The emblem of the Thule Society.
The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend.
Description[]
The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). They are also revealed to be what made up the Ahnenerbe for before their disbandment, they managed to obtain the necessary components and later other items to perform the Rite of Solomon and followed by Projekt Ragn Rok.
Overview[]
The Thule Society was originally a "German study group" headed by Walter Nauhaus, a wounded World War I veteran turned art student from Berlin who had become a keeper of pedigrees for the Germanenorden (or "Order of Teutons"), a secret society founded in 1911 and formally named in the following year. In 1917, Nauhaus moved to Munich; his Thule Society was to be a cover-name for the Munich branch of the Germanenorden, but events developed differently as a result of a schism in the Order.
In 1918, Nauhaus was contacted in Munich by Rudolf von Sebottendorf (or von Sebottendorff), an occultist and newly elected head of the Bavarian province of the schismatic offshoot known as the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. The two men became associates in a recruitment campaign, and Sebottendorff adopted Nauhaus's Thule Society as a cover-name for his Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater at its formal dedication on 18 August 1918.
A primary focus of the Thule Society was a claim concerning the origins of the Aryan race. In 1917, people who wanted to join the "Germanic Order", out of which the Thule Society developed in 1918, had to sign a special "blood declaration of faith" concerning their lineage. Moreover, and similar to other organizations, the Thule Society would locate supernatural or paranatural artifacts and use them for their benefit and to aid Hitler in his rise to power so he could use them as a form of weaponry to subdue and destroy his enemies.