In the month after the end of the First World War, Steiner gave a lecture at Dornach in which he said that “the view of spiritual science cannot be the giving of social criticism, but rather, only the pointing-out, without pessimism or optimism, of that which is” (GA 186, December 1st 1918). He was referring to the events which had led to the war, but his comment is a reminder that we should not allow the emotions engendered by overwhelming events to stop us from seeing as objectively as possible what the reality of any given situation is, and the causes which lie behind it.
Without Steiner’s peerless clairvoyance, however, we have to fall back on our own thinking and reasoning capacities; and it is difficult for most of us to avoid feelings of alarm or despondency, or to refrain from social criticism, in the face of disturbing current events.
Take, for example, the newly installed 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. There are certainly a few things about Trump and his background and business interests which are bound to upset our objectivity and sang-froid. According to Sidney Blumenthal in a recent essay in the London Review of Books, Trump’s father Fred was arrested for participating in a violent Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927. Fred also had ties to the Mob and quite openly discriminated against blacks when renting out housing. In more recent times, it seems that the Donald’s own business was dependent almost from the start on racketeers:
“There was Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, and Paul ‘Big Paulie’ Castellano, boss of the Gambino crime family, who owned the company that provided the ready-mix cement for Trump Tower, used in place of the usual steel girders. There was John Cody, the boss of Teamsters Local 282, who controlled the cement trucks and was an associate of the Gambino family. There was Daniel Sullivan, Trump’s labour ‘consultant’, who in partnership with the Philadelphia crime boss Nicodemos ‘Nicky’ Scarfo’s financier, sold Trump a property in Atlantic City that became his casino. There was Salvatore ‘Salvie’ Testa, ‘crown prince’ of the Philadelphia Mob, who sold Trump the site on which two construction firms owned by Scarfo built the Trump Plaza and Casino. There was Felix Sater, convicted money launderer for the Russian Mafia, Trump’s partner in building the Trump SoHo hotel through the Bayrock Group LLC, which by 2007 had more than $2 billion in Trump licensed projects and by 2014 was no more. There was Tevfik Arif, another Trump partner, Bayrock’s chairman, originally from Kazakhstan. Bayrock’s equity financing came from three Kazakh billionaires known as ‘the Trio’, who were reported to be engaged in racketeering, money laundering and other crimes. And so on.
There was no art to these deals. Trump’s relationships with the Mob weren’t just about the quality of cement. In his defence it was said that doing business with the Mob was inescapable in New York, but the truth is that there were prominent developers who crusaded against the sorts of arrangement that Trump routinely made. From beginning to end, whether Cosa Nostra or the Russian Mafia, Trump has been married to the Mob.”
Now in all fairness it should be pointed out that Sidney Blumenthal is a former aide to the Clintons, so may be seen as someone with an axe to grind; but since I have not yet heard any rebuttal of the information he presents, it seems entirely possible that the President of the United States has close ties with the American Mafia (and possibly the Russian Mafia too), while his opposite number in Russia, Vladimir Putin, is head of a state run by that same Russian Mafia. (Not that such skulduggery is anything new in American politics – eg, see here for details of Joseph Kennedy’s criminal links with the Mob that ensured the election of his son John F. Kennedy as president in 1960. The USA has always been the best democracy that money can buy.)
In such an extreme situation, how can one simply point out “that which is” and not find one’s feelings pulling one away from objective observation? Several people I know have speculated as to whether Donald Trump is the incarnation of Ahriman. Personally, I don’t think this is likely – my view is that Ahriman would not choose to be incarnated in the figure of someone with a fake orange tan (one which a sudden gust of wind revealed does not even extend up to the Trump hairline), let alone someone who since his inauguration as 45th President of the USA has found himself the laughing stock of the worldwide web.
Trump’s fake tan-line clearly visible (Photo via Elite Daily/REX/Shutterstock)
No, it seems more probable that Trump and the rest of his coven of billionaires and brigands are simply extreme examples of the corruption endemic to the American political system, although it may well be reasonable to regard them also as indicators of the impending incarnation – preparers of the way, if you like. I have written of this elsewhere, so will give here only brief quotations from Steiner:
“As truly as Lucifer walked on earth and Christ walked on earth objectively in a human being, so will Ahriman walk upon the earth with enormous power to manifest earthly intellectual capacity.” (GA 195, 25/12/1919) And again:
“…just as there was a bodily incarnation of Lucifer, and just as there was a bodily incarnation of the Christ, so will there be, before even a part of the 3rd millennium AD will have elapsed, in the West a real incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh.” (GA 191, 01/11/1919)
Steiner has enjoined us to be vigilant and to stay awake so as to spot what is going on. But lacking Steiner’s initiate consciousness and spiritual insight, there is a danger that the times we live in might tempt some of us to fall all too easily into paranoia and conspiracy theories. I recently found an example of this in the Russian anthroposophical writer, G A Bondarev, who in his book Events in the Ukraine and a Possible Future Scenario wrote this:
“…everywhere in the mass media – on television, in newspapers – one can see politicians and the powerful in finance, etc., making a certain gesture with their hand which means the number 666 spoken of in Revelation as the ‘number of the Beast.’ Many make this gesture in order to show that they are initiated into the secret and also to give evidence of their ‘chosenness’…Others, by showing this gesture when they appear publicly, want to call out, as it were, to the participants at certain functions: ‘What are we arguing about? Why are you disagreeing with us? This is it! This is happening!’ – or at least something of this kind. An exact interpretation is not possible, as the meaning of this gesture is kept secret.”
What Bondarev is referring to is the “A OK” gesture, in which the tip of the index finger is placed on the tip of the thumb to form an ‘O’ shape, and the remaining three fingers are splayed out. Donald Trump makes this gesture all the time when he is speaking and it is very easy to find examples of many prominent public figures doing the same. A quick search of Google Images using the term “hand gesture 666” brings up photos of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Jean-Claude Juncker, Nicolas Sarkozy, Pope Jean-Paul II, Colin Powell and many other famous public figures from politics and entertainment all making this gesture – but to Bondarev and others who think like him, it therefore follows that they must all be members of the Illuminati signalling their allegiance to one another. Err… no, I really don’t think so.
(Photo via Illuminatisymbols.info)
(Photo via IlluminatiRex)
(Photo via answering-christianity.com)
But despite the occasional absurdities, Bondarev also has some interesting ideas. Referring to Steiner’s pointing-out of the years AD 666, 1332 and 1998 as having special significance, he speculates that 1998 was the year of incarnation of Ahriman:
“…the year in which the body was created into which Ahriman steals. Its creation was obviously not a simple matter – after all, Ahriman is the god of death! Rudolf Steiner also speaks of this. In a lecture of 4th November 1919, he points to that special field of technological progress in which knowledge is used of the connection of the material realm with the human spirit: ‘…through a given application of these things, certain secret societies will…prepare that through which the Ahrimanic incarnation will be able to be here on the earth in the right way.’ (GA 193)
One can assume that they were able to combine the most up-to-date technological procedures with the means of black magic in order to create a body with the capacity to bear within it for a number of years the Ahrimanic monad. (Could it be three years?) Thus, it is in no way unjustified to assume that the incarnation of Ahriman is well under way. And according to an entry in a notebook of Rudolf Steiner…Ahriman will reveal himself to the world at the age of 18. Here it is probably more correct to speak of 18 and one-third years, which corresponds to the so-called lunar node or Metonic cycle. It follows from this that humanity needs to be ready by early 2017.”
So in early 2017 I leave you with that happy thought and invite your own comments on these speculations, paranoid or otherwise.
anthropopper 
Thank You, Jeremy. Another very interesting read. I agree with your analysis of the Trump phenomena,
‘it seems more probable that Trump and the rest of his coven of billionaires and brigands are simply extreme examples of the corruption endemic to the American political system,’ One does not need dark brotherhoods to explain the behviour of Capitalists.
Moving on to Bondarev’s comments on the incarnation of Ahriman – if I have understood Steiner’s revelation correctly, then this event, the incarnation of Ahriman, is a necessary part of the evolution of the earth and humanity. It is part of the Divine Plan. So why would ‘black magic’ be part of the process?
This is where Bondarev’s paranoia comes in – not in attempting to pinpoint the timing of Ahriman’s incarnation, Bondarev may well be right about that, but in representing this necessary event in human destiny as a lurid horror-movie drama.
I personally do not believe that Ahriman will appear as a public figure. This being’s work will be achieved by the fact of its incarnation. When Rudolf Steiner asks us to be awake to Ahriman I think he means awake to Ahriman’s influence in our world.
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As previously discussed in other threads, Steiner (1919 and 1924) discerned destructive, etherically incorporated ‘Soradt men’ (GA 346, in casu populists, Trump) from an abstract thinking, physically incarnated Ahrimanic power per se (GA 191, 193 and 195, with a remarkable characterisation: ’a citizen … like any one’, i.c. Putin). Here three quotes pertaining to this distinction :
“One will see people coming up to one and one will not be able to believe that they are really human beings. They will develop in a very strange way even outwardly. They will be intensive, strong natures outwardly with fierce features and a destructive rage in their emotions; they will have a face in which one will see a kind of a beast’s face outwardly. Soradt men will also be recognizable outwardly; they will be those who not only ridicule spiritual things, — they will fight it in the most terrible way and they will want to thrust it down into a cesspool. One will see that what is concentrated in a small region in present-day Russian communism will be inserted into the whole earth evolution of humanity.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0346/19240912v02.html
When the incarnation of Ahriman takes place in the Western World we shall simply see inscribed in the local Register, the birth of John William Smith (of course, this will not be the name) and people will look upon the child as a citizen in comfortable circumstances like any other, and they will sleep through what has in reality taken place. … But in the Ahrimanic age it is all-important that men should knower that they have here to do only externally with J. W. Smith, that inwardly Ahriman is present, and that they must not deceive themselves through sleepy illusion about what has happened.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0195/19191228p01.html
Gessen: “There really is an everyman quality to Putin. One of my favourite observations about him comes from a man who knew him back in St Petersburg in the 1990s. … as he told the British journalist Ben Judah:
He was an absolutely average man … His voice was average … not tough, not high. He had an average personality … average intelligence, not especially high intelligence. You could go out the door and find thousands and thousands of people in Russia, all of them just like Putin.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/22/vladimir-putin-killer-genius-kleptocrat-spy-myths
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Concerning the luciferic incarnation, an ‘age of about forty’ (not eighteen or nineteen) was mentioned by Steiner. Correspondingly, in 1991 – toward his fortieth year – Putin’s political civilian career suddenly started off, and he became a public figure.
“… it became evident that this man who had been allowed to grow up in the precincts of one of the Mystery centers in East Asia, began suddenly, at the age of about forty, to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation, and only through revelation.” (GA0193/19191104).
An ahrimanic incarnation ‘in the West’ could include Eastern Europe and Russia (e.g. Saint Petersburg). In a sense, Russia does not belong to the East (the pagan world) or to the Middle (Judaism), but rather to the West (the Christian world): ‘European civilisation and its American off-shoot’, as Steiner called it (GA 191).
Putin’s Eurasianism seems to distract from this view, but his traditionalism and conservative Christian values confirms it (and influences Trump).
“You are certainly aware that in the ordinary history of that ancient time, all civilisation, all culture in the then known world, goes by the name of Paganism. Like an oasis, Hebraic culture arises in its midst as a preparation for Christianity. Etc.” (GA0191/19191101)
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Some more interpretations:
– Boardman (1998) mentioned a physical incarnation ‘imminent in America’ (http://threeman.org/?p=1110)
– Van Manen (in: Gulbekain, 1999, p.222 f.) indicated an incarnation ‘in the later years of the 20th century’ (google R2M_MCGr8ssC).
– Meyer (2004, in German) pointed at ‘North America’.
Click to access Europaer_07_2004.pdf
– Powell (2009) followed the psychic Jean Dixon in an exact incarnation date of February 5, 1962 , (google gFSWq2Obo8kC).
– Bondarev (2010) based upon an unpublished ‘note’ by Steiner on a ahrimanic revelation at an age of 18 years. Bondarev (2006, Vol.III, p.24) is a white supremacist (Russia included), who apparently sees a danger in racial mixing based upon a literal interpretation (p.101 f.) of the battle between representatives of the 5th and the 4th cultural epoch according to Steiner (GA 174b).
Click to access Bondarev-Ukraine-III-Print.pdf
– Archiati (2016, in German), following Bondarev, pointed at the year 2017
Click to access 2016-vorwort-gibt-es.pdf
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Thank you, Ton.
Bondarev’s “occasional absurdities” that I referred to also include homophobia and anti-Semitism, the latter offence leading to his expulsion from membership of the GAS.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy,
Bondarev’s antisemitism was not just run of the mill or garden variety. It was outright Holocaust Denial even to the extent he denied the use of gas chambers. To give you a sense of it, I would put Bondarev’s Holocaust denial on a par with that of your bio-dynamic countryman, Nick Kollerstrom
Here is a passage written by Daniel Hindes in 2006 about Bondarev’s expulsion from the Society in 1998. (You also might be interested to know that Bondarev was appointed as a First Class Reader in Moscow in 1977 though he was relieved of his position in 1989.)
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/anthroposophy/conversations/topics/11297
A bit of additional background on Bondarew and his expulsion from the Anthroposophical Society may be helpful. The Russian edition of Bondarew’s book (its full title would be accurately translated to “Anthroposophy at the Crossroads of Today’s Occult Movements”) contained several antisemitic passages, including a denial that the Holocaust ever happened (supposedly it was made up by Jews to elicit sympathy).
Somehow these passages never made it into the German edition of the book. When this finally came to the attention of Anthroposophists in Germany, Bondarew was asked to clarify his views, and maintained and affirmed that he did believe and stood by what he had written in the Russian edition. This was problematic on a number of levels, since Holocaust denial is illegal in several European countries. The statutes of the General Anthroposophical Society allow the Vorstand to expel any member for any reason.
Bondarew was expelled, and the explanation included the statement that “When individuals who also occupy themselves with anthroposophy express anti-Semitic views, then this can only be their personal opinion, never an expression of the Anthroposophical Society nor indeed of anthropsophy itself.” — Daniel Hindes
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A world-wide phenomenon
The rise of extreme right-wing nationalism is a world wide phenomenon. In some states nationalistic regimes have come to power: USA, Russia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Japan!, India, China and many others. In more states there are strong parties along these lines, like in France, the Netherlands and many more.
This rise in nationalism is in part an answer to true problems in the differnt countries, but I think that doesnt give a full explanation. I m quite sure that there is a kind of development/change in the spiritual world behind it; it must be in the spheres of the archangles or archai, who lead the peoples, who inspire new impulses in the zeitgeist.
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Trump and other demagogues
Trump is a great speaker, a great demagogue. I had never watched a complete speech of a politician before, so it was a first for me to watch Trump s famous news conference in Washington and the speech in Malbourne, FL. About 2 hours altogether. How revealing, how scaring.
His demagogic talent, his agressiveness, his anger, his lack of thoughtfulness, that is really in his person, it is not an attitude.
Hitler was a demagogic talent as well, but it was not in his personality. When Hitler stepped down from the stage, he was an ordinary small person, this was described very often. So his „talent“ was really a kind of over-shadowing of forces, that gave him the power over the masses.
Erdogan uses simple language, speaks to the anatolian peseants so to speak, he bathes in turkish-sunni-muslim sentiments, deeply rooted in the national character and blood, appealing to old osman greatness, make Turkey great again: Atatürk s change from arab to latin letters was a great disaster, the change from the old osman education to western education was also a desaster etc.
Trump, Erdogan, Putin („the end of the Sovietunion was the greates tragedy in history“) all appeal to old greatness. They also have personal ambitions, once in power they must overcome opposing forces, like the independent justice system, independent press. This is much easier in Turkey and Russia than in the USA.
(I didnt say Hitler s and Trump s political aims were similar, no, I only compared their rhetorical talents.)
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This diagram has been presented recently in relation to the 3folding mess, but it also has relevance for the current political scene. When taken from right to left it presents a rather accurate depiction of the social symptoms of our time. Thus, Trump equals west, and the azuric death of culture. This can be upheld by personal observation over the last 17 years. Lucifer replaces Christ in the central-rights sphere, and this equates to the Merkel faction. In the east, Ahriman replaces Lucifer, and that is how the decadent spiritual-cultural has become the economism of Marxist-Leninism, and the present Putin faction.
This is what happens when Sorath resurrects the downfallen Lucifer and Ahriman, properly and lovingly disabled by the Christ. Sorath replaces Christ with Lucifer in the Centre, where fundamental rights should exist, and then places Ahriman in the East, where Lucifer once was. Of course, in the West is big-daddy himself, Sorath, who manipulates the world scene. Trump has many predecessors who did it better, but his presidency is designed to specifically show the world who rules.
That is also why it is such a parody and satire at the same time; a sickness unto death.
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Ahriman s incarnation
Trump as Ahriman? No, absolutely not, far from it.
What we know about A. s incarnation is based mainly on Rudolf Steiner and Wladimir Solowjow. Ahriman will be highly intelligent (T is a primitive adolescent), a brilliant writer, visionary, he will promise to make everybody, not only a small group, happy, bring peace and so on. (In this respect Obama was much closer to Ahriman.) So A. will be highly influencial, not necessarily a POTUS, rather not, which also means that he will not be a hidden, unknown person. And A. will have an important additional person at his side.
Look at the great ahrimanic inspired successes in Silicon Valley, they promise happiness and progress for everybody, independent of special interest. Only after a while we are able to see that they dont bring happiness but poverty and soul death to many or rather the majority.
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Ottmar wrote:
“So A. [Ahriman] will be highly influential, not necessarily a POTUS, rather not, which also means that he will not be a hidden, unknown person. And A. will have an important additional person at his side.”
I see the ahrimanic incarnation as George W. Bush, at the very outset of the 3rd millennium. He was POTUS from 2001-2009, and had Dick Cheney as his important person and strategist of 9/11 and the Iraq war that started what persists today as the (likely long-standing) War on Terror. Let us not forget that Sorath’s third evolutionary phase/surge began in 1998, and in 2003 Bush declared war on Iraq in spite of the U.N Security Council’s objection. What was found? Absolutely nothing to support attacking Iraq.
In 1332, Sorath’s second evolutionary phase began in France, in the aftermath of the downfall and martyrdom of the Knights Templar, including the burning-at-the stake of Jacques de Molay in 1314. In 1337, also just five years later, Philip VI of France, declared war with England, and thus began the Hundred Years War.
Does this not sound like a similar scenario to what is occurring today? As well, the promise of Silicon Valley. Is this not a really good example of the illness and death of the azuric culture of America? I believe that Steiner drew that diagram with a high degree of prescient insight for what was to come.
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Hi Jeremy,
I don’t think Bondarev was being anti-Semitic because he questioned the official narrative of the Holocaust – and I wonder if Bondarev had later questioned the ‘official story’ of 9/11 for instance, would he have been expelled for that….
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USA and China
The 2 archai led countries, when will they clash, how will that happen?
The clash between the 2 countries is inevitable, we can know this from Rudolf Steiner and also from a political perspective, there will be military, political, economical, cultural confrontation.
Trump gave way 3 times to China his first month in office, in 3 of the most important subjects and fields: economic („on my first day in office, I will declare China to be a currency manipulator“), political (on Taiwan, one-China policy) and military („no access to the military bases on the riffs in the south China Sea“). After these 3 big points for China there are the soft powers, attitudes, competition of ideas. China took advantage of the days of confusion in Washington: for the first time China didnt speak of a multipolar world (as a countermodel to a US-centered world) but it claimed a co-leadership in the world, to take up responsabilities and the will to shape the world order, (including supremacy in Asia, which was not directly, openly expressed so far). Already today the US has lost much of its credibility and sympathy in the world, and in Asia the rival China is reaping the consequences of it. Much of it is inevitable, but also much is the result of confusion, ignorance and unprofessionalism in the Trump administration; so the US already now pays dearly and will pay even more dearly for their blind aggressiveness and ignorance.
Rudolf Steiner spoke of the Atlantean wisdom, living in China and that the world will be greatly surprised when China will show this wisdom.
„Und wenn wir … sehen etwa in die Kulturen Mittelasiens, in die tibetanische oder chinesische Kultur, die in der nächsten Zeit in einer Weise werden für die Welt Bedeutung gewinnen, wovon sich die Menschen heute nichts träumen lassen, trotzdem uns nur kurze Zeit von dieser Sache trennt, wenn wir auf alle diese Dinge sehen und gewahr werden, wie die Seelen vieler Zarathustra-
Schüler in diesen Kulturen noch verkörpert sind, dann werden wir versucht werden, diese Dinge sehr ernst zu nehmen.“ GA 158, April 11,1912
In this lecture RS stresses that Christianity rules nowhere in the west, that Christianity is but a name, an outer dress. And in the East, the spiritual leaders know that there is a spiritual void in the west and that they will fill in this void with their culture, spirituality. „…. the Chinese culture will gain importance for the world in a very short period of time and people in the west have no clue how soon and how strong this will come,….many souls of Zarathustra disciples are still incarnated in these cultures…“
In the public and political sphere the US shows its ugly face to the world and this makes it even easier for the East, for China (and India) to appeal to the rest of the world.
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“And we must not look away from the fact that, if Chinese culture were to break its chains, and run over the western world, it would bring with it a spirituality which in many respects is the still unaltered successor of the old Atlantean culture. It would be as though something that had been under pressure were to fly asunder and scatter throughout the world—on a small scale this is what the old culture of India has done at the very first opportunity. [referring to the Theosophical Movement of Annie Besant].” GA158, April 11, 1912
Now, here is the intent of these earlier remarks about China, Tibet, and India. Steiner wants to inform the Russians of their uniquely young and developing Folk soul for the future destiny of the sixth cultural epoch. As such, it needs what only anthroposophy can provide.
“The spirituality that belongs to Anthroposophy can be found by souls who long and thirst for it. And here I must tell you that I became acquainted with a soul out of the spiritual world, a soul with a great longing for the spirit that expresses itself through Anthroposophy. It was in the purely spiritual world that I came to know this soul. When we go up through the ranks of the hierarchies and come to the individual Folk spirits, and then speak of the Folk souls within the Folk spirits, among the Folk souls who are, so to speak, still young and have to evolve further, as every being must, we find the Russian Folk soul. I know that this Russian Folk soul longs—longs with all its strength-for the spirits that finds expression in Anthroposophy. I have spoke here of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear anthroposophical friends, are children of this Russian Folk soul. It reigns and works within you, and you have a responsibility toward it. You must learn this responsibility! Do not take it amiss when I say that this Russian Folk soul was able to tell me many things. Most tragic of all was what it could show me in the year 1900 or thereabouts-because it was possible then to see something which I was not able to interpret correctly until much later—how little the Russian Folk soul is understood today. We have learned much, very much from Russia, and much of it has made a great impression on us. We have come to know the powerful impulses of Tolstoy, the psychology of Dostoevsky which set its mark so deeply on Western Europe, and finally we have learned to know such a man as [Vladimir] Solovyov, a man who makes us feel, if we let him work upon us, that as he wrote, so he was. And we see his writings in their true light only if we feel that behind him stands the Russian Folk soul. And this Russian Folk soul has far more to say than Solovyov himself could say, for with him we still always feel that much—much too much-derives from Western Europe.
Think of this word—responsibility—and remember that your task is to make yourselves worthy of the Russian Folk soul and to recognize its longing for impersonal Anthroposophy. Then, having learned to know the innermost impulse of this Anthroposophy, you will find yourselves asking all sorts of questions which can be put to the spirit of Anthroposophy only by a Russian soul.”
—Address to the Russian members, April 11, 1912, Helsinki, Finland, by Rudolf Steiner
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In the Russian address in GA158 (1912), Russia is placed between ‘the European West’ and ‘the Asian East’ (the line Petersburg-Palestine is not in the same direction, but rather perpendicular to the line Palestine-Beijing). The impulse of Christianity also reached European Russia, the most eastern part of the ‘West’. So, in this geopolitical sense, Russia and America in the North oppose China in the East (the North-South divide).
Forbes ranked Putin the World’s Most Powerful Individual every year from 2013 to 2016. “From the motherland to Syria to the U.S. presidential elections, Russia’s leader continues to get what he wants.” He has amassed a massive fortune, potentially the largest in the world. A well-to-do citizen compared to the elitist Bush jr.
Pozner: “Putin is a kind of Messiah type leader. He is a patriot, he cares about Russia as he sees it, he thinks he cares about Russia more than others do.” Putin’s 80% approval ratings would indicate that Russians think so, too. Despite sanctions and subsequently a standard of living that is less than it was three years ago, Putin has given his followers something they believe is more important.
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“Despite sanctions and subsequently a standard of living that is less than it was three years ago, Putin has given his followers something they believe is more important.”
Does Russia today have any idea of its Folk Soul? Is Putin a latter-day Woodrow Wilson who has successfully brought his people down to a more conventional and materialistic idea of freedom? Steiner, here, characterizes Wilson’s idea of freedom as “a useful cow giving milk and butter”. Today’s Russia appears to be very needful of these things; even desperate in needing to look up to someone. But Putin?
“You have found it possible, despite the difficult conditions that prevail in your country, to assemble here unhindered. Make use of this opportunity to achieve the greatest possible inward relatedness among you, in order to build the bridge between each one of you and your Folk soul. It cannot be my task to speak in detail of the services you can render to your Folk soul. But I would like to say something else, and would ask you, though I speak in words, to allow the words to change within your feelings. You are in a special situation, at the opposite pole as it were from a people, the people of North America, who are rising to a short period of brilliance. Reflect that these American people, your opposites, began to advance slowly westward just at the time when the epoch of materialism had begun in Europe, and they developed this materialism still further.
Remember that materialism prevails in the very roots of American civilization. Remember that the people who colonized America took with them the ideas that were current in educated Europe only a few centuries ago. While they were making their way through primeval forests, clearing the land bit by bit and preparing it for agriculture—activities we generally associate with quite uncultured people—they were already imbued with a whole range of materialistic modern concepts. They thought in terms of modern parliaments, natural science, modern social organization. Everything they accomplished was done under the influence of materialism. Think of the man who is generally regarded as one of their most important writers, the man whom they elected as their President—Woodrow Wilson. In the context of the present day he really is a significant writer; he has produced some brilliant literary studies of social life. But if one looks at his concepts and ideas, at everything that he stands for as a representative of the American people, what does it amount to? A house of cards. If the spiritual world were once to breathe upon it, this house of cards-and the whole culture that it typifies—would collapse. This American civilization can be traced back in every detail to the history books and the cultural history of previous centuries. It all lies there openly; everything about it is man-made.
Ask yourselves whence your character as a people comes; whence comes your spiritual life and all the best qualities you can cherish in your souls. You will not find the origin of all this on earth; its roots are in the spiritual world. All this is living and organic; it is no house of cards. It should never be a source of pride, however, but of modesty and humility; we should derive from it a feeling of responsibility, not an arrogant self-consciousness.
Yesterday I spoke to you about freedom. A great deal of water will have to flow under the bridges of Europe before any considerable number of people come to understand fully what freedom in this sense means. What is freedom? Looking to the West, what does it mean for an American? Whatever gives him the most comfortable life. For him, freedom signifies a social order which gives every individual the best chance to get on in the world! Our idea of freedom, says Woodrow Wilson, is different from that of Europeans, because we think of it in practical terms. A knife is used to cut with and a fork to eat with, because they are practically useful for these purposes. Freedom for an American is a utility product; it is something that serves his convenience. For the Western European freedom has been something very different—a lofty ideal to which he looked up to. One could almost apply the words of the poet and say that for a European freedom is a “high and glorious goddess” —while for the American, freedom is a useful cow which provides him with milk and butter. I am not the one putting it this way; it is the man who will be responsible for guiding the United States during the next few years. My task is not to advance opinions of my own, but to act as an interpreter of the living realities of the spiritual world. An outstanding American, Woodrow Wilson, has himself characterized freedom in this way. If now we take all that heroic spirits in Europe struggled to express in describing this divine freedom as a lofty, majestic goddess, we shall have to say: All our enthusiasm, our feelings and our thoughts go out towards the ideal of freedom as it hovered before these Europeans.”
—Address to the Russian Members/2, June 5, 1913
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Lenin came to power four years after Wilson. And why Putin? Putin abolished freedom of speech and press and the separation of powers, he plundered the economy. He strategically promoted the use of technology, statistics, the orthodox faith and patriotism, all ahrimanic preconditions.
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No, Lenin returned to Russia from exile just ten days after Wilson gained congressional approval to enter the war on April 6, 1917. A series of events began in January 1917 designed to invite the United States into the war, and it begins with the Zimmerman telegram to Mexico, along with the notification that Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships in the neutral zone on February 1st. Then, the February Revolution in Russia which toppled the monarchy of Czar Nicholas II, and abdication in favor of the Duma of Alexander Kerensky. This is the historical record. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lenin-returns-to-russia-from-exile
But, when we consider the spiritual heritage of Central Europe, or even Eastern Europe, we find that very important developments were occurring in the Central European cultural stream that had actually been building up throughout the second millennium, and meant to achieve a kind of culmination in the first quarter of the 20th century. And within this 25 year period, important revelations were given as to the future and critically important destiny of the Eastern European cultural stream, as well. The Russian Folk Soul has a near future destiny with the Sixth Cultural Epoch; the epoch of the Spirit-Self. Its present development is one of a gradual progression in the faculty of Intuition, as seen in its unique style of philosophical inquiries wherein the Divine Sophia plays a central part. This emphasis on the Divine Sophia is evidence of this cultural striving toward the age of Philadelphia. And yet, Russia is a country that has been severely inflicted upon by very ruthless and unkind forces that could only occur from a place which has no spiritual heritage upon which to foster the proper and responsible working in the world. In other words, from a spiritually-directed standpoint. America lacks this heritage at the present time.
Central Europe, or the German Folk, has a clearly delineated destiny wherein the Christ Impulse is central. In Spiritual Science, there is the pointed goal of making the Christ Impulse active in the Astral Body and the Ego. The German word for ‘I’ is ‘I-CH’, which indicates the close relationship between this folk soul and the Christ.
In English, ‘I’ exists sans the CH, which denotes much of what is still lacking in the Western European, and especially American cultural stream. As well, much exists today within the immediately given facts, evidence, and experience that the western mindset is highly beholding to its logical mind, or Intellectual Soul, as the supreme achievement in human evolution.
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And what about Bannon? In the 21st century he has become a prolific writer, influential visionary, well-to-do citizen, orthodox-catholic, patriotic nationalist and self-proclaimed Leninist, who is at war with the establishment.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world
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Of course; Steve Bannon is all these things. He is also the chief adviser and strategist of President Trump. Remember, please, that DJT won the election based on the anti-establishment, disenfranchised, and weak-willed vote of the American people. This says a lot about America because it has no recognizable spiritual heritage yet, other than freedom itself, and whether its graffiti sticks or not. America is a trip if it could just get organized around the principles of spiritual science.
“The course of evolution is such that on the one hand the Christ Impulse penetrates into the European peoples directly, through Greece and Italy, and on the other hand a more southerly stream by-passes Greece and Italy and unites with the influences brought indirectly by the Arabians.
Only through the union of Christianity and Mohammedanism during the important period with which we are dealing, was it possible for our modern culture to come into being. For reasons which I cannot go into to-day we have to reckon with periods of six to six-and-a-half centuries for such impulses as I have been describing. Thus actually six centuries after the Christ Event the renewed Moon-cult of the Arabians appears, expanding and spreading into Europe, and until the thirteenth century enriching the Christian culture which had received its direct impulses by other paths. There was an unbroken interchange of thought. If you are conversant merely with the outer course of events, if you know how in the monasteries of Western Europe — in spite of apparent opposition to Arabism — the Arabian concepts made their way into science, you will also be aware that until the middle of the thirteenth century — again a particularly significant point of time — the Arabian impulse and the direct Christ Impulse were interwoven.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110313p02.html
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Often Steiner pointed to (Central) Europe as the Middle. In other cases (Christianity, the incarnation of evil in a human being), the Middle was Jerusalem, as depicted above. Here Asia as a whole and the Turkish branch of Arabism are left out.
About Lenin and the import of bolshevism from the West ‘a distortion exists’: it was an evident religious impulse (GA200, p.29, Fu5VCKsPLpwC).
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The Miserable 21st Century—-
Here is an article which really hits home, especially here in America. It is one that I had hoped I would never read, even though feeling for many years that it was an eventual happening. We all remember Steiner’s final leading thoughts about the descent into the sub-earthly. The warning concerned technical science and its ability to drive humanity below the horizontal plane of objective being, i.e., the descent into sub-nature. Well, this has really occurred in the first 17 years of the third millennium. Would anyone disagree that the devices of technological materialism today serve to further isolate the rather anti-social human being with reality? And what becomes of such an alienation?
“Most of us came of age in the last half of the 20th century and had our perceptions of “normal” formed in that era. It was, all things considered, an unusually happy period. No world wars, no Great Depressions, fewer civil wars, fewer plagues.
It’s looking like we’re not going to get to enjoy one of those times again. The 21st century is looking much nastier and bumpier: rising ethnic nationalism, falling faith in democracy, a dissolving world order.
At the bottom of all this, perhaps, is declining economic growth. As Nicholas Eberstadt points out in his powerful essay “Our Miserable 21st Century,” in the current issue of Commentary, between 1948 and 2000 the U.S. economy grew at a per-capita rate of about 2.3 percent a year.
But then around 2000, something shifted. In this century, per-capita growth has been less than 1 percent a year on average, and even since 2009 it’s been only 1.1 percent a year. If the U.S. had been able to maintain postwar 20th-century growth rates into this century, U.S. per-capita G.D.P. would be over 20 percent higher than it Slow growth strains everything else — meaning less opportunity, less optimism and more of the sort of zero-sum, grab-what-you-can thinking that Donald Trump specializes in. The slowdown has devastated American workers. Between 1985 and 2000, the total hours of paid work in America increased by 35 percent. Over the next 15 years, they increased by only 4 percent.
For every one American man aged 25 to 55 looking for work, there are three who have dropped out of the labor force. If Americans were working at the same rates they were when this century started, over 10 million more people would have jobs. As Eberstadt puts it, “The plain fact is that 21st-century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.”
That means there’s an army of Americans semi-attached to their communities, who struggle to contribute, to realize their capacities and find their dignity. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics time-use studies, these labor force dropouts spend on average 2,000 hours a year watching some screen. That’s about the number of hours that usually go to a full-time job.
Fifty-seven percent of white males who have dropped out get by on some form of government disability check. About half of the men who have dropped out take pain medication on a daily basis. A survey in Ohio found that over one three-month period, 11 percent of Ohioans were prescribed opiates. One in eight American men now has a felony conviction on his record.
This is no way for our fellow citizens to live. The Eberstadt piece confirms one thought: The central task for many of us now is not to resist Donald Trump. He’ll seal his own fate. It’s to figure out how to replace him — how to respond to the slow growth and social disaffection that gave rise to him with some radically different policy mix.
The hard part is that America has to become more dynamic and more protective — both at the same time. In the past, American reformers could at least count on the fact that they were working with a dynamic society that was always generating the energy required to solve the nation’s woes. But as Tyler Cowen demonstrates in his compelling new book, “The Complacent Class,” contemporary Americans have lost their mojo.
Cowen shows that in sphere after sphere, Americans have become less adventurous and more static. For example, Americans used to move a lot to seize opportunities and transform their lives. But the rate of Americans who are migrating across state lines has plummeted by 51 percent from the levels of the 1950s and 1960s.
Americans used to be entrepreneurial, but there has been a decline in start-ups as a share of all business activity over the last generation. Millennials may be the least entrepreneurial generation in American history. The share of Americans under 30 who own a business has fallen 65 percent since the 1980s.
Americans tell themselves the old job-for-life model is over. But in fact Americans are switching jobs less than a generation ago, not more. The job reallocation rate — which measures employment turnover — is down by more than a quarter since 1990.
There are signs that America is less innovative. Accounting for population growth, Americans create 25 percent fewer major international patents than in 1999. There’s even less hunger to hit the open road. In 1983, 69 percent of 17-year-olds had driver’s licenses. Now only half of Americans get a license by age 18. In different ways Eberstadt and Cowen are describing a country that is decelerating, detaching, losing hope, getting sadder. Economic slowdown, social disaffection and risk aversion reinforce one another.
Of course nothing is foreordained. But where is the social movement that is thinking about the fundamentals of this century’s bad start and envisions an alternate path? Who has a compelling plan to boost economic growth? If Trump is not the answer, what is?”
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Please allow a little discourse:
“Soon after the time of the Prophet, the Residence is transferred from Medina to Damascus. From there the generals of the successors of the Prophet go forth with their armies but are again and again beaten back; the success achieved in the West is not achieved here. And then, very soon, we see a successor of the Prophet, Muavija by name, ruling in Damascus. His attitude and constitution of soul proceed on the one side from the monotheism of Arabism, but also from the determinism which grew steadily into fatalism. But already at that time., although in a more inward, mystical way, the Aristotelianism that had been carried over to Asia was taking effect. Muavija, who sent his generals on the one side as far as Constantinople and on the other made attempts — without any success to speak of — in the direction of Africa, this Muavija was at the same time a thoughtful man; but a man who did not accomplish anything very much, either outwardly or in the spiritual life.
Muavija rules not long after Mohammed. He thus stands entirely within Mohammedanism, within the religious life of Arabism. He is a genuine representative of Mohammedanism at that time, but one of those who are growing away from its hide-bound form and entering into that mode of thought which then, discarding the religious form, appears in the sciences and fine arts of the West.
Muavija is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed, but one whose thinking is no longer patterned in absolute conformity with that of Mohammed; he draws his impulse from Mohammed, but only his impulse. He has not yet discarded the religious core of Mohammedanism, but has already led it over into the sphere of thought, of logic. And above all he is one of those who are ardently intent upon pressing on into Europe, upon forcing their way to the West. If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power, but this was already blunted, was already losing its edge.
When such a spirit later passes through the gate of death and lives on, the driving force also persists, and if we follow the path further we get this striking impression. — During the life between death and a new birth, much that remained as longing is elaborated into world-encompassing plans for a later life, but world-encompassing plans that assume no very concrete form for the very reason that the force behind them was blunted.
[…]
If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240316p01.html
Now, for the Turkey issue relative to the Armenian massacre of 1915, Steiner’s diagram above was drawn in March 1911, and had no bearing at the time. In GA173/174, he gives a fuller explanation of the full-scope of the European karma.
http://www.history.com/topics/armenian-genocide
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Wilsonianism and Leninism are extremes, but both are ‘the most unspiritual ideologies’ (174b). What seems important in Leninism-Putinism is not its economism, but rather its pseudo-religious fury, its logic and its lies. This azuric-ahrimanic fury has also affected present-day America via Evola, Dugin and Bannon.
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Ton, Steve Bannon was noted for saying something about Julius Evola back in 2014 at a Catholic conference, long before Trump had designs on the Presidency of the United States.
At any rate, nothing that would impugn the integrity of Rudolf Steiner was ever said, or even implied, now was it?
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The direction of ideological influence (what Steiner 1920 called religious fury) seems to be from Evola/Dugin to Bannon/Trump, not the other way around:
This [Dugin’s] appeal of traditional values on populist voters and against out-of-touch elites, the “Pan-European Union” and “centralized government in the United States,” as Mr. Bannon put it, was not lost on Mr. Trump’s ideological guru.
Dugin, 55, already has fans in the US; White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon in 2014 defended his political theory, which fuses Martin Heidegger with Orthodox mysticism and a vitriolic hatred of liberals and ‘globalists’.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/putins-rasputin-has-message-donald-trumps-white-house-call-me-1607981
GA 200: The fact that Czarism and Bolshevism were imported from the West, makes it harder to see their religious fury.
Steve, I don’t see this kind of reasoning in e.g. Boardman’s introduction to Karma of Untruthfulness. His arguments are one-directional, economic ones.
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“Steve, I don’t see this kind of reasoning in e.g. Boardman’s introduction to Karma of Untruthfulness. His arguments are one-directional, economic ones.”
Ton, what have we been talking about for some time now? The East-West migration of Soradt. From 666 in southern Babylon, to 1332 in France, and now in America long before 1998. Yet, does not 1998 prove a great deal when we consider the resulting War on Terror? So, of course, Trump in 2017 has a chief strategist who knows about Julius Evola, and likely even more about Joseph E. Davies, ambassador to Moscow in 1936, who FDR sent in order to pre-plan the war of Germany with Russia, and convinced Stalin to agree to allow western support. How else could those purges of Stalin’s general forces have occurred other than that they refused the plot with America? Being honest Russian men, what else could they do but reject the whole idea? Yet, Stalin was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” in the early 1940’s.
Go figure that notion when, in 1947, Russia was now the targeted enemy of the U.S., and the HUAC formed in order to target perceived American Communists. The whole idea was to create the illusion of the need for the “bigger bomb”; you know, the one larger than the two that destroyed two cities in Japan, which was formerly America’s ally in the Pacific Ocean theatre of the continuing idea of “manifest destiny”.
In other words, America is the home of Soradt. What more can I say? If the world’s governments don’t like it, than fight against it. The Brexit vote seemed to be a good place to start this campaign against America, and the election of DJT as POTUS should only fuel the fire against the dominion of Soradt.
But, it will take fire and enthusiasm, earnestness and responsibility, and likely several other factors in order to make it happen. The world is certainly waking up to the American dominion of DJT. It is even a kind of pathetic slap in the face. Yet, Theresa May was the first foreign leader to meet with Trump here in Washington, and I think she came home glad to know she is supported in the aim to leave the EU.
So, it is indeed possible that something else is working today in order to sabotage Soradt’s working from the American home-base. Possibly capitalism itself can save the world.
What a profound idea that would be.
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‘what have we been talking about for some time now? The East-West migration of Soradt.’
Yes, and also independently and almost simultaneously, an ahrimanic appearance in the flesh in 1999 …
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Ton wrote:
Yes, and also independently and almost simultaneously, an ahrimanic appearance in the flesh in 1999 …
Well that was me, but a year early, and located deep in the heart of Texas.
Here is the evidence, still archived on the Internet.
http://steiner98.tripod.com
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Tom, you’re not ‘like any other’ (a John William Smith), you didn’t start at about forty, and you rather seem to be creative-luciferic.
America is only a European shoot-off in this incorporation-connection, but a soratic centre in another.
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Ton and Tom, please allow me to hit two nails on the head here.
Ton wrote:
“America is only a European shoot-off in this incorporation-connection, but a soratic centre in another.”
Yes, America is the western arm of the British Empire, which financed via the London Company the expansion “across the pond”, when James VI became James I of England in 1603. What Queen Elizabeth had resisted became fact beginning in 1607. The colonial expansion of America. This is also how Soradt made the ‘puddle-jump’ to the New World.
1998 equals Soradt’s third evolutionary push against Humanity. 1999 equals Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in the fallen USSR; now a collection of independent states called Russia. Thank George [HW] Bush for bringing that bit of diplomacy about with the Mikhael Gorbachev alliance from 1985 to 1991, in which the Soviet Union was toppled, and Gorbachev went into exile here in the United States. This is pure Soradtic intention. The world has one super-power today, folks. And if the Soviet Union still existed as the other power, the balance would be maintained in world affairs.
But, instead, radical Islam has arisen as the next great threat, and so we have the election of George [W] Bush as POTUS in 2000. The son of the great orchestrator of the demise of the Soviet Union. So, who gets to be the ahrimanic incarnation: Vladimir Putin or George W. Bush? Maybe neither, I realize, as this is such a guessing game when it is already too late anyway.
Tom, you may wonder who has stolen your identity and watered-down your former ahrimanic persuasion here at your very own site:
http://www.steiner98.org
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The place (in the Western world, including European Russia) was contrasted with China (in the East). Putin’s candidacy is based upon Steiner’s indication of an incorporation `before even a part of the third millennium of the Christian era has run its course’, i.e. on 31 December 1999.
Civilian Putin was corrupt from the start: The first Presidential Decree that Putin signed, on 31 December 1999, was titled “On guarantees for former president of the Russian Federation and members of his family”. This ensured that “corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives” would not be pursued (wiki).
Cf. the detailed essay by the historian H. van Manen in: The Future is Now (1999, R2M_MCGr8ssC)
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Ton, I read the appendix to “The Future is Now”, which was published in 1999, and edited by Sevak Gulbekian, and comprises some 19 essays ostensibly about the future course of life and world with the anthroposophical perspective into the new millennium. As such, Hans Peter van Manen’s appendix on the Ahrimanic incarnation encompasses some six references given in the year 1919. None of it is convincing, but it is persuasive.
You see, it can actually be shown historically that the perceived threats from China and Russia were dealt with when the United States forced Japan to become its ally in 1852. Consider it ‘manifest destiny’ extended into the Pacific Ocean. Thus, Japan was forced out of its 200-year shogun revolution, and made to partner with America. How else could the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 take place? How else could the insidious bombings of China’s peasant population take place in the 1920’s and 30’s without America’s giving Japan the technological power?
What if it can be shown that the original incarnation of Ahriman was slated for the far West, just as it was for Lucifer in the far East, c. 3000 BC. But, the arise of the American colony, c. 1607, served eventually to steal this ahrimanic incarnation from its original source, i.e., Japan, and make Japan an ally of the western soradtic powers?
Would not that also make the ahrimanic incarnation an American contrivance? That means making it Bush, Putin, Trump, or anybody else. It has already happened, folks, so decide your direction in life. Consider the anthroposophical perspective of “The Future Is Now”.
It reminds me of a past book, “Tomorrow Will Be Too Late”, by Peter Howard, c. 1964.
Steve
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“We called our band Pussy Riot—English words. I always believed that Russia is a part of Europe. There are different views on that—some people think Russia is Asia, and some people believe it’s something in between. I believe Russia is a European country, and obviously it has to find its own path. But Russian culture is primarily European culture. So that’s why I never really made this division between Russia and Europe or France or the United States.”
http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/a11272/pussy-riot-interview-nadya-tolokno/
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“Eastern Europe is inhabited by a people whose particular mission it will be in the sixth epoch, and not until the sixth epoch, to bring to definite expression the elementary forces that now lie within them. We know that the Russian peoples will not be ready until the sixth epoch of culture to unfold the forces now within them in an elementary form. The mission of Western and Central Europe is to introduce into men qualities that can be introduced by the consciousness soul. This is not the mission of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the spirit self comes down to the earth and can permeate the souls of men. This must be understood in the right sense. Understood in the wrong sense it may easily lead to pride and superciliousness, precisely in the East. The height of post-Atlantean culture is reached in the fifth epoch. What will follow in the sixth and seventh epochs will be a descending line of evolution. Nevertheless, this descending evolution in the sixth epoch will be inspired, permeated by the spirit self. Today the man of Eastern Europe feels instinctively, but often with perverted instinct, that this is so; only his consciousness of it is, for the most part, extremely hazy and confused. The frequent occurrence of the term, “the Russian man,” is quite characteristic. Genius expresses itself in language when, instead of saying as we do in the West: the British, the French, the Italian, the German — Eastern Europe says, “the Russian man.” Many of the Russian intelligentsia attach importance to the use of the expression, “the Russian man.” This is connected deeply with the genius of the particular culture. The term refers to the element of manhood, of brotherhood that is spread over a community. An attempt is made to indicate this by including a word that brings out the “manhood” in the term. But it is also obvious that the height to be reached in a distant future has not yet been attained, inasmuch as the term includes a word that glaringly contradicts the noun. In the expression, “the Russian man.” the adjective really nullifies what is expressed in the noun. For when true manhood is attained there should be no adjective to suggest any element of exclusiveness.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/PreSix_index.html
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Ahriman’s working is not only about technology as you can see in Jeremy’s quote from GA 195 (‘so will Ahriman walk upon the earth with enormous power to manifest earthly intellectual capacity’). His troll factories in St.Petersburg are intelligent.
And Solovjov’s story (see e.g. http://www.goodcatholicbooks.org/antichrist.html) is of course well-known to Russia’s elite. It covers Japan and China too.
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Steve, you argue again from a Steiner lecture, which predates the Russian revolution by two years. The ‘cleverness of the human animal’ (Leninism) was a new development within the consciousness soul epoch, as was the predicted appearance of Ahriman in the flesh in the West (Europe and its American offshoot). Doesn’t the advent of the sixth epoch stand apart from that?
Like Wilson and Lenin (GA260a, 1924), Putin could have had a stroke, perhaps suffered in utero.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/03/the-accidental-autocrat/303725/
Cf. Rev.13 on the apocalyptic seven-headed beast from the sea: ‘one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed’.
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Ton, your Esquire article invited my response with no introduction. I felt that it makes quite clear both the destiny of the “Russian Man”, as well as the assault from the nefarious powers of Sorath and his ahrimanic agent to undermine the Russian objective for the Sixth Cultural Epoch. Steiner began talking to the Russians as early as 1912 about their future destiny, and how much it depended on gaining anthroposophical knowledge. In 1913, he warned them about Woodrow Wilson, and the power-struggle that would ensue for supremacy in the 20th century. In 1915, with the lecture, “Preparing for the Sixth Epoch”, it is made abundantly clear that the Russian Folk Soul will be put to the test by the forces of evil. The October Revolution of 1917 is merely historical evidence today that Sorath intervenes from the west to undermine spiritual objectives. Steiner also looked to find out the source of how the 30-40 European leaders at the time of WWI lost their minds in order to decide to go to war. He found that it came from the west, where Sorath dwells.
Consider this: If Central Europe is Christ-centered in the “I Am” (I-CH), as the heart and soul of Anthroposophy, then how could Germany back such an anti-christic figure as Adolf Hitler, or even Kaiser Wilhelm II? I would say because of the power of imposing forces from the West, i.e, America. That is why we are taking pains to trace the east-to-west migration of Sorath, 666-1332-1998.
Steiner states somewhere in GA346 that by 1998, Sorath’s power of clever intelligence would be utterly incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. Would anyone doubt that assessment, considering the mind-boggling techno-clever machinations that exist today, along with all the attending lies and propaganda?
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When I first read that Steiner claimed that Ahriman would incarnate I thought Marshall Applewhite had to be the guy. At any rate Ahriman can’t be Donald Trump: presidential terms last four years and Ahriman only gets a three year term.
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Check it out, folks. Anthroposcope speaks with the precision of a three-year sentence. Yet, where does that come from? Likely where he found Marshall Applewhite of all places. Willing to learn we all are, but this seems beyond the scope of anthroposophical analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Applewhite
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Don’t take me too seriously, Steve. Except for when it comes to Donald Trump.
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I take everything seriously, especially flippancy. Now, what bothers you about Trump? The press —well certainly they play their part in the propaganda mill. Who knows how to separate the truth from the lies with the media. Then, there is the “social network” on the internet with its incessant ‘tweeting’ and building the opinion mill.
What if it can be shown that lack of capital is the biggest problem in the world, and Trump wants to help every honest nation to meet and exceed their expectations for peace, harmony, health and happiness? To do this he first has to overcome very entrenched and obdurate ideas and plans which involve unlawful acts and an immigration policy which is out of control. This is just to start, but if things are going to change then we need more than maintaining status quo. The world is where it is because of status quo. I didn’t vote for Trump, but I see a straight-forward approach in his attempts to deal with issues that need correction, and his complaints about the media, and their typically slanted views, is justified. Let this guy have a chance to do his best without the 24/7 assault. This is the paranoia that is seriously defective.
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I merely made the claim that if Trump is the incarnation of Ahriman, he’s not going to get through his presidential term. Assuming Steiner is an authority on the matter (which would be flippant) Ahriman could only stay in a human body for three years, hence Trump, if he was Ahriman, isn’t going to be able to finish his term. Were you uncertain about how this was related to the original post?
As for my comment about Marshall Applewhite: that was a flippant comment, but that goes for anything that isn’t either argued discursively or in an honest striving for spiritual truth. Still, I think the remedy for flippancy and carelessness is maieutic in nature. And so as not to avoid your challenge: I do think Applewhite is an interesting case in several respects.
He saw himself as an incarnation of Jesus. But the way he spoke of himself and the spiritual world was in entirely materialistic terms, which bears similarities to the way I presume Ahriman would talk about the spiritual world. So on those two accounts, if we take Applewhite seriously he would have to be the incarnation of an ahrimanic spiritual being in a human body at the close of the 20th century (which isn’t to say that he’s Ahriman). To further back that up, he claimed to have given up his individuality as Marshall Applewhite in order for a spiritual being called “Do” to take up his body.
Another aspect is his despise for the human body, which shows itself in the rules he prescribed for himself and his followers and the way they took their own lives in order to “transcend” their humanity. This act of imposing moral commandments on others, and of loathing the bodily nature is essentially luciferic in nature. Well actually, not only the bodily, he says that human ways, human behaviour and so forth must be abandoned. In essence, he’s against the human in us on behalf of a higher spiritual world conceived in entirely materialistic terms.
Those were things about Applewhite that made me consider him a good candidate. And that’s not even getting into the possibility that the comet, in which Applewhite’s spaceship was supposedly waiting for him and his followers, might have been seen by the ancient Egyptians.*
Also, I should answer why I brought up Applewhite in the first case, since it is seemingly off-topic. First off the original post did mention the possibility of Donald Trump being Ahriman, which made me think that there could be people who would associate Donald Trump with Ahriman. From there it was simple, I remembered having once made an association between Ahriman and Applewhite based on what I wrote above and then I wrote my flippant comment.
*) That I did pick up from Wikipedia, and ironically it seems that either Wikipedia or Kent Weeks, the egyptologist who made the above claim, made a mistake there.
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Brian, you wrote:
“Assuming Steiner is an authority on the matter (which would be flippant) Ahriman could only stay in a human body for three years, hence Trump, if he was Ahriman, isn’t going to be able to finish his term. Were you uncertain about how this was related to the original post?”
No, I saw that about Ahriman and three years, and wondered why? We know that Christ could only live in a human body for three years, but Ahriman has a very long history on earth, and by the time that Christ incarnated, Ahriman was the “ruler of the world”. He told Christ how he made men turn “stones into bread”, and that he would give this power to Christ, as well. Christ said: “Man does not live by bread alone”. Thus, Christ refused the temptation of Ahriman.
As well, Christ knew that He could not defeat Ahriman alone, i.e., in his own power to make mankind turn stones into bread; mammon. All Christ could do was order Ahriman [Satan] to “get behind me”. Thus, Ahriman has been working in the world for the entire time since the Mystery of Golgotha. Judas Iscariot assured *that* when he took the dipped morsel from Christ and Satan entered him at the Last Supper, and he went out into the night to barter the betrayal for 30 pieces of silver.
So, the issue is why would the ahrimanic incarnation have to be only three years in length? You cannot compare these two figures [Christ+Satan] in any such way other than as opposites. As such, ahriman could easily live for many years in a human body, and might even be one of the biggest philanthropists known in the annals of human history. In fact, that is a good place to start in possibly finding the critter 😉
Steve
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Appelewhite seems to have been possessed by another being, Soradt: ‘He will show himself before the end of this century already, and he will appear in a great many people as a being by whom they will be possessed. Etc.’
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0346/19240912v02.html
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My dear learned “Rebbes-of-the GA-Torah,” Steve Hale and Ton Majoor,
If I may now divert you both temporarily from playing your mutually self-indulgent game of anthroposophical oneupmanship in ascertaining the incarnation of Ahriman in the 3rd Millennium, please consider uniting your forces together and applying your vast knowledge of the GA-Torah to a real-life, real-world situation that even mentions the coming incarnation of Ahriman himself! It is happening right now at a Canadian Waldorf School, located in the town of Kelowna, British Columbia ( ~200 miles inland ENE of Vancouver BC).
Suppose you were both consulted by the Board of Trustees of this Canadian Kelowna Waldorf School and asked to address an assembly of trustees, teachers and parents, about this Demon called Ahriman and his imminent incarnation in human form? What would you tell them? And then, what would you tell the news media covering this event? Perhaps even at a televised press conference on the topic of Ahriman?
I would, of course, refer to you both proudly and affectionately as The A-Team
Frater Tomfortas
———
I quote from two articles in the local Kelowna online newspaper concerning the topic of Ahriman in the Waldorf school.
Of Politics and Demons
Feb 18, 2017
http://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/189049/of-politics-and-demons
Politics – and demons – are said to be behind an exodus of students and staff from a Kelowna private school.
Upwards of 40 students, out of a student body of about 125, left Kelowna Waldorf School last semester. That followed the firing of the school’s principal, resignation of the majority of its board of trustees, and several teachers quitting. [ . . . . ]
Steiner believed it was the responsibility of the Waldorf teachings to help guide human evolution down the right path and resist the forces of the demon Ahriman.
Ryder says that in October 2015, when a non-fundamentalist board was elected, a founding member of the school got up in the meeting and lectured the room on the “malign influences of the demon.”
“I was one of the people going, ‘What the hell is this guy talking about?’” Ryder said.
TOM: Now read the response in an article published 3 weeks later.
http://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/191066/Waldorf-responds-to-critics
Waldorf responds to critics
March 9, 2017
Anthroposophy isn’t taught directly to the children, but it’s something that the teachers have training on to help them understand how the curriculum is suited to the children,” said Salsa.
A recent job posting for a Kelowna Waldorf School teacher says the school is “proud to offer a full anthroposophical curriculum.”
Salsa says “anthroposophy is about the wisdom of humanity, the evolution of human consciousness” and that “it allows the teachers to understand how to teach the children in a developmentally-appropriate way.”
A former parent at the school, Dan Ryder, said a less-fundamentalist board was elected during a 2015 board of trustees meeting. At that time, a founding member of the school stood up and lectured those in attendance on the “malign influences of the demon Ahriman.”
Ahriman, a demonic figure Steiner predicted would one day incarnate amongst Western humanity, appears in many writings of Steiner, including a lecture, ‘The Ahrimanic Deception.’
When asked about Ahriman, Salsa said, “I don’t know what that is.”
He says he doesn’t know why former parents would say the current board subscribes to Steiner’s more fundamentalist beliefs.
==============
See, guys, you are now so top-heavy here with Begriffe (concepts) that you have become tediously boring with your abstract intellectual speculations about the incarnation of Ahriman. You are in dire need of real-life Wahrnehmungen (percepts, perceptions) to counter-balance your learned pedantry. So, please make me and the Anthropopper proud of you both by performing the magical anthro-alchemy of mixing concept and percept together to engender the magical emergence of Vorstellungen (representations, living ideas, imaginations) which might help out the Kelowna Waldorf School in their present existential crisis over Ahriman himself.
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Tom, I agree that it is an oddity indeed that the Kelowna Waldorf School, inception in 1981, is experiencing this kind of “ahrimanic incursion” after some 35 years of successful operation. But, at the same time, it is always useful to remember that Rudolf Steiner was always returning to Stuttgart after the founding of the first Waldorf School there in 1919, in order to lead faculty meetings to iron out issues and various disturbances associated with students, parents, and curriculum/pedagogical concerns. So, here is the question: If Steiner were alive today, would this bit of ineptitude on the part of the Kelowna administration be possible?
Steiner was very big on educational imperatives from a spiritual-scientific standpoint. Therefore, he was resistant to compromises of any kind. And, when he was asked by the Department of Education in Basle, Switzerland, to give a series of lectures on his new-found method of education in early 1920, here is what he had to say about it. Of course, the many years “sans Steiner”, only helps to uphold the original imperatives:
“In the curriculum, our concern is not simply to come to terms
pedagogically with a single child or even with a small class where
we could work with individual children (an idea that is commonly
held). We want each teacher to be so permeated with understanding
that even when standing before a large class, he can represent
this type of education. Each teacher should be permeated by a living
comprehension of the human being so that he understands
that the heart does not simply pump the blood through the organism,
but that the human being is living, and the movements of fluids
and the heart result from that aliveness. When a teacher has
absorbed this way of thinking, particular forces within him
become active in regard to the development of children. This activity
can result in significant insights, even in regard to a child who
is part of a large class and with whom we have worked for only a
few months. If you have trained your spirit in this way, and thus
created a strong contact with it, your spirit can look somewhat
clairvoyantly at the individual child. It is not so important that we
know that the heart is not the cause of the circulation of the blood.
What is important is that we develop within ourselves the possibility
of presenting such things in a way contrary to our modern materialistic thinking.
Those who develop this possibility within themselves, who configure their spirit in this way, make themselves alive in a different way in regard to developing children, even in large numbers. They gain the capacity of reading the curriculum from the nature of the developing child.
In Stuttgart I had to compromise, since under present social
conditions it is not possible to develop a school purely on the basis
of this kind of education. I said we needed to take three stages into
account. We need complete freedom in how we present the curriculum
during the first, second, and third grades, but we want the
children at the end of third grade to have learned the same things
as children in other schools. The same is true until age twelve, that
is, the sixth grade, and again when they leave the school. All we
could achieve was to present the curriculum in these stages: in the
first three school years, the second three, and in the third stage, the last two school years. These are simply things that we must accept
as compromises under today’s social conditions. Nevertheless, within
these three periods, we have been able to achieve some things.
We can, for example, base our work upon the sound principle that
we do not begin with the intellectual, as modern instruction generally
does. We do not need to begin with this one characteristic of
developing human beings –the intellect –instead we can begin
with the whole human being.
It is important to first acquire a clear concept of what the whole
human being actually is. Today, because people cannot observe
how thinking relates to human nature, they believe that we learn
to think by logically teaching children how to think. I have to
admit that during the first six decades of my life I used to consider
people in that way. Those who can observe developing human
beings, who can compare the developing human being with what
a person becomes, can see certain connections spread out over the
various periods of life, which go unobserved if a certain kind of
insight has not been developed.”
Some Remarks About Curriculum, 26 April, 1920, “The Renewal of Education”.
So, indeed Tom, while concepts usually marry up nicely with percepts in the so-called “real world” of fourfold being, what hamstrings these blog posts, especially because it is anthroposophy we are dealing with, kind of tends to get more into the conceptual. But I would hate to think that it is “tediously boring” to the listening audience. If so, then that needs to be made known on a general level, because I write to give substance, and back it up.
Steve
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Tom, aren’t there always two streams working contrarily (see: Study of Man)? The fear of Ahrimanic influences (materialism, intellectualism) seems to be the expression of a moral Luciferic fundamentalism. These two streams (worldly and priestly, percepts and concepts) can be counterbalanced by a middle stream:
Limiting use of technology in the classroom, going at the child’s own pace, it’s very arts and humanities focused schooling, and it’s very socially nice, in that the classroom environment is very friendly (Ryder).
By this description of the cuttle-fish, the mouse, the lamb, the horse, and the human being himself, you gradually awaken in the child, by way of the feelings, a clear conception that the lower animals have the character of head, the higher animals of trunk, and the human being of the limbs.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0294/19190828n01.html
(Cf. Schad, Man and Mammals 2012)
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Trump may not be Ahriman, however, he is clearly quite evil. That should be paid attention to quite seriously. Trump’s mentor Vladimir Putin more closely aligns with the visage of Ahriman.
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Concerning hand gestures, most do not understand the word Mundja
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Well, I’m one of those who don’t understand it either! What does it mean?
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I am VERY late to this thread. I am an American. Trump as Ahriman, sorry but I have to laugh, also Putin or any other person alive in the world view today. As I understand it, ‘He’ will be very charismatic, perfect in his appearance, good looking, eloquent, and above all, Christ like. As for Steiner’s words, before a part of the 3rd millennium has elapsed,,,which part elapsed? The first part OR the last part? The words are not conclusive on the timing as I see it. My feeling is, we are not yet in such horrible circumstances where, in my point of view, for Ahriman to make his appearance to act like a savior of mankind and MANY will see him as the returned Christ. One has to wonder with the wrath Oriphiel will wage on us in around 2400, would that be the horrors to have humans ‘looking in the clouds’ for salvation, only to have Ahriman make his appearance? Well I am not clairvoyant in this life, yet, but have healthy common sense.
Oh Man Know Thyself
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