The Nazi Ahenerbe, or Occult Bureau in The Grail Conspiracies

The Ahnenerbe—officially the “Ancestral Heritage Organization,” but
popularly known as The Occult Bureau—had been set up by Heinrich
Himmler, a member of the Nazi inner circle, who shared with Hitler a
deep fascination with the occult.

That aspect had never been publicized at the time, nor even after the
war, because Churchill and others were concerned how the public might
react to learn of a serious occult aspect within Nazism.

Initially, the Ahnenerbe had been an independent organization, but
shortly before the start of the war it was absorbed into the SS, a better-
known and more sinister organization also set up under Himmler’s
direction. At the time of that merger, the person in question had been
required to give up his civilian status and be sworn as an officer in the
SS, later rising to the rank of Colonel.

The work of the Ahnenerbe focused on two main areas: first was the
occult, which included following up on legends of supernatural powers
and ways of tapping Vril, or earth energies. The second involved racial
research, attempting to prove the superiority of the alleged Aryan race.

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He commanded the Occult Bureau’s excavation at the Cathar fortress of
Montsegur in southern France in 1943. The Cathars—or Albigensians
as they’d been termed back in my Catholic school-days—had been
declared heretics in 1208, about a century before that same fate struck
the Templars.

After nearly 40 years of fighting, the Cathars had been forced back into
their final fortress, Montsegur, perched atop a craggy mountain in the
Pyrenees. According to the legends, on the night before Montsegur fell,
four Parfaits—the Cathar equivalent of clergy—lowered themselves
down the unguarded rocky face, carrying the Cathar treasure.

To this day, that treasure has never been found, nor does anyone know
for certain what it was. Gold? Jewelry? Manuscripts containing archives
of the group, or even the alleged occult secrets they supposedly
possessed? Or the Holy Grail?

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Though distinct groups, there were surprising commonalities between
the Templars and the earlier Cathars.

Both groups were, by legend, guardians of the Holy Grail.

Both supposedly possessed mystical secrets of antiquity, including the
ability to create “unlimited wealth.”

And both were destroyed by the combined powers of the Vatican and
the French kings of the time. The Church because it wanted to
suppress growing spiritual rivals; the Kings because they wanted to
grab the physical wealth as well as those rumored secrets of accessing
“unlimited wealth,” supposedly held by both groups.

In any case, the Nazis sent the Colonel and a team to excavate that
mountain fortress of Montsegur in the Pyrenees in the summer of 1943.
What, if anything, they found, is unknown.

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From a later chapter in The Grail Conspiracies:

“You do know, I am sure, that Hitler and Himmler were obsessed not
only with the Cathars but with the Templars, as well. Hitler even
commissioned a portrait of himself in the armor of a Templar knight. So
in answer to your first question, of course the Ahnenerbe investigated
that issue of what Templar treasures passed through La Rochelle. But
with no certain answers. It is the second question that is most
interesting. Was the Cathar treasure taken to La Rochelle? If so, what
happened to it?”