Otto Rahn and the Quest for the Holy Grail: The Amazing Life of the Real "Indiana Jones"

Nigel Graddon's book on Otto Rahn is the first of its kind in English.No other biography exists in this language. The book not only details his complexed life but delves into the many layers of his Quest and involvement in the Occult. The depth is astounding if one wishes to explore the side roads in depth. They all lead somewhere and cross refer. This is no fantasy book.There is in fact so much detail that another 3 books would have to be written to expand and the side roads, well........

I'm a big fan of the Indiana Jones films and I'd vaguely heard of Otto Rahn being a possible real-life model for the character. Having read this book, it's easy to see why some claim that Rahn was the inspiration for Lucas and Spielberg's creation. Rahn's exploring activities in the South of France and his links with the SS are strongly echoed in the films' story lines. It is a great read and I really enjoyed it all the way through.

For too many years English speaking readers were starved of a decent biography of Grail explorer Otto Rahn. Frenchman Christian Bernadac's book did set out to look at the whole man while Hans Jurgen Lange's German workmanlike biography focused almost wholly on the outer persona of Rahn and largely ignored his philosophical drives and motives.This book, thankfully, does not focus upon one facet of Rahn's complex personality at the expense of others. It is evident that Rahn's relatively brief efforts to find legendary artefacts such as the Treasures of the Temple of Solomon were inspired by legend, myth and mystery as much as by orders issued by his boss SS chief Heinrich Himmler. To do justice to Rahn's life and work a researcher must delve into both the material and immaterial worlds and follow the threads that bind them together in many surprising ways. On the whole, the author succeeds in mapping these synergies and the result is a fascinating and all-encompassing work.

There's a fascinating book to be written about Otto Rahn, and this isn't it.Along the way the reader encounters, apparently at random, Hyperborean theories, the Cathars, Albigensian heresy, Tibetan energy centres, spiritualists and nazi Theosophists with a penchant for crucifixion (three times, since you ask), not to mention the Director of the Academy of Dissident Science, quoted, apparently uncritically, opining that the Nazis decoded the human genome, engaged in animal-human hybrids and are/were responsible for the reptilian 'greys' so beloved of believers and science fiction scriptwriters. It's irritatingly difficult to see where the author stands as regards these sources. Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, (yes, Conan Doyle - the author does like to get in as much material as he can) is cited as being an "associate" of a sprirtualist secret society of which Rahn was a member - an association, we are told, that only began after his (Conan-Doyle's) death. Not so much as the flicker of a raised eyebrow from the author. He does keep referring to the Indiana Jones films as some sort of profound extension of the grail mythos, though, rather than as a bit of a laugh, so perhaps it's not surprising.Rampantly mad ideas presented unsceptically are one thing, plain bad writing is another. The previous reviewer's description of it as "rambling" is spot on. Chapters wander off the point, then meander around, promise to go back to, then leap backwards and forwards across the point to an infuriating extent. A good editor would have shaken this ragbag into something much more linear and rigorous. "We will return to this," is a favourite phrase, to which the reader is more and more inclined to respond, "no we won't."The fact remains that Otto Rahn was an open homosexual who ended up searching for the Holy Grail for the Nazis. That, and the swamp of extreme ideas that surrounds the whole episode in history, could make for a fascinating book, but the author seems stuck in that swamp and floundering.

I have been an avid reader of books to do with the Cathars, the Grail, Rennes-le-Chateau etc for about 30 years. So I looked forward to the arrival of this book - particularly as I had read books by Otto Rahn in the past.I have to say I was greatly disappointed by it. it rambles back and forth. It has no narrative structure to speak of. It puts the author`s hypotheses forward with hardly a shred of evidence to support them in many cases.I have donated it to my local Charity Shop.

Until this book came along the only biographies of Otto Rahn were long on dry detail and short on passion and insight. Rahn was not just a hapless linguist who did Himmler's bidding in seeking the Grail treasures and who met an early death for his trouble. He was so much more than that. In examining Otto Rahn's literary output and his many letters to friends and family, it is as clear as the view from the peak of Montsegur that Rahn, a highly educated man, was a deep and perceptive thinker. While making his Grail explorations in the South of France and in other European power centres Otto Rahn drew inspiration from the Argonauts, the Rosicrucians and Cervantes; in fact, from a wide range of legendary sources in which Rahn glimpsed clues and signposts to great prizes both physical and spiritual. This being the case, anyone approaching Rahn in a biographical sense must address the study from the twin perspective of his exploration activities while in Himmler's SS and, more fundamentally, of his mystical journey which he undertook at least as much in seeking his own inner Grail as he did in attempting to find talismans of power for the Nazi leaders. Graddon's book fulfils this joint objective very well.

Book is written by a person with very non mainstream views. Was expecting a biography of a very interesting character. Got a book written by a fanboy of weird cults and conspiracy theories.

There is alot of information in this book that you can't get anywhere else. I only wish there was more. It not only gives you some insight into a man the world seems to know little or nothing about, but it gives you some insight into how the Nazis believed they could enforce world domination. It doesn't seem that Otto Rahn was sympathetic to the Nazi cause. And maybe, after reading the book, I am thinking that he did find something in the Pyranees in France. Read the book and see for yourself. You won't be able to put it down.

A very dry read......Good information, but I spend more time reading the distracting footnotes at the bottom of each page than I care too. This is an old fashioned historical read, but there is not a lot out there on the subject matter.

This book, while full of information on a wide variety of subjects concerning Rahn and his Nazi buddies, sheds very little light on his actual quest to find the Holy Grail. A good deal of the text is speculative and, while based on good research, makes for very dry reading. Still, while I wanted more of the "Indiana Jones" angle, I'm not sorry I took the time to read this.Only those that are already steeped in the occult mysteries of Nazi Germany will really appreciate where the author goes with a lot of his material but this work serves as a pretty deep introduction into that area of interests as pertains to the Nazis and Himmler in particular.

Otto Rahn spotlights a lesser known but nonetheless important figure in Heinrich Himmler's search for mythical objects that were believed to provide their possessor with tremendous metaphysical power. Rahn, as an individual hungry for fame and fortune, fell right into Himmler's designs for a Reich "archeologist" who believed in the existance and power of the artifacts he sought. It is no stretch of literary credibility to call Rahn the composit, historical portrait of the fictional characters represented Indiana Jones. Anyone who enjoys Indiana Jones and the villans of his stories owes it to themselves to read about Otto Rahn.