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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 12. Fascist occultism and it’s close relationship
to Buddhist tantrism
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
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.
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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