4um: Paul of Tarsus, or Christianity and Jewry

Title: Paul of Tarsus, or Christianity and Jewry
Source: Savitri Devi Archive
URL Source: http://savitridevi.org/paul_trans_english_fowler.html
Published: Jun 18, 1957
Author: Savitri Devi/R.G. Fowler translator
Post Date: 2014-08-08 07:36:19 by Deasy
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Keywords: judaism, universalism, pagan, odin
Views: 324
Comments: 7

If there is a fact that cannot fail to impress all persons who seriously study the history of Christianity, it is the almost complete absence of documents regarding the man whose name the great international religion bears, namely Jesus Christ. We only know of him from what is told to us in the gospels, i.e., practically nothing, for these miscellanies, if prolix in their descriptions of the miraculous facts they concern, give no information at all about his person, and, in particular, about his origins. Oh, we have in the four canonical gospels a long genealogy going back from Joseph, the husband of the mother of Jesus, as far as Adam! But I always ask myself what interest this can have for us, given that elsewhere we are expressly told that Joseph has nothing to do with the birth of the child. One of the numerous “apocryphal” gospels—rejected by the church—attributes the paternity of Jesus to a Roman soldier distinguished for his bravery and thus nicknamed “The Panther.” This gospel is cited by Heckel in one of his studies of early Christianity.² The acceptance of this point of view, however, does not entirely resolve the very important question of the origins of Christ, for it does not tell us who was Mary his mother. One of the four canonical gospels tells us that she was the daughter of Joachim and Anne when Anne was past the age of maternity; in other words, she was herself born miraculously—or she was quite simply a child adopted by Anne and Joachim in their old age—which does not clarify matters.

But there is something much more troubling. They have recently discovered the records of an important monastery of the Essene sect, situated scarcely thirty kilometers from Jerusalem. These records deal with a period extending from the beginning of the first century before Jesus Christ to the second half of the first century after him. There is already talk, seventy years before him, of a great Initiate, or a Spiritual Master—the “Master of Justice”—whose return one day is awaited. Of the extraordinary career of Jesus, of his innumerable miraculous healings, of his teaching during three whole years in the midst of the people of Palestine, of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, so brilliantly described in the canonical gospels, of his trial and crucifixion (accompanied according to the canonical gospels by events as impressive as an earthquake, the darkening of the sky for three hours in the afternoon, and the veil of the temple rending itself in two), not one word is said in the scrolls of these ascetics—eminently religious men, whom such events would have to interest. It seems, according to these “Dead Sea Scrolls”—I recommend to those who take interest in this matter to read the study which has been published by John Allegro in the English language³—or else Jesus did not produce any impression on the religious minds of his time, as avid for wisdom and also as well informed as the ascetics of the monastery in question appear to have been, or else . . . he simply did not exist at all! As troubling as it may be, these findings should be placed before the world public, and in particular the Christian public, after these recent discoveries.

In that which concerns the Christian church, however, and Christianity as an historical phenomenon, and the role that it plays in the West and in the world, the question has much less importance than it would seem at first. For even if Jesus had lived and preached, it is not he who is the true founder of Christianity as he is presented to the world. If he truly lived, Jesus was a man “above Time” whose kingdom—as he himself said to Pilate, according to the gospels—is “not of this world,” whose entire activity, entire teaching, tended to show, to those whom the world did not satisfy, a spiritual path by which they can escape, and find, in their interior paradise, in this “Kingdom of God” which is in us, the God “in spirit and in truth” whom they seek without knowing.⁴ If he had lived, Jesus would never have dreamed of founding a temporal organization—and, above all, not a political and financial organization—such as the Christian Church so quickly became. Politics did not interest him. And, detesting riches, he was a determined enemy of any mixture of money in spiritual affairs, which certain Christians have, rightly or wrongly, seen as an argument that proves that, contrary to the teaching of all Christian Churches (except those which absolutely negate his human nature [For example, the sect of the Monophysites]), he did not have Jewish blood. The true founder of historical Christianity, of Christianity that we know in practice, which has played and will play a role in the history of the West and the world, is neither Jesus, whom we know not at all, nor his disciple Peter, whom we know was Galilean and a simple fisherman in station, but Paul of Tarsus, whom we know was 100% Jewish in blood, in disposition, and in his heart, and, what is more, Jewish in education and a “Roman citizen,” as so many Jewish intellectuals today are French, German, Russian, or American citizens.

Historical Christianity—which is not at all a work “above Time,” but altogether a work “in Time”—is the work of Saul, called Paul, that is to say, the work of a Jew, as Marxism came to be more than two thousand years later. Let us examine the career of Paul of Tarsus.

Saul, called Paul, was a Jew and, what is more, an orthodox Jew at the same time as he was educated, a Jew imbued with the consciousness of his race and the role the “chosen people”—which they became according to the covenant of Jaweh—play in the world. He was a student of Gamaliel, one of the most reputed Jewish theologians of his time—theologian of the school of Pharisees, precisely the one which, according to the gospels, the prophet Jesus, whom the Christian church later on elevated to the rank of God, had quite violently combated for its arrogance, its hypocrisy, its habit of splitting hairs and putting the letter of the Jewish law before its spirit—before, at least, what he believed to be its spirit; it is not said whether Saul had not had, on this subject, a different idea than him. Moreover—and this is very important—Saul was an educated and self-conscious Jew born and raised outside of Palestine, in one of those cities of Roman Asia Minor that had succeeded Hellenistic Asia Minor and had retained all its characteristics: Tarsus, where Greek was the “lingua franca” of everyone and where Latin became, likewise, more and more familiar, and where one recognized representatives of all the peoples of the Near East. In other words, he was already a “ghetto” Jew, possessing, beyond a profound knowledge of the Israelite tradition, an understanding of the world of the “Goyim”—the non-Jews—which later on became of great value for him. He thought, without any doubt, like every good Jew, that the “Goy” is only to be dominated and exploited by the “chosen people.” But he knew their world infinitely better than the Jews of Palestine, in the midst of whom had emerged all the first believers of the new religious sect from which he was destined to form Christianity such as we see it.

It is said in the “Acts of the Apostles” that there was at first a ferocious persecution of the new sect. Did the adherents of the latter not scorn the Jewish Law in the strict sense of the word? Did the man who is recognized as the founder, and who is said to have returned from the dead, this Jew whom Saul himself had never seen, not give the example of his non-observance of the Sabbath, of his neglect of the days of fasting, and other strongly blameworthy transgressions of the rules of life from which a Jew should not depart at all? One may say the same of a mystery that bodes nothing good, hovering over the story of his birth, that he was perhaps not at all of Jewish origin—who knows? Why not persecute any such sect, when one is an orthodox Jew, student of the great Gamaliel? He had to preserve from scandal the observers of the Law. Saul, who had already given proof of zeal in being present at the stoning of Saint Stephen—one of the first preachers of the dangerous sect—continued to defend the Jewish Law and the tradition against those he considered to be heretics, until it finally dawned on him that there was a better—a much better—way of operating, precisely from the Jewish point of view. This he recognized on the road to Damascus.

The story, as the Christian church wishes it to be told, is that he suddenly had a vision of Jesus—whom he had not, I repeat, ever seen “in the flesh”—whose voice he finally heard say to him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?,” which voice he could not resist. He had, moreover, been blinded by a dazzling light, and he felt himself thrown to the ground. Transported to Damascus—at least according to the same account in “Acts of the Apostles”—he was recognized by one of the faithful of the sect which he had come to combat, the man who, after restoring Saul’s eyesight, baptized him and received him into the Christian community.

It is superfluous to say that this miraculous account cannot be accepted as it is told except by those who share the Christian faith. It does not have, like all accounts of its type, any historical value. Those who, without preconceived ideas, seek a plausible explanation—probable, natural—of the manner in which these things have happened, cannot be content. And the explanation, to be plausible, must give an account not only of the transformation of Saul into Paul—of the implacable defender of Judaism into the founder of the Christian church as we know it—but also of the nature, the content, and the direction of his activity after his conversion, of the internal logic of his career; otherwise put, the psychological connection, more or less conscious, between his past anti-Christianity and his great Christian work. Every conversion implies a connection between the past of the convert and the rest of his life, a deep reason, that is to say, a permanent aspiration of the convert that the act of conversion satisfies, a will, a permanent direction of life and action, of which the act of conversion is the expression and the instrument.

Now, given all we know of him and above all of the course of his career, there is only one profoundly fundamental will, inseparable from the personality of Paul of Tarsus in all the stages of his life, which can furnish the explanation for his “road to Damascus,” and this will is the one that serves the old Jewish ideal of spiritual domination, complementing and crowning that of economic domination. Saul, orthodox Jew, self-conscious Jew, who had combated the new sect insofar as it constituted a danger to orthodox Jewry, could only renounce his orthodoxy and become the soul and the arm precisely of this dangerous sect, after having understood that, recast by him, transformed, adapted to the exigencies of the vast world of the “Goyim”—the “Gentiles” of the gospels—interpreted, as he did, in the manner of giving, as said later on by Nietzsche, “a new meaning to the ancient mysteries,” it could become for centuries, if not forever, the most powerful instrument of the spiritual domination of Israel, the way by which it realizes, the most certainly and in the most definitive manner, the “mission” of the Jewish people, which was, according to him, as according to every good Israelite, that of ruling over the other peoples, subjecting them to a complete moral enslavement while exploiting them economically. And the more moral enslavement is complete, the more economic exploitation—it goes without saying—flourishes. It is only this prize that merits the pain of repudiating the rigidity of the ancient and venerable Law. Or, to speak a more trivial language, the sudden conversion of Saul along the road to Damascus is explicable in a completely natural manner solely if one allows that he suddenly appreciated the possibilities which nascent Christianity offered him for profit in the moral domination of his people, and which he had thought—in a stroke of genius, it might be said—“How I have taken the short view in persecuting this sect instead of serving mine come what may! How foolish I have been to attach myself to the forms—the details—instead of seeing the essential: the interest of the people of Israel, of the chosen people, of our people, of us Jews!”

The whole subsequent career of Paul is an illustration—a proof, to the extent that one may propose to “prove” facts of this nature—of this ingenious change of course, of this victory of an intelligent Jew, a practical man, a diplomat (and when “diplomat” is said in connection with religious questions, deception is meant) over the orthodoxly educated Jew preoccupied above all with the problems of ritual purity. From the day of his conversion, Paul, in effect, abandoned himself to the “Spirit,” and went where the “Spirit” suggested, or rather ordered, him to go, and spoke, in every circumstance, the words that the “Spirit” inspired in him. But where did the “Spirit” “order” him to go? To Palestine, among the Jews who still took part in the “errors” which he had publicly abjured, and who seemed to be the first to have title to the new revelation? Not on your life! He was quite careful! It was in Macedonia, as it was in Greece and among the Greeks of Asia Minor, among the Galatians, and later among the Romans—in Aryan lands: on the whole, in non-Jewish lands—that the neophyte went forth to preach the theological dogmas of original sin and eternal salvation through Jesus crucified, and the moral dogma of the equality of all men and of all peoples: it was in Athens where he proclaimed that God had created “all the nations, all the peoples, of one and the same blood” (“Acts of the Apostles,” chapter 17, verse 26). With this negation of the natural hierarchy of races, the Jews, had nothing to do—they who have, at all times, in their conception of the world, overturned this hierarchy to their profit. But it was (from the Jewish point of view) very useful to preach, to impose on the “Goyim,” to destroy their national values that had, up to that point, made them strong (or, rather, to simply hasten their destruction; for since the fourth century before Jesus Christ, they were already crumbling under the influence of the “hellenized” Jews of Alexandria). Without a doubt, Paul also preached it “in the Synagogues,” that is to say, to Jews, to whom he presented the new doctrine as the fulfillment of the prophecies and the messianic expectation; without a doubt, he said to these sons of his people, as to the “God fearers”—to semi-Jews, like Timothy, and to the Jewish quarters which were abundant in the Aegean seaports (the same as in Rome)—that Christ crucified and resurrected, whom he announced, was none other than the promised messiah. He gave a new meaning to the Jewish prophets, just as he gave a new meaning to the immemorial mysteries of Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor: a meaning that attributes a unique role, a unique place, a unique importance to the Jewish people in the religion of non-Jews. It was for him nothing but a means to the end of assuring for his people the spiritual domination of future ages. His genius—not religious, but political—consists in having understood this.

But it is not solely in the plan of the doctrine where he can show a disconcerting suppleness—“Greek with the Greeks, and Jew with the Jews,” as he himself said. He has a sense of practical necessities—and impossibilities. He who was at first so orthodox, is the first to oppose completely the imposition of the Jewish Law on Christian converts of non-Jewish races. He insists—against Peter and the least conciliatory group of the first Christians of Jerusalem—on the fact that a Christian of non-Jewish origin does not at all require circumcision or the Jewish laws concerning diet. He wrote for these new converts—half-Jews, half-Greeks, Romans of dubious origin, Levantines from all the parts of the Mediterranean: for all of this world without race, with which he served as the intermediary with his Jewish people, immutable in their tradition, and the vast world to conquer—where there does not exist, for them, the distinction between that which is “pure” and that which is “impure,” where they are permitted to eat anything (“all that which can be found in the market-place”). He knew that, without these concessions, Christianity could not expect to conquer the West—nor the Jews expect to conquer the world by means of the conversion of the West.

Peter, who was not at all a Jew of the “ghetto,” still did not understand at all the conditions of a non-Jewish world and did not see things from the same point of view—not yet anyway. It is because of this that it is necessary to see in Paul the true founder of historical Christianity: the man who made the purely spiritual teaching of the prophet Jesus the basis of a militant organization in Time, the goal of which is nothing but the domination of the Jews over a morally emasculated and physically debased world, a world where the mistaken love of “man” leads straight to the indiscriminate mixing of races, to the suppression of every national pride, and, in a word, to the degeneration of man.

It is time that all the non-Jewish nations finally open their eyes to this reality of two thousand years. May they understand the striking present day situation and react accordingly.

¹ Originally published as Paul de Tarse, ou Christianisme et juiverie (Calcutta: Savitri Dêvi Mukherji, 1958). Translated from the French by R.G. Fowler, with thanks to M.L., J.P., and D.O.

² Savitri may be referring to Ernst Haeckel, who mentions Pandera in his chapter on “Science and Christianity” in his The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Joseph McCabe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900), 328-9.

³ Savitri may be referring to any one of the following volumes by John Allegro: The Dead Sea Scrolls (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1956), The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed (New York: Gramercy, 1956), or, if it was published by the time of the essay’s composition, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of Christianity (New York: Criterion, 1957). In Pilgrimage, Savitri refers to another book on early Christianity by Gerald Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ (Springfield: Star Publishing Company, n.d.). See Savitri Devi, Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958), 332.

⁴ In The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958), Savitri makes a threefold distinction between men “above Time,” “in Time,” and “against Time.” Men above Time are visionaries and prophets who orient themselves by truths that transcend the present world. They are, therefore, impractical when it comes to changing the present world. Men in Time are entirely creatures of the present world. Therefore, they are more capable of attaining worldly success. Men against Time orient themselves by truths that transcend the present, yet they are capable of operating within the world to advance the cause of truth. Savitri offers the Pharaoh Akhnaton as the paradigm of the man above Time, Genghis Khan as the paradigm of the man in Time, and Hitler as the paradigm of the man against Time.

⁵ In May of 1957, Savitri sailed to Egypt en route to India. She stayed in the Cairo suburb of El-Maâdi in the home of Mahmoud Saleh, a Palestinian Arab and Nazi sympathizer. Saleh was a friend and neighbor of Nazi exile Johannes von Leers (1902-1963), a former German university professor and member of the SS who had been employed by Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda and was later employed by the Nasser government as a specialist in Zionist affairs. Savitri spent a good deal of her time in Egypt in Leers’ company. See Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, The Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 176-9. Savitri relates some of the events of her stay in Egypt in Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess: or the true story of a “most objectionable Nazi” and . . . half-a-dozen cats (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, n.d. [actually published in England circa 1965]), 97-99.

While I definitely have questions regarding the legitimacy of Pauline scriptural writings, which make up 80% of the New Testament, I'm not sure this writer is without an agenda. One thing that has always bothered me is the hatred that Jews have for Jesus and the things they say about him boiling in excrement, his temple prostitute mother and his Roman soldier father (making him a bastard). This author seems to have arrived at her conclusions via Babylonian Talmudic teaching.

The following interview is done with R.G. Fowler, the archivist of http://savitridevi.org and the general editor of the centennial edition of Savitri Devi's works. Most of you haven't heard of Savitri Devi, to no fault of your own, for prior to Fowler's website there was literally no information available anywhere on the internet about her. Moreso, outside of her most famous book, The Lightning and the Sun, nearly all of her writings were out of print. Thankfully, all of this has changed. It is our honor to help shed light on this enigmatic and mysterious woman. Savitri's writings are as important today as they were in the often tumultuous times she wrote them, perhaps even more. Besides being one of our favorite authors, she's also one of our favorite human beings. A bright burst of light in a dark sea of humanity.

How did you first hear of Savitri Devi, and what was your first impression of her?

I first heard of Savitri Devi in 2000. I was shown a copy of Impeachment of Man and Goodrick-Clarke’s Hitler’s Priestess. My first impression was that Savitri Devi was one of history’s great eccentrics. I am fascinated with human eccentricity, and that is what first led me to read her works. History is often stranger and more entertaining than fiction. Who could have made up Savitri Devi? She was utterly unique.

But as I read more of Savitri Devi’s works, I found her ideas increasingly appealing. So I suppose you can say that she made an eccentric out of me too, although I already was pretty far out of the mainstream. I was already familiar with and broadly sympathetic to National Socialism, Indo-European paganism, and the Traditional cyclical conception of history. I also shared her fascination with Akhnaton and the ancient world in general. But I was very impressed with how Savitri Devi synthesized these ideas and interests. She never claimed to be an original thinker, but I think she was too modest.

You are the Archivist of the online Savitri Devi Archive and the General Editor of the Centennial Edition of Savitri Devi’s Works, which reprints Savitri Devi’s published works, and prints previously unpublished ones as well. Tell us about these projects. What motivated you to begin this massive undertaking?

The goal of the Archive and the Centennial Edition is to make Savitri Devi’s works more accessible. When I first began reading Savitri Devi, it took me months to get copies of her books. Eventually, when the Archive and the Centennial Edition are complete, all of Savitri Devi’s books will be available for free online and can be easily purchased in high quality print editions.

I should note, though, that the Centennial Edition will not be a complete edition of Savitri Devi’s writings. We have no plans to reprint her doctoral dissertations, for instance. Nor will we republish works in their original languages. Instead, we plan to reprint all of Savitri Devi’s English-language books, plus English translations of L’Etang aux Lotus and Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne—plus Tyrtée l’Athenien and Hart wie Kruppstahl, if we can acquire the full manuscripts. But eventually we will put all of Savitri Devi’s writings, in the original languages and all translations, online at the Savitri Devi Archive

Even though the Savitri Devi Archive is a treasure trove of information, what information do you still seek? Are there periods of her life you are still in the dark about? Is there any possibility of the existence of unknown, unpublished books or articles?

Savitri Devi’s years in Greece are the most mysterious part of her life, particularly the years 1932-1935. In her writings and interviews, Savitri claims that she was in India from the spring of 1932 until the spring of 1935, when she returned to Europe to defend her doctoral dissertation, on April 1, 1935.

Dr. Greg Johnson, who is doing research for a new biography of Savitri Devi, discovered that this story is a lie. In 2004, in the Indian National Archive in New Delhi, he found a copy of Savitri Devi’s original application for a Visa to visit India. It is dated April 2, 1935—i.e., the day after she defended her doctoral dissertation in Lyons. It was filled out at the British Consulate in Lyons.

It is not known why Savitri Devi lied so consistently about her whereabouts in the years 1932-1935.

Savitri Devi also maintained that she met her future husband A. K. Mukherji in Calcutta in January of 1938, after his pro-Axis publication The New Mercury had been closed down. His family, however, claims that they met in Europe before she came to India, and this has been confirmed by Dr. Johnson’s archival research as well.

Dr. Johnson hypothesizes that both lies are related. He thinks that Savitri lied about when she met Mr. Mukherji to conceal the fact that she had been involved with the publication of The New Mercury. So if you want to find one source of lost articles by Savitri Devi, I recommend that one track down The New Mercury. Unfortunately, no copies seem to exist in libraries in India, Europe, or the United States. If anyone comes across old issues, please contact me through the Savitri Devi Archive.

What about the lie concerning her whereabouts in 1932-1935? We know that at least part of that time she was in Greece, where she was the French tutor of Cornelius Castoriadis, who later became famous in France as a left-wing political philosopher.

Dr. Johnson has a rather intriguing hypothesis about that period. Savitri Devi mentioned in And Time Rolls On that before Mr. Mukherji returned to India, he spent two years traveling in the U.S.S.R. doing research for his doctoral dissertation on British and Russian foreign policy in relation to Afghanistan and India. She also mentions that he traveled first class, and that the Communists were trying to groom him as a spy in India.

Surely there is a file on Mr. Mukherji somewhere in the archives of the Soviet secret police. And if that file were opened, would it also reveal that Savitri Devi was his traveling companion? Some day, the archives may tell.

My personal favorite is Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne (Memories and Reflections of an Aryan Woman) because it is the most comprehensive and beautiful statement of the full range of Savitri Devi’s ideas in relation to the Tradition. She wrote it at the end of her life, for the benefit of a circle of French friends and admirers including the writers Saint-Loup and Guy Sajer.

I am also very fond of And Time Rolls On, because I labored so long to produce it, and I am very proud of it. Whenever I read it, I can still hear Savitri’s taped voice in my head.

Regarding the original editions of her books, what would you say is the most difficult to obtain? Are they pricey? Do you yourself own them?

I own first editions of most of Savitri Devi’s books. All of Savitri Devi’s first editions are quite rare. She had 100 hardcover copies of Souvenirs printed, for personal friends, and I managed to get five copies, but I sold or gave away four of them. Savitri also had small hardcover printings of The Lightning and the Sun and Pilgrimage made. I have one of each.

Even rarer are Savitri Devi’s books with hand-painted dust-jackets. I know of such jackets for Gold in the Furnace, Defiance, and Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess. I have one of the Gold in the Furnace jackets, and a friend who has another has promised to leave it to me in her will.

But surely the rarest Savitri Devi title is A Perfect Man: Akhnaton, King of Egypt. She lists this as having been already published in Joy of the Sun, which was published in 1942. But I have never been able to find a copy, not in any library or private collection, and Savitri made a point of donating her books to the British Library. The book may simply be lost to history, although a copy may someday turn up.

Another possibility is that it was never published at all. Savitri could have listed it in Joy of the Sun, thinking that it would be published by the time Joy of the Sun appeared. But then she could have changed her mind and decided not to publish it. Or the project could have grown into her great book on Akhnaton, A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt, later republished as Son of the Sun. I think that this is the most likely story. (Notice that the subtitles of the two books are similar.) But perhaps I just want to convince myself that one of Savitri’s books has not been lost entirely.

The prices of Savitri Devi’s used books that appear online have been steadily rising, largely due to the existence of the Archive. In the past, when used booksellers received copies of one of Savitri’s books, I imagine they did not know what to do with them. I hate to think some were just thrown away, but that is possible. Now, if they are curious, they can go online and in a few minutes learn that Savitri Devi was a widely-published author whose works are intensely interesting to a small but growing audience of enthusiasts.

When I first went online searching for Savitri’s books, I found an autographed copy of Pilgrimage that had belonged to Muriel Gantry for £10. Recently, I saw a first edition of Defiance offered for more than $3,000! Although this might be bad for individual collectors who are not rich, it is definitely good for the preservation of Savitri Devi’s books, and that is a good thing in the long run.

Although some printers have balked at the “objectionable” content of Savitri Devi’s books, I have never had trouble finding printers who simply want the business. The biggest obstacles, therefore, are money and time. I solved the money problem by taking advance orders for the books, which have allowed me to pay the printers up front. The time problem, however, remains intractable. I have a more than full-time job as it is, so sometimes I just lack the time to edit and publish books, follow up research leads, and keep the Archive updated.

I find it to be very unfortunate that more people do not know of Savitri Devi’s writings. Your print runs are very low, at least in hard cover, limited to 200 hand numbered copies. Has this met the demand?

So far, we have sold out of the hardcover editions of And Time Rolls On and Gold in the Furnace. We still have a few copies of Defiance. We have almost sold out of the paperback printing of And Time Rolls On. When we do, I will bring out a new expanded and illustrated paperback edition. Of course, if one sells out the print run of books like these, it might be too risky to do another print run of hundreds of copies. But we could always set the titles up with a print-on-demand company, and they can print exactly the number of copies needed, which would free us from tying up capital and storage space.

Can you share any personal experiences you’ve had with people’s reactions to your publishing of Savitri Devi’s books or to the Savitri Devi Archive website?

First of all, there have been no negative experiences. Nobody has contacted me to express disapproval of the very idea of the Archive or of republishing Savitri Devi’s works. There have been no attempts to shut down the Archive, attack it online, and the like.

Second, the most positive personal outcomes from my work are the friendships I have made with people all over the world. Also gratifying in a personal way are the many kind letters and emails I have received from people who are enthusiastic about Savitri Devi and grateful for the Archive and the Centennial Edition.

But personal consequences, positive and negative, are really not a motivating factor in my work. Of course I appreciate the fact that my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. But, even if they had been overwhelmingly negative, I would have gone forward, for I do this out of a sense of duty: a duty to history, a duty to truth, and a duty of gratitude to Savitri Devi herself, this remarkable individual who has changed my life in countless ways.

How would you personally describe Savitri and her works to someone who had never heard of her before?

Savitri Devi’s personality is as fascinating as her ideas, so I stress both when trying to interest people. I also emphasize the extreme eccentricity of both her personality and her doctrines. These have to come out eventually, so there is no point in avoiding them. Moreover, they grab people’s attention like nothing else. Everyone wants to know more about the woman who worshiped Hitler as a divine avatar; the woman who criticized Hitler for being too kind; the woman who advocated animal rights but not human rights; the woman who would ban medical experiments on animals and do them on people instead—who would prefer to eat the flesh of an enemy than of an innocent lamb. But what is even more surprising than these views is the fact that Savitri Devi provides a consistent rationale for them.

There are quite a few things about Savitri Devi that the world will not know until a new biography of her is published. A few years ago, Dr. Johnson interviewed a woman who knew Savitri Devi in New Delhi in the 1970s. She told him many things that I found interesting, even surprising. I am sure he will not be annoyed if I share three facts that come immediately to mind.

First, she said that Savitri Devi’s favorite painter was Van Gogh, and that she admired Picasso as well.

Third, she said that Savitri Devi was not just fluent in eight languages—English, French, German, Italian, Greek, Icelandic, Hindi, and Bengali—but that she had knowledge of nineteen other languages and dialects, including Russian and many Indian languages. She said that when Savitri Devi visited her house, she would converse with her in Greek, her husband and son in English, and address four Indian servants in their native dialects, moving effortlessly back and forth between all six languages. Her linguistic abilities alone indicate that Savitri Devi had an astonishingly high IQ.

One astonishing aspect of Savitri is her humble attitude toward her own works and influence. Do you think she knew in her lifetime how important her works were and would be to National Socialists?

Savitri Devi was very humble. I hesitate to accuse her of false modesty, but her modesty does ring false, because she was obviously a superior individual, and she knew it.

But perhaps Savitri Devi’s modesty is a sign of her greatness of soul, in the sense discussed by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, great-souled people are aware of their superiority, but they do not show it off or dwell on it, because only small people enjoy looking down on and lording it over others. Instead, great souled people seek to hide their sense of superiority.

This dissimulation, which Plato and Aristotle called “irony,” is a form of falsehood, but it is forgivable, even laudable. What great-souled individuals crave is not to look down on inferiors, but to have equals and superiors, friends to enjoy and heroes or gods to worship.

That is certainly true of Savitri Devi, who claimed quite candidly that she was a skeptic about the literal existence of the gods, but had an overwhelming desire to worship them nonetheless.

All (false) modesty aside, I think that Savitri Devi strongly hoped that her books would become very important to National Socialists. In my short essay on Savitri Devi and Paul of Tarsus, “Enemy and Exemplar,” I argue that Savitri understood her project to be analogous to that of Saint Paul. Paul took the life and ideas of Jesus, a failed prophet or perhaps merely a would-be revolutionary (Savitri vacillated on this issue, but he was a failure either way), and created a religion that eventually triumphed over Rome and all of Europe.

Savitri Devi wished to be the Saint Paul to Hitler’s Christ. She too took a failed political leader and transformed him into a divine avatar around which she hoped to crystallize a religion that would serve as a vehicle for the eventual triumph of his ideas. This is a remarkably grandiose ambition for such a modest lady!

Her plans may be grandiose, but I hasten to add that this does not make them absurd or impracticable. After all, it took more than 300 years for Paul’s creation to triumph over Rome.

Savitri Devi died in 1982. Since then, interest in her works has grown dramatically. The religion she envisioned may indeed be taking shape. I would love to know what sort of impact Savitri Devi will have three centuries hence. If there are any white people left on the planet, I would like to think that Savitri Devi would have played no small part in ensuring their survival.

Savitri wanted very badly to go to Germany during Adolf Hitler’s time. World War II prevented her from ever going and seeing the nation and people she idolized and loved so much in her writings. But if she had, how do you think Adolf Hitler and the others would have received her? She said she would have loved to have worked under Goebbels, and I can’t think of a place that would have suited her better.

I think that Savitri Devi would have been well-received by German National Socialists. She would have impressed them as a sincere, intelligent, talented, and energetic National Socialist. I am sure that they would have found a way to fully mobilize her talents for the cause. Even her eccentricities would not have held her back, for the National Socialist leadership was filled with artistic, even bohemian types and remarkably free of bourgeois prigs. I am sure that she would have met Goebbels, Hess, Streicher, Himmler, and Hitler himself. I think she probably would have gotten along best with Hitler, Hess, and Goebbels, in spite of her great admiration for Himmler and Streicher.

I doubt, however, that Savitri Devi alone could have changed the outcome of the war. I imagine that she would have been in the bunker in Berlin to the bitter end. She might have preferred such a heroic death, but personally I am glad that she lived on to write her books.

In her extensive travels and contacts Savitri met some of the greatest heroes of Germany’s National Socialist era: Leon Degrelle, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, and Otto Skorzeny, to name just three! But she also met with others like Horst Wessel’s aunt and Heinrich Himmler’s widow. She met hundreds of other personalities from that era spread all over the world, including SS men in the Middle East. What do you think they thought of her? This National Socialist from India of all places!

From all accounts, Savitri Devi was held in high regard by virtually everyone who knew her. I have only encountered a couple of people who disliked her. Savitri Devi impressed people with her intelligence, breadth of knowledge, sincerity, and devotion to National Socialism. Many, I am sure, were skeptical of her metaphysical and religious beliefs, but National Socialists tend to be tolerant of such views because they are not uncommon in these circles.

Before and during the Second World War, Savitri Devi and her husband A. K. Mukherji worked as agents of the Axis powers in India. Did Savitri Devi know Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist leader who allied himself with the Third Reich and the Japanese against the British Empire?

Savitri Devi knew Subhas Chandra Bose. She met him in Calcutta in the late 1930s. She claims that she introduced him to her future husband, Mr. Mukherji, who in turn introduced him to the Japanese. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Although National Socialist Germany pioneered animal rights, banning vivisection, strict laws regarding habitat, humane treatment of animals, hunting regulations, etc., Savitri is seen as a modern champion of animal rights. Impeachment of Man was first published in 1959 dealing with this subject in a time when animal rights were far from the public’s mind. But, unfortunately, it would seem humanity has grown even more selfish and cruel in their treatment of animals since her book. One need only look at the Animal Liberation Front’s video’s on http://YouTube.com or anywhere else online to see some of the horrors we humans inflict upon animals. Many respected scientists say that the earth won’t be able to sustain a meat eating human population for much longer. The strain on the earth is enormous, ethical concerns aside. Like Adolf Hitler, Savitri was a vegetarian. Do you think this is the way of the future? Your thoughts on all of this.

Impeachment of Man is an admirable book, with many valid points. The world would be a much better place if everyone followed its teachings. But in the end, I find its argument for vegetarianism to be unconvincing.

I too love nature, and I love animals. I love my dog especially. But my dog eats meat, and so do I. That is the way of nature. Some animals eat plants. Others eat animals. I eat both. And killing is involved in both cases. Life feeds on death, and that goes for vegetarians too. As Joseph Campbell said, “A vegetarian is someone who has never heard a carrot scream.”

I tried vegetarianism, but I did not feel as healthy as I do when I include a small amount of animal protein in my diet, mostly from milk and eggs, but also from meat. I go to great lengths, however, to avoid supporting factory farms and other sickening forms of cruelty to animals. There is nothing natural about that. They are spawned from perversions of the human mind and soul, the marriage of greed and scientific method, to the exclusion of moral and aesthetic sensibilities.

But by the same token, I go to great lengths not to harm plants as well. I can’t bear to weed my own garden. But the principle is the same for plants and animals: I eat some of them, but I also wish to do them the least possible harm. Of course, I can feel more sympathy for animals than plants, because they are more like me. Especially cute animals. But I have no problem killing repulsive and dangerous animals.

I think that vegetarianism is a valid spiritual discipline if one wants somehow to transcend nature. But I do not wish to transcend nature at all. I wish to be a wholly natural being, and I think that is most in keeping with the spirit of Savitri Devi’s life-affirming pantheism.

Savitri Devi was against anthropocentrism—the idea that man is unique and placed above nature. She thought that anthropocentrism was the root of all environmental destruction and cruelty to animals. Yet vegetarianism is a practice that sets one outside and above nature too.

Sadly, Savitri died in England on October 22, 1982 before going on a planned speaking tour in the United States. In all her travels she never made it to the United States. Ironically, her urn and ashes were sent to the United States. Do you know where they were sent and to who? That was twenty seven years ago, any idea who has them today? Have you ever heard of anyone ever going to see her urn? There is a beautiful picture of it enshrined that I’m sure you're familiar with.

I asked Commander Matt Koehl of the New Order about the present location of Savitri’s ashes. He told me that they are enshrined at the New Order headquarters in Milwaukee. Visitation is not allowed.

Lastly, we’d like to thank you very, very much for helping to share this marvelous woman with the world, and for having this conversation with us! We would also like to thank Savitri for being everything that she was. A higher human being. Defiant till the end. A Woman Against Time. Final thoughts?

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about one of my favorite people. When I think about Savitri Devi’s long and lonely struggle to live and witness the truth, your interest touches me deeply. It makes me think that her struggles were not in vain, that she will live on in the way that mattered to her most: in the hearts and minds of a National Socialist community that will survive to face the dawn of a new Golden Age.

In this case, it would appear so, as she enumerates various narratives of Christ's life — and points out the curious lack thereof, and contraditions among. I'm sure she has an agenda: She's a pagan revivalist in a Juedo-Christian world.

One way Christians can use this material is to heed the warning of Christianity's origins within Judaic culture. It doesn't mean faith has to be lost, just a recognition that continuous cross pollination has been underway from the beginning. One could call it pollution of a simple creed, but the universalism of Christianity has tended to destroy national identity. Iconoclasm is inherent in Christianity's welcoming of all peoples.

Old Testament Judaism sought to crush all surrounding nations and enslave them. Christianity seeks to break down their borders and unify nations. There's something in common in those two approaches.