The Vril Society          

The  Vril Society  was formed by a group of female psychic mediums led by the Thule Gesellschaft medium Maria Orsitsch (Orsic) of Zagreb, who claimed to have received communication from Aryan aliens living on Alpha Cen Tauri, in the Aldebaran system. Allegedly, these aliens had visited Earth and settled in Sumeria, and the word Vril was formed from the ancient Sumerian word "Vri-Il" ("like god"). A second medium was known only as Sigrun, a name etymologically related to Sigrune, a Valkyrie and one of Wotan's nine daughters in Norse legend.

The Society allegedly taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, and their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) to reach Aldebaran. To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft  to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.

Members of the Vril Society are said to have included Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. These were original members of the Thule Society which supposedly joined Vril in 1919. The NSDAP (NationalSozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei) was created by Thule in 1920, one year later. Dr. Krohn, who helped to create the Nazi flag, was also a Thulist.

With Hitler in power in 1933, both Thule and Vril Gesellschafts allegedly received official state backing for continued disc development programs aimed at both spaceflight and possibly a war machine.

After 1941 Hitler forbade secret societies, so both Thule and Vril were documented under the SS E-IV unit.

 The claim of an ability to travel in some inter-dimensional mode is similar to Vril claims of channeled flight with the Jenseitsflugmaschine (Other World Flight Machine) and the Vril Flugscheiben (Flight Discs).

The plot of the novel centers on a mining engineer, who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean kingdom occupied by beings (the race of the Vril-ya), who seem to resemble angels. The hero soon discovers that they are descendants of the inhabitants of Atlantis. They have access to an extraordinary force called "Vril" that can be controlled at will. However their spiritually elevated hosts controlled the Vril.

The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance. According to Zee, the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure.

The book was quite popular in the late 19th century, and for a time the word "Vril" came to be associated with "life-giving elixirs".

When the theosophist William Scott-Elliot describes life in Atlantis in The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (first published 1896), the aircrafts of the Atlanteans are propelled by vril-force.  Obviously he did not regard that description as fiction, and his books are still published by the Theosophical Society.