The Splintering Frame

[David Guyatt]

I found this little jewel by Peter Levenda:

Her teachings were instrumental to the creation of the Nazi Party and it's Darwinian drive to annihalate the "race polluters" and restore the Aryans with their "pure" religion of fire, sword, and swastika to their previous glory.

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was born in what is now now Ukrainia. She would be forty-four years old before creating the Society for which she is best remembered, but her most important achievements still lay ahead of her.

In 1877--two years afer starting the Theosophical Society -- she would publish Isis Unveiled, an energetic blend of Eastern religion and mysticism, European mythology and Egyptian occultism, who rambuctious style would pave the way for her even more ambitious The Secret Doctrine in 1888. Some authors have written that the popularity of Blavatsky's writings in the late nineteeth century was evidence of an anti-positivist reaction among the middle classes to the effect that science was having on religous belief. In other words, science was going to far toward "proving" the errors of faith that the average person--suddenly up the existential creek without a paddle or prayer book--embraced the quasi-scientific approach toward religion represented in The Secret Doctrine.

Darwin had published The Origin of Species in 1859 and this was followed by the Descent of Man in 1871; both books offered evolution as the means by which humans were created, as opposed to the Biblical account found in Genesis. The effect of the theory of evolution on religion was as great then as it is now; the controversy over Darwinism caused many people to question the existence of God, the possiblity of redemption, life after death, etc. People were startled to discover that Biblical myths were at odds with scientific theories, and thus began to doubt everything they ever believed. They found themselves spiritually--and, perhaps, morally--adrift.

Blavatsky provided a much-appreciated antidote to Darwin even as she was brazenly appropriating (and reversing) his theory of evolution. As bizarre as here theories appear today, they were actually quite briliant for her time, for they enabled intelligent and educated men and women to maintian deep spirutual beliefs while simultaneously acknowledging the inroads made by scientific research into areas previously considered beyond the domain of mere human knowledge. Blavatsky outline a map of evolution that went far beyond Darwin to include vanished races from time immemorial through the present imperfect race of humans, and continuing on for races far into the future. Based on an idiosyncratic selection of various Asian scripture--including a few she made up herself-- The Secret Doctrine's message would later be picked up by the German occultists, who welcomed the pseudoscientific prose of its author as the answer to a dream. The smug and condescending attitude of scientists and their devotees toward the "unscientific" had proved contagious among many in the newly created middle class, and mystics began to satisfy the requirements of science in what are patently unscientific (we may say "nonscientific") pursuites. Modernism in general was seen as being largely an urban, sophisticated, intellectual (hence "Jewish") phenomenon, and this included science, technology, the Industrial Revolution, and capitalism. The only wholesome lifestyle was that of the peasant on his "land," and the naive beliefs of the people of the land, the paganus or pagans--with their sympathetic magic and worship of ancient gods in the form of such superstitious practices as fertility rites, the lighting of bonfires on particular days sacred to the old calendar, and the whole host of cultural traditions that can be discovered by consulting Fraziers The Golden Bough--were set up in opposition to "science," with its suspect lack of human warmth and its cold indifference to the "gods".

Science in its hubris was treading dangerously close to the territory claimed by religion (the orign of life, the creation of the universe, even the existence of God), and in order to get there it would have to dance a jig all over the occult "sciences." Science still smarted from the religious furors caused by Galileo and Copernicus; so rather than mount an all-out attack on God, it was a lot safer to conduct a rearguard action and go after the ghosts.

But then along came Blavatsky, who took new scientific attitudes as they were popularly understood and gave them a mystical twist. Taking here cur from Darwin, she popularized the notion of a spiritual struggle between various "races", and of the inherent superiority of the "Aryan" race, hypothetically the latest in the line of spiritual evolution. Blavatsky would borrow heavily from carefully chosen scientific authors in fields as diverse as archaeology and astronomy to bolster her arguements for the existance of Atlantis, extraterestrial (or superterrestrial) life-
forms, the creation of animals by humans (as opposed to the Darwinian line of succession), etc.

It should be remembered that Blavatsky's works--notably Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine--appear to be the result of prodigious scholarship and were extremely convincing in their day. The rationale behind many later Nazi projects can be traced back--through the writings of Von List, Von Sebettendorff, and Von Liebenfels--to ideas first popularized by Blavatsky. A caste system of races, the superiority of the Aryans (a white race with its origins in the Himalayas), an "initiated" version of astrology and astronomy, the cosmic truths coded within pagan myths ... all of these and more can be found in the ideology of its Dark Creature, the SS. It was, after all, Blavatsky who pointed out the supreme occult significance of the swastika. And it was a follower of Blavatsky who was instrumental in introducing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to a Western European community eager for a scapegoat. [Levenda doesn't say here who the Blavatsky follower that was responsible for introducing the Protocols to the Nazi Party Inner Circle is. It was the Estonia/Russia born Alfred Rosenberg later to be known as the "Philospher" of the Party, author of the mystical Myth of the Twentieth Century which rivaled Mein Kampf in its importance on Nazi Dogma. Rosenberg later was Publisher of the Party's Official Newspaper and Reichminister for the conquored Soviet Eastern Territories, as well as one of the principal defendants at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials].

Unholy Alliance
A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult
Peter Levenda
Avon Books, 1995

I have always thought that Peter Levenda knows of what he speaks when it comes to occult subjects.

It is as well to remember that the great battle between science and religion - the latter effectively being the Roman Church - was originally initiated by the forerunners of British Freemasons that dated back to Elizabethan times. But, of course, all science and no religion is as bad as all religion and no science. Replacing one with the other, as we have done, is simply turning over the same card from back to front. It's still the same card. What is required, but not achieved, is a balance between the two.

Nazi esotericists focused their will and efforts on Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) occultism, not a subject to indulge in unless the practitioner is aimed towards self consciousness. I have yet to find any information that any of them were thus inclined. Therefore their focus was solely on power. In other words the control of others. A programme that is still de rigueur around the world.

I find the Theosophical argument for the struggle of the races to be very ill defined and a little ignorant. At least as Blavatsky overtly presented it. Yet in her day the superiority of the white race was simply accepted as being the status quo and was not at all unusual. But then again, white and black have meanings that are deeper than usually understood, one reason why, I suppose, we have the traditional black and white chess board layout and the trestle boards of Freemasons etc., although the occasional red and white colours of chess boards betray their Rosicrucian imprint, I imagine.

The Protocols of Sion appear, from what I understand anyway, to have been a document of a particular occult order based in France, but with a lodge in the Russian Tsar's chamber. And elsewhere. As Noam Chomsky stated about it (from memory anyway?), there was a "guiding mind" behind it.

When everything is boiled down to its essence, everything has an esoteric/occult core. We just don't usually recognise or know this because our eyes and ears largely remain sealed.