Sebottendorff, [2]expelled from Germany in 1923 as an undesirable alien, returned in 1933. With his book, Bevor Hitler Kam, banned by the Bavarian political police on March I, 1934, and the Thule Group dissolved, Sebottendorff was arrested by the Gestapo, interned in a concentration camp and then expelled to Turkey.
There are several theories concerning Sebottendorff’s death. It had been always believed that on the 8th of May 1945 Sebottendorff, while sitting at a café in Istanbul, learned from the radio that Admiral Dönitz had unconditionally surrendered; he paid the bill and left the café. Later he walked along the bridge of Galata and when he reached half way across the bridge he jumped into the sea with his pockets filled with stones.There is now evidence (which still needs to be checked) that von Sebottendorff remained alive after 1945, and was protected by Turkish intelligence (for whom he then worked) against anyone who might have been interested in him because of the role he had played in the origins of the Nazi Party. According to this version, von Sebottendorff moved back to Egypt, where he died in the 1950s. There is an urban legend in Turkey which claims Sebottendorff and Dr. Şefik Hüsnü Değmer [*] (1887-1959) the founder of the turkish newspaper Aydinlik, (also the head of the Turkish Communist Party) were actually the same people, but this claim has no backing.
Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff (or von Sebottendorf) was the alias of Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer (b. Hoyerswerda, Dresden November 9, 1875 – d. Istanbul May 8, 1945?), who also occasionally used another alias, Erwin Torre. He was an important figure in the activities of the Thule Society, a post-World War I German occultist organization that influenced many members of the NSDAP. He was a Freemason and a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology, and alchemy.
Glauer was born in Hoyerswerda (located northeast of Dresden in Saxony, Germany), the son of a locomotive engineer from Silesia. He appears to have worked as a technician in Egypt between 1897–1900, although according to his own account he spent less than a month there in 1900 after a short career as a merchant sailor. In July of that year he travelled to Turkey, where he settled in 1901 and worked as an engineer on a large estate there in Beykoz (Çubuklu) that belonged to Hüseyin Fahri Paşa a Bektaşi[3], and a Mason who introduced him to esoteric studies connecting him to the Sufi Tariqa of Medlevi.
The adoption was later repeated in Germany and its legal validity has been questioned, but it was endorsed by the Sebottendorff family (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 140-41) and on this basis he asserted his claim to the Sebottendorff name and to the title of Freiherr.
After fighting on the Ottoman-Turkish side in the First Balkan War, Sebottendorff returned to Germany with a Turkish passport in 1913. He was exempted from military service during the First World War because of his Ottoman citizenship and because of a wound received during the First Balkan War.
Glauer was initially interested in Theosophy and Freemasonry. In 1901 he was initiated by a family of Greek-Jewish Freemasons into a lodge which is believed to have been affiliated to the French Rite of Memphis. In Turkey, he became interested in numerology, kabbalah and Sufism (including secret mystical exercises still practised by Sufis of the Bektashi order).[1] Speculations say he might have converted to Sufi Islam [2] [3], although the evidence (from his own semi-autobiographical writings) is rather tenuous on this point. In his autobiographical novel Der Talisman des Rosenkreuzers (The Rosicrucian Talisman), Sebottendorff distinguishes between Sufi-influenced Turkish Masonry and conventional Masonry.
Sebottendorff’s version of Freemasonry did not prevent his striking up a friendship with the Germanenorden chancellor, Hermann Pohl, who violently opposed Freemasonry as being international and Jew-ridden, but who used masonic terminology and organizational structure, believing this would insure secrecy. Settling in Munich, he established the Thule Society[4][5], which became increasingly political, and in 1918 established a political party, the German Workers' Party. This party was joined in 1919 by Adolf Hitler, who transformed it into the National Socialist German Workers' Party or Nazi Party. Sebottendorf was also the owner of the Völkischer Beobachter, which Hitler bought in 1921.[5] The paper was to become Hitler’s most important propaganda tool.By then, however, Sebottendorff had left the Thule Society and Bavaria, having been accused of negligence in allegedly allowing the names of several key Thule Society members to fall into the hands of the government of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, resulting in the execution of seven members after the attack on the Munich government in April 1919, an accusation that he never denied. Sebottendorff fled Germany for Switzerland and then Turkey.
After leaving Germany, Sebottendorff published Die Praxis der alten türkischen Freimauerei: Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis der Alchimie ("The practice of ancient Turkish Freemasonry: The key to the understanding of alchemy"), and then, in 1925, Der Talisman des Rosenkreuzers, a semi-autobiographical novel which is the main source for his earlier life.
He returned to Germany in January 1933, and published Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement), dealing with the Thule Society and the DAP. Hitler himself understandably disliked this book, which was banned. Sebottendorff was arrested, but somehow escaped (presumably due to some friendship from his Munich days) and in 1934 returned to Turkey.
Sebottendorff was an agent of the German military intelligence in neutral Istanbul during the period 1942–1945, while apparently also working as a double agent for the British military. His German handler, Herbert Rittlinger, later described him as a "useless" agent (eine Null), but kept him on largely, it seems, because of an affection for "this strange, by then penniless man, whose history he did not know, who pretended enthusiasm for the Nazi cause and admiration for the SS but who in reality seemed little interested in either, much preferring to talk about Tibetans".
[1] "In 1901 von Sebottendorff was initiated into a Masonic lodge which, like many in the Middle East, had connections with the French Grand Orient"). Furthermore: "the masonic lodge, which Glauer had joined at Bursa in 1901, may have been a local cadre of the pre-revolutionary Secret Society of Union and Progress, founded on the model of Freemasonry by Salonican Turks to generate liberal consciousness during the repressive reign of the Sultan." (Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., 139).
"...he learned Turkish from a Muslim imam and worked for a Sufi initiate at a toewn near Bursa, becoming initiated into Freemasonry there in 1901." Peter Levenda, Unholy Alliance. New York : Continuum, 2002, c. 1995. p. 74.
[2] Sebottendorff believed that the esoteric tradition of Sufism was the purest stream of wisdom and that it had nourished European occultism through astrologists, Rosicrucians and authentic freemasons of the Middle Ages. He claimed: "No one can accuse me of profanation, nor of sacrilege in uncovering the course of these mysteries...It is the means that the communities of dervishes traditionally use in order to acquire special strength by means of unusual techniques. They are, for the most part, men who aspire to the highest rite, that from which come those who have been prepared for their missions as spiritual leaders of Islam... This high rite is the practical basis of Freemasonry, and it inspired in times past the work of the alchemists and of the Rosicrucians...But to reply to the accusation of my being guilty of some kind of treachery: I say to you plainly that this book has been written on the instructions of the leaders of the Order."
[3] The Bektashi were also in close contact with the Sabbatean Movement from the start. When the false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi would visit Constantinople, for instance, he became “accustomed to living in a dervish monastery,” Gershom Scholem writes, “[a]nd it can hardly be doubted that there were early secret ties between the order of the Bektashi and the Donmeh.” It is known that among the Bektashi orders the doctrine of takiye (dissimulation) was widely practiced; it permitted the adherents of even radical mystical heresies in Islam to appear to the outside world as a wholly orthodox segment of the Sunni community in order to avoid persecution. It is also known that their enemies always claimed this duplicity of the Bektashi and accused them of it. Often they also added even more far-reaching accusation that the Bektashi, or at least certain of their subgroups, secretly subscribed to a religious nihilism. Now it is just this theory and practice of takiye which, though here for purely internal Jewish reasons, determined the Donmeh’s way of life in which the external appearance stood in radical contradiction to what they taught and stood for. Their common status as a mystical heresy with often extreme aberrations was bound to create sympathy between these two groups. Perhaps it is also no accident that the cemetary of the most extreme group of the Donmeh, with the grave of its leader Baruchya Russo (in Islam: Osman Baba), was located in the immediate vicinity of the Bektashi monastery of Salonika. According to Donmeh tradition, moreover, aside from several groups of Sabbatian families which still later joined them from Poland, a number of Turkish and Greek non-Jewish families also passed over and joined one of their subsects. - The Messianic Idea in Judaism (Schocken, 1995), pp. 150-1.
[4] Thule was a legendary island in the far north, similar to Atlantis and Mu, 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 (similar to the "Masters" of Theosophy or the White Brotherhood).
[5] Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the Gurdjeff disciple Karl Haushofer, the ace pilot Lothar Waisz, Prelate Gernot of the secret "Societas Templi Marcioni" (The Inheritors of the Knights Templar) and Maria Orsic, a transcendental medium from Zagreb met in Vienna. They all had extensively studied the "Golden Dawn", its teachings, rituals and especially its knowledge about Asian secret lodges. Sebottendorf and Haushofer were experienced travellers of India and Tibet and much influenced by the teachings and myths of those places. During the First World War Karl Haushofer had made contacts with one of the most influential secret societies of Asia, the Tibetan Yellow Hats" (dGe-lugs-pa). This sect was formed in 1409 by the Buddhist reformer Tsong-kha-pa. Haushofer was initiated and swore to commit suicide should his mission fail. The contacts between Haushofer and the Yellow Hats led in the Twenties to the formation of Tibetan colonies in Germany.
SECRET SUFI PRACTICES OF THE BAKTASHI ORDER REVEALED A Presentation of the Ritual, Doctrine and Signs of Recognition Among the Oriental Freemasons Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf
Laying out the complete program of spiritual exercises, Sebottendorff explains each abbreviated word-formula in the Qur’an, the hand gestures that go with them, and the exact order and duration for each exercise. Including a detailed biography of Sebottendorff and an examination of alchemy’s Islamic heritage, this book shows how the traditions of Oriental Freemasonry can ennoble the self and lead to higher knowledge.
In addition, Sebottendorff deals with Islamic mysticism, Sufism, the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and the ariosophical offshoot of the "theozoology" of Lanz von Liebenfels. In his work, published in 1924, Glauer describes encounters with Sufism, in particular the Bektashi dervish order, which he calls "old Turkish Freemasonry".
The British esoteric researcher Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke suspects that the lodge in Bursa was connected to French lodges of the Memphis Rite. In addition, it was a cover organization of the Young Turkish Committee for Unity and Progress, an illegal opposition movement against the absolutist regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II. Sebottendorf also inherited Termudi's library of occult books.
Sebottendorff believed he saw Rosicrucian traditions in their practices, which served to transform the body into subtle-matter. With his work, he provided new impulses for letter magic by superimposing the dervish practice with the letter exercises of JB Kernings and Karl Kolbs.
In 1910 he is said to have founded a mystical lodge in Istanbul.
Practice
Islam means “submission,” that is, submission to the will of God. The believer can just commend himself to the will of God simply because it is the will of God. He feels secure and does not ask why this is so and that is different--he fulfills the divine law simply because it is the revealed law of God. He accepts his fate as being immutable and, at the most, attempts by means of prayer to implore for mercy from God when the burden becomes too great for him. But the sign of the true believer will consistently be that he does not ask for release from the burden, but rather for the strength to be able to bear it. “Lead us in the way of those who do not err,” the Prophet prescribes to those who pray.
This faithful condition is what is most worthy to strive after, according to all religious systems. Actually he is also the most happy, it is he who the Prophet values most highly, and he represents this as his only goal--and therefore his religion is called Islam.
Now beside the belief there is something else that makes it equally possible for a person to yield to his fate; it is no longer faith but knowledge--knowledge of the divine laws. The one who knows no longer fulfills this law blindly but rather knowingly. The truly wise one is very near to the believer, but he is superior to the believer.
The Prophet created a very wise institution to open the way to knowledge for everyone who truly seeks it. According to this system in the Qur’an he provided explicit signs, which point the way to knowledge, and which have to reveal the law of creation to someone who gains knowledge from within his own being. The highest form of knowledge will always lead the wise to yield to Divine Providence without complaint--that is, to Islam through knowledge.
In what follows we will concern ourselves with this path. How the Prophet himself came into possession of this knowledge is recounted in the form of the following legend.
Not far from Mecca there lived at the time of Mohammed an aged hermit, Ben Chasi, who was teaching the Prophet. When the lesson was over the hermit gave him a metallic plate upon which were engraved formulas, the meaning of which the then thirty-year-old Prophet had just learned. Soon thereafter the hermit died, but Mohammed kept on teaching the secret of these formulas in the most intimate circles. Abu Bekr, the first calif, inherited the plate and the knowledge, which only spread within a small circle after the death of the Prophet: this is the secret knowledge of the oriental Freemasons.
In order to ensure against the loss of the formulas the Prophet distributed them throughout the Qur’an according to a precise key. The key is known, and the formulas are preserved in the Qur’an, such that the possibility remains for reconstructing the system at any time.
The formulas are preserved in the so-called abbreviated letters,1 the meaning of which is debated among orientalists as well as different commentators. Some are of the opinion that these letters are signatures. Individual Suras certainly originated under highly variable conditions: the Prophet dictated some, others he recited while friends wrote them down, still others were recorded later from memory. When the Suras were collected, the letters, which indicated the originator of the Sura, would have remained, but now without their meaning.
Some European scholars are of the view that these letters represent notes by the scribe. Thus ALM is supposed to mean: amara li muhamed--“Mohammed commanded me to write.”
Arabic commentators view these letters as holy abbreviations. Thus ALM means: allah latif madshid--“God is good.” Or, as another thinks: ana lahu alamu--“I am the God who knows.”
For others the letters are to be interpreted in a kabalistic sense. Certainly all the Suras in which these letters occur contain definite indications that they have something special to say.
The Arabic language, like all the Semitic languages, does not write the vowels. If one does not read these letters as such, but rather as words, they yield no meaning. For this reason people have been scratching their heads over the meaning of these letters. But in actuality these are the secret formulas concealed in the letters that someone who knows the truth can now easily read and pronounce. All of these formulas are compounds of the vowel A with one or several consonants.
Number of the Sura / Name of the Sura / Formula
2 / The Cow / alam
3 / Amran’s Family / alam
7 / El Araf / alamas
10 / Jonah / alar
11/ Houd / alar
12 / Joseph / alar
13 / Thunder / alamar
14 / Abraham / alar
15 / A-hijr / alar
19 / Mary / kaha ya as
20 / Ta ha / ta ha
26 / The Poet / tasam
27 / The Ant / tas
28 / The Narration / tasam
29 / The Spider / alam
30 / The Greeks / alam
31 / The Wise / alam
32 / Adoration / alam
36 / Ya sin / yas
38 / Sad / sa
40 / The Believer / cham
41 / Revelations Well Expounded / cham
42 / Consultation / cham asak
43 / Gold Adornments / cham
44 / Smoke / cham
45 / Kneeling / cham
46 / Al ahqaf / cham
50 / Qaf / ka
68 / The Feather / na
822 days--14 different formulas
The formulas are present in twenty-nine Suras. The number of days results in twenty-five lunar months in which three days are missing. On these three days the one who was dedicating himself to these exercises was occupied doing something else, to which we will return later.
[2] Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer (9 November 1875 – 8 May 1945?), also known as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff (or von Sebottendorf) was a German occultist, writer, intelligence agent and political activist. He was the founder of the Thule Society, a post-World War I German occultist organization where he played a key role, and that influenced many members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. He was a Freemason, a Sufi of the Bektashi order - after his conversion to Islam- and a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology, and alchemy. He also used the alias Erwin Torre.
Sebottendorf was an agent of the German military intelligence in neutral Istanbul during the period 1942–1945, while apparently also working as a double agent for the British military. His German handler, Herbert Rittlinger[*], later described him as a "useless" agent (eine Null), but kept him on largely, it seems, because of an affection for "this strange, by then penniless man, whose history he did not know, who pretended enthusiasm for the Nazi cause and admiration for the SS but who in reality seemed little interested in either, much preferring to talk about Tibetans".
Sebottendorf is generally thought to have committed suicide by jumping into the Bosphorus on May 8, 1945.[**]
[**] Although he was said to have committed suicide on 8 May 1945 with a gun or jumping into the Bosphorus , these allegations were later refuted. In any case, news of this kind were revealed about all Nazis who started working for other intelligence services at that time, and it was revealed that they lived later. As a matter of fact, according to the records of Adana Police Department dated April 17, 1957, it is stated that three persons named Michael Stahl, Hans Bendik and Rudolff Freiherr von Sebottendorff stayed in Cumhuriyet Hotel.
So it is completely wrong that Sebottendorff committed suicide in 1945 or was killed on the Night of Long Knives in 1934. He officially traded under his own name in Adana and Antalya in the 1950s. And again, in 1957, he personally left a package of documents and letters to the British Secret Service on the condition that it would not be disclosed for 50 years. On December 10, 1965, news was published that he froze to death in Doğancılar Park in Üsküdar and was buried in a common grave (potter's field)..
Leverkuehn, Paul | Paul Leverkühn (1893 -1960 )
Sufis and Nazis. What a story. Sebottendorff's real
association with Freemasonry is difficult to determine, although it appears
that he was initiated into an irregular body of the Rite of Memphis under the
Grand Orient of France. From his own writings it is clear that his version of
Freemasonry incorporated aspects of Islamic Sufi mysticism, alchemy, astrology
and Rosicrucianism. In his autobiographical novel Der Talisman des
Rosenkreuzers (The Rosicrucian Talisman), he made a clear distinction between
Turkish Freemasonry and regular Freemasonry.
Sebottendorff believed that the esoteric tradition of Sufism
was the purest stream of wisdom and that it had nourished European occultism
through astrologists, Rosicrucians and authentic freemasons of the Middle Ages.
Sebottendorff, expelled from Germany in 1923 as an undesirable alien, returned
in 1933. With his book, Bevor Hitler Kam, banned by the Bavarian political
police on March I, 1934, and the Thule Group dissolved, Sebottendorff was
arrested by the Gestapo, interned in a concentration camp and then expelled to
Turkey, where he committed suicide by jumping into the Bosporus on May 9, 1945
upon hearing of the German surrender. Mavi Boncuk |
Rudolf von Sebottendorf was the alias of Adam Alfred Rudolf
Glauer (November 9, 1875 – May 8, 1945), who also occasionally used another
alias, Erwin Torre. He was an important figure in the activities of the Thule
Society, a post-World War I German political organization that was a precursor
of the Nazi Party. He was a practitioner of sufi meditation and astrology.
Glauer was born in Hoyerswerda, Germany, the son of an engine driver from Dresden. He used the alias Sebottendorf because he claimed that he had been adopted by the Sebottendorf family and had a claim to the title of count. After a career as a merchant seaman, Glauer settled in Turkey in 1901 and became the supervisor of a large estate there.
Glauer was deeply influenced by Sufi mysticism, other Eastern philosophies, and in particular, the writings of Madame Blavatsky. He used Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine to launch his own recreation of ancient Germanic myth, positing a coming historical moment in which he theorized that the Aryan race would be restored to prior glories by the appearance of a race of Supermen. Glauer eventually became the prime mover behind the Thule Society, which was one of the most important precursors of the Nazi Party, although the Nazi Party itself, once it had become ascendant, obliterated the Thule Society.
The Thule Society, which espoused ideas of extreme nationalism, race mysticism, virulent anti-Semitism, and the occult, was formed shortly after the end of World War I in Munich by Glauer. It attracted about 250 ardent followers in Munich and about 1500 in greater Bavaria. Members of the Thule Society included Rudolf Hess, Dietrich Eckart, and Alfred Rosenberg. Thule agents infiltrated armed formations of the Communist Party in Munich and plotted to destroy the party, hatching plans to kidnap the party's leader, Kurt Eisner, and launching an attack against Munich's Communist government on April 30, 1919. The Thule Society also started its own newspaper, Müncher Beobachter, in 1918, and eventually approached the organizer Anton Drexler to develop links between the Society and various extreme right workers' organizations in Munich.
Drexler was instrumental in merging the Thule Society with a workers' party that he was involved with. The merged organization became known as the München Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP). It was the DAP that Adolf Hitler was introduced to in 1919. By April 1, 1920, the DAP had been reconstituted as the Nazi Party, and Glauer, who was accused of negligence in allegedly allowing the names of several key Thule Society members to fall into the hands of the Communists, resulting in the execution of seven members after the attack on the Munich government in April 1919, had fled Germany for Switzerland and then Turkey. He returned to Germany in January 1933, but fled again in 1934. He was an agent of the German military in Istanbul during the period 1942–1945 (while apparently also working as a double agent for the British military). Glauer allegedly committed suicide by jumping into the Bosphorus on May 8, 1945.
Rudolf von Sebottendorf was the alias of Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer who also occasionally used another alias, Erwin Torre. He was an important figure in the activities of the Thule Society, a post-World War I German political organization that was a precursor of the Nazi Party. Glauer was born in Hoyerswerda, Germany, the son of an engine driver from Dresden. He used the alias Sebottendorf because he claimed that he had been adopted by the Sebottendorf family and had a claim to the title of count. After a career as a merchant seaman, Glauer settled in Turkey in 1901 and became the supervisor of a large estate there. Glauer was deeply influenced by Sufi mysticism, other Eastern philosophies, and in particular, the writings of Madame Blavatsky. He used Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine to launch his own recreation of ancient Germanic myth, positing a coming historical moment in which he theorized that the Aryan race would be restored to prior glories by the appearance of a race of Supermen.
Nearly half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, Nazism remains a subject of extensive historical inquiry, general interest, and, alarmingly, a source of inspiration for resurgent fascism in Europe. Goodrick-Clarke's powerful and timely book traces the intellectual roots of Nazism back to a number of influential occult and millenarian sects in the Habsburg Empire during its waning years. These sects combined notions of popular nationalism with an advocacy of Aryan racism and a proclaimed need for German world-rule.
This book provides the first serious account of the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful millenarian and occult sects that thrived in Germany and Austria almost fifty years before the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.
These millenarian sects (principally the Ariosophists) espoused a mixture of popular nationalism, Aryan racism, and occultism to support their advocacy of German world-rule. Over time their ideas and symbols, filtered through nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party, came to exert a strong influence on Himmler's SS.
The fantasies thus fueled were played out with terrifying consequences in the realities structured into the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the hellish museums of Nazi apocalypse, had psychic roots reaching back to millenial visions of occult sects. Beyond what the TImes Literary Supplement calls an intriguing study of apocalyptic fantasies, this bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.
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