Rahn's second book, Luzifers Hofgesind, eine Reise zu den guten Geistern Europas [Lucifer's Court, a Journey to Europe's Good Spirits], appeared in Leipzigin 1937; it remains controversial to this day. The intinerary of his European journey included Bingen, Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, Milan, Rome, Verona, Brixen, Geneva, Worms, Michelstadt, Burg Wildenberg near Amorbach, Giessen Marburg Goslar, Cologne, Berlin, Warnemunde, Edinburgh, Reykyavik, and Reykholt. In the book, Rahn does not identify Lucifer with the Devil; for him, Lucifer was the Pyrenean Abellio or the Greek God Apollo—all bearers of light.
Nevertheless, the book contains at least one passage that is openly anti-Semitic, which led Paul Ladame to conclude that the Nazis had tampered with the final draft of the manuscript. Many years later he was quoted as saying, "Otto Rahn would never have written that." Apparently, Rahn dictated much of the book to his secretary, who was keeping an eye on his activities for Himmler.
More and more, Rahn yearned for a golden renaissance of traditional values based on the unity of France and Germany under neo-Cathar beliefs, and opposed the pernicious policies that were leading Europe to war. He was convinced that the intolerance inherent in the Old Testament was essentially responsible for the constant cycles of ethnic and genocidal violence throughout history. In fact, there is a strange symmetry between Hitler's war, which resulted in the Holocaust, and the Papal crusade against the Cathars, which obliterated Occitan civilization. After apparently quarreling with Himmler (which led to a tour of duty as a camp guard as punishment), amid accusations of homosexuality and possible Jewish heritage, he resigned from his post early in 1939. He wrote, "There is much sorrow in my country. Impossible for a tolerant, liberal man like me to live in the nation that my native country has become."
Trapped and overpowered by a malicious culture, Otto Wilhelm Rahn died in the snow of the Wilderkaiser on March 13, 1939, almost the anniversary of the fall of Montsegur. An apparent suicide, he ended his life in the style of the ritual Cathar endura. When he learned of Rahn's death, Antonin Gadal wrote, "Otto Rahn's suffering was over." Rahn was buried in 1940 in Darmstadt. As Karl Rittersbacher concluded, "the transit of this 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."
As he explains in his prologue to Crusade, Otto Rahn did not wish to point an accusing finger. For multiple reasons he wanted to chart a new path toward the future—and come to terms with human destiny. By addressing such problems asour own mortality, so essential to the human condition, Crusade contains a powerful message for our greedy and narcissistic society. "For some time now, I have resided in the mountains of the Tabor. Often, deeply moved, I have wandered through the crystal halls and marble crypts of the caves of the heretics, moving aside the bones of 'Pure Ones' and knights fallen in 'the fight for the spirit,' my steps echoing on the wet floor in the emptiness. Then I stop—listening— half expecting a troubadour to sing a sonnet in honor of the supreme Minne, that sublime love that converted men into gods."
Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, but Rahn's medieval world resembled that of his time, and our own, in its moral hypocrisy. With a remarkable sense of drama, he shows how the Cathars' genuine values were totally irrelevant to the despotic Pope and his power-hungry henchmen. He constantly contrasts the depravity of the Holy See and Saint Dominic's instrument for repression—the Inquisition—with the symbolic purity of the Grail. And yet, throughout the book, the mystery of the Cathar Mani or "Gral" lacks a single, sharply defined description. What was it?
In Parzival, Wolfram describes how a Kabbalistic astronomer named Flegetanis described the Gral as a "stone from the stars" to another Minnesingernamed Kyot who in turn related the story to Wolfram. Frequently, I have deliberately left the spelling of "Grail" in its middle German equivalent to emphasize that we are dealing with the legend of a "grail," and not the Holy Grail, the chalice that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch the blood of Jesus when he died on the cross. Like many others, Rahn was convinced that the founders of the church simply Christianized a pagan symbol. In Crusade, Rahn develops the Grail into an icon for the survival of the human soul. In this way, he is able to convey its dazzling yet indefinable power over the Cathars. Robert Graves wrote,"Symbolism or allegory is 'truer' than realism in that the former allows more possibilities or interpretations. And more possibilities—implying greater freedomand less context dependence—translate to a greater truth. Accordingly, it has been said, 'The more numerous the poetic meanings that could be concentrated in a sacred name; the greater was its power.'" In this way, the Gral is perhaps the most powerful symbol of all for a simple reason: nobody has ever seen it.
The reason I asked is because influences on the Indy movies are a pet subject of mine and I'm constantly on a quest to find & and verify them.
