When he came to power Hitler had a dowser scour the Reich Chancellery for cancerous ‘death rays’. Before flying to Scotland Rudolf Hess had his horoscope drawn up by a personal astrologer. Himmler backed research on the Holy Grail and medieval devil worship (‘Luciferism’) and sent an SS expedition by the explorer Dr Ernst Schafer to Tibet in 1938 to investigate the ancient Indo-German ‘Aryan’ origins of Buddhism. Himmler also founded the SS Witches Division, which collected evidence in eastern Europe in the second world war that Teutonic ‘wise women’ had been persecuted and burnt in a Jewish-Catholic Inquisition plot against volkisch German culture and blood. In 1939 Goebbles sat up late at night reading the prophecies of Nostradamus, which he revealed to an enthusiastic Führer as evidence that the British were soon to be defeated.

One could be forgiven for thinking the above might be the fevered imaginings of a Hollywood schlock movie producer or the midnight fantasies of a pulp-comic writer. In fact they are the sober truth, just part of the immense trove of bizarre material on Nazis and the supernatural that eight years of research by Eric Kurlander has uncovered.

The British had ASDIC or radar to find German U-boats: the German Navy had the Pendulum Dowsing Institute in Berlin. Here, over a large map of the Atlantic, a one-inch model battleship was moved about, as an expert in pendulum-dowsing swung a metal diviner on string above the map, watched by fascinated German admirals. If the pendulum dowser ‘reacted’ over the toy ship this indicated a genuine British battleship in the vicinity.

The Germans had convinced themselves that the British were finding U-boats by pendulum dowsing. After Mussolini was toppled and arrested, Operation Mars was launched: 40 experienced astrologers, tarot-card readers, magicians and dowsers were released from concentration camps and installed in a villa in Berlin’s Wannsee, under the leadership of top magician Wilhelm Wulf. ‘Find the Duce!’ were their orders. ‘These magicians cost the SS a pretty penny,’ complained the SS General Schellenberg; ‘they demanded — and got — huge quantities of luxury food, alcohol and tobacco before they could start work.’ A large map of Italy was unrolled and the pendulum dowsers started swinging the lead in an attempt to find the whereabouts of the Italian dictator. In the end Otto Skorzeny’s commandos found the Duce and rescued him, but Wulf avoided returning to Sachsenhausen, and was soon working for Himmler as his personal astrologer, claiming it was he who had found Mussolini through magic.

Professor Kurlander traces supernatural belief in Nazi Germany to the counter-cultural, mystical theories which abounded in fin-de-siècle Austria and Weimar Germany. Helena Blavatsky’s Great White Brotherhood of hidden Mahatmas in Tibet, and Rudolf Steiner’s theories of anthroposophy and bio-dynamic blood and soil agriculture were two such strands.

Central to the Nazis’ mystical beliefs was World Ice Theory, propounded in the 1912 book Glacial Cosmogony by Hanns Hörbiger. This held that white ‘Aryan’ man was not descended from the apes, as were other inferior races, but rather came from ‘divine sperma’ brought to earth by meteors. These developed into the godlike Supermen of the ancient civilisation of Atlantis-Thule which employed parapsychology and mystical electricity ‘like Thor’s hammer’. Atlantis was destroyed by ‘icy moons’ crashing into earth, and refugee Supermen established Buddhism and Hinduism in Tibet and the Himalayas and Shintoism in Japan. Jesus Christ was a White ‘Aryan’ of Atlantean descent, as were the Knights Templar and the Cathars, who held the mysteries of ancient Thule in the Holy Grail. The white Supermen were locked in a struggle for mastery with the ape-like ‘Tschandala’ or ‘monstrous humanoids’ — Jews, Slavs, blacks and ‘mongrel breeds’.

This overtly racist worldview was believed in by Hitler, Hess, Himmler and other senior Nazis. Julius Streicher was convinced that Jews gave off a particular odour and that he could ‘smell out a Jew’ at several metres, like the medieval witch-sniffers. Himmler tried to get World Ice Theory taught instead of Darwinian evolution in German universities. This theory explains why Himmler felt able to enrol Arabs, Indians and even Turkestaners in SS units. It also justified genocide, horrific medical experiments and mass population displacements, and convinced Hitler that ‘Nordics’ could tolerate cold better than ‘Slavs’, with dire results at Stalingrad. Himmler wasted much time and money on research into magic rays which he hoped would find oil and gold in the Rhine.

Kurlander believes that Nazi reliance on magic encouraged the development of pointless and wasteful ‘wonder weapons’ such as the V1 and V2 rockets, which killed many civilians but did not affect the Allied war effort. Not all Nazis believed in this tosh. Speer, Bormann and Heydrich attempted purges of magicians and astrologers, especially in the Hess Action, after the flight of the Deputy Führer to Scotland. Thousands were rounded up and put in camps, but within months most were free again, many working for Himmler. In 1943, at a time of acute labour shortage, an estimated 3,000 tarot-card readers were still working in Berlin alone.

The British knew all about the Nazi weakness for magic and parachuted faked copies of the astrological magazine Zenit into Germany which contained decidedly pessimistic horoscopes for Hitler and his acolytes.

Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish — and provide scholars and the general reader with much food for thought. Without such widespread crackpot beliefs the Nazis might just have won the war. ‘Every German has one foot in Atlantis, where he sees a better fatherland,’ claimed the renegade, defrocked Nazi Herman Rauschning. Thank heavens they did.

Source: Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/did-hitlers-obsession-with-the-occult
-lose-him-the-war/

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Three weeks ago a fascinating story was related to me by a colleague from my old home county of Staffordshire, England. “You’re not going to believe this one,” he told me excitedly down the phone. Well, I’ve heard some bizarre things in my time as an investigator of all-things weird, and so I sat back and listened to his story - that was provided to him by the person directly involved.

Essentially, the story centers upon a 1991 encounter with the unknown at a place called Castle Ring, which at 801 feet above sea-level is the highest point on a large area of forest in central England called the Cannock Chase. A plateau bordered by the Trent Valley to the north and the West Midlands to the south, the Chase is situated only several miles from where I grew up; and it is a beautiful, expansive area full of dense woods, a variety of wild animals, and magical tales of mystery and wonder.

Indeed, the area has a rich and long history of reported encounters with Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, big cats and even the occasional wallaby. It has also been the site of a number of disturbing animal mutilations that have been linked with occult activities.

Built between 500 BC and AD 40, Castle Ring is an Iron Age structure commonly known as a Hill Fort. Its main ditch and bank enclosure is 14 feet high and, at its widest point, is 853 feet across. Little is known about the people who built Castle Ring or its purpose, except to say that its creators were already in residence at the time of the Roman invasion and remained there until around AD 50.

But back to the story, which involves a historian and folklorist who lives in the English city of Lichfield. It is the historian’s belief that all of the weird activity that has occurred on the Cannock Chase - whether it be encounters of the alleged Bigfoot kind or ET kind - is a direct result of people dabbling in archaic rituals and rites designed to conjure up the denizens of some netherworld that co-exists with ours.

Such claims are not new, and having experienced more than a bit of high-strangeness myself on the Cannock Chase, I am highly inclined to believe that such a scenario is indeed the correct one. And it seems that the historian has good reasons for coming to such conclusions.

It was December 1991, around 10.00 AM on a cold winter morning, and the historian was walking around the Castle Ring, taking photographs, when his attention was drawn to a small, dense - and “hovering” - area of fog situated at a distance of about 250 to 300 feet. Curious as to what would cause such a phenomenon, he headed towards it, with some trepidation, he admitted. As he got within about 20 feet of the fog, he felt his hair become “static and electrified,” and an intense smell of burning metal filled the air: brimstone, no less.

But the bizarre activity had barely begun: suddenly, out of the fog loomed a large, and certainly monstrous, black dog. According to the historian, the dog looked in appearance like a cross between an Alsatian (or, for American readers, a German Shepherd) and a Pit-Bull, but was around the size of “a young horse.” The man detected an air of menace from the creature, which, he said, seemed to be “vibrating at a very high speed, like shaking impossibly quickly.” It positively oozed menace, and stamped its leg on the ground “like a bull would when it’s getting ready to charge.”

The man slowly backed away, and the black dog did likewise, retreating into the impenetrable depths of the fog. As the man reached a point perhaps 150 feet from the fog, he was both startled and shocked to see a small ball of light “zoom in” over the fog and duly cast down a vivid blue column of light in its direction. In an instant, the fog and the ball of light were gone, the black dog was nowhere to be seen, and normality was restored.

So, we might well ask: what on earth was all that about? Well, Britain has a long history and tradition of encounters with such black dogs. In centuries past they plagued the countryside, and to see one was considered an ill-omen, indeed. Death, disaster and untold tragedy were all said to follow an encounter with these spectral beasts. With names like Old Shuck, Black Shuck, and the Shug Monkey, they struck terror into the hearts of the people of Britain during the Middle Ages. Occasionally and curiously, however, the black dogs would act as guides for lost souls, directing them back to the safety of ancient pathways and roads, or direct them away from danger. But whatever they were, the black dogs were certainly nothing normal.

Today, encounters with such creatures are reported very infrequently, but they do occur - such as this one at the Castle Ring in 1991. Then, of course, we have the strange, aerial ball of light present at the Ring, that adds significant UFO overtones to the story. Can the whole weird saga be resolved? The historian believes it can.

Indeed, he is of the firm opinion that ancient man - who certainly constructed the Castle Ring - had mental abilities that extended far beyond our own, and was able to essentially tap into other realms of existence, and construct “from the mind” images of bizarre and monstrous beasts that inhabited those same realms.

The purpose? To act as guardians to prevent any harm being done to the areas that ancient man deemed to be of spiritual significance. It is the historian’s belief that some of the residual energy that led to the creation of these wild images is still in place at Castle Ring and elsewhere; and that when the time is right, they will once again manifest and take up their role as both guardian and protector of the old world.

I had come to similar conclusions myself a number of years ago. Of course, this raises deep and important questions about both Ufology and Cryptozoology, such as: how many of the still-elusive things that we pursue are flesh-and-blood entities, and how many may - in reality - originate in realms far stranger than we can possibly imagine? Certainly, the Cannock Chase has been the site of a number of Bigfoot-style encounters that have distinctly paranormal aspects to them, and that have occurred in the exact same locations where significant UFO activity has also been reported.

Needless to say, such observations have been made for decades by authorities such as John Keel. But, as this case serves to emphasize, whoever was responsible for those centuries old reports of ghostly black dogs, they were still up to their bizarre tricks deep in the heart of Castle Ring only 16 years ago.

Next time you visit a prehistoric site, keep one eye on the sky and one on the ground. If you’re lucky, you may see something far stranger than mere ancient, standing stones…

Source: UFOMystic
http://www.ufomystic.com/the-redfern-files/black-dogs-and-ufos/

Plinio Correa de Oliveira is almost as peculiar in death as he was in life. Dr. Plinio, as he is still known by his devout followers, was a right-wing Catholic figure who founded the ultra conservative Tradition, Family and Property Association, known in Catholic circles as the TFP.

In the early 1960s, he famously came to Rome to protest the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to modernize the Catholic Church in a changing era. He called such attempts at renewal “a point in history as sad as the death of our Lord” and handed out propaganda with similar sentiments.

In death, Dr. Plinio is said to be in close contact with Satan, who supposedly can be channeled by Brazilian exorcists. He also apparently rules the so-called afterlife to such an extent that his followers are convinced he controls climate change and is working toward the death of Pope Francis, according to Andrea Tornielli, who writes the Vatican Insider blog, and has published a series of articles outlining this saga worthy of a Dan Brown bestseller.

By getting rid of Pope Francis, some of the doctor’s followers believe, the way would be open for the Catholic Church to elect a more conservative leader in line with their more traditional practices.

After Dr. Plinio died in 1995, the TFP broke into two groups. One retains the TFP name and supports the recent claims of dubia or doubts launched against Pope Francis, which are supported by American Cardinal Raymond Burke. The other group, known as the Heralds of the Gospel, was founded by Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias and allegedly takes part in cult worship.

The extent of Plinio’s supernatural proclaimed by Dias (or at least the extent to which his followers exalt him for that perceived power) is the subject of a new inquiry by the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, according to Tornielli.

Specifically, Dr. Plinio’s followers led by Dias are said to be using rogue exorcism practices in which they actually communicate with the devil possessing people rather than chasing him out, as the standard accepted practice in Catholic exorcisms dictates.

According to Catholic sociologist Massimo Introvigne, who has studied Dr. Plinio’s life work, the Heralds of the Gospel form “a sort of secret and extravagant cult,” with its trinity composed of “Plinio Correa de Oliveira, his mother Donna Lucilia, and Monsignor Clá Días himself.”

And that sort of devil worship is understandably a problem for the Catholic Church. On June 12, Clá Dias resigned as head and founder of the Herald of Gospels, although Tornielli says he will stay on in what appears to be a consultant-like role.

"In leaving this assignment I cannot—as I do not wish—before God, to renounce my father's mission,” Dias wrote in his resignation letter, according to Tornielli. “And therefore I will continue to be available to each one, as God made me a living model and guardian of this charism given to me by the Holy Spirit.”

Particularly damning for the cult-like group is a series of videos on the internet that show exorcisms using practices not authorized by the Catholic Church. They include purported  conversations between the exorcists and the devil, which is a no-no in standard exorcism procedures. (Yes, exorcism as such remains a staple of the faith and authorized practitioners are not only recognized but recommended by Pope Francis.)

“Woe to the exorcist if he loses himself behind curious questions, which the ritual expressly forbids, or if he lets himself be led into a discussion with the devil as he is the master of lies,” Tornielli says, quoting the words of the Church’s most famous exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth.

In one passage from a video seen by The Daily Beast, Dias asks one of his minions to read from a transcript that was purportedly jotted down by an observer at one of the rogue exorcisms encompassing what appears to be dialogue between the exorcist and Satan.

The conversation was stilted, as one might expect with the struggle for the possessed person’s soul, but the gist was that Plinio was randomly “breaking people's computers so that they can’t go on the internet” and that he is changing the climate and was “therefore the author of the climate change, and the increase of heat. It is Plinio who does everything,” according to the devil as channeled through the exorcist. Then, the devil predicts that a meteorite will crash into the Atlantic ocean. “North America will disappear,” he warns.

The devil then turns to the fate of Pope Francis, which Tornielli was able to transcribe and translate from the somewhat distorted video. “The Vatican? It's mine, mine!” the devil says to the exorcist, according to Tornielli’s transcript. “The pope does whatever I want, he's stupid! He obeys me in everything. He is my glory, he is willing to do everything for me. He serves me.”

Then the devil, again as channeled by the exorcist for the Heralds of the Gospel, predicts that the pope will perish, not during a voyage, but at the Vatican. “The pope will die falling,” the exorcist’s transcript says quite clearly.

While much of the Heralds of the Gospel work seems, well, fanciful at best, the Vatican’s investigation is very serious. The Vatican could censure the group or strip it of the blessings of the Catholic Church, which would likely not actually stop them, but instead just push them farther underground. Or it could try to corral them back into the fold and hope they stop having sympathy for the devil.

Source: The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/this-secret-catholic-exorcist-cult-in-brazil-is-making-a-
deal-with-the-devil