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VON SEBOTTENDORFF
Rudolf Glauer, son of a railroader and a housewife, was born in Silesia in 1875. His parents died when he was still very young so he sought his fortune at sea. After two years of sailing he settled in Australia, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to become a prospector.
His fortune found in Turkey where he arrived in 1901. He became a superintendent for a very wealthy land owner, Hussein Pasha, who introduced him to esoteric studies connecting him to the Sufi Tariqa of Medlevi.
In Burda, Anatolia, a famous Jewish trader, Mr.Tarmudi, was willing to show him his rich and most precious collection of esoteric books and helped him in his initiation at the local Masonic Lodge, working according to Memphis Rite.
In 1911 a noble German resident in Istanbul, Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff, nominated him heir of his name and patrimony. Feeling strong due to his new title and with no more financial worries, Rudolf decided to completely devote himself to esoteric research, and later under the name of Rudolf von Sebottendorff, he wrote a book which made him famous: “The Operative Practice of Ancient Turkish Freemasonry”.
In this book, he claimed to have come in contact with a mysterious Sufi confraternity, the Beni el Mim (literally, ”Sons of the keys”), who were practicing, for centuries, an operative system of inner transmutation completely centered around the use of the “order signs” of Freemasonry.
According to Rudolf von Sebottendorff, such systems arrived in Europe with the Venetian traders’ ships in tenth century AD, granting the basis for the rising of Freemasonry and Alchemy. These two disciplines are nothing more than applications and developments of teachings on transmutation contained in the “Science of the Keys”.
Von Sebottendorff’s intention was to help anybody practice the system due to the detailed and practical description in his book. A good willed apprentice, would have been able to achieve the “Great Work” between more or less three months to three years time, dedicating no more than ten minutes a day to the exercises he has taught.
In a nutshell, the Science of the Keys consists in learning three signs to perform with the right hand: the “I”, the “A” and the “O”(or “U”, third and last vowel of the Archaic Arabian Alphabet that von Sebottendorff translated as “O” probably because more graphically similar to this one).
According to the symbolism of the four elements, the sign “I” helps to attract the fire energies, the “A” the water energies, the ”O” the air ones, while the earth is symbolically represented by the apprentice himself. He learns the signs from particular physical sensations, signaling the flowing of the evoked “subtle currents” inside the body.
Once this has happened he will be able to fix the currents in the human body through four kind of widely described “outlets ”.
Among them, the “Outlet of the Neck” is almost identical to the Masonic sign of Apprentice, the “outlet of the chest” to the Fellow –craft sign, the “outlet of the belly” to the Master sign (the fourth outlet, or “middle outlet” is just a light variation of the “outlet of the chest”.)
The successful outcome of the outlets is revealed by visual sensations of colors following in time, according to a rigorous order corresponding to the different phases of the alchemic work .
The final success is signaled by a “dazzling white color, which according to oriental mystics has an incredible value”.
Even if von Sebtotterdoff’s indications are many, there are still numerous unsolved questions about certain aspects of the Science of the Keys; and when the book (finished in 1916) was published in Europe in 1921, various fervid esoterists went to Turkey to find the answers, asking directly the mysterious Beni el Mim.
They planned to contact them because according to different paragraphs from the” Ancient Turkish Freemasonry” it was quite easy to recognize under which Sufi tariqa they were hiding: it was the Bektashiya, founded by Sheikh Hajji Bektash in the fourteenth century, present in Istanbul and in every Turkish city. But it was not the right moment, at that time the political situation was so tense it pushed the Sufi orders to double their secrecy measures, already normally strict, until they avoided any external contact.
Note: in 1925 all Sufi organizations were considered outlaw by the Turkish government until 1950. As a consequence of this measure, the most prestigious masters of Bektashiya left the country, taking shelter in the inaccessible mountains of Northern Albania, where the tariqa has settled for many centuries.
During the Second World War, a few Albanian Bektashi masters went abroad. One of them, Sheik Baba Rexheb(1901-1995) moved to the USA, where he taught until his death; a Bektashi tekke has been created around his grave in Michigan.
http://www.frosinaorg/infobits/baba.shtml
In reality the online material available today is quite wide, but as far as we know it doesn’t contain any references to the Science of the Keys.
This is also true with the most interesting literary work on Bektashi costumes, the novel ”Nur Baba” by Kadri Karaosmanoglu,still contains a detailed description of some of the most secret rituals used in the tariqa.
The only chance left was to try to contact von Sebottendorff directly. In the meantime, he was nowhere to be found. His European fans, in his book he has discouraged from personally contacting him, were thinking that he probably retreated to an inaccessible monastery; but in reality they would have been very disappointed to know the truth regarding the last adventures of their hero.
Back in Germany during the war, von Sebottendorff had problems regarding his condition of being a naturalized Turk. For sometime he had to strongly defend himself from the racist and xenophobe attitudes; then all of a sudden, mysteriously, he changed his mind, denying all his previous past experiences with the drastic ways that distinguish his personality.
The first indication of his changing was when he bought a newspaper the “Münchener Beobachter,” famous for his heavy extreme rightist propaganda, with strong anti-Masonic and anti-Semitic tones.
Since 1918 we find him among the founding members of the Thule Society, real inner circle members of the German National Socialist Worker Party (NSDAP). The following year a young unknown corporal called Adolph Hitler would join it.
Many years later when Nazism had already taken the power and von Sebotterdoff had successfully achieved the consular career, the events of “the night of the long knives” found him supporting the “old guard” of the party that became enemy to the Führer. Hoping for a better destiny, he wrote another book “Before Hitler came”(not to be confused by the homonymous work by D. Bronder , dated 1964) still today a highly appreciated source of knowledge regarding the origin of Nazism is concerned .
In this book he was vigorously claiming the merit of “to have sown what the Führer has grown“.
This last literary experience was not bound to bring him any luck: ”Before Hitler came” was immediately withdrawn from circulation, and its author got arrested.
Von Sebottendorff had to leave Germany divested of all his possessions.
Since 1934 he has been in Istanbul, again hired by the German Secret Service which will support him until his death, in exchange of a few deletions.
The most shocking aspect of the second part of his life, is the sudden way the Science of the Keys lost interest for him. There is no trace of it in the frenzied theories called “ariosophic” around which the Thule Society was created or in the 200 pages of the book “Before Hitler came”, containing detailed information about the life of its author.
Various simple explanations can be given. First of all The "Science of the Keys", similar to Castaneda’s “Tensegrity”, is a discipline the Adept can drop any moment he feels he has reached his goal. Its strictly operative nature makes it difficult to join any other ideology. Probably von Sebotterdoff had avoided proposing it to the ariosophic milieu only because he considered it unsuitable.
Our impression though, is that the causes of its being taken away are far deeper. The ”Ancient Turkish Freemasonry” was a beautifully written booklet, concise and brilliant authentic work by a young writer at his best. If we compare it with the twisted and enraged delirium of “Before Hitler came”, we can’t believe it was written by the same hand. Within not even twenty years time a rich and powerful man, proud of his excellent health, is victim of an incredible and unexpected mental decay.
It is maybe only a fancy, but when we try to find the reason why that had happened these words come back to our mind. They are about the “outlet of the neck” from the third chapter of “the Ancient Turkish Freemasonry”:
“…Soon we will realize the finger starts getting warm, and in that very moment, with the help of the will, the current can be led throughout the body(…).This can be done in a harmless way but without sending an influence to the head which has to be left free: otherwise we might feel in a drunken state which might be dangerous”
And further on:
“…an ancient book says to cut the head to these wild beasts: one should not go too far practicing this outlet because it could affect the neck provoking a slow consumption. The ancient Masons have frequently described this accident, when the fire runs away and spread in the vertebras (…). If there is a flame, one has the impression of seeing a terrifying demon holding man by the nape of the neck and pushing him on the ground…”
The same demon was probably there in May 1945, when sitting at a cafe’ in Istanbul, Rudolf von Sebottendorff learned from the radio that German Admiral Doenitz had unconditionally surrendered. Without saying a word, he paid the bill and left.
He was seen walking with his hands in his pockets along the bridge of Galata, a thinned and bent man busy in his thoughts-
When he reached half way across the bridge, with unexpected agility, he climbed over the parapet and before anybody could stop him he jumped into the sea. He had filled his pockets with stones.
The romantic story of a young prospector finishes with no glory. He had found the keys to open many doors but he ended up always opening the wrong one. Even his name negatively marked, has been cancelled forever by the Masons; and the enigmatic discipline of transmutation he had discovered, hardly survives today. It is practiced within limited coteries without revealing the world about its mysterious origins.