The occult technology of the Ark

In their article Re-engineering the Ark which was published in Fortean Times 207, authors Michael Blackburn and Mark Bennett speculate on the Ark as being a source of electrical energy.

This theory appeared much earlier in Nazi Germany. In 1936 a slim book written by Konradin Aller was published, entitled Moses Entlarvt: die Wunder Moses als Luftelektrische Vorgange (Moses Unmasked: The Miracles of Moses as Atmospheric Electrical Events), with a series of evocative drawings by Werner Graul. The booklet appeared as part of the series of the Werner Graul Bildbucher. The premise of the book was that Moses was a hoaxer; all the divine miracles that accompanied him were the effects of laws of nature. Thus the Ark was nothing more than a repository of electricity. This knowledge Moses had acquired in ancient Egypt.

Aller also alluded to the work of Estonian engineer and inventor Hermann Plauson. Plauson was director of the Fischer-Tropps Otto Traun Research Laboratories in Hamburg during the Weimar republic in the 1920’s. He built on Nikola Tesla’s ideas of connecting machinery to the wheelworks of nature, and 1920 saw the publication of Plauson’s book Gewinnung und Verwertung der Atmospharischen Elektrizitat (Production and Utilization of the Atmospheric Electricity). Plauson’s ideas were also published in the March, 1922 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention magazine. Gernsback was an intimate friend of Tesla – he arranged for a death mask to be made when Tesla had died.

Metropolis, film poster design by Werner Graul

Friedrich Hermann Werner Graul (1905 - 1984), was a sketcher and engraver by profession. Graul gravitated towards volkische circles and became a member of the NSDAP in 1933. He founded the periodical Sigrune and a publishing house of the same name. He specialised in drawings which represented the conversion of the ancient Germans to Christianity - drawings which clearly demonstrate his affection for the old religion. Graul also had designed the film poster for Fritz Lang's 1926 dystopian classic science fiction film Metropolis. The film was produced by German film production company UFA.

Gate drawing by Albin Grau, published in Saturn Gnosis

From Graul to Grau: A design and set painter named Albin Grau worked at UFA around that time. Grau, a mysterious person to whom we shall return in a later installment, was a freemason and a spiritualist with a deep passion for the occult. He became a member of the Fraternitas Saturni, founded in 1928 after a rather tumultuous visit by Aleister Crowley to Germany. The order specialised in an unusual mixture of avantgarde technology and magical ritual partly based, or so it claimed in the pages of its official organ Saturn Gnosis, on Tesla’s theories. Aller had not postulated a new theory; Tesla wrote in his article A Fairytale of Electricity, published on September 9, 1915 in Manufacturers' Record:

"...Moses was undoubtedly a practical and skillful electrician far in advance of his time. The Bible describes precisely, and minutely, arrangements constituting a machine in which electricity was generated by friction of air against silk curtains, and stored in a box constructed like a condenser. It is very plausible to assume that the sons of Aaron were killed by a high-tension discharge, and that the vestal fires of the Romans were electrical..." 

 Grau's paintings and drawings adorned several of the five lavishly produced Saturn Gnosis issues. The last issue was published in 1930, the Berlin order disbanded not long afterwards, due to the prohibition imposed by Nazi Germany on the esoteric societies. Grau would die at Buchenwald concentration camp in October, 1942. To conclude in biblical terms; UFA had its ateliers at Babelsberg.