Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
It may seem strange to include Lord Bulwer-Lytton in a thread devoted to science fiction and fantasy writers since he seems to have written only one book that could be viewed as being science fiction. However, this one book would go on to have huge ramifications for the 20th Century and would contribute greatly to the early growth of the science fiction genre. That book was ‘Vril: The Power of the Coming Race’ published in 1871.
Background
Bulwer-Lytton was the very epitome of a Victorian English establishment figure. Son of a general, he would go on to become a high ranking politician (he was Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1858 at a time when the British Empire was approaching its zenith) who rubbed shoulders with the great and the good of English society in the middle to late 19th century. This included being personal friends with Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister, who was also a fellow writer. Indeed, such was Bulwer-Lytton’s reputation that when the King of Greece abdicated in 1862, he was offered the vacant throne but declined. He was also a friend of Charles Dickens and it is said that he influenced Dickens to revise ‘Great Expectations’ so as to provide a more romantic ending since the original version of the novel did not end with Pip and Estella getting together. Bulwer-Lytton would also provide us with some famous quotations such as “The pen is mightier than the sword”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar” and “the great unwashed”. He even has places named after him, e,g., Lytton the suburb of Brisbane, Australia; Lytton in British Columbia, Canada; and Lytton in Iowa, USA to name but a few.
Educated at Trinity College and Trinity Hall Cambridge, Bulwer-Lytton's literary career began in 1820 with the publication of a book of poems and spanned much of the 19th century. He wrote in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery, romance, horror, the occult and, of course, science fiction. He was also a playwright with his plays being staged at major theatres in London and the USA. His books have somewhat fallen out of popularity these days but they would influence fellow writers in his own age and others subsequently. For example, his novel, ‘Strange Story’ (1862), which had a supernatural theme, would have an influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Similarly, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race’ would influence other science fiction and fantasy writers such as H.G. Wells (the ‘Time Machine’), Edgar Rice Burroughs (‘Pellucidar’ and the Barsoom series) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (‘The Lost World’). The writers of Theosophy were also influenced by his works. Annie Besant and especially Madam Helena Blavatsky, who incorporated some of his thoughts and ideas, particularly those set out in Vril: The Power of the Coming Race and ‘Zanoni’, in her own books (‘Isis Unveiled’ and ‘The Secret Doctrine’).
However, Bulwer-Lytton was far more than a politician and writer. Many consider him to be one of the leading occultists and esotericists of the day with links to various British secret societies including the ‘Rosicrucians’ and the ‘Orphic Circle’. I will revert back to the latter group later in this article. For the time being, I will point out that when Bulwer-Lytton wrote ‘The Power of the Coming Race’, esotericism was at a cross roads. For centuries ancient, esoteric or hermetic knowledge had been retained within the ranks of various secret societies such as the Freemasons and Rosicrucians, who were in essence the modern successors to the mystery schools of Egypt, Greece and Rome. Their knowledge was not to be made available to the profane, i.e. those who were outside of the membership of their schools. However, by the late 19th century, scientific rationalism had to a large extent triumphed over spirituality and the esoteric. Think of the scientific breakthroughs by Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, James Clarke Maxwell and other scientific luminaries during the 19th century. Hence, what were secret societies like the Rosicrucians to do as regards keeping their esoteric influences alive within a fast evolving modern industrial and technical culture where empiricism now ruled? Well one way would be to get that knowledge out to the more discerning members of the public by means of art, plays, poetry and books.
I have already referred to the works of Lewis Carrol in an earlier article on this thread who made such disclosure through his fantasy tales. He like Bulwer-Lytton was an esotericist and possible occultist. He moved in some of the same circles as Bulwer-Lytton, although I have not been able to find any evidence that he was in the Orphic Circle. The likelihood is that the two men were acquainted and probably went to some of the same trance medium channelling sessions that groups like the Orphic Circle, and later on the Theosophists, were very much into at the time. Indeed, one such prominent medium was Emma Hardinge Britten who had links with both the Orphic Circle and the Theosphists. I will have more to say about her role and the influence she may have had on Bulwer-Lytton below.
Vril: The Power of the Coming Race
So what is it about Vril: The Power of the Coming Race that drew so much attention from other writers and esoteric groups? Here is a plot summary for those who do not wish, or have time, to read the entire book (N.B. the summary is taken from Wikipedia):
The novel centres on a young, independent, unnamed, wealthy traveller (the narrator), who visits a friend, a mining engineer. They explore a natural chasm in a mine which has been exposed by an exploratory shaft. The narrator reaches the bottom of the chasm safely, but the rope breaks and his friend is killed. The narrator finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels. He befriends the first being he meets, who guides him around a city that is reminiscent of ancient Egyptian architecture. The explorer meets his host's wife, two sons and daughter who learn to speak English by way of a makeshift dictionary which the narrator unconsciously teaches them the language. His guide comes towards him, and he and his daughter, Zee, explain who they are and how they function.
The hero discovers that these beings, who call themselves Vril-ya, have great telepathic and other parapsychological abilities, such as being able to transmit information, get rid of pain and put others to sleep. The narrator is offended by the idea that the Vril-ya are better adapted to learn about him than he is to learn about them. Nevertheless, the guide (who turns out to be a magistrate) and his son Ta behave kindly towards him.
The narrator soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization called the Ana, who live in networks of caverns linked by tunnels. Originally surface dwellers, they fled underground thousands of years ago to escape a massive flood and gained greater power by facing and dominating the harsh conditions of the Earth. The place where the narrator descended houses 12,000 families, one of the largest groups. Their society is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being an "all-permeating fluid" called "Vril", a latent source of energy that the spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree that depends on their hereditary constitution. This mastery gives them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. It is this fluid that the Vril-ya employ to communicate with the narrator. The powers of the Vril include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are immense, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to destroy entire cities if necessary.
Men (called An, pronounced "Arn") and women (called Gy, pronounced "Gee") have equal rights. The women are stronger and larger than the men. The women are also the pursuing party in romantic relationships. They marry for just three years, after which the men choose whether to remain married, or be single. The female may then pursue a new husband. However, they seldom make the choice to remarry.
Their religion posits the existence of a superior being but does not dwell on his nature. The Vril-ya believe in the permanence of life, which according to them is not destroyed but merely changes form.
The narrator adopts the attire of his hosts and begins also to adopt their customs. Zee falls in love with him and tells her father, who orders Taë to kill him with his staff. Eventually both Taë and Zee conspire against such a command, and Zee leads the narrator through the same chasm which he first descended. Returning to the surface, he warns that in time the Vril-ya will run out of habitable space underground and will claim the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process, if necessary.
It should be noted that this book helped to popularise the ‘Hollow Earth Theory’, although it was by no means the first to do so. For example, Jules Verne’s ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ had been published only a few years before Bulwer-Lytton’s book. What really distinguishes this work is his reference to “Vril”. You will see that I have highlighted some of the text above to indicate clear references to things which the C’s have alluded to in many of their sessions. Hence, we have a race of Aryans who fled underground a long time ago [The Nation of the Third Eye or the White Brotherhood perhaps?]. They have advanced technology and super powers. This suggests they may be bi-density beings, both 3rd and 4th Density. They have control over this Vril energy, which sounds like zero point energy or the energy of the vacuum (aether), and this energy has immense destructive potential. Think also of Wilhelm Reich and his Orgone energy. We also learn that a Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for directing the Vril energy. [Where have we heard that before?] There is also an obvious harking back in the story to the destruction of Atlantis with the Ana escaping from the Deluge. Indeed, the word “Ana” reminds me of “Anu” the chief god of the ancient Sumerians and the leader of the Anunnaki.
As an amusing aside, the word “Vril” caught on in the popular imagination so much so that it is now remembered in the well known beverage ‘Bovril’ derived from “Bov” short for bovine and “Vril” meaning energy.
So where did Bulwer-Lytton get his ideas for Vril energy from? Recent evidence suggests that he developed his ideas about "Vril" against the background of his long preoccupation with occult natural forces. In his earlier novels Zanoni (1842) and A Strange Story (1862), Bulwer-Lytton had discussed electricity and other "material agents" as the possible natural causes for occult phenomena. He had this to say about it in correspondence to his friend, John Forster:
“I did not mean Vril for mesmerism, but for electricity, developed into uses as yet only dimly guessed, and including whatever there may be genuine in mesmerism, which I hold to be a mere branch current of the one great fluid pervading all nature. I am by no means, however, wedded to Vril, if you can suggest anything else to carry out this meaning namely, that the coming race, though akin to us, has nevertheless acquired by hereditary transmission, etc., certain distinctions which make it a different species, and contains powers which we could not attain to through a slow growth of time; so that this race would not amalgamate with, but destroy us. [...] Now, as some bodies are charged with electricity like the torpedo or electric eel, and never can communicate that power to other bodies, so I suppose the existence of a race charged with that electricity and having acquired the art to concentre and direct it in a word, to be conductors of its lightnings. If you can suggest any other idea of carrying out that idea of a destroying race, I should be glad. Probably even the notion of Vril might be more cleared from mysticism or mesmerism by being simply defined to be electricity and conducted by those staves or rods, omitting all about mesmeric passes, etc.”
Wikipedia states that Bulwer-Lytton has been regarded as an "initiate" or "adept" by esotericists, especially because of his Rosicrucian novel Zanoni (1842). However, they state there is no historical evidence that suggests that Bulwer-Lytton can be seen as an occultist or that he had been a member of any kind of esoteric association. Instead, it has been shown that Bulwer-Lytton has been "esotericized" since the 1870s. In 1870, the Societas Rosicrucians in Anglia appointed Bulwer-Lytton as its "Grand Patron". Although Bulwer-Lytton complained about this by letter in 1872, the claim has never been revoked.
The Orphic Circle
Despite this refutation, it seems very likely that Bulwer-Lytton was linked to various esoteric groups, particularly the Orphic Circle and the Rosicrucians. After all, secret societies are by their nature secret and they don’t tend to advertise their existence or leave records of their membership around for historians to peruse in years to come. Moreover, members of secret societies often communicate through code and use code names for each other (e.g., Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati). Hence, it is usually hard to pin down an historic figure’s relationship to secret societies unless they admit it openly in their writings. Just think how infrequently US historians take into account the role of free masons in establishing the United States of America. What of the Skull and Crossbones Society today and its influence on the US Government? How many people know that Sir Winston Churchill was a druid?
It is claimed that the Rosicrucians (who have a very ancient pedigree according to the Cassiopaean transcripts) were well informed about this mysterious force, the real name of which was only known to initiates. Hence, was Bulwer-Lytton deliberately leaking out their secrets and, if so, to whom? The answer to that question will become clearer as we go along.
Craven Cottage
One possible meeting place for the Orphic Circle, where they could conduct their ceremonial and practical rituals involving clairvoyants or trance mediums was Craven Cottage in Fulham, North London (the Cottage still stands and now forms part of the Fulham Football Club’s stadium). Bulwer-Lytton owned or rented the property between 1840 and 1846. He held sumptuous parties there where guests included Louis Napoleon (the deposed Emperor of France) and Benjamin Disraeli. Robert Browning the famous poet would also spend time recuperating there after an illness. The spiritualist, Samuel Carter Hall, confirmed in his memoirs that séances were definitely held there. He recalled that a young French clairvoyant, Alexis Didier, performed his mesmerism there only days after arriving in England in 1844. Craven Cottage had some odd features that may have made it ideal for such performances. These were a room referred to as ‘the Robbers Cave’, which had a doorway in the ceiling and the door into the library (known as the Egyptian Hall) had ancient Egyptian style pillars on either side. Craven Cottage was in fact a large rural residence and not a small cottage despite the name. Laurence Hutton in his description of the Cottage in his ‘Literary Landmarks of London’ described it as follows: “It stood in 1885, a picturesque ruin, and must have been, in its day a very remarkable specimen of fantastic architecture, embracing the Persian, Gothic, Moorish and Egyptian styles.” This would make it the perfect setting for rituals harking back to earlier times and ancient traditions. Whether Emma Britten performed any of her trance medium sessions for the Orphic Circle there is not known but there is every likelihood that she did.
Emma Hardinge Britten and the Orphic Circle
Emma Hardinge Britten (real name Emma Floyd) was a skilled trance medium, so much so that Madam Blavatsky thought she was the best that she had ever seen. The two women were well acquainted and Britten, who would go on to become one of the leading spiritualist advocates and practitioners of the 19th century, would be heavily involved with the theosophists in the early days of that movement until she fell out with Blavatsky and subsequently broke all links. Britten was a writer, orator and spiritualist who even had an influence on Abraham Lincoln’s presidential re-election in 1864 (via her ‘Coming Man’ speech). However, in her youth she had been an accomplished actress, singer and musician who performed on the West End stage in London. She was therefore already well known in London circles before she became a leading advocate for the spiritualist movement. It is her prowess as a medium though that first brought her to the attention of Bulwer-Lytton and the Orphic Circle.
She developed a reputation for her abilities as a spiritual or trance medium/clairvoyant during her early years. This may have brought her to the attention of the Orphic Circle. To make this link, I am attaching an article written by David Charles Manners in 2017, which describes his ancestor’s (Charles Thomas Pearce) involvement in the Orphic Circle and names Edward Bulwer-Lytton as a member as well as quoting directly from Britten.
Although she does not name them specifically, Britten had this to say about the Orphic Circle in 1887:
“When quite young, in fact, before I had attained my thirteenth year, I became acquainted with certain parties who sought me out and professed a desire to observe the somnambulic faculties for which I was then remarkable. I found my new associates to be ladies and gentlemen, mostly persons of noble rank, and during a period of several years, I, and many other young persons, assisted at their sessions in the quality of somnambulists, or mesmeric subjects....
I should have known but little of its principles and practices, as I was simply what I should now call a clairvoyant, sought out by the society for my gifts in this direction, had I not, in later years, been instructed in the fundamentals of the society by the author of ‘Art Magic’. When modern spiritualism dawned upon the world, for special reasons of my own, the fellows of my society gave me an honorary release from every obligation I had entered into with them except in the matter of secrecy. On that point I can never be released and never seek to be; but in respect to the statements I am about to make, my former associates . . . not only sanction, but command me to present to the candid enquirer [. . . the substance of the article to which these two paragraphs are an introduction.”
She subsequently added:
‘[They] claimed an affiliation with societies derived from the ancient mysteries of Egypt, Greece and Judaea’, whose ‘beliefs and practices had been concealed from the vulgar by cabalistic methods.’
Indeed, it is in Britten’s writings and those of her mysterious friend Chevalier Louis de B_ (the author of ‘Magic Art’ and ‘Ghostland’) that we find almost everything that is now known about this society. Manners also quotes Louis de B in his article:
“These initiates considered themselves ‘magians’, a term for Zoroastrian priests with ‘supernatural’ powers, though their methods were said to have been ‘inspired by far loftier aims and regulated by much more pious aspirations than those of most other English magicians’ [‘Louis de B’].”
So who is this Louis de B? In 1875, Emma Britten made this statement:
“In 1850 Emma Hardinge [Britten], then a resident of London, England, learned from two German gentlemen of her acquaintance some remarkable details of a society which held its sessions at Hamburgh and Berlin, the chief object of which was the study and development of the occult forces latent in Nature ...
. . . Emma Hardinge‘s friends were professed materialists, and, being officers in the Prussian Army, men of culture and ability, they were accustomed to strengthen their own disbelief in the soul‘s continued existence after death by quotations from many of the most renowned literary authorities of their own country. . .
“The author of ‘Ghost Land’ was himself an initiate of their body [i.e., the society at Hamburgh and Berlin ... He was also] a clairvoyant of most remarkable lucidity and power. Being associated in intimate relations with the President of the Brotherhood, who was indeed his tutor in early youth, whilst little more than a mere child he was employed as a magnetic subject ...
This gentleman, now a warm Spiritualist and believer in the power of disembodied spirits to effect what he once attributed to the spirits of mortals only, still affirms his faith in the superior force of the embodied human soul to perform feats of ponderous strength ...”
Despite some deliberate confusion between Prussia and Austria in her account, leading her at one point to speak of “the Berlin Brotherhood, Austria”, it is clearly Louis de B_ who is meant here; the other Prussian will then be his tutor, who bears the pseudonym Felix von Marx in Ghostland.
So now we have our first hint of a German connection and it is to Germany we must now turn for the development of Bulwer-Lytton’s ideas concerning the Vril energy.
The Thule Society
The founder of the ThuleGesellschaft (Society) was Rudolf von Sebottendorf a son of middle class Prussian parents. His original name was Rudolf Glauer. Glauer spent much of his youth in Egypt and Turkey. Indeed, he became von Sebottendorf whilst in Turkey, where he would claim that he had been adopted by the patriarch of the family, Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorf. The von Sebottendorf family never challenged the claim and actually endorsed the relationship. After his return to Germany, von Sebottendorf founded the Thule Society, borrowing heavily from the racial doctrines and beliefs of Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List. These doctrines included a revisionist history of an ancient very high civilisation from which the Aryans were descended. This was blended with the claims of ancient lore that Aryans descended to Earth at the poles (usually the North Pole) and dispersed themselves throughout the planet, marrying the lesser humans already on the planet and, by doing so, corrupting their race [I wonder where we may have heard all this before?]. Note that the name ‘Thule’ itself is a reference to a mythical lost continent located in the high north.
To understand the importance of the Thule Society to the history of Germany in the first part of the 20th century you only have to consider that Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s Deputy Fuhrer, joined the Thule Society in 1919 a year after it was created. When one learns that the Thule Society used the emblem of the swastika freely in its iconography, you immediately get the idea of how important the Thule Society may have been in the formation and evolution of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party’s (Nazi Party) doctrines, particularly those relating to racial purity. Indeed, at least one modern commentator has described the Thule Society as the midwife of the Nazi Party. Many of the early Nazi leaders were members of the Thule Society, although there is no documentary evidence that Adolf Hitler was ever a member. This does not mean that Hitler was not a member or that he didn’t have strong associations with the Society. It simply means that there is nothing to record the fact. Given Hess’s strong influence on Hitler and his ideas in the early days of the Nazi Party, it would certainly be surprising if Hitler had not met with von Sebottendorf. But whatever the truth is, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he ordered that all secret societies should be disbanded in Nazi Germany and that included the Thule Society too.
The Vril Society
But the Nazi Party was not the only movement that the Thule Society gave birth to. They were also supposed to have given birth to the Vril Society or the Luminous Lodge in Berlin. Could this organisation be the Berlin Brotherhood previously encountered in the story of Emma Britten perhaps? Another important member of the Thule Society was General Karl Haushofer (although this has been refuted by modern historians), a German geopolitician of renown and a leading occultist. Haushofer was a teacher, mentor and friend to Rudolf Hess. Haushofer’s son, Albrecht, was also a political geographer and geopolitician in his own right and was an adviser to the German Foreign Ministry in the 1930’s. Father and son may even have played a part in Hess’s ill fated flight to Britain in 1941. There are those who argue that some members of the Vril Society (including Haushofer) had contacts with the English secret society, the Order of the Magic Dawn (although this was supposedly defunct by 1923), which had leading English politicians attached to it. Could this again be evidence of the Berlin Brotherhood? They claim that Hess’s flight was to make use of these links to bring around a peace settlement between Germany and Britain. It should be noted that Albrecht Haushofer subsequently joined the anti-Nazi resistance during WW2 and was murdered by the Gestapo in Moabit Prison in 1945.
Unlike the Thule Society, there is little documentary evidence to establish the existence of the Vril Society. What exists is sparse indeed. Willy Ley, a German rocket engineer, who had emigrated to the United States in 1937, wrote an article titled “Pseudoscience in Naziland” that was published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1947. Among various pseudoscientific groups in Germany at the time of the Nazis, he mentions one that looked for the “Vril”. He said this group, which he thought called itself ‘Wahrheitsgesselschaft’ (Society for Truth), was more or less localised in Berlin. According to him, the group devoted its spare time looking for the Vril. It is only fair to mention that Ley made no mention of Haushofer in his article.
The existence of the Vril Society was subsequently alleged in 1960 by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels in their book the ‘Morning of the Magicians’. They claimed that the Vril, Society was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin that was a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society. They also thought it was in close contact with the English Order of the Golden Dawn (see above). Louis Pauwels would go on to claim in his book ‘Monsieur Gurdjieff’ that the Vril Society had been founded by Karl Haushofer, who was a student of the metaphysicist Georges Gurdjieff. However, there is nothing to substantiate this and historians take the view that there is no historical foundation for Bergier and Pauwel’s claims.
Although I am sympathetic to the views of main stream historians concerning a lack of documentary evidence for the Vril Society, others have done extensive research into Nazi scientific endeavours during this period and this research paints a rather different picture on how far advanced Nazi research truly was. Main stream historians also tend to overlook the scientific research of Nikola Tesla, who certainly made giant strides in discovering the way to transmit energy without the need for wires and cables in the early part of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine the Nazis were not aware of his research. For a fuller treatment of this subject, I would recommend readers to look at the work of Dr. Joseph P. Farrell and in particular his books ‘Reich of the Black Sun‘ and ‘The SS Brotherhood of the Bell’. Farrell, an American, is a German speaker and has gone back to original sources for the research uncovered in his books. Remember also that the C’s confirmed the existence of the Nazi Bell (Die Glocke) and the fact that it was a time machine in the transcripts. They also confirmed the existence of a Nazi base in Antartica that survived the war (see attached article on Maria Orsic for further information on this). Hence, even if we cannot prove the existence of the Vril Society as an incontrovertible fact, this does not in itself disprove that there may have been research in pre-war Germany into exotic forms of energy of the kind Bulwer-Lytton was referring to in his book. The plethora of UFOs sightings in the post war period could not have all been alien and many of them had a clear nuts and bolts dimension to them.
Assuming something like the Vril Society existed in Germany what was it intended to do? According to some sources, the objective of the Vril Group was to acquire knowledge about Vril (energy) through psychic means and to disclose pertinent information to the Thule Society in order to further the interests of the Nazi Party. Thus would come from this channelled knowledge the development of the ‘Munich Device’ called the Jenseitsflugmaschine (“JFM”) or "Otherworld Flying Machine". The first Reichsflugscheiben ("Nazi UFO") supposedly began construction in 1922 in Munich.
This metaphysical project was subsequently confiscated by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1933, after a likely tip-off by the physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who allegedly had been aware of the JFM since 1924. As we have already noted, when Hitler came to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, all secret societies and esoteric organisations were suppressed and banned by 1935. Thus, the Vril Group’s metaphysical research was confiscated and taken over by SS to serve their interests, which would lead eventually to the RundFlugZeug (RFZ) program to create armed Nazi flying discs. But how did they actually acquire this knowledge in the first place?
Maria Orsic
Maria Orsitsch or Orsic (born in 1895 in Zagreb Croatia) was an accomplished trance medium (like Emma Britten) who became associated with the Vril Society in Munich. Maria became a follower of the German National Socialist Movement, which was active in the early years after the First World War. In 1919, Maria moved to Munich and came into contact with the Thule Society.
Maria joined with another young woman, Traute A, also from Munich, and several other female friends, who formed an inner circle of “Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik”, better known as the Vril Society. They were all young ladies with very long hair. Maria was blond and Traute was brown-haired. They had long horse tails, a very uncommon hairstyle at that time, which became a distinctive characteristic in all of the women who joined the Vril Society. They believed that their long hair acted as cosmic antennae to receive alien communications from beyond. They claimed to have received psychic communications from Aryan aliens living on Alpha Centauri in the Aldebaran star system. Allegedly, these aliens had visited Earth in ancient times and settled in Sumeria, and the word Vril was formed from the ancient Sumerian word "Vri-Il" (meaning "like god or God-like").
[One wonders if these aliens could in fact have been members of Thor’s Pantheum in the same way that the Council of Nine may have been, whose channelings we know Gene Roddenberry participated in.]
It has long been thought by conspiracy theorists that Maria Orsic was part of Hitler’s inner circle, calling her “daughter” or “Goddess of the Devil”, and that she escaped with him either to Antarctica or Argentina in 1945. But, as previously stated, when Hitler came to power in 1933 all secret societies were disbanded and the projects of the Thule Society were taken over by the SS. By this time Maria’s whereabouts was unknown. Whether she was imprisoned, killed, or escaped, no one to this day knows. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the SS continued the Aldebaran channelling sessions in secret and Maria Orsic may therefore have continued being part of the project.
[N.B. I have attached an article that I found on the internet concerning Maria Orsic, which was poorly translated from German into English. I have sought to improve the translation without changing the original sense of the text. I have also added a transcript of a session with the C’s that backs up the involvement of the Thule Society and may give credence to the success of the channelling by Maria Orsic and her colleagues.]
Conclusion
Although it is impossible to substantiate the claims for the Thule and Vril Societies made above at this distance in time, if what has been alleged is even partially true, then Bulwer-Lytton’s book Vril: The Coming Race can be seen to have had a huge impact on the history of the 20th Century, way beyond anything he could have envisaged when he wrote it. Was the information encoded in his book derived from his Rosicrucian knowledge or from the channeling sessions he participated in with the likes of Emma Britten or was it in fact a mixture of both? We have no means of knowing now but, whatever the truth, his book has certainly proven to have been extremely influential in our own age. Perhaps we can view him in this light as a 19th Century version of Gene Roddenberry