"An ancient legend from the East
tells us that the spirits of the power of evil
are held captive in the maritime night
sealed by the prudent hand of God.
Until such time as fate, once in a millennium,
grants one fisherman the power to release them
unless he throws his bounty back into the sea immediately.

For my father, destiny had spoken.
On one occasion it was up to him
to push the demon back into its jail.

My father broke the seal. He did not feel the breath of the Devil.
He let the demon loose on the world."

Albrecht Haushoffer (The father)
executed by the Gestapo in 1945

Inv.SDD/sg-80132
The Host
Item acquired by the Curator in 1962
Origin: Turkey, Germany

Description

Roman vase?
Group of small soldiers representing the belligerents in the Second World War. 

Report: Surnateum investigation

The beginning is always a delicate time.
Our story begins in a Germany exhausted, ravaged and divided up following the First World War - in a chaotic world desperately trying to restore some semblance of order.
In Russia, the imperial family would be exterminated at Yekaterinburg; an epidemic that more closely resembled the plague than the influenza that killed 21 million people around the world. In two years, prohibition would begin in the United States.
In the Bavarian city of Munich, Baron von Sebottendorf created, within the Germanenorde, a magical secret society called the Thule-Gesellschaft. This group based its rituals on those of Turkish free masonry, into which the baron had been initiated. But Von Sebottendorf brought more with him than just rituals.
He owned an ancient bottle, several thousand years old, which, it was said, contained a demon - an extremely corrupt entity that could be consulted as an oracle.
The iridescent, milky-white, orange-sized bottle looked exactly like the bottle described by Robert Louis Stevenson in his short story entitled The Bottle Imp.
According to the legend, King Solomon locked the demon Belial in the bottle and then threw it down a well in Babylon. But once every one thousand years the object re-surfaces in another bid to annihilate mankind.
Any user who lets himself be subjugated by the hypnotic power of the entity must be very careful! In the Bible the demon Belial represents absolute evil and was worshipped in Sodom before that city was destroyed in a deluge of fire. It is said that Attila himself...
In 1919, seven members of the Thule-Gesellschaft decided, against the advice of Von Sebottendorf, to stir that which was sleeping in the bottle and to consult the oracle. These financially powerful men wanted to know which party to back in the strong and highly competitive reconstruction of Germany.
Belial was able to answer the question.
But their hatred for Jews, Communists and Free-Masons overcame any sense of caution about the risks of unleashing an uncontrollable magic action.
According to Croze and Orazi's magic calendar (Paris, 1896), April is the month of horoscopes. The essential purification ritual would last one month, culminating on the 30th of the month during Walpurgisnacht, the night of the sorcerers. This was the most intense time of Germanic magic, equivalent to the Anglo-American celebration of Halloween.
The group consisted of the following individuals: Prince von Thurn und Taxis, Countess von Weistarp, Baron von Seidliz and four other members whose names have been lost. Von Sebottendorf, sensing imminent danger, left Munich in early April - a wise move.
On 9 April, the Spartacist red revolution erupted in that city. On 26 April they took over the Four Seasons Hotel (in Maximilianenstrasse), headquarters of the Thule-Gesellschaft and arrested those present. Many objects were broken during the commotion. On 30 April the seven 'conspirators' were executed. On the same day the Spartacist HQ was cleaned out by flame-throwers, a deluge of fire.
Released from his prison, Belial was having the time of his life.

(Yes, that is the very same bottle that you see here; it emits a corrupting form of energy. If we place a small object in it, it will twist horribly.) (Experiment 1)

Following the failure of the Communist putsch, the Thule survivors met again. Those present were Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg and Karl Haushoffer. Von Sebottendorf never returned to Munich. He took up residence in Bad Sascha until 1934, and then returned to Turkey. From then on, nothing could save him.
A Babylonian magic seal from Iraq would have been needed to force the entity back into the bottle.
So they had to try and control the demon. To do that, the other members of the group decided to have Belial lodged in a soulless creature, a golem. He would be easy to control and would be invulnerable as long as the host lived there. The hardest thing was finding such a rare gem!
What was needed was a crude being with base instincts, one who was easily satisfied by the demon, but who had exceptional qualities as a medium. A perfect host, and one who was preferably born in April.
On 10 September 1919, Hell provided them with just such a gift in the person of a loud-mouthed corporal from Vienna called Adolf Hitler.
He had just joined the DAP, which would later become the Nazi party.
Until 1923, his education was handled by Dietrich Eckart, the grand master of the Thule-Gesellschaft. Upon his death, a young visionary Nazi officer took over. A member of the secret society, Rudolf Hess became the guardian. The bottle was carefully hidden somewhere near Bonn. But who controlled whom?
Little by little, Hitler removed himself from the sect's influence. In 1934, during the 'Night of the Long Knives', many of the people standing in his way simply disappeared.
Then came the war. The Führer had become uncontrollable.
In 1941, the Nazis made a desperate attempt to recover the seal hidden in Iraq, which at that time was controlled by the British.
Rudolf Hess knew that if Hitler killed himself - which was the only way to get rid of the creature - then he would automatically become the next host. That scenario started to seriously prey on his mind.
On 10 May 1941, under the influence of the Haushoffers (Karl and Albrecht), he flew to England in the hope of winning time and stopping the conflict. Among the proposals for peace, one clause called for Iraq to be returned to the Germans.
Nobody believed his story - at least not officially - and he was assumed to be insane.
The end of the story is well known.
Hitler committed 'suicide' in Berlin on 30 April 1945.
Albrecht Haushoffer was executed by the Gestapo shortly before.
His father Karl and his mother killed themselves upon hearing the news. Alfred Rosenberg was hanged in Nuremberg; the body of Von Sebottendorf was found drowned in the Bosphorous.
Only Rudolf Hess escaped the gallows, but was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau prison. Never had any other prisoner been guarded as he was.
A photo of Spandau prison published in Paris Match shows the guards from the four nations whose duty was to guard this single prisoner; they were in a hypnotic semi-sleep. He died in 1987, allegedly by his own hand.
In late 1949, three member of a secret society in contact with the army carried out research in Berlin and then near Bonn to find material evidence of this story. They were killed under mysterious and horrific circumstances. The Belgian army sergeant who brought their remains from Bonn to the military hospital in Liège never returned to his base. In addition to the bottle prison, he also carried the objects that you see here. These objects were handed over to the Collector.
An antique bottle in broken blue glass kept in a biscuit tin plus various Nazi odds and ends.
The Curator of the Surnateum, who told us the story, placed on his desk a series of figurines representing the main belligerents in the Second World War.
(Toys dating from the 1930s to 1950s) There were Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Stalin, De Gaulle, Roosevelt andHess, as well as a kind of crouching magician from Turkey holding a wand in his hands: Von Sebottendorf.
"This basic oracle can answer questions about the war and the belligerents," the Curator told us.
As a test, he asked the following questions: "Who was the host for the demon during the war?".
He spun the magician, which ended up pointing at Hitler.
Thinking it was a trick, someone else asked: "Where did Rudolf Hess flee to in 1941?" This time, the magician ended up pointing at Churchill.
Each question was answered correctly.
Unsettled, we put the toys away, leaving out only the magician.
It was at that very moment that one of us asked the question that we were all thinking: "Since the death of Hess and the destruction of Spandau, where has the entity been hidden?"
The figurine spun one last time, pointing its wand to my computer connected to the Internet.
The whole world was going to find out…

Note:

The Surnateum team recently acquired the magic seal required to control the demon. Who knows, perhaps putting its picture on the Internet will yield results?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hitler (Alan Bullock), a contemporary encyclopaedia
Hitler m'a dit (Hermann Rauschning)
Hitler et l'ordre noir (André Brissaud ) Lib.acad.Perrin
Hitler, l'élu du dragon (Jean Robin) Trédaniel
Le nazisme, société secrète (Werner Gerson) Belfont
Baltikum (Dominique Venner) Robert Laffont .
L'Illustration, 14 July 1934.
Paris Match nos. 393, 139, 330, 913.
Soir illustré, nos. 1765, 1766, 2492.
Histoire secrète de la mission Rudolf Hess (Lord James Hamilton) Robert Laffont
Le meurtre de Rudolf Hess (Hugh Thomas) Albin Michel
Europe magazine no. 38
Magic Calendar 1896 (Croze and Orazi) Art nouveau
Die Praxis Der Alten Türkische Frei Maürerei (Von Sebottendorf)
Dictionnaire de la Bible (A.M.Gérard ) Laffont
Historia no. 290
The Bottle Imp in Docteur Jekyll and Mr Hyde (R.L. Stevenson) Marabout
Original personal documents about WWII