Lucifer's Court

February 25, 2008
Some have described Rahn as the inspiration for the Indiana Jones movies. Indeed, after the publication of his first book, Crusade Against the Grail (1933), Rahn's quest for the relic came to be sponsored by the Nazis' SS. This is the first English translation of his travel diary as he searched for the Grail throughout Europe in the 1930s. For Rahn, Lucifer's court is composed of individuals who rebelled against the Christian takeover of pagan Europe, best exemplified by the Cathars of southern France who resisted Roman Catholicism in the 13th century. His disgust with and hatred for all things Christian, particularly the Roman popes, is highlighted on nearly every page. Although Rahn eventually repudiated the Nazis, his book is plagued with the same sort of racial and national fanaticism that formed the intellectual framework for that regime. What remains is a maddeningly repetitive, rambling and unoriginal treatise on folk religion. The book holds some interest as an historical document of the Nazi era, but little else.