I did a little surfing around on Amazon.com and "Spear of Destiny" seems to be discredited to some degree. The most scholarly book seems to be "The Occult Roots of Nazism," although I don't know much about the subject.
The story about Hitler running across the spear in his youth and his being fascinated with it seems believable to me. This seems to be consistent with an artist personality type, considering that he was a frustrated artist in his youth. (I can say this because I'm an artist by trade, and hopefully an exception ;o)
I would agree w/ that assesment simply because most of the information cannot be sourced. You must remember that the essential element of a secret society is secretiveness.
When he says, for example that Dietrich Eckart(sp?) was a poet that initiated Hitler into satanic rites, evidence that Eckart, a real poet known to associate w/ Hitler, was a satanist would be hard to come by.
The majority of his info concerning Hitler came from a man named Walter Stein, who was something of a mystic ( a Rosicrucian), and who claims to have known Hitler in his vagabond Vienna days. It is Stein's view of Cosmic Time, stretching back to Atlantis, that makes up the book's foundation. You simply can't source that stuff. Ravenscroft readily admits that the story he is telling is impossible to prove using standard historic models.
Where Ravenscroft does cite hard sources; those check out. And I believe it is these sources, such as Einhard (Life of Charlemagne) and William Shirer, Nietzsche, and Mein Kompf, and various Grail legends, that prove his story has some validity.
Naturally, as a "mystic" history it will not satisfy academic historians. Conversely, can the academics even approach the mystic reality that adherents to such a society believed if they themselves don't take the subject seriously?
When a hard-headed realist like Albert Speer states that at his first meeting w/ Hitler, it was like he came under a spell, is that just a turn of phrase or something more? Likewise, nearly every Hitler biographer, from Toland to Bullock has made reference to Hitler's "demonic" ability to control people. Was that simply attenuated charisma?<P. I don't know, nor do I think anyone ever will know the complete story, but I think Ravenscroft has something interesting to add.
Hitler and the Occult
The Nazi party grew out of several occult groups that sprung up in the late 19th century as a reaction to the advanced materialism and technology of the era. These groups spoke of the coming of a new Messiah that would save Germany. Young Adolf Hitler developed the notion that perhaps he was the chosen one to save the German people.
The political parties created in the wake of the country's defeat in World War I combined nationalistic sentiment and occultist practices to forge an image of a superior German people. Hitler's imprisonment after the failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch would make him a national hero for his defense of a strong German state, convincing him that he was the Messiah who could save Germany.
Hitler appropriated Christian religious symbols such as the Spear of Destiny and the Holy Grail for his own purposes. He adopted the swastika, which contained occult significance from earlier cultures, as the symbol of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's rise was the product of forces and events connecting him, his associates and the occult. Was Hitler influenced by supernatural ideas or was he just the embodiment of pure hate and evil? Examine the importance of symbols of the occult, religion and astrology to Hitler's concept of world domination.
Item Number: AAE-40199