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12. FASCIST OCCULTISM
AND IT’S CLOSE
RELATIONSHIP TO BUDDHIST TANTRISM
Visionary fascism was, and indeed still is,
exceptionally deeply fascinated by the Buddhocratic form of state. In the
late thirties (as the various fascist systems bloomed in Europe and the
whole world) Spencer Chapman, a traveler in Tibet, wrote that even in the
days of the dictators one can only be amazed at what uncontested power the
Dalai Lama possesses” (Chapman, 1940, p. 192). The idea of kingship of the
world, the uniting of spiritual and secular power in a single person, the
ideology of war in the Shambhala
myth, the uncompromisingly andocentric orientation, the tantric vision of
the feminine, the whole occult ambience and much more besides were
specifically adopted by several fascist ideologists and welded together
into an aggressive myth. As we shall soon see, entire fascist systems are
based upon the adoption of Tibetan/tantric doctrines.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s national socialist friends
As depressing as it may be for the Nobel peace
prize winner’s followers, there has been continuous contact between the
Dalai Lama and the far right wing and former national socialists (Nazis).
His close friendship with his German mentor, Heinrich Harrer has become the
most well-known of these. It caused a small scandal in 1997-1998 when,
after years of research, the Austrian journalist, Gerald Lehner, succeeded
in making public Harrer’s “brown-shirt” (i.e., German fascist) past, which
the latter had been able to keep secret for many years. Harrer is not just
anybody. He is one of the best-known international authors and has sold
over four million books in 57 languages (mostly about Tibet and the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama).
The Austrian mountain climber and competition
skier joined the SS on April
1, 1938 and in the same year received instructions to climb Nanga
Parbat in the Himalayas after an official
meeting with Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler, himself most interested in
occult phenomena is said by Harrer to have offered him a Tibet expedition. In 1942, the Reichsführer of the SS (Himmler)
ordered the creation of the Sven
Hedin Institut für Innerasienforschung [Sven Hedin Institute for
Central Asian Research]. This educational establishment had combined
esoteric, scientific, and racial studies goals. It was completely in this
vein that Himmler was interested in occult doctrines from “mysterious Tibet”,
and assumed — probably under the influence of theosophical ideas — that a
“race with Nordic blood” existed there, oppressed by the English and
Chinese, and waiting for their liberation by the Germans. Himmler’s
“advisor”, reports the German magazine Spiegel,
“… and the scientist Ernst Schäfer believed that Tibet was the cradle of
humanity, the refuge of an ‘Aryan root race’, where a priestly caste had
created a mysterious kingdom of Shambhala
— decorated with the Buddhist symbol of the wheel of teaching, a swastika.
In 1934 Schäfer set out on the first of two expeditions financed by the SS
to track down remnants of the ‘Nordic intellectual’ nobility” (Spiegel,
16/1998, p. 111).
Dr. Ernst Schäfer, a specialist on Tibet
and an ornithologist, was one of Himmler’s personal staff and in 1943 took
over the scientific leadership of the notorious project, “Ahnenerbe” (‘ancestral
inheritance’), primarily devoted to racial studies. His third research trip
to the Himalayas was officially described
as the “SS Schäfer Expedition” and was considered a huge success (Kater
1997, p. 80). Upon his return in August 1939, the scientist was presented
with the SS skull ring and dagger of honor in recognition. Subsequently,
the Reichsführer of the black
corps (Himmler) had grand plans for his protégé: Schäfer was supposed to
return to Tibet
and “stir up the Tibetan army against the British/Indian troops” with a
shock troop of 30 men (Kater, 1997, p. 212). The undertaking was, however, called
off at Hitler’s direct order. In the years to follow, Schäfer instead built
up the Sven Hedin Institute for Central Asian Research with great success,
making it the largest division within the Ahnenerbe project.
But let us return to Heinrich Harrer. War broke
out while he was still in India
and the young German was interned by the British. It was not until 1944
that he was able to flee to Tibet
with a comrade. Coincidence or fate led to his acting as the young Dalai
Lama’s personal tutor until the early 50s, and teaching him about all the
“wonders” of western civilization and introducing him to the English
language as well. It is very likely that his lessons were tainted by the
contemporary zeitgeist which had
swept through Hitler’s Germany,
and not by the British attitudes of the envoy Hugh Richardson, also present
in Lhasa.
This led in fact to some problems at the court of the young god-king and
the English were not happy about his contact to Harrer. But there are
nevertheless no grounds for describing the lessons the former SS member
gave his “divine” pupil as fascist, particularly since they were primarily
given after the end of the World War II. In 1952 His Holiness’s German
“teacher “ returned to Europe.
The adaptation to film of Harrer’s autobiographic
bestseller, Seven Years in Tibet, triggered
an international protest. Since the famous traveler through Tibet
had told director Jean Jacques Annaud nothing about his “brown-shirt” past,
and this only became public knowledge after the film had been finished,
Annaud felt pressured to introduce “corrections”. A remorseful Austrian was
now shown, who begins his mountain-climbing career as a supporter of a
regime accused of genocide and then, under the influence of the young Kundun and Tibetan Buddhism, reforms
to become a “campaigner for human rights”. In the film, he says of the
brutal Chinese: “Terrible — I dare not think about how I myself was once so
intolerant “ (Stern 41/97, p.
24).
Reinhold Messner, the famous mountain climber,
found such an admission of guilt from Hollywood’s
dream factory difficult to understand. He spoke up, confirming that he had
long known about Harrer’s political opinions. This man, he said had up
until the present day still not learned anything, he still believed in the
national socialist alpinist ideals. In contrast, the Dalai Lama’s brother,
Gyalo Thondup, defended the former SS member with the tasteless argument
that what the Chinese had done to the Tibetans was worse and more cruel
than what the Nazis had done to the Jews.
It is a fact that Harrer — in his own account-
first turned against the Chinese invaders at the end of the fifties, after
he had already left Tibet.
There is not the slightest trace of a deep catharsis as depicted in
Annaud’s film to be found in the German’s books. This was purely an
invention of the director to avoid losing face before a world audience.
The journalist Gerhard Lehner also pursued a
second lead: on September
13, 1994 eight veterans who had visited and reported from Tibet before 1950 met with the Dalai Lama in
London. In
a photo taken to record the occasion a second major SS figure can be seen
beside Heinrich Harrer and directly behind the Kundun, Dr. Bruno Beger. Beger was the actual “expert” who
pushed forward the racial studies research by Himmler’s Ahnenerbe project (Kater, 1997, p.
208). He too, like the Tibetan explorer Ernst Schäfer, was a member of
Himmler’s personal staff. In 1939 he went to the Himalayas
as a member of the SS Expedition. There he measured the skulls of more than
400 Tibetans in order to investigate a possible relationship between the
Tibetan and Aryan ‘races’. In 1943, Beger was sent to Auschwitz
where he took the measurements of 150 mainly Jewish prisoners. These were
later killed and added to a collection of skeletons. In 1971 Beger appeared
in a German court and was sentenced to three years imprisonment on
probation for his national socialist crimes.
Frontpage of Bruno Beger’s book: “Meine Begegnungen mit dem Ozean des
Wissens“
(„My meetings with the Ocean
of Knowledge”) – Königstein 1986
For
the Dalai Lama Beger has been of great help, because he did compose a
statement, that Tibet
was not part of China. (See The Status of Tibet in 1938-39 - Dr.
Bruno Beger –
www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=1994&m=11&p=24-2_1).
The head of the Dalai Lama between two former SS-men: Bruno Beger on right
side of his head and Heinrich Harrer on left side of his head:
http://www.tibet.com/Status/statement.html
Some
Links in English concerning Beger:
www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-14.html
www.mazal.org/Lifton/LiftonT286.htm
http://greyfalcon.us/Quest%20of%20the%20Nazis.htm
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mbilik/strut6.htm
http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2003/8/11_2.html
Beger as collaborator of Horror-Doctor August
Hirt:
http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/historia_KL/eksperymenty_ok.html
The racialist, who was the last survivor of the
“SS Schäfer Expedition” (dying in 1998), met His Holiness the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama at least five times (in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1994). The
meetings were all very hearty affairs. The former SS member dedicated a
small brochure entitled “My Encounters with the Ocean of Knowledge”
to the first three (Beger, 1986).
The Dalai Lama (worshipped by his followers as the
“Ocean of Wisdom” because of his
“omniscience”) claims not to have been informed about his Nazi friends’
past. One may well believe this, yet he has not distanced himself from them
since their exposure. His statements about Adolf Hitler and the “final
solution to the question of the Jews” also seem strange. Just like his
brother, Gyalo Thondup, he sees the dictator as a more noble figure than
the Chinese occupiers of Tibet:
“In 1959, in Lhasa,
the Chinese shot Tibetan families from aeroplanes with machine guns. Systematic
destruction in the name of liberation against the tyranny of the Dalai
Lama! Hu, Hu, Hu! In Hitler's case he was more honest. In concentration
camps he made it clear he intended to exterminate the Jews. With the
Chinese they called us their brothers! Big brother bullying little brother!
Hu, Hu, Hu! It’s less honest, I think” (Daily
Telegraph, August 15, 1998).
The Nazi–Tibet connection
Were there occult intentions behind the “SS
Schäfer Expedition”? In the neo-fascist literature these are considered a
top secret mission of Himmler’s to make contact with the “adepts of
Shambhala and Agarthi”. Authors from the scene like Wilhelm Landig, Miguel
Serrano, Russell McCloud, etc., let their readers believe that through
these expeditions a kind of metapolitical axis between Berlin
and Lhasa
was constructed. Dietrich Bronder knows that “Schäfer’s SS men were
permitted to enter holy Lhasa,
otherwise closed to Europeans and Christians, even the magnificent Lamaist
temple that contains just one huge symbol, the holiest in the Mongolian
world — the swastika” (Bronder, 1975, p. 250)
Although in recent years comprehensive research
findings about the interests of leading Nazis in occult phenomena have been
published, this is currently played down by pro-Lamaist intellectuals,
especially as far as a occult Nazi — Tibet connection is concerned. [1]
Ernst Schäfer and Bruno Beger, the two leaders of the undertaking (the SS
Schäfer expedition), are depicted as sober natural scientists. Heinrich
Himmler’ esoteric ambitions in Tibet were minimal, indeed
“probably did not exist” (Brauen, 2000). Hitler himself appears as a
decided anti-occultist. “However, the suggestion that Hitler was interested
in Eastern esotericism or even Tibet can be ruled out”
(Brauen, 2000, p. 65). With an appeal to the historian Goodrick-Clark, the
pro-Lamaist authors also assess the occult currents within the early
Nazi movement (the notorious Thule Society for example) as
insignificant, and completely lacking in evidence for a particular interest
in Tibet.
Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf (1875-1945), the founder of the Thule Society, is said to have
explicitly spoken out against the suggestion that the light came from the
highlands of Asia.
We do not see it as our primary task here to
historically prove the interweaving of the relevant SS members (Hitler,
Himmler, Harrer, etc.) in an occult Nazi — Tibet connection. Things were
not as cleanly rationalist and scientifically correct as the pro-Lamaist
intellectuals would have it among the SS. When for example, at the
presentation of a gift to the Tibetan regent in Lhasa Ernst Schäfer
declaims, “Since the swastika is also the supreme and most holy symbol for
us Germans, the motto of our visit is: A meeting of the Western and Eastern
swastikas in friendship and peace …” (quoted by Brauen, 2000, p. 79), then
an occult note in accord with the zeitgeist
of the time is present.
There are certainly also other, non-fascist,
authors who create an occult correspondence between national socialism and
Tibetan Buddhism via a esoteric interpretation of the “Hakenkreuz” (the swastika), a Buddhist symbol par excellence: “The rightward
hooked cross [signifies] a prayer formula in Tibet”, writes Friedrich W.
Doucet, “In its left-turned form — like the national socialist swastika —
it designates the orthodox Yellow Hats ... it is the Yellow Hats who
supervise the spiritual rules in the Tibetan ecclesiastical state and also
exercise worldly power” (Doucet, 1979, p. 81).[2]
It is also certain that Himmler’s spiritual advisor,
Karl Maria Wiligut (“Himmler’s Rasputin”), saw the “SS Schäfer Expedition”
as an extremely occult undertaking and at Himmler’s direction attempted to
exert an appropriate influence on the participants in the expedition. The
SS standard bearer Wiligut/Weisthor, who was one of Himmler’s personal
staff, was accredited with mediumistic abilities and he himself was
convinced he was in contact with transpersonal powers. Wiligut/Weisthor was
considered to be the Schutz Staffel’s
(SS’s) expert on runes and designed the legendary skull ring of the SS. His
megalomaniac overestimation of himself (there are authenticated statements
from him to the effect that he believed he was the “secret King of
Germany”) and the fact that he was deprived of the right of decision by his
family led Himmler to discharge Wiligut from the SS in 1939 (Lange 1998, p.
271).
The German author Rüdiger Sunner quotes the report
of a member of the “SS Schäfer Expedition” over a meeting with Wiligut.[3]
During the encounter (in 1937 or 1938?), the latter was in a trance-like
state and addressed his visitors in a guttural voice: “I telephoned my
friends this evening … in Abyssinia and America, in Japan and Tibet ...
with all who come from another world in order to construct a new empire.
The occidental spirit is thoroughly corrupted, we have a major task before
us. A new era will come, for creation is subject to just one grand law. One
of the keys lies with the Dalai Lama [!] and in the Tibetan monasteries.”
The visitor was not a little distressed, and goes on to report: “Then came
the names of monasteries and their abbots, of localities in eastern Tibet
which I alone knew about … Did he draw these out of my brain? Telepathy? To
this day I do not know, I know only that I left the place in a hurry”
(Sünner, 1999, p. 50). In the 80s the Chilean Miguel Serrano took up the
speculation anew that the Dalai Lama plays a key role in the
Nazi-Tibet connection. His “skill”,
this author says of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is “closely linked with that
of Hitler’s Germany
… on the basis of not yet discovered connections. A few years after Germany, Tibet also falls” (Serrano,
1987, p. 366).
Wiligut also believed that Lhasa
would form a geomantic quadrilateral with Urga (Ulan
Bator), the Egyptian pyramids, and Vienna. Miguel Seranno was later to
expound similar ideas (in the seventies). Himmler too was interested in
geomantic ideas and it cannot be excluded “that he hoped for more exact
data about this from the Schäfer expedition” (Brauen, 2000, p. 78).
Otto Rahn, likewise a member of the SS, who in the
30s attempted to render the myth of the holy grail and the Cathar movement
fruitful for the national socialist vision and the SS as some kind of
“warrior monks”, assumed that the Cathars had been influenced by Tibetan
Buddhism “One of the Cathari symbols of the spirit that is god which was
taken over from Buddhism was the mani,
a glowing jewel that lit up the world and allowed all earthly wishes to be
forgotten. The mani is the emblem
of the Buddhist law that drives out the night of misconception. In Nepal and Tibet it is considered the
symbol of the Dyanibodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or Padmapani, charity”
(Rahn, 1989, pp. 185, 107).
The myth of the “black sun” which was able to win
a central place in the neo-fascist movement and displays similarities with
the Tibetan Rahu myth from the Kalachakra Tantra, can be traced to
the inspiration of Wiligut and his milieu among others. In a commentary on
Wiligut’s runic writings, a pupil, Emil Rüdiger, mentions an invisible dark
planet, Santur by name, which is
supposed to influence human history and to be able to be microcosmically
linked with the energy body of an adept. Appropriate yogic exercises (rune
gymnastics) are recommended for producing “high intelligence effects” (Lange,
1998, p. 226). Just how seamlessly such “rune gymnastics” can be linked to
tantric exercises can be seen in the writings of Miguel Serrano, the father
of “esoteric Hitlerism” (Serrano, 1984).
It is thus not at all the case that there is no historical
foundation for hypothesizing an occult Nazi — Tibet connection, even if it
is publicly denied by one of the protagonists of the “SS Schäfer
Expedition”, Bruno Beger (Lange 1998, p. 68). Nevertheless, an occult
interconnection between the SS and Lamaist Tibet of the dimensions in which
it is currently portrayed in a large number of neo-fascist and esoteric
publications has to be described as a post
facto construction. This construction could, however, we repeat, fall
back on an esoteric ambience in which Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS,
and other high-ranking Nazis moved. Thus the well-known, historically
proven material has at any rate been sufficient to create new and very
effective myths. In the Nazi- Tibet connection , we are thus dealing with a
process of myth creation and not a historical set of events. In such
processes, there is a blending of historical facts, the stuff of
traditional sagas, straining for effect, and imaginary, visionary,
religious, fantastic, and personal elements until it all binds into a
resistant pattern and anchors itself as such in a culture. It is not
unusual for different mythologemes to become fused, and this is exactly, as
we will show, what has happened in the case of the Nazi — Tibet connection. Here, racist Nazi
myths have been fused with elements of the Tibetan Shambhala myth and with
sexual magic practices from Tantric Buddhism.
In this process of myth construction it should
also not be underestimated that the meetings known to have occurred between
the Dalai Lama and former SS members (Schäfer, Harrer, Beger) have a occult
significance alone by virtue of the fact that anybody who mentally
negotiates an esoteric network interprets a meeting with the Dalai Lama as
an occult event.
On the
Homepage of the Government of Tibet in Exile (
http://www.tibet.com/Status/statement.html ) 13. 09. 1994: The XIV. Dalai Lama between two former
SS-men, Bruno Beger on his right behind and Heinrich Harrer on his left
behind. The other persons, who visited Tibet
before 1950, are:
Mr Kazi Sonam Togpyal, Mr Robert Ford, Mrs Ronguy Collectt (daughter of Sir
Charles Bell),
Mrs Joan Mary Jehu, Mr Archibald Jack and Prof. Fosco Maraini.
In the meantime an enormous amount of literature
about a suspected Nazi — Tibet
connection has appeared, some examples of which we briefly introduce here:
·
In
1958 an American publisher released the book The Lightning and the Sun, by Savitri Devi (“Hitler’s
Priestess”), which presents Adolf Hitler as an avatar (an incarnation) of
the sun god, alongside Akhenaton and Genghis Khan. Devi does not mention a
Nazi — Tibet connection,
but introduces the “avatar principle” into the myth building surrounding
Hitler that is seized upon by later authors so as to present the Führer as an incarnation from the kingdom of Agarthi/Shambhala (see Miguel
Serrano in this regard).
·
In
their best-seller The Dawn of Magic,
Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwells (1962) first claim that the
Shambhala/Agarthi myth strongly influenced the founders of the national
socialist movement.
·
Robert
Charroux (Verratene Geheimnisse [“Betrayed
Secrets”]) presumes that Lama priests had gained influence over Hitler and
worked on “ a plan for exercising control over the world which was thoroughly
the equal of that of the Germans “ (Charroux, 170, p. 258).
·
The
anti-fascist myth researcher Friedrich Doucet (Im Banne des Mythos [In the Thrall of Myth], 1979) discusses
“psycho-techniques of the monks and abbots in the Lama monasteries of Tibet”
with which leading national socialist figures were manipulated.
·
Likewise,
the anthroposophically oriented author, Trevor Ravenscroft (The Spear of Destiny), 1974),
assumes that Hitler cooperated with “Tibetan leaders” in Berlin.
·
In
the 80s, two books by the Chilean Miguel Serrano appeared (El Cordon Dorado [The Golden Ribbon]
and Adolf Hitler el último Avatara [Adolf
Hitler: The Final Avatar]). Both texts form the basis for “esoteric
Hitlerism”. One of Serrano’s central themes is the relationship between sexual
magic and political power (especially national socialism). The Fourteenth
Dalai Lama, whom Serrano has met several times, is woven by the author into
the creation of neo-fascist myths around Hitler.
·
According to Jan van Helsing (Geheimgesellschaften
und ihre Macht ...
[“Secret
Societies and their Power”], 1993), Tibetan monks worked together with
Templar Knights who were organized in the highest lodge of the “black sun”
on the establishment of the Third Reich. The secret order had (and still
has) an important base underground in the Himalayas.
The ruler of the underground kingdom is said to be “Rigden Iyepo”, the king
of the world, with his representative on the surface, the Dalai Lama.
·
In
Die schwarze Sonne von Tashi Lhunpo
[The Black Sun of Tashi Lhunpo] (1996), McCloud reports on the survival of
the national socialist Thule group in Tibet
. They are the followers of a “sun oracle” there.
·
For Wilhelm Landig (Götzen gegen
Thule ...
[Idols
against Thule], n.d.), Tibet is also “the realm of the black sun! It is the
meeting point of the esoteric circles of the Schutzstaffel [the SS], whose knowledge Mr. Himmler also knew
about but did not share.”
·
In
his novel (The Black Sun…, 1997),
Peter Moon reiterates the decisive influence of Tibetan Lamas on National Socialism
and extends it with new images. He takes the side of the old Tibetan Bon
religion, and accuses the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism of religious
oppression.
“Why”, Martin Brauen, a pro-Lamaist expert on Tibet, asks in light of this considerable and
by no means complete literature list, “does Tibet arouse the interest of
the neo-fascists so much?” What makes Tibet so attractive for them?
What is so fascinating about the Shambhala myth that it draws into its
thrall both those who cultivate and those who combat it?” (Brauen, 2000, p.
93). He cannot answer this question. But in order to be able invert the
fact that national socialism had a occult relationship to Tibetan Buddhism
into its complete opposite, he foregrounds an anti-Lamaist faction within the
German right-wing. It was precisely the Nazis, Brauen says, who denounced
the Lamas and the Tibetans as “Untermenschen”
(subhumans).
·
Among
the anti–Dalai Lama and anti-Tibet literature are works by S. Ipares (Geheime Weltmächte [Secret World
Powers], 1937), who was influenced by the orientalist Albert Grünwedel. In
his book, the author talks of an occult hierarchia
ordinis of the Lamaist theocracy, which invisibly influences and steers
the East.
·
J.
Strunk’s arguments (Zu Juda und Rom —
Tibet, [To Juda and Rome — Tibet], 1937) are more far reaching; he
tries to uncover a conspiracy of an international ecclesiastical elite
(with members from all the world religions) with the living Buddha, the
Dalai Lama from Lhasa
as their visible head. “What there are of organizations and new spiritual
currents running alongside and in all directions nearly always end up on
the ‘roof of the world’, in a Lama temple, once one has progressed through
Jewish and Christian lodges” (Strunk, 1937, p. 28).
·
In
the same year (1937) Fritz Wilhelmy published the piece Asekha. Der Kreuzzug der Bettelmönche [Asekha:
The Crusade of the Mendicant Monks]. In it “Tibetan Buddhism … [is] openly
appointed to play a more than mysterious role in the great global hustle
and bustle of suprastate pullers of strings” (Wilhelmy 1937, p.17)
·
General
Ludendorff and his wife likewise took to the field with great vigor against
the “Asian priests” and warned that the Tibetan Lamas had emplaced
themselves at the head of Jewish and Jesuit secret orders (Europa den Asiatenpriestern? [Europe of the Asian priests)], 1941).
·
Clearly
the most prominent of the anti-Lamaist Nazi faction was the racialist
Alfred Rosenberg, who in his seminal work Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhundert [The Myth of the 20th
Century] made the battle between the priests and the warrior caste into the
primal conflict of the history of the world. The Tibetan lamas appear here
as the representatives of a decadent Asian Catholicism.
The problem with the construction of a fascist
anti-Lamaism lies in the fact that apart from Alfred Rosenberg the
right-wing authors cited definitely did not occupy positions of power like
those of Himmler, the SS, and the Ahnenerbe
project. “Hitler’s mythologist” (Rosenberg)
was cut dead by Himmler and barely taken seriously by Hitler. The
Ludendorff’s fell out of favor with the Führer.
In contrast, the SS with their rites and their martial style increasingly
became the epitome of the Nazi myth. It was the SS who explored Tibet
and it was a former SS trooper (Heinrich Harrer) who schooled the Dalai
Lama.
Besides this, the national socialist opponents of
Lamaism mentioned, who Martin Brauen so demonstratively parades to prove
that fascism was hostile towards Tibetan Buddhism, are just as fanatically
fascinated by the atavistic mythology of Tibet as the pro-Lamaist fascists
whom we have listed above. They do not attack the Lamaist system out of a
democratic attitude or rational consideration, but the opposite, because
they fear the occult world of the Lamas — namely, control by magic, the
conquest of the planet by Buddhist despots, the manipulation of awareness
through rituals, etc. — all concepts which can indeed be found in the
tantric texts. Thus, right-wing opponents of Lamaism, just like the
right-wing advocates of Lamaism, see in Tibet and its religion an
occult control center.
Since the pro-Lamaist intellectuals can no loner
deny that fascist authors increasingly sought out contact with Lamaist
cultural images after the war, they emphatically reassure us that these
were a matter of Western “illusions”, or at least Western hybrids of
Lamaism which were in no sense just. With this they seem to think the
problem is solved (in this regard, see Brauen 2000). But they leave us
waiting for an examination of contents which reveals to what depth and
extent ideas and practices from Lamaism have been directly incorporated by
the fascist side. Yet a debate about the images, archetypes, metapolitical
visions, political structures, and rituals from the Tibetan cultural sphere
which the neo-Nazis refer back to is of far greater interest than the
question of whether there was personal contact between lamas and Nazis.
Here the actual work of cultural criticism begins, which entails
-
discovering Lamaist myths of
origin behind the “Nazi fantasies”
-
investigating these Lamaist myths
of origin
-
examining structural similarities
between neo-fascism and Lamaism
Only then when such “myths of origin” are not to
be found can the Nazi- Tibet connection be said to have been exposed as a purely
Western fiction.
The following list of paradigms, concepts,
theories, methods, and myths which have essentially shaped the culture of
Lamaism (and still do) have become central for the neo-fascist movement:
·
The
combination of religious and political power
·
A
strictly hierarchical state structure that rests upon a spiritually based
“Führer principle”
·
The
out and out patriarchal orientation of the state and society
·
A
pattern of complete subordination of pupil to master
·
The
appearance of divine beings of earth to fulfill political missions (the
avatar, incarnation, and Bodhisattva principle)
·
A
political micro-/macrocosmic theory according to which a Buddhist ruler
represents a likeness of the entire universe.
·
The
idea of a world ruler (Chakravartin) and a violent conquest of the world
·
The
motif of spiritual/political redemption
·
The
idea of a superhuman center of power in Asia,
from where an influence on world politics is exercised (the Shambhala myth)
·
The
legitimation of contemporary politics through mythic roots
·
The
derivation of political control from myths of the sun and light
·
The
myth of the “black sun” (Rahu myth in the Kalachakra Tantra)
·
Alchemic
speculations (as in the Kalachakra
Tantra)
·
An
interest in secret men’s associations (members of orders)
·
The
existence of a supernatural community of “priestly warriors” (Shambhala
warriors) who observe and influence the history of the world
·
A
“Buddhist” warrior ethic based upon spiritual control of the body and
emotions
·
An
apocalyptic final battle, in which good and evil stand opposed and all
nonbelievers are annihilated (Shambhala war)
·
A
fascination with the machinery of war (Shambhala myth)
·
Flying
discs (UFOs) — corresponding objects (flying wheels) will be put to use in
the final Shambhala war
·
A
magical view of the world and the associated conception that the
manipulation of symbols can affect history
·
Techniques
for manipulating consciousness
·
A
great interest in paranormal phenomena and their combination with politics
(visions, oracles, prophecies)
·
A
magic/political understanding of the system of rituals in the service of
the state
·
Sexual
magic practices for transforming erotic love and sexuality into worldly and
spiritual power (Kalachakra Tantra)
·
The
functionalization of the feminine principle for the purposes of
politico-religious power
All these pillars of Tibetan Buddhist culture are
likewise ingredients of the Kalachakra
Tantra constantly practiced by the Dalai Lama and the Shambhala myth
this evokes. For centuries they have determined the form of Tibetan
monastic society, completely independent of any Western imaginings or
influence. Hence the question about neo-fascism's inordinate interest in Tibet
and its atavistic culture is easily answered: fascists of the most varied
persuasion see their own “political theology” confirmed by the Tibetan
Buddhist religious system, or discover new images and practices in it with
which they can enrich and extend their ideologies.
Some (not all) of the above-mentioned Tibetan
cultural elements to which the new right has helped itself were also to be
found in the Europe of old, yet these were either disempowered or
relativized by the Enlightenment and “modernity” — only to be reactivated
in the history of fascism and national socialism. In traditional Tibet (up
until 1958), in the community of Tibetans in exile, but above all in the
figure of the Dalai Lama and his clergy, in the holy texts and the rituals
(the tantras), these images and archetypes were able to survive without
pause. Through the active presence of the lamas in the West they are now
visible and tangible once more and play an ever greater role in Western
popular culture. Yet it is not just in comics and kitsch films that the
Dalai Lama is portrayed as a god-king, but also both the respectable and
the down-market western press, a label which gains fundamental significance
in the political theology of fascism and is combined there with the Führer principle.[4]
Julius Evola: A fascist Tantric
 
It was not just the ideologists and theoreticians
of national socialism who were closely concerned with Tibet, but also high-ranking
intellectuals and scholars closely linked to Italian fascism. First of all,
Giuseppe Tucci, who attempted to combine Eastern and fascist ideas with one
another, must be mentioned (Benavides 1995).
A further example is the work of the Italian,
Julius Evola (1898-1974), for a time Benito Mussolini’s chief ideologist
(mainly in the forties). In numerous books and articles he has investigated
and further developed the relationship between tantric rituals and power
politics. He has followed “tantric trails” in European cultural history and
come across them everywhere: among the Cathars, the troubadours, the
Knights Templar, in the work of Alighieri Dante, the mysticism surrounding
the holy grail, European knighthood, alchemy. Using criteria drawn from Vajrayana, he propounds a cultural
history of sexuality in his most famous book, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex. Evola
was not just a theoretician, he also practiced sexual magic rites himself.
There are unmistakable statements from him about the “tantric female
sacrifice” and the transformation of sexuality into political power. Like
almost no other, the Italian has openly named the events that unfold in the
mysteries of the yogis and then confessed to them: “The young woman,” he
writes, “who is first ‘demonized’ and then raped, ... is essentially... the
basic motif for the higher forms of tantric and Vajrayanic sexual magic” (Evola,
1983, p. 389). In dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini he saw
the precursors of future Maha Siddhas
who would one day conquer the world with their magic powers: “The magician,
the ruler, the lord”, he proclaims in regard to Tantrism, “that is the type
of the culture of the future!” (Evola, 1926, p. 304). He recommends
Tantrism as “the way for a Western elite” (Evola, East and West, p. 29).
In the Shambhala myth he sees a confirmation of
the European tradition of the savior king, especially the myth of the
grail: “At a particular time decreed by one of the cyclical laws, a new
manifestation of the solar principle from above will occur in the form of a
sacred ruler who gains victory over the ‘dark age’: Kalki Avatara.
Symbolically Kalki will be born in Shambhala — one of the terms in the
Indian/Tibetan tradition for the holiest hyperborean [Nordic] center”
(Evola 1955, p. 56).
We could fill many pages illustrating the
influence of Vajrayana (Tibetan Tantrism) on Evola’s work. But however, we
will instead concentrate on a detailed discussion of the ideas of one of
his pupils, Miguel Serrano. Serrano combines Evola’s fascist philosophy of
power warriors with the national socialist thoughts on race. His works are
particularly interesting for us not just because he is still alive (in
1999), but also because he has been linked with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
several times.
Miguel Serrano: The Dalai Lama’s “friend” and chief ideologist
of “esoteric Hitlerism”
"Miguel Serrano”, writes his interviewer,
Isidro Palacios, “was the only [!] western foreigner who traveled to meet
the Dalai Lama as the monk-emperor of the Tibetan Buddhists fled from the
holy land of Tibet
to the south because of the Chinese invasion. Our conversation partner
[Serrano] traveled from India
into the Himalayas where his meeting with
the Dalai Lama took place, and since then a close friendship has existed
between him and the now Nobel prize winner” (Palacios, 1990, p. 2). Who is
this “close friend” of the Kundun then?
Miguel Serrano was born in Santiago, Chile
in 1917. Between 1947 and 1948 he visited Antarctica
for the first time, to which he later undertook many journeys. One of the
massifs which he explored on an expedition there bears his name today.
Between 1939 and 1945 he published the esoteric journal, La Nueva Edad [The New Age]. He was
active as a diplomat for Chile
in several countries, including India,
Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria,
and Austria.
He also worked as an ambassador at the International Atomic Energy Commission
in Vienna
and at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
Largely unnoticed by the public, Serrano has been in friendly contact with
numerous prominent national socialist and fascist figures since the
seventies: with Léon Degrelle, Otto Skorzeny, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Hanna
Reitsch, Julius Evola, Herman Wirth, Savitri Devi, and the French Waffen SS man and author Saint Loup.
The Chilean returned to his country of birth and lives some kilometers from
Santiago
(as of 1999).
He published numerous books with an occult/poetic
content. Even his work best known in the West, in which he recounts his
encounters with the German poet Hermann Hesse and the depth psychologist C.
G. Jung, displays a great deal of occultist speculation when one reads it
attentively. Serrano titled his book The
Hermetic Circle: Conversations, Correspondence, and Memories of Hermann
Hesse and C. G. Jung.[5] This title alone should signal that the author
had formed an esoteric brotherhood with Jung and Hesse, a sort of
triumvirate of magicians who had gained admittance to the archetypal
storehouses of the human subconscious and are unique in the twentieth
century. Jung was sympathetic towards the Chilean who had courted him. He
wrote an effusive foreword to Serrano’s tale, The Visit of the Queen of Saba: “This book is unusual. It is a
dream amidst other dreams, one could say, and completely different to the
spontaneous creations of the unconscious with which I am familiar”
(Serrano, 1980, p. 7). Serrano was also a great admirer of the American
poet, Ezra Pound, who sympathized with the Italian fascists. Together with
Pound’s widow (Olga Rudge) and Prince Ivanici, Serrano had a commemorative
stone erected in Italy.
His occult studies took him to all parts of the
world. He saw himself as a modern Percival (Parsifal) and Minnesinger, who
went in search of the Grail under the protection of his diplomatic
passport. “The life of an ambassador is a farce and a folly”, he said in an
interview in the journal Cedade,
“My post allows me to meet with people of value like the Dalai Lama, Nehru,
Indira Gandhi, Hanna Reitsch (Hitler’s famous female war pilot) and others”
(Cedade, 1986). Switzerland, Westphalia, the mountains of Salzburg, the Pyrenées, his travels in search of the
Grail led him through all these “geomantically” significant sites, but
likewise to the Himalayas, Patagonia, and Antarctica.
The Chilean was rightly considered the occult
eminence of modern, international fascism. Meanwhile, his phantasmagoric
writings have also developed a fanatic following in the German neo-nazi
scene: It is the Chilean author’s obsessive intention to convince his
readers that Adolf Hitler was an avatar
(a divine incarnation) or a tulku,
and ever will be, since he lives on in another body in another sphere, that
of the kingdom of Shambhala.
According to Serrano, the Führer will
reappear as the doomsday ruler and fight a terrible battle, and that in the
next few years. How did this bizarre fantasy arise?
Shortly after the Second World War a mysterious
“master” from the beyond is supposed to have appeared to the Chilean and
said to him: “Hitler is a initiate, he can communicate with those dwelling
on the astral plane. I do not know who his spiritual leaders are, but I
have decided to help him. Hitler is a being with an iron, unshakable will
which he inevitably put into effect. He never yielded. I was in contact
with him.” (Serrano, 1987, p. 21).
After this appearance of his spiritual guru,
Serrano was absolutely convinced that he had been entrusted with the
mission of the century: the worldwide dissemination of
Hitlerismo Esoterico (of “esoteric Hitlerism”). Whilst still
performing his international duties as a Chilean Ambassador he held himself
back, although he carried the idea in his heart from the nineteen fifties
on. During this period he published books of a poetic/esoteric content with
several respectable western publishers which, although they without
exception include tantric topics (especially the “female sacrifice”),
studiously avoid mentioning the name of Adolf Hitler. Only in 1978 did the
Chilean first dare to go public with an open profession of belief in the
German Nazi dictator, and published El
Cordón Dorado — Hitlerismo Esoterico [The Golden Ribbon — Esoteric
Hitlerism]. In the mid-eighties the almost 650-page, large-format book, Adolf Hitler, el Ùltimo Avatâra
[Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar], followed. Serrano summarizes the results
of his extensive occult research into this topic with the concise statement
that, “esoteric Hitlerism is tantric” (Serrano, 1987, p. 330).
Shambhala: The center of
“esoteric Hitlerism”
In the following sections, we hope to show just
how much of his fascist world view Serrano owed to Tantrism. It is of
especial interest in connection with this study that he recognized
“esoteric Hitlerism” as a central doctrine from the kingdom of Shambhala:
“In fact”, the author says, “Shambhala
is indeed the center of esoteric Hitlerism. The entrance to it [the realm
of Shambhala] was to be found in
the vicinity of Shigatse or near Gyangtse [in southern Tibet]. Through my
investigations I arrived at the conclusion that our center [i.e., that of
Serrano’s occult order] had also been located there. The connection between
Hitlerism and the Tibetans or Mongolians was also not immediate, but
indirect, in as far as they established contact with the Hyperboreans (the
Aryan gods of the north) and made free passage and the transmission of
physical messages possible. Tibetans and Mongolians were their vassals who
had to guard the magic entry gates to their world. ... When I visited Berchtesgaden [the Obersalzberg to which Hitler
retreated time and again], my attention was constantly captivated by a
tellurian force, a tangible vibration in the air, which instantaneously
linked this point with the Tibetan Himalayas and trans-Himalaya: Hitler’s high-lying refuge with the Lhasa of the Dalai Lama, with Shambhala. For some particular
reason, esoteric Hitlerism had chosen this point, which is full of direct
connections, magnetic vibrations, and those which touch the stars, as the
holy center of its order (the SS), and it had avoided letting a final
physical struggle, which could have harmed this area, take place there”
(Serrano, 1987, p. 32). In his book, NOS,
Serrano defines the kingdom
of Shambhala
as “one of the hidden subterranean cities in which is performed the tantric
initiation that transforms, transmutes and transfigures matter. There are
people who say that it was the capital of Agarthi” (Serrano, 1984, p. 186). Before Shambhala was relocated in the Himalayas
by the hyperborean (Nordic) siddhas,
it was a kingdom at the North Pole.
Shambhala and Agarthi are thus the two occult regions (or cities) from which
the national socialist dictator, Adolf Hitler, was sent to our planet.
According to Serrano the two locations lie in a magic realm beneath the
surface of the Earth. “Thus the submerged Agarthi and Shambhala are
to be found there, which the Tibetans and Mongolians speak of as the seat
of the king of the world, and also the symbolic orient of the [Knights]
Templar and the true Rosicrucians. Thus the unknown leaders of these two
orders, as well the organization of esoteric Hitlerism [the SS], betook
themselves there. And from there Hitler clearly received instructions”
(Serrano, 1987, p. 32). [6]
Following the Second World War the rumor (which
Serrano seizes upon thankfully) arose in occult circles that Hitler had
settled a brotherhood of Tibetan lamas in Berlin,
who stood in direct contact with the kingdom of Shambhala.
After the Russians entered the city the members of the order committed
suicide ( Ravenscroft, 1988, p. 262ff.).[7]
But Hitler — Serrano says- did not suicide; rather
he was able to return to his subterranean home of Shambhala. “Hitler lives. He did not die in Berlin. I have seen him under the earth.
... I kept this secret for many years; then it was dangerous to reveal it,
and it was even more difficult to write about it”, the mysterious master we
have already mentioned explained to his pupil, Serrano (Serrano, 1987, p.
37). The “Führer”, however, did not flee to Tibet as is assumed in other
occult speculations. Serrano doubts such assumptions, since on the basis of
his researches he reached the conclusion that the mythic realm of Shambhala was relocated from the
Himalayas to the South Pole (Antarctica)
following the war and that today the entrance to the underground imperium
may be found there. Hitler is thus said to have traveled to Antarctica.
In the near future, the “Führer” with ascend to
earth from the subterranean Shambhala
(now at the South Pole) for a second time, with a powerful army of UFOs in
fact. (At another point Serrano reports that Hitler will lead his army on a
white horse, like the Rudra Chakrin,
the wrathful wheel turner from Shambhala.)
The “last avatar” (Hitler) will plunge the planet into a terrible
apocalyptic war between the forces of light (the hyperborean Aryan race)
and the powers of darkness (the Jewish race). The Jews, who currently rule
the world, will be exterminated and the Nazis will found the Edidad Dorada (the “golden age”) and
the “Fourth Reich”.
Serrano took his “fantasies” literally. To seek
his spiritual leader (or the tulku
Hitler), the Chilean diplomat (in India
at the time) set off and began exploring in the Himalayas and in Antarctica. “In the book The Serpent of Paradise, I describe my search for the ashram of
the Siddha in the Himalayas, which is likewise to be found beneath the
earth in the Kailash mountains, in a very remote area where my master’s
residence also is” (Serrano, 1987, p. 40).[8] He was convince that he would
find an entrance to Shambhala or Agarthi in the Kailash. He also
tried to reach Lake
Yamdrok, because he
suspected there was an entrance gateway to the underground Shambhala there as well. But the
Chinese turned him back at the border.
EL/ELLA
But the time was not ripe, Serrano was unable to
discover the entrance to Shambhala.
In Kalimpong, “before the gates of Tibet” he encountered a “man”
who assured the Chilean that a mysterious “order” exerts an influence over
both the affairs of the distant past and the most recent events of world
history. Obviously this man was
the guru who — as he recounts in his key book EL/ELLA — initiated Serrano into the rites of sexual magic, and
the order was a tantric secret
society. Its members, the “man” said, “live in two cities in the Himalayas, Agarthi
and Shambhala. To get there one
has to trace this (tantric) way back to the origin of time” (Serrano, 1982,
p. 10).
The pupil (Serrano) — we read in EL/ELLA — is prepared to go this way
and is initiated into the tantras and the “laws of androgyny” by the
master: “This knowledge has been passed on to us by the serpent [kundalini] that survived on the
ocean floor as the world of the god-men was destroyed, in which the woman
was not outside but rather inside and where man and woman were one. ....
Until you are one with the woman ... you will be no priest king ... The
stallion must become a mare, the man a woman ...” the guru continued his
teaching (Serrano, 1982, pp. 11-12).[9]
This is never, the pupil learns, possible through
chastity and asceticism. Rather, the man must encounter the woman in the
“magic love” in order to divert her feminine energies. As we know, this
requires absolute control over the sexual act and above all the retention
of the seed: “If the stallion expels the seed, he becomes impoverished by
this. ... For as long as the seed flows outwards like a river, the play of
the deceptive appearances will continue” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13). In another
text it says: “the magic love that is taught in ... Shambhala. ... In it the seed may not be issued outwardly and
be lost in the woman, rather it must flow inwardly into the body of its
owner in order to impregnate him with the androgyne, ... as one in the
likewise symbolic language of alchemy” (Serrano, 1987, p. 289). If the man
does not expel his sperm he can absorb the woman’s gynergies completely. “If the woman does not receive”, Serrano
says, “she gives! Through her skin she exudes substances, a concentrated energy,
which satiates you and penetrates into your blood and heart” (Serrano,
1982, p. 14).
But it can happen that the tantric experiment
fails. If the sadhaka (the pupil) loses his seed during the magic sexual
act then he is destroyed by the aggressive femininity: “The spider devours
the male who fertilizes her, the bees murder the drones, the fearsome
mother wears the organ of generation tied around her neck. Everything
female devours, every mare, mother, goddess, or woman. In one way or
another the man is consumed” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13).
It is thus a matter of life and death. Ultimately,
according to Serrano the “killing” of the external woman (the karma
mudra) is therefore necessary, so that the inner woman (the maha
mudra) can be formed. The author does not shrink from discussing the
“tantric female sacrifice” directly: “Only those who are able to love the
woman so much [!] that they externally kill her [!] in order to make
possible her inner rebirth will find the immortal city of Agarthi (or Shambhala)” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13).[10] For an uninformed
reader hidden, but obvious to one who knows the logic of Tantrism, a
tantric female murder is described in both of his initiatory writings, EL/ELLA [HE/SHE] and NOS [WE].
In a love scene from EL/ELL,A a young woman expires in Serrano’s arms in order to
then re-emerge within him as an inner maha
mudra. He bends over her, strokes her hair and kisses her bloody lips:
“They tasted like bitter honey, and he swallowed a little of her blood”
Then he suddenly sees the stigmata: “Strangely, it [the blood] was only on
her feet and the palms of her hands as if she had been crucified. 'Here!',
she said. She indicated her side, at breast level. A white line seemed to
run through it, like a spear wound” (Serrano, 1982, pp. 72-73). The
references to the sacrifice of Christ are obvious, indeed they seem quite
blatant. “When I die,” the woman then says, “you will bear me within you; I
will be you, live in you ... You have drunk my blood, and we are now two
siblings. My character is already
being transferred into your blood ... If god will, I shall love you even
more when I am dead. ... I have to die that you may live” (Serrano, 1982,
pp. 73-74). With this she fulfills the wise saying of Serrano’s master:
“The decay of the one [the woman] is the purification of the other [the
man]" (Serrano, 1982, p. 93). “The absolute woman”, he says at another
point, “can sleep or she can die, which is the same thing” (Serrano, 1987,
p. 289).
Written in a fantasy manner, the book NOS — Book of the Resurrection also
depicts a tantric female sacrifice. The heroine of this “hermetic
biography” is called Allouine, the main hero is admittedly Serrano.
Additionally, various “tantric” masters crop up. Among them are,
unmistakably, C.G. Jung, Hermann Hesse, and the American poet Ezra Pound.
The contents of the book depict the voluntary self-sacrifice of Allouine,
her interiorization as a maha mudra
by the author (Serrano), and the latter’ achievement of immortality through
the absorption of gynergy. “The
woman dies. She is dead. She must die. ... She is the warrior’s [the
yogi’s] companion, existing only in his mind, in his spirit” (Serrano,
1984, p. 11), Serrano instructs us once more. “She [the woman] becomes interiorized in you through her death, she
inspires you”, one of his masters explains to him and in another passage
continues: “The secret path of yoga along which you are traveling is only
for the warrior, for the initiated hero. It is not the path for the woman;
because a woman has no chakras, no kundalini
to awaken. ... A woman is the Kundalini. A woman has no soul. She is the
soul. A woman has no eternity. She is eternity” (Serrano, 1984, pp. 102,
147).
Serrano stages a tantric séance with Allouine, in
which they both consume the five forbidden foods. Then he drinks “the
liquor of orgasm ... the heavenly Soma, an spirit of secret wine ... which
is now only to be found in the river of your blood” (Serrano, 1984, p.
112). We know that he is talking about the sukra, the mixture of male and female seed, of menstrual blood
and sperm. This magic potion grants the Tantric immortality. In NOS too the author longs for the
blood of his lover like a vampire and goes into raptures if he detects it
on his lips. After he has washed the dying Allouine, he kisses her and
drinks of her blood.
Yet Allouine patiently and will-lessly accepts her
sacrifice: “My desire for you (i.e., for Serrano) is reaching its peak. The
fire of sacrifice has already been lit in my vulva and beats there like a
heart. ... My will no longer exists” (Serrano, 1984, p. 111). “The
authentic, absolute woman sacrifices herself voluntarily,” we read in NOS, “immolating herself in order to
give her eternity to her lover. ... The beloved is now the hidden beloved,
she who has died and buried herself in your bones and your veins. The
female Sophia, guru of the soul, she who courses through the blood, the
female philosopher, Sophia, wisdom, the dove, gnosis” (Serrano, 1984, pp.
147-148). Dying, his “wisdom consort” says to him, “I shall but love thee
better after death. I give you my eternity. … My beloved, you will be my
coffin of perfumed, precious wood!” (Serrano, 1984, p. 140).
After he has internalized Allouine within himself,
the Tantric Serrano can now overcome his EGO, he can now talk of NOS (WE),
since his lover (maha mudra) will
dwell in him for ever. Through this love, deadly for the woman, the man
gains eternal life. In this context, Serrano plays upon the word AMOR, which
does not just mean love, but also A-MOR, i.e., beyond death.
Eternally united with Allouine’s gynergy following her physical
death, Serrano buries her corpse and places a stone at her grave into which
he has chiseled a leftward hooked cross, the supreme symbol of “esoteric
Hitlerism”.
Hitler as a tantric and as
king of the world (Chakravartin)
From Serrano’s tantric world view it is
only all too easy to assume that Hitler (as a tulku) also conducted sexual magic practices with a wisdom
consort (mudra). Eva Braun, the
lover of the dictator appears to have only partially performed this duty.
Behind her, Serrano says, stood a greater one: “We must thus consider the
relationship with Eva Braun to have been like that between Jesus and Mary
Magdalene in the Christian legend, like that of an alchemist to his mystic
sister. ... The presence of the woman, her telepathic, self-communicating
energy, the tensions this generates are indispensable for a tantric
magician, for this kind of bearer of power. The mystic consort of Hitler
was, however, not Eva Braun, but rather another” (Serrano, 1987, p. 25). He
refers to her as the “Valkyrie” or as Lilith
too. With the name Lilith he
draws a connection to Adam. Like
Hitler, the biblical first father of humanity (Adam) also possessed two women, an outer Eve and an inner Lilith.
Did Hitler perhaps make an decisive tantric mistake, asks the author, in
marrying Eva Braun (shortly
before his suicide)? “... Since the secret Eve [Braun] of transient flesh and blood was accepted, she now
[took] the place of the mystic consort” (Serrano, 1987, p. 25), and Hitler
lost part of his magic powers (siddhis).
A according to Serrano the “Führer” of the Third
Reich was a tantra master from Shambhala,
the “high priest of the occident” (Serrano, 1987, p. 269) He came to earth
to fulfill a mission — the control of the world by the Nordic
("hyperborean”) race. But in him Serrano does not just see the
incarnation of a warlike archetype who lowered himself into a human frame
in the nineteen-thirties and forties. In the dictator he directly
recognized a tulku and god sent
from Shambhala. Hitler “was a
highly developed being, a Bodhisattva, a tulku ... the incarnation of a
deity” (Serrano, n.d., p. 119).
Just as a tulku
need not only appear in the form of a single person, but can rather produce
many emanations of his self, so too the various fascist national “Führers” of the first half of our
century were the emanations of the mightiest central tulku and Shambhala
prince, Adolf Hitler: Benito Mussolini in Italy; Oliveira Salazar in
Portugal; Leon Degrelle in Belgium; José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Spain;
Plinio Salgado in Brazil; Doriot in France; Jorge González von Marée in
Chile; and Subhash Chandra Bose in India. All the fascist energy of the
world was concentrated in the German “Führer” (Hitler): “The tulku”, says
Serrano, “ — in this case it is Hitler — radiates out from a center of
higher power, which like an enormous sun absorbs everything and draws it
into his fire and his fate. If HE falls, then all the others fall too, then
HE is of course ALL [of them]" (Serrano, 1987, p. 270).
According to Serrano Hitler must also be seen as
the earthly appearance of the Chakravartin:
“For the initiates of the SS Hitler was that mysterious prophet or magician
who … would restore the sense of royal dignity, where the king of the world
is the emperor, the priest of priests and king of kings; it is the leader,
who will establish a new golden age for a thousand years and more”
(Serrano, 1987, p. 354). This is clearly intended for the future, since–
according to Serrano — Hitler will soon return once more to fulfill his
cosmic mission. One may think what one will of such prognoses, but it is in
any case amazing what a large upturn fascist movements have achieved worldwide
since the end of the eighties.
The SS as a tantric
warrior order from Shambhala
For Serrano the tantric initiation is the central
rite of a “hyperborean” (Nordic) warrior caste. Shambhala counts as the supreme mystery site for the initiation
of the “priest-warriors”. “In Shambhala”,
the author says, “ the use of the force through which the mutation of the
earth and the people can be carried out is taught, and the latter [the
people] are introduced into the martial
initiation, which makes this possible. ... Those who follow this
initiatory stream have struggled to found a new/old order here on the
present-day earth which has its roots in the transcendent origins, with the
goal of reawakening the golden age, and they will fight on to the end...”
(Serrano, 1987, p. 258). [11]
This order is the secret brotherhood of the Shambhala officers, who have for
centuries been incarnated in our world — for instance as knights of the
holy grail or as Rosicrucians or finally as the occult elite of the SS,
Hitler’s notorious Schutz-Staffel.
“Once a year”, we learn, “the inner circle of the SS people met with their
supreme leaders for a few days of retreat, the solitude, and meditation. A
kind of western yoga was practiced here, but nothing is known about it”
(Serrano, 1987, pp. 171-172).
According to Serrano the SS were divided into two
sections, an inner esoteric one and an outer one. The “exoteric SS” were
selected to “be able to deal with the most difficult tasks and adventures
in the external world”. “Nothing of the esoteric of the black order, its
practices and teachings, its invisible connections and its occult doctrines
was known” to them (Serrano, 1987, p. 264). The “inner circle” of the SS
consisted of “sun people, supermen, god-men, the total human, the human
magician” (Serrano, n.d., p. 96). The esoteric SS were siddhas (magicians) from the underground kingdom of Shambhala,
or at least their messengers In German, SS are the initials of the “black
sun” (“schwarze Sonne”), and
Serrano did also call the members of the order “the men of the black sun”.
We are reminded that the planet of darkness, Rahu, which darkens the sun and moon, is also referred to in
the Kalachakra Tantra as the
black sun.
The author is convinced, of course, that sexual
magic rites were practiced in the SS (the “new aristocracy of the Aryan
race”). Like Julius Evola before him, the Chilean makes constant references
in his writings to how sexuality may be converted into high-quality
aggressive military energy and political power through tantric practices:
“Come and take me like a warrior!”,
a lover (his karma mudra) says to
him at one stage in his key novels, “I give you my heart for you to devour.
Let us drink our blood” (Serrano, 1982, p. 54). In EL/ELLA the author recommends to heroes initiated into the
tantras that “the warrior should
give death the face of his lover; the fiery femininity of death will be
thus evoked” (Serrano, 1982, p. 87). For Serrano, tantric practices and the
cult life of a fascist/esoteric warrior caste are one.
Additionally, the sexual magic of the SS was
connected with racial experiments. These aimed at a mutation of the human
race, or better, a regaining of the formerly high-standing Aryan god-men
who had in the dim and distant past tarnished themselves through “ordinary”
sexual intercourse with human women and produced a lesser race. According
to Serrano, such experiments were conducted in the Wewelsburg, the occult
center of the SS. “Laboratories of leftward magic” for the re-creation of
the original, pure Aryan race were to be found there (Serrano, n.d. pp.
488, 589). But these were nothing more than the above-ground branches of
corresponding establishments in subterranean Shambhala. “ In Shambhala
they attempted to produce a mutation of their kind which would allow them
to return to that which they were before their interbreeding with the sons
of man...” — when they still had a white, almost transparent body and
blonde hair (Serrano, 1982, p. 54).
As Tantrics, the SS were “beyond good and evil”
and for this reason their “terrible deeds” were justified by Serrano, plus
that they took place at higher cosmic command (Serrano, 1987, p. 331). The
“final solution to the question of the gypsies” (many gypsies perished in
the concentration camps), for example, is said to have come directly “from Tibet
to Hitler, certainly from Shambhala”.
The gypsies used to live in Shambhala
and had then been driven out of there. “The reasons for this”, says
Serrano, “were known in the Tibet
of the Dalai Lama” (Serrano, 1987, p. 366).
Just like the Knights Templar, the inner occult
core of the SS were incarnations of the guardians of the holy grail, and
“the grail of the siddhas [the magicians], of the solar and martial
initiations” is to be found in Shambhala
(Serrano, 1987, p. 264). The miracles which radiated from the grail were
evident in the achievements of the black order in the course of the Second
World War: “If one examines the achievements of the followers of Hitler in
all areas of creation within a period of just six years, one cannot avoid
admiring this miracle and making a comparison with the Templar order. And
one comes to believe that the SS have likewise found the grail and even
deciphered it” (Serrano, 1987, p. 278). Even the monumental architecture of
the Third Reich is supposed to have been prepared on the building sites of Shambhala. The Hyperboreans (the
gods of the north), we may read, “emigrated to two secret cities in the Himalayas, Agarthi
and Shambhala. ... In Shambhala they practiced the magic of
the giants which made the monumental buildings possible” (Serrano, 1982, p.
54).
In the Second World War the forces of light and
the “sun race” (Hitler and the SS) stood opposed to the forces of darkness
and the “moon race” (the Allies and the Jews). It was no ordinary war, but
rather a global battle between the gods (the Nazis, the light Aryan race)
and demons (the Jews, the dark Semitic race), between Odin, the highest god of the Germanic peoples, and Jehovah, the highest god of the
Jews. The Nordic (hyperborean) heroes fought the “lord of darkness”, the
“satanic demiurge”. At heart, Serrano says, the patriarchal and matriarchal
powers were at war.
Admittedly Hitler outwardly lost the war, but
through his sacrifice and his example he saved the ideals of the warrior
caste from Shambhala. He shall
return at the head of his “wild army” to finally liberate the white race
from the lord of darkness (Jehovah).
It will then come to a terrible final battle. “These are the dimensions of
Hitler, the envoy of the hyperborean [Nordic] siddhas, the tulku, the
Bodhisattva, the Chakravartin, the Führer of the Aryans, so that the
demiurge Jehovah has to mobilize
all his earthly and extraterrestrial legions” (Serrano, n.d., p. 50).
One may well dismiss Serrano’s visions as the
product of an overactive imagination, but it cannot be denied that modern
fascism has found a home and a predecessor in the Shambhala myth and in Tantrism. Its mythological conceptions
and visions of power can without difficulty be brought into harmony with
the practice and political ideology of the Kalachakra Tantra for all fundamental issues. The occult right
wing’s move toward Tibetan Buddhism is thus in no way to be understood as
the exploitation of the dharma
for ignoble purposes, since there is a profound inner relatedness between
these two ways of looking at the world.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama and Serrano
Naturally, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama would simply
dismiss any link between the Shambhala
myth and Kalachakra Tantra
and the “esoteric Hitlerism” of Serrano, regardless of how closely matched
even the conceptual principles of the two systems may be. Nonetheless, it
is of great interest to our culturally critical study that the Kundun met with the racist Chilean
several times (in at least 1959, 1984, and 1992). When His Holiness visited
Chile in the year 1992,
he was greeted at the airport by, among others, the leader of the National Socialist Party of Chile
— Miguel Serrano by name. The principal ideologue of Esoteric Hitlerism told the reporters
present that he and the hierarch from Tibet
had been good “friends” since his time in India (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 302).
Serrano was also a friend of the German living in India whom we have so often
cited, Lama Govinda, in whose meditation tower with a view of the Himalayan
mountains he was able to immerse himself.
The first encounter with the Kundun took place in 1959. In his own account, the founder of
“esoteric Hitlerism” was the sole foreigner to greet the Dalai Lama as he
crossed the Indian border after his flight from Tibet. “Shortly before the
taking of Tibet by Mao’s
troops”, he reports in his own words, “the Dalai Lama succeeded in fleeing
to India.
I journeyed into the Himalayas to wait for
him there. I donned Tibetan clothes which the Maharaja of Sikkim had given
me so as to attempt to get to Tibet from there. I made it to
the Tibetan border, where — incidentally — I made the acquaintance of one
of Roerich’s sons who also gave me a report of the hidden city lying in the
mountains (Shambhala). The at
that time still very young Dalai Lama later, when everything was over, gave
me a small Tibetan dog, as a sign of his gratitude” (Palacio, 1990, p. 4).
It is at any rate interesting that the Kundun, who was introduced to
western culture by a member of the SS (Heinrich Harrer), meets as the first
(!) Westerner after his crossing of the Indian border the fascist Miguel
Serrano, who sees a mythic command from the kingdom Shambhala at the esoteric core of the SS. Serrano says of
himself: “I was employed as a tool and continue to be used” (Cedade, 1986). We may recall that
upon crossing the border, the Dalai Lama gave vent to the cry of “Victory
to the gods!”. The gods that Serrano represented and as whose tool he
served were Wotan, Odin, and, in his own words, Adolf Hitler.
Miguel Serrano and the XIV. Dalai Lama in Santiago
de Chile (1992)
As far as the “enchanting” Tibetan temple bitch of
“honey yellow color” which was given him by the Kundun is concerned, this creature had a most special
significance for the Chilean. The lamas, the author says, referred to the
petite race as the “lion of the back door of the Temple”. Serrano’s “back door lion” was
called Dolma, “the name of a
Tibetan goddess; in truth the shakti”
(Serrano, n.d., p. 189). Dolma is
the Tibetan name for the goddess Tara.
As abstruse as it may sound, after some time the Chilean recognized in the Dolma given him by the Kundun the reincarnation of a woman
whom he once loved as a “mystic partner” and who (in accordance with the
laws of the “tantric female sacrifice”) had had to die (Serrano, n.d., p.
189). As Dolma the bitch one day
passed away in his arms — Serrano had flown from Spain
to Vienna
just to accompany her into eternity — he recalled an event of mythological
dimensions from the 16th century. As if he were in a trance he suddenly
felt that it was not the Tibetan Dolma
but rather the dying sister of the last Aztec emperor Montezuma, Papán by
name, whom he held in his arms. Papán — Serrano claimed — originally a high
priestess from the north ("Hyperborea”), had in Mexico prophesied- according to legend — the
return of the white gods to America.
In her final hour, Dolma (the
bitch) radiated out the energy of the Aztec princess who had to suffer a
ritual sacrificial death.
Thanks to this vision Serrano could once more
experience the fascination which habitually flooded through him at the
embrace of dying women, even if one of them had this time been incarnated
in a bitch. In NOS, a dying dog
(the fate of Dolma probably lies behind
this) spoke to him like a tantric lover with a human voice: “You don't need
me outside anymore. I will howl inside you, like my brother the wolf”
(Serrano, 1984, p. 21).
Such central “hermetic” experiences naturally tied
the Chilean to the Kundun and his
tantric world view profoundly and so it is also not surprising that Serrano
linked “esoteric Hitlerism” and the fate of Germany to the Dalai Lama
directly: His “skill”, the author says of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is
“closely linked to that of Hitler’s Germany ... on account of yet
undiscovered connections. A few years after Germany,
Tibet
also fell” (Serrano, 1987, p. 366).
The Chilean did not yet know about the SS past of
Heinrich Harrer, the Kundun’s
“best friend” and teacher, since this first became known in 1997 in
connection with the film Seven Years
in Tibet. But we can be certain that this fact would have been cited by
him as further evidence to justify an occult connection between Shambhala
and the SS, between the Dalai Lama
and Adolf Hitler, particularly as
the Chilean indicates at many points in his writings that the SS sent
“secret missions” to Tibet in order to search for traces of the Aryan race
there.
Serrano allows himself to be celebrated as the
“Führer” of the National Socialist Party
of Chile. His calendar commences
with the year of Adolf Hitler’s birth in 1889. He describes “esoteric
Hitlerism” as the “new religion of the young heroes and future warriors and
priests, the true myth of the coming century” (Cedade, 1986). In 1989, on the 100th anniversary of Hitler’s
birth (the year 100 for Serrano) a commemorative celebration was staged at
which the Chilean and representatives of “esoteric Hitlerism” from various
countries (Chile, Spain, Italy, Germany) spoke: “On the peak of a mountain
in the Andes ranges which dominates Santiago,” the Chilean newspaper, La Epoca, writes, “and to the sounds
of the Ride of the Valkyrie from
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The
Ring of the Nibelung), some 100 Chilean followers and foreigners commemorated
Adolf Hitler in yesterday’s evening twilight and promised that in the new
Hitlerist age the continuing triumph of his ideas would proceed from Chile.
... Hitler, Serrano opined, would be resurrected from in the Andes ('Andes'
means 'perfected, total human) and he would do like the Caleuche [a mystic hero of Chile,
whose name means 'the man who returns’) and introduce the age of Hitler” (Epoca, April 21, 1989). This event
should not be underestimated on the basis of the small number of
participants. For Serrano it had a ritual/symbolic significance and was
reported in detail in the German neo-Nazi scene, for example.
In fascist circles worldwide, Serrano is a “hot
tip” and his bizarre visions do in fact exercise a fascinating attraction
on many young people. His nazi books are openly offered for sale in all
South American countries. The German translation of
Cordón Dorado Hitlerismo Esoterico is available as a hardback (Das goldene Band — esoterischer
Hitlerismus). Highly sought after copies of the other works (about
Hitlerism) in German translation and individual propaganda essays are in
circulation and passed from hand to hand. “Serrano’s mystical neo-Nazism …
[has] a distinct appeal to the younger generation”, writes the historian
Goodrick Clark, “Here Nazism becomes a pop mythology, severed from the
historic context of the Third Reich. The Gnostic Cathars, Rosicrucian
mysteries, Hindu Avatars, and extraterrestrial gods add a sensational and occult appeal to powerful
myths of elitism, planetary destiny, and the cosmic conspiracy of the Jews
that culminate in a global racist ideology of white supremacism. … Books by
Serrano … are now circulating among neo-pagans, Satanists, skinheads, and
Nazi metal music fans in the United States, Scandinavia, and Western
Europe” (Goodrick Clark, 1998, pp. 221-222). The Dalai Lama has never
distanced himself from Serrano. Instead of decisively opposing fascism in
any country, he recently called for the former Chilean State President and
fascist, Augusto Pinochet, to be spared a trial.
In the following chapter, we shall
introduce a further case where Tantric Buddhism, the Shambhala myth, and the Dalai Lama have acted as godfather to a
modern, extremely radical and aggressive form of fascism. A case which
shook the world community — we mean the story of the Japanese doomsday guru, Shoko Asahara.
Footnotes:
[2] Clearly under the impression that the swastika would become the emblem of national socialism, a moral
category was introduced in that one distinguished between the hooked
crosses which are turned to the right and those to the left. The left is
supposed to produce evil, the right good (Doucet, 197, p. 74). Without
doubt this is based upon misinformation. In the Tibetan ritual system both
forms of swastika are common.
[9]Serrano was initiated into
the Tantras of the Kaula, a
Shivaite order. Yet the initiation scenarios from his books which we
describe here are completely in keeping with Vajrayana. Serrano is not very fussy about distinguishing
between the Hindu and Buddhist Tantra tradition. For him it is a matter of
the principle behind the Tantric
initiation and he finds this to the same extent among the Buddhists and the
Hindus. Tantrism is for him an esoteric world cult which he discovers among
the Egyptians, the Knights Templar, the Cathars, the Rosicrucians and the
secret societies behind Hitler (the Thule
society). At any rate, he sees in Shambhala
and Agarthi the two mythic points
of origin from which the Tantras come.
[11]Serrano regards Julius Evola
and, oddly enough, Herrmann Hesse as well as the two teachers who first
made him aware of the warlike spirit of Buddhism: “I am indebted to both
that I got to know Buddhism as a way of the warrior. Evola explains that
the religion of the Gautama is principally a warlike teaching which came
from a prince who belonged to the Indian warrior caste, the Kshatriyas”
(Palacio, 1990, p. 11).
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