Herbert Reichstein
Herbert Reichstein (1892 -1944) was an author and publisher of esoteric and ariosophical writings. He worked closely with Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels from the mid-1920s onwards, and the publications of Guido von List are considered to have been an important influence on his thought. In the fall of 1925, he came into contact with members of a Berlin occult group known as the “Swastika Circle,” which brought together various esoteric teachings such as chiromancy and astrology.
This group formed a part of the ideological conglomerate that Reichstein was still promoting in October 1925 with his newly founded “German Working Group for Human Knowledge and Human Destiny” and the official organ of that organization, the journal “Ariosophie.” It was around this time that Reichstein began cooperation with Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels for the publication of his work.
With the help of Reichstein, von Liebenfels published “The Ariosophical Kabbalah of Names and Places” in 1926. Based on this work, Reichstein felt inspired and empowered to write a “Practical Handbook of Ariosophical Kabbalah,” which he published as a serial in 1930 through his journal “Ariosophie,” and subsequently released in book form as a revised and expanded edition. That work is published here as “Ariosophic Kabbalah.”
Reichstein understood that the numerological key used to convert letters into numbers will determine the accuracy of its calculations, and in keeping with von Liebenfels’ model, he employed the Hebrew alphabet as such a key. But in Reichstein’s interpretation, additional correspondences are identified between those letters and the ancient Nordic runes, following the Kala system of Guido von List.