There’s a story about Germany in the 1930s that may or may not be true, although it’s pretty unlikely that anybody is ever going to find out which it is. The story goes that there was an organization called the “Vril Society” (“society” was probably in German) that was involved in — or maybe responsible for — work conducted in Germany during WWII into building aircraft that looked like flying saucers. A couple of these, at least, were actually constructed, according to photographs, but none of them worked.
The most likely reason they couldn’t get the things to work — besides the questionable aerodynamics of the design — is probably the society’s failure to get their hands on any “vril.” This vril stuff was the key; it was an almost limitless source of power. If you have some vril, you can control the weather, read minds, and, of course, get your flying saucer to really work.
There really have been people who searched for “vril,” usually trying to find it (or mine it) underground, because of course that’s where it must be. And since that’s where the stuff is, there must be people down there who actually have and use the stuff. The same folks who looked for vril were also looking for these subterranean people, who were quite simply a higher form of humanity (despite their negative altitude).
How do we know this? Or, more precisely, how do we “know” this? From a book, of course! In 1871 The Coming Race was published, and it described in detail both vril and the people who used it:
“These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of vril, which Faraday would perhaps call ‘atmospheric magnetism’, they can influence the variations of temperature — in plain words, the weather; that by operations, akin to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-biology, odic force, &c., but applied scientifically, through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics.”
The only thing is, The Coming Race was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the same author whose wordy, florid prose is behind the Edward Bulwer-Lytton prize for the most ridiculous first line of a novel. He’s the guy who began one of his books “It was a dark and stormy night.” To be fair, we think it’s funny now, but in his own time Bulwer-Lytton’s books were best sellers.
It’s both amusing and depressing to think that some people have been gullible enough to believe the events in a novel — except that just maybe the first ones — the ones in Germany — didn’t actually believe it so much as use it. In 1930s Germany the Nazi party came to power, and it’s pretty well documented that (1) they generally weren’t very bright, and (2) they badly wanted better weapons, aircraft, and the like. Like other groups of not-so-clever people, the Nazis were not very nice to people who actually were smart, but they realized that in some cases they could use the smart folks to get what they wanted — those better weapons and whatnot. There are several accounts of engineering projects conducted in Germany up to and during WWII that the people involved were quite aware were never going to work, but as long as they could be made to look like they were almost ready to start functioning, nobody working on the project was going to be sent to the Russian Front.
After WWII, of course, gullible dolts (and paperback writers) everywhere had more time to daydream about whatever took their fancy, including vril, and additional stories appeared. The underground vril-users were from Atlantis, they were in telepathic communication with space aliens, and so on. But none of that was enough to sustain usage of “vril,” which entered the language for a little while, but has since disappeared, probably lacking sufficient odic force.
Vril also entered commercial language in 1899, as “Bovril,” which at the time was called “beef tea” and today still exists, although we now call it “broth” or “bullion.” The brand name “Bovril” was formed from “bovinus,” Latin for ox, and “vril” from the novel, which was very popular in its day. (Because there was “vril” involved, it would give you energy, see?) And as luck would have it, The Coming Race is still in print, and Bovril is still on sale in England. You can get them both from Amazon — and at least in the US, the bullion costs more than the book.
