A Sun That Never Sets: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Landig Group Part III

Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the Landig Group, some times known as the Vienna Circle. This mysterious group has rarely been addressed by researchers except in the most outlandish literal and outlandish fashion (i.e. Joseph P. Farrell). Despite being largely unknown in the English speaking world, the Group has managed a very wide, if little understood, influence in mainland Europe and South America. Many of the modern mythos involving the Black Sun, Nazi UFOs, "the Last Battalion" and such like were heavily influenced by the Landig Group.

In the first installment of this series I mainly focused on the backgrounds of co-founders Erich Halik and Rudolf J. Mund while only briefly addressing the Group's namesake, Wilhelm Landig. With the second installment I briefly addressed Landig's "Thule novels" from which much of their ideology was spread to the general public and two key elements of said ideology: the Black Sun and Nazi UFOs. With this installment I would like to get back to Landig himself and do a more thorough examination of the man.

Landig's "Thule" trilogy

In the first installment I noted that Landig (like Mund, but not Halik) had been a member of the SS. Now I would like to go into more detail concerning his membership in the SS:

"... Landig was one of Hitler's earliest Austrian supporters and took part in the abortive putsch (coup d'etat) by Austrian National Socialists against the Vienna government in July 1934. In the wake of this failed uprising, the Austrian National Socialists were declared illegal and he fled to Germany. Landig joined the SS, being simultaneously inducted into the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; the intelligence agency of the SS and NSDAP) and the Waffen-SS (militarized component of the SS). He was stationed at the Arbeitswissenchaftlichen-Institut in Berlin (a component of the Deutschen Arbeitsfront [DAF]). Following the March 1938 unification of Austria and Germany, Landig returned to Vienna as an SD specialist under Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach. He claims to have been responsible for coordinating production of a German secret weapon – flying saucers whose motive power was derived from an unknown energy discovered by SS specialist studying esoteric writings and symbols gathered during SS-Standartenfuhrer Ernst Schafer' 1938-1939 expedition to Tibet. While the German certainly worked on a wide variety of unusual experimental aircraft during the war, it is difficult to know from Landig's account where reality stops and fantasy begins; he claims to have overseen security at a military airport in Prague where he witnessed the operation of flying discs. In 1944, Landig was wounded during anti-partisan operations in the Balkans, and sent to a military hospital in Belgrade... He then returned to the Vienna and was posted to Abteilung I (Inland) of the SD. Despite his many years of service, Landig's final rank appears to have been that of an SS-Oberscharduhrer (Sergeant First Class). In September 1945, he was taken into custody by British occupation authorities and later released."

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pgs. 465-466)

Landig

While the possibility that Landig was involved with secret weapons research for the SS is seemingly highly improbable, acclaimed historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke speculated that it was possible that Landig met one of his chief ideological influences while serving in the SS during the final months of the WWII: the notorious occultist and philosopher Baron Julius Evola, who could charitably be called fascism's answer to Aleister Crowley. If ever there was a magician in this past century who could be described as "evil incarnate," the Baron would surely fit the bill. Evola's influence was present throughout the Landig Group.

"... The focus of their discussions were a secret center in the Arctic known as the Blue Island, which could serve as a source point for a renaissance of traditional life. This idea was taken from Julius Evola, whose Erhebung wider die moderne Welt [Revolt against the Modern World] (1935) became the bible of the Landig group. Landig's volkisch ideology of Ario-Germanic superiority was embedded within the high-flown metaphysics of Evola's primordial Tradition. Only the Northern Atlantic races, especially the Aryan Germans, understood the sacred nature of regal authority, the mystery of ritual, initiation and consecration, the divine origins of patrician rule, chivalry and a rigid caste hierarchy. Evola's polar mythology of Thule and trenchant anti-modernity had already been current among German conservative and right-wing periodicals during the Third Reich. As a Waffen-SS officer, Landig may also have met Evola during the last years of the war. After June 1944, Evola had worked in Vienna, helping to recruit a pan-European army of Waffen-SS volunteers from all over Europe to defend the continent against the invasion of the United States and the Soviet Union."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 129)

the Baron

The likelihood of Landig and Evola having met during the latter's time in Austria during the final year of the war is greatly increased when one considers the agency within the SS that Evola had ties with.

"Despite the SS attack, as well as his own hesitation about Hitler, Evola spent World War II working for a section of SS intelligence, called the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuhrers-SS (Security Service of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, or SD) in Rome, Berlin and Vienna. He may even have collaborated with the SD in Romania in the late 1930s. Founded in June 1931 by Reinhard Heydrich, the SD initially spied on the Nazi Party's domestic political opponents. It also ran a press and information service headed by Franz Alfred Six. After the Nazi seizure of power, the SD branched out into foreign intelligence operations. It developed a reputation for recruiting some of Germany's 'best and brightest' lawyers, economists, and academics into its ranks. At the outbreak of the war, the SD became part of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA), which was established in September 1939 to consolidate all SS intelligence operations into one super-agency."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 315-316)

an SD patch

Despite the common perception that Evola was at odds with the SS (due in no small part to attacks made by Karl Maria Wiligut while he was in the SS's good graces on the Baron), as indicated in the above quote, he long held the organization in high esteem and seems to have become involved with it in an official capacity at least by the outbreak of WWII. Its possible his ties with the SS began even sooner thanks to the close relationship Evola developed with the Romanian Iron Guard, who long enjoyed patronage from the Nazi Party and especially the SS (I've written briefly on Evola's ties to the Iron Guard before here).

What exactly Evola did for the SS throughout the war is rather vague in general, but especially concerning the period he spent in Vienna as the conflict was winding down. Needless to say, there are some curious rumblings concerning Evola's work during this time.

"Evola's SD work at the end of the war is shrouded in mystery. Historian Richard Drake says that while he was in Vienna, 'Evola performed vital liaison services for the SS as Nazi Germany sought to recruit a European army for the defense of the Continent against the Soviet Union and the United States.' According to his own account, Evola spent his time living incognito while doing 'intellectual' research. But what kind of research?

"While Evola was in Vienna, the SD supplied him with a series of arcane texts plundered from private libraries and rare book collections. The SD bureau that provided him with these documents was Amt VII, an obscure branch that served as an RSHA research library. With this precious archive, Evola closely studied masonic rituals and translated certain 'esoteric texts' for a book called Historie Secrete des Societes Secretes. It never appeared because Evola claimed that all his documents were lost during the Russian bombardment.

"But why would the SD actively involve itself was arcane research at a time when hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were sweeping into the Reich? And why would Evola choose to live in Vienna under a false name and devote his time to such a strange project? Could the answer to this question be found in the cryptic reference to Evola's 'efforts to establish a secret international order' in the 1938 SS report?

"I believe that Evola's Vienna project was intimately linked to the development of what I will call 'the Order,' a new kind of Knights Templar designed to successfully function sub rosa. Well before the end of World War II, the intelligence and financial networks of the Third Reich were hard at work preparing underground networks to survive the coming Allied occupation. Escape lines to South America and the Middle East were organized. Bank accounts were created in Switzerland and other neutral nations to finance the underground with plunder the Nazis had looted from occupied Europe. But how was this secret empire to be managed, except by a virtually invisible 'government in exile?'

"For years Evola had been fascinated by knightly orders as expressions of the Kshatriya caste of warrior aristocrats. In the formal structure of the SS, he saw the precursor to a new Ordenstaat, a State ruled by an Order. He also understood the great advantages provided by medieval orders of chivalry due to their transnational composition. Crusading orders, like the Knights Templar and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, were pan-European, with separate national sections ('langues,' or tongues) unified through a Council presided over by a Grand Master. After the collapse of fascist state power, a new Order, an 'invisible college' of sorts, was needed not only to manipulate bank accounts and travel schedules but to have policy-making functions. Nor could it simply be run under the auspices of the Vatican, since Evola believed that Rome's downfall had been caused by the acceptance of Christianity by the dominant faction of the Roman elite. The Emperor Constantine's official embrace of the 'gentle Nazarene' in 313 A.D. had accumulated, a hundred years later, in Alaric's sack of Rome. With the American chewing-gum imperialist threatening in the West, and the new Hun sweeping in from the East, was the situation in 1945 really so different? The Order was a vessel for those 'Hermetic' elements of the Conservative Revolution, old ruling class, and new Nazi elite not entirely beholden to the political, cultural, and religious 'Guelf' wing of the European aristocracy, which remained ideologically loyal to the continued propagation of the ruling Christian mythology.

"This account of the origins of the Order is obviously speculative, and I advance it as hypothesis, not fact. Yet if I'm correct the SD really did have a need for Evola's unique talents. With his extensive knowledge of matters esoteric and occult; his fascination with secret societies and knightly Orders; his Waffen SS transnationalism; his ties to some of the highest figures in fascism, Nazism, and movements like the Iron Guard; and his loyal service to the SD, Baron Evola was a perfect candidate to help theorize a new underground Order. As the SD's equivalent of Albert Pike, the former Confederate Army general who designed the rituals for the Scottish Rite Masons in the late 1800s, Evola's task was to help create the inner organizational and ritual structure for the Grand Masters of a secret Shamballah whose financial nerve center was carefully hidden away in Swiss bank accounts."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 319-321)

the Seal of the Knights Templar, who have long held a special place in Esoteric Nazism

While Evola's expertise would have certainly been useful in creating the structure of an underground Order, his extensive knowledge of history, psychology, mythology and the occult would have proven invaluable in crafting a mythos for this Order. That's why its quite suspect that fellow SD man Wilhelm Landig would begin to unveil an ideology in the early 1950s based around a secretive Nazi underground roughly modeled upon the Medieval military orders of old.

So, to recap: Evola and Landig were both SS men who served in the SD, one of the intelligence wings of the SS; they both ended up in Vienna during the final year of the war where Landig claimed to have been working on a secret weapons project while Evola was apparently creating (or "rediscovering") a new fascist mythology for the post-war years. Then, less than a decade after the war ends, Landig begins promoting an ideology based heavily upon Evola's published works and which also echoes a kind of "Black" Order which some researchers have alleged Evola was involved with during his final years in the SS.

increasingly in popular culture this "Black Order" Evola and Landig theorized has appeared in romantic accounts of a "Last" or "Final" Battalion at battle with the "Judeo-Masonic forces"

Obviously, this is quite a series of "coincidences." Further muddying the waters is the possibility that Evola and Landig even worked out of the same section of the SD. Of the mysterious Amt VII bureau that provided Evola with materials for his research into secret societies, the great Kevin Coogan notes:

"Amt VII maintained the RSHA's library, the Freemasonry museum, and other archives. Himmler even got Amt VII involved in the study of witchcraft during the Middle Ages.

"A 24 July 1945 CIC report on Amt VII gives its background:

"'When the SD moved from BERLIN to MUENCHEN late in 1934, it included Zentral Abteilung II and the Presse Abteilung. The former was divided into two Haupt Abteilungen specializing in enemy ideologies. Haupt Abteilung I dealt with Jewry, Freemasonry, and Catholicism; Haupt Abteilung II, with Marxism, Reactionary movements, and the LUDENDORFF movement.'

"After Franz Alfred Six, who headed the Press Department, decided he wanted not just to spy on the German press but to influence it, he made a power play to take over Zentral Abteilung II:

"'SIX succeeded in having himself made chief of this department in 1936 and then wrote articles about Freemasonry, Catholicism, and Judaism, which were sometimes published by the Nordische Verlag in HAMBURG.

"After a time there was friction between the Gestapo and Zentral Abteilung II. Both agencies often issued reports which were mutually contradictory. A re-organization of Zentral Abteilung II took place. It was officially dissolved, its papers and files of operational value were sent to the Gestapo, and what was left of Zentral Abteilung II became Amt VII of the RSHA...'"

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 327-328 n. 36)

Franz Alfred Six, one of Nazi Germany's leading "experts" on Freemasonry

As was noted above, Landig served in something known as Abteilung I (Inland) during his time in Vienna working for the SD. Unfortunately, there were several organizations bearing the "Abteilung" name (which seems to translate as "battalion") and I have not been able to determine whether this section was related to the Zentral Abteilung II (which was divided into two sections known as Haupt Abteilung I & II) bureau that eventually became Amt VII.

But it goes without say, the possibility that Landig was aware of Evola's research during this period is certainly present. Indeed, if Landig was working for Evola in some capacity this could explain how Landig was able to to devise such an elaborate mythos so soon after the war when there is scarce evidence of his interest in esoteric topics before or during the conflict. Perhaps Evola's research was the real secret weapon Landig observed rather than his ridiculous claims of Nazi UFOs.

they do make for a great sales pitch, however

Before wrapping things up, there is one last aspect of Landig's early post-war activities I would like to briefly examine: the possibility that he was involved with the so-called "Ratlines" in some capacity.

The Ratlines were routes established originally by forces within the Vatican that enabled Nazi and fascist war criminals to flee Europe for foreign lands, typically South America or the Middle East. By 1947 (if not sooner) the US Military and intelligence community had also become actively involved in these endeavors. One of the earliest Ratlines appeared in Landig's neck of the woods.

"The Ratline can be said to have begun in Austria. Salzburg and Vienna were the hotspots, with an emphasis on the CIC (the US Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps) presence in Salzburg, whose officers invented the term 'Ratline.' The CIC utilized the services of Roman Catholic Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic as well as other Croatian priests. It is believed by many that Croatian Archbishop Stepinac was also involved in the smuggling of Nazis and Nazi wealth out of the hands of the Communists. Draganovic began the movement of the Ustashe war criminals to Argentina, and then continued with the Nazis in general using the same channels via Rome and Genoa."

(Ratline, Peter Levenda, pgs. 238-239)

Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic, a Croatian priest who played a key role in establishing the early Ratlines

As was noted in part one, there is evidence that Landig was in contact with US intelligence officers after being released from an internment camp in 1947. Also noted there (and above) was the fact that Landig had established close ties with the Croatian fascists during his time serving in the Balkans to the point that he had received decorations from the Croats for his service. Landig's experience as an intelligence officer while working for the SD, his ties to the Croatian Ustashe regime and his presence in Vienna during a time when the Ratline there was active are highly suggestive. Certainly Landig would have been well suited to assist in such an endeavor, but unfortunately few seem to have considered this possibility.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I'll begin to examine Landig's post-WWII political career and its curious associations. Stay tuned.

A Sun That Never Sets: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Landig Group Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the infamous Landig Group, some times referred to as the Vienna Circle. While largely unknown in the English speaking world, the Landig Group would have a very overlooked influence on mainland European and South American esotericism by the end of the twentieth century. Most notably, the Group is often credited with introducing UFOlogy and the Black Sun mythos to Esoteric Nazism in the post-World War II era. While the ideology of Landig and company was largely unknown to the general public for many years, their mythos have more recently been spread to a wider audience thanks to the efforts of individuals such as Jan Van Helsing.

The Group has largely been ignored by New Agers and the conspiratorial right in equal measures, and when they have been addressed (i.e. by Joseph Farrell) it is typically in the most literal and sensational manner imaginable. This series is an attempt to address this state of affairs, but unfortunately there are many aspects of the Group that do not seem to have been investigated as thoroughly as it surely warrants. However, there are certainly some interesting connections to be made with the data that is available.

With the first installment of this series I largely focused on the backgrounds of two of the three men, Erich Halik and Randolf J. Mund, who co-founded the Group along with its namesake, Wilhelm Landig, in 1950. I began to address Landig in brief at the end of that installment as well.

Landig

Before picking with Landig again, however, it behooves me to address his novels and their influence in brief. So here's a synopsis of Landig's "Thule trilogy" to get the ball rolling:

"However, it was Wilhelm Landig's own novels that ensured the revival of occult-nationalist themes among a younger generation of neo-Nazis in the 1990s. The ideas and interest discussed by the Landig group in the 1950s found permanent expression in Landig's trilogy of Thule novels. The first of these, Gotzen gegen Thule (1971), was begun in the late 1950s and incorporated the thought of Julius Evola and Herman Wirth. Theories of Aryan polar origins and Atlantis are mixed with powerful new nationalist myths of 'the last battalion,' secret German UFO bases in the Arctic, alchemy, Grail myths and Cathar heresies, and a Nazi-Tibetan connection involving Himalayan masters and an underground kingdom in Mongolia. In this novel and especially in its successor, Wolfszeit um Thule (1980), a global Jewish conspiracy always lurks in the shadows, seeking to foil the revival of Nordic German rule, but its Judeo-Christian idols are powerless against the resurgence of the Black Sun. The last novel of the series, Rebellen fur Thule (1991), is a wishful fantasy of right-wing radicalism among German youth. A former SS officer, the hero of the second novel, is invited to lecture on the Atlantean heritage of the Aryans at a German secondary school. The pupils reject the liberal views of their despised left-wing history teacher and hungrily embrace the new nationalist myths of Thule."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 137)

the first of Landig's "Thule" novels

While the influence of Landig's work has been relatively broad (in certain regions of the world at least), it was his conception of Nazi UFOs, 'the last battalion', and the Black Sun that have had the most long lasting impact. Of these concepts, its worth addressing the Black Sun and the UFO interest in brief here. Let's start with the legendary Black Sun.

In recent times the claim has frequently been put forth by conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis alike that the Black Sun is an ancient symbol dating back to humanity's earliest civilizations. But in his exhaustive study of the symbol, The Black Sun Unveiled, researcher James Pontolillo found little evidence of this. While Pontolillo notes that several black suns have been noted in antiquity, they were almost exclusively references to eclipses (i.e. the now infamous reference in the Edda) which have a meaning somewhat different than the modern concept of the Black Sun. Pontolillo's account does not seem to be entirely complete, however, as he makes few reference to the appearance of the Black Sun in Mesoamerican culture prior to European contact. In such circles the Black Sun references seem to be quite striking.

"The Mesoamerican myths are shared, among others by the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mexicans and the Toltecs. One prominent god common to these people is Quetzalcoatl, literally 'feathered serpent', who incarnates one of the many mystical beliefs of the Black Sun in Central America. After his shinning passage through the sky during the day, he would dive into the Underworld with a Blackened aura.

"The Aztecs compared the passage of the sun into the Underworld with a butterfly, which is an archetype for transformation and reincarnation. The only event when the Black Sun would appear during the day would be a solar eclipse. He would then be identified with the earth goddess Itzpapalotl, also called the 'Obsidian Butterfly' (obsidian is a very dark volcanic stone), who would eat men during that exceptional cosmic event."

(Nazi Secrets, Frank Lost, pgs. 86-87)

Quetzalcoatl

Thus, it would seem that the Mesoamerican traditions were also primarily concerned with eclipses as well. This is in contrast to the later cosmic interpretations of the Black Sun, some of which would place it at the center of the universe and credit it with life giving properties. According to Pontolillo, the modern concept of the Black Sun does not seem to have emerged until the Middle Ages. Its earliest manifestation was likely in Sufism.

"Corbin (1971) and others have presented a strong case supporting the idea that the Black Sun and the Green Ray of European alchemical tradition... ultimately derive from Sufi mystical texts which were brought to the West during and after the Crusades (1095 -- 1291 CE). The Sufis theorized that there was a threefold structure to the human soul... On the lower plane [nafs ammara] was the ego or the imperative psyche appearing as a black disk, figure, sun or cloud. On the upper plane [nafs motma'yanna] was the pacified soul appearing as a splendid emerald surrounded by orbs of light. In between the two lay the intellect or soul-consciousness [nafs eawwama] appearing as a great red sun. As early as the writings of the Persian polymath Avicenna (980 -- 1037), the Sufi tradition spoke of an experience variously called the Black Light, the Night of Light, the dark Noontide, the midnight sun, or the 'Darkness at the approaches to the Pole' which was considered to be both the highest spiritual state and the most perilous of initatic steps... This Black Light, which permeates the entire universe, is only revealed to accomplished masters who have vanished themselves in the process known as fana, or annihilation of the ego. With the appearance of the divine Black Light in the mystic's superconsciousness, all things disappear instead of remaining visible. The screen or barrier of matter is overcome. The Black Light is not an Ahrimanic/Satanic darkness in the sense of the negation of or an absence of light, but the invisibility of 'the preorigin of all that is visible... [an] invisibility due to an excess of brilliance, to being too close to the light... ' In mystical terms 'it is the first Intelligence... rising as a revelation over the Darkness of the Deus absconditus... the human soul itself as the light of consciousness rising over the Darkness of the subconscious...'"

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pgs. 87-88) 

Avicenna

It is from these roots that the celebrated Black Sun of the alchemists likely emerged. While there can be little dispute that the Black Sun of alchemy is the first true manifestation of the modern symbol, it did not appear in any European alchemical works prior to the Ripley Scroll of the mid-fifteenth century. From there it would appear in the works of several notable alchemists (many of whom being German) including Albrecht Durer, Georgette de Montenay, Johann Mylius, Robert Fludd and possibly Sir Edward Kelley (yes, the same Kelley who was English magician and spy John Dee's assistant on several of his major workings; interestingly Dee used an obsidian stone, which as noted above was linked to the Black Sun in Mesoamerican culture, as a seerer stone).

Edward Kelley

Naturally it was at this point that the modern conception of the Black Sun began to emerge. It went something along these lines:

"Alchemists saw the Black Sun as unworked, primal matter, still to be set on the path of development. To the psychoanalyst, the Black Sun stands for the unconscious, again in its most elemental form."

(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 950)

Pontolillo confirms the alchemical association of the Black Sun with primal matter, at least during the early stages. But he notes that later alchemists took it down psychological routes later embraced by the legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.

"In several later alchemical treatises it is obvious that the Magnum Opus is increasingly to be understood in mystical terms (or in modern parlance, psychological terms). The alchemists point toward the need to enter into the darkest abyss (the depths of the Black Sun) in order to experience the invisible sun hidden within matter. It is hardly surprising that modern writers on alchemy have tried to forge a link with Sri Aurobindo's ideas on Martanda... The most influential modern description of the Black Sun comes from the alchemical writings of Swiss psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung, who drew his inspiration from the images in Mylius' Philosophia reformata (1622), when he noted that the Black Sun represents 'a provisional extinction of the conscious standpoint owing to an invasion from the unconscious...' The conscious position is acknowledged to be dead and renewal ('greening') can only be accomplished through the addition of new material from a deeper layer. Some people will experience this as a depression, while others will experience it as elation. Like any mind-altering substance, the effects of the Black Sun's dark fire are user-mediated to a degree."

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pg. 103)

an alchemical depiction of the Black Sun

The concept of the Black Sun as a kind of invisible energy hidden within matter would appear indirectly in the writings of various Ariosophists in the early twentieth century. But I'm getting ahead of the game a bit.

After the Black Sun's appearance in European alchemy it began to spread across the continent and appeared in the works of William Blake, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, William Hope Hodgson and many others. Its transference to Ariosophy, and by default Esoteric Nazism, almost surely traces back to H.P. Blavatsky's concept of the "Central Sun", however. Blavatsky, as I'm sure many of my readers are aware, was the founder of Theosophy and one of the most important metaphysical figures of the modern era by a wide margin. Her work was widely read in Germany prior to the First World War, laying the foundation for Ariosophy and the notion of a metaphysical "Central Sun."

"In her major opus The Secret Doctrine (1888), Helena Blavatsky occasionally mentioned a 'central sun' in the Milky Ways, 'a point unseen and mysterious, the ever-hidden center of attraction of our Sun and system.' As the energetic center of the galaxy or even the universe, this dark central sun represents the mass of potential energy prior to the Big Bang of modern cosmology. While the Jewish Cabala described its 'black light,' Eastern initiates of Aryan tradition regarded it as the source of 'creative light' and the 'center of Universal life --Electricity.' Blavatsky thus emphasized a distinction between the Semitic and Aryan cosmology: the former materializes and humanizes the mysteries of nature; the latter spiritualizes matter. Blavatsky's ideas were first taken up by volkisch-theosophical authors in Germany before the First World War and after. Guido von List wrote of an invisible 'primal fire' as the ancient Ario-German's notion of the highest divinity. Peryt Shou (1873-1953), a German occult writer, had described humanity's heightened receptivity to the ultraviolet spiritual light of the 'central sun' in the Age of Aquarius and related this to Germany's future in the troubled postwar era."

 (Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 136)

H.P. Blavatsky

As was noted in part one, the Landig Group was based out of Vienna and its three founding figures all had long time ties to the city. Also noted there was the fact that Vienna produced the two guiding lights of Ariosophy, Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, who also remained close to the city throughout their respective lives. Thus, the Vienna was a major outpost (some may even say heart) of the Ariosophy movement. Its likely that Landig and company first discovered Ariosophy prior to the Second World War while living in and around Vienna. Landig was in several youth wings of the German Freikorps, some of whom were influenced by Ariosophy (as I noted before here), to boot.

While the Landig Group would play a major role in the crafting of the modern conception of the Black Sun, they were of course not the only influence. This strand, tracing back to H.P. Blavatsky, can be traced up through the early twentieth century via Peryt Shou, Karl Maria Wiligut, early "Ancient Astronaut" proponent Robert Charroux, Andre Brissaud, Kenneth Grant and Miguel Serrano. Of these Grant, a close associate of Aleister Crowley, is the most compelling. The system Grant outlined in his 1972 classic The Magical Revival touches on many of the same topics of interest to these proto-fascist and neo-Nazi ideologues and yet reaches very different conclusions in many instances. This shall make for some interesting speculation in a future installment.

Grant

As for the Nazi regime itself, evidence of the Black Sun is relatively scarce. There are some intriguing appearances of a black round disk on various German aircraft during the Nazi era, however. They first appeared during the Spanish Civil War and were later seen on German aircraft in the polar region at the close of the Second World War.

"Aircraft of the Spanish Nationalist Air Force and the German Legion Condor had previously employed a black fuselage roundel during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)... There is a prosaic explanation for the presence of a black roundel on German aircraft during the Second World War. Each Luftwaffe air wing (Jagdgeschwader 5 [JG5] in the case of Norway) was subdivided into several consecutively numbered groups (Gruppe I through IV for JG5). The standard Luftwaffe convention (though not always followed) was that all IV. Gruppe aircraft should be marked with a black roundel immediately aft of their fuselage cross."

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pg. 357 n. 29)

some of the German aircraft used during the Spanish Civil War that displayed the Black Sun

There is no evidence that there was any esoteric significance to these markings, however. It should also be noted that Erich Halik, a co-founder of the Landig Group, was the first individual to link the black roundels that sometimes appeared on German aircraft with the Black Sun in the magazine Mensch und Schicksal in 1952. But moving along.

A Black Sun also made a curious appearance on the cover of Junges Volk, a youth magazine put out by the German American Bund around 1940. This particular Black Sun is quite unique and does not have a clear precursor. It is unlikely that this symbol had much influence on the Black Sun mythos of the postwar years due to the short lifespan of the Bund as well the relatively limited and largely juvenile subscribers of Junges Volk.

And then there's the sunwheel of the North Tower of Wewelsburg castle. This topic is vastly beyond the scope of this blog, but a few points should be made: For one, there is no evidence whatever that Himmler conceived of the notorious sunwheel as a representation of the Black Sun. In point of fact, its not entirely certain that the SS was responsible for the sunwheel in the first place (though the likelihood is at about 95%) and there are certainly no official surviving documentation concerning its purpose.

Wewelsburg

Outside of Wewelsburg, there is only one other possible known appearance of this particular sunwheel in conjunction with a Nazi site. One very similar to it appears at a military bunker memorial to Bismark in Hamburg. However, the origins of this sunwheel are even murkier than the one in Wewelsburg and it is not certain who was behind its creation.

the sunwheel at Hamburg

The Wewelsburg sunwheel was not associated with the Black Sun until the postwar years. It is commonly claimed that the first linkage of the Wewelsburg sunwheel with the Black Sun was made by Russell McCloud in his 1991 novel Die Schwarze Sonne von Tashi Lhunpo but this is incorrect. French historian Andre Brissaud was the first to link Wewelsburg with the Black Sun in his 1969 work Hitler et l'ordre noir. Brissaud did not implicitly link the Wewelsburg sunwheel with the Black Sun, however, and gave a rather inaccurate description of it and the castle's North Tower on the whole.

the first public linkage of the Black Sun with Wewelsburg

In 1990 two publications emerged that directly linked the Wewelsburg sunwheel to the Black Sun. The first was produced by the highly controversial British cult known as the Order of Nine Angels (ONA) and was entitled The Black Sun. The second came from an obscure group known as the Freuddeskreis Wulf Sorensen (FWS) via a publication they had influence over known as Wolfszeit. In 1990 several issues of this magazine published articles linking the Wewelsburg sunwheel with the Black Sun.

a 2011 ebook edition of the ONA's 1990 Black Sun publication

And with that, let us move along to the concept of Nazi UFOs. The Internet is of course awash in accounts of these crafts thanks in no small part to works of Henry Stevens and Joseph P. Farrell. While Nazi Germany certainly made some phenomenon technological advances, evidence of Nazi UFOs is pretty slim.

"... In internet Sci-Fi underground lore and, in the thriving world of conspiracy theories, there circulate unsubstantiated claims that the Third Reich somehow managed to produce futuristic flying devices, far ahead of the scientific capabilities of their times. These so-called Nazi UFOs have even names: Rundflugzeug, Feuerball, Diskus, Haunebu, Hauneburg-Gerate, V7, VRIL, Kugelblitz, Andromeda-Gerate, Flugkreisel, Kugelwaffen, and Reichsflugscheiben. Many blueprints of these devices can be found on the internet, all of them grossly concocted in German with 'original Nazi fonts' and precise measurements to add a realistic touch.

"These Nazi UFO fantasies proceed mainly from 3 origins:

"1 - The alleged wider scopes and achievements of the real 1938-1939 German expedition to Antarctica in Neuschwabenland; Colin Summerhayes of the Scott Polar Institute scientifically debunked all claims that there were German bases in Antarctica...

"2 - The great advances that the Germans possessed in rocketry, and the purported findings of Doctor Viktor Schauberger, in the field of breaking new means of propulsion (His famous 'Repulsine' engine). Some scientists proved however that his Repulsine was no more than a water turbine, on which he was working to cool aircraft engines at the Messerschmitt plants.

"3 - The Allied sightings of so-called 'Foo Fighters', allegedly German secret weapons, designed to harass an aircraft through electromagnetic disruption. Though real, the German pilots saw the same phenomenon, and asked themselves what they could be, and where they possibly came from...

"The first links made between UFOs and Nazis are the work of the Italian Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, a scientist and former Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime. He claimed in 1950 that 'types of flying disks were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942.

"There have also been subsequent claims that underground FIAT factories, mainly located in vast tunnels around the Lake of Garda in Italy, were used to produce Nazi UFOs. These stories were propagated by the Italian Renato Vesco who claimed, among others, to have studied at a German Aeronautical Institute during the war, but was later discredited because of discrepancies concerning his very young age at the time.

"In 1950 the famous German magazine Der Spiegel tackled the subject of possible Nazi UFO's for the first time, and reported the dubious stories of former engineer Rudolf Schriever and his round flying device. Schriever did indeed show discrepancies in later versions of the same story, notably in 1952 during another interview.

"True enough, some prototypes that never achieved mass production status, like the Sack AS-6, had a shape very close to those of the after war UFO sightings..."

 (Nazi Secrets, Frank Lost, pgs. 72-76)

While this researcher would not totally discount some physical Nazi UFOs thanks to research such as that displayed by Jacques Vallee in Messengers of Deception, the prospect of Nazi UFOs on the whole is on rather flimsy footing. Wilhelm Landig himself claimed to have been involved in secret weapons research toward the end of World War II which he would have us believe is the source of his knowledge of Nazi UFOs. But evidence of his involvement in such projects is scarce, as we shall see in the next installment. In point of fact, his later period work for the SS was likely of an intelligence nature.

Erich Halik, a co-founder of the Landig Group, was an engineer in the field of aeronautical propulsion systems but did not work in such a capacity for the Third Reich during the war. He went on to work for a Austrian defense contractor known as Hirtenberger AG. He claimed to have worked on UFO propulsion system for the defense contractor but there is no evidence for this. He did, however, participate in some of the earliest developmental work for drone aircraft. But unfortunately, not enough information is available in these regards to determine the legitimacy of Halik's claims.

Many would of course dismiss the later interest these ideologues of Esoteric Nazism had in UFOs as a PR stunt at best or a disinformation campaign at worst. Certainly the former is true in the case of individuals such as Ernst Zundel while there are strong indications of the latter in Landig's background. But this researcher does not believe that things are that simple.

Early Ariosophists such as Jorg Lanz von Liebenefels, Peryt Shou and Karl Maria Wiligut all speak of the ancestors of the ancient Aryans as god men and make illusions to them descending from the heavens or the clouds throughout their writings. Shou, in some of his writings from the 1910s, even makes allusions to the Sirius tradition.

Shou

Its likely the first modern conception of "Ancient Astronaut" theory (AAT) as it is currently understood derived from Alice Bailey, a Theosophist and the legendary founder of Lucis Trust. Her cosmology was almost surely adopted by Silver Shirts founder William Dudley Pelley, who articulated what was likely the first fascist-tinged take on Ancient Astronaut theory, as I noted before here. Its likely that Bailey also inspired (at least in part) the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, who is also increasingly sited as an early inspiration for AAT.

Bailey

Pelley was also aware of Theosophy from his time spent living in New York City during the 1920s (and may even have possibly known Bailey). Its also highly likely that Lovecraft was familiar with Theosophy at least from his time in NYC as well. And then, on the other side of the Atlantic, you have various Ariosophists, which derived from Theosophy, such as Liebenfels, Shou and Wiligut making allusions to Aryan supermen from the heavens and clouds.

Needless to say, there's seem to have been something very strange happening within Theosophy (which also played a key role in developing the modern conception of the Black Sun, as noted above) around this time frame. Such a topic is far beyond the scope of this series, but clearly the interests neo-Nazi occultists have displayed concerning UFOs should not be quickly dismissed.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I will begin examining the curious life of Wilhelm Landig in depth. Stay tuned.