Overview
Ideology regarding the Aryan race (in the sense of Indo-Europeans, though with Germanic peoples being viewed as their purest representatives), runic symbols, the swastika, and sometimes occultism are important elements in Ariosophy. From around 1900, esoteric notions entered Guido List's thoughts by 1899 at the latest. In April 1903 he sent his manuscript, proposing what Goodrick-Clarke calls a "monumental pseudoscience" concerning the ancient German faith, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna onwards, these ariosophic ideas (together with, and influenced by, Theosophy) contributed significantly to an occult counterculture in Germany and Austria. A historic interest in this topic has stemmed from the ideological relation of Ariosophy to Nazism, and is obvious in such book titles as:
- The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
- Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (The Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas), Wilfried Daim's biography of Lanz von Liebenfels
However, Goodrick-Clarke's comprehensive study finds little evidence of direct influence, except in the case of the highly idiosyncratic ancient-German mythos elaborated by the 'clairvoyant' (but in fact schizophrenic) SS-Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut, of which the practical consequences were, first, the incorporation of Wiligut's symbolism into the ceremonies of an elite circle within the SS; and, secondly, the official censure of those occultists and runic magicians whom Wiligut stigmatised as heretics, which may have persuaded Heinrich Himmler to order the internment of several of them. The most notable other case is Himmler's Ahnenerbe. (For the debate on the direct relations to Nazi ideology see Religious aspects of Nazism.) Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 192-202) examines what evidence there is for influences on Hitler and on other Nazis, but he concludes that "Ariosophy is a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism" (ibid., 202).
Read more about this topic: Ariosophy