Aliens and Religion, Part 8 - Theozoology and World Ice Theory
How Beliefs About Aliens Played *A* Role in Nazism
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Religion and Aliens
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This post continues a series of objective, non-judgement views of various religions’ views on the potential of extraterrestrial life. See the previous posts on Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism and Other Christian Faiths, Islam Judaism, the Dharma faiths, and the ancient religions for more.
Disclaimer: A Special Note for this Sensitive Topic
Theozoology and World Ice Theory are parts of and influenced a broader movement known as the esoteric faith of Ariosophy. These beliefs formed the German occultic counterculture in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Ariosophy influenced groups like the Thule Society, which provided a core membership for the German Workers Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party.
While I am practicing Catholic and believe everything the Church teaches, my look at other religions’ beliefs on the possibility of alien life has been objective, with no opinion on the beliefs themselves given by me. However, for this post, I will make an exception.
Nazism in all its forms is evil, whether Hitlerite, Strasserism, neo-Nazism, esoteric, or other. God bless those who crushed Nazi Germany. Nothing in this newsletter should be considered as an endorsement of Nazism. Ideologies that seek to pit man against each other are evil, whether left, right, or third position.
Now that we have stomped once again on Nazism’s grave, let’s discover how aliens played a side role in creation myths that influenced the Nazi’s.
Background: The Dark Myths of the Aryans
The nineteenth century saw the collapse of the Habsburg-run Holy Roman Empire and the rise of a unified German state. The main drive uniting people in this effort was German nationalism, which went from nearly nothing to a latecomer on the world scene, ready to make up for lost time. A significant cultural off-shoot of this nationalism was the German Volk Movement (Volkische Bewegung). This loose grouping created a romanic interpretation of the past filled with noble ancient tales and a belief that the pre-Christian Germanic beliefs were pure. Some believed either Christianity needed to have its Roman and Jewish elements.
Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of the ancient city of Troy significantly boosted the Volk movement. Schilemann noticed swastikas were prominent throughout the world, especially in Indo-European-speaking cultures. This revelation gave Vokische proponents a way to tie Germany to great civilizations instead of considering their homeland an ancient European backwater.
Novelist Guido von List introduced occultic mysticism into the folk movement with his Ariosophy. List claimed the well-known German paganism was a cover for the “true” beliefs of the ancient German beliefs that he called “Wotonism.” List believed a Woton-run German empire once was the pinnacle of an advanced ancient civilization. However, Christianity from Rome and later Jewish interests worked to tear the Germans down. To return to greatness, Germans needed to reject foreign influence and capitalism, which to him were tools of an international anti-German conspiracy, and embrace a German state that would reduce non-Germans to second-class citizen status.
Theozoology: Introducing Aliens into Ariosophy
Adolf Lanz, who went by the name Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels, was a former Catholic monk who wanted to combine his interests in the Bible with his German nationalism and weird sexual desires. Lanz was a friend of List’s, and the two fed off each other. After engaging with List and dealing with his own sexual issues, Lanz came up with his religion of Theozoology.
Lanz added to Ariosophy with his book Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite-Apelings and the Divine Electron. In Theozoology, Lanz taught angels were in reality interstellar aliens made out of pure energy known as Theoza. These Theoza settled on Earth, which was already populated by the Biblical Adam-line “ape-men.” While the Theoza originally reproduced amongst themselves via electricity, eventually a Theoza engaged in unnatural relations with Eve. Those hybrid children who attempted to keep pure Theoza lines became “Aryans” while those who engaged in more unnatural relations became blacks, Jews, Slavs, and other races Lanz considered undesirable. Those who engaged in the “worst” behaviors devolved into modern day apes. This myth separated German Aryans from the rest of the world, demanding a “racial hygiene” program to restore Germans to a status where they would regain Theoza superpowers such as psychic abilities.
The Lanz-founded Order of the New Templars adopted the swastika in 1907 as the symbol of Aryans. This was the first time the Volkische movement used the symbol not to tie the German race with other civilizations but as a specific symbol to represent the “lost concept” of an Aryan master race.
Lanz published the magazine Ostara, which promoted Theozoology and called for other races to be destroyed to restore the original “superpowered Aryan race” to glory. The sacrifice was done to appease Lanz’s concept of a Theoza creator god who made other Theoza. One of the magazine’s readers was a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler.
World Ice Theory: Aryans from Space and a Living Universe
In 1894, Austrian engineer Hans Horbiger had a dream featuring ice as the universe’s base element. In the dream, space ice, as the base element of the universe, collided and combined to create planets and other space objects. Space ice, in turn, would compete against ice-turned-solar fire in a universe of struggle. According to this theory, which he named Welteislehre (World Ice Theory, sometimes translated as Cosmic Ice Theory), our solar system came about by a star crashing into a dead star of water, thus creating large chunks of ice. The shards of ice became the planets, moons, and asteroids we know today.
Life itself came from this space ice, settling on Earth via panspermia. This life thrived in colder climates but degraded in warmer temperatures. Thus, “Aryans” living in northern Europe were the highest form of humans.
World Ice Theory held events like Noah’s flood occurred because stellar ice objects hit Earth, melted, and flooded the land. These catastrophes destroyed “lost” advanced “Aryan” civilizations, as well as mythological creatures such as giants.
World Ice Theory is silent on whether the original life that came to Earth settled elsewhere. However, Horbiger believed the universe itself was another living organism. He stated each part of the universe was a small component of a universe-sized creature. Every “conflict”, whether fire versus ice or one race against the other, was thought of as the universe-creature’s immune system in action. To wage war was one fulfilling one’s part in the cosmos.
What the Nazis Did with These Theories
World Ice Theory and Theozoology were picked up and discussed in the Ariosophy-believing and promoting Thule Society, which future leading Nazis Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hans Frank were members of.
During Hitler’s rise to power, he severed the Nazi Party’s ties with the Thule Society and, during his reign over Germany, had the Gestapo isolate and then suppress the New Templars. The Nazi Party would not allow cliques to operate within it.
A short docu-drama called Hitler Stole My Ideas is based on Lanz’s accusations of Hitler stealing ideas from Theozoology.
However, the Nazis embraced the “science” of World Ice Theory because it presented a cosmic view that wasn’t Jewish-made like Eisenstein’s Relativity and emphasized a universe of “struggle.” Hitler supported the theory and planned to make a planetarium dedicated in part to Horbiger. He even suggested that World Ice Theory could replace Christianity one day.
As for Theozoology, despite the Nazis shutting down the New Templars, the faith was part of a plethora of ideas the Nazis allowed to spread despite Lanz being banned from creating new writings. The Nazis let people pick and choose which anti-Semitic theories they embraced, giving the impression people were not being forced into one particular reason to hate the Jews, thus limiting blowback. The one group that embraced Ariosophy occultism was the SS, which had the freedom to do so with its members. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, would even steal quotes from Lanz’s Ostara.
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Until Next Time
Thank you for reading this newsletter post. Next time, I will have some major Fallen and Risen news. Then, we will continue the religion and aliens series by looking at American Indian native religions (see previous editions of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism and other Christian Groups, Islam, Judaism, the Dharma faiths, and Ancient Religions).
As always, please leave a comment with any questions, reviews, thoughts, whatever about Fallen, Risen, or whatever else I have discussed. I promise to reply!