The Thule Society, founded in 1918 at the end of the First World War by Rudolf von Seebottendorf, was a mystical secret society with an overtly racist program. Based in Munich, Germany, it attracted a number of German nationalists, reaching a peak of 250 members in the city. In the chaos of the war's end, a communist government was set up in Munich, which was opposed by numerous right-wing groups, including members of the Thule Society. In 1919 the Thule Society was merged with a worker's party to become the Munich German Workers Party. This was the organization that Adolf Hitler joined. In 1920 this charismatic speaker took control and renamed the party the National-Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), also known by the abbreviation "Nazi".
One of the main meeting places of the Thule Society had been the Munich hotel "Four Seasons". It was in this hotel that Rudolf Steiner was scheduled to speak publicly on May 15,1922. Steiner was advised that this was not wise (though not known at the time, Steiner was on a top-ten list of people the radical right intended to assasinate) but insisted that if he was scheduled to speak, then speak he would. At the end of the lecture the lights suddenly went out, explosions sounded, and a group rushed the stage. Steiner was only saved by the fact that in anticipation of an attack, some wrestlers had been hired as bodyguards, and and escape route planned. The bodyguards fought off the attackers while Steiner was rushed out the back and taken to safety. The event was even noted in the New York Times, which also described how, once Stiner escaped "the demonstrators marched to Railroad Station Square with the intention of hauling down the Republican colors. But these are now taken in at dark and secreted in safe places. The chagrined demonstrators therefore contented themselves with singing the imperialistic ‘Flag Song’ around the flagless flagpoles.” (New York Times, May 17, 1922). Steiner never spoke publicly in Germany again.
So Steiner was not a member of the Thule Society, but rather was seen as an opponent by the German right of the time (including the heirs to the Thule Society, the Nazi party, followers of Ludendorff and others) and was on an assassination list. So given this history, who would claim that, to the contrary, Stiener was actually a member of the Thule Society?
The EAEC (European American Evangelical Crusade) currently active in Sacramento, seems to be the type of organization that gives Christianity a bad name. Staunchly fundamentalist, they also evince an underlying hate-motif towards all unbelievers, and especially Jews. As is typical of such insular hate-groups, their mastery of factual material is incomplete at best. Let us take, for example, the article titled "DEMOCRATS, STEM CELLS, AND CLONING: PART II" by John S. Torell
(online at http://www.eaec.org/newsletters/2004/NL2004Oct.htm). Nearly every fact alleged in this October 2004 newsletter article is incorrect. It also contains several obviously racist statements and many similarities to Neo-Nazi discourse.
The article is subtitled "A Prophetic Look at the Future" and leads off with an imagination of life in 2030. Consistent with radical right-wing discourse, the source of evil laws is none other than the United Nations, who will at that point apparently have sovereignty over the United States. The evil will be mandatory abortions for all abnormal fetuses. Medical science will allow married homosexual couples (now legal the world over, thanks again to the UN, one suppose) to have babies via in vitro fertilization. Designer babies will be the norm, and
Black Americans are using a new breakthrough in baby designing by making sure that their babies are born with less pigment, thus giving them a lighter skin tone. During the last century black Americans had discriminated among themselves, and those who were very dark skinned were looked down upon by those whose skin was of a lighter shade.
Completing the nightmare, the Democratic Party, now run by open homosexuals, dominates the United States, and – the final insult – all its leaders are followers of the Jewish Kabala. We are quickly informed that the God of the Kabala is known as the "Holy Serpent" and good Christians know it as Satan of the apocalypse. Finally, the budget is balanced by practicing mercy killing mercilessly – starving patients to death in hospitals. Doctors behave like concentration camp guards as the patients scream for water and say "we are just following orders".
At this point the article becomes downright bizarre. It is claimed that this technique of killing off the infirm by concentration-camp style dehydration in hospitals is actually going on in Sweden right now! In fact, all of this future evil is being prepared in Sweden in the present! The article then goes back to describing a fundamentalist Christian's version of 1984 in the year 2030: "…the American Constitution had been declared 'unconstitutional' by a Supreme Court stacked with liberal homosexuals and Jews." There is no religious freedom and Christians are imprisoned. Finally, cloned humans, called "humanoids" – who are by definition soul-less demons – are marrying good Christians and have equal rights. We are informed that "there is no salvation available for humanoids and when they marry a 'real' human, the children in that union are the offspring of demons and humans, with no salvation available." The Bible has been revised beyond recognition, and all religions have merged into one "called The Universal Church of God." This is bad because this Universal Church also contains Hindus and Moslems, and so no self-respecting Christian would have anything to do with it.
All of this is almost puerile hate-mongering; highly improbable to anyone with a basic education, and offensive to anyone not an extremely narrow-minded so-called "Christian".
The future outlined above is being prepared in the present, we are informed, just as the present was prepared in 1947. And to look at how that came about, you must look at occultism, especially the Jewish occultism of the Kabala, but really any non-Christian-fundamentalist spiritualism, and Germany is the country where Satan is most active. "The top human leadership in Satan's organization is made up of Kabbalistic Jews…"
Jumping ahead to the portions that concern us on the Defending Rudolf Steiner site, we come to the following:
The membership in the Thule Society did not come from the lower classes in Germany, but consisted of judges, chiefs of police, attorneys, teachers, professors, industrial leaders, medical doctors, scientists and other rich German people of which many were Jewish.
Again Torell sounds the anti-Semitic leitmotif. The Jews are the sinister occult movement behind – get this – Nazism!
Future leaders in Nazi Germany, like Wilhelm Frick (Interior Minister during the Nazi regime), Hans Frank (a German Jew who later became Secretary of the Justice Department in Nazi Germany and then appointed the German governor over occupied Poland) became members of the Thule Society…
Wilhelm Frick and Hans Frank were indeed early and prominent Nazis. I have not been able to find any reference whatsoever in any legitimate historical sources to either of the two being Jewish. It is highly improbable, to say the least, given how stringent the Nazi Party was in verifying their members to be free of Jewish blood. Both Frick and Frank were party members in good standing to the end of the War, and both were executed at Nuremberg.
…and so did Rudolf Steiner (founder of the Anthroposophical Society and the parent organization of the Waldorf Schools…
Steiner was never a member of the Thule Society, nor have I ever seen it alleged anywhere besides here, and there is no evidence to support this claim. Steiner's movements during this period (1910-1922) are all known, and there is no documented contact between Steiner and Thule Society members. Further, the stated goals of the Thule society are contrary to what Steiner was trying to accomplish, and Steiner was highly critical of Guido von List and all his "peculiar racialist mysticism".
Also, the Anthroposophical Society is not the parent organization of Waldorf Schools. The Waldorf movement is an independent, loosely affiliated group of independent schools, not a hierarchical structure.
…the German-British Jew Rudolf Hess (who later became Hitler's Deputy Chief of the Nazi Party)…
Rudolf Hess was not Jewish (Torell appears to operate under the misapprehension that anyone named "Hess" must be Jewish since Moses Hess was a Zionist). This has been clearly established by both historians and Nazis.
…and Alfred Rosenberg (An Estonian born Jew, who became editor of Volkisher Beobachter and later head of the Nazi Party when Hitler was serving time in prison in 1923).
Torell again has his facts mixed up. Alfred Rosenberg was an Estonian born anti-Semite. He was a prominent Nazi, and was executed at Nuremberg.
Members of the Thule Society at that time read like Who's Who in Germany in 1919.
This is a gross overstatement. The Thule Society was a fringe movement.
The foundation of the Nazi party was laid, and it was going to not only be a political party, but for the first time politics and occultism were merged into one, which later was going to lead to an occult Nazi state, where technology would also be added, combining all three as never before.
This paragraph might find some support among historians. There are those who emphasize the occult angle, and there are many who find it trivial. Torell then turns to:
Vladimir Lenin
In order for the American reader of this newsletter to understand how much this German cabal of Satanists, after being dead for many years, are still influencing the entire public education system in the United States, let us briefly look at one member – Rudolf Steiner: Not only was Steiner a member of the Thule Society, he had been a Freemason for many years, a member of the Theosophical Society and a grandmaster in the lodge "MYSTICA AETERNA." This lodge belonged to the Memphis and Misraim Rite masonry, which was open for both men and women. The future butcher of Russia, Vladimir Lenin, was a Freemason and lived for many years in Switzerland. From the year 1909 and on, Steiner was in frequent contact with Lenin, while he still resided in Switzerland. Steiner was also a member in another occult Masonic order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) which claimed to be the heirs to the KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, an order specializing in ritual sexual orgies.
A few points to this silly litany of accusations against Steiner:
- Steiner was not a Satanist.
- Steiner was never a member of the OTO. This has been fully and carefully established.
- The OTO, a 20th Century movement, advocated sexual magic (including ritual sexual magic).
- The Knights Templar (a medieval group attacked by Philip the Fair, King of France, in 1307 AD and disbanded in 1312) did not practice or advocate ritual sexual orgies, as far as any historian has ever determined.
- Steiner opposed sexual magic on the strongest terms before the OTO was even founded.
- Steiner was never a member of the Thule Society. No evidence for this has ever been presented, nor is the connection remotely plausible to scholars of Steiner or the Thule Society.
- In 1906 Steiner obtained from Theodore Reuss permission to open a Misraim-Memphis lodge, which he called Mystica Aeterna. Counter to Masonic tradition, Steiner's lodge would be open to men and women alike. Steiner stated that his goal to reform and save Masonry for the future. Steiner's lodge operated up to 1914, when he closed it due to the outbreak of the First World War. Steiner never joined any of Reuss' other lodges, and beyond purchasing the right to run his own lodge, was never a Mason. The OTO was founded by Reuss in 1912 and required a written application.
- Lenin was never a Mason. The claim, without any proof, that Lenin was a Mason was first made in 1919. No further evidence of it has ever surfaced.
- Steiner and Lenin never met. Torell's attempt to place them together as fellow-Masons in Switzerland falls down in light of the fact that neither was ever a Mason. The lives of both have been fully investigated, and neither scholars of Lenin or Steiner have found any connection.
- Steiner abhorred both Marxism and Bolshevism, and spoke out strongly against both.
Torell has written a completely inaccurate description of both Steiner and Lenin. In the context of the larger article it is understandable. Almost every fact presented is inaccurate.
Torell continues:
The official teaching of the Anthroposophical Society is "the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds." This is typical double talk that is found in the New Age, and its real meaning is to teach people to establish contacts with spirit beings (known in the Bible as demons).
The Anthroposophical Society has no official teachings. This is in their charter. However the statement "the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds" is a fair and accurate description of one of Steiner's premises. It is typically narrow-minded fundamentalism to see any mention of the word "spirit" immediately suggesting demons. Steiner was deeply Christian (in a non-sectarian manner) and lectured extensively on Christ's importance and the life of Jesus. But Torell is intolerant even of other Christians (to say nothing of Jews and other non-Christians) if they don't strictly adhere to his narrow and literal understanding of the Bible.
In order for Steiner and his group to progress beyond their society, they established the Waldorf school system, which spread to the United States in 1928, and there are now over 157 established schools with a large school in Sacramento, the capitol of California. The graduates from this school system now are in the hundreds of thousands, and these misled trained occultists have now reached into every structure in the U.S., from politics, business, education, etc. and through their influence the public school system in the U.S. has adopted a number of Waldorf techniques, through which their occult teaching is now openly taught in public schools. They are vanguards to the coming occult takeover of the world.
Torell seems to have forgotten that above he declared that it was the Jewish homosexuals that are going to take over the world. Here it is Waldorf-occultists (or are they the same?). There is really no system or logic to this hate-mongering.
I find it hard to take much of this rambling seriously. The history is hopelessly mixed up, and a remarkable number of Nazi's are suddenly Jews. People are declared Masons for whom there has previously been no evidence of Masonic connections. There is precious little in the way of evidence for any of the many claims made throughout out the article (which numbers some 11,000 words in the original) and it all seems written to scare a specific white fundamentalist segment of the US population. None of the claims made against Steiner can possible be taken seriously.
