Njaco
The Pop-Tart Whisperer
from Mystic Places: Mysteries of the Unknown / TimeLife Books
Our ancestors sheltered themselves in caves for many more generations than they have lived in houses. Haunting cave drawings from the dawn of time stand as mute testimony that early humans probed and speculated about the deepest recesses of the earth. Small wonder that the idea of life underground has tugged for so long at the back of the mind.
....As the twentieth century began, it might have seemed that the idea of a hollow earth would become more and more difficult to sustain. Two theorists were stimulated by some anomalus discoveries by polar explorers. They believed that voyagers could sail over the edge of polar openings without being aware that they had left one world for another.
....Before full-scale aerial surveys of the poles could shed much light on the polar regions, a kind of dark age intervened, during which exploration and scientific progress were overshadowed by war and tyranny. In 1933, Adolf Hitler proclaimed himself the leader of the Thousand Year Reich, a civilization of supermen that would rule the world. The Nazi philosophy was based on a belief in the supremacy of the Aryan race, and strenuous efforts were made to buttress this claim with evidence dredged from history, folklore and science. In this atmosphere of myth, hollow-earth theories thrived.
....Peter Bender, a German aviator who was seriously wounded in WWI, attracted favourable attention in Germany during the 1930s with his elaborations on Koreshanity. Top Nazi leaders, including Hitler, reportedly took seriously the concept of a concave world that was first proposed by Cyrus "Koresch" Teed. And it appears that these leaders sometimes translated their beliefs into concrete action.
....In April 1942, for example, at the height of the war, Dr. Heinz Fischer, an expert on infrared radiation, purportedly led a group of technicians on a secret expedition to the Baltic island of Rugen. The men aimed a powerful camera loaded with infrared film into the sky at a 45 degree angle and left it in this position for several days. The goal, which proved elusive, was to take a picture of the British fleet across the hollow interior of the concave earth.
....Other beliefs about inner worlds gained currency among Nazi enthusiasts. There was, for example, a Vril Society, also known as the Luminous Lodge, which held that Lord Lytton's book, "The Coming Race", was true and that it offered a blueprint for the future. Members of this occultist body no doubt thrilled to the Vril-ya slogan -"No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." But developing a race of supermen was difficult and took time. The Luminous Lodge wanted to make contact with any existing race of superior beings, in the hope of establishing peaceful relations and learning their secrets.
....Other organizations followed similar urges. The anti-Semitic Thule Society of Bavaria, whose adherents included Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg and deputy fuhrer Rudolf Hess, sometimes claimed to represent survivors of Atlantis who lived in the Himalayas - the legendary secret chiefs of Tibet. Some of the Society's more enthusiastic members believed that they could contact their master, the King of Fear, by use of Tarot cards.
....According to some accounts, Hitler may even have believed that he had seen a member of a superrace from the inner earth. He reportedly told Hermann Rauschning, the Nazi governor of Danzig, "The new man is living amongst us now! He is here!...I will tell you a secret. I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him." The fuhrer was also rumoured to have dispatched expeditions to Tibet and Mongolia in search of underground wisdom. In further pursuit of such knowledge, special units are said to have scoured mines and caverns of occupied Europe for passages leading to a subterranean world. And then there is the recurring legend that senior Nazis took refuge in the bowels of the earth as Germany collapsed in ruins.
Our ancestors sheltered themselves in caves for many more generations than they have lived in houses. Haunting cave drawings from the dawn of time stand as mute testimony that early humans probed and speculated about the deepest recesses of the earth. Small wonder that the idea of life underground has tugged for so long at the back of the mind.
....As the twentieth century began, it might have seemed that the idea of a hollow earth would become more and more difficult to sustain. Two theorists were stimulated by some anomalus discoveries by polar explorers. They believed that voyagers could sail over the edge of polar openings without being aware that they had left one world for another.
....Before full-scale aerial surveys of the poles could shed much light on the polar regions, a kind of dark age intervened, during which exploration and scientific progress were overshadowed by war and tyranny. In 1933, Adolf Hitler proclaimed himself the leader of the Thousand Year Reich, a civilization of supermen that would rule the world. The Nazi philosophy was based on a belief in the supremacy of the Aryan race, and strenuous efforts were made to buttress this claim with evidence dredged from history, folklore and science. In this atmosphere of myth, hollow-earth theories thrived.
....Peter Bender, a German aviator who was seriously wounded in WWI, attracted favourable attention in Germany during the 1930s with his elaborations on Koreshanity. Top Nazi leaders, including Hitler, reportedly took seriously the concept of a concave world that was first proposed by Cyrus "Koresch" Teed. And it appears that these leaders sometimes translated their beliefs into concrete action.
....In April 1942, for example, at the height of the war, Dr. Heinz Fischer, an expert on infrared radiation, purportedly led a group of technicians on a secret expedition to the Baltic island of Rugen. The men aimed a powerful camera loaded with infrared film into the sky at a 45 degree angle and left it in this position for several days. The goal, which proved elusive, was to take a picture of the British fleet across the hollow interior of the concave earth.
....Other beliefs about inner worlds gained currency among Nazi enthusiasts. There was, for example, a Vril Society, also known as the Luminous Lodge, which held that Lord Lytton's book, "The Coming Race", was true and that it offered a blueprint for the future. Members of this occultist body no doubt thrilled to the Vril-ya slogan -"No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." But developing a race of supermen was difficult and took time. The Luminous Lodge wanted to make contact with any existing race of superior beings, in the hope of establishing peaceful relations and learning their secrets.
....Other organizations followed similar urges. The anti-Semitic Thule Society of Bavaria, whose adherents included Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg and deputy fuhrer Rudolf Hess, sometimes claimed to represent survivors of Atlantis who lived in the Himalayas - the legendary secret chiefs of Tibet. Some of the Society's more enthusiastic members believed that they could contact their master, the King of Fear, by use of Tarot cards.
....According to some accounts, Hitler may even have believed that he had seen a member of a superrace from the inner earth. He reportedly told Hermann Rauschning, the Nazi governor of Danzig, "The new man is living amongst us now! He is here!...I will tell you a secret. I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him." The fuhrer was also rumoured to have dispatched expeditions to Tibet and Mongolia in search of underground wisdom. In further pursuit of such knowledge, special units are said to have scoured mines and caverns of occupied Europe for passages leading to a subterranean world. And then there is the recurring legend that senior Nazis took refuge in the bowels of the earth as Germany collapsed in ruins.
