Aristotelian Confusion
I have tried in various places to suggest that the future of Anthroposophy requires the meeting and amalgamation of the Aristotelian and Platonist streams. The following story is about some undesirable consequences, that occur when this doesn’t happen.
I do come at these questions from what to some might be an odd point of view. Before meeting Rudolf Steiner through his books, I studied for about seven years the Hermetic Science of the ancient Egyptians, aka: magic, via the three books of
Franz Bardon.
This Way of Seeing used the four classical elements: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, which were also symbols for will, intellect, feeling, and consciousness. At one point I wrote a long series of “letters about magic”, where I worked at the riddle of whether or not these four elements had any relationship to the four fundamental forces/transformations of modern physics [electromagnetic, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear reactions. (1)
This understanding of the fundamental nature of Reality has then informed all my other work, scientific, anthroposophic, and otherwise. My latest book is: The Father at Rest – magical and mystical dark-matter physics in an Age of Technological Chaos” https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/joel-wendt/the-father-at-rest/paperback/product-znpekm.html?page=1&pageSize=4
I am also a “Platonist”, or a pagan if you prefer, in the manner described by Steiner as the Culmination. I am a devote of the Mother, and on a familiar relationship with Her, such that I can write, with truth: She is Rogue Weather, Gravity, the Four Horseman, and the Gate of Death, as well as Divine Providence. Her relationship to the Son: “She has the whole world in His Hands”.
Today I received an email which led to my reading: “Ways of looking at a virus”, written by Jon McAlice and Craig Holdrege. (2)
This is a remarkable work, tracing the history of various ideas, and as well describing in detail certain experiments and their conclusions. The subtitle is: “Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic”.
It is long read (24 pages pdf.), yet very much worth the trouble. The attention to detail, the explanatory reasoning, and use of legitimate sources is professional, in the best sense of that word.
Earlier they had written an article on Thomas Cowan’s: “The Contagion Myth” (3). I was disturbed by what I saw as weaknesses in their review of that book, after which I wrote an article about their article (4).
I also, via good fortune in the last couple of days, captured on Facebook a copy of something said by Rudolf Steiner about “forces” in nature (see appendix A).
My following comments are not so much criticism of the works of Craig Holdrege and Jon McAlice, but rather about matters that are relevant, yet missing. The core problem is that in anthroposophical circles, the Story of the Goddess Natura is missing. This next link is to the lecture Steiner gives on this prophecy of a meeting on the cusp of the Second to the Third Millennium (5)
There are no abstract forces in nature, just the will of Beings. When matter comes into existence, the beings involved are called Salamanders (for fire), Sylphs (for air), Undines (for water) and Gnomes (for earth). This next link is to some comments of Steiner on these folk (6).
These elemental Beings have no freedom, in the sense of folk of the angelic realms. They have a specific nature, which works in a kind of integrated fashion, with the result that the material/physical world comes into existence.
For example, in Appendix A Steiner remarks: “Atoms are to be regarded as ideal contents of space. The contents are the results of force-directions meeting each other — e.g., directions of force. a b c are active in space, and by their meeting a resultant force is carried which is effective as an atom of tetrahedral character.”
Steiner here was trying to point in the direction of these elemental Beings, without being accused of believing in Faerie and the Fae. Note there are three directions of force, a b c that are active in space, yet their unified result is an “atom”, seen as an ideal content of space.
In Hermetic Science, fire/will, and air/intellect, as well as water/feeling, combine into earth/consciousness.
“In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the ordinary convex polyhedra and the only one that has fewer than 5 faces.” Google.
Let me add an additional thread ….
Steiner had problems with how natural science was conceiving of the smallest bits of stuff. He described the “concept” of the “atom” as evil, at one point. That is, not true and not good. He had similar problems with the germ theory of disease, referred to in (2).
I was surprised that the Nature Institute folk did not mention this aspect of Steiner’s works, which can be found in his: Spiritual Science and Medicine lectures.
My version goes like this … Imagine you are driving through the countryside in Vermont, rich with dairy farms. Large fields of contented cows, enjoying the plant material they are converting to milk. The germ theory of disease treats the cows as the cause of the environment, which is logically nonsense.
So when we observe, as an aspect of illness, a massive proliferation of tiny organisms, our assumption that these entities created the environment (the illness) is false on its face. They are just another symptom, which if we don’t appreciate it, this causes our treatments to fail. In (2), certain boundary conditions are explained, and some of them result in us never being able to vaccinate against the “flu” … it is constantly evolving.
Not only does modern medicine not cure heart disease or cancer, all it offers for allegedly “contagious” diseases is vaccines which do not cure, but rather only suppress symptoms.
When we get the “flu” then, something else is going on, which is basically that the total organism of the human being is somehow out of balance, creating the conditions for the proliferation of the tiny organisms.
What is the flu, as a phenomena? It is not an illness, so much as the work of the immune system, forcing us to rest the body, and expel numerous built up toxic poisons, via: sweating, barfing, coughing, and excreting. A “flu” is a healing process, which if suppressed makes for more harm.
In their considerations of Thomas Cowan’s The Contagion Myth, Holdrege and McAlice argue that his references early on, to certain kinds research, are mistaken. In particular they refer to what can be seen by an electron microscope, which images, and the related “conceptions”, supports the idea of contagion. Keep in mind that medical science is rooted in a materialistic science (we are only matter, without spirit). Further, like all sciences we are not finished learning what there is to be learned.
This problem can be resolved if we take a look at Dr. Rudolf Hauschka’s book: “The Nature of Substance”, which I had assumed would be familiar to the Nature Institute folk. Apparently I was wrong in my assumption, for they were clearly unaware of his work suggesting that when we take water, for example, and attack it with electricity or strong chemicals, and thereby produce oxygen and hydrogen, we have taken something living and killed it. The elements oxygen and hydrogen are “corpses” of something once living.
Most substances do not appear in pure form, but are rather parts of some combination of molecules of various kinds of elements, according to the table of elements. Yet, Nature gives Her gifts as wholes, and when with our thinking we focus on parts, we fail to notice the deeper phenomenological expression.
For example, while we can write a chemical equation representing the process of photosynthesis, we have abstracted from the wholeness aspect, something that in nature might best be described as millions of leaves living in a sea of light, breathing in tune with all life. “In It (the Word) is Life, and the Life is the Light of the World”. If you can, get your hands on George Adams Kaufmann’s “Space and the Light of Creation”, published in 1933.
What Nature reveals, tells the true story, yet the efforts of those who are concerned with so-called contagious illnesses, are filled with abstract concepts, in which the idea of the part (such as atoms and germs) fails to grasp the living reality. (2) does recognize the idea of wholeness, or ecology, it just misses noticing the actual scale of the Feminine aspect of the Divine Mystery.
If molecules are corpses of something once living, then atoms are corpses of corpses. In which case the pursuit of a virus, or virion, is again looking at corpse material. What happens at Cern, in the Hadron Super Collider, is the annihilation of corpses of corpses of corpses, by ever more energized fresh out of a capture chamber a “tiny thing” that essentially lies on the threshold between the material and non-material realms, … “things” with half-lives so small, we should be ashamed to fancy the Creation was built out of such entities.
With regard to the electron microscope, we have a device that shoots a ray at pieces of corpse material, which scientists fancy are the cause of the illness. It is no wonder then, as explained in (2), that these tiny bits of stuff can hardly be called living. Again, I am not arguing against, but adding to.
A comment of Steiner’s become acutely relevant in the light of the conceptual morass noted above. From the last sentence of the original preface to The Philosophy of Freedom: “One must be able to confront an idea, and experience it, otherwise we will fall into its bondage.”
Also in (2), the authors speculate on the social changes that have accompanied the pandemic. Were they better informed about the Mother, they would see that She gave a time-out to the whole world, which was rushing headlong into ecological disasters. (7)
A reasonable question is: Why are people ill? If it is not a germ or virus, what is happening?
Around the 1850’s, commercial industrial processes began to pollute the whole living environment in which humans exist. The soil, the air, the water, the food, and the medicine (side-effects) are poisons. That is what makes us ill, and thus a suitable environment for ancient corpse material to attach itself.
There is much more complicated material, not known to Holdrege and McAlice, which I have detailed here: https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2021/10/09/the-indictment-for-crimes-against-humanity/
As far as I can tell, Holdrege and McAlice are unfamiliar with Thomas Cowan’s work. His Four-fold Path to Healing (nutrition, therapeutics, movement, and meditation) should be owned by everyone. The same with “Human Heart, Cosmic Heart”; “Autoimmunity, Vaccines, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illnesses”; as well as “Cancer and the New Biology of Water”.
Taken together they provide a real foundation for the book: “The Contagion Myth”.
Cowan is the Einstein of modern medicine. The game changer. As with Einstein, he encounters great resistance to his works. Fortunately the reader does not need to learn higher mathematics with Cowan (and his friend Sally Fallon Morell), for their work and writings are not just helpful to us personally, but a fine educational introduction to wonders not yet seen by materialistic medicine.
(1) https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2019/05/20/letters-about-magic/
(2) https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/jon-mcalice-and-craig-holdrege/ways-of-looking-at-a-virus
(3) https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/craig-holdrege-and-jon-mcalice/some comments-on-the-contagion-myth
(4) https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2021/06/01/dear-the-nature-institute-folk/
(5) https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA238/English/APC1957/19240912a01.html
Appendix A: Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s Answers to Six Questions about Some Basic Concepts of Natural Science. (Answered in 1919.)
(The exact questions no longer exist.)
Atoms are to be regarded as ideal contents of space. The contents are the results of force-directions meeting each other — e.g., directions of force. a b c are active in space, and by their meeting a resultant force is carried which is effective as an atom of tetrahedral character.
Elements are the expression of certain meetings of forces; that they manifest themselves as such is due to the fact that one force, in meeting another, produces a result, while other effects of forces on each other are without result.
Crystals are the result of more complicated meetings of forces, atoms the result of simple meetings.
Amorphic masses result from the neutralization of force-reactions.
Force is the revelation of spirit viewed in a one-sided way. One cannot say that force has an effect on matter, since matter consists merely in the affects of the force-rays when they meet.
Never does one form of energy pass over into another one; as little as the activity of one man goes into that of another. What passes over is merely the arithmetical expression of measure. If mechanical energy passes over into warmth the real occurrence is as follows: a certain quantity of this revelation which reveals itself in warmth is stimulated in a spiritual being by a certain quantity of mechanical energy. (This is so in a healthy fashion with Mayer. It was only Helmholtz who botched up this matter.)
Neither sound, nor warmth, nor light, nor electricity are vibrations, just as little as a horse is a sum of gallop-paces. Sound, for instance, is an essential entity, and the effect of this real quality in its passage through the air is vibration. For man as a sensing being, the vibration is motivation to imitate the essential entity in himself; this constitutes the perception of sound. It is similar with others: light, etc
.
Light is that by which it is perceived. (See Introduction to Goethe’s Theory of Colour.) The vibration is the revelation of light in the ether.
The refraction of light is the result of the effect of a certain force-direction upon the light-direction. Newton’s colour rings (circles), phenomena of interference, are results of light-radiation (effect of light in the ether), and of the effects of other forces found in the path of light (weakening effects, gradually weakening affects of other forces). The same goes for phenomena of polarisation. One should not seek the polarisation figures in the structure of the essence of the light but in the structure of the medium which places itself in the path of light.
The speed of transmission is the result of a kind of friction of the light against the medium.
Light is not to be considered as a function of electricity, but the latter is to be considered as a kind of corporeal carrier of light.
Electrically charged matter: certain accumulations of force retain those accumulations of force which manifest as electricity.
Mathematics is the abstracted sum of the forces effective in space. If one says, “Mathematical propositions are valid a priori”, this comes from the fact that man exists within the same lines of force as the other beings, and that he can disassociate himself from everything that does not belong to the scheme of space, etc.
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