36.15 - MU Podcast - This Hollow Earth - Episode 06: The Coming Race and Vril Power

Summary

This installment of the This Hollow Earth saga dives into Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel The Coming Race, the supposed fiction that introduced Vril, an all-powerful energy wielded by a winged subterranean race called the Vril-ya. The hosts retell the narrator's descent through a mine shaft into a lamp-lit underground city, his encounters with mechanical wings, healing and destroying staffs, and a race that survived an ancient deluge by fleeing underground. They explore claims that Nazi occultists in the Vril Society treated the novel as fact and launched expeditions to find entrances to the hollow earth.

Key takeaways

• 1Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 'The Coming Race' was published anonymously in May 1871 by Blackwood and Sons; Bulwer-Lytton was also author of 'The Last Days of Pompeii' and allegedly a member of several secret societies
• 2Gunther Rosenberg of the European Occult Research Society reportedly said the Nazis established the 'Luminous Lodge' of the Vril Society based on the novel
• 3The episode draws on Warren Smith's 1977 book 'This Hollow Earth', which claims Nazi records show Hitler launched unsuccessful hollow earth expeditions, charted German, Swiss and Italian mines for shafts, and ordered a colonel to investigate Bulwer-Lytton's life
• 4In the novel, the Vril-ya descend from the Ana race, who fled underground to escape an ancient deluge and later ended war through the mutually destructive power of Vril, including weapons able to destroy a city from 500-600 miles away
• 5Ingersoll Lockwood's 1893 children's book 'Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey' and his 'The Last President' are linked to time-travel and prophecy theories
• 6Vril is compared to Michael Faraday's idea of a single common origin for natural forces, to Mesmer's animal magnetism, to the Vajra, and to Moses's staff

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey there, and welcome to Mysterious Universe season 36, episode number 15. Now, if you are not already a Plus member, then your FOMO must be just a flutter. For this is episode number 6 of our This Hollow Earth saga. So definitely sign up in the links below, guys. Get all of the previous episodes, and we still have more to enjoy after this. Come catch up on this incredible journey that we're on here with us. We've already spoken to many a sacred llama who agree with the legendary monks that a subterranean utopia exists beyond the surface of our realm, inhabited by an all-awesome king of the world who rules and resides in his super-cool inner-earth kingdom, and his performance review is not to be missed. So definitely check that out. Remember that? Yep. We have investigated the wild story of several adventures through Asia and Central America to locate the legends and the entrances supposedly found beneath these pyramids all over the world. We know for sexy certain that these massive monumental megaliths that exist in selected locations hold the entrances to underground labyrinths. Do these entrances include access to treasure vaults and tunnels that seem to permeate this porous land that we inhabit? ...

Excerpt from Mysterious Universe, Oct 16, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.