Otto Rahn: A Life in Search of the Grail

by Dmitry Moiseev

Dmitry Moiseev explores the life of Otto Rahn, an adventurous SS poet and medievalist whose quest for the Cathars and the Grail offers a unique and esoteric interpretation of medieval legends.

The Last Minnesinger

The legend of the Grail, which according to the generally accepted Christian version was the cup from which Jesus Christ drank at the Last Supper, and into which Joseph of Arimathea then collected his blood after the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross, is an eternal source of inspiration for everyone interested in medieval chivalric legends and who can see a special meaning in this. For Christians, the Grail is one of the ‘Instruments of the Passion’ (Arma Christi), the instruments of Jesus’ martyrdom, along with the Cross, the Nails, the Crown of Thorns and others. For others who are not familiar with such an interpretation of this legendary symbol, since the European Middle Ages, there have been other interpretations imbued with a deep esoteric meaning.

Discussing this narrative in the work The Mystery of the Grail (1937), the Italian traditionalist Julius Evola (1898–1974) notes: ‘The story of the Grail as a whole has a supernatural, secret and initiatory character.’ In the same place, he quotes the phrase of the French poet of the 12th-13th centuries Robert de Boron: ‘Ordinary mortals have never stood at the origins of the great story of the Grail’ (Unque retreite este n’avoit — la grant estoire dou Graal — par nul homme qui fust mortal).

Evola points out that ‘the stone that fell from heaven was an emerald that adorned Lucifer’s forehead. A faithful angel cut a cup out of it, and so the Grail appeared. It was given to Adam before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. Seth, the son of Adam, returned to the earthly paradise for a while and took the Grail with him. Other people brought the Grail to Montségur, a fortress in the Pyrenees, which was besieged by the armies of Lucifer, in order to return the Grail and put it back in the crown of their leader, out of which it had fallen; however, it was believed that the Grail had been saved by the knights who hid it within a mountain.’

The Grail — a cup or a stone ?

For Otto Wilhelm Rahn (1904–1939), a German medievalist inspired by the story of the Grail, the non-Christian version of the legend served as the main inspiration for his short, passionate and extremely productive life. His authorial reading of the legend of the Grail, to which both his books are dedicated, is exceptionally original; it gives a completely unusual idea about this legend, radically different from the popular one, from which a whole and consistent spiritual teaching is derived, inspired by Rahn’s long–term study of Cathar chivalry and the tragedy of the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), which resulted in the genocide of the Occitan civilisation by Christians and the destruction of its original spiritual teachings. As part of this series of four articles for Arktos Journal, we will examine the legend of the Grail through the prism of Otto Rahn’s clear gaze and briefly summarise his vision of the Cathar spiritual teaching, traditional for the lands of Provence.

Otto Rahn was born 18 February 1904 in the German city of Michelstadt, in the land of Hesse in central Germany near the Odenwald mountain range. The atmosphere of the future writer’s childhood was imbued with legends of medieval chivalry — both his father, Karl, and his mother, Clara, introduced the boy to the tales of Lohengrin, Siegfried and Parsifal. This greatly influenced the worldview of Rahn, who later wrote: ‘My ancestors were pagans and my grandparents were heretics.’

In 1910, little Otto went to school, then entered Justus Liebig University in Giessen, one of the oldest universities in Germany, where he studied law, German philosophy, history and philology. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1924 with a thesis named To the Research of Master Kyot of Wolfram von Eschenbach and got a degree in philology and history. He decided to continue his studies at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, but soon changed his mind about going further along the academic path and decided to focus on literary work. At the same time, the deteriorating economic situation in Germany, as well as around the world, forced Rahn to do various jobs just to survive. He translated texts, wrote scripts for movies, and worked as a traveling salesman. At the same time, his key interest remained the Cathar spirituality of Provence, devastated by the Catholics — Rahn was drawn to those lands, and he was waiting for a convenient excuse to begin his own original research of this story, which he had been obsessed with since childhood.

Who, besides his parents and his university professor of theology, Baron von Gall, who devoted a significant part of his life to the study of the Cathar tragedy, and the German geniuses Goethe (1749–1832) and Novalis (1772–1801), to whom the writer himself refers, defined Otto Rahn’s worldview and its formation? Christopher Jones points out that by 1844, the 600th anniversary of the fall of Montségur, the Cathar topic was becoming extremely popular in Europe. The Cathars were seen as the first anti-Catholics and anti-clericals, and in this perspective their drama attracted increased attention. One can highlight such fundamental works of this period, such as the History of the Albigenses (1872) by Napoléon Peyrat in two volumes and Essays on the History of Medieval Sects (1890) by Ignaz von Döllinger. Also, Rahn’s views were obviously influenced by the French historian of religion Joseph Ernest Renan, author of the work The Life of Jesus (1863), which provoked the fury of the Catholic Church.

After years of study, in 1928, Rahn visited Paris, where he met Maurice Magre (1877–1941), a French poet and writer of Buddhist beliefs, with whom the German medievalist shared a common interest in Cathar teachings. Subsequently, Magre would write the books The Blood of Toulouse (1931) and The Treasure of the Albigenses (1938), inspired by the story of Catharism. With the assistance of Magre, Rahn meets Miriam de Pujol-Murat, a French countess who considered herself a descendant of the legendary Esclarmonde de Foix, keeper of the Grail and chatelaine de Montségur. Miriam subsequently became one of the sponsors of Rahn’s research. She was also a member of the occult group Les Polaires, which searched for traces of the legendary Christian Rosenkreutz.

Modern picture portraying Esclarmonde de Foix

In 1931, Rahn visited Geneva, after which he finally began his own research on the Grail saga in the French Pyrenees. His companion on his first trip was the Swiss writer Paul-Alexis Ladame (1909–2000), who, like Rahn, considered himself the heir of an ancient Cathar family. Ladame subsequently recounted many memories of his and Rahn’s adventures, and in his latest work, to which Rahn’s English translator Christopher Jones draws attention, quotes the Cathar adage: ‘In 700 years, when the laurel grows green again’ (Al cap de set cent ans, lo laurel verdejara) — the final words of the last Cathar Perfectus, Guilhem de Bélibaste, before he was burned alive. They were also joined by Antonin Gadal (1871–1962), a French mystic, historian of Catharism and a specialist in speleology (cave exploration). Gadal urged Rahn to pay special attention to the role of the castle of Montségur. For two years, Rahn and his friends traveled to Languedoc, Provence and the Pyrenees, after which, in May 1932, he was expelled from France on suspicion of spying for Germany. Upon his return to Germany, on 13 December 1933, he joined the German Writers’ Union.

The collected material was enough to write a book, 5,000 copies of which was published in 1934 by the Urban publishing house from Freiburg im Breisgau — Crusade Against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome. Approximately the same number of copies of the book were sold in France after the translation of the text into French.

Rahn begins this text by reconstructing in detail the spirit of medieval Provence, telling his reader about the troubadours, their culture and language: ‘Poetry was the melodious voice of chivalry; its gracious language, Provencal, is the primogenitor among neo-Latin languages, interwoven like a colourful carpet with Iberian, Greek, Celt, Gothic, and Arab touches.’ Turning to examples of Occitan poetry, the German historian turns to the unfinished romance by medieval French poet Chrétien de Troyes Perceval, the Story of the Grail, as well as to its German version — Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, drawing parallels between the events of his novel and the historical circumstances of the collapse of Provencal culture.

Reflecting on the Cathar faith, he writes:

The Cathars did not feel that Earth was their homeland. They compared it to a prison that an architect, lacking experience, had constructed from low-quality materials. They were conscious of the fact that their real home could only be somewhere beyond the stars. “Up there” had been built by the Spirit, Amor: neither hatred nor war, but life; neither sickness nor death, rather — God. In the beginning was the Spirit. In it was the Word, and they were God.

Just as within us two worlds may fight each other — the spirit, which is fat, and the flesh, which is thin — there are two principles of action in the universe: the Yes and the No, the Good and the Bad.

Rahn proceeds to the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece, about the Argonauts, as well as to the stories on Hercules and his labours, then to Celtic legends, after which he expounds on the idea he developed about the ‘faith of the Pure’, or, in other words, about the authentic beliefs of the Provencal people:

The Occitan Church of Amor (Minne) was composed of Perfect Ones (Perfecti) and the faithful or “imperfect ones”. The latter were not constrained by the severe rules of the Perfecti in their condition as Pure Ones. They could do whatever suited them: marry, dedicate themselves to business, compose songs of the Minne, go to war — in sum, live their lives as one did in those days in Occitania. The name “Cathar” was reserved for those who, after a precisely prescribed period of preparation and through a sacramental act (the consolation, consolamentum), were initiated into the esoteric mysteries of the Church of Amor.

Rahn draws attention to the fact that ‘the Pure ones’ had their own original metaphysics, which differed significantly from Christian dogmas. He briefly describes its principles in Crusade Against the Grail:

God existed in an eternal, incomprehensible principle, the one with a thousand names, and yet, this is him: God!

In the principle the Word was with God. His Father is God, his Mother, and the Spirit that is in God. The Word is God.

In the principle also existed the Spirit. He is the Amor with which God spoke: the Word that made Life and Light. The Spirit is Amor. The Spirit is God. The Amor is God. The Amor is more resplendent than the sun and more brilliant than the most valuable precious stones.

According to Rahn, the Cathar concept of God as a Spirit is closely linked to the pre-Christian beliefs of the Greeks and Celts. Also, following Maurice Magre, he detects some Buddhist influences:

One of the symbols of the Spirit that is also God — a symbol taken from Buddhism by the Cathars — was the Mani, a precious stone that illuminates the world with its flashing, and makes all earthly desire disappear. The Mani is the emblem of Buddhist law that disperses the night of error. In Nepal and Tibet, it is considered the symbol of brotherly love, of the Dhyanibodhissattva Avalokitecvara or Padmapani.

Gradually, Rahn comes to the conviction that what Wolfram von Eschenbach described in his famous chivalric romance is an encrypted account of the events of the crusade against the Albigenses, which in the Rahn’s vision appears to be an attempt to capture the Grail. Having described in detail in Crusade Against the Grail the historical circumstances of this tragedy of Provence, Rahn asks a key question and immediately gives an answer to it:

What happened to the Grail, the Occitan Mani? According to a Pyrenean legend, the Grail moves farther away from this world, and upward toward the sky, when humanity is no longer worthy of it. Perhaps the Pure Ones of Occitania keep the Grail on one of those stars that circle Montségur like a halo, that Golgotha of Occitania. The Grail symbolised their desire for Paradise, where mankind is the image, not the caricature, of God — an image that is revealed only when you love your fellow man as yourself. Chivalrous knights, wandering poets, poetic priests, and chaste women were in other times the keepers of this symbol.

Otto Rahn’s poetic research did not seem to bring him the necessary popularity so that he could afford to forget about routine mundane matters. However, one day, once again experiencing financial difficulties, the writer receives a mysterious anonymous telegram containing an offer to pay him 1,000 Reichsmarks per month to write a sequel to Crusade against the Grail. The letter contained only the address — Berlin, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 7. Responding to the interest of a mysterious well–wisher, the German medievalist discovered that the sender was Heinrich Himmler personally, the Reichsführer of the SS and one of the most powerful men in National Socialist Germany. Himmler informed Rahn that he was very impressed by his book and invited him to continue his research under his patronage. Rahn came into contact with Himmler’s ‘court magician’, Karl Maria Wiligut (Weisthor), and began working in the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA).

On 12 March 1936, Rahn was accepted into the officer rank of Unterscharführer. He became a member of Allgemeine-SS, number 276 208. It seemed that the future of the German scientist was cloudless — with such patronage in Germany at that time, it was possible to solve any problems. Rahn continued his research, gave public lectures, and spoke on the radio, but quickly fell into disgrace. He continued to maintain relations with open opponents of the regime like Adolf Friese; he generally did not like the direction in which the Nazi state was developing. In particular, he wrote, ‘There is a lot of grief in my country. It is impossible for a tolerant, liberal person like me to live in the country that my native country has become’.

In 1937, the Leipzig publishing house Schwarzhäupter-Verlag issued Rahn’s second and last book, Lucifer’s Court: A Journey to Europe’s Good Spirits.

If Crusade Against the Grail was more of a historical study, albeit with philosophical digressions and reflections, Lucifer’s Court is an articulated spiritual position of Otto Rahn’s neo-Cathar beliefs. The book is designed in the form of a travel diary of a writer who moves to places associated with the vision he develops — Provence, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Iceland. ‘Now the picture that I saw spiritually can be observed, comprehended and loved by others’, writes the inspired Rahn in the preface of his work. There he expounds in detail on his teaching about the Grail. Speaking about Adelaide, the mother of Raymond-Roger Trencavel, viscount of Carcassonne, Rahn writes, ‘Adelaide and her son were devoted to the Cathar heresy. They rejected the cross as a holy symbol. As Wolfram von Eschenbach notes several times, the Grail was the symbol of the heretical faith left on Earth by the pure ones. He meant the Cathars, because the Cathars are often called the pure ones.’ Next, Rahn details his vision of the Occitan spiritual code that he believes he unriddled:

I maintain, which I noted at that time in Southern France, that as Wolfram himself indicated, the true story of the Grail and of Parzival had come from Provence to Germany; Wolfram had used a Provencal poem as a model for his epic. His authority, Kyot, was in fact the troubadour Guiot de Provins, who performed his sonnets for knightly heretics and heretical noblewomen. Munsalvat, the Grail Castle, had as its model the Pyrenean castle Montségur. The Terre de Salvat was the area of the Pyrenean Tabor. And perhaps the treasure of the church, which four chivalrous pure ones had taken from the threatened castle of Montségur to the caves of Sabarthès, was the Grail — not the Church’s distortion known as the chalice of Jesus of Nazareth, but a stone fallen from Lucifer’s crown that bestows food and drink and immortality to those who are worthy of his display.

Based on the fine philological work he carried out with Occitan and German, Rahn makes a number of bold statements, according to which Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival appears as Raymond-Roger Trencavel, his mother Adelaide is Wolfram’s Herzeloyde, the Grail is a symbol of the faith of the Cathars, knowledge about it came to Germany from Provence, Montségur is the Grail castle Munsalvat, and his chatelaine Esclarmonde de Foix is the Repanse de Schoie from Parzival, ‘who alone can carry the Grail in her hands’. Finally, ‘although Rome destroyed the writings of the Cathars, we possess in Wolfram’s Parzival a literary work certainly dictated by Cathars!’ The result of this vision, carefully and poetically presented by Otto Rahn, was an integral spiritual concept, which we will continue to consider in detail in our next articles for Arktos Journal. In the meantime, let’s return to the biography of Rahn.

Raymond VII de Toulouse

Lucifer’s Court delighted Himmler, who personally ordered 100 copies of the book for himself and even presented one to Hitler. Despite this, the difficulties in the relationship between Otto Rahn and the National Socialist regime increased. The problem for the National Socialist authorities and the SS was also the homosexuality of Rahn — the fact of which, after the dispersal of the SA and the murder of Ernst Röhm in 1934, was treated extremely intolerantly in Germany, and another fact was that Rahn ignored the SS request, dated 24 January 1938, to confirm his Aryan origin, which a month later became the reason for the report written by Karl Wolff. Despite the fact that on 11 September 1938 Rahn was promoted to the rank of Obersturmführer, the SS were obviously dissatisfied with him.

From 23 November to 21 December 1937 Rahn served in the Dachau concentration camp — for SS officers this was a disciplinary measure that they were subjected to for certain offenses. The official reason in the case of Rahn was the violation of a promise to abstain from alcohol for two years. At the end of 1938, after a case of unwillingness to comply with racial laws, Rahn spent two more months in another concentration camp — Buchenwald — also as punishment for misconduct.

Anticipating the approach of war, Otto Rahn was in turmoil. He dreamed of uniting Germany and France under the neo-Cathar religion he had reconstructed; at the beginning of 1939 it was obvious that this dream would not come true. On 28 February 1939, Otto Ran submitted a report on his dismissal from the SS.

On 13 March 1939, almost on the anniversary of the fall of Montségur, Rahn disappeared in the Wilderkaiser near Zoll in Tyrol. This day is considered the day of his death; Rahn froze to death in the mountains. Whether his passing away was suicide, in the spirit of the Cathar ritual of endura, or an accident has remained a mystery. Four days after his death, on 17 March 1939, Rahn was relieved of his position in the ranks of the SS. Karl Rittersbacher subsequently said, ‘The transit of his soul, in eternal search for a new and desired spirituality that he could not find on Earth, reminds me as if a benevolent angel of death had brought him the consolamentum.’

Another suitable epitaph for the death of Otto Rahn may be a quote from the German medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, which Rahn cites in Lucifer’s Court:

The righteous person serves neither God nor his creatures. He stands so firmly in righteousness that he, in contrast, respects neither the agonies of hell nor the joys of heaven. It is the righteous people also serious about righteousness that, were God not righteous, they would not care about Him. The person shall not be afraid of God! God is a God of the present. One shall not frantically seek or wrongly believe in him, rather take him, as he is my own and within me. Truth is also noble that, if God would like to turn from the truth, I will attach myself to the truth and leave God!

Otto Rahn’s mysterious death, in relation to which there are many versions, including conspiracy theories, marked the end of his earthly path. When each of us leaves, the only thing that remains important is what we managed to do in our present incarnation, which we live through. Having spent 35 years in this world, Otto Rahn had been able to formulate a full-fledged spiritual teaching — neo-Catharism — carefully derived from ancient sagas, legends, long years of studies and field research, as well as an original approach to the story of the Grail. Our next publications for Arktos Journal will be devoted to the consideration of the esoteric and philosophical model of Rahn.