"Temple of Set Reading List:
Category 14 - Fascism, Totalitarianism, and Magic" (8/22/88CE)
Reprinted from: _The Crystal Tablet of Set_
(c) Temple of Set 1989 CE
Weirdbase file version by TS permission

by Michael A. Aquino, Ipsissimus VI* Temple of Set
Electronic mail: MCI-Mail 278-4041
 
This is a very potent, controversial, and dangerous area of magic, whose 
implications are rarely examined, understood, or appreciated by the profane 
[which is just as well]. Much of the data concerning it derives from Nazi 
Germany, whose character as a state based upon magical rather than 
conventional principles goes a long way towards explaining the "peculiar" 
fascination which that episode continues to exert on students of history and 
political science. Many of the techniques pioneered or perfected by the 
Nazis continue to be used/abused - generally in a superficial and ignorant 
fashion - by every country of the world in one guise or another. The 
magician who can recognize and identify these techniques and the principles 
behind them can thus control or avoid their influence as desired.

14A. _The Mass Psychology of Fascism_ by Wilhelm Reich. NY: Simon & 
Schuster, 1970. (TS-3) MA: "The controversial Reich examined both the Nazi 
and the communist elements of Germany, found them wanting, and was roundly 
denounced by them in return. This book exposes their use of mass movements 
and mob psychology as a sexual substitute, and their repression of 
'innocent' sex as a deliberate political technique [compare #14E]. This 
manipulation of expression and repression is applied to other social 
phenomena as well - such as certain organized religious bodies. A lucid and 
hard-hitting study. A biographical profile of Reich is presented in #6N, 
Appendix 75 - 'The Frankenstein Legacy'."

14B. _The Occult and the Third Reich_ by Jean-Michel Angebert. NY: 
Macmillan, 1974. (TS-3) (OT-3) MA: "This book contains sections on the Grail 
(both Christian and pagan), traditions concerning Atlantis and ancient 
initiatory societies, the theories of Nietzsche and Wagner, Nazi mysticism, 
and the Catharist tradition. Well footnoted. The almost fantastic subject 
material tends to make the author's objectivity suspect, but on close 
examination his argument is grounded in responsible research. On the other 
hand Otto Rahn, the young German mystic whose theories are advanced in this 
book did not hold the alleged high rank in the SS, nor commit suicide 
because of politico/mystical reasons. He was an Unterscharfuehrer (sergeant) 
who killed himself after being expelled from the SS because of his sexual 
preferences."

14C. _The Grail Legend_ by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. NY: G.P. 
Putnam's Sons, 1970. (TS-4) (OT-1) MA: "Another book for the C.G. Jung 
Foundation for Analytical Psychology [see also #19K], this impressive study 
treats all major historical versions of the Grail legend, identifies their 
common features, and evaluates their significance. The definitive work on 
the Grail. See also #6N, Appendix 36 - In Quest of the Unholy Grail."

14D. _The Spear of Destiny_ by Trevor Ravenscroft. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 
1973. (TS-3) (OT-3) MA: "The chief merit of this book lies in its profile of 
the metaphysical and occult-society concepts and movements that influenced 
pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany. Read critically but thoughtfully. Since it is 
heavily footnoted to Theosophical Society (Blavatsky) and Anthrosophical 
Society (Steiner) sources, this book cannot be considered factually 
reliable."

14E. _1984_ by George Orwell. NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949. (TS-3) MA: 
"Orwell's classic portrait of a 'negative utopia', with many features 
adapted from Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia - but also a satire of 
socialist trends in postwar Britain. Many features of Orwell's imaginary 
society may be increasingly applied to actual ones today. The shape of 
things to come?"

14F. _Mein Kampf_ by Adolf Hitler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943. 
(TS-5) (OT-3) MA: "Everyone knows that this is 'the most evil book ever 
written', but few have taken the time to actually read it, hence cannot 
really explain why. Further complicating the situation is Hitler's 
interspersion of political philosophy (interesting) with emotional tirades 
(not so interesting). Look for the discussions concerning the selection of 
leaders, control of the masses, and the justification for human social 
organization. You may be surprised at what you discover. Keep in mind that 
this book was written not as a historical memoir, but rather as a propaganda 
device to lend an image of philosophical substance and coherence to the 
still-fledgling and somewhat [due to Hitler's incarceration in prison at the 
time of MK's writing] disorganized Nazi Party. A far more revealing 'Hitler 
Memoir' is #14K."

14G. _Hitler: Legend, Myth, & Reality_ by Werner Maser. NY: Harper & Row, 
1971. (TS-3) MA: "As time passes, biographical profiles of Hitler become 
increasingly more objective. This is probably the most useful one currently 
in print, which Colin Wilson calls 'the most important document on Hitler so 
far published'. It is noteworthy for its focus on the man rather than on the 
political official [for the political official see #14H]. If you are going 
to take a look at Hitler's own writings and statements (#14F/K/L), read this 
first for perspective."

14H. _The War Path_ (NY: Viking, 1978) and Hitler's War (2 volumes) (NY: 
Viking, 1977) by David Irving. (TS-4) MA: "1933-39 (WP) and 1939-45 (HW) 
through Hitler's eyes. An impressive work of research that will show you 
peacetime Nazi Germany and World War II as you've never seen them before. 
Sound scholarship, objective evaluation."

14I. _The Bormann Brotherhood_ by William Stevenson. NY: Harcourt Brace 
Jovanovich, 1973. (TS-3) MA: "Around VI-VII the pursuit of underground Nazi-
survivalist organizations was all the rage, and there was a flurry of 
Bormannism, ODESSA films/novels, etc. This little book was sort of 
overwhelmed in the general stampede, but it didn't deserve to be. A cold, 
clear, fact-packed study of the post-World War II survival of the original 
Nazi hierarchy."

14J. _Three Faces of Fascism_ by Ernst Nolte. NY: Holt, Rinehart and 
Winston, 1963. (TS-4) MA: "This is a political science text analyzing 20th-
century fascist movements in France, Germany, and Italy. The observations 
concerning the metapolitical implications of the philosophy are among the 
most profound yet voiced. The analysis of the failure of the French movement 
is as instructive as that of the successes of the German and Italian 
movements. It is interesting to contrast Nolte's assessment of fascism with 
Hitler's [as set forth in #14F]."

14K. _Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944_ by H.R. Trevor-Roper (Ed.). 
NY: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953 [simultaneously published in England as 
_Hitler's Table Talk_ by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London]. (TS-5) (OT-3) MA: 
"Martin Bormann was sufficiently fascinated by Adolf Hitler's private 
conversational comments on various topics that he persuaded Hitler to allow 
them to be stenographically recorded. After 1945 the transcriptions were 
found among Bormann's private papers and were ultimately compiled and 
published by Professor Trevor-Roper (who also edited and published the final 
entries of Dr. Goebbels' diaries). Hitler's conversations cover an 
astonishingly broad spectrum of topics - organized religion, metaphysics, 
dogmatism, Voltaire, origins of the human race, aesthetics, Egyptian & Greek 
culture, Hoerbiger's cosmology, genius, philosophy of law, superstition, 
mental diseases, etc. An impressive look into the mind of an individual whom 
the postwar world has been conditioned to dismiss as a crude, criminal, and 
unintrospective thug. Read, then judge for yourself."

14L. _The Voice of Destruction_ by Hermann Rauschning. NY: G.P. Putnam's 
Sons, 1940. (TS-5) (OT-3) MA: "Rauschning was a regional party leader 
(Gauleiter) of the early Nazi Party who was a confidant of Hitler's during 
1932-34. At first so impressed with the F~hrer's private statements that he 
took extensive and immediate notes, he later took fright and bolted to 
Paris. In 1937-38 he wrote a theoretical condemnation of Nazism entitled The 
Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (NY: Alliance Book Corporation, 
1939). It seemed so alarmist that few took it seriously - until World War II 
broke out. Then Rauschning was able to publish these transcripts and 
analyses of Hitler's conversations. Topics include: Aristocracy, Antichrist, 
barbarism, ethics of war, a new social order, the Human Solstice, Black & 
White Magic, and the mystical elements in Obersalzburg. Most of the material 
for Nazi occultism quoted and alluded to in #4B came from this book. It was 
generally regarded as so "weird" as to be spurious until after the war, when 
the #14K material came to light and substantiated it."

14M. _Hitler's Secret Sciences_ by Nigel Pennick. Suffolk: Neville Spearman, 
1981. (TS-4) (OT-1) MA: "The esoteric section of the German Nazi SS was not 
the Sicherheitsdienst [as alleged in #6L] but the Deutsche Ahnenerbe (German 
Ancestral Heritage Organization). Most histories of the SS concern 
themselves with the better-known organizations and activities of the Black 
Order, mentioning the Ahnenerbe only in passing. This is one of the first 
books to discuss it in any detail. Again there is a lot of #14B/C/D 
material, but it is all relevant and coherently organized. This is a concise 
(177 pages), fact-packed book bolstered by a strong bibliography of rare and 
unusual publications and periodicals. If you are seriously interested in the 
Ahnenerbe, and are fluent in highly-technical German, see Kater, Michael H., 
_Das 'Ahnenerbe' der SS 1935-1945: ein Betrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten 
Reiches_ (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974). [The complete 
archaeological, magical, and administrative records of the Ahnenerbe are 
contained on microfilm rolls #120-211, Microcopy T-580 (10-135-4) in the 
National Archives Building of the United States, Washington, D.C. These 
papers have never been sorted, indexed, and annotated in detail, but the 
Order of the Trapezoid has compiled a working index with brief annotations 
pending a more thorough study. Initiates of the Order who may be traveling 
to Washington and wish to examine that microfilm are invited to contact the 
Temple office for a copy of the index.] [See also #5H.]"

14N. _The Passing of the Great Race_ by Madison Grant. NY: Charles 
Scribner's Sons, 1916. (TS-5) MA: "You can still find #14F in print, because 
it's a good whipping-boy for sanctimonous finger-waggling. It is less easy 
to find the books from 'our side' that argued along similar lines. This is 
[was!] one of the more famous, and you may still uncover an occasional copy 
in the back room of a used-book store or in the darkest corners of obscure 
libraries. Grant was not exactly a nonentity or lunatic-fringe fanatic. He 
was Chairman of the New York Zoological Society, Trustee of the American 
Museum of Natural History, and a Councilor of the American Geographical 
Society. In this book [by a prominent publisher] he argues a forceful case 
for a European race history that would have done credit to Hitler and 
Rosenberg. The most interesting aspect of this book is that only a very few 
years ago it was accepted as a respectable contender in the 
academic/scientific community. After World War II it was, in Orwell's terms, 
guilty of Crimethink and thus condemned to be an Unperson. There is a lesson 
to be learned here concerning the durability and invulnerability of 
'established scientific fact' when it becomes politically or socially 
inconvenient. I hereby suggest that you make up your own mind as to whether 
the book is convincing. After all, I wouldn't want to get in trouble for 
even appearing to endorse it."

14O. _Race and Race History and Other Essays_ by Alfred Rosenberg (Robert 
Pois, Ed.). NY: Harper & Row (Harper Torchback #TB-1820), 1974. (TS-5) MA: 
"Extracts from the major race-history writings of the Nazis' 'official 
philosopher' - with a finger-waggling introduction, of course. It is O.K. 
for this book to be in print; it has the appropriate editorial condemnation. 
[See also #14S.]"

14P. _Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power_ by Robert Strausz-Hupe. 
NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1942. (TS-4) MA: "The study of international 
relations on the basis of power politics is academically known as political 
realism (Realpolitik), and before reading #14P you might want to flip 
through the bible of this school, Hans Morgenthau's _Politics Among 
Nations_, for a general familiarity with its principles. In 1926 and 1928 
Oswald Spengler published his powerful indictment of contemporary Western 
civilization, _The Decline of the West_, and this made a great impression on 
a German General named Karl Haushofer. Haushofer became a professor who 
gained increasing fame in Germany as the master-theoretician of 
'Geopolitics', being a part-political, part-geographic, and part-mystical 
rationale for aggressive state expansionism. Haushofer was considered by 
many to be the evil genius behind Hitler's 'blood and soil' and 'living-
space' programs. He wrote no single, coherent text of his philosophy. This 
book was commissioned in order to explain Geopolitics to a still-
uncomprehending U.S. diplomatic community, and it does a good job. 
Geopolitical thinking was out of favor in the West until reintroduced by 
Henry Kissinger (a Morgenthau enthusiast), but it has always been the 
lynchpin of Eastern (Soviet/Chinese) foreign policy. Strausz-Hupe 
summarizes: 'World policy evolves towards several continental systems, and 
technology accentuates the strategic importance of large, contiguous areas. 
Thus the era of overseas empires and free world trade closes. If this 
reasoning is pushed to its absolute conclusion, the national state is also a 
thing of the past, and the future belongs to the giant state. Many nations 
will be locked in a few vast compartments. But in each of these one people, 
controlling a strategic area, will be master of the others.'"

14Q. _Wewelsburg 1933 bis 1945: SS Kult- und Terrorstaette_ by Prof. Dr. 
Karl Hueser. Paderborn: Verlag Bonifatius Druckerei, 1982 (German language 
edition only). (TS-5) (OT-5) MA: "The definitive documentary study of the 
role of the Wewelsburg Castle in the mythological and Black Magical 
practices of the SS. This is a historical, not an 'occult' publication; in 
the first few paragraphs it easily discounts the fanciful, ignorant accounts 
of the Wewelsburg such as appear in #14B/D/N/R, etc. Here is bedrock: 
bewildering to some, but a Gate to the Order of the Trapezoid."

14R. _Hitler: The Occult Messiah_ by Gerald Suster. NY: St. Martin's Press, 
1981. (TS-3) MA: "This is a short (200-page) hardcover book which brings 
together most if not all of the occult speculations concerning Nazi Germany, 
with a reasonable degree of footnoting. Hence it is included here as a good 
introductory survey of the field. Extensive quotations from Crowley and an 
'AEon of Horus' theme throughout the text expose the author's Thelemite 
bias."

14S. _The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology_ by 
Robert Cecil. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1972. (TS-4) (OT-3) MA: "The best 
biography and critical analysis concerning Alfred Rosenberg, 'official 
philosopher' of the Nazi movement. Much of the material otherwise in 
existence concerning Rosenberg is suppressed by the Soviet Union, while 
previous Western biographies and editions of his memoirs were crudely edited 
to portray him as more of a monster than a human being, much less a 
philosopher. Nevertheless Cecil is no apologist for Rosenberg, bringing out 
his weaknesses as well as his strengths. This book also describes the 
ideological background and climate of Nazi Germany as a whole, and 
summarizes the main arguments of Rosenberg's _Myth of the Twentieth 
Century_. [A 1982 English translation by Vivian Bird of Rosenberg's _The 
Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual 
Confrontations of our Age_ is available from Noontide Press, 1822-1/2 
Newport Blvd. #183, Costa Mesa, CA 92627, USA.][See also #14O.]"

14T. _Metapolitics from the Romantics to Hitler_ by Peter Viereck. NY: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1941. (TS-4) (OT-1) MA: "This is quite simply the 
definitive history and analysis of the Germanic mystical and magical 
tradition as it has been applied to society and politics. No other political 
analysis of Nazi Germany compares with it, and an understanding of the Nazi 
phenomenon is impossible without it. Major sections deal with Romanticism, 
life-worship, Kultur, dynamism, Wagner, Chamberlain, Fichte, Hegel, 
Rosenberg, and Hitler."

14U. _For Freedom Destined: Mysteries of Man's Evolution in the Mythology of 
Wagner's "Ring" Operas and "Parsifal"_ by Franz E. Winkler. Garden City, NY: 
Waldorf Press, 1974. (TS-4) (OT-1) MA: "The definitive study of the magical 
and philosophical aspects of the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ operas. From the 
book: 'When we think of the origin of man, we insist illogically on 
confusing the history of his purely biological being with the history of his 
spirit; the latter defies any attempt at investigation by methods we now 
call scientific. Darwin and his followers deal with the emergent evolution 
of visible man, while on the other hand religion and mythology deal with the 
evolution of his invisible soul. In his cycle of the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_, 
Wagner uses the magic power of music, words, and scenery to open man's heart 
to the history of the hidden essence of his own self, and to the changing 
forces that are active behind the sensory phenomena of man and Earth.'"

14V. _The True Believer_ by Eric Hoffer. NY: Harper & Row, 1951. (TS-3) (OT-
3) MA: "Hoffer's thoughtful study of the mind of the fanatic and of the 
various media through which such a mind attempts to fulfill itself - 
religious, political, or social. It is particularly instructive to compare 
Hoffer's theses with the experiences of Hitler, Himmler, and Rosenberg as 
treated elsewhere in this reading-list category. The book's strong point is 
Hoffer's famed common-sense, but this same feature is also its weak point, 
because it is obvious that Hoffer is not aware of [or does not understand] 
the principles discussed, for example, in #14T."

14W. _Astrology and the Third Reich_ by Ellic Howe. Wellingborough, 
Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1984. (TS-3) (OT-3) MA: "A historical 
study of astrological beliefs in Western Europe since 1700, with special 
emphasis on German astrology during 1919-1930 and in Nazi Germany. A revised 
and expanded edition of Howe's earlier _Urania's Children_, this book also 
presents and critiques basic astrological theory and explores the Lesser 
Magical use of astrology as a psychological warfare device during World War 
II. Howe, in addition to being the author of #10F and a contributor to #4E, 
served in Britain's Political Warfare Executive during World War II."

14X. _The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 
1890-1935_ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: 
Aquarian Press, 1985. (TS-3) (OT-3) MA: "This new and very scholarly book 
fills a crucial need in the study of 20th-century Germanic occultism, namely 
a detailed and non-sensationalistic account of Guido von List's 
Armanenschaft, Joerg Lanz von Liebenfels' Order of New Templars, and Rudolf 
von Sebottendorff's Thule Gesellschaft. Also profiled is SS-Oberfuehrer Karl 
Wiligut, occult counselor to Heinrich Himmler and architect of such projects 
as the Wewelsburg restoration and the SS-Totenkopf ring. This book is a 
revised version of the author's doctoral thesis at Oxford."