Book | Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff in Turkey and Secret Practices of the Sufi Freemasons

Mavi Boncuk | 

Secret Practices of the Sufi Freemasons

by Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff (Author), Stephen E. Flowers (Introduction, Translator) [1]

Originally published in Germany in 1924, this rare book by Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff reveals the secret spiritual exercises of the Bektashi Order of Sufis as well as how this order, also known as Oriental Freemasonry, preserves the ancient spiritual doctrines forgotten by modern Freemasonry. Sebottendorff explains how the mysterious abbreviated letters found in the Qur’an represent formulas for perfecting the spirit of the individual. When combined with Masonic hand signs and grips and conducted accordingly to a precise schedule, these formulas incorporate spiritual power into the body and transform the soul from its base state into a noble, godlike state: the Magnum Opus of the medieval alchemists.

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.

Pictured: Sebottendorff (left), Nuri Killigil [Ennver pasha's brother] (middle), M. Remzi Denker a Killigil business partner (right).

EXCERPT

Chapter 1
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. 

[1] Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff (1875-1945) was a Freemason and practitioner of alchemy. In 1900 he moved to Turkey where he met the Jewish Termudi family, who introduced him to Rosicrucianism and led to his initiation into a local Masonic lodge. In 1910 he founded a lodge of the Bektashi Order in Constantinople. Returning to Germany, in 1917 he founded the Thule Society, an occult organization that led to the German Workers’ Party--joined in 1919 by Adolf Hitler, who transformed it into the Nazi Party. Sebottendorff left the Thule Society as it became increasingly political, fleeing to Turkey. 

Translator Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Germanic languages and medieval studies from the University of Texas at Austin and studied the history of occultism at the University of Göttingen, Germany. The author of more than two dozen books, including Lords of the Left-Hand Path, he lives near Austin, Texas. 

[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.

According to his own statements, Glauer was adopted in the Orient by a baron Heinrich von Sebottendorf and has since called himself Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf. A first marriage lasted only a few months. He became an Ottoman citizen in 1911 and was apparently adopted (under Turkish law) by the expatriate Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff shortly thereafter. 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, Glauer 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.He then returned to Germany and first settled in Berlin, then in Kleinzschachwitz, a suburb of Dresden villas, where he bought a large property for 50,000 Reichsmarks. Because of his Turkish nationality, he was not drafted into the military during the First World War. In 1915, he married Bertha Anna Iffland, the daughter of a wealthy Berlin merchant, in Vienna, and has lived on his wife's fortune ever since.

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)..

[*] Herbert Rittlinger (born December 26, 1909 in Leipzig ; † June 12, 1978 in Oed am Rain ) was a German writer , photographer , explorer and pioneer of canoeing .

Book: Folding boat pushes forward. From the Carpathian jungle to wild Kurdistan. FA Brockhaus , Leipzig 1934 ( Travel and Adventure )

Rittlinger first experienced the Second World War as a soldier in a propaganda company in France. Then he came to the German defense under Wilhelm Canaris . With his wife Marianne, disguised as a harmless businessman, from 1942 Rittlinger headed the “ Fremde Heere West ” residency in Istanbul . There he was the successor to Paul Leverkuehn . In his later book ("Secret Service with Limited Liability") he described, among other things, the encounter with Rudolf von Sebottendorf , one of his agents, whom he called the storyteller in the book "Hakawaki".