An Invitation to an Alchemical Wedding.
The Anthroposophical Society is a community, which has many ideas of how the world would be a better place if Steiner was more known. There is a difficulty in taking such a stance, however, if your own house is not in order. His work output was massive, yet this riddle dominates: What makes Steiner folk think the Mystery put all Their Easter Eggs in just one basket?
I do Anthroposophy (method) to create Spiritual Science (content), … American (1) style some might say. Which means to me, one travels a path that includes relationships with the Underworld, aka: the Lost Cities, aka: Faerie – the Realm of the Mother, … where the descriptive name shaman is to be preferred to seer. Without a doubt Steiner was a seer, yet Socrates was effectively a “shaman”, being a priest of the Feminine Mysteries, aka: the Goddess Natura.
This Way of Experience was to be added to the work of Steiner, and the main Rite involved was given the name the Culmination, which was to be a meeting of two small groups of gifted individuals, who seldom incarnate at the same time. Steiner named them Aristotelians and the Platonists, and said that if this small group failed in its task, our civilization would continue to fall.
Some believe that meeting has happened – at least as far as the Society goes, but I see no evidence in the Steiner-speak world, given that the Language that would result, and the ideas pointed out, would no longer be the same as how the majority speak out of Spiritual Science today … if and when the two Ways are properly Married.
I was present at the main Culmination gathering, that occurred on the Ark internet discussion group, which meeting among the electronic aethers happened from around 1997 to 2003. As he promised, the spirit that had been known to us as Rudolf Steiner was there, under the name Harvey Bornfield.
The general agreement of that group was that while Steiner was great (not perfect, please), the Society was flawed. Some of those problems will be pointed out below. Keep in mind that this Culmination Rite is ongoing. As a Platonist, my relationship with the Goddess Nature is a love affair. She is intimate, powerful, life altering, yet coy, playful and mysterious. She should be courted.
In my writing, I name Rudolf Steiner as “the John the Baptist figure of the Second Becoming of Christ in the Realm of Living Thought. The voice crying in the wildness of scientific materialism” (Language). She, on the other hand, is not easily seen in the Steiner realm, because they no longer recognize Her deft, arts of singing into being: Rogue Weather, Climate Change, the Four Horsemen, and the Gate of Death.
Even “anthroposophists” (Aristotelians) can’t quite grasp the Ideal of the Meaning (not just the act, but the actor) of Being, unless they confess, and surrender, to the mystery of the Trinity, where if there is a Son, there must also be a Mother and a Father. Another way to appreciate this Mystery is that the primal Unity has three major attributes, or “faces”: the fathering (generating), mothering (nurturing), and the secondary unity, the Love of the Son (“All thing happened through Him, and not one thing that has happened, happened without Him”).
Consider that one of the underlying truths is that there is more that can be done, if the Society is to fulfill its role, for the future. As in – the Society can open their hearts to understanding Her. She, who has the whole world in His Hands (Language) via macro social events, such as this era of the Rite of Humanity Collectively Crossing the Threshold. This Rite unfolds via Their rulership (2) of the complicated Ritual which began with the Covid Plague … He as the Artist of Karma, and She as Divine Providence. The Hermetic Science of the ancient Egyptians refers to them as Fate and Fortune.
On a personal note, I am reminded of my own first dozen years as a member of the Society. Again, there was a kind of language mystery. I had been engaged for some years in the self observation of my own thinking, via the empirical methods of natural science (as encouraged by Steiner), but found – among anthroposophists – almost no discussions of the problem of freedom in the sense of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. “One must be able to confront an Idea, and experience it, otherwise one will fall into its bondage.”
Being new to the Society, I kept my own observations to myself. The language of Knowledge of Higher Worlds dominated, and most group studies were about Steiner-said, which I eventually described – in the lead article of my first magazine: “Outlaw Anthroposophy”, as “Some Musings on the Epistemological Swamp Land of the The Anthroposophical Society”.
Another oddity, perhaps fatal, is that Society members know so little of Goethean Science. The leaders mostly have contests for elaborating what Steiner meant, and ignore the remarkable genius of his best students.
As a consequence of certain attitudes of mine, I have not been truly included in the work of the Society, even though I have been devoted to Steiner since 1978. A kind of outlier as some say. While other people went to conferences, I just stayed home and did the work. I don’t think this is a problem, rather just karma, which is often a challenge in itself.
The Society has to become ready to gain what the shamans (devotees of the Goddess Natura) in the Americas have to offer (Wendt – uniting Hermetic Science with Anthroposophy; MacCoun, – uniting Christian and Tibetan Alchemy; and Clarke – uniting Kabbalah with Native American cosmology). The three of us were on the Ark, with Bornfield, and I only years later saw Harvey – a personal friend, as that figure we all talked about endlessly.
You can gain some insight into the way Lucifer and Ahriman work, by noticing that the three of us are seldom – if ever – invited to publish papers in anthroposophical media, or any other kind of interaction as an aspect of Spiritual Science. Meanwhile a non-America born individual is invited here to speak of Vidar, and the so-called Northern Way – an aspect of spirit alien to the Americas. This reminds me of the first Society gathering at Christmas I attended, where we were handed printouts of German Christmas Carols, in German, as songs to sing, … as if we didn’t have any of our own Carols in English
Sometimes in these venues I describe myself as a Christian, ahead of being an “anthroposophist”. See my CV, for conformation: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
The Society is also filled with folk in love with Nature, and seeking how to commune-with Her, rather than continue to assert dominion-over. All the same, the Americas are quite different in their “geology”, than what is true for Central Europe. If, as Steiner points out, our Souls on incarnation are built up out of an equilibrium between a spirit descending from higher worlds, and the spirit of the land we seek as place of birth, … the Ways of the Americas, as regards Her and Him, are unique.
For the last two and a half decades I have been a writer. For me this has not been so much of an obsession, as having a very vital and intuitive thought life, such that what comes from the new thinking must incarnate on a page, otherwise the mind is too full, and nothing more can become.
A few years back, I started to play with WordPress. That link is https://thecollectiveimagination.com What follows is a way to access a kind of personal library, and fool around with what I have been taught and had thought in me.
The main page has a three-dot drop down menu, and those categories speak for themselves. The lead article is called: “Evil “. The second article goes to two searchable lists of several hundred postings. Those links are just below, and after them – on the main page – the most recent or two diary entry …
Once on the searchable lists, use your browser open the “find” tool, and wander in (key words, such as Covid help). You can also just scroll down, checking out the names of the articles, or books. WordPress then takes my postings, and at the end adds links from their algorithm to three allegedly related articles of mine, and also shows the previous post, and the following one as well.
All in all there are dozens of books, and hundreds of articles, and most books that are in print are also available for free online.
While the system allows for comments, I don’t read them – at last count 643. I suspect folks think of my “public library” as similar to Facebook discussions. Writing for me is an art, and like any artist it makes no sense to me that others imagine that more blue here, and less red there, will be an improvement. The works could use an editor, sure. All the same, editorial flaws are desirable imperfections – a kind of beauty: read: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/zenpotter.html
I’ve been wondering about electricity, and other features of Nature, for decades. This has led to a kind of spiritual high energy physics. The latest article is here.
I also discovered that the three patriarchal monotheisms, are one religion, not three. https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2019/11/08/tiger-saucy-tells-of-some-overlooked-features-of-the-true-story-of-religions/ And, who is the identity of Ahriman’s incarnation (he is here now). People have contrary opinions, based most often on pre-thought thoughts (assumptions) and don’t want to look at the evidence and the reasoning. https://thecollectiveimagination.com/citizenship-and-modern-politricks/
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(1) America, an aspect of the Americas … Among the Fae, I heard a rumor that Ahriman’s support of the religion of Steinerism had successfully detoured many minds. It is helpful to imagine me, as a Gnomish wizard, off away from the others, grumpy over the mess this has made of things. Yet, we are where and when we need to be. Basic life hack: We are all the right person in the right place at the right time, and simultaneously the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
I am haunted by the shades of George Washington, Clara Barton, St. Matthew, Socrates, and a twelfth century tinker. George was a Mason. A skilled planner. Thought ahead, and regularly used a tincture of the cannabis plant. Clara was like modern movies’ depiction of late teenage heroines, such as Katniss Everdeen in the films called “the hunger games”. Sees the awful, and acts – running into the fire, not away from it. Matt, walked all over Judea, … walked. No taxis or limos. A story teller, creating an oral tradition (that years later is turned by another into text), without having any idea what was being born. Kind of amazed, and childlike. When you have meet a God, that is something few get to experience. Socrates particularly liked the intoxication that came with some of the Rites, in the Feminine Mysteries. She asks for everything. Complete surrender.
Then there is the trickster, the tinker. Showed up at Chartres, and while his lady read palms, he shared homemade whiskey and told tales from the Gypsy wisdom – a lingering memory of that most ancient Egyptian tradition.
(2) As this Easter (2023) approached, I wrote three essays which collectively explains the dynamic living social processes involved in this present Rite. https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2022/12/26/event-and-aftermath-the-creation-of-love-through-crisis/
Catherine MacCoun’s “On Becoming a Real Alchemist – a guide for the modern magician” is available on Amazon. Stephen Clarke’s “The Sacred Geometry of Ancestral Pathways’’ is available through me as a 1550k+ download word file. hermit@tiac.net It is thirty eight pages when printed, and filled with remarkable art. My basic work on Hermetic Science, in relationship to modern physics, is here: https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2019/05/20/letters-about-magic/
A Feast for the Courtship … already being enacted in a variety Ways all over the world, where the ancient Earth Religions are being remembered.
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 