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Ariosophic Demon Seeds: The Theosophical Roots of Nazi Race Theory

John L. Crow

When examining the history of Nazi occultism, one quickly finds that the domain is a confusing

muddle of influences, connections, and ideological transmissions. Within this morass, it is

difficult to draw lines of direct connection. Yet, if one is persistent, over time certain names,

organizations, and documents consistently emerge as influential on a wide spectrum of

participants. One of these figures is Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), or better known as

“Madame” Blavatsky. Blavatsky was co-founder of the occult organization, The Theosophical

Society, which was initially created in 1875 in New York City, but shortly after, relocated its

headquarters to India. In 1888 Blavatsky published her magnum opus, the two volume The Secret

Doctrine. In the Secret Doctrine she outlines a new vision of humanity’s evolution, one that

places the Aryans at the top of a race hierarchy. She claimed these revelations came from occult

sources and would inform various German occult organizations which, in turn, would later

inform the racial theories of Nazism.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a myriad of racial theories

circulating throughout Europe, all of which had their antecedents in the nineteenth century. A

common link for these theories was an innate anti-Semitism that kept the Jewish “race” separate

and denigrated. Within occult circles in Germany and Austria, Theosophical theories of race and

human evolution were intermingled with Pan Germanic nationalism, anti-Semitism and nostalgic

appeals to a Germanic heritage prior to Christianity. This potent cocktail of ideas were consumed

heavily by various groups such as the German Order, the Thule Society, and promoted by

Ariosophists such as Guido von List (1848-1919) and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954).

Together, these individuals and organizations laid the foundation for a variety of ideas that

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informed Nazi race theory and contributed to the Nazi Holocaust, claiming the lives of over 20

million. While there are no direct links, most, if not all of these individuals and organizations

found inspiration and validation within the work of the Theosophical Society and in particular

the materials of Madame Blavatsky. However, there are those who claim that Hitler had little

interest in occultism. Thus before examining any connection between Nazism and occultism, one

must first answer the question as to whether Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) had interests in the occult

because if he opposed it, it is unlikely that it would appear in the Nazi Party’s theories of race.

However numerous the links between occultism and Nazi present themselves, there are

still many prominent historians and biographers of Hitler that deny any connections between the

National Socialist Movement and the occult. In contrast, other historians have claimed that

Nazism is unfathomable without understanding its connections to occultism.1 Raymond

Sickinger has suggested that there is a middle way between these two positions, asking if it is

possible to “suggest that Hitler thought and acted in a magical way and that he found a magical

approach to difficult problems to be efficacious.”2 This middle ground seems to be reasonable

and has recently been backed up by the materials taken from Hitler’s personal library.

In the May 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Timothy W. Ryback described his trip to

the Library of Congress to examine a collection of 1,200 books taken from Hitler’s library at the

end of World War II, deposited in Washington, D.C., and then effectively forgotten. Among the

books Ryback found that about 10% dealt with religious and occult themes.3

1
Sickinger, “Hitler and the Occult,” 107.
2
Ibid., 111.
3
Ryback, “Hitler’s Forgotten Library.”

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An important volume that Ryback located was Magic: History, Theory and Practice (1923), a

book on occultism and magic by Dr. Ernst Schertel. Ryback notes that it was “One of the most

heavily marked books” in the library.4 He continues,

Hitler's copy of Magic bears a handwritten dedication from Schertel, scrawled on

the title page in pencil. A 170-page softcover in large format, the book has been
thoroughly read, and its margins scored repeatedly. I found a particularly thick
pencil line beside the passage ‘He who does not carry demonic seeds within him
will never give birth to a new world.’5

Hitler’s copy of Schertel’s Magic has subsequently been reprinted with his annotations denoted.

Within the volume we not only find him highlighting the comment about carrying demonic

seeds, we find a whole paragraph highlighted about magic and being a magician. Other

suggestive annotations include statements such as “Every demonic-magical world is centered

towards the great individuals, from whom basic creative conceptions spring.”6

Based on Ryback’s discovery and the annotations by Hitler in Schertel’s book alone, we

can confidently say that Hitler had at least a passing interest in occultism. However this is not the

only evidence as to Hitler’s interest in the esoteric traditions. Hitler was also a reader of

Ariosophic/occult periodicals and promoted the publication of cabala based horoscopes of him

and Nazi party members.7 Moreover, others within Nazism shared his interests. Thus, when Nazi

occultism is investigated, a complex web of ideas and influences emerge. However, before

examining the occult roots of Nazism, it is first necessary to review Blavatsky’s occult theories

of race to excavate the foundation upon which much of the Nazi theories of race were founded.

Nazi race theories built on earlier European theories of race. One of the earliest attempts

to systematize theories of race, and certainly one of the most influential, was presented by the

French Count, Arthur Gobineau (1816-1882). In 1856 he published The Moral and Intellectual

4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid., 67, 69, 78.
7
Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, 174.

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Diversity of Races. In this volume he classifies the various races of humanity in a seemingly

scientific way, perpetuating preexisting categories such as “Negro,” “Yellow” and “White”

races. These he declares are completely incommensurate and that the White race is superior.

Prior to his The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, Gobineau published his most famous

work, An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855). In his discussion of race

divisions, he notes that within the White races, the “Aryans” are the most superior and, in

contrast to the white race, the “negroid variety is the lowest.”8 Gobineau’s theories of race were

very influential in both Europe and the United States. We find his categories being adopted by

others including Blavatsky. However she recapitulates the theory of races. She retains the

divisions and hierarchy established by Gobineau.

The first references to the occult origins of races in Theosophy did not come from

Blavatsky but in the works of Alfred Percy Sinnett (1840-1921). A prominent Theosophist, he

had received a number of letters which he claimed were written by occult masters, or

“Mahatmas,” residing in the Himalayan Mountains. Based on these letters he published The

Occult World (1880) and Esoteric Buddhism (1883). In the latter, in a chapter entitled “The

World Periods,” Sinnett describes the seven phases the human race has experienced previously

and will continue to experience into the future.9 He goes on to note that present day humans are

in the fifth race. He claims that this race began about one million years ago.10 Despite the fact

that the fifth race began so long ago, there are remnants from the previous races.

In The Secret Doctrine, volume two, subtitled “Anthropogenesis,” Blavatsky builds on

the foundation laid by Sinnett, or the Mahatmas, assuming one accepts the source of his

information, and expands upon it, filling in holes, and coalescing the whole system into a unity

8
Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 1:205.
9
Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism, 95.
10
Ibid., 98.

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which is claimed to come from an occult source: stanzas from the Book of Dzyan.11 The first race

was of purely spiritual beings which resided in “The Imperishable Sacred Land.” The inhabitants

were completely spirit based and lacked materiality. The second race, the “Hyperboreans,” was

also composed of spiritual beings who were the first to attempt to have physical bodies.

Blavatsky also notes that the way the Hyperboreans reproduced was not sexual but through

asexual “budding,” being that they were androgynys containing both sexes in one body.12 Unlike

their predecessors, the inhabitants of the second race could and did die during a global cataclysm

of fire.13

It was during the third race that humanity, as it is known today, made its appearance. The

third race originally started as androgynys, containing both sexes, but bifurcated in the middle of

the race’s time span to create independent sexes. It was also at this time that humanity suffered

its fall. In a reversal of Genesis, it is the males who cause humanity to sin and it is from their

insatiable lusts. It is also with the third race that Blavatsky begins to point to living remnants.

She writes, “of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the

Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of

which are entirely covered with hair.”14 The fourth race was endowed with intelligence and

language which allowed it to construct the beginnings of civilization. Within this development,

divisions in societies emerged based on religious practices.15 Within the fourth race, and even

extending back to the latter parts of the third race, Blavatsky places the Australian aborigines,

“fast dying out,” and African and Oceanic tribes. Like the third race, the fourth was almost

11
Blavatsky claimed to have seen a manuscript of the Book of Dzyan while studying with esoteric masters in Tibet. She claimed
the Book of Dzyan and other ancient manuscripts were safeguarded from profane eyes by the initiates of an Occult Brotherhood,
i.e. the Mahatmas. According to Blavatsky, the Book of Dzyan had been written in the sacred language of Senzar.
12
Ibid., 2:116.
13
Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 2:141.
14
Ibid., 2:195n.
15
Ibid., 2:273.

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completely destroyed by an environmental catastrophe. Yet a remnant survived and began to

thrive on the continent of Asia. These survivors became the earliest members of the fifth race.

Reminiscent of Gobineau’s categories, the Book of Dzyan claims that after the flood that

destroyed the fourth race, “Some Yellow, some Brown and Black, and some Red, remained.”16

These make up the human race which led into the emergence of the fifth race, the Aryans,

according to Blavatsky’s narrative, and they will lead humanity forward spiritually. By her

reckoning, the Aryan Hindu is derived from the oldest parts of the fifth race while the Semite

Hebrew from the newest.17 This leads to the Europeans who are also from various stages of the

Aryan race and who trace their roots to India. This is where Blavatsky claims humanity is at

present but in the future with the sixth and seventh races, humanity will once more shed it gender

bifurcated bodies, and will eventually return to spirit. Until humanity reaches that utopian future,

Theosophy represented the Aryans as humanity’s superior race.

In the form presented by Blavatsky, the Theosophical human evolution narrative did not

support Germanic notions of ultimate superiority. While it certainly supported assertions of

Aryan descent, it did not promote the Germanic people as the future superior race, nor did it

make the kinds of distinctions between the Aryans and Semites which became important in Nazi

race theory. Indeed, James A. Santucci, one of the leading scholars on the history of Theosophy,

claims that Blavatsky’s discussion of race is very different than that of other race theorists. He

writes, “Blavatsky’s use of the term ‘Aryan’ as the name of one of the root races has raised

particular suspicion. Yet there is no evidence that this latter term was used in the manner that

Comte de Gobineau employed it.”18 While Santucci may be correct that Blavatsky and others

saw race differently, connected to the divine in a way others may have only connected to

biological differentiation, it does not change the fact that she used the preexisting racial

16
Ibid., 2:351.
17
Ibid., 2:470.
18
Santucci, “The Notion of Race in Theosophy,” 39.

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categories present in the nineteenth century. As such, she pulled on preexisting prejudices and

replicated them within her text. Thus it is not surprising that those whose goals were served by

appropriating the Theosophical narrative did so without difficulty. While others who adopted the

Theosophical narrative certainly may be misrepresenting Theosophical doctrine, one can hardly

say Blavatsky’s narrative was free from racism as Santucci suggests. There is just too much

derogatory and inflammatory racial categorization in her work.

When German race theorists incorporated Blavatsky’s narrative, it was within a larger

program of asserting German superiority. The three most influential figures in this program

consisted on Guido von List, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, and Rudolf von Sebottendorff (1875-

1945). Liebenfels, a former Roman Catholic and member of the Cistercian order, left the church

and in 1907 founded the “Order of the New Templars” (ONT). Godwin speculates that it was

Liebenfels’ ONT that acted as a prototype of Heinrich Himmler’s (1900-1945) Schutzstaffel, the

famous SS that became the “training- and breeding-ground for the masters of New Age of Aryan

supremacy.”19 One of Liebenfels’ earliest books introduced the idea of “Theozoology,” “a new

science inspired by H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine.”20 Within his Theozoology, taking a cue

from Blavatsky, he suggested that early Aryans committed bestiality with lower species and this

created a different branch of humanity, separate from the pure Aryans.21 Historian Nicholas

Goodrick-Clarke summarizes,

According to [Liebenfels’] theology the Fall simply denoted the racial

compromise of the Aryans due to wicked interbreeding with lower animal species.
The consequence of these persistent sins […] was the creation of several mixed
races, which threatened the proper and sacred authority throughout the world,
especially in Germany where this race was most numerous.22

19
Godwin, Arktos, 49.
20
Ibid.
21
Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, 93–94.
22
Ibid., 94.

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Liebenfels also theorized that the Aryan’s home was originally the polar north which he called

Arktogaä which means “Northern Earth” in Greek. Von List also claimed that Germans

originally came from the North Pole. He incorporated its myth into his Ariosophy – the term for

his ideology combining Theosophy and occultism with his notions of German heritage and

Aryan racism. List was a romantic and longed for an imagined time when Germans worshiped

the old gods and venerated their ancestors before Christianity had corrupted the people. Raised a

Roman Catholic, List rejected his family’s faith and, instead, embraced a völkisch love of nature.

His earliest works were fiction that promoted a Pan Germanic message, one in which the German

people embraced their lost heritage.23 In 1902, he embraced occult notions of race and linguistics

which he began organizing. List sent a copy of his research, in 1903, to the Imperial Academy of

Sciences in Vienna. They returned his manuscript with no comments. However he continued to

work on this material, incorporating a variety of occult sources including Theosophy.24

By 1904 List had an influential following which began funding the publication of his

material and founded a List Society (Guido-van-List-Gesellschaft). As Goodrick-Clark notes,

this activity demonstrates “the appeal of List’s ideas to Pan-Germans and occultists alike.”25 As

List’s popularity grew, his ideas circulated in a number of areas including Pan German

nationalists, those promoting a völkisch revival, and those concerned with occult Aryan-German

heritage. It is here that List and Liebenfels overlap. Both knew of the others work and in most

instances, they were complementary.

Lists ideas were also carried forward by others who, in 1912, founded the

Germanenorden (Order of Germans).26 This organization was founded as a vehicle for the

transmission of Listian ideology and was matched with a virulent anti-Semitism. This concern

for Jewish influence emerged out of the belief that powerful and wealthy Jews in German society
23
Ibid., 38–40.
24
Ibid., 41.
25
Ibid., 43.
26
Ibid., 123.

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could only have achieved their position through conspiratorial means. Thus the Germanenorden

was established to counter this influence. To gain members, the organization repeatedly

advertised in newspapers and other periodicals. Their ads called for “fair-haired and blue-eyed

German men and women of pure Aryan decent to join the Order.” Along with this call was the

insertion of three runes.27 In 1916, the ad caught the eye of Rudolf von Sebottendorff (1875-

c.1945) who applied and was admitted.28 Sebottendorff was a Freemason, interested in

occultism, including Theosophy, and was enthusiast for the ideas of List and Liebenfels. After

his entry into the Germanenorden, he was subsequently appointed the Ordensmeister (local

group leader) for the Bavaria division. It was at this time, while speaking with his colleague,

Walter Nauhaus, also an occultist and member of Germanenorden, that Nauhaus suggested that

Sebottendorff create a new organization called Thule Gesellschaft (the Thule Society). It emblem

was a dagger with oak leaves and a swastika with curved arms and sun rays emitting from it.

(See Figure 1.)

The Swastika, a very old symbol, is very common in India and is associated with both

Buddhism and Hinduism. Frequently statues of the Buddha and images of Hindu deities contain

swastikas. (See figure 2.) When creating its seal, the Theosophical society adopted the swastika

as one of the elements. (See figure 3.) It was the Theosophical use of the swastika that brought it

to everyone’s attention. Friedrich Krohn, “a dentish from Starnberg” as Hitler described him,

was a member of the Germanenorden, and possibly Thule, and proposed a design for the

Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), or the German Worker’s Party, using the swastika found on both

the Thule logo and Theosophical seal.29 Hitler generally accepted the design. However he

changed the swastika direction and altered the arms from curved to straight. The line from

Germanenorden to Thule to the DAP becomes clearer through Sebottendorff. Both Thule and the

27
Ibid., 142.
28
Ibid.
29
Quinn, The Swastika, 151.

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DAP met at the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Munich. It was here that Sebottendorff attempted to

recruit members to Thule and thus established a small working group within the DAP. As

Jocelyn Godwin notes, the DAP, “in turn, was transformed at the end of February 1920 into the

National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) of which Adolf Hitler would soon become

President. All three groups used the swastika as their emblem.”30 Thus in 1920, the swastika

becomes the de facto symbol for the Nazis and its origin, although indirect, is the Theosophical

Society.

Similarly, Theosophical notions of an superior Aryan race gets adopted and adapted by

individuals like List and Liebenfels, who in turn transmit their ideology to others supporting

völkisch agendas, such as Himmler. These individuals create groups promoting the ideas and

combine them with wide spread anti-Semitism. These ideas find there ways to the DAP

members, including Hitler and they open up opportunities for Hitler to spread his own virulent

anti-Semitism and combine it with German nationalism.

Himmler also participated in this potent cocktail of Aryan race supremacy, anti-

Semitism, occultism and a völkisch predilection. In the 1930s, Himmler was involved with the

Artamanen, a German agrarian and völkisch movement dedicated to ruralism. Once he became

head of the SS, he absorbed this group and created the Agrarain Apparatus of the Nazi party.

Here he began disseminating his notions of Nordic-Aryan superiority to children while

encouraging them to mentally return to a German pre-Christian agrarian past. Moving beyond

just asserting Aryan superiority, he began a program to demonstrate it in the German youth.

Selecting the purest Aryan children, Himmler created camps and other agrarian places where

German children manifested their racial superiority through physical exercises saturated by the

appropriate ideological environment.31

30
Godwin, Arktos, 51.
31
Ibid., 177.

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Himmler also instituted his esoteric and völkisch theories within the SS. He imagined the

SS as an “Order of Germanic Cults,” not unlike the earlier Thule Society, “Order of the New

Templars,” and Germanenorden, and created a variety of rituals for the members of the SS. To

combat significant Christian influences, he appealed to neo-pagan agrarian rituals such as the

Feast of Midsummer.32 Himmler also believed he was in contact with previous Nordic ancestors

such as King Heinrich I (875-936). Not unlike the Spiritualist movement from which Theosophy

emerged, he believed he had the power to call up spirits and hold regular meetings with them.

Historian of the SS, Heinz Höhne, explains Himmler’s fascination with the Germanic past:

The reason for all the occultism, however, was no mere love of history for its own
sake. Contact with the past was supposed to instill into the SS Order the
realisation that they were members of a select band, to lay the foundations of a
historical determinism, marking out the SS man as the latest scion of a long line
of Germanic nobility.33

Himmler’s Aryan-Nordic racist theories, cult of the ancestor’s, occult rituals, German

nationalism, and fanatical belief in Hitler were intended by Himmler “to lend the SS that

ideological unity which it lacked” initially.34

Himmler’s race theories, völkisch predilection, and pre-Christian, occult spirituality were

ultimately compatible with Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s race theories. They all espoused

ideological basis for Aryan race superiority, romanticism for völkisch agrarianism, strident anti-

Semitism, and an orientation towards the esoteric and occult. The complicated web of influences

and ideological transmission frequently overlap, but they invariably lead back to the

Theosophical Society.

So much more could be written about regarding the connections between Theosophy and

the Nazi party. Goodrick-Clarke, in his The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) charts the numerous

overlaps and connections, real and imagined. For instance he writes that since 1960, there has

32
Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s S.S., 154–155.
33
Ibid., 154.
34
Ibid.

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been a persistent myth that the Thule society and other occult lodges were channels for black

initiations connected to “hidden masters from the east.”35 This trope, of course, invokes the

Theosophical claims of Mahatmas in the east that distilled occult knowledge through the Society.

Yet these speculations are unnecessary to map out the way Ariosophy appropriated Theosophical

race doctrine and changed it to meet its own needs. As Goodrick-Clarke writes, “Semi-religious

beliefs in a race of Aryan god-men, the needed extermination of inferiors, and a wonderful

millennial future of German world-domination obsessed Hitler, Himmler and many other high-

ranking Nazi leaders.”36 Indeed it was this notion of “Blood and Soil,” the belief that the

Germanic people were a superior race and directly connected to the soil of Europe which became

the philosophy of Hitler, Himmler and others.37 While it would be false to say that these beliefs

were all fostered through occultism and Theosophy, it would also be a mistake to miss their

influence, if even indirect.

The transmission of ideas from person-to-person and the way ideas change over time is a

difficult process to document. At most one can only point to family resemblances and speculate

on connection and diffusion. While there is no “smoking gun” demonstrating a direct line from

Theosophy to the Nazis, there is enough to demonstrate continuity and influence. Nazi race

theory is very different from Blavatsky’s construction of human race evolution. But this does not

mean there is no connection. One can plant demonic seeds without ever knowing how the results

will take root.

35
Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, 218.
36
Ibid., 203.
37
Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s S.S., 44–45.

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Illustrations

Figure 1. Logo of the Thule Gesellschaft

Figure 2. Buddha statue with a swastika

Figure 3. Theosophical Society Seal

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Works Cited

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and
Philosophy: Anthropogenesis. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Centennial Edition. Pasadena: Theosophical
University Press, 1988.
Coon, Arthur M. The Theosophical Seal: A Study for the Student and the Non-Student. Adyar,
India: Theosophical Pub. House, 1958.
Gobineau, Arthur. The Inequality of Human Races. Edited by Oscar Levy. Translated by Adrian
Collins. Vol. 1. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915.
———. The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races with Particular Reference to Their
Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind. Edited by H. Hotz.
Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1856.
Godwin, Joscelyn. Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival. Kempton,
IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence
on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York, NY:
New York University Press, 1992.
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
Höhne, Heinz. The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s S.S. Translated by Richard
Barry. 1st American ed. New York, NY: Coward-McCann, 1970.
Quinn, Malcolm. The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol. Material Cultures. London: Routledge,
1994.
Rempel, Gerhard. Hitler’s Children: The Hitler Youth and The SS. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Ryback, Timothy W. “Hitler’s Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for
God.” The Atlantic Monthly, May 2003.
Santucci, James A. “The Notion of Race in Theosophy.” Nova Religio 11, no. 3 (February 2008):
37–63.
Schertel, Ernst. Magic: History, Theory and Practice. Edited by J.H. Kelley. Boise, ID: Catalog
of the Universal Mind, 2009.
Sickinger, Raymond L. “Hitler and the Occult: The Magical Thinking of Adolf Hitler.” The
Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 2 (2000): 107–125. doi:10.1111/j.0022-
3840.2000.3402_107.x.
Sinnett, A.P. Esoteric Buddhism. Sixth American ed. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.,
1887.

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