I just happened to be reading some background info about Nosferatu on Wikipedia since it's my favorite vampire movie, and stumbled on to the occult references. Like the company "Prana Film" which only made Nosferatu was a reference to prana in Buddhism, and one of the founders named Albin Grau was an occultist and claimed that while in the German Army in WWI a Serb farmer told Grau that his father was supposedly a vampire, which inspired Grau to make a vampire film.
As for the film crew being Satanists or being inspired by Satanism specifically, I've never read anything about that before but I wouldn't be surprised, there's plenty of connections between occultism and Satanism.
I do remember when I watched this film the symbols read by Knock written by Count Orlock seemed kind of strange, and didn't quite understand why Orlock would write a letter in Romanian/German and then include a message written in symbols that odds are most people wouldn't understand. Were the symbols supposed to hypnotize Knock? Or was Orlock a Satanist (either as a monster or in his past life) and somehow knew Knock was a Satanist as well, which is why he contracted Knock in the first place?
That would explain why Orlock wrote part of the letter in Satanic writing. Apparently the "normal" part of the letter simply stated that Orlock wanted to by a house in Wisborg, but once Knock reads the weird symbols he tells Hutter to sell Orlock the abandoned house. Perhaps Orlock mentioned needing a crypt/abandoned house in the Satanic symbols to ensure only Knock could read that part and help hide that he was a vampire from anyone else? They say in the film that there were a lot of rumors about Knock beforehand, and since he went insane perhaps he was never quite right to begin with.
On a side note, I did a report for a Nazi Germany class in college regarding occultism and the Nazi Party once. Apparently before WWI there was an increase in occultism, astrology, etc. among the Germanic peoples and a lot of key occultists got their start around this time, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of occultism floating around the production of Nosferatu, especially given that it was a German film and one of the earliest vampire films.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.
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cyninbend-149-610489
9 years ago
There are some documentaries on the subject that appear on the national geographic and history channels from time to time, and they are up on youtube if people search. It's spooky but there is lots of evidence since both Hitler and Himmler were attracted to the occult. Nazi ideology traces back to the racism of Theosophy and the weird sci-fi beliefs prominent in the 19th century...ancient powers and energies like the Vril, etc. It's behind the Nazi quest for things like the ark of the covenant and other mythological items, the use of the swastika, and Himmler's purchase of that castle (Vabelsburg? that's just phonetic from hearing the word). Anyway, the shows are fascinating if nothing more. Just put "Hitler and the occult" in the youtube search engine!
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