New Realities recorded on June 1, 2010
Summary
Host Alan Steinfeld interviews Sidney Kirkpatrick about his book ‘Hitler’s Holy Relics.’ They discuss Hitler’s obsession with mysticism and the occult, focusing on his theft of the Spear of Destiny and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. Kirkpatrick explains the historical and mythological significance of these artifacts, the Nazi think tank Ahnenerbe, and the efforts of US Army personnel, including Private Walter Horn, to recover the stolen relics after World War II. The interview concludes with details on where the relics are currently housed and how to find more information about Kirkpatrick’s work.
Transcript
Alan Steinfeld
Welcome to New Realities. That was a song called The Crime of a Century by Duke Williams. But we really are going to talk about something like the crime of a century tonight with the guest Sidney Kirkpatrick and his book Hitler’s Holy Relics. Sidney, thanks for being here tonight.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
It’s a pleasure to join you, Alan.
Alan Steinfeld
I heard you recently on Coast to Coast in a really informative interview and talking about the book. The idea is that Hitler stole these relics from the museum in Austria, the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the Spear of Destiny, and took them to Nuremberg where he had them hidden. Eventually, towards the end of the war, it seemed like the Germans were losing and they wanted to hide these things someplace else. Is that true? Is that where it starts?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Generally what I’ve written is a true crime World War II story. We know, and much has been written about it of course, Hitler plundering the great art treasures of Europe. What we haven’t really known is the degree to which Hitler and his high priest Heinrich Himmler were interested in mysticism. One of the treasures that they went after was a collection called the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. One of the relics in that collection was the Spear of Destiny, which of course is featured in a lot of Indiana Jones movies and comics and a lot of pulp fiction for many years. With this book, I think we get the real story.
Alan Steinfeld
Just for people who don’t know what the Spear of Destiny is, it’s the spear that supposedly pierced the side of Jesus and the blood that spewed out healed this Roman soldier and he became a converted follower of Jesus. That spear has somehow stayed around for 2,000 years as a relic of power, really. Would you say that?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Absolutely, as a symbol of power and there’s a great deal of mythos about it. To be specific, as legend has it, as it’s told in the Christian Apocrypha and Eastern Orthodox tradition, Longinus was a Roman centurion who was going blind. He had cataracts. Pilate pulled him out of the ranks because he was no use any longer on the battlefield and assigned him to Mount Calvary. His specific assignment that night, the night of the crucifixion, was to make sure all the bodies were off the crosses. You couldn’t have a body hanging on a cross at Sabbath, at sunset. So he and his assistants first broke the legs of the two thieves which were said to have been martyred or crucified next to Jesus. When they came to Jesus, depending upon which account you believe, some say he was still alive. Longinus speared him on his right side and according to tradition, blood dripped down the side of the spear and into Longinus’s eyes. He was miraculously healed and had a vision of the future, a vision of Jesus as the Messiah. What was so important to this in terms of the entire Christ story is that this fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, one that the Messiah’s bones would not be broken.
Alan Steinfeld
Why is that so important? That was a part that I did read in the Gospels that Jesus didn’t want his legs to be broken. Why is that so important mystically, spiritually, do you think?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
That the body was to remain pure. It was not to be broken. So that was part of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The other fulfillment was that as it is in the Bible, that Jesus would be proclaimed the Messiah and essentially that it was a Gentile that would be doing that. Of course, it was Longinus, the Roman centurion. One could look at it, of course theologians argue these points back and forth, but one could look at it that Longinus was the last of Jesus’s miraculous healings and also that Longinus, a Gentile, a Roman, a soldier, was the very first Christian. Because Jesus wasn’t the Messiah until he was pierced in the chest like that. Longinus was the first there, so hence he was the first Christian. Because Longinus was a Roman citizen and not a Jew, he was free to travel Roman roads. He went to Antioch and eventually traveled up around the edges of the Mediterranean and was eventually martyred. He carried with him that spear, proclaiming and as a display item and said, ‘Here, look at this, this is the spear that I pierced the Messiah with.’ The spear took on a real mystical importance and many emperors lusted after it, fought over it. Unlike other holy relics, let’s say like the Shroud of Turin, this spear was not property of the church. It was property of the emperor, of the world monarch who possessed it. As it was passed on through history, it became part of the coronation ceremony. If you really wanted to be a Holy Roman Emperor, you needed to have the spear along with other accoutrements that were eventually added to it: the crown, the scepter, the golden orb, which was like a golden apple with a cross on it, which signified world Christian rulership. So these eventually became a collection over a period of 700, 800 years, which are called the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. What makes this story so very interesting is that we know all about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and of course the rise of the Third Reich, their activities during World War II. But Adolf Hitler as a young art student had actually seen this relic. In 1909, he was 20 years old. He was a failed art student at points in his life in Vienna. He was literally sleeping on park benches. As the story is told, he ran into the Hofburg Museum, which is the sort of Royal Treasury, to get out of the rain. While he was wandering through the museum, he went to Room 11 and there in a display case was the Holy Lance and the other Crown Jewels. He started reading the legend about this and it resonated with him. Depending upon which accounts you believe, he actually fell into a state of ecstasy, had a trance over it. I certainly can’t speak with authority on that subject, but it certainly meant a lot to him and was very important to him. Years later in 1933 when he became Chancellor, he tried to set up museum exchanges so that Germany could borrow the spear and put it on display briefly at the museum. But the Austrians didn’t trust him. They knew they wouldn’t get it back if they lent it to Germany and so he took it by force. It’s interesting in many respects. I hate to sort of go on here, but I just find this whole subject so interesting. In the whole plethora of Nazi plunder, you know, he took Michelangelos, Renoirs, Da Vincis. They went through the Louvre. The very first treasures that the Nazis took were the Crown Jewels. They took them May 15, 1938 and on May 15, it’s St. Longinus Day. So these were the very first treasures he took and he took it on the very day that Catholics venerate St. Longinus.
Alan Steinfeld
Let’s get back to the Longinus spear because the whole idea of holy relics is that they do emanate an energy. I personally think they do. I mean, on the Coast to Coast show you said it was more like a mantlepiece or it was implied that it was just for show of power. But I think Hitler probably really believed that it truly was power and energy. When you see an object being placed near a saint or being prayed at, it sort of assumes the power that’s being projected to that particular object. So a billion people for a thousand years projecting prayers towards the spear or the crown, but particularly the spear, gives people, and I think it may very well be an energetic transfer of some kind. What’s your opinion about that on a spiritual level?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Absolutely. I feel like it’s charged with energy. One can debate whether the spear that Hitler got a hold of, the spear that Napoleon lusted after, the spear that Charlemagne carried on 47 successful military campaigns, was in fact actually the actual spear that pierced the side of Jesus on the cross. We know the history in terms of how many spears the Romans brought back. Napoleon actually sent one to Paris that he thought was it that he got out of Jerusalem, which turned out to be an early fake. The one that ended up in Vienna, that Hitler lusted after, but didn’t get. One can argue that maybe it wasn’t the actual spear that was at the crucifixion. I tend to believe that it was. But regardless of that, this was the spear that was venerated, that was prayed over for some 2,000 years. And so I think there’s a lot of energy, there’s certainly a lot of spiritual energy invested in it. You may be familiar with the book that was written by Trevor Ravenscroft called The Spear of Destiny. He went into that subject very nicely. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the military records available to him because they were classified, he couldn’t get a hold of them. So there are a lot of errors in that book. But what it did, I think, is bring to public attention not only the long, venerated history of the Holy Lance, but aspects of Nazi mysticism that have not been really discussed. And it’s only been really in the last decade or so where authors, writers are willing to look long and hard and reevaluate the nature of Nazi mysticism. If you look at my father’s generation, my father fought in World War II, my grandfather fought in World War II, this was not a subject they discussed. I mean, if you asked my grandfather about it, he would just not have said it. Hitler was certainly not a Christian, he was a pagan. They would have just dismissed it out of hand.
Alan Steinfeld
But the swastika itself was a mystical sign. As you said, they start wanting to merge the political, spiritual, religious sense of the Third Reich as a holy order on earth in a sense, right?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Yeah. I certainly use the term a Holy Reich. But certainly no God-fearing Christian would want to use those two words together. But I think that’s certainly what Hitler was envisioning. And going back to the reevaluation of what people know about Nazi mysticism, one of the things that was so remarkable to me as I started getting into this subject and researching it was the Nazis wrote their own Bible. They revised the New Testament. They got rid of the Old Testament because it was too Jewish. And they tried to pull Judaism out of the Bible. But they actually wrote a Bible which, had they been successful, had they successfully wiped out the Soviet Union and taken control, might have been the Bible that was used. They were building a national cathedral. A lot of people just don’t realize the degree to which the Nazis and certainly Hitler and Himmler were informed by Christian tradition and Christian ethos. Of course, this is not to in any way support that regime, but I think people tend to overlook the fact that Mein Kampf was edited by a Jesuit priest.
Alan Steinfeld
It would be interesting to see what that Nazi Bible actually read like. Was it destroyed completely? I mean it would just be a kind of a weird study of religion I think, to look at the Nazi Bible. Has anyone read that? Is it around?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
One can get it. It’s not widely distributed, of course. But the Nazis were creating what they viewed as a Holy Reich, complete with an Aryan Jesus. This is where Longinus figures into the story so far because you have Longinus, an Aryan. That’s how the Germans thought of him, as an Aryan because he was a Roman from Gaul. And that the first Christian, many Nazis believed, Longinus was the founder of Christianity. That he brought Christianity to the West. That a soldier, Longinus, in spearing Jesus, had killed the King of the Jews.
Alan Steinfeld
Getting on the subject of Nazi mysticism, it’s something that I was told that somehow the Tibetans were involved in taking the suffering that was happening in the concentration camps and turning it into a sort of power. Is there any truth to that level of Nazi mysticism? I know it’s off the subject of your book. Have you heard that about the involvement of the Tibetans at all?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, yes, certainly. That was a part of it. In Hitler’s Holy Relics, I specifically get into a group who were known as the Ahnenerbe. And this was a Nazi think tank of soldier scholars. If you were a doctoral student, if you were a historian in Nazi Germany and you wanted to avoid going into the armed forces, you could join the Ahnenerbe. And this is the group that went around the world that sent scholars to Tibet, looking for evidence to try and prove that Jesus was of Aryan descent. I know it’s sort of mind-boggling, but literally they had teams sent all around the world. This is what Steven Spielberg drew on for his Indiana Jones series. The Nazis were looking for the Ark. And there were elements of truth to that whole thing.
Alan Steinfeld
So what was the story with the Tibetans and the allegiance with the Nazis?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, of course, at the very base of Nazi ideology was the belief that Aryan man represented high culture, that ancient Aryan man possessed psychic abilities, language abilities, and were a sort of super human, a race of superhuman people. And that they had become polluted over the centuries, over the millennia through intermarriage and a whole score of things. And so the Ahnenerbe and this group of scholars were going around the earth searching for evidence of where Aryan man had traveled. The runes, I’m sure you’ve heard of these, which are sort of Nordic scratchings, Nordic symbols which have been found on rocks and mosaics. Evidence of what the Nazis believed was Aryan man. And they believed that Aryan man had settled in Tibet. And they were doing all kinds of anthropological studies to try to prove that. And that mystical beliefs that grew up in Tibet were of Aryan roots.
Alan Steinfeld
Was there something about turning suffering into power, was that part of the legend true? Have you heard that?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, I’ve heard it, and I certainly can’t say that I understand it. But certainly through suffering comes purity. And that was their saying.
Alan Steinfeld
And the monks doing that for the Nazis, I’m just curious, because I never was able to confirm that legend.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, it’s a very frightening thought, isn’t it?
Alan Steinfeld
It is, it is. But getting back to this idea of the Nazi mysticism, I mean in a sense Hitler became a sort of religious cult figure. He was the leader of the people, he was this dark Messiah in his own way.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Exactly, yes. And of course Nuremberg, which figures very prominently in my book, it’s the backdrop of the whole story, that’s where the crime story takes place. Nuremberg had a very, very ancient long history with these relics in particular. And the Spear of Destiny was displayed in Nuremberg for some 750 years. It was there where cults grew up around the spear, where the spear itself was made part of the communion ceremony. Where the chalice was filled with wine, and then the spear was dipped into the chalice with wine and became the blood. There are some churches in Germany and in Europe that still practice that ceremony. One of the most really fascinating things to me, very convincing, and it was certainly very convincing to the German people. I don’t know if you’re aware of the German mystic Anna Catherine Emmerich? She was very much like Hildegard von Bingen in the 1800s in a nunnery in Germany. And she was a famous stigmatist, where wounds opened up on her hands and on her feet, corresponding of course to the crucifixion, and would fall into states of ecstasy. You would know her work in Mel Gibson’s movie Passion of the Christ. The passion story that Mel Gibson tells in that movie is directly from the ecstasies of Anna Catherine Emmerich. She figures very prominently in the history of the spear because one of her talents as a mystic was if you handed her an object, she could psychically or spiritually tell you where that object had been, who had used it. And various rulers over in her time would present her with things and want to know its origin. She was invariably right and they tried to trick her many times and she kept with it. And at one point they brought the Holy Lance, which was in Nuremberg, into the nunnery and handed it to her. And she trembled, fell down and laid out and went into a state of ecstasy, and a wound opened up on her side and she started bleeding. And this was witnessed by many people and was dutifully recorded, but it sort of added to the mystery, to the mysticism of this lance. That this was, even in Martin Luther’s day, when the great cathedrals were being ransacked, the spear was still held out as a holy object.
Alan Steinfeld
So if this spear was that powerful, and maybe it did give Hitler the power that he had to sweep through Europe, there’s lots of questions that come up. Is there any morality on the side of relics to do good, or is it just like you got the power, you go with it? I don’t know if these are questions that can really be answered. Of course, ultimately, it didn’t win out, but we can just hypothesize and think did it give Hitler power? I think it may have. It seems possible.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, it certainly did in several respects. One because these relics were venerated so much that they were held by world monarchs, that Hitler was the next claimant. I mean you have to realize the first major claimant to the spear was Emperor Constantine in 300 AD. The first Christian Roman Emperor. Constantine was said to have carried this spear at both Councils of Nicaea, which were the councils where the Bible actually came into being. It was carried there. After that, it passed to Emperor Theodosius. It went onto Otto, Frederick Barbarossa, Napoleon lusted after these, after the spear and the Crown Jewels, which were in Nuremberg, and sent an army to try and get them. The city fathers in Nuremberg secreted them out of Nuremberg into hiding and brought them to Vienna. Which is how they ended up there.
Alan Steinfeld
And because with Napoleon came the end of the Holy Roman Empire, when the empire collapsed, Nuremberg, which an emperor had willed these things to Nuremberg for eternity, when the Holy Roman Empire collapsed and Nuremberg asked for these treasures back, the Austrians said, well, these are the property of the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire doesn’t exist, we’re going to keep them. So they ended up in Vienna. Have you been to Vienna to the Hofburg Museum to look yourself at the Spear of Destiny that’s back there?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Oh, absolutely. This was really one of the most fascinating research trips. Researching this story was just really one of the most fascinating, bizarre adventures of my life. We started in underground Nuremberg, where this secret bunker that Heinrich Himmler built to store these things, and the bunker is still there. I mean you can’t go to Berlin and visit the Hitler bunker, but you can visit the Himmler bunker.
Alan Steinfeld
I was in Nuremberg, I didn’t know about that. I visited that castle. I was in Nuremberg just hitchhiking through about 20 years ago, and there was this really creepy castle, and I heard you say it was a youth hostel. I think I stayed in that youth hostel, and it is a really weird place. Isn’t it creepy?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
It is. Well, the German government really doesn’t know what to do with this castle because it’s a historical monument. It was important to the history of Germany long before Heinrich Himmler took it over. And then Himmler took it over, and so the German government doesn’t want to turn it into a tourist attraction for neo-Nazis, but at the same time they can’t tear it down. So they don’t quite know what to do with it, and it’s still there, and many of Himmler’s things are still in it. And it’s a youth hostel. It’s a very creepy place to visit.
Alan Steinfeld
I stayed in that youth hostel and I, yeah, it was odd. I didn’t know any of this story and none of it was actually written up on a tourist plaque. It was just really…
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Right. Well it’s not. The advantage I had in going into this book was to take a step back, was the oral memoirs of a World War II soldier who happened to be German-born, German-educated, Walter Horn. Got his doctoral degree in 1933 just as Hitler had come to power. And his art history professor, his mentor, was saying you gotta get the hell out of Germany, there’s real trouble on its way. And Walter was reluctant to pull up stakes, one because his whole family was in Germany. Another reason is because his specialty was Germanic holy relics, medieval history. And third, he was having an affair with his Jewish girl, who was married to a Nazi and she thought she was protected by virtue of her marriage, but of course she wasn’t. He dragged his feet too long, eventually got into trouble with the SS, fled to Italy, got to Cuba, got to Greenwich Village, and eventually got a job teaching at UC Berkeley. He married the first student, the first girl who came into his classroom, got his US citizenship, breathed a sigh of relief. And then bang, Pearl Harbor, we’re in the war, and he finds himself headed back to Germany to fight the Nazis. That’s really where the book begins.
Alan Steinfeld
How old was he when he got to Berkeley though?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
He was in his 30s. And then he gets drafted. He ends up in Germany. Then he is interviewing someone in Hitler’s army who’s kept this relic secret. He is fighting with General Patton. And Patton is just ready to make the jump across the Rhine into Germany. And Patton is really concerned, and for good reason, that the Nazis are going to use chemical or biological weapons when they cross into the Fatherland. And so they’ve captured these prisoners from the Battle of the Bulge, and Patton wants all his German speakers out there interrogating these guys to see what they know about chemical and biological weapons. Of course, Walter is one of the first brought out there because he was born and raised in Germany. He’s interviewing these people and he’s not getting any information about chemical weapons. And here’s this 50-some odd year old private who’s brought to him to interrogate. The guy doesn’t know anything, but Walter felt really bad for him, sad for him because he could have been his own father. He offers him a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and they’re out chatting, and he says, well, I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything about what you’re looking for here, but if you’re at all interested in art history or holy relics, I do have a story to tell. And there probably wasn’t anybody in the entire US Third Army, maybe the entire US Army, better suited to hear what this private Huber had to say.
Alan Steinfeld
Why would a private know about the holy relics of Hitler’s treasures?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, good question. This private’s father was an air conditioning specialist, and Heinrich Himmler had hired the father to build a ventilation unit, a special air conditioning ventilation unit in a secret bunker that was buried deep underneath Nuremberg Castle. And the specifications given to the father was that this vault chamber had to be kept at a certain temperature, a certain humidity, and once a week Private Huber’s mother was picked up by the SS and brought into this vault to make sure that these treasures were being adequately taken care of, that there wasn’t mold or insect damage or anything on these things. They spent, Himmler poured a small fortune into building this secret bunker. And it had showers, oil tanks. I mean it was a totally self-contained unit. You could have survived in that bunker for at least six months without having to go out. And that’s where these relics were kept, the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the Spear of Longinus were kept there throughout the whole war from the time Hitler seized it in 1938. Hitler seized it in 38 and they brought them for display in Nuremberg and there was actually going to be a great Nazi party rally held for them, but then the bombing missions started. And so these things had to be protected. And Himmler didn’t want his holy spear, his talisman, taken from him. The irony, and this is just, the truth is so full of synchronicities when you really get into it and start studying the truth behind these stories, and they’re so much better than fiction. You have this one German-born US Army captain who really knows about these holy relics who’s being told this story. He goes back to his tent that night and he types up an art history paper. I mean, technically it’s an intelligence paper, but this guy’s an art historian. I mean, he teaches art history at Berkeley. He has his doctorate in art history. So he writes this 30 or 40 page, what might appear in some scholarly journal, and he sends it on to Third Army Intelligence in Paris, thinking that it’s going to be dismissed as some slush pile of useless information. And lo and behold, and totally by surprise, it works its way up the ranks to Patton himself. And Patton himself believes in Longinus. Patton himself had written about Longinus. He is as obsessed with reincarnation and mysticism as Himmler was. So Walter Horn is sent around to recover these treasures. And in the course of recovering those treasures, he gets a picture window, and hopefully the reader does too, a picture window into Nazi mysticism. And the core of that mysticism wasn’t just a symbolic thing, it was a true belief that, like we said before, that there was power in these objects.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, exactly. I mean, the truth of the matter is that the best writers always feel that way, whether they’ll admit that or not, or whether they’ll even open themselves up to admit how closely they’re feeling, they’re resonating, their sympathetic, and I mean that in a much more general term than sympathy. I think most good writers do that. You won’t find many who will admit that, or who will say yeah, I’m channeling this particular person, but I think it happens much more than is generally known.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, I think you’re right, because obviously you’re so into the story, there’s a resonance with the person, and who we really are are vibrational resonance, and if we can tune into that station that that person was, we can start to really confidently, in a sense, of course we’ll never know, pick up on their feelings and thoughts and the dramas of their life.
Alan Steinfeld
I agree perfectly with what you’re saying, but I think there are indications a writer gets when they know they’re on the right track. Because doors open for them. When they catch that vibration. I think, while writing the Casey book, there were so many bizarre synchronicities, you just had to stop and wonder. I’m writing a book too, and it’s about a historic figure, and I get that sense too. It’s just for me, do I take the chance in a sense of really being in that person’s head and saying this is what happened, I guess why not, who’s going to argue with me, right?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
You have to dot your i’s, you have to conduct good scholarship, or at least alert the reader to how this information is being drawn. One of the problems with the Trevor Ravenscroft book is that some of this material is imagined and he says this comes to him in a dream. So I certainly can’t go there. You gotta do your heavy lifting. And I’m very proud that I’ve done the scholarship. The reviews on Hitler’s Holy Relics have been just phenomenal. I’m very pleased, couldn’t be happier.
Alan Steinfeld
But is your next book a sort of history, non-fiction?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Oh yeah, I only write non-fiction books, and I often write books that could be made into movies. The first book I wrote, called A Cast of Killers, is about an aging film director, King Vidor, who goes back to solve the murder of one of his friends in Hollywood. That’s a true story too. The book I wrote after that is about a disillusioned marine biologist who escapes academia to move to this little Caribbean island, thinking that he’s going to get away from all of his problems, only to run into a much more serious problem. But I write true stories, archeologists, archaeology is certainly another one of my passions. The next book sort of along the mystical lines as well?
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, but they’re mainstream books. One doesn’t have to be devoted to esoteric subject matter to appreciate them. Do you ever get into UFOs at all, and any research in that area?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
No, not yet.
Alan Steinfeld
Because there’s a whole huge story going on there, a whole cover-up that I explore a lot on this program. If you ever do, it’d be very interesting for you. And one final question, have you looked at relics in other religions, because India is full of ancient relics from great saints, and people use them as power objects. The mystical energies coming from them. Have you looked into that at all?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
No, I haven’t. I would certainly love to, and I’m an inveterate traveler. I travel constantly, and it would be a fascinating subject to get into. Certainly would be.
Alan Steinfeld
Because there was an Indian I met running an ashram that would bury some of these ancient holy relics under the floor of his temple to empower ceremonies there. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but he would use these as tools for people to have more powerful spiritual experiences.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Yes, I can certainly understand that. And hopefully science will come and meet spirituality halfway at some point here in the future. Because it would be wonderful if dedicated scientists would actually study these things, because there is something there, and it’s undeniable if you really go in and study it. There is evidence there, but most mainstream scientists won’t go anywhere near it.
Alan Steinfeld
You mean like a scientist would go in and maybe be able to test the field, perhaps the quantum field around these objects to see if there was really an emanation?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Exactly, sure. Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
Because next week I’m interviewing this guy Mark Newkirk who is very much dealing with fields of energy, light fields he calls them, and I wonder if there is a test that could be developed for these things. In an interview I did with Hal Puthoff, he would say some of these mystics generated a quantum field. So if they started to levitate, people around them would levitate too because of this field of energy that seemed to emanate off some of these mystics. So Hal is a very well-respected scientist in his own right, and it’s delightful that there are scientists like Hal Puthoff who are beginning to explore these things. I’m certainly convinced that science and spirituality, or mysticism, whatever you want to call it, will come together at some point. People like Lynne McTaggart, her book The Field, that’s bridging the gap, and Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas about morphogenetic fields. They’re showing there’s a physics to metaphysics, that the two are really not separate, but part of a continuum. And often I look at the idea of the field in the sense that we are generating energy that we don’t really stop at our physical body, but there’s a greater body that we are a part of and that intersects with other people, creating let’s say psychic fields where we can know the thoughts of others because we are intersecting with a larger part of them.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Very well said, Alan. That was excellent.
Alan Steinfeld
So I think exactly what you’re saying, we’re coming to a new time of the science of spirituality and mysticism, and I think it’s very exciting times.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, I’m glad to be a part of it, and it’s wonderful that you’re such a part of it.
Alan Steinfeld
Thank you. So I guess we can wrap up here. The idea is to really read the book. I would encourage people to read the book, and it’s in every bookstore, Hitler’s Holy Relics by Sidney Kirkpatrick, and it’s on Amazon as well. We’re looking forward to some other books by you. Sidney is also the author of Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet. What year did that come out?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Around 2000.
Alan Steinfeld
And your website is sidneykirkpatrick.com, right?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
dot com or just hitlersholyrelics, one word. hitlersholyrelics.com.
Alan Steinfeld
And it’s doing pretty well, right?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Yes, yes. It’s only been out a couple weeks now and it’s done very well. I’m very pleased. The reviews have been excellent. I’m very proud of this book. I’m proud of not only the material in it, but of how well it reads. It’s a fast, fun read.
Alan Steinfeld
Do you see it as a movie?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Oh absolutely. Here you have the real thing of Indiana Jones, the material that it was based on. There’s a lot of drama in this story, a lot of human drama, and of course it’s the human story which is always the most vital. And here is a perfect vehicle in this expatriate German in which to reveal the larger story.
Alan Steinfeld
And you get into his mind in a sense or project the kind of feeling that you confirmed by people who knew him, but do you sense that you really connect with Walter Horn in a way that you’re really being in that person’s head and saying, ‘This is what happened’? I guess why not, who’s going to argue with me, right?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Well, you have to dot your i’s, you have to conduct good scholarship, or at least alert the reader to how this information is being drawn. One of the problems with the Trevor Ravenscroft book is that some of this material is imagined and he says this came to him in a dream. So I certainly can’t go there. You’ve got to do your heavy lifting. And I’m very proud that I prize myself on doing that research. And I’m fortunate to have the money from a publisher’s advance to do that kind of research that most people don’t get an opportunity to do.
Alan Steinfeld
Who published this last book?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Simon & Schuster.
Alan Steinfeld
Great. Well, good luck with it. Thank you. I know we’ve talked a lot, but any final words that you want the reader or someone buying this book to know?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Just that it’s a very fun read. And at the same time, one gets a picture window into a world that is very rarely seen. It’s only through the protagonist, this expatriate German, that we really get a picture window into Nazi mysticism that we just haven’t gotten. So you’re not going to find a story like this anywhere.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, thank you. It’s very exciting and it just seems like the Nazis just won’t go away. I mean, of course it was a dramatic world time, but there’s still lessons to be learned from that part of our history. And maybe the Spear of Longinus is back to empower a new age, possibly. I don’t know.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Could be.
Alan Steinfeld
Alright, well thanks. Thanks for everything.
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Thank you Alan, so much. It’s a pleasure talking to you and I look forward to following up in the future.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, yeah. Maybe we’ll do another one. I’ll look forward to reading the whole book and let you know how it goes. Okay?
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Okay. Thank you so much.
Alan Steinfeld
Thank you. This is Alan Steinfeld for New Realities. If you’re interested in rehearing that interview, you can go to bbsradio.com, look under the archives of New Realities, and also go to my website newrealities.com. And if you want to reach me, I’m at newrealities@earthlink.net. Thank you for listening. Next week will be Mark Newkirk and the light field generators. So listen next week. Have a good night. Thank you for listening.
