The last third of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century saw a significant increase in syncretic, cross-cultural, hybrid forms of esotericism. In what follows, we will consider several exemplars of a global form of esotericism that combines Hinduism, European paganism and Western esotericism with a religion of esoteric Hitlerism in order to create a strikingly new and, for many people, shocking approach to history. Here, Hitler is regarded not as a villain but as an avatar, a divine being. In this neo-esoteric religion, to defer to William Blake, “thou read'st black where I read white”. In what follows, we will outline the history of the main figures in esoteric Hitlerism, Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano, and consider the global significance of these figures for the study of what we will term “neo-esotericism”

There is, of course, a long history of groups and individuals that reverse conventional values. Here we might recall the emergence, in the latter half of the twentieth century, of magical groups and individuals that took as their own the “unspeakable horrors” of the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). In his gothic fiction, Lovecraft created what has become known as the “Cthulhu mythos”, which includes a mythical book – the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred – and a mythos of terrifying “ancient ones”, entities from beyond the depths of space and time that, far from being beneficent towards humanity, or even neutral, generate horror and even insanity in those who come into contact with them, or who even leaf through the pages of the Necronomicon.