My Letter to the Thule Society

"The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category."  —Adolf Hitler

Recently I received the rare and unusual compliment of being offered the position of Spiritual Advisor (evidently with the role of High Priest on the table) of the Thule Society, also known as the Thule Contemplative Society of Hitler. Remarkably, it is a more or less Theravada Buddhist society which nevertheless also supports a kind of deified hero cult of Adolf Hitler. It also endorses, perhaps even more strongly than Hitler did, opposition to Jews who purportedly are striving to degrade and enslave the goyim of the world.

The President of the Society is Brian Ruhe, who has become notorious as “the Nazi Buddhist.” I have never had much interest in the goings on of western Buddhism, so I knew relatively little about Mr. Ruhe…until very recently, and one sees that, yes indeed, he manages to be both a Theravada Buddhist and a fervent admirer of Hitler and of National Socialism. Anyway, he became aware of this blog, and liked it well enough that he invited me to join the Thule Society in a rather advanced capacity. What follows is my response to his invitation, followed by my response to his response to my first response. Those of you who are intrigued by the very idea of Buddhism and NatSoc being combined into a single system, in the 21st century, may look to the Thule Society website, at thulesociety.com. You may receive a warning from Google, advising you that the link is “suspicious,” but it’s more politics than malware that have caused the censorious warning.


Hail Mr. Ruhe

OK, I’ve considered the suggestions you made in your emails, and read the draft of your Weltanshauung statement, and also have looked at some of the Thule Society website. Also I’ve watched a few of your videos, which were recommended to me, over the past several months, though I usually don’t look at Dhamma stuff on YouTube, or on the Internet in general. It does appear that there is some overlap between your approach to western Dhamma and mine, and also some considerable divergence. I suppose I should try to address the issues systematically.

HITLER
First of all, of course, orthodox Theravada Buddhism and Adolf Hitler have relatively little in common. I think Hitler was a damned interesting person, and I’ve read hundreds of pages of biographical information on his life and attitudes (though I haven’t read any of his own books), and I’d rather hang out with him for an evening than with, say, Stalin or FDR. He has been demonized by popular western culture, though certainly he was no worse than any number of other great leaders, some of whom have been lauded as heroes mainly because they won their wars. Aside from his hatred of Jews he was very similar in certain respects to Napoleon, who of course is not demonized all that much. Maybe Napoleon had less reason to hate Jews; I don’t know. 

Even so, it seems fairly straightforward to me that, from the perspective of Theravada Buddhist ethics, Adolf Hitler was not a very good or a very wise person. As I wrote a few months ago in a blog post on Buddhist militarism, there really is no valid way to spin Dhamma as anything but radically pacifist. Also, Dhamma declares self-view and the idea “I am” to be the fundamental root of all suffering and badness in this world, and of course Herr Hitler was no pacifist and may have had a bigger ego, and greater motives of self-glorification, than the alleged narcissist Donald Trump.

I think declaring Hitler a deity may be useful in setting up some kind of mythos, but it seems to stretch credibility from a Buddhist point of view unless maybe one were declaring him to be a Māra-like (or maybe Shiva-like) god of chaos and destruction…possibly clearing the way for positive rebirth, or some such. But on the Thule Society website, under Spiritual Practices, I see that you’ve taken the traditional meditation on the qualities of the Buddha (idipi so bhagavā…) and swapped in “the Feuhrer” for “the Buddha”—which seems to indicate that you consider Hitler not only to be a god but a full-blown Buddha, a fully enlightened being, also.

That’s way too rich for my blood. I simply cannot see Adolf Hitler as an enlightened being, unless I were to accept the Mahayanist idea that everyone is already an enlightened being. About as far as I could accept or endorse would be an idea like Carl Jung’s, that Hitler was a kind of prophet who channeled the collective unconscious of the Aryan race, or some such. But I wouldn’t even be inclined to give him the status of sole prophet of the western spirit—I’d include a list of other prophets, including Hitler’s own hero Frederick the Great of Prussia, maybe Napoleon, maybe some of America’s founding fathers, maybe Frederick II the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, some of the cultural greats like Shakespeare and Wagner, and maybe even some Roman emperors like Julian “the Apostate.” So your apotheosis of Hitler would be a barrier to my joining your group, or being closely affiliated with it.

I do consider it unfortunate that the European race has not had its own prophet, in the sense of a true spiritual leader and founder of an advanced religious system—not since very ancient times anyhow. Instead of Julian’s Neoplatonism we adopted the distorted message of a Hebrew from Galilee. I do think the time is getting very ripe for a spiritual revival in the west, and the need for an inspired spiritual leader may bring one forth, just as the desperate desire for a Messiah among the Jews of the early Roman Empire, or the deep desire for a prophet of their own among the early medieval Arabs, helped Jesus and Muhammad to rise to the level of spiritual world leaders. A great European prophet does seem overdue. Which serves as a segue to the next issue.

THE JEWS
I can agree with you on the JQ to the extent that there are indeed rich, powerful, influential Jews who have gained control over political systems, economies, educational institutions, and the media, and who are using this control in part to subvert (classical) liberal western civilization. It’s not ALL Jews certainly, or even most Jews, but there certainly are some who are attempting to destabilize and undermine western Gentile society. Kevin MacDonald was of the opinion that this is mainly for the sake of furthering specifically Jewish interests: money, and eliminating the potential for any future antisemitic genocide in the west. Plus I suppose sheer tribalistic ethnocentrism. This seems plausible, and I have seen no persuasive evidence that space aliens or reptilians are involved in it.

Consequently my opinion with regard to the JQ is that people should be educated with regard to the situation, like with regard to how the social sciences have been hijacked by Jewish radical activists; how very influential Jews have been exercising control of the media, and thus what people are allowed to see, and ultimately to think; and of course the Jewish attitudes and profound pro-Ashkenazim agenda inspiring socialism, multiculturalism, etc. People should be informed of what has been going on, with as much clear evidence as possible, and of course anyone guilty of committing actual crimes should be punished; but I don’t see any more to be done about it, short of a return to pogroms and Final Solutions. Which of course a Buddhist could never really endorse.

I place much less emphasis on the JQ than you apparently do, mainly because I do not quite consider them to be as vastly powerful as you do. They’re powerful, but not the minions of reptilian devas at the verge of enslaving the world.

I do think that there are other dangers of equal magnitude, for example the spread of Islam. Western Europe has become so weak and decadent that they could easily convert (or be converted) to Islam en masse—but even that could be preferable to a degenerate race of feminized ultraliberal eunuchs. If the west doesn’t find its own fresh inspiration, and fairly soon, it may happen, which probably wouldn’t be such good news for the Jews. As you probably are well aware, a lot of the alt-right are turning towards Odinism as a European religion, although it seems more an attempted replication of a spiritual system than a real, living faith.

You may say that even Islamism taking over the west, especially in Europe, is part of the Jewish master plan somehow, but even if that is true it’s a more immediate problem than Jewish control of the world economy and popular culture. If a house has a grease fire in the kitchen caused by an arsonist, the fire must be attended to before the arsonist is hunted down and caught. Same goes for hysterical feminism and grievance culture—such predicaments should be addressed independently of simply blaming the Jews. By overcoming the destructive forces in society one weakens any force behind them, Jewish or otherwise.

REPTILIANS AND SPACE ALIENS
In the draft of your manifesto you seem to be saying that the nāgas mentioned in Buddhist cosmology/mythology are devas associated with the Rothschild family. First of all I would point out that, although Virūpakkha is called the King of the Nāgas and is a deva at the level immediately above our human one, nāgas themselves are considered to be animals, despite their human intelligence and shapeshifting abilities. This is one of the many seeming inconsistencies of Buddhist cosmology in the texts, but “reptilians” as you call them are almost always considered to be animals in the Pali texts. (There’s a story in the Vinaya involving a nāga that assumed human form and was ordained as a bhikkhu, but which was compelled by the Buddha to disrobe, on the grounds that nāgas are animals, not men.) In fact the whole idea of nāgas evolved from prehistoric cobra worship in northern India—the word nāga also means cobra in Pali. They had supernatural powers attributed to them because an 18-foot king cobra is impressive as hell, being as tall as a man when it rises up, and if it bites you, you die, which was rich food for the superstitious ancient Indian mind to feast on. So the idea that the Jewish Rothschild family are really reptilian cobra-dragons as described in the Pali texts, or that the family has one or two in disguise living among them, is a narrative of which I am very skeptical to say the least.

With regard to UFOs and beings from other planets conspiring with Jews for some reason, I would have to see some damned persuasive, incontrovertible evidence of it before I would endorse it. First, if alien beings wanted us to be aware of their existence, we would all know it. Second, why in hell would they choose the Jews with whom to conspire secretly, especially if there are no reptilian Rothschilds? (That’s a rhetorical question, and you don’t need to answer it.) If beings are intelligent and technologically advanced enough to arrive here from another world, then they could very probably enslave us easily without the help of Hebrews, if they wanted to do it. I have little use for science fiction movies involving aliens flying here from other planets many light years away while being obviously as stupid as we are, if not more so. The human frailties of the gods (or aliens in science fiction) are more a symptom of the limits of human imagination than of divine (or alien) weakness.

My own preferred theory on UFOs, or rather of alien visitations, is that, assuming that they are real, they don’t come through space from a faraway planet but come sideways through probability from an alternate earth, in accordance with the so-called many worlds hypothesis. If they are in fact coming here I would guess that they’re studying us, maybe out of keen scientific curiosity. I do hope, though, that they’ll have enough compassion not to let the human race destroy itself. If they’re superior to us in intelligence and power I suppose it’s fair to refer to them as a kind of deva.

THE ROLE OF A REACTIONARY DHAMMA SOCIETY IN THE WEST
As you know, quite a few people are fed up with ultraliberal “progressivism” and political correctness hysteria, and would like to see a more conservative form of Dhamma arise in the west to help combat the disease. The main problem I see is that Buddhism was originally intended to be apolitical, renouncing worldly affairs as much as possible; and furthermore, as I already mentioned, it’s radically pacifistic. So the Dhamma aspect as I see it should emphasize some of the basics of Buddhist philosophy, like the very important concept that unhappiness or dukkha is our own doing, and that we eliminate it by improving our attitude, not by trying to control what everyone else in the world is allowed to do, say, and think. In other words western Dhamma should put more emphasis on spiritual toughness and acceptance of responsibility for one’s own happiness and unhappiness, success and failure. Also, if it is to assist in strengthening the western spirit it should be a kind of adjunct to a larger movement, which may include aggressive activities of which Dhamma really doesn’t approve.

That’s the problem I see—the west will probably undergo social upheaval and possibly civil war, soon, especially in Europe; and this may even be necessary to avoid the collapse of the west as a civilization. Like Thomas Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must occasionally be refreshed by the blood of patriots and tyrants, and I as a Buddhist monk can’t really endorse it from a Dhammic point of view, even though seeing that it may be necessary from a political and historical perspective. So there would have to be a broader movement that looks to Dhamma for spiritual and philosophical guidance, but is not entirely committed to apolitical renunciation, or even necessarily pacifism and non-violence. This is tough for me. Sometimes, speaking from the perspective of harsh empiricism, a nation must fight for survival, regardless of enlightened ideals. I have to acknowledge that, even though I shouldn’t praise it as good. I can acknowledge that fighting may be necessary to save a civilization well worth saving, without asserting that the fighting would be “good kamma.” It’s a strange kind of dilemma that most western Buddhists can’t wrap their head around. Leftists in general aren’t very good at dealing with harsh empirical realities.

So I could be an advisor to a group that is rather militant, but I wouldn’t want such a group to consider itself 100% Buddhist. I could be a kind of external consultant, or some such. Also a group that is specifically anti-Jew rather than anti-progressive would be rather too extreme or off the tracks of orthodoxy even for me.

I am still willing to do one or more interviews for your YouTube channel, although my Skype account is now unworkable. I didn’t use Skype for two years or more, and when I tried recently to open it, I discovered that in the meantime it had been bought out by Microsoft, which has resulted in the need for a Microsoft account and strange demands for passwords that don’t work. Last night in disgust I simply deleted my Skype account (or rather the app on my computer) after a few more failed attempts to get the damned thing operational. It used to be that Gmail had video chats that worked better than Skype, although you may not have a Gmail account. If you know of any other video conference apps that work well I could download it. Otherwise I’ll have to start from scratch and set up a new Skype account.

Also I am considering posting this letter on the politically incorrect blog, along with a link to your website, if you do not object.

As a postscript or Appendix I include an email I got from an American Buddhist friend who knows much more about the original Thule Society, post-WW2 National Socialism, and the deification of Adolf Hitler (à la Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, et al.) than I do. I’ve already set him straight on your qualifications as a teacher of Theravada.

Metta

Paññobhāsa

APPENDIX (very slightly redacted)

Hail, O PB!

...Yeah, I am not surprised that the Thuleans would be interested in you due to your slightly right of center politics...at least that is how your politics strike me, but then I consider myself a Classical Liberal. Of course we are basically both Nazis so far as the MSM and the SJWs are concerned, and the Thuleans are probably using the same criteria as they do to judge you.

The level of scholarship that these people usually display make it very likely that they have a somewhat hazy idea about the difference between Buddhism, Hinduism, and Savitri Devi's worship of AH as a Hindu Avatar.

I am indeed fascinated with Serrano, and with Savitri Devi, both of whom regarded AH as an avatar of Vishnu. Although I am fascinated by these people and love to explore the depths of their ideas, well, let us just say that I am diving, while the Thuleans are sinking.

Maria Osric is a mythological character associated with what was called "The All German Society for Metaphysics" (aka the "Vril Society") but which as far as I know never had any concrete, physical existence on this worldly plane.

The Thule Society DID exist, and was connected with the Occult Templarism that was popular at that time (and which eventually led to the OTO, which our old pal Aleister Crowley was heavily involved with) but like a lot of other small Occultist groups it was disbanded by the NatSoc government, very people it supposed brought to power and secretly controlled.

Baron Sebbottendorf, founder of the Thule Society, later wrote a book called Before Hitler Came claiming that NatSoc in general and Hitler in particular had been influenced heavily by him and by the Thule-Gesellschaft.

This did not go over well with the authorities, and he left Germany soon after the book was published. Sebbotendorf was one of numerous Occultists who then (as now) criss-cross the world and constantly lay claims to being greater and more influential than they actually were.

The Thule-Gesellschaft was peripherally involved with founding the DAP, which later became the NSDAP. There were of course several Occultists who stood high in the ranks of the NSDAP, notably Hess and Himmler, but I do not think that there was any organised occultism as such behind the party.

Serrano himself was more of a Gnostic, with the Jews being children of the evil Demiurge (NOT a new idea amongst Gnostics at all, at all!) but also incorporated Hindu and Western Esoteric concepts into his somewhat eclectic system. He sometimes refers to AH as Kalki, and references the Kali Yuga a lot in his writings….

Serrano was friends with Jung as well as with Ezra Pound. Interestingly, George Lincoln Rockwell's National Socialist White Peoples' partyarty became a contemplative religious organisation dedicated to Esoteric Hitlerism after Rockwell was assassinated....

In any event, I think you are wise to hesitate before becoming high priest of an Esoteric Hitlerist cult! But they do sound fascinating! I will check out their site, and look forward to your interview.

Thanks for the heads up!

Peace, and
Hail Victory! ;-)

ANOTHER APPENDIX: MY NEXT LETTER TO THE THULE SOCIETY
The following is a response to the Thule Society President’s response to my response.

Hail Brian

OK, well, I’ve read your responses to my response, so I have some responses to your responses. Again I’ll try to do it systematically, under Headings.

THE HOLOCAUST
This is kind of a weird topic, along with the concept of the Holohoax. How many Jews had to be killed for the deaths to qualify as a Holocaust? A full six million? One million? A hundred thousand? Or would it depend on a certain minimum percentage of European Jews being executed? I have no idea. It may very well be, as far as I know, that the figure of six million is greatly exaggerated; but I have no way of knowing how many died, and I’m pretty sure that lots of Jews were actually killed by the Germans and their allies during the 1930s and the first half of the 40s. A hell of a lot of people died, including Jews and a much larger number of Slavs. (Speaking of whom, it’s strange that most people in the west have no idea of the Holodomor, in which the Stalinist USSR allegedly starved more than a million Ukrainians to death. I have read that the guy Stalin put in charge of the project was Jewish. In fact a disproportionately large percentage of Marxists working for the USSR were Jews. People tend to think that Gentile/Jewish atrocities and massacres have been only one way, against the Jews, but that of course is not so.) At any rate, I am of the opinion that lots of Jews were actually killed by the Germans under Hitler, but the exact number of course is questionable.

THE RELIABILITY OF ANCIENT INDIAN BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY
You took issue to my referring to shape-shifting nāgas, etc. as “mythology,” although it’s simply a fact that new religious systems tend to base their cosmology on the popular beliefs of the people. The ancient Indian Buddhist cosmology is an adaptation of what people believed in northern India during the Iron Age, with some specifically Buddhist modifications. Seriously, if you think that the cosmology described in the Suttas is infallibly true, then you must believe that the earth is flat and floats on water, with a ten million mile high mountain in the center, and with the sun and moon revolving around the central mountain. Also you’d be constrained to accept the idea that eclipses of the sun and moon are caused by an Asura/Titan named Rāhu swallowing them into his mouth.

When the Greek Ptolemaic geography reached India in the early middle ages via trade routes, the Indians (the Hindu astronomers at least) modified their cosmology to accommodate a spherical earth, so that the world became like an orange impaled on a huge conical mountain, the peak protruding from the north pole. Talking animals with human intelligence, fire-breathing cobra dragons, the material universe first manifesting as Brahma’a throne, etc., not to mention the Rāhu theory of eclipses, are just not credible to me. Any more than the story of Genesis with Jehovah God (or the Christ/Logos) creating the world out of nothing in six days, which is believed by Christians to this day, some of whom have been arguing with me over it because of my recent blog post on evolution. I assume the scientific explanation also isn’t ultimately true, but at least it is compatible with the empirical evidence.

This all reminds me of a quote from an old book describing one of the early embassies of the British Empire sent to the court of the Burmese King in Ava in the mid 19th century:

“Major Phayre endeavored to explain the solar system; but as the Burmese theory is that of a central mountain called Myen-Mo [Meru], several millions of miles high, around which are firmly fixed four great islands, on the southern of which Asia and Europe are situated, the sun which lights them revolving round the central mountain, the Envoy of course did not succeed in convincing the Minister of the truth of our view of the case….The [Minister] somewhat indignantly said, ‘It (Myen-Mo) is spoken of in our sacred books, and its height is given, and the inhabitants of each region are known exactly.’”

The modern world has its own mythology. Now instead of elves it’s space aliens, although they do look similar.

I may as well throw in the high probability that wiseguy early Buddhists modified the whole idea of Brahma realms essentially for propaganda purposes. They took Maha-Brahma, literally the Brahministic personification of Ultimate Reality, and turned him into a rather bumbling fanboy of the Buddha, putting lots of higher Brahma realms above him, some of which are accessible only to Buddhists. They played a similar trick on Indra, warlike King of Gods and patron deity of the Indo-Aryans, by converting him also into a devout Buddhist. The early Buddhist systematologists were very human, and prone to the same foibles as the systematologists of just about any religion. It’s very likely, besides, that most of the words attributed to the Buddha in the Pali texts (let alone the Mahayana texts) are not authentic. If you’re interested in my reasons for this assumption, you can find them in the article “What Did the Buddha Really Teach?” on the nippapanca.org website.

This skepticism of mine is not the position I would have preferred, and it wasn't the one I had going into the Sangha. But one should follow where the evidence leads, even if the direction is an unpleasant one.

ON THE QUESTIONABLE VALUE OF BEING AN EXPERT
This is a strange one, and kind of a black pill, which you remind me of with your list of thousands of hours you’ve spent studying reptilians and so on. Being an expert clearly has value; for example a trained heart surgeon will be much better at heart surgery than anyone else; but still some people study and study and still can be completely mistaken. Consider all the political experts out there. There are thousands of academics who are very intelligent people, who study and teach and write authoritative books, who still think, for example, that Marxism is still somehow a good idea. (What amount of failed economies, totalitarian regimes, and genocidal atrocities would be required for them to realize that it is really NOT a good idea I don’t know. I assume dedicating so much time to something causes one to be very reluctant to start being skeptical on the subject.) Intelligent experts study the same subject and come up with exactly opposite ideas. So a person may dedicate thousands of hours to studying evidence of biblical Creationism, for instance, but that doesn’t make it true—especially if one considers all the people studying the same body of evidence and coming up with radically different conclusions.

ON THE VALUE OF PRAYER
One point I forgot to mention the last time is your Society’s emphasis on praying to Brahmas for help to overcome the malevolent devas in league with the Jews. Theravada Buddhism officially does not recommend prayer, much less ritual fire sacrifice; although I suppose the mental states are what would determine its value if it were done. If one were to perform a ritual sacrifice, say, more or less in the Hindu fashion of pouring libations of aromatic butter oil onto a fire while chanting some appropriate scripture (let’s say), then if one did it mindfully, and with sincere intentions of making offerings to those worthy of praise, then the agent’s own skillful kamma would help him, not necessarily a deity somehow flattered or obliged by the ceremony.

BEING SPIRITUAL ADVISOR TO THE THULE SOCIETY
As I mentioned before, the whole worshipping Hitler thing, plus the emphasis on combating reptilians in league with globalist Jews, causes me to be pretty reluctant to assume any official title or role in the organization. I’m not much of a team player anyway. Although, as I said last time, I could be an ally of sorts with regard to the Dhamma aspect, and occasionally offer advice, and do some sort of video interview if I can get a damned Skype account working. We are in agreement on multiple points, especially in our disdain for ultraliberal politically correct western Buddhism. Good luck (=Good kamma) with your efforts with that.

Metta

Pannobhasa