Part 2 of the HITLER'S PRIESTESS review
My first question -- does anyone want me to do more of these? The book itself could be good for a dozen entries at least, though some of them would be of minimal interest (does anyone really want to know just how many fascist organizations were in 1930's India?), but talking about one topic could get tiresome.
Anyway -- When last we left, Savitri Devi, still going under her birth name of Maximiani Portas, was about to go on a Lenten pilgrimage to Palestine in 1929 with fellow Greek Orthodox believers. Her English mother tried to get her interested in Anglicanism, but Portas' contempt for England and its people ensured that effort failed. The ritual and Byzantine legacy of the Greek Orthodox Church drew her love, though she mostly seems to have been interested in it out of Greek nationalism and the Megali Idea. Christianity itself annoyed her with its human-centeredness and the relegation of nature. Feeling skeptical, she journeyed to the Holy Land alongside her fellow believers, hoping to be convinced one way or another about her faith.
Portas was a well-educated woman, and as followed the standards of the time she knew her Bible. Especially the Old Testament, with Israel's history -- the Exodus under Moses, the Sinaitic Covenant, the return under Joshua into Canaan. Her mother and mother's sister had encouraged her reading, also telling her to respect the Jews as "the chosen people". That didn't happen. Instead, she completely rejected the Jewish emphasis on a single and solitary God, transcendent and apart from nature. As Goodrick-Clarke notes, "her Bible knowledge had instilled in her a repugnance for the Jews, in whose ethical monotheism she identified the original and ultimate enemy of her own pagan, pantheistic tendencies" (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 19). Above all, she viewed the idea that Yahweh was the God of Israel, yet had entrusted the Jews with a mission to the nations, as the height of arrogance.
Current events in Palestine did nothing to improve her view of Jews. Britain had promised a homeland in Palestine to the Jews if they gave assistance to the Allies in World War One, and didn't help the Turks who were the actual rulers at the time. This was called the Balfour Declaration. In 1922 the League of Nations gave Britian a mandate over Palestine, with a proviso that they live up to their promise and aid the Jews in settling there. The British were more eager to stay on the good side of the Arab majority, who loathed the Jews. The increased levels of Jewish immigration in the 1920's only enflamed their rage, and by the end of the decade the Arabs wee making armed assaults on Jewish settlements. The Jews were determined not to be forced out. They fought back furiously, buying land, getting guns, encouraging further immigration, and demanding the self-determination that had been promised. "Portas was atagonistic towards these trends, which in turn darkened her perception of the Holy Land as a Jewish prize." (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 20)
The pilgrims took forty days to wander the Palestinian countryside before going to the City of David to celebrate Easter there. Portas was disgusted by what she saw as her fellows' servile groveling before the alien shrines of an alien race. To her, it showed how Judaism and its sister Christianity had turned the proud and noble Nordics into a race of sniveling slaves. She got into some trouble with fellow pilgrims by telling them that the Christian shrines they honored were falsehoods and devoted to lies.
In Palestine Portas also encountered Jews in large numbers for the first time, and not just Jews, but Jews who were not trying to assimilate into a surrounding community. She wandered the Old City, feeling disgust (by her own account) at the exotic nature of the Jews. Their clothes, their customs, their observances and festivals; the strange dark men in broad-brimmed hats and long black coats hastening to pray by the Wailing Wall; the paradox of a tribal God claiming universal significance; and the endless references to the history of Israel and the fulfillment of Scripture all filled her with disgust. These could not be the "chosen people". To her they seemed scarcely human, let along European.
By her later account, at that moment she experienced one of several truly spiritual moments in her life. She knew of Hitler as a German politician, and while she respected him for defying the Versaille Treaty, she thought little of him beyond that. But then it hit her. Hitler's struggle against Jewish influence in Germany was not a German affair, but an international one. She understood that all the formerly pagan nations of Europe must throw off the chains of Jewish and Christian slavery and return to the old pagan gods if they would ever be free and strong. In that moment, Maximiani Portas knew the truth: she was a Nazi, she had always been a Nazi, and Hitler was the chosen champion of humanity. She had entered the Old City a very skeptical Christian. She left it a fanatical devotee of Adolf Hitler and Naziism.
Her first efforts to re-ignite the pagan fire among her fellow Greeks failed miserably. Portas sadly realised that Christianity had poisoned their minds for too long. They could no longer appreciate the beauty of Aryan paganism. In the midst of all this she wrote her philosophical thesis on the nature of simplicity in mathematics and natural science. She studied ascience so she coudl write about it and within a year had taken papers in physical chemistry, biological chemistry, mineralogy, and general chemistry. She got her Master of Sciences next year (1931).
She also kept up her studies of Hitler, Aryan paganism, and anti-semitism. It was while reading Mein Kampf that she decided that since the earliest Aryans had ciome from the East, she must also look East to learn. Upon her father's death in 1932, she inherited enough money that she could go to the Aryan fountainhead. She would go to India and study Aryan Paganism at its uncorrupted source.
Next: I (very briefly) cover Portas' years in India, she changes her name to Savitri Devi, and then after WW2 becomes the evangelist of Naziism -- in conquered Germany.
Anyway -- When last we left, Savitri Devi, still going under her birth name of Maximiani Portas, was about to go on a Lenten pilgrimage to Palestine in 1929 with fellow Greek Orthodox believers. Her English mother tried to get her interested in Anglicanism, but Portas' contempt for England and its people ensured that effort failed. The ritual and Byzantine legacy of the Greek Orthodox Church drew her love, though she mostly seems to have been interested in it out of Greek nationalism and the Megali Idea. Christianity itself annoyed her with its human-centeredness and the relegation of nature. Feeling skeptical, she journeyed to the Holy Land alongside her fellow believers, hoping to be convinced one way or another about her faith.
Portas was a well-educated woman, and as followed the standards of the time she knew her Bible. Especially the Old Testament, with Israel's history -- the Exodus under Moses, the Sinaitic Covenant, the return under Joshua into Canaan. Her mother and mother's sister had encouraged her reading, also telling her to respect the Jews as "the chosen people". That didn't happen. Instead, she completely rejected the Jewish emphasis on a single and solitary God, transcendent and apart from nature. As Goodrick-Clarke notes, "her Bible knowledge had instilled in her a repugnance for the Jews, in whose ethical monotheism she identified the original and ultimate enemy of her own pagan, pantheistic tendencies" (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 19). Above all, she viewed the idea that Yahweh was the God of Israel, yet had entrusted the Jews with a mission to the nations, as the height of arrogance.
Current events in Palestine did nothing to improve her view of Jews. Britain had promised a homeland in Palestine to the Jews if they gave assistance to the Allies in World War One, and didn't help the Turks who were the actual rulers at the time. This was called the Balfour Declaration. In 1922 the League of Nations gave Britian a mandate over Palestine, with a proviso that they live up to their promise and aid the Jews in settling there. The British were more eager to stay on the good side of the Arab majority, who loathed the Jews. The increased levels of Jewish immigration in the 1920's only enflamed their rage, and by the end of the decade the Arabs wee making armed assaults on Jewish settlements. The Jews were determined not to be forced out. They fought back furiously, buying land, getting guns, encouraging further immigration, and demanding the self-determination that had been promised. "Portas was atagonistic towards these trends, which in turn darkened her perception of the Holy Land as a Jewish prize." (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, pg. 20)
The pilgrims took forty days to wander the Palestinian countryside before going to the City of David to celebrate Easter there. Portas was disgusted by what she saw as her fellows' servile groveling before the alien shrines of an alien race. To her, it showed how Judaism and its sister Christianity had turned the proud and noble Nordics into a race of sniveling slaves. She got into some trouble with fellow pilgrims by telling them that the Christian shrines they honored were falsehoods and devoted to lies.
In Palestine Portas also encountered Jews in large numbers for the first time, and not just Jews, but Jews who were not trying to assimilate into a surrounding community. She wandered the Old City, feeling disgust (by her own account) at the exotic nature of the Jews. Their clothes, their customs, their observances and festivals; the strange dark men in broad-brimmed hats and long black coats hastening to pray by the Wailing Wall; the paradox of a tribal God claiming universal significance; and the endless references to the history of Israel and the fulfillment of Scripture all filled her with disgust. These could not be the "chosen people". To her they seemed scarcely human, let along European.
By her later account, at that moment she experienced one of several truly spiritual moments in her life. She knew of Hitler as a German politician, and while she respected him for defying the Versaille Treaty, she thought little of him beyond that. But then it hit her. Hitler's struggle against Jewish influence in Germany was not a German affair, but an international one. She understood that all the formerly pagan nations of Europe must throw off the chains of Jewish and Christian slavery and return to the old pagan gods if they would ever be free and strong. In that moment, Maximiani Portas knew the truth: she was a Nazi, she had always been a Nazi, and Hitler was the chosen champion of humanity. She had entered the Old City a very skeptical Christian. She left it a fanatical devotee of Adolf Hitler and Naziism.
Her first efforts to re-ignite the pagan fire among her fellow Greeks failed miserably. Portas sadly realised that Christianity had poisoned their minds for too long. They could no longer appreciate the beauty of Aryan paganism. In the midst of all this she wrote her philosophical thesis on the nature of simplicity in mathematics and natural science. She studied ascience so she coudl write about it and within a year had taken papers in physical chemistry, biological chemistry, mineralogy, and general chemistry. She got her Master of Sciences next year (1931).
She also kept up her studies of Hitler, Aryan paganism, and anti-semitism. It was while reading Mein Kampf that she decided that since the earliest Aryans had ciome from the East, she must also look East to learn. Upon her father's death in 1932, she inherited enough money that she could go to the Aryan fountainhead. She would go to India and study Aryan Paganism at its uncorrupted source.
Next: I (very briefly) cover Portas' years in India, she changes her name to Savitri Devi, and then after WW2 becomes the evangelist of Naziism -- in conquered Germany.