Peter Longerich

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― Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: A Life

“He distanced himself more and more from Roman Catholicism. Instead, he became increasingly preoccupied with works that, in his view, dealt with occult phenomena in a serious ‘scholarly’ way; for example, a book about ‘Astrology, Hypnosis, Spiritualism, Telepathy’,33 topics which, at the peak of the inflation and during the subsequent period of upheaval, were generally in vogue.34 In 1925 he was to read a book about the power of pendulums,35 and in the same year he approached an astrologer with a request for four horoscopes.36 He was impressed by an account of the Pyramid of Cheops—‘history built and written in stone and a representation of the universe, which a genius has written in the form of this pyramid’—since it showed ‘a range of knowledge that we conceited people of culture have long ago lost and even now have not recovered to the same extent’.37 During January and February 1923 he read a book on Spiritualism, and commented in his notes that it had convinced him that Spiritualism was true. Thus, Himmler assumed that it was possible to communicate with the souls of the dead.38 Already, in May 1921, he had read a book twice within a short time which claimed to prove there was life after death; despite being somewhat sceptical, he was inclined to believe the evidence put forward. ‘The transmigration of souls’, he noted at the end of his commentary on it.39 It was a topic that was also to preoccupy him after he became Reichsführer-SS (RFSS).”
― Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: A Life