@Taw
LOL so he was in that way, worse than EvD? He wasn't even an R-S to start?

Well so much for Thule then unless there is some older thread line that was usurped by the Aryan pride nutters.

@KimK
To the extent that some legends place Atlantis in the Atlantic before it sank into the see, Mu is placed in the Pacific before it disappeared. Its existence allegedly is documented in ancient clay tablets that ... I dunno where they are now ... were in an old temple in India. Mu, unlike Atlantis, also is said to be the mother continent and home to an advanced civilization from which the modern races of man came forth. How the races (three primary races) interacted in Mu sort of gets racially biased.

put it like this. if EvD had had his career in the first half of the century, he'd have been one of Adolf and heinrich's bestsest buddies. As it is, his drivel in the postwar environment was primarily aimed at making money from the gullible, however its still offensive despite the lack of overt racism because it still reduces humans to the roles of puppets in a greater scheme over which we haver no control, and it takes proper credit for the achievements of our ancestors and gives it to made-up aliens.

Sebottendorf did actually believe his rot, many of them did, inc Hausoffer who essentially designed the Nazi version of swastika (which Hitler then claimed for himself) and was a regular vistor along with Hess to Hitler's prison cell, and was also a personal acquaintance with the Duke of Hamilton who was a memeber of the Golden Dawn, thus also explaining Hess' flight to the Duke's estate in Scotland in 1941.

Myself i was never to clear on Neuschwabenland; was it supposed to be Germanic Antarctica? or somewhere else?

LOL - You certainly know how to get me wandering about don't you? I'm sure you know already but Neuschwabenland, named after the expeditionary ship, Schwabenland, is/was in Antarctica. Unlike the RvS romance with a sunken
kingdom under the North Pole, this one was an attempt to exercise German
territoriality over a chunk of Antarctica to put the 3rd Reich shoulder-to-shoulder with the other super powers.

Although the territory and territorial names that were marked off and established by the 3rd Reich were dissolved by the Antarctic Treaty, some of the mountain ranges and other geographic features first discovered and named by the Schwabenland expeditions have kept their German names.

oh yeah that's right, i'd forgotten, it's been years since I read anything about it.

my daughter who's doing 20th century history now for GCSE (she's in Russia at the mo for a week) asked me the other night what the difference was between left and right wing, and why the extremes of these two principles seem more similar than disparate in method. While I was explaining it to her (won't repeat all that here) I was thinking about this discussion we're having her and putting it in the context of post-WW1 Germany. Which drew me to this question?

was the Nazi regime essentially a mystic cult made up of true believers and fellow-travelling opportunists? Were people like Hausoffer right when they said that their influence on history had been amongst the greatest ever, that Hitler "had danced to the tune they'd played?" Nazism is anomalous in the ranks of authoritarian regimes because of its particularly biological focus, an amalgam of latent and overt german anti-semitism stemming back centuries, with perverted and demagougic social Darwinism.; other regimes more properly described as fascistic were not by definition racist, although they did often cruelly discriminate in matters of race, suffice to say it was usually a matter of policy rather than purpose.

Without the influence of pseudo-intellectual late 19th C romantic mysticism and the notions of predestined racial superiority embodied in it. i doubt that the primitive pre-Hitler NSDAP would have remained anything more than one insignificant extremist party and that Germany would have lapsed into an ultra conservatism in the 1930s, dominated by a military-backed right wing coalition.

@Indy, All I know about Thule is that it is an 18 character Rune script.

I have actually been to many archeological sites in Greece, and have seen a few sculptures and paintings that supposedly came from "Atlantis".

Indy - Fair enough, Indy it is (I prefer it too. "Ed" doesn't have the same panache ).

I find it interesting that we have so few histrical sources dealing with Atlantis, etc, and yet scholars have spent their lives postulating theory after theory that cannot be proven. Still, what else can one do?

@Loc - What about that rune? Can you elaborate?

@Taw.

The regime needed the mysticism. Yes. It was the religion that justified what they did. I think all the of fascists needed some form of mystical-religious aggrandizement. But I don't think the mysticism permeated the top of the Nazi pyramid.

I don't think Hitler and Goebbels nor for that matter Goering and, until his demise, Ernst Rohm were fanatically mystical believers in that stuff. I think they saw the mysticism for what it was... an excellent tool, like any other religion, to justify the means they wished to employ to achieve their ends. Bormann and Speer, also, I doubt were so mystified.

Himmler....well....he's different. Hess? Don't know. He was a nutter in any case.

I think Hitler, especially, would have considered himself to be the genius of what RvS espoused but not its high priest. After all, consider that unlike his Aryan ideal, he looked very much NOT so Aryan. Even worse off in comparison was Goebbels.

I suppose a fitter and trimmer version of either Rohm or Goering may have approximated something stereo-Aryanesque but the core cadre, in my opinion, had to have a knowing self-appraisal of their apparent biological contradiction to RvS' palaver.

I think these guys had to have looked at this nonsense with a cynical and mercenary eye.... Although... the fact that Goebbels took his family's and his own life in the name of the Reich at the very end is a rather dramatic testimony to his convictions (so to speak), I look upon that ending as the supreme expression of his agit-prop abilities.

The socio-economic conditions in the Weimar Republic also need to be kept in the forefront. Clemenceau's nearly barbaric price for peace, in my mind, really and truly kept Germany in ripe condition for something regrettable to take hold. The communists had at least an even chance to come to power... but they lacked monied backing. In opposition to them were nothing but political parties organized along what I would compare to over here as "single interest lobbies." And most of those single interests lacked any appeal beyond their constituencies.

A wounded nation that was not allowed to mend, like post WW1 Germany, would, I think, be the perfect petrie dish for propagating an ugly and crippling culture of mass desperation, humiliation and violent anger. The communists were tapping into that pile of emotional energy to blame the social inequities of capitalism and winning over quite a number of underdogs (in the Weimar, by definition, but for a small percentage of the people, most Germans were underdogs).

In the end, I think that the mass sentiment in Germany looked upon the NSDAP to be the more homegrown political solution than the communists (never mind Marx and Engels... they were Prussians anyway, right?)... and the monied interests found the Nazis to be less unpalatable. And news of what seemed to have happened to high culture in Russia would have proved to be a distasteful alternative to likely more than half the German population.

The mystic gobbledygook that poured out was an excellent sop to the downtrodden who, at that point, probably got no emotional solace from their own established faiths and certainly got less material satisfaction or reward than being a Brown Shirt or wanting to be one or being friends of one, etc.

Mussolini played the glory of Rome card didn't he? That's not mysticisim, per se, but it didn't have to be. That which was the greatness of Rome was everywhere to see. To call upon his people to reclaim that heritage is just as strong a justification.... actually even better justification because the concrete evidence for it was everywhere to be seen.

In Spain, Franco and the Church.

In Japan, the resuscitation of the investiture of a Divine Emperor is mystical enough, don't you think?

As for the South American variety, I give you Pinochet and the Catholic Church or the Peronists of Argentina.

Edited by - Indy11 on 2/13/2004 7:00:28 PM

i was watching a program on discovery channel, cant remember the name, but it was about ancient inventions: they discovered a map that shows a continent that no longer exists, it also had a symbol now used by nuclear submarines to show north.

they also found in egypt a heiroglyphic scene that seems to represent a lightbulb, they built one according to the specs on the wall, and it worked.

and another program was saying that a guy in ancient alexandria, called heron, invented the steam engine and the pistion but never thought to use the two together, and saw them as noveltys.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams

@Indy, I do tend to agree with you on this. I asked the question largely to just raise it as a possibility, my own views are more in accord with your own, but with a degree of circumspection. Myself i think Hitler used mysticism as a tool, I believe he was nothing more than an opportunist at heart, despite his Wagnerian romantic delusions. You know he was a member of the Munich Soviet and a communist at one stage? He'd have tied his colours to anything that got him what he wanted, i.e. power and influence. (I have a further theory about this, but this isn't the place to air it; the last time I mentioned it on alt.society.politics.what-if? it started the most immnese flame war I've ever seen!)

@ff, the ancient world has many anomalous inventions and possibilities like those you mention. Did you know the Greeks had mechanical (not water) clocks and calendars too? o yes..

There's no need to postulate aliens or ancient pre-historic civilisations to answer the problems of these things existence. A combination of human ingenuity and empirical investigation is sufficient. Why were they never more than novelties, though, when many have specualted on the what if? of a technological revolution in classical times? again no mystery; ancient societies were based on slavery, even the so-called democratic ones, and the economic and political forces that eventually brought about industrialisation were not present. Why even bother with expending resources to build pie-in-the-sky machines when you could go down into the market place and buy a ruckload of expendable slaves to do it?

The Temple of Hathor at Dendera. - Viewer beware, those cathode ray tubes are one of EvD's theories. Many of the photographs of the low relief pictures are photoenhanced to prove a point. But it is true that some odd looking things are depicted.

On the other hand, Hero or Heron of Alexandria has been known to have dabbled with many kinds of mechanical devices, including steam jetted. No one knows when, though, the range for Hero's time is from 200BC to 200AD. That's a wide swing.

wot no pyramids? or should i say, alien landing platforms? which is of course what they are, having seen it on Stargate <cr*p>

the problem is of course removing the claptrap from the intriguing stuff. Cathode ray tubes indeed, I'm sure visiting aliends would have had something a bit more impressive than valves. What were they tring to do, build a cats whisker radio?

BUT.. but.. it is true, however, and i wish it wasnt, that there are pyramid mysteries and they do tie in with the Atlantis nonsense...

1/ The Great Pyramid is aligned to the cardinal points of the compass to an incredible degree of accuracy ie GPSS standards. Thus demonstrating no matter how skeptical you are that the Egyptians knew how to find and survey north.

2/ following on, the Pyramid sits on the latitude and longitude that covers more land mass than any other. How? Why? its one thing to find north, another thing entirely to undestand longitude (latitudes easier, but still implies a knowledge and understanding that the earth is round) Longitude also requires an ability to accurately measure time (marine chronometers?) and to some extent organised long distance relaying of messages. But in this case we must also postulate the possibility of knowledge of the Earths overall geography and the distribution of the continents. By a bronze age desert people? that's a bit bonkers, isn't it?

this latitude/longitude "coincidence" nearly brought about the establishment of the international meridian at the Pyrmaid and not at Greenwich, it was a strong contender in the 19th century.

3/ at the Pyramid site, there are 3 underground chambers that contain full size ocean going sailing ships, not tokens or models from funerary chambers, but real ships, bloody big ones too. Archaeologists dismiss them as "some religious or ritual device" which is rather unfair and unprofessional imho. But the implications are so serious and far-reaching that i can understand why the subject is dismissed so readily. Its difficult to acceot that a desert civilisation that has basically one inland waterway could possess the seafaring knowledge to build such craft and if they had such ability, not even use it?

4/ the oldest egyptian tales tell us that thier founders were "saved" from water, and the topic comes up again and again in their legends and histories. Even the name Moses etymologically derives from this linguistic source, and we all know his story (basket, nile , reeds, egyptian princess, gods right hand man etc)

5/ Egyptian traditions clearly tell us that their culture and technology were brought from outside. This has always been put down as a creation myth, but the central character, Thoth/Sin, is a lot more complex than some benevolent god, and later identified with Hermes-Trismegistus, has at least some provenance as supposedely a real person. We also know that Egyptian civilisation is a lot older than the standard chronologies have led us to believe, and we have to stick an extra 3500 to 5000 yrs on. This latter point of age can be proven, whether you accept it or not is a different matter. The erosion on the Sphinx alone demonstrates weathering by falling water (rain) which ice-coresamples show did not suficiently occur in Egypt during the accepted chronolgy, but at least 3500yrs previously, with a good millenia or more of weathering, knocking the age of the Sphinx back another 1500 years from that, putting the Sphinx at about 7500BC. Wtf?

When you start putting the mysteries and coincidences together, it all starts getting harder to dismiss, which is why professional egyptologists dont talk about it much. Even so its a brave soul who puts forward theories of pre ice age advanced culutures from lost islands and continents, that following a gardual or rapid cataclysm, disemminated their knowledge and culture amongst primitive peoples (a la Numenoreans) in order to rebuild civilisation. its in many ways an attractive idea, sadly lacking in evidence except for these abundant and bizarre anomolies. it would take the discovery of some piece of technology, or some ruins, that can be conclusively dated to before 10,000BC to really put any meat on these bones. Such eveidence has never been found, or if it has, no-one saw it for what it was. wadjoo fink?

still no need for aliens, though


Edited by - Tawakalna on 2/15/2004 7:16:44 AM

Well the pyramids themselves are questioned by both EvD and the pro-Atlantean camp aren't they? I think the case is presented that none of the three are inscribed with the names of the pharaohs in whose names they are said to have been built.

Also, there is a stela, apparently, that is attributed to Khufu and which is supposed to claim credit for having restored the Great Pyramid. Much like Khafre is said to have repaired the Sphynx. So the EvD camp and some in the pro-Atlantean camp argue that the pyramids are as old as the Sphynx and were not made in the 4th Dynasty. No one has a good explanation for the Sphynx. No overtly indicative leads exist.

I don't know what to say about the pro-Atlanteans but.... It doesn't square with the Atlantis story as related by Plato.

I don't want to go back to the EvD theory that we fur wearing apes were too stupid to be able to do it on our own so someone else, preferably off-planet did it for us.



Edited by - Indy11 on 2/15/2004 8:02:12 AM

lets just forget vD, he's a liar, and all his copiers and hangers-on, they're all just deluded. As are most if not all of his precursors including Piazzi Smyth who, obsessed by numbers and pyramidical symbology, actually hacked bits off the great pyramid to make it fit his calculations.

I have no doubt that there's a lot more behind all this than we yet know. I honestly believe that sooner or later evidence will be found for a much earlier "dawn" of civilisation than we can currently accept. I strongly suspect that Egypt got its kick-start in pre-history from outside sources (call them Atlanteans if you will) not from gods, not from space-men, but from humans just like you and me (well not quite like me ) forced to leave their homelands due to climactic change. I have no problem accepting that we've had to climb up the ladder of progress again in our own history, and that we might have to do it again. if there was a truly massive nuclear war, and somehow humanity managed to hang on, would the cycle not be similar? How long would it take to rebuild, a 100 yrs, a thousand, ten thousand, even with salvaged knowledge from our own time? would we not become the Ancients then to future generation, and the stuff of myth and legend, with rationalists saying that we never existed?

All I'm saying is that I'm open minded to the possibility; I don't state it as dogma or creed, I just don't accept so many coincidences and anomalies are just accidents. If it is ever proven, i will take pride in the fact that we humans were able to crawl our way back up from disaster in a few thousand years, not millions as the animal kingdom does, and without fookin aliens. That EvD aliens rubbish is really insulting.

just to go off at another tangent: aliens and ufos. i don't beleieve in aliens, ie that they come to earth, but i do believe in ufos. I dont think anyone can deny that a large number of ufo sightings are genuine (hell ive seen em) but thats the "iknow cos i saw it" witness statement - what they ARE is another matter. I dont think theyre from other worlds at all, i think thats your US tax dollars flying around, highly advanced aircraft engineering and propulsion systems based on Nazi research and new technology.

In 1983 my ship was en route to Belize and we were about 500 nm NE of Nassau (Sargasso Sea, very calm night) and i was on late watch. Some breakers needed replacing in the comms cabinet so the duty lieu sent me off to stores to get some parts, as it was a fine night and we weren't on alert or anything and there were no rdar contacts for miles except cargo ships, a few tankers and some civilian air trafiic high up, I didn't exactly rush. I was talking to one of the stores lads who'd nipped on deck for a fag, when he noticed this black shape on the horizon, thort it was a cloud at first, it came nearer very quickly and with no sound at all and passed straight over us, never changed direction and disappeared quite quickly. I could see the shape clearly outlined against the stars, but it had no lights that i could see and no markings. i immediately reported it to the duty officer who checked with both surface -toair radar ops and there was no contact on radar at all, nor had there been. Me and Goldsworthy (the stores bloke) both indicated the track of the thing (heading due west ie towards the Florida coast) on the radar display and no-one but us ahd seen anything, apart from another chap who'd been looking out at the same time. later on the officers reported it up the line but nothing ever came of it. it went in the log as an unidentified aircraft and the radar was checked for malfunctions (it was fine)

what was it? a big fat flying delta wing, not bat like a la B2, just a big slightly flattened delta. no sound, wghich was weird, i ve experienced supersonic planes going past and know they can go past and the sound reach you later, this was different, it never made any sound. the thing looked about the size of a 747 as its taking off and youre about 500ft below it, but really I dont know how high up it was or exactly how fast it was going no frame of reference. it was just fast..