Uncovers the mindset and motives that drive far-right extremists More than half a century after the defeat of Nazism and fascism, the far right is again challenging the liberal order of Western democracies. Radical movements are feeding on anxiety about immigration, globalization and the refugee crisis, giving rise to new waves of nationalism and surges of white supremacism. A curious mixture of Aristocratic paganism, anti-Semitic demonology, Eastern philosophies and the occult is influencing populist antigovernment sentiment and helping to exploit the widespread fear that invisible elites are shaping world events. Black Sun examines this neofascist ideology, showing how hate groups, militias and conspiracy cults gain influence. Based on interviews and extensive research into underground groups, the book documents new Nazi and fascist sects that have sprung up since the 1970s and examines the mentality and motivation of these far-right extremists. The result is a detailed, grounded portrait of the mythical and devotional aspects of Hitler cults among Aryan mystics, racist skinheads and Nazi satanists, and disciples of heavy metal music and occult literature. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke offers a unique perspective on far right neo-Nazism viewing it as a new form of Western religious heresy. He paints a frightening picture of a religion with its own relics, rituals, prophecies and an international sectarian following that could, under the proper conditions, gain political power and attempt to realize its dangerous millenarian fantasies.

The rarely told story of Savitri Devi-a Frenchwoman and one of Hitler's most powerful advocates In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds. Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuous since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought-combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinism, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life-and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology. As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar-a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age-Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy. Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.

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.

"[A] superb study. . . . Goodrick-Clarke has done a service to sanity, even if the gullible will go on swallowing [Devi's] recycled poison rather than his antidote."
"--Times Literary Supplement"

"An excellent, thought-provoking volume. . . . We may readily accept that Devi was a revolting creature. But it is as well that we realise that such demons in human form existed and still do exist."
"--Independent"

"An admirably cool-headed history of an inflammatory subject. . . . It is likely to stand as the definitive study of a subject that a lesser author would have exploited for maximum sensationalism."
"--Gnosis"

"An engrossing, disturbing, and important book. Well-researched and evocatively told, the strange story of Savitri Devi is a mirror of the twentieth century's dark undercurrents and deserves to be widely read and pondered."
"--Robert S. Ellwood, University of Southern California"

"[A] provoking volume."
--"Bulletin of the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research, No. 10"

In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds.

Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuos since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Naziideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought - combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinisn, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life - and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology.

As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar-- a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age - Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy.

Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.

Over half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, the complexities of Nazi ideology are still being unravelled. This text is a serious attempt to identify these ideological origins. It demonstrates the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful occult and millenarian sects that thrived in Germany and Austria at the turn of the century. Their ideas and symbols filtered through to nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party and their fantasies were played out with terrifying consequences in the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka are the hellish museums of the Nazi apocalypse. This bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.

Western esotericism has now emerged as an academic study in its own right, combining spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating the humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order. This introduction to the Western esoteric traditions offers a concise overview of their historical development.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke explores these traditions, from their roots in Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up to their reverberations in today's scientific paradigms. While the study of Western esotericism is usually confined to the history of ideas, Goodrick-Clarke examines the phenomenon much more broadly. He demonstrates that, far from being a strictly intellectual movement, the spread of esotericism owes a great deal to geopolitics and globalization. In Hellenistic culture, for example, the empire of Alexander the Great, which stretched across Egypt and Western Asia to provinces in India, facilitated a mixing of Eastern and Western cultures. As the Greeks absorbed ideas from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, they gave rise to the first esoteric movements.
From the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, post-Reformation spirituality found expression in theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Similarly, in the modern era, dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and a lack of faith in traditional Christianity led thinkers like Madame Blavatsky to look East for spiritual inspiration. Goodrick-Clarke further examines Modern esoteric thought in the light of new scientific and medical paradigms along with the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. This book tracesthe complete history of these movements and is the definitive account of Western esotericism.

Paracelsus, the father of modern medicine, was a controversial 16th-century scientist and healer who challenged the medical world's reliance on classical texts and abstract reasoning with his holistic approach, an approach that will strike a chord with many people today, in an age where alternative medicine is becoming more and more popular. This book fills the long-standing gaps in our knowledge of the man and his work.

"[An] important work"
--"Philadelphia Inquirer"

"Excellent book provides a lucid and often chilling guide."--"Journal of European Studies"

"Goodrick-Clarke writes with exceptional clarity, adroitly steeting his reader through the maze of changes and overlappings in the multifarious groups which he describes."
--"Quadrant"

"Given the extraordinarily dense amount of detail provided in such a wide-ranging series of chapters, Goodrick-Clarke writes with exceptional clarity, adroitly steering his reader through the maze of changes and overlappings in the multifarious groups which he describes."
--"Quadrant"

"Presents a troubling picture of the mindset of the modern Far Right."
--"Library Journal"

"Anyone who remembers the devastation wrought by Nazi fanaticism can only be astonished and dismayed by this book. Who could have foreseen that half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich the Jews would once again be perceived as a demonic power intent on destroying the 'Aryan race', or that Hitler would be imagined as a divine being who is about to return to earth to complete the Holocaust? For the matter, who could have foreseen that the preposterous 'pagan' cult developed by Heinrich Himmler would ever be revived? Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke shows not only that these things have indeed happened but how and why they have happened. He also suggests what dangers they may portend. Black Sun is both an enthralling and a deeply disturbing work. It deserves the most serious attention--and a wide readership."
--Norman Cohn, author of "The Pursuit of the Millennium and Warrant for Genocide"

"Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has done pioneering work in the field of theoccult roots of Nazism. In the present volume he performs the same invaluable service with regard to the ideological fantasies of post war neo-fascism."
--Walter Laqueur

"This book is a thorough examination of neo-Nazi extremist group development in the United States through the twentieth century."
--"Multicultural Review"

.,."It is undeniably important and is sure to open your mind to shadowy worlds you never new existed."--"Fortean Times"

More than half a century after the defeat of Nazism and fascism, the far right is again challenging the liberal order of Western democracies. Radical movements are feeding on anxiety about economic globalization, affirmative action, and third-world immigration, flashpoint issues to many traditional groups in multicultural societies. A curious mixture of Aristocratic paganism, anti-Semitic demonology, Eastern philosophies and the occult is influencing populist antigovernment sentiment and helping to exploit the widespread fear that invisible elites are shaping world events.

Black Sun examines the new neofascist ideology, showing how hate groups, militias and conspiracy cults attempt to gain influence. Based on interviews and extensive research into underground groups, Black Sun documents the new Nazi and fascist sects that have sprung up from the 1970s through the 1990s and examines the mentality and motivation of these far-right extremists. The result is a detailed, grounded portrait of the mythical and devotional aspects of Hitler cults among Aryan mystics, racist skinheads and Nazi satanists, Heavy Metal music fans, and in occult literature.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke offers a unique perspective on far right neo-Nazism viewing itas a new form of Western religious heresy. He paints a frightening picture of a religion with its own relics, rituals, prophecies and an international sectarian following that could, under the proper conditions, gain political power and attempt to realize its dangerous millenarian fantasies.