The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum, was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.
Karl Maria Wiligut was an Austrian occultist and SS-Brigadeführer.
Adolf Josef Lanz, also known under his pseudonym as fascist agitator Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, was an Austrian political and racial theorist and occultist, who was a pioneer of Ariosophy. He was a former monk and the founder of the magazine Ostara, in which he published anti-semitic and völkisch theories.
The Völkisch movement was a German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through to the Nazi era, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany afterwards. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", inspired by the one-body-metaphor, and by the idea of naturally grown communities in unity, it was characterized by organicism, racialism, populism, agrarianism, romantic nationalism and – as a consequence of a growing exclusive and ethnic connotation – by antisemitism from the 1900s onward. Völkisch nationalists generally considered the Jews to be an "alien people" who belonged to a different Volk from the Germans.
Savitri Devi Mukherji was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in India. She was later a leading member of the Neo-Nazi underground during the 1960s.
The Germanenorden was an occultist and völkisch secret society in early 20th-century Germany. Its aim was to monitor Jews and spread antisemitic material.
Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, also known as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff was a German occultist, writer, intelligence agent and political activist. He was the founder of the Thule Society, a post-World War I German occultist organization where he played a key role, and that influenced many members of the Nazi Party. He was a Freemason, a Sufi of the Bektashi order - after his conversion to Islam - and a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology, and alchemy. He also used the alias Erwin Torre.
The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popular culture since at least the early 1940s, and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s. Books on the topic include The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972). Occultism in Nazism has also been featured in numerous documentaries, films, novels, comic books, and other fictional media. Notable examples include the film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the Wolfenstein video-game series, the comic-book series Hellboy (1993–present), and the manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (1987).
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke was a British historian and professor of Western esotericism at the University of Exeter, best known for his authorship of several scholarly books on the history of Germany between the World Wars, esoteric and occult traditions.
Karl Ernst Krafft was a Swiss astrologer, born in Basel. He worked on the fields of astrology and graphology.
The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935 is a book about Nazi occultism and Ariosophy by historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who traces some of its roots back to Esotericism in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945. The foreword is by Rohan Butler, who had written The Roots of National Socialism in the 1930s. The book is based on Goodrick-Clarke's 1982 Ph.D. thesis The ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935: Reactionary political fantasy in relation to social anxiety.
Armanism and Ariosophy are esoteric ideological systems that were pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which means the wisdom of the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and in the 1920s, it became the name of his doctrine. In research on the topic, such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the term 'Ariosophy' is generically used to describe the Aryan-esoteric theories of a subset of the 'Völkische Bewegung'. This broader use of the word is retrospective and it was not generally current among the esotericists themselves. List actually called his doctrine 'Armanism', while Lanz used the terms 'Theozoology' and 'Ario-Christianity' before the First World War.
The Black Sun is a type of sun wheel symbol originally employed in Nazi Germany and later by neo-Nazis. The symbol's design consists of twelve radial sig runes, similar to the symbols employed by the SS in their logo. It first appeared in Nazi Germany as a design element in a castle at Wewelsburg remodeled and expanded by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, which he intended to be a center for the SS.
Friedrich Bernhard Marby was a German rune occultist and Germanic revivalist. He is best known for his revivalism and use of the Armanen runes. Marby was imprisoned during the Third Reich, which may have been due to a denunciation by Karl Maria Wiligut. According to the Odinist magazine Vor Trú, Marby "was one of the most important figures in the realm of runic sciences" with an impact felt not only by contemporaries but "among today's researchers and practitioners."
The Occult Reich is a 1974 book about occultism during the Third Reich by J. H. Brennan.
The Occult History of the Third Reich, narrated by Patrick Allen and directed by Dave Flitton, is a 1991 four-part History Channel documentary regarding the occult influences and history of Nazi Germany and early 20th century Germany.
Esoteric Nazism, also known as Esoteric Hitlerism, refers to a range of mystical interpretations and adaptations of Nazism. After the Second World War, esoteric interpretations of the Third Reich were adapted into new religious movements of white nationalism and neo-Nazism. They included beliefs in finding a mythical Hyperborea.
Germany and Austria have spawned many movements and practices in Western Esotericism, including Rosicrucianism, theosophy, anthroposophy and ariosophy, among others.
Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany. He was a German-Russian author in the völkisch movement and became SS-Standartenführer in 1944.
Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
