Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/OCCULT/LETTER2.TXT

Text File | 1991-09-16 | 21KB | 358 lines

                    LETTER FROM GERMANY No. 2

                               by
                          Frater U.'.D.'.


*In these letters I am taking a diachronic look at German
occultism past and present, mixing current news with historical
titbits illustrating among other things the strong relationship
between German magic and the Anglo-Saxon world. (For linguistic
reasons as well as for convenience's sake I will generally
include Swiss and Austrian occultism under this heading - no
imperialist takein intended!)*


The accentuation of this second letter will lie on the more
contemporary aspects of magic in the German speaking countries.
The pre-war magical setup had been a very lively affair: a
colorful hotpotch of irregular freemasonry and theosophy; yoga;
astrology (of an intellectual calibre never surpassed
internationally since, if we can trust an English expert like
Ellic Howe); Mazdaznan, a quasi-yogic religious cult originally
founded by Otto(man) Hanish in the USA, with its myriad of
dietetic rules and a strong emphasis on physical exercise and
pranayama, purporting to have derived from Iranian Zoroastrism
and still rumored to be extant in some of the more obscure
corners of the Western world; thelemic lodges of the O.T.O., and
other Crowleyites; the Fraternitas Saturni (FS); the Order of
Mental Building Masters (under Ra-Ohmir Quintscher), which later
fused with the FS; a variety of groups (often quite tiny
organisations with a cultural impact reciprocal to their actual
size) of the "blood and soil" flavor espousing runic lore and
racial/Arian mysticism, the most notable being the Guido von List
Society (which included the Armanen Order) and Jörg Lanz von
Liebenfels's ariosophic Ordo Novi Templi (Order of the New
Temple, ONT); plus the usual riffraff aspiring to more or less
vaguely defined "spiritual" or "esoteric" goals with a strong
Eastern bias, to name but the highlights of this era.
     With the arrival of Hitler and National Socialist rulership
all "secret orders", whether genuinely clandestine operations or
"secret" only by claim, where banned along with political parties
(barring, of course, the NSdAP) and where consequently deprived
of all publicity. This process was basically completed by 1935
with the exception of the astrologers' associations, which in
1937 even became part of the workers' union temporarily, until
they, too, were abolished and persecuted in 1941 following Rudolf
Hess's misguided flight to England which was purported to have
been incited by his personal astrological counselor. In a later
letter I will cover the question of Nazi Occultism in a more
comprehensive manner. Suffice it here to state that the magical
scene in Germany and Austria was practically defunct from 1935 at
the latest and was unable to recover until well after the war
when the more dire material needs in these devastated countries
had been coped with.
     Gregor A. Gregorius (1888-1961), the Berlin bookseller whose
conventional name was Eugen Grosche, had founded the FS in 1928,
as mentioned in my *Letter from Germany No. 1*. He had been a
communist of sorts with a one year arrest during Nazi
dictatorship to prove it. (He had even moved into Swiss exile and
later went to Italy where he was arrested by the fascists and
turned over to the German authorities on their categorical
request. Interestingly enough, his Gestapo arrest warrant
declares his "contacts with the internationally renowned
Freemason Aleister Crowley" as one of the prime reasons for his
internment.)
     Immediately after the war he became a "cultural commissary"
of the German Communist Party in the then time Soviet Zone (the -
Eastern - *German Democratic Republic* was only founded in 1948,
as was the - West German - *Federal Republic of Germany*) but was
later expelled on reasons of "bourgeois tendencies", a standard
accusation in Stalinist times.
     He next moved to West Berlin, where he set up a bookstore
and renewed his international contacts, getting together a number
of pre-war members and re-registering the FS as a formal
institution in 1948. In 1950 he started publishing the monthly
*Blätter für angewandte okkulte Lebenskunst* ("Magazine for
Applied Occult Arts of Life"), a curious title veiling the most
comprehensive, extensive and encylopedic periodical on the
magical arts in Western history. While openly sold in bookstores,
it was the official organ of the Fraternitas Saturni and included
inlets (handed out to members only) covering internal affairs
such as graduations, membership lists, syllabi &c.
     The publication mode of this foretime monthly magazine was
later changed to bi-monthly appearance and it existed till 1963,
totalling 164 issues of some 3,500 pages of text and
illustrations. Gregorius retained editorship until his death and
it was only in concurrence with internal squabbles and schisms
within the order itself that it ceased publication two years
after. It has never been published in English (or any other
language apart from German, for that matter), though Stephen
Flowers quotes extensively from it in his excellent *Fire and
Ice* (Llewellyn Publications).

     The English speaking world would really be in for a surprise
or two should this magazine be published in translation one day.
True to say, the general tenor of its articles is biassed towards
the more traditionalist approach to magic and the majority of
essays may well be considered to be somewhat pedestrian, as
magazines generally go; but then again never before (or after)
has Western magic produced such a treasure house of knowledge
surpassing even Aleister Crowley's famous *Equinox* in scope,
practicability and diversity. There is many a pearl of wisdom to
be found here for anyone interested in the conventional mode of
magic, and it is to be hoped that some American or English
publisher will be bold enought to take the risk of publishing it
in translation one day.
     Nor where the *Blätter* the order's only publication. Well
before the war Gregorius edited the magazine *Saturn Gnosis*,
which was taken up again after the FS's post-war reconstitution
and is still being published on an irregular basis; other
magazines included *Vita-Gnosis* and *Der magische Weg* ("The
Magical Path"). However, these periodicals were strictly
promulgated for members only and are very hard (and costly!) to
come by for outsiders.
     Today, order membership has decreased considerably compared
with the fifties, but this is not, as one might suppose, due to
lack of interest. On the contrary: while fluctuation in the
order's purported heyday used to be exorbitant (appr. 50% per
year!), it has been reduced to almost nil now due to its rigid
initiation policy. For unlike the O.T.O., the FS is not obliged
by its own constitution to accept any candidate willing (or
purporting) to give it a try. Consequently, only very few
applicants ever make it into the order's august ranks, and it is
safe to say that the Fraternitas Saturni still constitutes the
paragon of traditionalist, conventional magic in the German
speaking world of today.



     However, magic comes in many masks. Especially the younger
generation amongst today's magicians has lost interest in the
dogmatic and traditionalist approach or is, at least, striving to
incorporate more modern techniques and beliefs as well. This is
mainly the doing of what I have named the "Bonn Group" of
magicians operating between 1979 to 1981 in a formal framework
and individually actively contributing to the advancement of
magical theory and practice ever since.
     When I founded the Horus Bookshop with two partners in Bonn,
in 1979, the current wave of esotericism had not quite begun yet,
and while interest in the occult arts was undeniably mounting,
business then was sluggish enough to provide ample time for other
activities. Thus, a group of some fourteen people (male and
female) interested in practical magic assembled in the bookshop's
backroom every other week or so to constitute what was
tentatively te