Savitri Devi

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Savitri Devi
Image:Mukherji.jpg
Savitri Devi in Calcutta, 1937 (age 32)
Born Maximine Julia Portaz
30 September 1905
Lyon, France
Died October 22, 1982 (aged 77)
Sible Hedingham, Essex, England
Cause of death Myocardial infarction and coronary thrombosis
Occupation Teacher, author, political activist
Religious beliefs Hindu Nazi mysticism
Spouse Asit Krishna Mukherji

Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905, Lyon, France — October 22, 1982, Essex, England) was the pseudonym of the French writer Maximiani Portaz,[1] of mixed English, Lombard, and Greek ethnicity. She was married to Asit Krishna Mukherji.

She became enamoured with Hinduism and Nazism, trying to synthesise the two, and proclaiming Adolf Hitler an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. Her writings have influenced neo-Nazism and Nazi mysticism. Although mystical in her conception of Nazism, Savitri Devi saw Nazism as a practical faith without the requirement of metaphysics. Among Savitri Devi's ideas was the classifications of "men above time", "men in time" and "men against time". She is credited with pioneering neo-Nazi interest in occultism, Deep Ecology, and the New Age movement. She influenced the Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano. In 1982, Francisco Freda published a German translation of Gold in the Furnace; the fourth volume of his annual review, Risguardo (1980-), was devoted to Savitri Devi as the "missionary of Aryan Paganism".

Her works, in conjunction with those of Julius Evola, have been major influences on the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party and activist Bill White. Far-rightist Italian and self-described "Nazi Maoist" Claudio Mutti was influenced by reading Pilgrimage as an idealistic teenager. As a young bodyguard for Colin Jordan, David Myatt enthusiastically embraced the values expressed in The Lightning and the Sun. In the U.S., James Mason (whose Universal Order bears strong resemblance to the sentiments of Savitri Devi) paid tribute to her in Siege. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme of the Charles Manson gang has recommended The Lightning and the Sun. Revilo P. Oliver wrote that he saw the potentiality of a future religion venerating Adolf Hitler "in the works of a highly intelligent and learned lady of Greek ancestry, Dr. Savitri Devi."

She was also one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists.[1]

Contents

[edit] Early years

Born as Maximine Julia Portaz, Savitri Devi was the daughter of a Greek/Lombard Italian father and an English mother. She was born two and a half months premature, weighing only 930 grams (2.05 lbs) and expected to not live. She formed her political views early on. From childhood and throughout her life, she was a passionate advocate for animal rights, which was related to her views of Jews as the practitioners of Kosher slaughter. Her earliest political affiliations were with Greek nationalism.[1] During World War I, she was outraged by the Triple Entente's invasion of neutral Greece.

Portaz studied philosophy and chemistry, earning two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Lyons. Her first two books were her doctoral dissertations: Essai-critique sur Théophile Kaïris (Critical Essay on Theophilius Kaïris) (Lyons: Maximine Portaz, 1935) and La simplicité mathématique (Mathematical Simplicity) (Lyons: Maximine Portaz, 1935). Portas impressed her teachers with her vibrant, penetrating mind. She was the tutor of the famous philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997), as he revealed in a radio interview by Katherine von Bulow (France Culture - 20/4/96). In early 1928, she renounced French citizenship and acquired Greek nationality. Joining a pilgrimage to Palestine during Lent in 1929, Portas decided she was a National Socialist. In 1932, she travelled to India in search of a living pagan culture. Formally adhering to Hinduism, she took the name Savitri Devi ("Sun-rays Goddess" in Sanskrit). She volunteered at the Hindu Mission and wrote A Warning to the Hindus to offer support for Hindu nationalism and independence, and rally resistance to the spread of Christianity and Islam in India. In 1940 she married Asit Krishna Mukherji, a Bengali Brahmin with National Socialist views who edited the pro-German newspaper New Mercury.

[edit] Neo-Nazi activism

After World War II, she travelled to Europe in late 1945 (as the wife of an Indian — she was Savitri Devi Mukherji now — she had a British passport). Her first stop was England, where she made contacts. She then visited her mother in France and then travelled on to Iceland where she witnessed the eruption of Mount Hekla. She then returned to England, then travelled to Sweden where she met with Sven Hedin.

On June 15, 1948, she took the Nord-Expreß from Denmark to Germany, where she distributed many thousands of copies of handwritten leaflets encouraging the “Men and women of Germany” to “hold fast to our glorious National Socialist faith, and resist!” She penned her experience in Gold in the Furnace (which has been reedited in honour of her 100th birthday under the title Gold in the Furnace: Experiences in Post-War Germany).

Arrested for posting bills, she was tried (in Düsseldorf on April 5, 1949), for the promotion of Nazi ideas on German territory subject to the Allied Control Council, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. She served eight months in Werl prison, where she befriended her fellow Nazi and SS prisoners, (recounted in Defiance) before being released and expelled from Germany. She went to stay in Lyon, France.

In April of 1953, she obtained a Greek passport in her maiden name in order to re-enter Germany, and she began a pilgrimage, as she called it, of Nazi holy sites. She flew from Athens to Rome then travelled by rail over the Brenner Pass into "Greater Germany", which she regarded as "[t]he spiritual home of all racially conscious modern Aryans". However, the Avesta makes no mention of Europe as a part of the Airyana-shayana ("abode of the Aryans") nor do the Vedas. She travelled to a number of sites significant in the life of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP (German Nazi Party), as well as German nationalist and heathen monuments, as recounted in her 1958 book Pilgrimage.

[edit] International ties to neo-Nazis

Savitri Devi became friends with Hans-Ulrich Rudel, and completed her manuscript of The Lightning and the Sun at his home in March of 1956. Through his introductions she was able to meet a number of Nazi émigrés in Spain and the Middle East. In 1957 she stayed with Johannes von Leers in Egypt. In 1961 she stayed with Otto Skorzeny in Madrid.

Savitri Devi took employment teaching in France during the 1960s, spending her summer holidays with friends at Berchtesgaden. In the spring of 1961, while on her Easter holiday in London she learned of the British National Party. This group emerged after the Second World War when a handful of former members of the British Union of Fascists took on the name. (The original BNP was absorbed quite quickly into the Union Movement - it is not connected with the present BNP.) She met with the British National Party president Andrew Fountaine. Beginning a correspondence with Colin Jordan, she became a devoted supporter of the National Socialist Movement.

In August 1962, Savitri Devi attended the international Nazi conference in Gloucestershire and was a founder-signatory of the Cotswold Agreement that established the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS). At this conference she met, and was greatly impressed with George Lincoln Rockwell. When Rockwell became leader of WUNS, he appointed William Luther Pierce editor of its new magazine: National Socialist World (1966-68). Along with articles by Jordan and Rockwell, Pierce devoted nearly eighty pages of the first issue to a condensed edition of The Lightning and the Sun. Because of the enthusiastic response, Pierce included chapters from Gold in the Furnace and Defiance in subsequent issues.

After retiring from teaching in 1970, Savitri Devi spent nine months at the Normandy home of close friend Françoise Dior while working on her memoirs. Concluding that her pension would go much further in India, she flew from Paris to Bombay on 23 June 1971. In August she moved to New Delhi, where she lived alone, with a number of cats and at least one cobra.

Savitri Devi continued correspondence with Nazi enthusiasts in Europe, the Americas and Jordan, John Tyndall, Matt Koehl, Miguel Serrano and Ernst Zündel. She was the first to claim to Zündel that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was untrue; he proposed a series of taped interviews (conducted in November of 1978) and published a new illustrated edition of The Lightning and the Sun in 1979. A number of neo-Nazi pilgrims traveled to meet her, among them Christian Bouchet.

[edit] Death

She died in 1982 in Sible Hedingham, Essex, England at her friend Muriel Gantry's house; the cause of death was recorded as myocardial infarction and coronary thrombosis. She was en route to lecture in America at the invitation of Matt Koehl at the time. Her ashes were sent to the American Nazi Party shrine in Arlington where they were placed next to those of Lincoln Rockwell.

[edit] Works

Year Title ISBN Summary
1935 Essai critique sur Theophile Kaïris First doctoral thesis, on the life and thought of the Greek educator and philosopher Theophile Kaïris.
1935 La simplicité mathématique 500-page thesis on the nature of simplicity in mathematics. It included a discussion of Léon Brunschvicq, and drew upon the work of George Boole, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Henri Poincaré, and Alfred North Whitehead.
1940 (written 1935-6) L'Etang aux lotus (The Lotus Pond) Impressions of India. A combination of travelog and philosophical, cultural, and political reflections.
1936 A Warning to the Hindus ISBN 81-85002-40-1 Written to rally support for Hindu nationalism and independence, and rally resistance to the spread of Christianity and Islam.
1940 The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity Promotes the idea that India must put aside social prejudice and communal hatred to create the political unity to achieve independence.
1946 A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt ISBN 0-912057-95-5 and ISBN 0-912057-17-3
1951 Defiance Autobiographical account of her propaganda mission, arrest, trial, and imprisonment in occupied Germany in 1949.
1952 (written 1948-9), reedited 2005 Gold in the Furnace Conditions in postwar Germany.
1958 (written 1953-4) Pilgrimage Account of her pilgrimage to various National Socialist holy sites.
1958 (written 1948-56) The Lightning and the Sun ISBN 0-937944-14-9 A work synthesizing the Hindu philosophy of cyclical history with National Socialism. Contains biographies of Genghis Khan, Akhnaton, and Adolf Hitler. Famous for the claim that Hitler was an avatar of the God Vishnu.
1959 (written in 1945) Impeachment of Man ISBN 0-939482-33-9 Animal rights and ecology.
1965 (written 1957-60) Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or The True Story of a "Most Objectionable Nazi" and... half-a-dozen Cats A fictionalized autobiography and memoir of her favorite cats.
1976 (written 1968-71) Souvenirs et reflexions d’une aryenne (Memories and Reflections of an Aryan Woman) A series of philosophical essays rather than a memoir, this is the most comprehensive statement of her philosophy.
2005 And Time Rolls on: The Savitri Devi Interviews 1978 autobiographical interviews originally recorded in Calcutta.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (in English). New York University Press, pp. 88. ISBN 0814731554. OCLC 47665567. 

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

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