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The Thule Society
73 Plays1 year ago
M and Josh discuss the Thule Society, the Vril Societies, and... Kerry Thornley!
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Transcript
The Struggle with Pronunciation and Introduction Jokes
00:00:00
Speaker
Tull. Tully. Tullay. Thull. Crow. Hey, um, whatcha up to? Look, I am constantly embarrassed by my inability to pronounce names, so I'm trying to practice pronouncing the titular topic of this week's episode.
00:00:21
Speaker
The Tool Society. Yes, the famous secret society of Tim Allen sitcom fans. No, no, no. The Thaw Society. Oh, the Mr. T Society. I pity the Thaw. Pity the Thaw, surely. It's not the version I remember. Anyway, it actually might be Toolie, or maybe Too-lay Society. The Buster Poindexter Society. Too-lay, Too-lay, Too-lay, Too-lay, Too-lay. Feeling hot, hot, hot. No, no, no, no. Well, which one is it then?
00:00:50
Speaker
It's the, you know, society I'm talking about. Anyway, we really shouldn't make that much fun of them. They're not inherently funny given they are basically proto-Nazis. Or we should make fun of them because if we aren't punching Nazis, we should definitely be punching down about them.
00:01:09
Speaker
Fair enough. So, basically, I can get away with never pronouncing the name of the Tully Society right. Indeed, in fact, if you do say it correctly, I'll be very disappointed in you. Okay, on then to discuss the Tutti Society. Like Thomas the Tank Engine is a Nazi? The entire island of Soledore is a dystopian mess, but that's another matter for another time.
Formal vs Rambling Introductions: A Debate
00:01:36
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em Dintus.
00:01:47
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Edison, and sitting next to me so close I can smell their thoughts. It's Dr. M. R. Xtentis. No, you're actually speaking of the whiskey, but my thoughts are like whiskey. They're raw, considered, and even so slightly peasy. And I can't quite explain why your thoughts literally are whiskey. That's all that rattles around in your head as far as I'm aware. Whiskey in the jar-o. Whiskey in the jar-o. Whiskey in the jar-o.
00:02:15
Speaker
So we're together again, in the same room, slightly echo air, but then there's the brakes. Yeah, unfortunately we don't have any kind of muffling for this current setup. Don't be disgusting.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, so we're actually trying a video record this time, so there might, assuming it all goes to plan, be a version of this up on my old YouTube channel, which in mind people will watch, where you can actually see the two of us speaking at each other, occasionally turning to look at the camera, which is at an unfortunate angle, or you could just nod and just listen to this the way you always do, the way God intended, quite frankly.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yes, God did not intend us to have eyes. Eyes are an evolutionary accident, and we should be getting rid of them immediately. Exactly. Now, we have an episode, just a regular old episode, this episode. And throwback. It's on academic paper. An episode which is going to go places. It's going to go a bunch of places. So this, should we just go straight into it? Should we play the chime and start it proper, or should we do a bit more of a rambling introduction?
00:03:20
Speaker
I mean, you've kind of said we should go straight into it. I think we should. I do think we do think we should put a chime in. Right, let's do that. A chime is important. I don't know why, but it is tradition. And as you know, appeals to tradition are never fallacious. Never? Never. Been cool. Bonk.
Connection to Past Episodes and Secret Societies
00:03:41
Speaker
Yes, I feel much better after that. Now, by way of an introduction, so one and a half episodes ago when I did a little filler episode, I mentioned the Behind the Bastards podcast having talked about the Illuminati after we talked about the Illuminati. So we beat them through. Trailblazers that we are. Yep, that's certainly exactly what we are. That I believe all of their research is based upon things that we learned on Wikipedia. Almost certainly.
00:04:05
Speaker
And then last week, in the bonus episode, we talked about it a bit more and talked a bit about Kerry Thornley of the Distorians. Someone I do know something about, although it turns out I might have been wrong. Which got us to talking about the whole...
Origins and Influence of the Thule Society
00:04:19
Speaker
Now, I'm just going to say full society because that's what it looks like if it were an English word, which it isn't. It's sort of a German word by way of Greek and Latin. And I'm going to call them the full society throughout because, frankly,
00:04:30
Speaker
That's my prerogative, just like Britney Spears. Yeah, Bobby Brown surely.
00:04:36
Speaker
Both. Whatever. So yeah, the Film Society came up and... Sorry, all of them all got as toxic going through my head now. One of the greatest music videos of all time featuring... Martin Henderson. Yes, precisely. New Zealand's own Martin Henderson. Although he has been a lot more successful in America. He has, but it's just... Including in a follow-up film to detention, one of our favourite films. He was a follow-up film, didn't he? No, no, but he was in the director's follow-up film. I didn't realise they didn't make more films after that one. Geez. It's really good. So, the Film Society.
00:05:05
Speaker
It's like the Illuminati, which you talked about a little while ago. It's something that we realise we never actually devoted an actual episode to. Yeah, and like the Illuminati, it's a real society. The full society did exist.
00:05:20
Speaker
And like the Illuminati, people continue to maintain the full society is around today. Unlike the Illuminati, arguably, the full society actually did have a major impact on European politics in the 20th century, although the story of that is actually quite complicated. But it is the fact you can trace the Nazi Party
00:05:45
Speaker
in 1930s Germany to the full society in the early 20th century. So there is a direct link there, although, as we'll see, that link is interesting and that, well, we'll get into it.
00:06:01
Speaker
So let's start at the start. Where exactly does this name come from? Thul, or in German, as we'll see, it's Tula, was a land, a land mass of some kind referred to by the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans. According to the pronunciation guide I read in ancient Greek, it was pronounced Thule. And Thule was just this land in the far north.
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, it was somewhere over there. It was somewhere up. Somewhere over there. A long way away. Not here. Over there. And it was sort of considered, it was sort of used as a shorthand for the placed furthest away. Yeah, which of them was ultimate for.
00:06:41
Speaker
It was the land furtherest. The furthest away. See, Ultimathel just became like we would say the ends of the earth or something. It's just the bit that's the farthest away.
Racist Ideologies and Formation of the Nazi Party
00:06:50
Speaker
And that's what it actually was. Some people think they might have been talking about Greenland or Iceland and I believe later on
00:06:56
Speaker
Greenland and Iceland became referred to as the one with Dr Methil or something. There actually is a place a long way away from the centre of the world, aka either Rome or Istanbul. That must have been full.
00:07:11
Speaker
But at the time, they might have been talking about that. There were a whole, any number of islands around the coast of Northern Europe and the British Isles that they think it might have been. Some people even think that might have just been part of Scandinavia or something, might have been Norway or something like that. Or Sweden. Or Sweden, you never know.
00:07:27
Speaker
But the point is, it was far north and far, far away. So far north, not far right? Well, we're getting there. So come the late 1800s, early 1900s, you had your German occultists
00:07:46
Speaker
who thought that Thule had been the capital of ancient Hyperborea, which I know from the Conan short stories, but of course the Conan short stories is actually building on this kind of notion of ancient European-ness, so
00:08:02
Speaker
Howard is basically working on the idea that there are these pre-existing narratives of ancient Europe being actually the remnant of a much older civilization, but actually I've been reading the Conan short stories recently and Howard actually wrote a potted history of the ages of Hyperborea leading up to modern-day Europe, explaining how all the various races he invented for the Conan stories
00:08:30
Speaker
evolved into the modern panoply of races we find in Europe. Side point, there's actually a debate going on in America right now as to whether we should be using the word race whatsoever given that no one has ever successfully defined a race and race has been used for racism.
00:08:47
Speaker
So even the term race here is awkward, but Howard uses the notion of hyperborea to kind of create and backport his mythology, like talking to go, actually, I'm not writing about a faraway place. I'm writing about distant history.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yes, so there was a whole and that was old, old Madame Blavatsky, wasn't it? She should be coming up again. She did the the sort of the ancient ancient civilization connected universe thing where she sort of took all of them and said, OK, first it was hyperborea and then it was these guys and then it was moo and then it was Atlantis or whatever and sort of slapped them all together and apparently smoke an amazing number of cigarettes. That woman just the amount she got through every day is it was nothing short of heroic.
00:09:32
Speaker
although she herself was just a fantastic conwoman. It was quite interesting listening to the stuff she got up to. But anyway, I'm not here to talk about Madame Blavatsky, we're talking about Thule, which some Germans thought was the capital of the land where the Aryan race originated. And so because of that, this particular society that we're going to be talking about started calling itself Detula Gesellschaft,
00:09:55
Speaker
That sounds very rude. Well, much like, now when we talked about the illuminati before, we talked about how how old Adam Weishaupt called them, what there's something about the perfectibilistan or something, something a lot more unwieldy before he landed on the illuminati. And indeed, the Tula Gesellschaft was originally the studian grouper for Gemanisius Altatum, the study group for Germanic antiquity. But then they decided Tula Gesellschaft was a little bit
00:10:23
Speaker
slipped off the tongue a little easier. Although only a little. Well if you're German as well. That's what you try to say. So it was, right from the start, it was an interesting society. Interesting in what way Joshua? Interesting in what way? In a very very racist way. To join the full society you had to sign the declaration that said
00:10:46
Speaker
The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or coloured blood flows in either his or in his wife's veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the coloured races.
00:10:58
Speaker
So that both sounds sexist, and also probably more importantly, not to say that sexism should not be considered to be a bad thing, but also incredibly racist. Incredibly racist. Sexism for the time, those secret societies were kind of boys clubs. But it's a very racist boys club. Yes, and as we'll see, a bunch of German racist anti-Semites in the early 1900s
00:11:28
Speaker
Wonder where that's going? I mean, as someone who's completely ignorant of European history, I have no idea. Well, we'll find out together. So, where do we start? Who's the founder? Tell me about the founder. Wow, the founder has many names.
00:11:46
Speaker
It is founded according to history. I believe there are some people who go, there might have been some additional figures in it. But the primary founder that people talk about for the full society is Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, also known as Rudolf von Sebottendorf, or just Erwin Tor. He was born on the 9th of November, 1875, and died on the 8th of May, 1945, that to date, which seems... 1945.
00:12:16
Speaker
So he was a Freemason. He was allegedly a Sufi so he spent time in the Middle East and it is alleged he converted to Islam at some point but sources seem to kind of vary as to whether he actually was a Sufi or whether he was someone who practiced Sufi mysticism but actually wasn't a Sufi himself.
00:12:41
Speaker
He was also a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology and alchemy. Because people in the 19th century, they really, really liked their mysticism. They liked their mysticism a lot. Now, in 1916, so basically in his 30s, he got involved with the German Norden, which was founded back in 1912, which was a Teutonic order,
00:13:08
Speaker
which was an occultic volkesque or folk movement, secret society whose aim was to monitor Jews and spread anti-Semitic material. Mmm, anti-Semitic material, you say. I don't like to jump to conclusions here, but he does sound like the sort of person who'd make you sign an oath that you had no Jewish blood in you before you could enter his secret treehouse.
00:13:32
Speaker
I mean, given that we know he's going to found the society which requires that declaration to join, I think we can connect those two dots almost directly. Good, okay, yes, good, good, I'm on board. So he was appointed the Ordenmeister, the local group leader, for the Bavarian division of the schismatic German Norden-Woveter of the Holy Grail.
00:13:56
Speaker
was schismatic because the order had split during the First World War into a loyalist group that was loyal to the existing Grand Master and a schismatic set of the same group. So as we kind of see with a lot of alt-right, extreme-right groups,
00:14:15
Speaker
It's the kind of purity politics that goes on because you're not being the right kind of anti-Semite. No, you're not being the right kind of anti-Semite. No, no, no. And so they basically had a split. And so he was a member of the non-loyalist group.
00:14:31
Speaker
And so with this kind of entry into society, because people point out that early on in his career, he's trying to attract people to his own particular personal philosophy and really doesn't get anywhere with it. But as soon as he joins the German Norden, he basically has an end to bring followers into his own personal philosophy.
00:14:55
Speaker
So in 1918, with this kind of backing of being part of a large anti-Semitic group in Germany, he settles in Munich and starts the full society, which was much more political and therefore led in some part to the formation of the Deutsche Arbeiter Parti, DAP. If you know you're German, you will know that the Nazi Party
00:15:23
Speaker
Nazi is short for Nazionale, in Nazionale, so see at least in Deutsche Abbeiter Part I. So Nazi was just, the Nazi party is this party with National Socialists stuck on the front.
00:15:35
Speaker
A young up-and-comer by the name of Adolf Hitler joined that party in 1919 and eventually stamped his mark upon it, turning them into the Nazis. Now, the full society was notably a lot more political than the German Norden that preceded it.
00:15:54
Speaker
So the German Norden were basically men who were interested in the threat of the Jew in German society and trying to persuade other people through the promotion of anti-Semitic literature that they too should be concerned about Jewish infiltration of decent German society. The full society was overtly political. We need to get rid of these Jewish people. They don't belong in Germany. The German Norden were
00:16:19
Speaker
No, we are not comfortable with the Jew in our society. We must warn the other Germans. They must not be comfortable with them either. The full societies go, no, no, we just don't want them around. We don't want them around. We need to get rid of them. So one thing I wasn't clear off, was Hitler a member of the full society, or did he just join the German Workers Party, which was sort of an offshoot of it? So as far as I can tell,
00:16:46
Speaker
he's a member of the German Workers' Party, which has been formed by the full society. And then the German Workers' Society becomes the Nazi Party, and the full society basically then ceases to exist. So as the DAP becomes bigger, the full society is essentially disbanded,
00:17:12
Speaker
Interesting enough, Glauer leaves the full society and never joins the Nazi party. So he continues to be a full society member but isn't willing to become a DAP member. In fact, once he leaves the full society, he writes a book on the rise of Nazism in Germany. Remember, this is a man
00:17:36
Speaker
who is an explicit anti-Semite, he writes a book on the rise of Nazism that Hitler doesn't like. It sounds like he's just kind of bitter that he set up his nice society and then these guys came along and turned it into their political party.
00:17:57
Speaker
I mean, I think there's a bit of that, I think there's also a bit of the you're not mystical enough for what I want. To pedestrian. Yeah, I mean, this is a person who is very into mysticism and doesn't really see the Nazi party as being mystical enough.
00:18:14
Speaker
Now, of course, any listener to this podcast who is aware of the kind of occult nature of the Third Reich will be going, what do you mean there?
Occult Interests and Internal Criticisms in Nazi Party
00:18:22
Speaker
And I should point out, most historians have big debates as to how occultic the Nazis were. So there were certain high ranking Nazis who were really, really into their mysticism and their esoteric orders. But it's not clear that Hitler
00:18:39
Speaker
was particularly fond of that occultic stuff. He allowed it to occur with the high ranking Nazis, and certainly those high ranking Nazis then borrowed tropes from those orders, or sometimes just taking direct hierarchy from the Jesuits themselves to model things like the SS on. But it does seem that Nazis in itself was not occultic.
00:19:03
Speaker
even if there were prominent Nazis who were interested in the occult. Yes, I've heard the full society compared to the Annaniebe, which was part of the SS, I think. Yeah, although there's a bit of a debate there as to how occulty they were.
00:19:19
Speaker
whether that, so the SS is often taken to have actually been modelled, let's say, on the Jesuits. So taking the Jesuitical style of organisation. And it turns out secret societies and Catholic orders end up having quite a lot of overlap. Funny that. Quite funny.
00:19:40
Speaker
if we're talking about Nazis. Yes, and then after Mr Glauer left the Thule Society and wrote this book on Nazis that Hitler didn't like particularly much, he ended up becoming an agent for German intelligence. I assume we're into or approaching wartime now.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, so this is during the war, as far as I believe. During the war? He's stationed in Istanbul. But in reality, was a double agent working for the British? I should say, allegedly, the record tier are not particularly clear, but it does seem that he was passing information onto the British, if not actually a British double agent at this time.
00:20:18
Speaker
but wasn't so interested in the whole life of a spy. Yeah, so we have the records of his German handler who did he was a useless spy and really only wanted to talk about Tibetan Buddhism the entire time.
00:20:34
Speaker
So not very good at the spying job. But then again, if he's a double agent for the British, he might be quite deliberately a bad spy to then pass on what information his handler gives to British intelligence. The life of a double spy is very interesting.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yes. And then to top everything off, he died in mysterious circumstances. Yes. So it's a suspected suicide, but no one's entirely sure. All we know is he jumped into the Bosphorus in 1945 on the 8th of May.
00:21:10
Speaker
What did he fall or was he pushed? Nobody knows. Or by an angry Buddhist who's a second tired of him asking constant questions. Well, they are notoriously murderous, those Buddhists. Depends on the cast.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, so they were, right from certain, I think even before the Nazi Party existed, they were buddies with the people who would go on to form the Nazi Party, your likes of, who was it, Hesse, Rudolf Hesse, I think was in the Thule Society, a whole bunch of them.
Modern-Day Thule Society and Controversial Beliefs
00:21:41
Speaker
And if you were to go online right now, this very day, and go to thulsociety.com, one thing to cut, Thul is used, I have Thul brand roof racks on my car.
00:21:56
Speaker
You do. It is a prominent Swedish outdoor equipment brand, which must be very embarrassing. Must be a little bit awkward. I don't know. Given that, yes, tholesociety.com takes you to the modern version of the society, although there's always a question as to whether these are modern versions of the society. Or reinventions. Like with the Illuminati, there must be a dozen different people who call themselves Illuminatis.
00:22:24
Speaker
One of our friends at university, he went out with someone who claimed to be in a direct lineage of priestesses of Isis from ancient Egypt. And no one really believed that story because
00:22:39
Speaker
the modern witchcraft is very much an invention in the at the best the late 19th century at worst kind of the mid 20th century with societies which then just claim they have lineage back to ancient orders in the same respect there are lots of organizations that claim that they are the successors to the Knights Templar despite the fact that they were incorporated in 1962 and had no members prior to that point so thawsociety.com
00:23:09
Speaker
may not be the actual lineage of full society. See, I've been saying full society. I've lapsed. I've lapsed already. Well, you were planning to be completely inconsistent, so I think you have to keep things up. Yeah, but I'm numbly consistently saying the way we're anywhere. Anyway, so...
00:23:26
Speaker
they in so the modern full society calls itself the full contemplative society of Hitler and they claim and let me quote from sorry just so that again the full contemplative society of Hitler of Hitler of it sounds like the Council of Ricks or something you've got the
00:23:45
Speaker
the Hitler Society. It's like a superhero team from the 1950s. The Council of, in the Flash, who was the mentor character in the early season? Yeah, I can't remember his name. I don't think a multiverse of them. Anyway, we're getting really autopic there with multiverses. There is no multiverse here. No, certainly not a multiverse of Hitler's. Yes, that would be a terrible thing.
00:24:11
Speaker
But the full Contemplative Society of Hitler claims, there was a powerful spiritual aspect at Adolf Hitler that played a decisive part in his earthly manifestation and subsequent worldly success. Hitler's spiritual nature was the core of who he was, and his spiritual power drove his mission on earth. An unshakeable faith in Hitler and his mission are the foundation of the full society. The president of the full society believes that Hitler was a profound spiritual being
00:24:41
Speaker
and every other member of the full society is encouraged to think the same way. So Hitler was very spiritual.
00:24:52
Speaker
very, very, very spiritual racism. Yeah. He practiced, he practiced anti-Semitism with the very, very, very religious. Well, they were religious, I think is the term we're looking for. There's a quote, I can never remember where it comes from, from some sitcom or movie or cartoon, I can't remember, where somebody is talking about Nazis and they say, it's not about hate, it's about love, the love of hating Jews.
00:25:19
Speaker
Do you remember that? It's also making me think of Ye and Ye's thing about loving Hitler. He was a great spiritual being. The podcast is going to the conspiracy. I think it's the only podcast in the world which has a very strong stance on hating Nazis. Very strong anti-Hittler. We don't care who knows it.
00:25:44
Speaker
We state all the time, we do not like Nazis, we do not care. We think the Hitler is a wrong fellow who's up to no good, not a good person. So we want to state on the record again, we are as far as ever, we are the only podcast in the world which weakly proclaims our hatred of Nazis. That's true.
00:26:03
Speaker
Although he did of course kill Hitler and indeed possibly got more Nazis killed than anyone else really when you come down to it. I mean I'm just not willing to do a sympathy for Hitler thing here. No, that's probably for the best, no, it's just stay consistent. Hitler was responsible for ridding the world of Hitler. Which I mean I can't say that about myself. I haven't even killed Hitler once. There's an episode of Supernatural where they kill Hitler.
00:26:32
Speaker
Good. Yeah. I have not rejoined into that. No. I think it's good. It's actually one of the few good episodes in the latter part of Supernatural's run. Which was very, very, I never watched Supernatural, but every now and then someone had mentioned it and it's like, good God, is it still going? Did they get to like 15 seasons or something? I only watched it to completion because I wanted to see how it was in, because I had a prediction as to who the final villain was and I was correct. Very good.
00:27:01
Speaker
So anyway, we are a podcast that talks about conspiracies and conspiracy theories, especially with
Thule Society's Academic Presence and Offshoots
00:27:09
Speaker
an academic bent. Now, I remember we've talked about, looked at papers before and stuff where I surprised at how long it took things like 9-11 to come up. But I don't remember things like the thought society being mentioned a hell of a lot.
00:27:22
Speaker
No, so I went and looked at my database on philosophical and social science work on conspiracy theory to see how often the full or full society comes up. I'm just going to trip over this the entire time now.
00:27:38
Speaker
And the answer is not often. So actually it comes up quite a bit in the philosophy of geoontologies, which is the philosophy of mapping. Because there's this thing about if we're trying to make maps out of reference terms, fall is hard to map because it's always located over there. And because numerous different European cultures have different ideas as to where over there is, there's no coherent
00:28:06
Speaker
set of items which would fit for where fall is located. So there's actually quite a vibrant discussion in the philosophy of geontologies as to, you know, if you were to make a map that had fall on it, where would it go? And this is kind of salient for the debates on AI at the moment, because the philosophy of geontology has long been talking about computer aided mapping.
00:28:32
Speaker
because most people are unaware, but Google Maps in particular has been using models based upon neural networks to distinguish between towns, cities, mountains, hills, rivers and streams. And it's got quite consistent.
00:28:49
Speaker
So then the thing is, you know, you take other abstract notions. The difference between a hill and a mountain is actually very hard to define in kind of mapping terms. And then you go, well, what about locations that people talk about which aren't located here, but over there, can you find a consistent set? So it comes up there quite a bit. It also comes up
00:29:11
Speaker
in respect to the infamous Waikato thesis on one Kerry Bolton, who we've talked about on this podcast a few times in the past, because it turns out that he once belonged to the white order of fool. That's really loading it up there, the
00:29:30
Speaker
land that's referred to as the homeland of the Aryan people, and then you call it the white order of that land. I mean, it's like, we get it, Kerry, you're white. We understand. Your whiteness is the core of your being. A thing that you have absolutely no control over and can claim no credit for is the most important thing about you.
00:29:51
Speaker
So the White Order of Fool was a loosely organized American society which was apparently formed back in the mid-90s by Fedraw Prisoners, so someone who was actually in prison at the time, won Peter George Caracos
00:30:08
Speaker
also founded by an art school graduate by the name of Michael Lucian and an occultist by the name of Joseph Carrick. And membership of the white order of four was limited to individuals of European descent over 18 years of age.
00:30:26
Speaker
And to join the Society, you are to write a short essay, including your views on culture, spirituality, politics and history. And if you are deemed suitable based upon this 500-word essay you write, then you might be sent an application
00:30:46
Speaker
And you'd also be given a kind of reading list, including such wonderful works as Mein Kampf, Imperium, Beyond Good and Evil, Might is Right, Siege by James Mason, and Revolt Against the Modern World.
00:31:02
Speaker
That was that Hitler fellow again, wasn't it? Yeah, profoundly spiritual being, Adolf Hitler and his struggle. I assume it's full of meditation techniques and Buddhist cones. No. No, full of antisemitism. Yeah, unfortunately. That actually tracks you. Now it also comes up in discussions of secret societies.
Vril Society: Myth and Influence
00:31:26
Speaker
which you know if you're talking about the illuminati of the full society groups like that it comes up as a in the list of these things actually existed but was what was interesting is that one of the references I found associated the full society with real societies now we've talked about real and real yah at least once in the past oh we must have yeah and we have talked about everything
00:31:52
Speaker
It's true. No topic has left has left been unturned. That sentence makes dramatic sense. None. I say it does. So so when we've talked about Vril in the past, we've talked about the notion that this is a novel, Vril, the power of the coming race, which was written by one Edward Bueller Lightum, who of course is famous for the phrase, it was a dark and stormy night.
00:32:19
Speaker
And this is a novel he wrote, and it's fiction, about a hollow earth civilization held by the Vrilja who have access to Vril energy. He really likes saying the word Vril, doesn't he? Well, I mean, it does kind of... It made up a funny sounding word and thought I'm just going to use it for everything. It does sound good though. Vril. Vril. Vril. Sounds like a car revving up, if you ask me. Vril, vril, vril, vril, ooh.
00:32:48
Speaker
Now, the novel is fiction, but a lot of people took it to be a cult of truth. Beulah Lytton was actually revealing something he knew, but putting it in fiction to hide that from the public, but send signals to other people. For those of you who aren't watching the video, I did the classic nose tap there, send signals. So that's why you need to watch the video, otherwise you'd miss all these subtle little
00:33:15
Speaker
A little visual cue. Yeah, exactly one visual cue you will have missed by not watching the video by this point. You're really missing out, Becco. Since we've just described the visual cue. That's meaning you don't need to watch the video at all. I say in looking at the camera. It's like all the times I've looked directly at the camera and winked theatrically throughout this, so you know that most of what I'm saying I haven't meant at all. And it's been in total lies.
00:33:38
Speaker
I mean, that's a dangerous thing to say in the episode where we're talking about how much we don't like Hitler. We hate Nazis. Is that Hitler, Wink? No, let's not go there. Yeah. Yeah. So people like Madame Blavasky, who was co-founder of the Theosophical Society and believer in hidden chambers and things at Giza. Also, apparently, Epic Smoker. Epic Smoker, unbelievable. William Scott Elliott, who was a story of both Atlantis and Lemuria. Oh, Lemuria, the Land of Levers. I know, yeah. And Rudolf Steiner.
00:34:09
Speaker
educationalist, clairvoyant, and hater of fertilizer. What did he have against fertilizer? Did you say fertilizer? Do you mean manure? Or do you mean the... Okay. He had this thing about biodynamics, which we now take to be a kind of organic farming. So the belief that the farm itself is a living organism which needs to have a kind of homeostasis.
00:34:32
Speaker
And so the idea of using chemical fertilizers or advanced fertilizers was bringing stuff from outside the organism into the farm which would then take things out of balance. As soon as of the firm belief that you can't use chemical sprays, pesticides, fertilizers for your crops. Most people now think it's pseudoscience but
00:34:55
Speaker
Waldorf Steiner schools and the like still continue to have some aspect of the Steiner philosophical views going on although I believe most of the Waldorf Steiner schools in Aotearoa New Zealand are kind of very much we don't have any association with Steiner because he was a bit of a scientific racist and that's really really awkward
00:35:15
Speaker
So a whole bunch of people thought that real the power of the coming race wasn't actually fiction, or if it was fiction, was hiding a deeper truth, the idea that there is this real energy that needs to be harnessed and controlled. And so this then led in pre-World War I Germany. Can we take this one?
00:35:38
Speaker
Let me give it a go and then you can greet me to the formation of the Reichsabet Gimmenschaft. Reichsabetsgemeinschaft, pretty much, yeah. An obscure esoteric group who published, Josh, you're saying, Vril de Kosmichert Urkraft? Vril, the cosmic elementary power.
00:36:01
Speaker
This was a pamphlet, really, 60 pages long, and it doesn't say much about the group other than it was founded in 1925 to study the uses of this cosmic real energy. Yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
So we've got some evidence that there was a virile society operating in pre-World War I Germany, which means that they probably were around about the same time as the full society. And given that many of the people who believed in the virile society also turned out to be scientific racists, it's not
00:36:44
Speaker
beyond imagination to go. Or maybe they shared some salient points there. Mysticism and hatred of the Jew. So this, what's the name again? Reichstarrbeitsgemeinschaft. Might be the same group that was discussed in an article published by
00:37:06
Speaker
a migrant German rocket engineer who left before the end of World War II, so wasn't one of those Operation Paperclip German rocket engineers. He wrote a little essay called Pseudoscience in Nazi Land that was published in Astounding Science Fiction, and he talks about a group which, and I'll ask Josh, if you want to read the quote here,
00:37:32
Speaker
He said, the next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group, which I think called itself Wachheitsgesellschaft, Society for Truth, and which was more or less localized in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for vril. So these might be the same. All organizations, given that lay who's an interesting character in his own right, there's a crater on the far side of the moon named after him. He was really, really into his cryptozoology.
00:38:00
Speaker
I was going to say he was really into crypto, but that's completely different meaning these days. Maybe we should bring that back. Yeah, we should bring that back. Maybe we should walk around saying, I'm really into crypto. And then we'll see, yeah, what I do with the bigfoots and Chupacabra. Yeah, I'll show you my NFTs, my Nomlekrenship finding tools. We'll workshop it later.
00:38:23
Speaker
So, yeah, so he writes this little essay saying, look, when I was in Germany, I was aware there was an organization that was basing itself upon a novel and they were really interested in researching viral energy. And it may be one and the same as the other organization, although it's not beyond the imagination to think there might have been more than one viral society operating in Germany at that time.
00:38:49
Speaker
And then we have another reference. And this one, this one may not be so good. So there's a very famous book called The Morning of the Magicians by Jacques Bergere and Luis Powell. This book is kind of a precursor to Eric Von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods. There's a big debate going on. Chariots of the Gods?
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah, the question mark is important. There's a big debate going on as to whether it is plagiarism or borrowing of ideas or whether there's a kind of common source of ideas to both books. And in their book, they talk about a real society as a secret community of a cultist in pre-Nazi Berlin, which was part of the inner circle of the full society.
00:39:33
Speaker
So not just associated with it but actually the inner core of the full society were these people searching for real energy and not just that but this real society which had got inside the full society was connected to the hermetic order of the golden dawn. Which ones are they? I always think of the golden
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah, the other one in Asia. But anyways, who's the Metacorder of the Golden Globes? Crowley is a member of it at some particular point. Yeah, right. There's a whole bunch of, yeah. Now, no one really... Have you seen the Shining Path? That's something completely different. Yeah, it is completely different. Now, no one really thinks the Morning of the Magicians is a particularly accurate or indeed factual book. But despite the fact that people
00:40:23
Speaker
don't really think the mourning of the magicians is particularly factual, and many people actually think that Berge and Powels are just elaborating on the lay reference, but elaborate on the lay reference for a very large chunk of the book. So taking
00:40:39
Speaker
one-line reference in pseudoscience in Nazi land and then devoting a large section of the book elaborating on that claim. People had then used this as a launching point for making claims about the continuation of the rural society and also the continuation of the full society to the modern day. Right.
00:41:01
Speaker
So basically, there's not a lot of academic work about the thought society and what there is relates it a little bit to these other ones in one of those twisty sorts of ways where one of the societies inside of that one and then they both formed an artsy party and so on and so forth. But I think the question that's on all of our lips at this point in time is what does this have to do with John F. Kennedy? So yeah, I would say what's this got to do with Shakespeare as a callback
00:41:31
Speaker
to our What the Conspiracy episodes. And then of course there's the Shakespearean connection. But there is a use. I mean there probably is a connection to Shakespeare somewhere. There must be. But we're going to talk about JFK because one of the reasons why we're talking about the full society was because of the mention of Kerry Thornley in the bonus episode last week.
Kerry Thornley, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the JFK Connection
00:41:53
Speaker
And that's going oh,
00:41:54
Speaker
I know some stories about Kerry Thornley and you're going, yeah, I have some stories. The Illuminati sort of inspired a little bit the Discordians of whom Kerry Thornley was one of the founders. Which then inspired the Illuminati's trilogy, so kind of fed back into that system. But of course, Kerry Thornley
00:42:14
Speaker
very famously was the author of the book Oswald, which was the psychological novel which explained why Oswald had the training and the psychology to be the sole assassin of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And of course what's really interesting
00:42:35
Speaker
about Thornley. He was asked to write this book by the Warren Commission and that's because a year before the assassination of JFK, Thornley had written a novel about a US Army sniper who'd affixed to Russia, which of course
00:42:56
Speaker
matches a story, won Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Army sniper trained soldier who defected to Russia and then defected back to America. Yes, because of course Thorne Lee served with Lee Harvey Oswald.
00:43:12
Speaker
They were in the US Marine Corps in 1959. And yes, he has the distinction of being the only person to have written a book about Lee Harvey Oswald that was written before the assassination of JFK. And obviously that got folks like the Warren Commission very interested in him. He testified before the Warren Commission.
00:43:30
Speaker
He also, then after that, he, he, so basically he's with Oswald in the Marine Corps in 1959, writes a book about him in 1962, which apparently the Warren Commission got their hands on the manuscript. The book itself wasn't, didn't see, wasn't properly published until 1991. And then
00:43:52
Speaker
In 1964 he testifies before the Warring Commission, the assassination of course having happened in between those two events, and then writes this other book in 1965 which as you say basically agrees with the Warring Commission findings, says that yes it's entirely makes sense that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman written
00:44:11
Speaker
We have the right kind of training and the right kind of psychology, which say the wrong kind of psychology, to be an assassin. He did have the right psychology to be an assassin, but the argument is he had the wrong kind of psychology generally. But you might find this sort of path and these sort of publishings by Kerry Thornley a little bit suspicious. If you're someone who has perhaps an alternate theory about what might have actually happened to John F. Kennedy, if you're someone like
00:44:41
Speaker
Jim Garrison. Jim Garrison was very, very suspicious of Thornley. He was. In part because he was very suspicious of the Warren Commission report. Jim Garrison, of course, is the person who was played by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stein's movie, JFK. He's the back and to the left guy. Back and to the left. This is not the right accent, but back and to the left. I'm just thinking of the the critic episode with now the new extended cut of JK with 15 minutes more footage. Back and to the left.
00:45:11
Speaker
back into the lift. Back into the lift. Back into the lift. That's the guy. That's the guy we're talking about. So he was very suspicious of Thornley, this person who was, you know, a personal acquaintance of Lee Harvey Oswald. And I mean, Garrison thought that Thornley was involved. He thought he was involved in the assassination.
00:45:35
Speaker
He believed that there was, obviously, if you know anything about JFK and all the movie JFK, you know that he disagreed with the findings of the Warring Commission, thought there must have been a second gunman, thought there was a wider conspiracy. So he subpoenaed Kerry Thornley and questioned him about Lee Harvey Oswald and about the supposed group.
00:46:01
Speaker
involved in Garrison's theory about what had happened with the assassination, ended up accusing Kerry Thornley of perjury, went on the stand, Kerry Thornley said, yeah, I haven't actually had any contact with Oswald since we served together in 1959. I think there's some debate about whether or not that's actually true, but because they lived, there's some detail, they were quite
00:46:27
Speaker
physically close to one another at some point and also Thornley hadn't encountered it at all. And Thornley was quite a big fan of taking drugs so there's also the distinct possibility that they had contact and Thornley was out of it at the time. Yes and so that becomes quite pertinent I think. Thornley was of the flower child generation or whatever, did a lot of acid, did a lot of drugs
Thornley's Confessions and Conspiracy Theories
00:46:53
Speaker
It was a counterculture manifesto, the Principia Discordia. It was very into his sort of pranking, to the extent that I believe they were actually sending, or there's a story that the early copies of the Principia Discordia were printed on Jim Garrison's photocopier because they knew someone who worked in his office. And I believe it's known that they
00:47:21
Speaker
printed some pamphlets on Jim Garrison's photocopier, might not have actually been the Princopia Discordia. But the point is they were, while Kerry Thornley was being interviewed for being under suspicion of being involved in the JFK assassination, they were still sending sort of prank letters to Jim Garrison's secretary talking about this Illuminati plot to kill JFK that Thornley and them were implicated with as a prank. He was
00:47:50
Speaker
Interesting fact, he was a fellow who, when he encountered an idea, tended to sort of grab onto it with both hands. So he was a libertarian for a while, I understand. Quite a far right libertarian. So once he took the liking to libertarian, he went
00:48:06
Speaker
full-on libertarian and did that with certain other beliefs. The dodgy part is that apparently he was at one point, he was very into the idea of the sort of free love, sex is natural sort of thing, which went as far as to say sex with children is perfectly okay because it's just all sex and we should just all do it. And there are allegations that he attempted to molest children, possibly out of a sense of duty,
00:48:35
Speaker
possibly because his belief in this was so strong that he thought it was the sort of thing he should do, but he had a lot of very strange beliefs. He not helped by the gigantic quantities of drugs he consumed and possible signs of mental illness as well. But those that all culminated...
00:48:52
Speaker
in a set of beliefs that's pertinent to our topic today. Well yes, because in 1992 he appears on the television programme A Current Affair and confesses he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Yeah. And not only that, the full society was involved.
00:49:12
Speaker
Now, many people think that this was an act. So people like Jonathan Venkin, who's written on conspiracies and cover-ups in America, goes on when a Thornley was a notable prankster. And so this is the kind of thing he would do. I believe Garrison's dead by 1992. So he appears on a TV show to go, well, look, Garrison should have indicted me.
00:49:36
Speaker
And she would have investigated me further because I was involved, which is the kind of prank you would pull after someone like Garrison has died. Thornley always maintained up until his death that he was not pranking anyone. That he wasn't aware he was part of a plot to assassinate JFK back when the assassination occurred, back in 1963.
00:50:03
Speaker
But, at the same time, was involved in that plot. Now, the version of the story I remember reading, and this is back when I was working in my PhD, so we're talking probably mid-2000s, is that yes, Thornley was of the firm belief
00:50:21
Speaker
that he and Oswald were patsies for the full society. It turns out the story is probably more complicated. So this claim about the full society comes out of Thornley's memoir, which is named Confessions of a Conspiracy to Kill JFK.
00:50:41
Speaker
which is published after his death. He was working on it with a true crime writer and journalist by the name of Sondra London. She basically finished off the text and released it for free online. And in the text, he's talking about how he wants to get in contact with Garrison in Garrison's later life. And Garrison basically says to an intermediary, I never want to meet or talk to Kerry Thornley ever again.
00:51:08
Speaker
And Thornley uses this as a launching point to talk about paranoia, because he's in communication with someone who is talking about the Kennedy assassination being planned by the full society in antiquity. So not a current day full society, but an ancient full society plot that was coming to fruition in the 1960s.
00:51:32
Speaker
And Thornley's talking about the idea that Garrison sees Thornley as a paranoiac, which is kind of ironic, given that Garrison himself was a paranoiac par excellence, if you take the official theory about the death of JFK to be correct.
00:51:50
Speaker
So it's only you kind of use it to go, well, look, it's really hard to distinguish between people with legitimate concerns and investigations and people who are suffering from paranoid-esque delusions to go with the kind of Hofstadian notion of a paranoid style. And so it kind of develops on the kind of the riffing of, you know, I can see that when I'm dealing with this person who claims that the full society was involved in a plot to kill JFK, that someone might see me in the same way.
00:52:20
Speaker
But the book itself is very weird, because basically he does end up saying, look, I was part of a large-scale, probably state-run conspiracy to hide who really killed JFK, which means he was involved in the conspiracy because he was a patsy in the same way that Oswald was a patsy.
00:52:41
Speaker
And that's where the full society reference seems to come in. It's not actually thornly saying they were definitely involved. It's thornly going, well, this person says they were involved. And as someone who will take on any idea and contemplate it seriously, I'm going, is it a paranoid fantasy or not? I mean, maybe if there is a large scale conspiracy to kill JFK,
00:53:06
Speaker
Maybe there are elements of ancient orders involved exactly in these kind of machinations. And his eventual conclusion at the end of Confessions of a Conspiracy to Kill JFK is, look, there are all of these organisations that have been operating throughout US history, and they're the real power and control of the American state. Individuals like Oswald or Thornley are just patsies in a larger plot.
00:53:32
Speaker
But yes, I think it would be fair to say that Kerry Thornley said a lot of stuff. He said a lot of stuff. But you also believed a lot of stuff. Believed a lot of stuff. And not all of it consistent throughout time. And not all of it consistent throughout time.
00:53:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I don't know, he was a weird fellow. He sort of, from what I understand, the Principia Discordia was a work of satire and humour, but also intended to be some sort of an enlightening counter-cultural sort of a thing designed to free people's minds a little bit. And yes, as we say, he bounced from one belief to another in whatever belief he happened to have latched on to at the time. He believed wholeheartedly, even though it would change. He was
00:54:23
Speaker
He was just a weird fellow, and it is very difficult to take anything he says at face value, especially since it usually contradicts other things he has said. And that's kind of where it ends. So we start with the Thule Society, a much more blatantly racist secret society than, say, the Illuminati, which nevertheless kind of went on a similar trajectory, I suppose. We like the Illuminati. It didn't really last super long. I think the Illuminati only went for like a couple of years, didn't it, before they
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, very short. I mean, there's less than a decade. The full society, I think, goes on for slightly longer. But not much more. No. But unlike the... Well, I mean, as we said in the Illuminati episode, there is a story to be told about the ideals of the Illuminati then going on to things like the French Revolution and the like, which you might say were a good thing as long as you're not a royal. Well, the ideals of the full society
00:55:22
Speaker
They were at least compatible with what ended up being the Nazi Party, even if the esoteric stuff got jettisoned along the way. The idea of an overtly political organisation devoted to hatred of the Jew. And the coloured rices, as I would put it.
00:55:43
Speaker
the Romani, the Gypsy. Yeah, all of that. So they were the racist Illuminati and the good old Freemasons just kept chucking along while all these other groups splintered off of them and basically flamed out and either got banned by the Bavarian authorities or defeated in World War II. So I think the lesson is we should all be like the Freemasons.
00:56:12
Speaker
Slow and steady wins the race. For the video views, we should now do a free messiahic handshake. Yep. That was authentic. I want you to know that. And that's all we have to say about the Phil Society, really. They're another one. I don't know. Maybe this needs to be a regular thing. Secret societies. There must be more that we haven't talked about. There are lots we haven't talked about. There must be more notable ones that we haven't talked about as well.
00:56:40
Speaker
Well, we could talk about the history of the Rosicrucians, a society that may have never existed, but does exist now. The Templars, of course. I mean, they've come up a bunch of times, especially when you start talking about Scott Walter and his... Oh, yes. His unsolved... He's really into ancient alien stuff now. Oh, is he? Yeah. The only episode of his show that I saw about aliens was him debunking.
00:57:05
Speaker
I suppose an alien kind of... Apparently he's really into ancient aliens now. Funny fella. Jesus was an alien. But obviously. Which means he's probably what God told me to. Which I was actually thought about the Hitler and his benevolent spiritual side kept reminding me of the whole Warhammer 40,000 thing where the Emperor of Earth was supposedly every famous historical figure throughout history and was both Jesus and
00:57:35
Speaker
Hitler. And then and then other things also. Ah, Warhammer 40,000. Never played it. My brother used to play it. I'd watch him and his friends spend an hour setting up, then make one move and then spend the rest of the afternoon arguing over the rules as to whether or not they could do that move. And I never played that game.
00:57:52
Speaker
I used to play squads in Warhammer 40K, and then they just got rid of my army. And now apparently they've brought them back. But I've been burnt by Games Workshop once, I'm not going to be burnt a second time. No, fair enough. I think if there's to be a moral to this episode, let it be, don't get burnt by Games Workshop more than once. Especially given the cost of that issue on entry, you have to buy the rule books, then you have to buy squads. Squads themselves are incredibly expensive for bits of plastic.
00:58:22
Speaker
I mean, the cost of entry into Warhammer 40k seems to be about 240 NZ to just be able to do a light skirmish. Yes. In fact, I think let the moral of this episode be, destroy capitalism. Yes. Now. But before you destroy capitalism, you might want to give us some money by signing up as our patrons and going to Betrayer.com and looking for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and becoming a patron and if you do,
00:58:48
Speaker
We don't have much for you this week. We do not have much for you this week. But we end up doing some pop culture discussions or something. We'll talk about what's been going on in Britain. We'll be talking about what's been going on on Jordan Peterson's Twitter feed.
00:59:04
Speaker
He's a person and and yes, so if you want a bit of bonus content Then become a patron of ours and you'll get some from us whether you want it or not But presumably you do want it, which is why you became a patron capitalism. Yeah, if if you are accidentally a patron of podcasts I'd like to know how. Please do write in to explain how you've got access to our patron bonus Episodes and we can probably give you some escape routes. Yeah
00:59:32
Speaker
So we're going to get on and do that. You lot can get on and get on with the rest of your lives. And I'm just going to say goodbye. Toodaloo pep, all. Toodaloo pep.
00:59:52
Speaker
Our show's cons... sorry. Producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor. You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider joining our Patreon. And remember, Soylent Green is meeples.