Ariosophy

[7] While a broad definition of the term 'Ariosophy' is useful for some purposes, various of the later authors, including Ellegaard Ellerbek, Philipp Stauff and Günther Kirchoff, can more exactly be described as cultivating the Armanism of List.

Highly practical[further explanation needed] systems of rune occultism, influenced mainly by List, were developed by Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Siegfried Adolf Kummer.

[9] Also worthy of mention are Peryt Shou, the occult novelist; A. Frank Glahn, noted more for his pendulum dowsing; Rudolf von Sebottendorff and Walter Nauhaus, who built up the Thule Society; and Karl Maria Wiligut, who was the most notable occultist working for the SS.

[11] Before he turned to occultism, Guido List had written articles for German Nationalist newspapers in Austria, as well as four historical novels and three plays, some of which were "set in tribal Germany" before the advent of Christianity.

[13] His conception of the original religion of the Germanic tribes was a form of sun worship, with its priest-kings (similar to the Icelandic goði) as legendary rulers of ancient Germany, who were immortalized as the gods of the various Aryan faiths.

Although the article was rejected by the academy, it would later be expanded by List, and grew into his final masterpiece, a comprehensive treatment of his linguistic and historical theories, published in 1914 as Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (The Proto-Language of the Aryo-Germanics and their Mystery Language).

Wotanism teaches that God dwells within the individual human spirit as an inner source of magical power, but is also immanent within nature through the primal laws that govern the cycles of growth, decay, and renewal.

[22] In Das Geheimnis der Runen,[23] List addresses the seeming contradiction by explaining the final redemption of the linear time frame as an exoteric parable that stands for the esoteric truth of renewal in many future cycles and incarnations.

[39] According to Rudgley,[40] "[u]nsubstantiated rumours" have him fleeing Nazi Germany in exile to South America, but "it is more likely that he perished in one of the camps that Marby was to survive or died during the Allied bombing of Dresden."

The author undertook a comparative survey of ancient Near Eastern cultures, in which he detected evidence from iconography and literature that seemed to point to the continued survival, into early historical times, of hominid ape-men similar to the Neanderthal men known from fossil remains in Europe, or the Pithecanthropus (now called Homo erectus) from Java.

[42] Furthermore, Lanz systematically analysed the Old Testament in the light of his hypothesis, identifying and interpreting coded references to the ape-men that substantiated an illicit practice of interbreeding between humans and "lower" species in antiquity.

In 1905 he expanded these researches into a fundamental statement of doctrine titled Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron[43] ("Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite-Apelings and the Divine Electron").

He claimed that "Aryan" peoples originated from interstellar deities (termed Theozoa) who bred by electricity, while "lower" races were a result of interbreeding between humans and ape-men (or Anthropozoa).

The institute maintained a friendly collaboration with Lanz, its guiding intellect and inspiration, but also acknowledged an indebtedness to List, declaring itself as the successor to the Armanen priest-kings and their hierophantic tradition.

Reichstein's circle therefore establishes the historical precedent for a broad conception that was followed by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in 1985 when he redefined Ariosophy as a general term to describe Aryan-centric occult theories and hermetic practices, including both Lanz's Ario-Christianity and the earlier Armanism of List, as well as later derivatives of either or both systems.

It was founded in Berlin in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch and several prominent German occultists including Philipp Stauff, who held office in the List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden's first leader.

Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopagan festivity in völkisch circles (and later in Nazi Germany), and more regularly to read the Eddas as well as some of the German mystics.

Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common Aryan root, he was attracted by Pohl's runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917.

[56] The name of Nauhaus's original Thule Society was adopted as a cover-name for Sebottendorff's Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918, with Pohl's assistance and approval.

perspective, the importance of the Thule Society lies in its organising the discussion circle that led to the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei, or DAP), founded in January 1919.

Speculative authors assert[citation needed] that a number of high Nazi Party officials had been members of the Thule Society (including such prominent figures as Max Amann, Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg and Gottfried Feder).

However, a member of the Thule Society, dentist Dr. Friedrich Krohn, did choose[citation needed] the swastika symbol for the Nazi party (although the design was revised at Hitler's insistence).

[56] The book was banned by the Bavarian Political Police on March 1, 1934; Sebottendorff was arrested by the Gestapo, interned in a concentration camp, then expelled to Turkey yet again, where he committed suicide by drowning in the Bosphorus on May 9, 1945,[citation needed] as the Nazis surrendered to the Allies.

Rudolf John Gorsleben was associated with the Thule Society during the Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 and, along with Dietrich Eckart, he was taken prisoner by the Communists, narrowly escaping execution.

Assisted by learned contributors to his study-group, Gorsleben developed an original and eclectic mystery religion founded in part upon the Armanism of List, whom he quoted with approval.

The treasurer was Friedrich Schaefer from Mühlhausen, whose wife, Käthe, kept open house for another occult-völkisch circle (the 'Free Sons of the North and Baltic Seas') that gathered around Karl Maria Wiligut in the early 1930s.

[Note 8] When Rudolf John Gorsleben died from heart disease in August 1930, the Edda Society was taken over by Bülow who had designed a 'world-rune-clock' that illustrated the correspondences between the runes, the gods and the zodiac, as well as colours and numbers.

[63] Schleipfer had discovered some of List's works in an antique bookstore in the mid-1960s, and was inspired to found the runic and Armanist magazine Irminsul[64] in hopes of attracting suitable people for a revived Listian order.

The Awakening of the Armanen Order is a rebirth of life based on its natural foundations of the Germanic and Celtic people.The Armanen-Orden celebrates seasonal festivities in a similar fashion as Odinist groups do and invites interested people to these events.

In view of the similarity of their ideas relating to the glorification and preservation of the endangered Aryan race, the suppression and ultimate extermination of the non-Aryans, and the establishment of a fabulous Aryan-German millennial empire, the link between the two men looks highly probable.