weapon must be regarded as the most critical moment of the twentieth century until the Americans claimed the Spear in Nuremberg in 1945, and, while holding it in their possession, inaugurated the Atomic Age by dropping their atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (15)
Joscelyn Godwin has called The Spear of Destiny ‘a bloodcurdling work of historical reinvention’, (16) and in spite of the breathless praise it has received from occult writers and reviewers over the years, it is difficult to disagree with his judgement. This view is also taken by the Australian author and journalist Ken Anderson, whose book Hitler and the Occult (1995) is a powerful and well-argued critique of Ravenscroft, Stein and The Spear of Destiny. For the rest of this chapter, we must therefore turn our attention to the problems inherent in Ravenscroft’s account, as he learned it from Stein, of Hitler’s desire to claim this allegedly most powerful of magical talismans. To be sure, these problems are manifold and display clear inconsistencies both with what we know of the history of the Third Reich and the wider context of European history.
For instance, we are told in Spear that the Holy Lance had been prized by many great warriors through the centuries, including Napoleon Bonaparte, who had demanded the lance after the Battle of Austerlitz of December 1805. ‘Just before the battle began, the lance had been smuggled out of Nuremberg and hidden in Vienna to keep it out of the French dictator’s hands.’ (17) However, as Anderson comments, it would have been a rather stupid decision to hide the lance in Vienna, since the French had already occupied the city the previous month. ‘Why would anyone want to smuggle anything into an occupied city if the purpose in so doing was to keep it out of the hands of the head of the occupying force?’ (18) Moreover, historical records prove that the lance was taken from Nuremberg to Vienna in 1800 and placed in the museum on full display. Had he wanted the lance, Napoleon could have acquired it at any time.
And what of the spear itself, which, claims Ravenscroft, was the very one used by the Roman centurion to pierce the side of Christ? We are told that Hitler found little difficulty in sorting out the merits of the various Spears, purporting to be the weapon of the Roman Centurion Longinus, which were scattered around the palaces, museums, cathedrals and churches of Europe … Adolf Hitler was excited to find one Spear which appeared to have been associated with a legend of world destiny throughout its entire history. This Spear, dating back to the Third Century, had apparently been traced by numerous historians right through to the tenth century to the reign of the Saxon King Heinrich I, the ‘Fowler’, where it was last mentioned in his hands at the famous battle of Unstrut in which the Saxon Cavalry conquered the marauding Magyars. (19) [Emphasis added.]
At this point, a question will doubtless have occurred to the reader: how could a weapon dating back only to the third century have been used to pierce the side of Christ? It is a question Ravenscroft does not answer. (20) The existence of a lance which was supposedly used to stab Christ is first recorded in the sixth century by the pilgrim St Antonius of Piacenza, who claims to have seen it in the Mount Zion Basilica in Jerusalem. When Jerusalem fell to the Persians in AD 615, the shaft of the lance was captured by the victors, while the lance-head was saved and taken to Constantinople where it was incorporated into an icon and kept in the Santa Sophia Church. More than six centuries later, the point found its way into the possession of the French King Louis and was taken to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. The lance-head disappeared (and was possibly destroyed) during the French Revolution. The shaft of the lance was sent to Jerusalem in about AD 670 by the Frankish pilgrim Arculf, and only reappears in history in the late ninth century, turning up in Constantinople. It was captured by the Turks in 1492, who sent it as a gift to Rome. It has remained in St Peter’s since then, although its authenticity has never been established beyond doubt. (21)
However, archaeologists have established that this lance, first mentioned in the sixth century, is not the one Hitler found in the Habsburg Treasure House. This lance is known as the Lance of St Maurice, or Constantine’s Lance, which was made in the eighth or ninth century. (22)
Anderson writes: ‘It would take much research to examine each one of Ravenscroft’s claims concerning the possessors of the Maurice Lance and its affect on them and on world history.’ (23) And in fact, such a task lies well beyond the scope of this book also. He goes on:
Besides, we do not have the unique facility Ravenscroft had [i.e. techniques of psychic mind expansion] in tracing its owners where there is no written record, for example its progression from the time it left the hands of Heinrich I and turned up many years later in the possession of his son Otto the Great. Ravenscroft says Hitler’s henchman SS head Heinrich Himmler put the finest scholars in Germany to work on bridging the gap but they were unable to do so. However, Ravenscroft’s mentor, Dr Walter Stein, ‘by means of a unique method of historical research involving “Mind Expansion” was able to discover Heinrich had sent the lance to the English King Athelstan.’ (Athelstan [895–940] was the grandson of Alfred the Great. Crowned King in 925, he was the first ruler of all England.) Stein ‘found’ that the lance was present at the Battle of Malmesbury in which the Danes were defeated on English soil. It was subsequently returned as a gift for Otto’s wedding to Athelstan’s sister Eadgita. (24)
Anderson spots a crucial mistake in this account of the lance (and one which certainly casts doubt on Stein’s unorthodox methods of historical ‘research’.) According to William of Malmesbury, the sword of Constantine the Great was sent by Hugh the Good, King of the Franks, to King Athelstan to persuade him to give his daughter’s hand in marriage. (25)
It so happens that historical inaccuracies are also to be found in Ravenscroft’s account of his own exploits in the Second World War, in which he claims to have been taken prisoner by the Germans after the attempted assassination of Rommel. Born in 1921, Ravenscroft attended Repton Public School and then Sandhurst Military College. Six months later, in December 1939, he received his commission in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He then trained as a commando and joined the Special Services. (26) According to the cover blurb on various editions of The Spear of Destiny: ‘He was captured on a raid which attempted to assassinate Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa and was a POW in Germany from 1944 to 1945, escaping three times but each time being recaptured.’
Although the raid on Rommel certainly took place on 13–14 November 1941 (with all but two of the party being captured), Ravenscroft is not mentioned in records as being present in the 28-man team who conducted the operation. Anderson reports that when he made enquiries of former Commando Sergeant Jack Terry, the ex-soldier insisted that Ravenscroft was not a member of the party. (27) ‘In any case Ravenscroft’s service record shows he was “missing at sea” on 24 October 1941, well before the raid. He was subsequently taken prisoner of war on an unspecified date.’ (28)
There also appear to be inconsistencies in Ravenscroft’s account of how he came to meet Walter Stein. A few years after the war, Ravenscroft read Stein’s book World History in the Light of the Holy Grail and came to the conclusion that much of the material in the book had been accessed by Stein through occult means of mind expansion, perhaps similar to those he himself had employed while a prisoner of war. Paying Stein a visit in Kensington, London, Ravenscroft informed him of his belief, and also of his belief that Wolfram von Eschenbach had employed the same talents in composing his Grail romance Parsival in the twelfth century.
Ravenscroft quoted to Stein this extract from Eschenbach’s work: ‘If anyone requests me to [continue the story] let him not consider it as a book. I don’t know a single letter of the alphabet.’ Ravenscroft says that the reason Eschenbach was stressing that he did not know a letter of the alphabet was to make it clear that he had not gathered the material for the book from his contemporaries, traditional folklore, or any existing written work. Rather, he was saying his so-called Grail romance was an ‘Initiation Document’ of the highest order. (29)
Stein was impressed enough by his visitor’s argument that he invited him to stay to lunch, and the two men remained friends and colleagues from then until Stein’s death. Ravenscroft himself died of cancer in January 1989 in Torquay, England.
Anderson interviewed Ravenscroft’s brother, Bill, in January 1995. A former King’s Own Borderers officer, Bill Ravenscroft stated that his brother met Walter Stein not by paying an unannounced visit to his Kensington home but rather through Stein’s wife, Yopi, while Trevor Ravenscroft was teaching at the Rudolf Steiner school in East Grinstead, England just after the war. (30) According to Bill Ravenscroft, Trevor learned of Stein’s impressive library through Yopi and was given permission by her to consult the books in the library in order to complete The Spear of Destiny. Trevor Ravenscroft makes no mention whatsoever of Yopi in his book. Anderson asks: why? ‘Was Bill’s memory of events incorrect? Was it because the symbiotic relationship that supposedly developed between Trevor and the man he claims was his mentor never happened?’ (31)
If The Spear of Destiny is to be believed, the moment Hitler entered the Habsburg Treasure House upon the annexation of Austria in 1938 and stood before the holy artefact he had coveted for so long humanity in the
