Vril

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Title Vril, the Power of the Coming Race

Front Cover
Author Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Language English
Publisher Wildside Press
Released August 2002
Media type Paperback
Pages 204
ISBN ISBN 978-1-59-224886-5

The Coming Race (original title), also reprinted as Vril: The Power of the Coming Race is a novel published in 1870 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The novel is an early example of science fiction, sometimes cited as the first of this genre. However, many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called Vril was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists accepted the book as truth. Furthermore, since 1960 there is a conspiracy theory about a secret Vril-Society.

Contents

[edit] The novel

The plot of the novel centres on a mining engineer, who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean kingdom occupied by beings (the race of the Vril-ya), who seem to resemble angels. The hero soon discovers that they are descendants of the inhabitants of Atlantis. They have access to an extraordinary force called "Vril" that can be controlled at will. However their spiritually elevated hosts controlled the Vril.

The narrator encounters surviving remnants of antediluvian civilisations who lingered in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels.[1] There they preserved ancient secrets, chief among which was the "all-permeating fluid" called Vril, a latent source of energy which could be mastered by initiates through training of the will, to a degree which depended upon their hereditary constitution. It goes without saying that such mastery would make the initiate a "superman". Through their mastery of Vril, the subterranean people (known as the Vril-ya and identified as a branch from the Aryan stock) would one day emerge from their underground sanctuaries and conquer the surface of the earth.

The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance. According to Zee, the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms, as done by Zee. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration.

A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril. The narrator describes it as hollow with 'stops', 'keys', or 'springs' in which Vril can be altered, modified or directed to either destroy or heal. The staff is about the size of a walking stick but can be lengthened or shortened according to the user's preferences. The appearance and function of the Vril staff differs according to gender, age, etc. Some staffs are more potent for destruction, others for healing. The staffs of children are said to be much simpler than those of sages; in those of wives and mothers the destructive part is removed while the healing aspects are emphasized. The destructive force is so great that the fire lodged in the hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could cleave the strongest fortress or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. It is also said that if army met army and both had command of the vril-force, both sides would be annihilated.

Interestingly, the Vril-ya also use Vril to take baths: It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps four times a-year when in health, to use a bath charged with vril. They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great sustainer of life; but used in excess, when in the normal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality. For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing off the complaint.

[edit] Reception of the book

The book was quite popular in the late 19th century, and for a time the word "Vril" came to be associated with "life-giving elixirs".

Some readers believe the book is non-fiction, and "Vril" has become associated with theories about Nazi-piloted Flugscheiben ("Flight Discs"), Vril-powered KSK (Kraftstrahlkanone, "force-ray cannon" — transmission rods that produce potent energy rays), Jesuit "spiritual exercises", and Atlanteans to name a few.

The concept of the Vril was given new impetus by the French author Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), who at one time was the French Consul in Calcutta. In Les Fils de Dieu (1873) and in Les Traditions indo-européennes (1876), Jacolliot claims that he encountered Vril among the Jains in Mysore and Gujerat.[2]

The writings of these two authors, and Bulwer-Lytton's occult background, convinced some commentators that the fictionalised Vril was based on a real magical force. Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, endorsed this view in her book Isis Unveiled (1877) and again in The Secret Doctrine (1888). In Jacolliot and Blavatsky, the Vril power and its attainment by a superhuman elite are worked into a mystical doctrine of race. However, the character of the subterranean people was transformed. Instead of potential conquerors, they were benevolent (if mysterious) spiritual guides, while Blavatsky's theory of racial evolution explicitly repudiated the idea of superior and inferior races.

When the theosophist William Scott-Elliot describes life in Atlantis in The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (first published 1896), the aircrafts of the Atlanteans are propelled by vril-force. [3] Obviously he did not regard that description as fiction, and his books are still published by the Theosophical Society.

On the other hand, Rosicrucian teachings (which are not directly related to Theosophy) state that like all other such stories this book has never been taken seriously, but regarded only as the fantastic imagination of a clever writer, in same way that Jules Verne's stories met with a like attitude of admiration for this vivid fancy upon the part of the public; yet submarine navigation and 'bird-like flights' are facts today [4].

Bulwer-Lytton's novel remained little-known [check that], but with the influential works of Jacolliot and Blavatsky in the public arena, the myth of the Aryan superman fell on fertile soil. (It is worth noting that Nietzsche's superficially similar concept of the übermensch was not published until 1883 and met with no immediately comparable success.)

George Bernard Shaw read the book and was attracted to the idea of Vril, according to Michael Holroyd's biography of him.

[edit] Vril society

Speculation on Vril has not ceased. However, the speculation has not been continued by the Theosophical Society. A German author called Wilhelm Landig has linked Vril with Ufos and a escape by high Nazis to Antarctica. Most likely one will encounter far-fetched assertion about this in relation to a Vril-Society.

[edit] Willy Ley

Willy Ley (right) in a discussion with Heinz Haber und Wernher v. Braun, 1954
Willy Ley (right) in a discussion with Heinz Haber und Wernher v. Braun, 1954

Willy Ley was a German rocket engineer who had emigrated to the United States in 1937. In 1947, he published an article entitled "Pseudoscience in Naziland" in the science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction. There he attempted to explain to his readers how National Socialism could have fallen on such a fertile ground in Germany. He explained this with the high popularity of irrational convictions in Germany during the time. Among other pseudo-scientific groups he mentions a very peculiar one: "The next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group which I think called itself Wahrheitsgesellschaft - Society for Truth - and which was more or less localized in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for Vril."

The article by Ley, and two small pamphlets by a „Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft ‚Das kommende Deutschland'“, that describe a Perpetual motion based on vril, are the only real basis for the speculation that set off later. The Society for Truth that Ley describes was conducting 'research' on the existence of Vril. One can assume that it did not succeed, since the existence of Vril would not comply with common physics. However, it was not related in any way to Nazi organisations.

[edit] Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels

The existence of a Vril-Society was first alleged in 1960 by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels[5]. In their book Le matin des magiciens, which appeared in 1960, they claimed that the Vril-Society was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin. The Berlin Vril Society was in fact a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society. It was also thought to be in close contact with the English group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Vril information takes up about a tenth of the volume, the remainder of which details other esoteric speculations, but the authors fail to clearly explain whether this section is fact or fiction.

In his book Monsieur Gurdjief, Louis Pauwels claimed that a Vril Society had been founded by General Karl Haushofer, a student of Russian magician and metaphysician Georges Gurdjieff. Pauwels later recanted many assertions in relation to Gurdjieff.

Obviously belief in the existence of the Vril Society has persisted.

[edit] Publications on the Vril Society in English

Supposedly, a historian with the name Michael Fitzgerald has published two books on the Vril society, seeking to establish both the reality of the Vril Society, and Hitler's own membership in it.

  • Michael FitzGerald, Storm Troopers of Satan (Robert Hale, 1990)
  • Michael FitzGerald, Adolf Hitler: A Portrait (Spellmount, 2006)

[edit] Publications on the Vril Society in German

The book of Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels was published in German with the title: Aufbruch ins dritte Jahrtausend: von der Zukunft der phantastischen Vernunft in 1969.

New publications appeared in Germany in the 1990s. In 1992 Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl published: Das Vril-Projekt, in which they linked the legend of the Vril-Society with the older myth of the Nazi UFOs. In 1993 the German right-wing author Jan Udo Holey, writing under penname Jan van Helsing, published Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert which is said to have sold over 100.000 times.

[edit] The Conspiracy Theory - Claims in detail

According to these authors [who excatly?], the Vril Society was founded as "The All German Society for Metaphysics" in 1921 to explore the origins of the Aryan race, to seek contact with the "hidden masters" of Ultima Thule, and to practice meditation and other techniques intended to strengthen individual mastery of the divine Vril force itself. It was formed by a group of female psychic mediums led by the Thule Gesellschaft medium Maria Orsitsch (Orsic) of Zagreb, who claimed to have received communication from Aryan aliens living on Alpha Tauri, in the Aldebaran system. Allegedly, these aliens had visited Earth and settled in Sumeria, and the word Vril was formed from the ancient Sumerian word "Vri-Il" ("like god"). A second medium was known only as Sigrun, a name etymologically related to Sigrune, a Valkyrie and one of Wotan's nine daughters in Norse legend. Other sources [which?] state that the Vril Society was founded by an ill-defined group of Rosicrucians in Berlin before the end of the 19th century, while still others [which?] state that it was founded by Karl Haushofer in Berlin in 1918. Some sources state that the Vril Society was also known as the Luminous Lodge, or the Lodge of Light,[1] though others claim that it was originally called the Brothers of the Light. [2]

The Society allegedly not only taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) to reach Aldebaran. To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft and the alleged DHvSS (Die Herren des schwarzen Steins, The Masters of the Black Stone) to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.

Members of the Vril Society are said to have included Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. These were original members of the Thule Society which supposedly joined Vril in 1919. The NSDAP (NationalSozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei) was created by Thule in 1920, one year later. Dr. Krohn, who helped to create the Nazi flag, was also a Thulist.

With Hitler in power in 1933, both Thule and Vril Gesellschafts allegedly received official state backing for continued disc development programs aimed at both spaceflight and possibly a war machine.

There is no evidence that a functional prototype was ever made. The claim of an ability to travel in some inter-dimensional mode is similar to Vril claims of channeled flight with the Jenseitsflugmaschine (Other World Flight Machine) and the Vril Flugscheiben (Flight Discs).

Elements like:

clearly form a conspiracy theory.

[edit] Occultism and Nazism

Main article: Nazi mysticism

Historians agree that the Vril Society, as described by the later authors, never existed.[6] Verifiable evidence of the Vril Society's existence has never been published.

A society that took the book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton serious and devoted its spare time looking for vril, but did not have any impact on Nazism, could of course have existed.

When Alan Bullock freely admits that Hitler was influenced by a range of occult ideas [7], and when other historians (Hugh Trevor-Roper, James Webb, Francis X. King, Dusty Sklar)[8] also mention the extensive influence of occult ideas upon Hitler, they are referring to the Germanic mysticism that was en vogue in Vienna and Munich during that time.

It has been convincingly argued that Hitler was likely to have meet Lanz von Liebenfels while in Vienna and that he was a constant reader of his magazine 'Ostara'. And as soon as he came into contact with the NSDAP in Munich, he also came into contact with the Thule society.

Further evidence for occult influence is shown by private memos and letters of Himmler and Bormann, as well as the recollections of Hitler's friends August Kubizek[9], Josef Greiner[10] and Hermann Rauschning[11].

However, while certain societies really did exist, like the ONT by Lanz von Liebenfels, they were by far not powerful enough to have any influence on the Nazi Party or the SS. The occult influences on the SS originated from Himmler himself and Karl Maria Wiligut.

After 1941[citation needed], most 'secret societies' were officially dissolved by the Gestapo. These measures were most probably the result of the general Nazi policy of suppressing lodge organizations and esoteric groups. [12]

Secret Societies can not be held responsible for the Holocaust and the Third Reich.

[edit] References in popular culture

  • The still-popular English drink Bovril takes its name from the combination of the words "Bovine" and "Vril".
  • The story may have inspired Nikola Tesla when he invented remote control. While Tesla denied this, biographer Marc J. Seifer says the inventor probably knew the story given Bulwer-Lytton's popularity at the time.
  • The book is mentioned in the song by David Bowie "Oh! You Pretty Things": "Look out at your children / See their faces in golden rays / Don't kid yourself they belong to you / They're the start of the coming race"
  • "Vril" is also mentioned in the book "HACKERS" by Steven Levy.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The legend has received a further layer of elaboration from recent authors like Raymond Bernard who conflate Bulwer-Lytton's "Coming Race" with speculations about interior civilisations which live on the inside of the Hollow Earth. (The concept of a hollow earth was first advanced by Sir Edmund Halley at the end of the seventeenth century.) By contrast, Bulwer-Lytton's subterranean people dwelt in caverns within the crust of a solid earth.
  2. ^ Some sources trace the concept of Vril to Jacolliot and maintain that it was re-popularised by Bulwer-Lytton. See http://www.intelinet.org/swastika/swasti02.htm#anchor114253
  3. ^ L. Sprague de Camp, Lost Continents, 1954 (First Edition), p. 67
  4. ^ Heindel, Max, The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures (The Coming Force--Vril or What?), ISBN 0-911274-84-7, 1920 [1908]
  5. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, p. 113
  6. ^ A Vril Society is not mentioned in the extensive biography of Hitler by Ian Kershaw, nor in the one by Alan Bullock, nor the biography of Hermann Göring by Werner Maser, nor the book about the history of the Schutzstaffel (SS) by Heinz Hoehne.
  7. ^ Alan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (Odhams, 1952)
  8. ^ Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (Pan, 1955); James Webb, The Occult Establishment (Richard Drew, 1981); Francis X. King, Satan and Swastika (Mayflower, 1974); Dusty Sklar, The Nazis and the Occult (Dorset Press, 1977)
  9. ^ August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew (Wingate, 1954)
  10. ^ Josef Greiner, Das Ende des Hitlermythos (Amalthea, 1947)
  11. ^ Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (Thornton Butterworth, 1939)
  12. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 197

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

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