and National Socialist context, are nothing new. Vikernes, however, claims that his ideas have developed primarily through what he calls “deep intuition”—literally from the “blood.” Such ideas of blood as a carrier of hereditary information are common in Nazi circles, and can in some way be compared to Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Whether one believes this or not is irrelevant, as it is hard to imagine that Vikernes arrived at his “flying saucers from Sirius” conclusion as the result of some racial genetic memory when the UFOs are flying all around him.
One example of how the UFO myth permeates Vikernes’s immediate environment is in the Norwegian orthodox Hitlerite organization Zorn 88, recently renamed Norges Nasjonalsosialistiske Bevegelse (The Norwegian National Socialist Movement), whose magazine, Gjallarhorn, Vikernes has occasionally contributed to. Erik Rune Hansen, Gjallarhorn’s editor and the secretary of the NNSB, has publicly claimed to have seen a UFO and Gjallarhorn has carried a number of articles with an esoteric slant.
Dabbling in UFO lore has a long tradition in Norwegian right-wing and Nationalist thinking. One reason for this might be found in the continuing influence of Vidkun Quisling’s philosophy of Universism, which included speculations about the existence of life on other planets. For some of the political activists who stepped into the vacuum left after Quisling’s execution for treason, the post-war preoccupation with UFOs melded perfectly with elements of Universism.
One prominent figure in this confusing landscape—although he can in no way be seen as a direct successor of Quisling—was Anders Lange. He was secretary of the ultra-patriotic and staunchly anti-communist Fedrelandslaget (Fatherland League) in the 1930s. The most prominent personality involved with the Fedrelandslaget was Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian national icon who was famous for his daring exploits in the polar regions and his relief work in the famine-stricken Soviet Union. During the latter period, Vidkun Quisling served as one of his most trusted helpers.
Anders Lange seems to have been considerably more radical than Nansen and most of his comrades in Fedrelandslaget. In his younger days in the
1930s, Lange said he considered himself a fascist and supporter of Mussolini. But as with many others, the war caused him to distance himself from totalitarian opinions, and in the post-war era he emerged as a fierce opponent of state intervention in private affairs, although his politics still retained a racial slant.
Lange was an avid dog enthusiast. As an extension of running his own kennel, in 1948 he began publishing Hundebladet (loosely translated: Dog News). The newsletter soon came to deal with matters far beyond the canine realm. Anders Lange was a firm believer in a tolerant editorial policy, which led to his publication becoming a rallying point for all sorts of alternative perspectives.
One such avenue of thought that manifested itself in Hundebladet was UFO speculation. The newsletter regularly published articles and items relating to flying saucers. Lange might have seen this as a logical extension of his interest in Quisling’s Universism theories, but regardless it certainly attracted readers who were far more interested in extraterrestrial spacecraft than politics.
The apex of Anders Lange’s political career came in 1973, when he formed Anders Langes Parti for sterk nedsettelse av skatter, avgifter og offentlige inngrep. This mouthful translates to “Anders Lange’s Party for a Drastic Reduction in Taxes, Rates, and State Intervention,” and the name encapsulated the crux of the party’s platform. After a television debate in which Lange posed with a sword, the ALP (as it was known for short) won five percent of the vote and Lange entered parliament as its representative, where he made quite an impression with his flamboyant personality, no doubt assisted by his ever-present glass of egg liqueur. The egg liqueur not only served as a tonic for Lange’s voice (in the ALP’s heyday, Lange would give speeches almost daily), but also became a political protest in its own right. Enjoying a glass during television debates had a strong symbolic value in a country with strict alcohol restrictions—precisely the kind of “State Intervention” that the ALP staunchly opposed.
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