Ectoplasm

[Jan Klimkowski]

Craig Clark writes:

>Interesting question: we never hear about this stuff in the history
>we learn at school and in our universities (at least, I didn't - I
>had to research it myself during my post-grad studies on _GR_). Why
>not? What purpose is served by keeping this stuff out of wide general
>knowledge? Or am I too just being paranoid?

I believe I've read tales of Pynchon, in his Paranoid phase (when he   
allegedly materialised in friends' kitchens dressed as Rocketman)   
believing he knew more than was good for his health, heh-heh....

But there are many aspects to this.  Take something like Alien Abduction   
 - you can be interested in:
i) exploring it as a cultural phenomenon;
ii) dissecting it with the tools of sociology or anthroplogy; or
iii) discovering who started the rumour in the first place and who   
bankrolls its biggest players, such as the   
John-Mack-Aliens- at -Harvard-Roadshow.

Of course most of us are interested in all three but, as a hack, I tend   
to spend most time searching out the invisible movers and shakers, and   
this doubtless influences my reading of Pynchon.

The Nazis would not have come to power were it not for the generous   
donations of British, American, German & Swiss bankers & industrialists.   
 But why Hitler?

I think a case can be made that a whole coterie of influential 'n inbred   
aristocrats became obsessed with two Big Ideas around this time:   
Occultism and Eugenics.  (In passing, anybody who's looked into these   
areas knows that 90% of what the Academy sez about WB Yeats is pure   
garbage: try asking a 33-degree Mason from an occult lodge about Yeats'   
symbolic system some time.)

And one of the richest and most influential occult groups at the turn of   
the century was the Thule Society, featuring amongst its castlist none   
other than a Prince von Thurn und Taxis. Whilst conducting the type of   
political assassinations now more generally the remit of the world's   
intelligence agencies, the Thule Society's highest secrets included the   
following:

"Thule was a legendary island in the Far North, similar to Atlantis,   
supposedly the center of a lost, high level civilization. But not all   
secrets of that civilization had been completely wiped out. Those that   
remained were being guarded by ancient, highly intelligent beings...The   
truly initiated could establish contact with these beings...[who could]   
endow the initiated with supernatural strength and energy. With the help   
of these energies of Thule, the goal of the initiated was to create a new   
race of supermen of "Aryan" stock who would exterminate all "inferior"   
races."

Meanwhile:

"Under Himmler, the SS became a veritable occultic order. Christian names   
of SS soldiers were replaced with Teutonic names, and all members were   
required to maintain the strictest secrecy and detachment from the rest   
of society. In later years Himmler spent vast sums of money on esoteric   
research projects such as an expedition to Tibet "to look for traces of a   
pure Germanic race which might have been able to keep intact the ancient   
Nordic mysteries"."

OK - we're all intelligent human beings.  This is funny, yeah?  Hitler   
had advanced plans for abolishing Christmas, and Black Ops knew this.  So   
why did wartime propaganda pass up the obvious opportunity to portray   
Uncle Adolf as a literal rather than a symbolic Satanist?

Which kind of us brings us back to Craig's original question.

jan