580 words
Savitri Devi was a philosopher, a religious thinker, and a tireless polemicist and activist for the causes of animal rights, European pagan revivalism, Hindu Nationalism, German National Socialism, and — after the Second World War — pan-European racial nationalism. She also sought to found a religion, Esoteric Hitlerism, fusing National Socialism with the Traditionalism of René Guénon and Julius Evola. All told, she was one of the most extraordinary personalities of the 20th century.
She was born Maximine Portaz born in Lyons, France on September 30, 1905. Her mother, Julia Nash was English, descending from Viking stock. (She claimed that the name Nash is derived from Ash, as in the World Ash Tree.) Her father, Maxim Portaz, was three fourths Italian from Savoy, one fourth Greek. Because of her mixed-European heritage, she identified herself simply as “European.” She also described herself as a “nationalist of all nations.”
For an account of her life and work, read R. G. Fowler’s tribute to Savitri Devi on her 100th birthday: “Woman Against Time: Remembering Savitri Devi’s 100th Birthday.” (Translations: German, French, Czech, Norwegian.)
Savitri Devi died on October 22, 1982 in Sible Hedingham, Essex, England at the home of her friend Muriel Gantry. For a sad account of her passing, see Muriel Gantry’s “The Last Days of Savitri Devi,” selected from her correspondence by R. G. Fowler.
For more information on Savitri Devi’s life, work, and influence see R. G. Fowler’s website The Savitri Devi Archive.
Counter-Currents has reprinted several works by Savitri Devi online:
- “Cosmotheism in Savitri Devi,” an excerpt from Defiance
- “In Memory of May 1st, 1945,” a poem written under the pen name Clara Sharland
- “Incurable Decadence,” chapter 11 of Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne
- “Paul of Tarsus, or Christianity and Jewry,” an essay from 1957. Norwegian translation here.
- “Race, Economics, and Kindness: The Ideal World,” chapter 11 of Impeachment of Man
- “The Religion of the Strong,” chapter 1 of Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne
Counter-Currents has also published or reprinted several works about Savitri Devi:
- Paul Brundsen, “Life is Worship: Savitri Devi’s Son of the Sun.” French translation here
- R. G. Fowler, “Enemy and Exemplar: Savitri Devi on Paul of Tarsus.” Translations: German, French
- R. G. Fowler, “Woman Against Time: Remembering Savitri Devi’s 100th Birthday.” Translations: German, French, Czech, Norwegian, Portuguese
- Juleigh Howard-Hobson, “After the Avatar, 1945,” a sonnet
- Alex Kurtagić, Review of Defiance
- Alex Kurtagić, Review of Gold in the Furnace
- Video: “Savitri Devi: Woman Against Time“
Savitri Devi is also quite widely tagged at Counter-Currents.
Four of Savitri Devi’s books are currently in print in English and available for purchase at Counter-Currents:
- The latest publication of Savitri Devi is Forever and Ever: Devotional Poems, the first volume of her previously unpublished writings, available in a limited, numbered hardcover edition of 200 copies.
- For her views on animal rights, vegetarianism, and Deep Ecology, see her manifesto Impeachment of Man.
- For accounts of her clandestine propaganda activities in Occupied Germany see Gold in the Furnace: Experiences in Occupied Germany.
- On her subsequent arrest, trial, and imprisonment, see Defiance: The Prison Memoirs of Savitri Devi.
The best introduction to Savitri Devi’s life and work is And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews. Unfortunately, it is now out of print, but Counter-Currents will bring it back into print later this year.
Counter-Currents has now taken over publication of the Centennial Edition of Savitri Devi’s Works. The next volume, due out before the end of the year, is the long-anticipated republication of the complete and unabridged edition of The Lightning and the Sun.
4 comments
Whitman said of his Leaves of Grass: whoever reads this touches a man. Just so of Her Ligthtening and the Sun. It is a strange work of remarkable power. Hitler as a precursor to the last incarnation of Visnu – how improbable and unbelievable. Yet I find myself seeing life through this lens sometimes – without ever having given my formal intellectual consent. It went right under or over my mind – thus revealing to me the formidable power of Myth.
Saw a funny youtube: conspiracy attack dogs getting the better of David de Rothschild, eco-guru, and Christ figure. Towards the end of their encounter he pleads with them, I’m not a reptile from the 9th dimension. David Icke’s work is powerful mthology. Can it also serve?
If it were not for Savitri Devi I would not be here reading C-C, nor would I be a few months into a process of reconsidering and examining my life. But I came across her Son of the Sun years ago as a young teen. Where did I go? It was only a return to her that seemed unavoidable and the purchase of a volume that inadvertently led me here and I’ve not been the same since.
I must admit that it was the work of Vithof and Eldrig of the Black Solar Art project Fanisk that returned me to the aryan source from which I had been led astray.
Today, I wish I had spent more time honoring Savitri Devi. She has had a profound impact on my life and yet I am still so confused and distanced from where I want to be that I had forgotten yesterday was her birthday.
Thank you for this collection, hypertext table of contents, as it were, of texts by and on Savitri Devi. I will be perusing these in my spare moments to come this week.
Savitri Devi and Serrano, along with Esoteric Hitlerism, are beacons for me as I seek.
For a moment here it strikes me that one must never remember Savitri Devi if one’s mind never lets her go.
Nothing strikes me as unbelievable or improbable about Hitler as an incarnation of Vishnu before the coming of the last avatar, Kalki. This myth, like all myths, symbolically deals with man’s relationship to higher unseen Forces and processes. Myth is our way of representing these forces. I would argue that myth is more real than the rational material approach, since myth deals with higher Truths, hence with true Reality.
Savitri Devi passed through this ossified, hardened, and corrupt world like the fiery comet that heralds great change. I honor her and her memory.
All lies in jest – interpretation is the jester is it not? Fundamentalists take these things literally and make life very small indeed.
But yes, I don’t disagree with you. To paraphrase Joe Friday: Do we want the Truth or just the facts?
Maybe it is the literal Truth – but how will we know until long after the Fact, long after our lives are over? Only people interpreting the Past will be able to verify – and that is another art only as good as the men doing it. I mean if the Rapture happens or the extinction of the White Race, then Hitler wasn’t a partial incarnation of Vishnu. If Kalki comes and cleans house, then perhaps he was.
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