“These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of vril, which Faraday would perhaps call ‘atmospheric magnetism,’ they can influence the variations of temperature—in plain words, the weather; that by operations, akin to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-biology, odic force, &c., but applied scientifically, through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics. To all such agencies they give the common name of vril.”
Anonymous [Edward Bulwer-Lytton]: The Coming Race (1871)
One of the most curious myths of Nazi Occultism is the legend of “Vril Society,” supposedly a Berlin-based group of mystics who had harnessed the awesome cosmic force of Vril. As most of you know, the concept later found its way to fringe ufology, where it was said to be the motive force utilised by Nazi UFO’s such as the Vril Haunebu.
Yrjö von Grönhagen’s Himmler’s Secret Society, out now on Star Regulus Press and available through Amazon worldwide, contains a fascinating first-hand account of how, as late as 1936, a certain black-caped gentleman calling himself “the Christ” tried to sell the secrets of Vril to Himmler’s court mystic Karl-Maria Wiligut: for the measly sum of 20 million reichsmarks, the SS could tap into the frightening power of militarized Vril.
The public at large first learnt of German applications of Vril in the May 1947 issue of the US pulp magazine Amazing Science Fiction . In his feature “Pseudoscience in Naziland,” the German rocket enthusiast and cryptozoologist Willy Ley, who had immigrated to the US in 1935, told of a Berlin group – he remembers they called themselves Wahrheitsgesellschaft, the Society of Truth – who “had devoted their spare time looking for the cosmic force of Vril.” Fully aware that the name came from the Bulwer-Lytton novel, they had postulated that while the bit about a subterranean race was fiction, the power of Vril was not: it had enabled the Britons, “who kept it as a state secret,” “to amass their colonial empire.”
Morning of the Magicians, the famous/infamous exercise in”fantastic realism,” first published in French in 1960 by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier – who apparently knew Ley through their shared interest in cryptozoology – holistically implemented Vril into the emerging myth of Nazi Occultism. “Vril Society” became to mean “the inner circle” of the Thule Gesellschaft with “ties to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Order”; a legend profitably recycled in a number of popular works such as Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny (1972).
To accompany my translation of Himmler’s Secret Society, I’ve included biographies and background information on some intriguing characters and themes in the book. They naturally include the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft “Das Kommende Deutschland” and one Hans Janik, first calling himself “John the Baptist,” and later, perhaps logically, “the Christ,” a Czech-born mystic. The whole ball of wax that is now the Nazi Vril mythos seems to have derived its initial inspiration from their sordid story.
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