“The Garden of Eden
and
The Heavenly Jerusalem
are the same place, depending on whether you are looking
backward or forward.”
“The Garden of Eden
and
The Heavenly Jerusalem
are the same place, depending on whether you are looking
backward or forward.”
§ i. Appeals to foreign law-courts were first devised among the Greeks through mistrust of one another's justice, for they looked on justice as a necessity not indigenous among them. Is it not on much the same principle that the philosophers, in regard to some of their questions, owing to their variety of opinion, have appealed to the brute creation as to a strange state, and submitted the decision to their instincts and habits as not to be talked over 22and impartial? Or is it a general charge against human infirmity that, having different opinions on the most necessary and important things, we seek in horses and dogs and birds how to marry and beget and rear children, as though we had no means of making our own nature known, and appeal to the habits and instincts of the brute creation, and call them in to bear witness against the many deviations from nature in our lives, which from the first are confused and disorderly. For among the brutes nature remains ever the same, pure and simple, but in men, owing to reason and habit, like oil in the hands of the perfumers, being mixed up with many added opinions, it becomes various and loses its original simplicity. And let us not wonder that the brutes follow nature more closely than human beings, for in that respect even they are outstripped by inanimate things, which, being dowered neither with imagination nor any appetite or inclination contrary to nature, ever continue in the one path which nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain or evident trace of nature.44
§ ii. Consider in their marriages how much the animals follow nature. For they do not wait for any legislation about bachelor or late-married, like the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon, nor do they fear penalties for childlessness, nor are they anxious for the jus trium liberorum,45 like many of the Romans, who only marry and have children for the privileges it bestows, not to have heirs, but to be qualified for succeeding themselves to inheritances. Then, again, 23the male animal does not go with the female at all times; for its aim is not pleasure but procreation: so in the season of spring, the most appropriate time for such pairings,46 the female being submissive and tender attracts the male by her beautiful condition of body, coming as she does from the dew and fresh pastures, and when pregnant modestly retires and takes thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. We cannot adequately describe all this, but every animal exhibits for its young affection and forethought and endurance and unselfishness. We call the bee wise, and celebrate its "making the yellow honey,"47 flattering it for its tickling sweetness; but we neglect the wisdom and ingenuity of other creatures, both as regards the birth and bringing up of their young. For example, the kingfisher after conception weaves its nest with the thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it, they even say that it does not admit the sea, or even the very smallest things. And cats, when they breed, very often let their kittens go out and feed, and take them back into their entrails again.48 And the bear, a most savage and ugly beast, gives birth to its young without shape or joints, and with its tongue as with an instrument moulds its features, so that it seems to give form as well as life to its progeny. And the lion in Homer, "whom the hunters meet in the wood with its whelps, exulting in its strength, which so frowns that it hides its eyes,"49 does it not intend to bargain with the hunters for its whelps? For universally the love of animals for their offspring makes timid ones bold, and lazy ones energetic, and greedy ones 24unselfish. And so the bird in Homer, feeding its young "with its beak, with whatever it has captured, even though it goes ill with itself,"50 nourishes its young at the cost of its own hunger, and when the food is near its maw abstains from it, and holds it tightly in its mouth, that it may not gulp it down unawares. "And so a bitch bestriding her tender pups, barks at a strange man, and yearns for the fray,"51 making her fear for them a sort of second anger. And partridges when they are pursued with their young let them fly on, and, contriving their safety, themselves fly so near the sportsmen as to be almost caught, and then wheel round, and again fly back and make the sportsmen hope to catch them, till at last, having thus provided for the safety of their young, they lead the sportsmen on a long way. As to hens, we see every day how they watch over their chicks, dropping their wings over some, and letting others climb on their backs, or anywhere about them, and clucking for joy all the time: and though they fly from dogs and dragons when only afraid for themselves, if they are afraid for their chicks they stand their ground and fight valiantly. Are we to suppose then that nature has only implanted these instincts in fowls and dogs and bears, anxious only about their offspring, to put us mortals out of countenance and to give us a bad name? considering these examples for us to follow, while disgrace justly attaches to our inhumanity, for mankind only is accused of having no disinterested affection, and of not knowing how to love except in regard to advantage. For that line is greatly admired in the theatres, "Man loves man only for reward," and is the view of Epicurus, who thinks that the father so loves his son, the mother her child, children their parents. Whereas, if the brutes could understand conversation, and if anyone were to introduce horses and cows and dogs and birds into a common theatre,52 and were to change the sentiment into "neither do dogs love their pups, nor horses their foals, nor birds their young, out 25of interest, but gratuitously and by nature," it would be recognized by the affections of all of them to be a true sentiment. Why it would be disgraceful, great God, that birth and travail and procreation should be gratis and mere nature among the beasts, while among mankind they should be merely mercenary transactions!
§ iii. But such a statement is not true or worthy of credit. For as nature, in wild growths, such as wild vines, wild figs, or wild olives, makes the fruit imperfect and inferior to the fruit of cultivated trees, so has she given to the brutes an imperfect affection for their kind, one neither marked by justice nor going beyond commodity: whereas to man, a logical and social animal, she has taught justice and law, and honour to the gods, and building of cities, and philanthropy, and has contributed the noble and goodly and fruitful seeds of all these in love to one's offspring, thereby following the very first elements that are found in the construction of the body. For nature is everywhere perfect and artistic and complete, and, to borrow the expression of Erasistratus, has nothing tawdry about her: but one cannot adequately describe all the processes appertaining to birth, nor would it be perhaps decent to pry too closely into such hidden matters, and to particularize too minutely all their wondrous ingenuity. But her contrivance and dispensation of milk alone is sufficient to prove nature's wonderful care and forethought. For all the superfluous blood in women, that owing to their languor and thinness of spirit floats about on the surface and oppresses them, has a safety-valve provided by nature in the menses, which relieve and cleanse the rest of the body, and fit the womb for conception in due season. But after conception nature stops the menses, and arrests the flow of the blood, using it as aliment for the babe in the womb, until the time arrives for its birth, and it requires a different kind of food. At this stage the blood is most ingeniously changed into a supply of milk, not diffused all over the body, but externally in the breasts, so that the babe can with its mouth imbibe the gentle and soothing nutriment.53 But all these various 26processes of nature, all this economy, all this forethought, would be useless, had not nature also implanted in mothers love to their offspring and anxiety for their welfare.
And the poet's words are especially applicable to a newborn babe. For there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul as a newborn babe: to whom almost alone nature has given an impure outlet to the light of day: being kneaded with blood, and full of defilement, and like one killed rather than born: which no one would touch, or lift up, or kiss, or embrace, but from natural affection. And that is why all the animals have their udders under the belly, women alone have their breasts high on their bodies, that they can lift up their babes to kiss, to dandle, and to fondle: seeing that their bearing and rearing children comes not from necessity but love.
§ iv. Refer the question to the ancient inhabitants of the earth, to the first mothers and fathers. There was no law ordering them to have families, no expectation of advantage or return to be got out of them. I should rather say that mothers would be likely to be hostile and bear malice to their babes, owing to the great danger and pains of travail. And women say the lines, "When the sharp pangs of travail seize on the pregnant woman, then come to her aid the Ilithyiæ, who help women in hard childbirth, those daughters of Hera, goddesses of travail,"55 were not written by Homer, but by some Homerid who had been a mother, or was even then in the throes of travail, and who vividly felt the sharp pain in her womb. But the love to one's offspring implanted by nature, moves and influences the mother even then: in the very height of her throes, she neglects not nor flees from her babe, but turns to it and smiles at it, and takes it up and caresses it, though she derives no pleasure or utility from it, but with pain and sorrow receives it, "warming it and fostering it 27in swaddling clothes, with unintermittent assiduity both night and day."56 What hope of gain or advantage had they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is toilsome, his growth slow; and as excellence flowers late, most fathers die before their sons attain to fame. Neocles lived not to see Themistocles' victory at Salamis, nor Miltiades Cimon's at the Eurymedon, nor did Xanthippus hear Pericles haranguing, nor did Aristo hear Plato philosophizing, nor did their fathers know of the triumphs of Euripides and Sophocles. They heard them faltering in speech and lisping in syllables, the poor parents saw their errors in revelling and drinking and love-affairs, so that of all Evenus'57 lines, that one alone is most remembered and quoted, "to a father a son is always a cause of fear or pain." Nevertheless, parents do not cease to bring up sons, even when they can least need them. For it is ridiculous to suppose that the rich, when they have sons, sacrifice and rejoice that they will have people to take care of them and to bury them; unless indeed they bring up sons from want of heirs; as if one could not find or fall in with anyone who would be willing to have another's property! Why, the sand on the sea shore, and the dust, and the wings of birds of varied note, are less numerous than the number of would-be heirs. For had Danaus, the father of fifty daughters, been childless, he would have had more heirs, and of a different spirit. For sons have no gratitude, nor regard, nor veneration for inheritance; but take it as a debt; whereas the voices of strangers which you hear round the childless man, are like those lines in the play, "O People, first bathe, after one decision in the courts, then eat, drink, gobble, take the three-obol-piece."58 And what Euripides has said, "Money finds friends for men, and has the greatest 28power among mankind," is not merely a general truth, but is especially true in the case of the childless. For those the rich entertain to dinner, those great men pay court to, to those alone orators give their services gratis. "A mighty personage is a rich man, whose heir is unknown." It has at any rate made many much loved and honoured, whom the possession of one child would have made unloved and insignificant. Whence we see that there is no power or advantage to be got from children, but that the love of them, alike in mankind as among the animals, proceeds entirely from nature.
§ v. What if this natural affection, like many other virtues, is obscured by badness, as a wilderness chokes a garden? Are we to say that man does not love himself by nature, because many cut their throats or throw themselves down precipices? Did not Œdipus put out his eyes? And did not Hegesias by his speeches make, many of his hearers to commit suicide?59 "Fatality has many different aspects."60 But all these are diseases and maladies of the soul driving a man contrary to nature out of his wits: as men themselves testify even against themselves. For if a sow destroys one of its litter, or a bitch one of its pups, men are dejected and troubled, and think it an evil omen, and sacrifice to the gods to avert any bad results, on the score that it is natural to all to love and cherish their offspring, unnatural to destroy it. For just as in mines the gold is conspicuous even though mixed up with earth, so nature manifests plainly love to offspring even in instances of faulty habits and affections. For when the poor do not rear their children, it is from fear that if reared to man's estate they would be more than ought to be the case servile, and have little culture, and be debarred of all advantages: so, thinking poverty the worst of all evils, they cannot bear to give it their children, any more than they would some bad disease.61
44Much of this is very corrupt in the Greek. I have tried to get the best sense I could; but it is very obscure. Certainly Plutarch's style is often very harsh and crabbed.
45The jus trium liberorum assigned certain privileges to the father of three children, under the Roman Emperors. Frequent allusions are made to this law by the ancient writers.
46Compare Lucretius, i. 10-20.
47A quotation from Simonides.
48We are not bound to swallow all the ancients tell us. Credat Judæus Apella!
49"Iliad," xvii. 134-136.
50"Iliad," ix. 324. Quoted again in "How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," § 8.
51"Odyssey," xx. 14, 15.
52A theatre, that is, in which animals and birds and human beings should meet in common.
53All that is said here about the milk, the menses, and the blood, I have been obliged somewhat to condense and paraphrase. The ancients sometimes speak more plainly than we can. Ever and anon one must pare down a phrase or word in translating an ancient author. It is inevitable. Verbum sat sapienti.
54Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 446, 447.
55Ibid. xi. 269-271.
56A fragment from Euripides, according to Xylander.
57Evenus of Paros was an Elegiac Poet.
58Aristophanes, "Equites," 50, 51.
59See Cicero "Tuscul." i. 34.
60Euripides, "Alcestis," 1159; "Helena," 1688; "Andromache," 1284; "Bacchæ," 1388.
61The discourse breaks off abruptly. It is directed against the Epicureans. It throws ridicule on appealing to the affection of brutes for their offspring instead of appealing to human nature.
[This article is also available in Slovenian translation.]
Many high-ranking members of the Nazi regime, including Hitler, but especially Himmler and Hess, held convoluted occult beliefs. Prompted by those beliefs, the Germans sent an official expedition to Tibet between 1938 and 1939 at the invitation of the Tibetan Government to attend the Losar (New Year) celebrations.
Tibet had suffered a long history of Chinese attempts to annex it and British failure to prevent the aggression or to protect Tibet. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was severely persecuting Buddhism, specifically the Tibetan form as practiced among the Mongols within its borders and in its satellite, the People’s Republic of Mongolia (Outer Mongolia). In contrast, Japan was upholding Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia, which it had annexed as part of Manchukuo, its puppet state in Manchuria. Claiming that Japan was Shambhala, the Imperial Government was trying to win the support of the Mongols under its rule for an invasion of Outer Mongolia and Siberia to create a pan-Mongol confederation under Japanese protection.
The Tibetan Government was exploring the possibility of also gaining protection from Japan in the face of the unstable situation. Japan and Germany had signed an Anti-Commintern Pact in 1936, declaring their mutual hostility toward the spread of international Communism. The invitation for the visit of an official delegation from Nazi Germany was extended in this context. In August 1939, shortly after the German expedition to Tibet, Hitler broke his pact with Japan and signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact. In September, the Soviets defeated the Japanese who had invaded Outer Mongolia in May. Subsequently, nothing ever materialized from the Japanese and German contacts with the Tibetan Government.
[For more detail, see: Russian and Japanese Involvement with Pre-Communist Tibet: The Role of the Shambhala Legend.]
Several postwar writers on the Occult have asserted that Buddhism and the legend of Shambhala played a role in the German-Tibetan official contact. Let us examine the issue.
The first element of Nazi occult beliefs was in the mythic land of Hyperborea-Thule. Just as Plato had cited the Egyptian legend of the sunken island of Atlantis, Herodotus mentioned the Egyptian legend of the continent of Hyperborea in the far north. When ice destroyed this ancient land, its people migrated south. Writing in 1679, the Swedish author Olaf Rudbeck identified the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans and located the latter at the North Pole. According to several accounts, Hyperborea split into the islands of Thule and Ultima Thule, which some people identified with Iceland and Greenland.
The second ingredient was the idea of a hollow earth. At the end of the seventeenth century, the British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley first suggested that the earth was hollow, consisting of four concentric spheres. The hollow earth theory fired many people’s imaginations, especially with the publication in 1864 of French novelist Jules Verne’sVoyage to the Center of the Earth.
Soon, the concept of vril appeared. In 1871, British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race, described a superior race, the Vril-ya, who lived beneath the earth and planned to conquer the world with vril, a psychokinetic energy. The French author Louis Jacolliot furthered the myth in Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God) (1873) and Les Traditions indo-européeenes (The Indo-European Traditions) (1876). In these books, he linked vril with the subterranean people of Thule. The Thuleans will harness the power of vril to become supermen and rule the world.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) also emphasized the concept of the Übermensch (superman) and began his work, Der Antichrist (The Antichrist) (1888) with the line, “Let us see ourselves for what we are. We are Hyperboreans. We know well enough how we are living off that track.” Although Nietzsche never mentioned vril, yet in his posthumously published collection of aphorisms, Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power), he emphasized the role of an internal force for superhuman development. He wrote that “the herd,” meaning common persons, strives for security within itself through creating morality and rules, whereas the supermen have an internal vital force that drives them to go beyond the herd. That force necessitates and drives them to lie to the herd in order to remain independent and free from the “herd mentality.”
In The Arctic Home of the Vedas (1903), the early advocate of Indian freedom, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, added a further touch by identifying the southern migration of the Thuleans with the origin of the Aryan race. Thus, many Germans in the early twentieth century believed that they were the descendants of the Aryans who had migrated south from Hyperborea-Thule and who were destined to become the master race of supermen through the power of vril. Hitler was among them.
Felix Niedner, the German translator of the Old Norse Eddas, founded the Thule Society in 1910. In 1918, Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf established its Munich branch. Sebottendorf had previously lived for several years in Istanbul where, in 1910, he had formed a secret society that combined esoteric Sufism and Freemasonry. It believed in the creed of the assassins, deriving from the Nazari sect of Ismaili Islam, which had flourished during the Crusades. While in Istanbul, Sebottendorf was also undoubtedly familiar with the pan-Turanian movement of the Young Turks, started in 1908, which was largely behind the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916. Turkey and Germany were allies during the First World War. Back in Germany, Sebottendorf had also been a member of the Germanen Order (Order of Teutons), founded in 1912 as a right-wing society with a secret anti-Semitic Lodge. Through these channels, assassination, genocide, and anti-Semitism became parts of the Thule Society’s creed. Anti-Communism was added after the Bavarian Communist Revolution later in 1918, when the Munich Thule Society became the center of the counterrevolutionary movement.
In 1919, the Society spawned the German Workers Party. Starting later that year, Dietrich Eckart, a member of the inner circle of the Thule Society, initiated Hitler into the Society and began to train him in its methods for harnessing vril to create a race of Aryan supermen. Hitler had been mystic-minded from his youth, when he had studied the Occult and Theosophy in Vienna. Later, Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf to Eckart. In 1920, Hitler became the head of the German Workers Party, now renamed the National Socialist German Worker (Nazi) Party.
Another major influence on Hitler’s thinking was Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), a German military advisor to the Japanese after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Because he was extremely impressed with Japanese culture, many believe that he was responsible for the later German-Japanese alliance. He was also highly interested in Indian and Tibetan culture, learned Sanskrit, and claimed that he had visited Tibet.
After serving as a general in the First World War, Haushofer founded the Vril Society in Berlin in 1918. It shared the same basic beliefs as the Thule Society and some say that it was its inner circle. The Society sought contact with supernatural beings beneath the earth to gain from them the powers of vril. It also asserted a Central Asian origin of the Aryan race. Haushofer developed the doctrine of Geopolitics and, in the early 1920s, became the director of the Institute for Geopolitics at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Geopolitics advocated conquering territory to gain more living space (Germ. Lebensraum) as a means of acquiring power.
Rudolf Hess was one of Haushofer’s closest students and introduced him to Hitler in 1923, while Hitler was in prison for his failed Putsch. Subsequently, Haushofer often visited the future Führer, teaching him Geopolitics in association with the ideas of the Thule and Vril Societies. Thus, when Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he adopted Geopolitics as his policy for the Aryan race to conquer Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. The key to success would be finding the forefathers of the Aryan race in Central Asia, the guardians of the secrets of vril.
The swastika is an ancient Indian symbol of immutable good luck. “Swastika” is an Anglicization of the Sanskrit word svastika, which means well-being or good luck. Used by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains for thousands of years, it became widespread in Tibet as well.
The swastika has also appeared in most other ancient cultures of the world. For example, the counterclockwise variant of it, adopted by the Nazis, is also the letter “G” in the medieval Northern European Runic Script. The Freemasons took the letter as an important symbol, since “G” could stand for God, the Great Architect of the Universe, or Geometry.
The swastika is also a traditional symbol of the Old Norse God of Thunder and Might (Scandinavian Thor, German Donner, Baltic Perkunas). Because of this association with the God of Thunder, the Latvians and Finnish both took the swastika as the insignia for their air forces when they gained independence after the First World War.
In the late nineteenth century, Guido von List adopted the swastika as an emblem for the Neo-Pagan movement in Germany. The Germans did not use the Sanskrit word swastika, however, but called it instead “Hakenkreutz,” meaning “hooked cross.” It would defeat and replace the cross, just as Neo-Paganism would defeat and replace Christianity.
Sharing the anti-Christian sentiment of the Neo-Pagan movement, the Thule Society also adopted the Hakenkreuz as part of its emblem, placing it in a circle with a vertical German dagger superimposed on it. In 1920, at the suggestion of Dr. Friedrich Krohn of the Thule Society, Hitler adopted the Hakenkreuz in a white circle for the central design of the Nazi Party flag. Hitler chose red for the background color to compete against the red flag of the rival Communist Party.
The French researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, in Le Matin des Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) (1962), wrote that Haushofer convinced Hitler to use the Hakenkreuz as the symbol for the Nazi Party. They postulate that this was due to Haushofer’s interest in Indian and Tibetan culture. This conclusion is highly unlikely, since Haushofer did not meet Hitler until 1923, whereas the Nazi flag first appeared in 1920. It is more likely that Haushofer used the widespread presence of the swastika in India and Tibet as evidence to convince Hitler of this region as the location of the forefathers of the Aryan race.
During the first half of the 1920s, a violent rivalry took place among the Occult Societies and Secret Lodges in Germany. In later years, Hitler continued the persecution of Anthroposophists, Theosophists, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians. Various scholars ascribe this policy to Hitler’s wish to eliminate any occult rivals to his rule.
Influenced by Nietszche’s writings and Thule Society creeds, Hitler believed that Christianity was a defective religion, infected by its roots in Jewish thinking. He viewed its teachings of forgiveness, the triumph of the weak, and self-abnegation as anti-evolutionary and saw himself as a messiah replacing God and Christ. Steiner had used the image of the Antichrist and Lucifer as future spiritual leaders who would regenerate Christianity in a new pure form. Hitler went much further. He saw himself as ridding the world of a degenerate system and bringing about a new step in evolution with the Aryan master race. He could tolerate no rival Antichrists, either now or in the future. He was tolerant, however, of Buddhism.
[See: Mistaken Foreign Myths about Shambhala.]
In 1924, Paul Dahlke founded the Buddhistisches Haus (House for Buddhists) in Frohnau, Berlin. It was open to members of all Buddhist traditions, but primarily catered to the Theravada and Japanese forms, since they were the most widely known in the West at thattime. In 1933, it hosted the First European Buddhist Congress. The Nazis allowed the House for Buddhists to remain open throughout the war, but tightly controlled it. As some members knew Chinese and Japanese, they acted as translators for the government in return for tolerance of Buddhism.
Although the Nazi regime closed the Buddhistische Gemeinde (Buddhist Society) in Berlin, which had been active from 1936, and briefly arrested its founder Martin Steinke in 1941, they generally did not persecute Buddhists. After his release, Steinke and several others continued to lecture on Buddhism in Berlin. There is no evidence, however, that teachers of Tibetan Buddhism were ever present in the Third Reich.
The Nazi policy of tolerance for Buddhism does not prove any influence of Buddhist teachings on Hitler or Nazi ideology. A more probable explanation is Germany’s wish not to damage relations with its Buddhist ally, Japan.
Under the influence of Haushofer, Hitler authorized Frederick Hielscher, in 1935, to establish the Ahnenerbe (Bureau for the Study of Ancestral Heritage), with Colonel Wolfram von Sievers as its head. Among other functions, Hitler charged it with researching Germanic runes and the origins of the swastika, and locating the source of the Aryan race. Tibet was the most promising candidate.
Alexander Csoma de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor) (1784-1842) was a Hungarian scholar obsessed with the quest to find the origins of the Hungarian people. Based on the linguistic affinities between Hungarian and the Turkic languages, he felt that the origins of the Hungarian people were in “the land of the Yugurs (Uighurs)” in East Turkistan (Xinjiang, Sinkiang). He believed that if he could reach Lhasa, he would find there the keys for locating his homeland.
Hungarian, Finnish, the Turkic languages, Mongolian, and Manchu belong to the Ural-Altaic family of languages, also known as the Turanian family, after the Persian word Turanfor Turkistan. From 1909, the Turks had a pan-Turanian movement spearheaded by a society known as the Young Turks. The Hungarian Turanian Society soon followed in 1910 and the Turanian Alliance of Hungary in 1920. Some scholars believe that the Japanese and Korean languages also belong to the Turanian family. Thus, the Turanian National Alliance was founded in Japan in 1921 and the Japanese Turanian Society in the early 1930s. Haushofer was undoubtedly aware of these movements, which sought the origins of the Turanian race in Central Asia. It fit in well with the Thule Society’s search for the origins of the Aryan race there as well. His interest in Tibetan culture added weight to the candidacy of Tibet as the key to finding a common origin for the Aryan and Turanian races and for gaining the power of vril that its spiritual leaders possessed.
Haushofer was not the only influence on the Ahnenerbe’s interest in Tibet. Hielscher was a friend of Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer who had led expeditions to Tibet in 1893, 1899-1902, and 1905-1908, and an expedition to Mongolia in 1927-1930. A favorite of the Nazis, Hitler invited him to give the opening address at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Hedin engaged in pro-Nazi publishing activities in Sweden and made numerous diplomatic missions to Germany between 1939 and 1943.
In 1937, Himmler made the Ahnenerbe an official organization attached to the SS (Germ.Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad) and appointed Professor Walther Wüst, chairman of the Sanskrit Department at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, as its new director. The Ahnenerbe had a Tibet Institut (Tibet Institute), which was renamed the Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasien und Expeditionen (Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asia and Expeditions) in 1943.
Ernst Schäfer, a German hunter and biologist, participated in two expeditions to Tibet, in 1931 – 1 932 and 1934 – 1936, for sport and zoological research. The Ahnenerbe sponsored him to lead a third expedition (1938-1939) at the official invitation of the Tibetan Government. The visit coincided with renewed Tibetan contacts with Japan. A possible explanation for the invitation is that the Tibetan Government wished to maintain cordial relations with the Japanese and their German allies as a balance against the British and Chinese. Thus, the Tibetan Government welcomed the German expedition at the 1939 New Year (Losar) celebration in Lhasa.
[See: Russian and Japanese Involvemen with Pre-Cummunist Tibet: The Role of the Shambala Legend.]
In Fest der weissen Schleier: Eine Forscherfahrt durch Tibet nach Lhasa, der heiligen Stadt des Gottkönigtums (Festival of the White Gauze Scarves: A Research Expedition through Tibet to Lhasa, the Holy City of the God Realm) (1950), Ernst Schäfer described his experiences during the expedition. During the festivities, he reported, the Nechung Oracle warned that although the Germans brought sweet presents and words, Tibet must be careful: Germany’s leader is like a dragon. Tsarong, the pro-Japanese former head of the Tibetan military, tried to soften the prediction. He said that the Regent had heard much more from the Oracle, but he himself was unauthorized to divulge the details. The Regent prays daily for no war between the British and the Germans, since this would have terrible consequences for Tibet as well. Both countries must understand that all good people must pray the same. During the rest of his stay in Lhasa, Schäfer met often with the Regent and had a good rapport.
The Germans were highly interested in establishing friendly relations with Tibet. Their agenda, however, was slightly different from that of the Tibetans. One of the members of the Schäfer expedition was the anthropologist Bruno Beger, who was responsible for racial research. Having worked with H. F. K. Günther on Die nordische Rasse bei den Indogermanen Asiens (The Northern Race among the Indo-Germans of Asia), Beger subscribed to Günther’s theory of a “northern race” in Central Asia and Tibet. In 1937, he had proposed a research project for Eastern Tibet and, with the Schäfer expedition, planned to investigate scientifically the racial characteristics of the Tibetan people. While in Tibet and Sikkim on the way, Beger measured the skulls of three hundred Tibetans and Sikkimese and examined some of their other physical features and bodily marks. He concluded that the Tibetans occupied an intermediary position between the Mongol and European races, with the European racial element showing itself most pronouncedly among the aristocracy.
According to Richard Greve, “Tibetforschung in SS-Ahnenerbe (Tibetan Research in the SS- Ahnenerbe)” published in T. Hauschild (ed.) “Lebenslust und Fremdenfurcht” – Ethnologie im Dritten Reich (“Passion for Life and Xenophobia” – Ethnology in the Third Reich) (1995), Beger recommended that the Tibetans could play an important role after the final victory of the Third Reich. They could serve as an allied race in a pan-Mongol confederation under the aegis of Germany and Japan. Although Beger also recommended further studies to measure all the Tibetans, no further expeditions to Tibet were undertaken.
Several postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult, such as Trevor Ravenscroft in The Spear of Destiny (1973), have asserted that under the influence of Haushofer and the Thule Society, Germany sent annual expeditions to Tibet from 1926 to 1943. Their mission was first to find and then to maintain contact with the Aryan forefathers in Shambhala and Agharti, hidden subterranean cities beneath the Himalayas. Adepts there were the guardians of secret occult powers, especially vril, and the missions sought their aid in harnessing those powers for creating an Aryan master race. According to these accounts, Shambhala refused any assistance, but Agharti agreed. Subsequently, from 1929, groups of Tibetans purportedly came to Germany and started lodges known as the Society of Green Men. In connection with the Green Dragon Society in Japan, through the intermediary of Haushofer, they supposedly helped the Nazi cause with their occult powers. Himmler was attracted to these groups of Tibetan-Agharti adepts and, purportedly from their influence, established the Ahnenerbe in 1935.
Aside from the fact that Himmler did not establish the Ahnenerbe, but rather incorporated it into the SS in 1937, Ravenscroft’s account contains other dubious assertions. The main one is the purported Agharti support of the Nazi cause. In 1922, the Polish scientist Ferdinand Ossendowski published Beasts, Men and Gods describing his travels through Mongolia. In it, he related hearing of the subterranean land of Agharti beneath the Gobi Desert. In the future, its powerful inhabitants would come to the surface to save the world from disaster. The German translation of Ossendowski’s book, Tiere, Menschen und Götter, appeared in 1923 and became quite popular. Sven Hedin, however, published in 1925 Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski and the Truth), in which he debunked the Polish scientist’s claims. He pointed out that Ossendowski had lifted the idea of Agharti from Saint-Yves d’Alveidre’s 1886 novel Mission de l’Inde en Europe (Mission of India in Europe) to make his story more appealing to the German public. Since Hedin had a strong influence on the Ahnenerbe, it is unlikely that this bureau would have sent an expedition specifically to find Shambhala and Agharti and, subsequently, would have received assistance from the latter.
[See: Mistaken Foreign Myths about Shambhala.]