by Frank Lost
The Black Sun in the Gruppenführer hall of
the Wewelsburg lies exactly above the swastika
on the ceiling of the crypt underneath.
In the center of the marbled floor of the Gruppenführersaal (SS Generals' Hall) on the first floor of the castle lies an inlaid dark green Sonnenrad (“sun wheel” in German). The axis of the Sonnenrad was made out of a pure golden disk that was supposed to become the center of whole "Germanic world empire" from 1941 on. The design resembles that of Early Medieval Germanic brooches (Zierscheiben), possibly worn on Frankish and Alemannic women's belts. Its shape bears a solar significance, showing a twelve-spoke sun wheel looking like a decorative disk of the Merovingians that represented the passage of the visible sun through the months of the year. The design also reminds one of the round table of Arthurian legends where each spoke of the sun wheel represents one "knight" or one officer of the "inner" SS.
Close-up of the now famous Black Sun symbol
It is most likely that this symbol was embedded during the Third Reich but it is only after the Second World War that it was called Die Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun in German), though there is no evidence at all that Himmler's SS linked this symbol with that of the Black Sun. The very association between both seems to be a post-war esoteric interpretation that is still in use in certain scenes of neo-Nazism and Odinism.
Neo-Nazi Black Sun symbol
According to Jean-Michel Angebert (Les mystiques du soleil, 1971) the swastika is actually the Black Sun, i.e., a principle of hidden energy in a multi-dimensional universe beyond the visible world. It is close to Iamblichus' philosophy based on gnosis. Without going so far, the sun wheel possibly had a relation to Germanic sun-based mysticism which was propagated by the SS; the sun was interpreted as "the strongest and most visible expression of God."
Here we find again the opposing traditional concepts of physical objects versus their spiritual expression: the marble Black Sun symbol from Wewelsburg vs. the inner light of a mystical universal and its creative energy. In the same way, the material cup of the Grail can be opposed to the alchemical properties of the beverage it holds, i.e., spiritual immortality. We can draw the comparison even further with the Sol Invictus ("Invincible Sun"), which was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire, who seems to have inspired Himmler's sun mysticism.
In 274 AD the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult, alongside the traditional Roman cults. But like the inner light of the Black Sun, or the immortality and/or mystical knowledge hidden in the Grail, the Sol Invictus stood for a spiritual sun, a metaphysical concept, only accessible to initiates, not just the physical sun visible to the exoteric crowds.
All these stories surely added up to the myth that Castle Wewelsburg was an esoteric center, hiding not only rare historical artifacts (like the fake Celtic Cauldron of genuine pure gold recently found in the Chiem Lake in Germany) brought in by the Ahnenerbe but also the deepest spiritual secrets about the origins of the Nordic race.
Weisthor, Himmler's Rasputin – Karl Maria Wiligut, aka Weisthor, headed a Department for Pre-and Early History that was created within the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA). There, he developed the plans for the rebuilding of the Wewelsburg into a pseudo-religious center for the SS elite.
During the 1920s, he designed his own runic alphabet with mostly alternative meanings from the mainstream Futhark and wrote with them 38 verses called the Halgarita Sprüche.
He claimed to have memorized these verses as a child, when taught by his father. Werner von Bülow and Emil Rüdiger of the Edda-Gesellschaft (Edda Society) claimed some verses are connected with the Black Sun, like verse number 27 which would be a 20,000-year-old "solar blessing" according to Willigut:
Sunur Saga santur toe
Syntir peri fuir Sprueh
Wilugoti Haga tharn
Halga fuir santur toe.
which translates, according to Werner von Bülow, more or less as follows, and taking into account that this language exists probably only in Weisthor's brain:
"Legend tells, that two Suns, two wholesome in change-rule UR and SUN, alike to the hourglass which turned upside down ever gives one of these the victory The meaning of the divine errant wandering way dross star in fire's sphere became in fire-tongue revealed to the Earth-I-course of the race of Paradise god willing leaders lead to the weal through their care in universal course, what is visible and soon hidden, whence they led the imagination of mankind polar in change-play, from UR to SUN in sacrificial service of waxing and waning, in holy fire Santur is ambiguously spent in sparks, but turns victorious to blessing"
Karl Maria Wiligut aka Weisthor
These confused and almost incomprehensible verses are supposed to stress that Santur would be a burnt-out sun and the source of power of the Hyperboreans. These were purportedly the ancestors of Germanic tribes living in the North Pole, when its climate was mild and its landscapes were green. Hyperborea had its capital city, Thule, and was once identified with Iceland. Furthermore Santur allegedly still orbits in the vicinity of our planet as a Black Sun and sends powerful hidden energy. The latter recalls the Nemesis hypothesis and the invisible creative energy that a Black Sun is supposed to radiate.
The Vienna Circle – In the 4th district of Wieden in Vienna, Austria, ex-Waffen-SS Wilhelm Landig founded a group in 1950 called the Vienna Circle or, after him, the Landig Group. The group gathered the first time at Landig's apartment and held discussion on esoteric and völkisch (nationalist and racialist) mysticism. They revived and promoted the mythology of Hyperborea which was, as we saw, allegedly the home of the Aryans' ancestors in the Arctic.
Wilhelm Landig
According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Black Sun, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, 2002), the Landig group invented the concept of the Black Sun that flourished in neo-Nazi groups during the 1990s. It was through Wilhelm Landig's own novels that this Nazi revival was made possible. He wrote for this purpose a trilogy: Götzen gegen Thule, Rebellen für Thule and Wolfszeit um Thule.
Erich Halik, a prominent member of the Vienna Circle, was the first to link the esotericism of the inner SS elite with the Black Sun concept, but not yet to the Wewelsburg symbol. Landig called the Black Sun "a substitute Swastika and mystical source of energy, capable of regenerating the Aryan race." The visible sun would be merely a symbol of an invisible anti-sun: "Everything that can be comprehended by human senses is material, the shadow of the invisible spiritual light. The material fire is – seen in this way – also just the shadow of the spiritual fire."
Landig revived old völkisch pseudo-scientific theories about Atlantis, Hörbiger's Hollow Earth and Aryan mysticism. In his trilogy, he locates in the Arctic the Aryan positive forces of the Black Sun, which according to him is represented by a disk that is not black, but of a deep purple that will turn white when Germany eventually overcomes this titanic world struggle. Interestingly enough, Landig states that the Black Sun refers to the Babylonian religion, which in turn would come from the Aldebaran star, which "shines within us and gives us the power of understanding." For Landig, the Black Sun is the symbol for an esoteric order inside the SS, and it "shines above the Midnight Mountain an invisible light because it shines within." The Midnight Mountain seems to be present in the myths of different people throughout the globe like the Chinese and the Indians, the latter calling it Mount Meru.
Furthermore, Landig circulated stories about Nazi flying saucers assembled in an underground base in Antarctica (see Neuschwabenland expedition), from which US Admiral Byrd could not extirpate them.
The Black Sun of Tashi Lhunpo (Die schwarze Sonne von Tashi Lhunpo) is an occult Nazi thriller written in 1991 by Russel McCloud, a pen name for Stephan Mögle-Stadel. It tells of the assassinations of the president of the European Bank and a leading member of the UN Security Council, which are linked by a brand mark of the symbol of the Black Sun on the foreheads of the victims. This is the very first time that the symbol of th
e Sun Wheel, as found at the Wewelsburg castle, is linked with the Black Sun myth itself. If it contradicts the deep purple disk of Landig's trilogy, it evokes nonetheless very well a universal creative source of energy, with its black circle and twelve radial sig runes. The only problem is that it seems to be a pure fiction, Stephan Mögle-Stadel being just a journalist enjoying writing a thriller.
Nonetheless the neo-Nazi scene adopted the Wewelsburg Sonnenrad as the one and only true symbol of the Black Sun, and a legal substitute to the swastika, which is forbidden in many European countries.
More Post-war Nazi Fantasies – According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, "In the early 1990s, the Austrians Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl developed new Nazi UFO myths involving ancient Babylon, Vril energy and extraterrestrial civilizations in the solar system of Aldebaran. These colorful ideas are integral elements of a dualist Marcionite religion propagated by Ralf Ettl through his Tempelhofgesellschaft (Temple Society) in Vienna, identified as a secret successor to the historic Templars, who had absorbed Gnostic and heretical ideas in the Levant". Ratthofer and Ettl state in the DVD UFO – Geheimnisse des Dritten Reichs (1990) (UFO – Secrets of the Third Reich), "Within the SS the Thule Society created a separate secret organization called the 'Black Sun' with the 'Geheimnis Schwarze Sonne' as its logo."
In 1997 Peter Moon wrote The Black Sun: Montauk's Nazi-Tibetan Connection in which he shows for the first time in Nazi occultism a picture of the "Signet of the Black Sun." This is allegedly the symbol of "the innermost secret society of Nazi Germany: the Black Sun."
As a matter of conclusion, the Black Sun can be seen as a multi-faceted myth with an ancient background, though it is not demonstrated that its various historical phases of development refer to the same concept. It is possible, though, to identify many common elements to these myths, which could contribute to unveiling parts of a unique and original truth.
Signet of the Black Sun
The Black Sun seems to be an invisible counterpart of our visible sun, which is able to bestow its influence onto planets, things and living beings. It hides from mortals, though keeping tuned with their very biological rhythms, but can be seen by souls in the Netherworld. Its alchemical and psycho-analytical meaning is that of a spiritual force, able to lead a deep internal transformation prior to a total rebirth or reincarnation.
Nazis were after the spiritual secrets of the Nordic race, and they could have envisaged the Black Sun, at least in a very confidential inner circle of the SS, as a universal pervasive force of creative energy that shines "from within." Some went so far as to state that this force would "allow souls to experience many levels of reality simultaneously."
This definition of the Black Sun resembles strongly that of the Vril force, for which documentation is scarce if not mostly unreliable. Likewise, it is said that our planet is hollow and illuminated by a central Black Sun, dispensing a greenish light.
The Vril
The Vril, as well as the secret society bearing its name, is now a traditional stopover in the meanders of so-called Nazi esotericism. Compared to the Black Sun, the Vril’s very existence is really controversial, and sometimes we shall have to depart from historically verifiable facts in order to enter a twilight zone between myth and reality. But how unreal are the myths?
In the Beginning Was a Sci-Fi Novel – Many sects actually begin with the sayings or visions of a single man, whereas others are based on a holy book or even a novel. This is the case of Scientology, but it could be applied to some extent to other very successful religions. The Vril was first mentioned in a book entitled The Coming Race, written by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1871. Though the term “science fiction” did not exist at that time, it would well fit to this book as well as to Jules Verne's. He also wrote Zanoni, an occult fiction, and the famous Last Days of Pompeii.
The plot centers on a traveller who lost his way in an old mine in Great Britain, only to find himself the guest of an antediluvian subterranean race called the Vril-ya. Neither gods nor angels, they look, however, far superior to humans by their height, their intelligence, their cold wisdom and their supernatural powers like telepathy. They harness an "all-permeating" fluid called Vril. Through training their will, they can master this universal, invisible, creative energy that can heal, transform or destroy, besides acting as a fuel for transportation devices and lighting of the underground. The latter was of a light green luminescence.
The hero and narrator is taught the most accessible history of the Vril-ya by Zee, his host's daughter. He learns that when the underground caves are not sufficient for their breeding, the Vril-ya will have to conquer the surface world, destroying mankind if necessary. Vril is indeed so powerful that a Vril-ya child could reduce a city of tens of millions of inhabitants to ashes in a matter of seconds.
The narrator studies the Vril-ya language and draws the conclusion that they are "descended from the same ancestors as the great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant civilization of the world."
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Somehow the Vril-ya have much in common with Lovecraft's Unknown Superiors: telepathy, mastery of unknown forces and an antediluvian ancestry.
Black Sun & Alchemy – One ought to be cautious with all that refers to esotericism, since one fake myth reinforces the other, especially on the Internet. Nonetheless, the idea exists that Bulwer-Lytton only based his novel on more ancient myths and archetypes, which were popular among Middle Ages alchemists. The life force underlying the Vril was indeed already known since antiquity as Prana, Chi, Ojas, Astral Light, Odic Force and Orgone. Some advocates of the Hollow Earth Theory have even said, more recently, that Vril came from the Black Sun hidden force that would be an irradiating Prima Materia ("primordial matter" in Latin), at the center of our planet.
Green is the Symbol of the Vril – The green light that illuminates the Vril-ya’s underworld reminds of many other occurrences of that color: Goethe's tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; the Holy Grail that could be an emerald fallen from Lucifer's forehead; the Greenland, named in the 10th century by Erik the Red, in remembrance of the Primordial Earth, though 60 percent of the island was by then already covered by white ice; Osiris was seen by certain Egyptologists as a green irradiating god; the Mesoamerican Quetzalcoatl Great Priest drew their might from an enormous magical emerald and the god himself was green; the famous Emerald Tablet (tabula smaragdina) of the hermetic tradition of the alchemists; eventually, some green lunar stones would possess a "levitation" power enabling witches to fly in old Scottish lore or, hidden under cathedrals, would have prevented bombs from falling onto them during WWII in Germany.
Quetzalcoatl
Let us have a special mention for the Order of the Green Dragon and the Monk with the Green Gloves.
The Order of the Green Dragon was a Japanese secret (political/mystical) society dedicated to mastering the human body, which in turn permitted access to a "great power." Higher initiates were required to be able to germinate a seed by telekinesis.
While a military attaché in Tokyo before WWI, Karl Haushofer would have been one of just three Westerner members of the Order. Haushofer was one of the founders of geopolitics (the theory of Lebensraum or vital space) and allegedly also a member of the Vril Society. He never was a member of the Nazi Party, and was even married to a Jewish woman despite many contrary assertions in neo-Nazi esoteric literature.
The Vril Society profess to have sent expeditions to Tibet before WWII, and as late as 1942, to meet the Bon Pö monks of Agarthi. In the ‘20s, Tibetan monks formed the Society of Green Men in Berlin and Munich. Their High Priest was a man called the Monk with the Green Gloves. Hitler would have visited him for his clairvoyant gifts.
The Society of Green Men, helped by the Order of the Green Dragon, allegedly helped the Nazis to try to turn Aryans into God-Men. Pauwels and Bergier, in their Morning of the Magicians, a very unreliable source but the only one on this subject, report that during
the fall of Berlin, the Russians found many dead bodies of Asians in German uniforms who apparently committed suicide in a ritual way.
According to the same source, Haushofer would have committed the same kind of suicide, except that this is historically untrue. Historian H. A. Jacobsen proved that all what was written in The Morning of the Magicians about him, the Thule Society, and the Vril Society is simply fiction.