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: 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 him as that person too.

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/

~!~!~!~???~!~!~!~

(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 twelve 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 heroins, 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.

Songs of Shame and Failure

This morning, when I was setting out to finish this whatever it is, I had the idea to do a tarot reading for the World. Ordinarily I don’t do predictive readings, Tarot being the most ancient book of wisdom. While I do have a special living-book in my “spirit bag”, since we are being playful, I’ll use a more recent version of the symbolic art. My personal one is based on the work and images in the book: “Practical Astrology” by St. Germain (still in print, hard to find the cards/leaves of the book inside the book though).

I’ll shuffle the leaves, and draw seven – representative of the coming seven days of the passion of Christ. Between each draw, the leaves will be shuffled again – with the book completely present each time. The so-called indicator is not being left out of the ongoing seeking wisdom in chaos. The draw will involve a left handed division of the book, with the indicator being the top leaf.

Moon-day: The Two of Swords, water-feeling element. Mars-day: The Eight of Cups, fire-will element. Mercury-day: The Nine of Cups, air-intellect element. Jupiter-day: The Four of Cups, earth-consciousness element. Venus-day: The Eight of Cups, water-feeling element. Saturn-day: The Six of Cups, earth-consciousness element. Sun-day: The Queen of Pentacles, fire-will element.

As to the four natures, Swords is Fire, Staffs is Intellect, Cups is Feeling, and the Coins is Earth. If there is a pattern that touched me, as a helpful hint to pondering … The first three days of the week, according to ancient lore, are fire/water/fire the earth then only once, and the last three are earth/water/earth. This daily back ground then receives Swords, Cups, Cups, Cups, Cups, Cups and then Pentacles … or, will, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, and last, consciousness.

It can be asked … of what value is Egyptian cosmology in the age of Steiner’s Spiritual Science? What does a thoughtful phenomenology experience?

Meanwhile – this Easter – the world shakes …

Most sane Americans knew this day was coming. After 2008, Congress and presidents fell back in line with the desires of “bankers”, the high priests of the religion of free market capitalism.

One way to see this failure is to attend to the spiritual social phenomena … our time has been called the age of the consciousness soul: aka the third shaking … where individual biographies must have crisis in order to create the good and the true. … out of themselves. Our minds look at the awful in and of the human dominated world, and find evidence of vast conspiracies as a cause of most suffering. There has to be a better Way to live.

Not surprisingly, the Son’s admonition to Judge Not is the key to understanding. Easy to say, takes Courage and art to do. Another way is that Love reveals that all the bad and evil remains mysteries until we have the Courage to ask: What does the Mystery see in this individual person, that I have yet to comprehend?

In our world today, Everyone has to make choices. The difficult part is finding the Courage to act out of the own insight. From one point of view, the banksters effect on this collective moment is an indirect effect of higher impulses, as She, who has the whole world in His Hands, is also the “composer-conductor” of a living symphony of modern social and political experience, in which we are adored individual and unique variations on a theme.

The basic instruments of the soul are the four temperaments, which have some interesting characteristics. To the ancient Egyptian priests their symbology of the elements was a scientific observation. Choleric = Fire = Will; Sanguine = Air = Intellect; Phlegmatic = Water = Feeling; and Melancholic = Earth = Consciousness, aka: the spirit world, the soul world, and the physical world, the first three being a single corporate expression. Consciousness (Earth) is made of the union of Fire (Will), Air (Intellect), of Water (Feeling)

Fire and Air, in combination = the spirit world; Air and Water in combination generate the soul world; and Water and Earth generate the physical material world. RS submits that there are four bodies: physical, life body, astral body, and spirit, or warmth, body. I’ve read in RS that the physical body is not the matter – the “stuff”, but the laws that govern materialization.

Let us not forget the ancient powers, that the Greeks called the Titans. Their hearts and hands are all over earthquakes, plagues, conquests, famine, and death. Who rules them? She, the Mother does, … with love. Even titans of industry have karma.

The ill-managed world economy is just one engine of chaos. In addition the cultural life of the world, in the sense of the influence of Ideas, such as the Dying and Becoming of “Western” Civilization, is another such engine of division as to who is right about most everything. The realm of the heart – the political-legal sphere of our social lives – is also undergoing metamorphosis, through disorder given that the law is presently most everywhere a factor of excessive order.

A bass tone – in the whole – is each one’s need to individualize themselves. As a consequence, She weaves the personal biographies into a whole tapestry of meaning. She – Fire – is the weaver; the father – Intellect – the loom, and the son – Feeling – is the infinite threads of many colors. Together They are Earth = Consciousness. At the sword point of the shuttle lie our choices. We act. The Mystery reacts.

String instruments come to mind. In Hermetic Science She is Fortune, and He is Fate. As to the Emerald Tablet, we are the microcosm. The News – as much as it gets the facts straight – is about others, whose fate is to become “teaching stories”, if we wish it so.

Should we be depressed about weather, and economic circuses? With some certainty – in America – an economic leveling has to occur. Scarcity is on the rise.

Those who like to create “markets”, need customers, and other wealth, that are not theirs to take. Ownership instead of Stewardship is the false god of the religion of free market capitalism. To create the bought and sold object crafts, we need workers. We are also consumers of what is made. To control resources we need wars, and cannon fodder to fight them.

There is no saving anything. Unless it is ourselves. The falling apart can be ridden, like a wild winged horse in a stampede of hungry lions. Not easy, yet one act can manage the core trials: surrender. Not just to the world, but also to our own nature

This is a forked-lightening path … a cascading stew of choices many, … daily. Often there are immediate consequences. Keep in mind that there is no future or past, only Now.

These meanings are from St. Germain’s book: “Practical Astrology” (still in print). {I have woven in the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ.}

The Two Swords … foretells a duel, yet the results will not be fatal. Your partnerships will not go smoothly; and in general many obstacles will be thrown in your way. [washing the feet]

The Eight of Cups … scandals due to love affairs, or unfortunate choice of husband or wife. [the scourging]

The Nine of Cups … there will be a marriage with an elderly person, but it advises you to keep away from marriage altogether. [the crowning with thorns]

The Four of Cups … a great joy is in store for you. You will meet with strong friendships and enduring love. There will soon be an increase in your family.

[the carrying of the cross]

The Eight of Cups … scandals due to love affairs, or unfortunate choice of husband or wife. [the crucifixion]

The Six of Cups … means that there will be much indecision in your love affairs and that you will probably make a poor choice by not listening to the voice of your heart or to that of your conscience; there are also probabilities of divorce or of intrigues outside of wedlock. [the death]

In the ancient Egyptian Way, the symbol of The Mistress of the Pentacle, suggests a coming brilliant marriage or, in general the influence of one in high position willing to help you. [the resurrection]

As I was writing this, a curious thought passed by. What if the reading is about the individual, and their relationship with the Mystery? That is the love affair problematic, that weaves through all the readings.

“Don’t think I came to cause peace across the land. I didn’t come to cause peace, I came to wield a sword, because I came to divide a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a bride against her mother-in-law, and to make a man’s servants his enemies. Whoever prefers father or mother over me is not worthy of me; and whoever prefers son or daughter over me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever found his life will lose it, and the one who lost his life because of me will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me, receives my Sender.” {Mathew 10: 34-40.}

When I quoted this in my book: The Way of the Fool, I explained its meaning this way: “Here Christ is telling us that individuality, the freedom and development of the human i-AM, is so important to the Creation, that the overcoming of the ties of blood (family values) is of greater significance, than the preservation of any tradition.”

A hermit’s heart and mind reflected in the sense world of “matter” … chronic knee pain, among a few other gifts of aging, confined me to my home – going for a walk in the woods not possible. Much work and play had to have its temple …

Each corner of the “square” room, from one point view, is a cross-axis of the Four Directions. These also have their own warding staff … which has no powers whatsoever, other than to remind of the related “idea” …. each of the staffs have their own story …

East – the actual direction the sun rises, and shines into this Wizard’s Aerie:

upper right, my Lady … a buddha by nature … an incarnation of kindness and generosity … we both like books and the house is full of them … both our fathers were born in Montana. I also went to Law School in Missoula, while years later she did a year of college there … she once ate at a restaurant in Denver – called the Broker, a place I spent some time washing dishes … In 2008, I was at meeting in the Concord MA library. She walked through a door surrounded by a golden halo. I got her phone number from the mutual friend who ran the meeting. First date, we talked for five hours, closing a Chinese place. We did not touch … then about two weeks later we were sitting together on a couch in her living room, and at the same time we leaned into each and felt “home” …

North (above):

Upper left, pacific northwest icon, opposite schematic of the Millennium Falcon

West (the sun sets and the moon comes out):

note the serpent flute, the warding staff was a gift … upper left out of focus, Happy thumbs-up Jesus from the movie “Dogma” … door to living room left, and to the master bed room right …

South (below):

red picture with odd light reflection … reproduction of the carved head of Steiner’s Representive of Humanity.

Favorite book:

many seasons of the forest that begins 23 feet from my study widow – eleven years love affair, considering I mostly can’t walk without a lot of knee pain …

all those trees outside my window, make a glorious dome, as they share the sun and the sky …

the forest kind of ends … perhaps a hundred feet from my window to the right, beyond which is houses three, tho’ barely visible … I was sitting in my study one day, and had a sudden impulse to grab my camera, having guessed She (a local grandmother three) might be interesting in the late afternoon sun. I could never have imagined this scene. I’ve always felt She mediated between the forest to Her left, and the 17 foot tall arborvitae that formed the tree wall between us and the neighbor on that side. The “owner” of the land cut Her down a couple years back, not seeing Her as anything other than a dead tree, in the way of things. I grieved a bit, and then realized the root system, of which She was a spiritual nexus remained ….

sometimes the clouds kiss the ground, and mists magical are present … the above bark-less grandmother tree in the center, I didn’t even notice until recently, She’s invisible in summer. the hawk that visits once in a while, sits on the horizontal limb in the left half of the picture. We have had the usual squirrels, birds, and racoons on the deck for food in the winter, and much of the year the squirrels frolic in the branches in front of me, with the usual daring and beauty. We have had a mother bear, and two little ones cruse the yard in the Spring. A dog of ours, that was near death for awhile and yet survived, called forth a vulture who watched for a few hours and then left. My favorite, was being on the deck after second spring visit and the trio of bears left – after 20 minutes grazing. It was night, and as I looked into the yard when they traveled away, first passing to the left of the Grandmother Tree, a silver fox crossed right to left in front of Her, paused and looked at me over its left shoulder, before disappearing into the Forest.

bear cub in tree … studying climbing, another year and in the daylight

an annual symphony of light and shadow …

Altars:

I wanted to build a kind of zone of passage, between the forest, and the study … something for equilibrium … In part this is from the vision I had one day looking out my window, where I realized inside the house, from the framing skeleton, to the walls, to the furniture, to my desk, to the pencils and paper, and “leaves” of my books, was She transformed by our hands …

around the time of the change, I found this chest in a falling down garden shed, of a place we rented … that was in 1971 … It was painted green, and empty, …. I cleaned it up, and its been with me now for fifty-two years …

lower left, turtle with the earth on its back, going up: a bear in an easy chair, (one of my Indian-like names is Lazy Bear) …. the center is a famous painting, and I saw in it the tension of attraction between the male and female architypes, … sort of: “sorry dude, no sex until you are seriously washed clean … you stink”. … the cork board is mostly a place for memories and tokens of falling through life … I write beneath its gaze …

some artifices of the desk, a pipe for dreaming, and a favorite book: George Adams: “Physical and Ethereal Spaces”

gnomic masters of existence

My Lady went on a trip of several days, and asked me to turn an oblong planter – that was in our front hall under a window – into a fairy garden … this is a small corner, and the whole slowly evolves with the seasons,

next, searching for faeries …. in the study … they tend to be out of focus, which gives the picture a remarkable quality

south corner detail

the one above and the one below are in the mediation zone

she below is just to the left of the West corner

this lady is guarding some books, while resting in a wooden mortar and pestle.

the chest is under the towel … whenever I look at my study, and feel off about the chaos, I take out my inner gnome, and clean and organize … fun part is how often this “cleaning” leads to me finding something I had misplaced, and perhaps had even been looking for with some impatience … in a certain sense we are playing hide and seek, …

This book shelf came with the house, and my desk is just beneath, while in between is the cork board of memory …

art supplies, and my shaman-lawyer briefcase, for whenever if I get to go to court ….

favorite cane, lazy bear’s electric chair … great for practical Franz Bardon studies …

more books … another cane and a gripper for reaching ….

books, and an art work in process – I want to make something wild, and large, and call it “Strange-fire”, the living and self-conscious space ship for exploring the astral expanse ,,,

needs no comment …

above and below, the alchemist mind needs to never forget death …

when we first moved in, eleven years ago, I could still go up and down the stairs to the Underworld Temple. Like the tree throughout the house, the mineral world is exposed here, what with lines electrical, heat and cooling ducts, a furnace and oil tank, as well as waste removal tubes … the house came with four fireplaces, and the altar to the left features Her, holding Him (curtesy Raphael), laid over a map of the starry world.

the paintings to the right of Her and Him, are by a friend: Robert Nuckels. I have others, … a sketch of his is the man with the gun in the lower part of the window. The group, on the brick wall in this picture, were done after he had read Patrick Dixon’s “America – the Central Motif”

The grass outside the window. The tree wound on the right was there when we moved in. Yard services suggested creating another wound (to the left), worried about storms and falling trees. I sought to heal the one to the left with a hexagonal natural stone discovered who knows when. The crystal standing on it was a gift that my Lady had received. The healing gesture to the right, was what I call my Hopi Stone (see below). The right tree transformed, and joined the ground over the years. My Lady’s crystal went inside her meditation room, and the Hopi Stone is now resting in the other wound, itself coved with moss, and encircled each spring with various kinds of mycelium manifestations.

Buddha watches over this part of the “yard”, as does St. Francis look upon the deck.

first visit … Mother bear, guarding the base of the tree the baby bear was enjoying

Recently discovered the above (2023)

Early research on Hopi Prophecy (1996) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/eldbr.html

A view of this material ten years later. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/twbhp.html

Includes a link to 35 videos on Youtube, the same material as above with additional thoughts and connections to our times. https://www.youtube.com/user/joel232001#p/c/83FB144A08E3E617/0/iKLFQYhbE8

Some artwork by yours truly:

I went to visit the Hopi mesas in 1986, over a two day trip of 600 miles each way, on Easter Saturday, and Sunday. I spoke briefly with an elder: Grandfather David Monogye, about the Prophecy. He was 106, tiny, and blind. We held hands as we talked (which he initiated). During this conversation, he rocked a bit back and forth. When I told I thought I knew who the True Brother was, and that these folks (anthroposophists) had new science that showed that the Earth was a living being, he stopped rocking. Then his granddaughter, who was nearby, stepped between us breaking the connection, and told me to leave, … she actually said she did not want me disturbing an old man’s dreams.

Art work by Robert Nuckles. This is also the cover of my novel: “American Phoenix” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/amphx.html

The Mood of Easter, in the Light of Our Individual Logos Nature

Over the course of my adult life, I began to notice a remarkable inner phenomena.

As the Season of Easter came and went there arose a kind of dying and becoming in my soul. Aspects of my soul life seemed no longer necessary, and this death in the soul was – in the beginning – painful, perhaps even depressing. The basic mood of soul was a kind of dread.

Then around Good Friday, the dying passed, and by Sunday, and the Resurrection, new and hopeful aspects of soul emerged. Over time I learned to notice which aspects wanted to be let go, and this meant I could name them, and participate in their dying and becoming.

Over these few decades, I was simultaneously making an empirical study of “thinking, where I would write something like: “the logical (Logos Nature) of thought is …. “

One of the ways this appears is when we ponder or muse about life, and then make and experience connections. This own logos logic is felt, more than pictured. We might wonder whether or not other’s should or have to make the same connections. Not an easy moral riddle, given the demands of others to see the world the Way they see it.

In our life, we might muse on an experience we call: common sense. “It makes sense (meaning) to me”. That each of us might have different results, the inner felt experience remains the same and we are right to trust it.

In terms of human experience, each spirit-spark is the center of a universe. I am here, and out there is … what?

Over the biography we create an inner understanding of this “what?” We make personal inner art, … which is meaning. Emerson wrote of what he called (I paraphrase) “a ray of relation connecting our self, and all the objects of experience.“

If we look at the spiritual-meaning of human history, we soon find everywhere-when that our story once included the experience of connectiveness of all to all. Did this feeling disappear from how we conceive today, and were we led this way to a shared abyss – ruled by the religions of unnatural science and free market capitalism?

The science of the ancients knew the mystery directly. Modern life – the third shaking of the world, as known to those native peoples still connected – is a crisis of meaning. Are we the generated and nurtured love creation of the mystery, or a random accident in an uncaring cosmos?

To the Romantic poets a great loss. Us and Nature somehow disconnected. That is changing, one individual heart’s mind at a time … by conscious choice, we are traveling home, to become connected to the Garden once more.

For these decades I have become connected to the logos nature of the works of Rudolf Steiner. Among those works, and followed by his followers, is the idea of Evil and Good. He speaks of great powers, such as Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat, and the Asuras, as capable of great Evil.

My logos nature asked: If these bad guys could win, should not it already be over – so what is going on given that they have not? After all, we are still here.

Clearly then there had to be power in the realm of mystery that ruled them – the alleged bad guys. The question was answered easily for me: the Holy Mother – Earth Mother.

I often share this idea these days, by writing of “She who has the whole world in His Hands”. I also write of the ancient’s great idea of the Macrocosm and the microcosm. As Above, so Below, and As Below, so Above … for the Miracle of the One.

The One has aspects. These are qualitative realities. One aspect is the act of fathering or generation. Its mirror is the act of mothering or nurturing. As these qualities never lose wholeness or connection, their union aspect is love. Not just the idea of love, but deeds of real caring.

One does not have to believe, for there to be experiences that are themselves knowing. We are blessed this way, regardless of our view of the world.

Each of us are created this way – generation and nurturing and loving are all potential. Still, we are a universe, living and bumping into other universes. The Trinity latent in the One, aka: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … these are within the reach of our wills, … we are essentially Them … as above so below.

Trust your common sense logos nature logical musings … nobody but you knows the complexity of your biographical story as well as you do … nobody.

{first draft) written while intoxicated with the Mother’s medicine that grows like a weed, and listening – via Alexa – to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra}.

The above is connected to two other discoveries. These are elaborated here: https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2022/12/26/event-and-aftermath-the-creation-of-love-through-crisis/ and here: https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2023/02/20/a-song-of-the-entombment-in-the-key-of-lent/

Bragging Rites

My eldest son, Marc A. Wendt, is turning sixty on the seventh of March. I’ll try not to be too embarrassing … in what I share. I knocked his mother (Tina) up, when I was in the USAF Academy. She was 17, and gorgeous. Yet, DNA is not the heart of who we are.

Also, my memory may have glitches, so Marc may disagree …

He was born in 1963. In high school he taught himself how to play the guitar. He is still in a band, that gets invited to play small Lake Tahoe venues on holidays, besides more local venues. https://www.lumanationmusic.com/

He didn’t graduate from high school. However, he did get pretty good at playing ultimate Frisbee, in those years. We were living in time and place – Berkeley California – a leading light in the ‘60’s. We were not raising our kids the way our parents had. We marched in a major protest in San Francisco, with him in tow, and he wore a sign: “Draft Dodger – 1984”.

His best friend’s father owned a restaurant in Mill Valley California. At various times, Marc washed dishes there, learned grill cook there, and manage a restaurant there. This eatery, with a touch or two of Mexican, often had as customers various members of rock bands – and such folk of fame within the film business.

This region – “Marin Country”, was allegedly cursed by the being forced-out Natives: “May you never want to leave.” Marc still lives there. I don’t remember the details, but Marc applied for a job with Lucas Films that had a huge place in Marin … the legendary Skywalker Ranch.

He worked for “George” for twenty years. He had two major kinds of jobs. I use the familiar first name, because that is what his employees called him – affectionately – among each other.

One involved the care-taking of various objects … after a time he ran the “archives”, a multi-building storage of much of the stuff from the films, and all the products that were licensed for sale. Those latter folks were required to send to Lucas Films one hundred of whatever they were selling.

Marc later proposed, and set up, a process by which the excess of toys and such were given away at Christmas, to groups – like firemen – that do toy gathering.

His other complicated job was to manage audio-visual presentations given to interested licensees. For example, while a film was in post production, he traveled with “George” to five cities in Europe. To show clips and such. He traveled with almost a dozen “trunks”, full of tech. Even though Marc had spent hours – via phones and emails – trying to get the venues prepared in advance, he was ready with the right cord and such, to get the setup working anyway.

When Disney bought Lucas Films, from “George”, they paid two billion in cash, and two billion in stock. With a lot of co-workers, he was then “traded” to Disney, and worked for them in the same job, although with much sadness. The profit driven Disney people didn’t care about the cultural value of the archives, and Marc knew these items would be just stuffed in places, with a minimum of interest in their long term preservation.

After a few months, Marc was told to move to LA, or be let go. “George” had negotiated fairly reasonable extra payouts, but still …

Marc wandered a bit, and then decided to become a “life coach”. Took classes, was coached himself, and is still connected to his support network. He also manages youth camps in the summer.

https://marcwendtcoaching.com/

http://www.marcwendtproductions.com/coaching.html

My take on “coaching” is that people need someone to talk to, privately and intimately, without this process being called an “illness”. Coaches need to be someone who has lived life – its ups and downs, and sideways and byways. Been there done that.

Think about it … I’m his father. All of my five children have borne the burden of that encounter. Just as I have “encountered” them. Many places in my writing I describe them as my most important teachers.

Enough about me …

There is an old toy called a “flexy-flier”. It is like a single person snow sled, except it has wheels instead of runners. He and a friend rode it on a steep long hill together, one piled on the other. I don’t remember many details of this daring, except that led to serious road rashes, and a trip to the hospital.

I point this out as a seed of a certain kind of fearlessness. When he commits himself, he is all in. He was married for a long time to an alcoholic, an intelligent woman who was a nurse in an intensive care unit. His nature is to be committed, and loyal. He did Al-anon, so that he knew how to give the right care, and the right limits.

One summer, he was playing a role in a Star Wars convention, and got me, and his available siblings, in for free, all wearing lanyards that let us into various places, … through a door just for such folk, who then get seats in the front.

We were on our own for a bit, and then we sought him out where he was working, an audio-visual room (large) where people might to get hear “George” and friends live, with moving pictures and such. Marc was at this space at the back of the room, on a raised 20 feet by 20 feet platform covered with gear, and people doing stuff.

We got together to go somewhere else and as we walked out the door he came with us. I said: “Don’t you have to do stuff?” He said, “No problem, I’ve got people.” Me: “You’ve got people! That is so cool”.

When Marc was in high school, he and some friends formed a “garage” band. That is they took over a garage, and covered it all over inside with egg cartons as baffles. His sister, Doren, was a gifted singer, and was part of the band.

I was working as a grill cook, at a place that had outdoor seating, and sometimes some music. Their band was set up to do a gig, on a Friday afternoon I think.

The night before, while walking from the garage toward home (such as it was), Doren was so “high” emotionally that she walked in front of a moving car (was not the first time she was a car magnet, either – this was number three).

The band played their gig, with Doren singing while on crutches – just a slight hip dislocation – still aches today. Some of the band members continued to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he and they still hang out occasionally, and might even turn on an electric guitar and a keyboard or two.

His uncle (my brother Doug) was driving him, with me for company, to spend a few weeks in the care of his grandmother, who lived in Great Falls Montana. Doug surprised us both, for he knew how to get to the Snake River Canyon in Idaho, where Evil Knievel – one of Marc’s hero’s – would try, yet fail, to take a rocket and fly over the chasm.

News reports said there were 20,000 people there. We had to walk a couple of miles, to end up sharing, with some serious “Bikers”, a picnicking zone on the edge with a good view. Daring women took their clothes off. Marc was a fan, of course, for a six or seven year old – what an adventure.

My older brother Lou had three daughters. I don’t quite remember the details, but we went camping a Glacier National Park, and woke up to snow everywhere. Young Marc had to spend most of his time in the tent with his older cousins, who with full teenage rigor teased him mercilessly. They gave him a “name”, which I shall take to my grave.

When he was three of four, the Batman was first on TV, and when their theme song played at the start, Marc would drive up in his big wheels to watch. Around that time he was maybe four. Had to go to the hospital twice. One time were playing on the bed, and he fell and hit his head. Another time, he was being baby sat by a woman with a child of the same age, who decide to hit Marc on the back of the head with a hammer.

There is no “sign” here. Children run to fast, fall done go boom. Parents lose their minds over anything bleeding.

When he was an infant, and feverish, I would walk all night holding him. I also used to throw him up in the air, and then catch him, when he was a toddler. Might have made him fear heights.

Every birthday now, he walks across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The attached picture is of Marc, with his parents. Mom (Tina) died a few years ago of cancer. He has been a great support for my work. When it was needed, and possible, he always stepped up for both of us.

He filmed me a few years ago, doing my bits about spirit and the world. Saved for a later documentary. When I wrote my screen treatment for “the Grandmother War” he reworked it in the expected form: “Final Draft”.

Mom had become a Buddhist, and I was a Christian wizard. Recently I sold the rights to all my intellectual and personal property (including an excellent library) to him for a dollar. Lately, Marc has been part of a group studying Kabbalistic Writings.

He lives with his Lady (a jewelry artist) in Marin Country. There’s a dog, and a garden, and on occasion a wafting of sea air.

I would not be me, without him … first son, the one parents have to experiment on. Fortunately, they fly the coop, escape to their own lives, … while I am writing this, I discover that after my Lady, he is my best friend.

A Song of the Entombment, … in the Key of Lent.

Whether we know this – or not – our biographies share common trials and experiences. In the wider cultures of the world there are different maps to the same territory. Here, I will use Christian Iconography, which is based on the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ: 1) Washing the Feet; 2) the Scourging; 3) the Crowning with Thorns; 4) the Carrying of the Cross; 5) the Crucifixion; 6) the Entombment; and 7) the Resurrection.

These are discussed in detail, in Tomberg’s “Inner Development”(1), written while he was still working within the School of Spiritual Science, and the Anthroposophical Movement. Theses seven lectures were given in Rotterdam, on 15-22 August 1938.

1. The New Michael Community and its Significance for the Future. 2. Meditation – Its Being and its Effect. 3. Indian Yoga in Relation to the Christian-Rosicrucian Path. 4. Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. 5. The Two Guardians of the Threshold. 6. The Occult Trials. 7. Rudolf Steiner’s Life-Path as the Way of the Christian Initiate.

I have made some personal observations over the years, of these trial aspects of Christian Initiation: see “Cowboy Bebop and the Physics of Thought as Moral Art”(2). Self observation, coupled with the intuitions of artists, revealed that we all go through these trials, and within any given biography they do not have to happen in the above order, or only once. We can experience “a Crowning with Thorns“ in our personal lives, and then later a “Scourging”.

A Crowning with Thorns happens when intimates deny the value of our thoughts. Scourging is the judgmental stones that are thrown at us in words, by these same intimates. It is called Karma … this power. Intimates are not just family, but also bosses, co-workers, jailers, and lovers.

For a shared trial within this crisis of civilization, we have the Plague. To conceive the world as a school of hard knocks and shared pain, allows us to also notice many opportunities to “wash the feet” aka: “Event and Aftermath – the Creation of Love Through Crisis”(3).

This potential practice of Stage 1 is always present. A Sign of coming Resurrection – a dying and becoming of “Western” civilization – is the everywhere cross-cultural experience of Entombment – so much going on all over, not just in the whole world, but as regards our intimates – we become aware of just how powerless we are to “save” them, and sometimes ourselves as well.

Entombment and depression are neighbors in the soul. In each case the will is paralyzed. The former can be dealt with, in a way quite different from the latter. (4) From this Plague Rite, we are in preparation for the 6^th Epoch, engendering a soul capacity of waking up through pain. Not just ours, but other’s pain as well.

Yesterday I had a two hour phone call with my eldest daughter (age 56). We’ve had many such over the years. She lives now month to month, and needs serious and costly dental work. Her personal experience of the plague-illness was quite difficult, and she presently lives alone. The most I can do is lend an ear, hopefully seasoned with sage advice – yet still a limiting effect and sign of our own powerlessness (Entombment).

I know her voice, which these days does not so much despair, as revealing a courage and refusal to succumb. Today she is better at coping with life’s chaos, than when she spent 15 years teaching school in Los Angeles. She had dental back then, yet trying to educate children, in an environment that opposes creativity (lesson plans have to be approved and so forth), … it was eating her soul.

Today she teaches individual kids, whose families she met that had a child with special needs, none of which were being met by the “L.A. School District”.

All of us can tell such stories of family and friends. Meanwhile the News floods us with horror, yet if we think about it, 99.999% of the billions of humans on the planet, are not in war zones, or digging through rubble searching for signs of life.

The oddity of Entombment is that it is the Gate of Surrender. In recovery, the idea is: “Let go, let God”. Christ, the human being, also surrendered – at the ripe moment – to implacable circumstances.

Carrying the Cross happens when we act in life as a moral human being. The Crucifixion is when we are nailed to the demands of others, for the expression of our own heart’s mind.

The death of possibilities can be an experience of the soul, when we give up some aspects of self, in order to follow the Will of Fortune (Divine Providence) and Fate (the Artist of Karma). Yet, … it is curious is it not, that our prayer is “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”. St. Paul allegedly wrote or said: “Not I, but Christ in me”.

I don’t think he understood … what was his idea of Christ? Something we already are, or some Ideal by which we should measure ourselves, … and others? Paul was not a disciple – a fisher of men, but a zealot who just changed the object of his religious passions. Many are the folk who have had their own Damascus Event, … the Roman Catholic Church called them saints, and confined them to holy orders. Which suggests Paul was not all that unique.

When we accept (surrender to) the biographical reality of the Seven Stages, we will then see we all are already sons and daughters of Mystery. The hard to bare moods of the trials are often longer than we wish, for growth of this sort requires time. Yet, if we just step back a bit, and see the Whole as it is, – we might get the idea of John the Baptist, about the One coming after him, who will baptize us all in Fire and Holy Breath.

(1) https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Development-Valentin-Tomberg/dp/0880103639/ref=sr_1_1?crid=N0LDPU82C5GE&keywords=tomberg+inner+development&qid=1676910263&s=books&sprefix=tomberg+inner+developement%2Cstripbooks%2C103&sr=1-1

(2)

http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/CowboyBebop.html

(3)

(4)

Some reflections on the Truth Value

of Modern Theoretical Physics

The use of the term “Ideal” below is modeled after this formulation: first: Phenomena. second: Concept. third Idea; and fourth Ideal, from Tomberg’s “The Art of the Good – On the Regeneration of Fallen Justice”.

I have been doing spiritual (Ideal) physics for almost three decades. My earliest work was “There is no Free Energy: Space and “field” phenomena; Nature and sub-nature”. https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/46/n05/Goethe_Space_Field_Phenomena.html

There I challenged the idea, that a device that puts out more electrical energy, than its electrical input, is not actually creating “free” energy. “It” comes from some “place”, and I made references to Lehrs book: “Man or Matter”, and three works of George Adams Kaufmann: “Space and the Light of Creation”; “Physical and Ethereal Spaces”; and, “Universal Forces in Mechanics”

One of the great tragedies for the Anthroposophical Society, and as a consequence for the whole World, is the loss of Adams’ works on mathematical physics. Among the basic books of Goethean Science, “Physical and Ethereal Spaces” should be first. Conceive of reading it as Yoga for the Imagination. “As Rudolf Steiner said on one occasion, we must learn to experience what is “extensive” intensively, and what is “intensive” extensively.” https://kyl.neocities.org/books/%5BTEC%20ADA%5D%20physical%20and%20ethereal%20spaces.pdf

My next excursion into a contemplation of Ideal Physics was: “Electricity and the Spirit in Nature” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/electricityandthespiritinnature.html

In that work I try to see Nature’s processes in their wholeness expression. This requires working first with the ideas of thinking and the imagination, so as to then be able to understand their effect on how we see the world. The work is long, as it must be for our ideation, given that folks suffering from modern “education”, believe the world is basically parts, and hardly any thought is given to how it all functions together with the whole.

Further work on an Ideal Physics was done here: “Letters on Magic” https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2019/05/20/letters-about-magic/

As I had been studying Hermetic Science (magic) since about 1973, I was drawn into the idea that there might be a relationship between the four elements of classical antiquity, Fire/will; Air/intellect; Water/feeling; and, Earth/consciousness, and the four fundamental forces and transformations of modern physics: Electromagnetism; Gravity; and the Weak and Strong nuclear forces.

As it needed to be, it also is long – I wrote it in 12 parts. Along the way I encourage the thought that a quantum world does not actually exist. This includes the study of David Shiang’s: “God does not play dice”.

I began the series on Magic with a reference to an article in the New York Times: “Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics”.

My latest effort to study electrical phenomena began with the certainty that behind every phenomena stands living Cosmic Beings. “The Father at Rest – magical and mystical dark-matter physics in the Age of Technological Chaos”.

The primary Ideal is Unity. There is also a pairing, as a consequence: Father (the generator – the One) and Mother (the nurturer – the Many). What is lamely called “quantum entanglement” (two particles, after being separated in Space, cannot be separated in Time) is proof of the fundamental Unity, a quality never lost, however many transformations.

For example, the latest research in high energy physics has suggested that the mathematical “point” in space, where the God Particle (the Higgs Boson, aka: the cause of mass) is to be found, shows abnormal electrical presence (the strength of the field provided by the principle of Unity) … that is 125 times larger than the hydrogen atom.

A recent New York Times article is named: “Physics and the Future”. Below is the whole article copied, with comments by me in []’s, and italics. Mysterious are the Ways of the Tiny. There being many points of view, or multiple kabbalah’s, I can share with those interested, Stephen Clarke’s: “The Sacred Geometry of Our Ancestral Pathways”. Send me an email {hermit@tiac.net}, and I’ll send a word file.

The Art is terrific, … it is about 37 pages, and a serious reader should print it.

I also recommend Georg Unger’s “On Nuclear Energy and the Occult Atom”, which – amazingly – still seems to be in print.

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~~!~!~ begin quote

The future belongs to those who prepare for it, as scientists who petition federal agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy for research funds know all too well. The price of big-ticket instruments like a space telescope [the assumption of a lifeless and non-sentient Nature dominates – see http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/space.html ], or particle [the smallest parts create the observable whole] accelerator can be as high as $10 billion.

And so this past June, the physics community began to consider what they want to do next, and why.

That is the mandate of a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, called Elementary Particle Physics: Progress and Promise. Sharing the chairmanship are two prominent scientists: Maria Spiropulu, Shang-Yi Ch’en Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and the cosmologist Michael Turner, an emeritus professor at …

Ariel Davis, asking questions … [image selections by yours truly]

In the 1980s, Dr. Turner was among the scientists who began using the tools of particle physics to study [so, from the tiniest, we can build up the whole?] the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe, and using the universe [the “universe” as a theory – idea] to learn about particle physics. Dr. Spiropulu, born in Greece, was on the team in 2012 that discovered the long-sought Higgs boson at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN; she now uses quantum computers to investigate the properties of wormholes. [above, in Letters on Magic, I deconstructed the quantum Loki inspired fantasy, with the help of a MIT trained engineer, who thought in a very different way from the “theorists”]. The committee’s report is scheduled for release in June 2024.

[The tricky part goes like this: there is a real aspect to what they study in High Energy physics. The conceptions in which their conclusions are framed, however, are in error. For starters, there is no place in the “universe”, where what is done in a Hadron super-collider is also done by “nature”. Theory sez this happens in our Sun and Stars. Look mommy at what we did, making “suns – atom bombs” appear in the life sphere. An essentially unnatural science, commits an unnatural act, all in good faith … sort of … where would the militarism of the world be, without new toys.]

Recently The Times met with the two scientists to discuss the group’s progress, the disappointments of the last 20 [20?, really? Try 50.] years and the challenges ahead. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Why convene this committee now?

Turner: I feel like things have never been more exciting in particle physics, in terms of the opportunities to understand space and time, matter and energy, and the fundamental particles — if they are even particles. If you asked a particle physicist where the field is going, you’d get a lot of different answers.

But what’s the grand vision? What is so exciting about this field? I was so excited in 1980 about the idea of grand unification, and that now looks small compared to the possibilities ahead.

Ariel Davis

You’re referring to Grand Unified Theories, or GUTs, which were considered a way to achieve Einstein’s dream of a single equation that encompassed all the forces of nature. Where are we on unification?

Turner: As far as we know, the basic building blocks of matter are quarks and leptons [leptons have a half-life of 2 millionths of a second, – and the universe was built on these “stones”?] ; the rules that govern them are described by the quantum field theory called the Standard Model. In addition to the building blocks, there are force carriers — the photon, of the electromagnetic force; eight gluons, of the strong color force; the W and Z bosons, of the weak nuclear force, and the Higgs boson, which explains why some particles have mass. The discovery of the Higgs boson completed the Standard Model.

[Stuff ??? is ??? take “water, for example. Wreck living water with chemicals or electricity, and we get molecules. Nature, oddly, never gives us pure elements (of the table of elements). Even gold never appears in nature without an accompanying partner. All is combinations of elements, and much of stuff is highly complex. Once you cross the boundary, between the living and the lifeless, a mystery appears. Where in nature can we find nature creating life out of the lifeless? Our unnatural science’s theory and belief, that the lifeless generates the living, is nowhere empirically observed.]

What is a molecule, but a corpse-part of something living. Likewise, an atom is a corpse of corpse-parts. Effectively, Cern practices a kind of necromancy, [“smashing and breaking” rituals, without any sense there might be some kind of sentience latent there. For a magical and mystical Ideal science, the smallest living invisible beings are the elementals: salamanders (fire), undines (water), sylphs (air), and gnomes (earth). How does that “activity” create physical matter? In Rudolf Steiner’s works I encountered this conception, … I’ll paraphrase: Matter arises from the intersection of four planes of ethereal forces.

The point center aspect of matter is the inner locus of a geometric figure we call a tetrahedron — four sides, each an equilateral triangle. With our studies of projective geometry, we have learned to move these four planes inward into a point center, where the “triangle” disappears, yet remains the same.

Each plane can also be grasped by thought as infinite. So, we take the planes of the tetrahedron, and imaginatively move them outward, instead of inward. This spherical-like gesture generates the “plane at infinity”.

It can help to actually imagine this movement inward and outward. Rudolf Steiner said this: “Think on it: how the point becomes a sphere and yet remains itself.  Hast thou understood how the infinite sphere may be only a point, and then come again, for then the Infinite will shine forth for thee in the finite.“.

From George Adams we can get the idea that the leaving of physical three dimensional space, has us then in ethereal space, which is planar “centered”, not point centered.

Now imagine the sides of the tetrahedron as a community elemental beings, yet each triangle is only one of the four types. Not only that, bring in the older ideas of the Pyramid builders, that fire is a symbol for will (Father), air a symbol for intellect (Son), water a symbol for feeling (Mother), and earth a symbol for consciousness. Consciousness is the union of the other three.

Fire is the Saturn power- or will, Air the Sun power – intellect, Water the Moon power – feeling, and Earth the Earth power – consciousness. According to the Emerald Tablet, and the Tarot, these three qualitative powers combine to generate the fourth.]

But the quest for the fundamental rules is not over. Why two different kinds of building blocks? Why so many “elementary” particles? Why four forces? How do dark matter, dark energy, gravity and space-time fit in? Answering these questions is the work of elementary particle physics.

Spiropulu: The curveball is that we don’t understand the mass of the Higgs, which is about 125 times the mass of a hydrogen atom.

When we discovered the Higgs, the first thing we expected was to find these other new supersymmetric particles, because the mass we measured was unstable without their presence, but we haven’t found them yet. (If the Higgs field [the effect of the Principle of Unity] collapsed, we could bubble out into a different universe — and of course that hasn’t happened yet.) [Literally, thanks be to God! joyously ~!~!~!~!~!~!@!!]

That has been a little bit crushing; for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: We didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle. [the field of levity (the Son) as is paired with the field of gravity (the Mother).

Turner: The unification of the forces is just part of what’s going on. But it is boring in comparison to the larger questions about space and time. Discussing what space and time are and where they came from is now within the realm of particle physics.

From the perspective [religious belief] of cosmology, the Big Bang is the origin of space and time, at least from the point of view of Einstein’s general relativity. So the origin of the universe, space and time are all connected. And does the universe have an end? Is there a multiverse? How many spaces and times are there? Does that question even make sense?

Spiropulu: To me, by the way, unification is not boring. Just saying.

Turner: I meant boring relatively speaking. It’s still very interesting!

Spiropulu: The strongest hint we have of the unity of nature comes from particle physics. At high enough energies, the fundamental forces — gravity [Mother’s Love], electromagnetism [Father’s love at rest] and the strong and weak nuclear forces [In it (the Word) was life, and the life was the light of the world – it helps to picture these material entities as having an invisible to the senses ethereal and sentient self-aware inner nature] — seem to become equal [all is harmonious – the Music of the Spheres].

But we have not reached the God scale in our particle accelerators. So possibly we have to reframe the question. In my view the ultimate law remains a persistent puzzle, and the way we solve it is going to be through new thinking.

Turner: I like what Maria is saying. It feels like we have all the pieces of the puzzle on the table; it looks like the four different forces we see are just different facets of a unified force. But that may not be the right way to phrase the question.

That is the hallmark of great science: You ask a question, and often it turns out to be the wrong question, but you have to ask a question just to find out it’s the wrong one. If it is, you ask a new one.

{ Pictures of Maria Spiropulu of the California Institute of Technology, left, Michael Turner, of the University of Chicago, center, with reporter Dennis Overbye. }

Ariel Davis

String theory — the vaunted “theory of everything” — describes the basic particles and forces in nature as vibrating strings of energy. Is there hope on our horizon for better understanding it? This alleged stringiness only shows up at energies millions of times higher than what could be achieved by any particle accelerator ever imagined. Some scientists criticize string theory as being outside science.

Spiropulu: It’s not testable.

Turner: But it is a powerful mathematical tool. And if you look at the progress of science over the past 2,500 years, from the Milesians, who began without mathematics, to the present, mathematics has been the pacing item. Geometry, algebra, Newton and calculus, and Einstein and non-Riemannian geometry. [ … except when one ignores the incompleteness theorems of Gödel, which basically sez that arithmetical functions are based on unproven assumptions and axioms, and this fact means the results are also lacking certainty, given that we can change the unproven axioms at will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems ]

Spiropulu: I would be more daring and say that string theory is a framework, like other frameworks we have discovered, within which we try to explain the physical world. The Standard Model is a framework — and in the ranges of energies that we can test it, the framework has proved to be useful.

Turner: Another way to say it is that we have new words and language to describe nature. Mathematics is the language of science, and the more our language is enriched, the more fully we can describe nature. We will have to wait and see what comes from string theory, but I think it will be big.

[ Here we run into the fundamental logical problem: quantities vs. qualities . Mathematics is a language of counting and measuring. Yet, our total experience is full of “qualia”, or that which can’t be reduced to number – such as the taste of a fresh orange, or the delight of a first kiss. What is called the search for meaning is also fully qualitative. ]

Ariel Davis

Among the many features of string theory is that the equations seem to have 10⁵⁰⁰ solutions — describing 10⁵⁰⁰ different possible universes or even more. Do we live in a multiverse?

Turner: I think we have to deal with it, even though it sounds crazy. And the multiverse gives me a headache; not being testable, at least not yet, it isn’t science. But it may be the most important idea of our time. It’s one of the things on the table. Headache or not, we have to deal with it. It needs to go up or out; either it’s part of science or it isn’t part of science.

Ariel Davis

Why is it considered a triumph that the standard model of cosmology doesn’t say what 95 percent of the universe is? Only 5 percent of it is atomic material like stars and people; 25 percent is some other “dark matter,” and about 70 percent is something even weirder — Mike has named it “dark energy” — that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Turner: That’s a big success, yeah. We’ve named all the major components.

Ariel Davis

But you don’t know what most of them are.

Spiropulu: We get stalled when we reach very deep. And at some point we need to change gear — change the question or the methodology. At the end of the day, understanding the physics of the universe is not a walk in the park. More questions go unanswered than are answered.

Ariel Davis

If unification is the wrong question, what is the right one?

Turner: I don’t think you can talk about space, time, matter, energy and elementary particles without talking about the history of the universe.

The Big Bang looks like the origin of space and time, and so we can ask, What are space and time really? Einstein showed us that they’re not just the place where things happen, as Newton said. They’re dynamical: space can bend and time can warp. But now we’re ready to answer the question: Where did they come from?

We are creatures of time, so we think the universe is all about time. And that may be the wrong way to look at the universe. [ Linear time is a kind of necessary fiction. We are always in the Now, and past and future never exist. Ursula LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed” has as its main character a theoretical physicist trying to work out a “mathematics” in which the sequential marries the simultaneous]

We have to keep in mind what you said earlier. Many of the tools in particle physics take a very long time to develop and are very expensive. These investments always pay off, often with big surprises that change the course of science.

And that makes progress challenging. But I am bullish on particle physics because the opportunities have never been bigger and the field has been at the bleeding edge of science for years. Particle physics invented big, global science, and national and now global facilities. If history is any guide, nothing will prevent them from answering the big questions! [such as “What is consciousness?”~!~!~!~!#%*]

Ariel Davis

It took three decades to build the James Webb Space Telescope.

Spiropulu: Space — bingo!

Turner: I mean, science is all about big dreams. Sometimes the dreams are beyond your immediate reach. But science has allowed humankind to do big things — Covid vaccines, the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the Webb telescope — that extend our vision and our power to shape our future. When we do these big things nowadays, we do them together. If we continue to dream big and work together, even more amazing things lie ahead. [perhaps, but have you truly found the right questions yet?]

Dennis Overbye joined The Times in 1998, and has been a reporter since 2001. He has written two books: “Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Search for the Secret of the Universe” and “Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance.” @overbye

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 24, 2023, Section D, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Physics and the Future. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Since I wrote the above, an interesting set of ideas appeared. Here is the article, which then also includes commentary {~!~!~!~}. Keep in mind that there is some kind of there there, … the errant assumptions as to what it all means are to be remembered.

  "Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy. The finding, published today in the journal Nature, reveals that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create {assumption} an electrical current. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy from thin air.

{ the facts observed are parts of a whole … }

The research team, led by Dr. Rhys Grinter, Ph.D. student Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia, produced and analyzed a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium.
Recent work by the team has shown that many bacteria use hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source in nutrient-poor environments. “We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and the deep ocean” Professor Greening said. “But we didn’t know how they did this, until now.”

{ Matter is a result of the interweaving of living beings, and at all the “edges” of the environment a life power is present as an interweaving of primary qualitative fields. The Principle of Unity appears in the above phenomena … that is none of the parts are ever disconnected from each “other”, given that every “thing” is embedded in interactive fields. “In it (the Word) was Life (bacterium is one form), and the Life was the Light (hydrogen electrical linkage) of the World.”}

“In this Nature paper, the researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current. Dr. Grinter notes, “Huc is extraordinarily efficient. Unlike all other known enzymes and chemical catalysts, it even consumes hydrogen below atmospheric levels—as little as 0.00005% of the air we breathe.”

{ Tesla remarked that it would be possible to extract electricity from the “ambient medium“. }

The researchers used several cutting-edge methods to reveal the molecular blueprint of atmospheric hydrogen oxidation. They used advanced microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine its atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing boundaries to produce the most resolved enzyme structure reported by this method to date. They also used a technique called electrochemistry to demonstrate the purified enzyme creates electricity at minute hydrogen concentrations.
Laboratory work performed by Kropp shows that it is possible to store purified Huc for long periods. “It is astonishingly stable. It is possible to freeze the enzyme or heat it to 80 degrees celsius, and it retains its power to generate energy,” Kropp said. “This reflects that this enzyme helps bacteria to survive in the most extreme environments. “
Huc is a “natural battery” that produces a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen. While this research is at an early stage, the discovery of Huc has considerable potential to develop small air-powered devices, for example as an alternative to solar-powered devices.
The bacteria that produce enzymes like Huc are common and can be grown in large quantities, meaning we have access to a sustainable source of the enzyme. Dr. Grinter says that a key objective for future work is to scale up Huc production. “Once we produce Huc in sufficient quantities, the sky is quite literally the limit for using it to produce clean energy.”

{In my first article above: “There is no Free Energy”. The thinking, in the article we have been reviewing, does not bother to consider that we might well upset an already damaged atmospheric environment. In the book “Man or Matter”, by Ernst Lehrs, we find the concept that when we remove
“electricity” from where it rests, we age the planet – the material – and push it in the direction of “dust’.

Building on that idea, because electricity is the principle of order (why matter adheres), we have broken the Nature given organization, and are thus producing chaos. This happens when we “take” a fundamental material phenomena, and relocate it into a more concentrated “form”, finding elaborate ways of making it do work (energy).

Having grasped this “force”, we use it in a way that produces more ‘order”, in one place in the interweaving of the various fields, and less order in another.

For a human being to be exposed to concentrations of order (electromagnetic fields of high level voltages), also produces imbalances that can lead to illness. }

The Case of Sergei Prokofieff in the Case of Valentine Tomberg

I would like to take an unusual tack in commenting on Sergei Prokoffief’s recent book The Case of Valentine Tomberg – Anthroposophy or Jesuitism? ¹ I will concede, initially, for the sake of argument and to limit the scope of discussion, that SP is correct on all counts in his charges against VT. I will proceed by developing overlooked implications which are contained in his procedure and in his conclusions. Others are in a far better position to engage in evaluating the merits of the ‘facts’ as well as the history of the situation than I am.

‘Facts’ are also precisely those things most open to dispute or dismissal, especially since one already committed to belief in a certain position rarely lets a fact get in the way. So I will just wash my hands of that whole aspect of “he said, she said” and try and dig a little deeper. I will work from my inner experience of having tried to understand and appreciate where both SP and VT are coming from and draw on what I have learned from them instead of taking an ‘objective’ approach.

SP obviously feels impelled to issue a challenge for some deep and resolute thinking on a variety of closely related issues of an essential nature. For him, these issues cut to the core of what anthroposophical endeavor is and should be. In posing these questions SP deserves our thanks, for few people are capable of critically examining the governing assumptions of anthroposophical endeaveor. These questions, which should be existential, not abstract, for all devoted and sincere anthroposophists, are good ones, and every reader of this book should be a participant and struggle through to his or her own relationship to them, in response to his call to task. SP seems to feel that too many of us just skate over the surface of things and are naïve and credulous, lacking in original relationship for what is at stake. In this, he may be right; I think he is.

However, even granting for the sake of argument his premises, and even many of his conclusions, I end up in a quite different place from what SP intends. SP rests his case at an intermediate position, and does not fully draw out his conclusions. I propose that to proceed to the necessary conclusions results in a moral reductio ad absurdam which is untenable, and which casts doubt on his standpoint as a whole, and upon his originating premises in particular.

First of all, and in general, even if (if!) SP is correct on all counts, why does he treat Valentine Tomberg as an enemy? If one disagrees with another, one still has a range of options from which to choose in how to disagree. Why a character assassination on someone who just as easily could be considered a close colleague and a fellow initiate? (Blavatsky was a very “bad girl”, indeed – she loved her hashish, for example, rode a horse like a man, and one of her prominent photographs shows her being trundled around a garden in a wheelbarrow, yet

because of her accomplishments, these things are overlooked. We resent deeply the charges of racism against Dr. Steiner himself, even though some of his statements about Negroes and Mexicans look pretty problematical in light of current sensibilities. We make allowances if we feel like it!)

Assume VT’s impulse failed completely. He does not ask: “What is there of worth in what he intended?” He makes no effort to examine or evaluate what VT might have had in mind for the course of his life, or what was the dream of his heart. Was VT evil from his conception and are his motives so perverse as to be unmentionable? The best explanation that I can come up with for SP’s failure to examine the subjectivity of VT in The Case of Valentine Tomberg is that he cannot, for he is in avoidance and denial of the very things that VT attempts to address in his life’s work. Hence the reactive and belligerent tone of his book, for it has an overall mood of spite and vindictiveness which is wholly out of keeping with real conscious appreciation (i.e.: critical understanding), and all too typical for someone challenged in their sore spot or shadow.

VT’s impulse (to broaden the scope of anthroposophy and to reach out to other congregations) went awry? If so, so what? Don’t most best efforts fail? Was anthroposophy itself a rousing success? The prominent Anthroposophist and Vorstand Chairman Hermann Poppelbaum said that, in light of its history, anthroposophists must acquire an entirely new relationship to failure! And what is the proof that it has failed? It hasn’t failed in my life, not in the lives of many others whom I know. The fact that someone like VT (or anyone, really) could find a way to work creatively with the impulse that Rudolf Steiner inaugurated (not completed, as SP seems to think) was my biggest indication, upon meeting anthroposophy 25 years ago, that there was something alive behind it – one could work with it; it had the potential to grow. This gave it credibility for me.

I find no willingness on SP’s part to search for what might be of worth in

VT’s life work, no generosity of spirit or impulse of reconciliation.

Depending on your meditation then, the question circles back and asks: “What kind of credibility is thus implied for SP’s logic and intention in the first place?”

For SP should know, thinker that he is, that logic is like a trained animal; it goes where you point it. (More precisely, one of the main axioms of mathematical logic (Godel’s Proof) is that is that anything which can be proved absolutely is thereby also at the same time also proven to be absolutely irrelevant with regard to any real-world consideration. One has to choose axioms to start with in any form of logic or calculation. These choices cannot be anything other than arbitrary in the last analysis. They can never be proven to correspond with the experienced world, because they themselves are the basis for the logical system itself as well as for one’s view of what constitutes “reality.” The system can only be judged as to whether or not they are internally consistent).

The weight of evidence that SP marshals is impressive, but we have seen too many courtroom dramas where everything gets turned upside-down at the end as a result of an overlooked detail to be overly impressed by that. Facts don’t prove the case where moral considerations are involved, and SP furthermore substitutes his interpretations of the facts for the facts themselves. That he is being reactive is by the far the most charitable of the possible interpretations of this situation. Of course, one cannot avoid the moral responsibility of drawing difficult but necessary conclusions from time to time, and on matters of core principle there should be no compromise. But if the heart is not engaged things can go seriously awry – as I believe they have in SP’s latest effort. Unfortunately for SP, however, the way in which he has flung down the gauntlet has made such a direct reply as this inevitable, at least for myself. Not that I don’t find many things in VT’s later work perplexing and enigmatic. But there are also many things in Steiner’s output which require the utmost goodwill and suspension of judgement to accept – many more than in VT’s work. It’s good training to ‘hold questions in patience’; I frequently find questions more stimulating than answers. SP obviously prefers conclusions of the “you’re either with us or against us” variety.

The way in which SP has nailed his colors to the mast is a bit unnerving. Not only does he fail to leave any room for dialogue, as if he has fully answered his questions not only for himself but also for everyone else; he has left himself no room for nuance or maneuver. This is very foolish, especially since the depth of his agitation and conviction is so deep that his logic becomes sloppy, his factfinding perfunctory and arbitrary, and his conclusions arbitrary. In the tradition of the true fundamentalist – a universal type – he chooses his axiom (in this case the immutable purity of the content of anthroposophy as received from RS, unmodifiable and unaugmentable by the use of the anthroposophic method by any individual, student or initiate) and then, since the true has been proven (by assumption), he becomes lazy and careless. Nonetheless, I am grateful and indebted to him for forcing me to work through the dilemmas he poses.

To be specific: “Occult Imprisonment” supposedly imposed by the Jesuits upon VT explains for SP everything provoking serious reflection about the course of VT’s life and work after (or right before) his turn to Catholicism. But this explains nothing. The inner issues raised and the options offered by VT’s life and work still remain, even though SP considers the ‘fact’ of this move of such a nature that it locks down the lid on any examination of those issues or of what VT’s freely chosen intention might have been. This is not even logic, but pure biased agenda. One of the sub-issues here is that of the Papacy, not an easy one for me, being a lapsed Catholic and no friend of the conventional wisdom of Catholicism. But by saying (perhaps correctly) that since the institution of the Papacy belongs to the era of the sentient soul, and since we are in the era of the consciousness soul, it is thereby outmoded, superseded and retrograde, he also inadvertently reveals his bias against the sentient soul in general. That this is so is clearly indicated by the vituperativeness of his attack. The natural instinct for fellow-feeling – the famous gemut; the main fruit of the sentient-soul period – he evidently considers as being just so much excess baggage. But this is precisely the thing that RS himself decried as being obvious by its absence in so many of the affairs of the Society of his day, as it still is. Just because too much sense of group identity is bad does not mean that no fellow-feeling is better….

He is not broadminded enough to realize that to embrace a path of devotion and sacrifice of personal will in service of a spiritual inspiration – an ideal signified by “The Pope”, aka: “The Hierophant” in the Tarot, and represented so imperfectly in mundane reality by the Pope himself – is an act that also validates the Impulse that inspired Rudolf Steiner in his attunement with the Michael School and the Anthroposophical Movement. But he castigates Tomberg for doing what he proclaims himself to be doing. So VT is merely SP’s rival. This is terribly confused as well as trivial and clearly says more about SP than it does about VT. Anyway, VT was not referring to the formal institution of the Papacy so much as referring to the function which may or may not be operating in any individual, one which mediates between the divine and the earthly across the Threshold by sacrificing the personal and the arbitrary. The Pontiff himself has an awkward job in trying to do this full-time within the egregoric weight of a two thousand year-old bureaucracy, but SP materializes the concept and does not grasp the spiritual or esoteric implications of this particular function as described by VT. Reflexively, what does this say about SP’s conception of his role and function in representing anthroposophy as a spiritual impulse? He is certainly acting more like an actual Pope of the old school than VT ever endorsed it as an ideal, and his attack upon VT has exactly the kind of calculating deviousness of the Jesuit than he decries in VT – in which it is simply absent.

Back to ”Occult Imprisonment” (OI). The allegation of this occurrence as an explanation for VT’s defection from anthroposophy is not even made straightforwardly by SP, but is inserted by relating this as being the conjecture of someone else, now deceased and unavailable for questioning. SP, furthermore, cannot even relate this first-hand, for the conjecture was passed on in the way such things are, by means of gossip. (Unsupported testimony is, legally as well as epistomologically inadmissible. Since VT is on trial here by SP, I call SP on fairness on this point). As if this were not enough to self-discredit the charge or render it unsuitable for mention, SP does not even personally vouch for his knowledge or, in lieu of that, for his conviction, that such a thing is true or offer any indication as to how it might have been implemented: he just slips it in and leaves it hanging, as if the truth of it should be obvious to all. It’s not. I can’t believe that his editor didn’t do his job and tell him to yank this portion. But then he wouldn’t have any other easily dismissive explanation for VT’s behavior, one with the added convenience of being strange and scary enough to dissuade examination of it by the easily intimidated or by those incapable of judging or researching it themselves. But: if such a thing is true (the OI), then it is no small thing, and the question then becomes: “Who was VT then, to have inspired such opposition?” (The adage that you can tell the worth of a man by the nature of his enemies comes to mind). SP is silent on this, for he does not want to remind us that the precedents for victims of OI in the anthroposophical history are Caspar Hauser and H. P. Blavatsky, both very worthy souls!

This is not illustrative of an artfully constructed and closely reasoned argument; one which would inspire respect for its conclusions out of the obvious conscientiousness of the author and the elegant aesthetic of its demonstration.

Other aspects of this faulty logic and procedure could be addressed and developed here, but I can only include mention of them in the following recap because of space limitations:

1). He does not describe OI or claim to know what it is.

2). He does not identify which faction of “the Jesuits” is responsible for the OI. To blame the entire stream is no more apt than to blame Christianity for slavery. And is a good example of sloppy categorical thinking.

2). He fails to address the corollary of his charge: the practice of full-fledged ritual black magic in the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church. To not follow up on this is just as irresponsible as bringing it up in the first place.

3). The famous precedent: the OI of H. P. Blavatsky as related by RS. VT is certainly in good company here.

4). Charges by Annie Besant that RS was under the influence of the Jesuits were a significant factor in the split of RS from the Theosophical Society, second perhaps only to the Krishnamurti affair. SP has a special obligation to be conscientious in this area and to make his charge stick if he lays it on the table.

5). There is an unfortunate history of outstanding individuals – even entire national chapters – being ‘excommunicated’ from the Society. There is also a history of such individuals either suffering quietly until they died or ‘allowed’ reentry under decades-later reinstatement. VT, on the other hand, seems to have refused to be thwarted and said something like: “You can’t fire me, I quit!”. He went ahead and found a new audience. Does SP resent VT’s spiritual autonomy and his refusal to submit?

6). VT’s new audience was those familiar and sympathetic to the esoteric streams within French culture, and he drew heavily upon those influences in his mighty Meditations on the Tarot. Could there possibly be some ethnophobia operating within SP here, with the Russian SP trying to be “holier than thou” in the mostly germanic milieu of the Vorstand he courts, in addition to drawing upon centuries of almost instinctual animosity between the Germans and the French as well as Rudolf Steiner’s own publicly stated animosity towards the effects of French culture?

6). So VT dared talk to the Catholics. So? Perhaps he was following the example of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who left his cozy womb in heaven to enter our sordid earth existence. Would SP like to suggest that Christ should not have consorted with known criminals and scoundrels like us? SP must think that Anthroposophy is too weak for the real world and deserves to be shelted under his auspices.

7). SP criticizes the Jesuits on a number of points and quotes RS extensively in support. Again: “So what?” Consider this: Is Anthroposophy all it could be? What could a ruthless muckraker find if he put his mind to it? How many have quit the Society for reasons of conscience? What of the millions that RS said were out there as potential members? Why don’t they like the Society – is it their fault or the Society’s?

There is no ‘Big Picture’ here in this grab bag of SP’s, despite SP’s attempts to corner the high ground. In Soloviev’s tale of the Antichrist, representatives of the different streams of Christianity set aside their in-house differences to do their real work: oppose the antichrist and represent the Life and Love of Christ. In order to achieve this, an appeal far more subtle and simple is needed than the one to doctrinal correctness, which after, all is a private matter for the individual sense of conscience – unless you subscribe to a sentient-soul sense of authoritarian preeminence. This latter approach doesn’t work, or rather; it only works with precisely the wrong type of people: people who need a Pope.

True spiritual vision is audacious and unprecedented, yet has heavy context. SP is not bold, he is reckless. He has generated quite a bit of credibility by virtue of his past work, which represents at least an obvious conscientiousness in research, but here he squanders it in spite against one who could be one of his best spiritual allies. That SP ignores the imperatives of the Apocalypse indicates that he either does not see them, that he considers them unimportant, or that he has an only an abstract appreciation of them. I have no explanation for his seduction by a fabulous anthroposophical “correctness” although this instance is a typical combination of Luciferic idealism combined with Ahrimanic rigidity. One would have thought that the leader of the Anthroposophical Society would have been a more subtle thinker that this.

In his intense tunnel vision, focused on his goal of discrediting VT, he has forgotten that the means create the ends, and has failed to notice that he is talking and walking in different directions. While we all have our personal affinities and personal biases, they need no justification at anyone else’s expense.

Personally, I hope (and believe) that we are all by now smart enough not to fall prey to such a weak appeal to cheap factionalism in the name of a righteous but illusory anthroposophical fundamentalism. That’s already been tried by people with a lot more clout than SP. The purity and strength of Steiner’s legacy is in the process of the intention; in the humility and the intuition which reaches out to the approaching future, not in the content of it which is only a marker in the past.

As for who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’, that is a debate taking place on a banal level, a level of little or no sophistication – one for which Ahriman is especially well suited: the one who knows all the ‘facts’ and is incapable of external refutation. We should fight where we are strong – in our moral conscience and in our ability to suffer, and, in love, to be stronger than that which causes us suffering, and to persuade by example and character. In this we may reliably hope to be good at some day.

Christ seems to be much more interested in: “Are we good?” than in: “Are we right?”

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” – G. K. Chesterton.

Just in case you still wonder what all the fuss is about, consider this: “Who’s next?”

If you have any desire for real spiritual experience or talent for spiritual research – and it will be original, even heretical to those of fixed mind; if it is authentic – then do you want SP or the spectre of orthodoxy breathing down your neck? Shame on him for introducing the subtle virus of fear: the fear of being ‘wrong’. You will, if you are successful in your quest for understanding, be going past all previously understood understandings – even your own – although they may become renewed and deepened in the process. Do you want support and informed peer review or backbiting and ad hominum attacks? Does SP have access to some kind of secret learning process which prevents him from “learning by doing”: i.e.; by learning from making mistakes, which is usually the case for most of us?

The discussion that SP hopes to have cannot be decided on this side of the Threshold even by using the highest, faultless, and well-intentioned analysis and logic or accumulation of scattered gossip. Any such effort is bound to be counterproductive, unless it has the active cooperation of the Spiritual World. Let SP state clearly what he knows to be true, out of his personal Word, and submit his other opinions simply as his opinions.

Sergei Prokoffief has had the courage to speak bluntly. It is out of respect and with no personal animosity that I speak just as bluntly in reply for one who cannot speak for himself, one who has been a friend to me.

Such questions as SP raises have been around in the Society for quite some time; again, he comes up with little that is new. But by bringing them to light in such a glare and with the overstated boldness imprimatur of his official authority, perhaps we have the opportunity to finally put them to rest once and for all so that we may all get on with our lives and meet the end of the century with a lighter load.

A positive appreciation of what Valentine Tomberg represents will have to wait for another opportunity, but perhaps this brief partial analysis of the ‘charges’ against him will induce individuals to do that for themselves, on their own. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire…” I can only say that the more I work into VT’s work the more substance of true spiritual worth I find. And that if I wanted to, I could make a much better case against him than SP has made, particularly in examining the inconsistencies involved in his flip-flop on the question of evil between his early Anthroposophical Studies of the Old Testament and his later Meditations on the Tarot. But I have my own understanding about this, and I don’t care to dance on his bones.

One last thing that provides a context for me and renders much of this a mere distraction: “Who and where is the Initiate who informs the activity of the Movement now? Will he/she be capable of approaching the Society if such artificial and gratuitous agitation and turmoil is not quelled?”

CODA

It has become apparent to this writer, after several years of reflection and many varied conversations upon this subject, that it orbits around considerations which can only be characterized as hero-worship. The thwarted expectations, agendas, and identifications precipitating about the central question of the “Boddhisattva” bear every similarity to the population of a solar system. Krishnamurti was a comet of the first magnitude, heralded with great fanfare, extolled with every extravagance while present, and then just as quickly absent from the gravitational field of the Theosophists, powered by a motor all his own.

Disgusted by the unaccountability of those who promoted him (and Krishnamurti was not the first candidate of those who wished to manufacture a controllable Christ-candidate), Steiner left the Theosophical Society to found his own Anthroposophical Society. While present, there was no doubt that an initiate in the fullness of his capability was present. Afterwards, with no designated replacement in sight, and insufficient critical mass within the body of members, his Society became split over many issues, one of which was, once again, the identity of the Boddhisattva. All this is detailed quite well in T. H. Meyer’s The Bodhisattva Question². The gist of it is that some thought it was Steiner, some thought it was Tomberg. Few seemed to think that it was not an important question, or a matter of extreme significance which camp one chose to join. On this, as well as many other questions – many involving issues of continuing revelation, if any – the Society was torn apart, with hundreds of individuals, a great weight of significant personalities, and at least two whole national Society Chapters being expelled by the headquarters in Switzerland.

Although time and the passage of the pivotal players have healed some wounds, much of the residue lingers, either as dust under the rug or skeletons in the closet, and the present condition of the Society – or predicament, depending on how one wishes to view it – are not comprehensible without an understanding of the context out of which they arise. Many members of the Society have no wish, talent, or opportunity to investigate such intractable and contentious issues, and they simple follow their own interests, cultivating their own gardens. These may be the fortunate ones.

Within the context of this matter of Prokoffief’s crusade against Valentine Tomberg, all this may be quite relevant. In Prokoffief’s first book, written when he was at the tender age of 25, he identifies Rudolf Steiner as the Boddhisattva of this age (Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, pp. 69- 79.) Even taking into account his first flush of enthusiasm for discovering the New World of Anthroposophy, it must be noted that he ignores Steiner’s own disavowal of this proposition, which was made to him and refused by him while he was still alive. The same situation also obtained for Valentine Tomberg: he said it wasn’t him, either.

Yet people seem to have an irresistible urge to try and figure or who it was or is. I submit that it doesn’t make any difference, especially as indicated by the fact that there is no way to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. So why even go there?

Stephen Clarke

1998

PS: 2016: Since the death of Sergei Prokofieff, such considerations as were proposed above may be seen as ill-considered since the man now has no opportunity to respond. To this I say:

1. Such tendencies as I describe may be seen as symptomatic default tendencies within the Society as a whole, since its inception, and considered as such.
2. In 1998 and for years afterward, this article was submitted to Mr. Prokofieff himself for comment and response, also to as many official representatives of the Society in Dornach and in this country as I had contact information for. In no case did I receive any substantial response, and none at all from Mr. Prokofieff himself.

1 Temple Lodge, London, 1997. Originally published in German by Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 1995. Enlarged second edition published by the author, 1996.

English translation from the second edition by Richard Michell.

2 Meyer, T. H.: The Bodhisattva Question – Krishnamurti, Rudolf Steiner, Annie Besant, Valentin Tomberg, and the Mystery of the Twentieth-Century Master. Temple Lodge, 1993 (from the German of 1989).

Prokofieff on Sophia and Anthroposophia

I feel that the review (published in a recent issue of The Journal for Anthroposophy, c. 1998, of Sergei Prokoffief’s book on Sophia and Anthroposophia¹ invites further discussion – here is the critical review, not press release as previously appearing, that I have written for myself and share with you. I hope others choose to respond on the broader basis of the issues, not the narrow one of sympathy or antipathy to the personality or style of either mine or Mr. Prokofieff’s.

Rather than engage in a full-tilt analytical critique of the substance of the book’s contents, I will adopt another approach. I will evaluate the book mainly on the basis of style and overall artistic effect, although the results of some small amount of analysis is too revealing to pass up.

My initial response to the book, read when first released: “I wish I knew as much as SP about all these things!” Then: “How does he know all these things?” Then: “Does he really know these things or is he just relying on his obvious skill and diligence as a systematizer and cataloguer of Steiner’s legacy?” and then: “Is this just highly sophisticated jargon?” The result of such reflections for this writer is a feeling of creeping dread over what SP has done. Having worked through to enough clarity about my own perceptions on the same subject to be able to contribute another point of view, and an initial attempt at a more focused critique than what has been offered to date, they are:

His style is elusive and aloof, in spite of – or perhaps because of – the exhausting and intimidating amount of data and esoteric detail. Where is SP himself in the welter of ideation? When he has the opportunity to forthrightly state something which one would expect to be of high personal value, he uses the third person or reverts to a “der Doktor hat gesagt” stance which admits of no alternatives. His assumption of the role of the Anthroposophical Authority is questionable for me, especially since I do not find that the cold light that he casts upon the form of Sophia illuminates anything of great and lasting value. In his zeal to present the truth (adequately, for him, by listing only what he considers to be the facts), he uses the external light of theory and analysis: an approach much more suitable for dissection in a forensic autopsy than for an intimate portrayal of one’s beloved. For what has been paramount in my experiences of any aspect of the Divine Feminine – a continual and ongoing encounter – has been the subjectivity of it all: the objectively real spiritual subjectivity of the heart-space sharing with another warm and immediately accessible being who shares, not data or detail, but herself. I find no acknowledgement of this moral reality in SP’s book, and this continues to be baffling, as

I am unwilling to attribute what I feel to be the essentially anti-sophianic impulse of the book to a conscious attempt.

Yes: anti-sophianic. I see no indication the Mr. Prokofieff has had that watershed encounter which allows him to speak from personal experience about what has become for him an object of analytic dissection. Lacking that encounter – which is parallel to the encounter with Christ – a writer cannot help but fail in his task of introducing us to that being.

Note I say “feeling.” Not in the sense of emotionality, but I refer to the function of the Heart. While it is not infallible, it does give one a sense of orientation if it is functioning, and for me, I feel the breath of an alien wind in Mr. Prokofieff’s style and approach. Perhaps it is a matter of temperament and style, but there is also something which goes much deeper that that.

Perhaps also it might be attributable to bad editing and awkward translation, but SP must nonetheless answer for not only the content, but also the form of his material, which has such widespread distribution and credibility within official Anthroposophical circles.

In his efforts to be convincing, he has chosen to have recourse to the Intellectual Soul-period technique of natural science: reductive analysis. This goes beyond issues of simple style – it amounts to new wine in old flasks. Although this may open the door for some who have had no prior encounter with the subject matter, it is a few some who will respond, and it is a door that has long been opened wide, and wider, by others. As non-Anthroposophists may not tend to find anything of interest in this book – I don’t think he will appeal to those who have an initial open-minded curiosity about things Steiner; dogmatists of whatever stripe all sound eerily alike to the street-smart – what portion of Anthroposophical membership does he appeal to? Is it that everconstricting circle of those who are unsure of their faith or those who are easily swayed by the self-appointed ”experts” who claim to “know” Steiner doctrine?

Let us examine and parse one symptomatic passage, one that opens up the book and sets the tone for what is to follow:

p. 1 “Many years…led gradually to a wholly new experience of Anthroposophy. It

revealed itself as not only a contemporary spiritual-scientific teaching issuing from sources of esoteric christianity but also as a living being of the spiritual world, as Anthroposophia, who brings to human beings of the twentieth century the new revelation of the heavenly Sophia, the divine wisdom.”

– He uses the passive voice: “Many years …led”, and: “It revealed itself…” Where is P. in all this? He takes the position of a passive observer, a neutral agent, or a clear pane of glass. But we should not that there is no objectivity in the spiritual world of the sort which we experience in the material world. Prokofieff consistently attempts to imitate the objectivity that is native to the mode of materialistic natural science. This calls into question issues of a bias towards a false objectivity and a resulting predisposition to corner the high ground.

By using this passive voice, it is as if Prokofieff simply bears the messages to us from the spiritual world, without opening them to alter them in any way as he hands them to us in their pure state. But this is not possible. There is always one’s own point of view and one’s interpretation of what one has experienced. If this is not borne in mind, one is open to all sorts of distortions and presumptions. In communicating such things as Prokofieff does, it is important for one listening, and even more importantly, given the intrinsically Ahrimanic nature of the medium, for one reading, to know who is talking or writing and that one doing so is taking responsibility for what is being presented and is clear on what portion of that is one’s own ideas, provisional conclusions, questions that remain open, etc.. As sense of this can be had in many different ways, but a conscientious attempt to take into account one’s own limitations is always in order and is usually evident when it is in effect. Prokofieff demonstrates no such humility, or even indebtedness to the work of other researchers. It all comes straight from the mouth of the highest hierarchies, almost as if channeled by a clear medium, or as downloaded from the Central Computer.

All of this is symptomatic and troubling. This is not to say that any of what Prokoffief sets forth is necessarily false as data, but the real question for one who reads is: “How do we know it is true?” Prokofieff’s process is opaque and not open to scrutiny. From the time he burst upon the scene with his first book published at the age of 21, he claims to have complete comprehension of just about everything. This places one who strives for embodiment and expression of the Consciousness Soul – autonomy, in a word – at an unfair and unjust disadvantage when trying to evaluate Prokofieff’s immense output. It’s take it or leave it, and is basically an appeal to authority on Prokofieff’s part. This is a not a valid technique, nor, taken as a whole in its effect, is it convincing. Not only did Rudolf Steiner lay a profoundly transparent and effective groundwork for his communications in his theory of knowledge and in his esoteric instructions, his lectures are inherently conducive to credibility because his style is saturated with respect for that all-important autonomy and moral integrity of the individual. There is simply no way that by his later teenage years (when the substance of his first book must have been in process) Sergei Prokofieff could have worked his way fully through Steiner’s method of esoteric development and reached the stage of initiation – greater than Steiner’s, for he presumes to comprehend Steiner’s own internal process of development as the sage of the age – that would allow him to speak on the subjects he does with the requisite authority. That leaves genius and revelation – as well as, possibly, conjecture and unlawful influence – as the means by which Prokofieff arrives at his insights. But is this anthroposophical? And how are we to tell?

Yes, I honor what I take to be his intention to eliminate anything of a potentially polluting personality or a contaminating emotionality from the substance of his remarks, which he obviously believes to be of the highest and most profound worth. He wishes to place his remarks on a plane in which questions of a personal nature to not arise. But if some objectivity is good and necessary in such matters, it does not follow that more is better. At a certain point, too much objectivity becomes a falsehood of its own. This is where Prokofieff falls down. The principle of “If some is good, more is better” did not apply to Elvis, and it does not apply to Sergei Prokofieff, either.

Now this criticism would not apply if he did not claim and attempt so much. But there is nothing which escapes his view. In this instance, he knows that he comprehends the “new revelation of the heavenly Sophia.” Not “a” revelation, but “the” revelation. A small word, but one which is indeed accurate in describing Prokofieff’s consistent attitude towards his own work. Against such a standard, even Steiner himself would fail – it is needless to say. But is it needful to say in this case of Prokofieff’s attempt to carry the Master’s work forward.

This speaks to process and artistic quality. There is also the aspect of content; to what extent is Prokofieff correct in his statements, and how is one to judge that? There are few, if any, who could or would presume to challenge Prokofieff on the grounds that: “I have seen or done that for myself and I can say that he is/is not correct.” So one is helpless before his pronouncements, and this in inherently unfair and should raise the hackles of a conscientious anthroposophist.

To the extent that Prokofieff does not adhre to the demands of the Consciousness Soul – the present one – Prokoffief’s process _is_ transparent, and should give the conscientious reader pause, for, to a large extent in this case, MacLujan’s dictum applies: The Medium is the Message. All the while that Prokoffief presents his pearls of wisdom and the reader struggles to imbibe and ingest them at the furious clip at which they are presented, they pile up somewhere in the psyche, for they are indigestible. To accept something as true without having one’s own good sense of how or why they are true, or without being educated in such a sensibility is a violation of sorts, one that happens all the time in mass-media advertising, political propaganda, and the like. Steiner himself always went to extreme pains to place his often provocative remarks within a wealth of contextual detail; to respect his audience’s healthy need to participate in his process of disclosure and to bring them along with him. This in itself is one of his bona fides and it inspires confidence in the substance of his observations.

Prokoffief demonstrates no such balance. When he himself is not the authority, Steiner is. One’s choices are to believe or not believe. Until one has sufficient proven grounds to go with the former – and even then only on a provisional basis – one must choose that latter. In this area, sheer weight of Steiner references has no weight.

• Prokoffief consistently uses the adjective “heavenly” in conjunction with “Sophia.” This brings up the question of: “Why?” Occasionally, yes, it serves to emphasize something about her lofty nature, or in the way in which her influence is perceived to come down from above, but it also prompts this court jester and truth-teller to inquire: “If there is a ‘heavenly’ Sophia, are there other Sophias?…earthly Sophia’s, chthonic Sophias even?” In his insistence upon the “heavenly” qualities of the Sophia he attends to it is almost as if he wishes to close the door on an inquiry into the possibilities of other aspects of Sophia; again, that his interpretation of Sophia as exclusively heavenly; that “heavenly” only emphasizes her essential nature, is the only one. We have referred to this tendency previously; here we have an example. And it is not a trivial one, for many cultures, cultures which Prokoffief either does not know about, is not interested in, or dismisses out of hand as of no account, possess other, not necessarily contradictory but certainly complimentarily alternative perspectives on the issue of the Divine Feminine and from where she, and by extension, “Sophia”, proceed.

Me thinketh he protesteth too much. Whether consciously or unconsciously, but certainly revealingly, in this slight but consistent instance of a revealing clumsiness, he slips. He is saying, whether he intends to or not: “Do not look beyond the heavenly aspect of Sophia.”

Later, we will examine where we can go with this theme and indicate just how much territory is left blank on Prokoffief’s map of Sophia and how Prokoffief has dealt with this challenge to his complete system by trimming the map to fit.

No, I do not expect you to take my word for it; just hold the question open for the time being.

• “…a wholly new experience of Anthroposophy.” Then what are we to make of his prior work, interpretations, and pronouncements regarding anthroposophy, ones which were perfect, complete, and final at those earlier stages in his development? In what way have they changed, altered, or been modified? Has he ever corrected himself in his unfoldment as a savant? How is this new experience different from his old experience? On all of this he is silent. He seems to have gone from one stage of perfection to another; from his teens until now it has been a seamless progression in the unfoldment of an ever-increasing perfection of observation and total vision of the cosmos and its evolution and everything’s place in it. As revealed to him by…? It just comes to him; no context is supplied. Experiences do not happen without an individual experiencing them: who is experiencing these new but also final revelations; a Prokofieff without an ego, history, or issues of personal perspective? This is hardly adequate for a Spiritual Science or for one who leads the Society dedicated to its fostering. In science, method is everything. Like Anthroposophy on the higher level that Steiner wished to place it, it is more a verb than a noun. Its essence lies in process, not in its results.

Prokoffief, to all appearances, has no process. Since this is obviously impossible (am I wrong?), this opens up fundamental questions regarding the security of the foundation upon which all of Prokoffief’s particular resulting observations rest. And Sergei Prokoffief appears to be remarkably resistant to disclosing anything of what his process is. This violates protocols of transparency – not just the formal scientific ones, but moral ones also. Is he without peer in this world, even on the occasional detail? He seems to think so; that he is answerable to no one.

Again, this places the reader in an untenable position.

• All of this from parsing just one passage? Yes, but after having read all of his books at least once and this one many times. Many more than once, with group study of some of them, and after having gone through two separated cycles of study group activity focused exclusively on his book on Sophia and Anthroposophia. And after having my own consistent and continuing personal relationship with Anthroposophia herself. Once certain issues about Prokofieff’s work surface and come into notice, they appear everywhere as a leitmotiv.

There is much more to be examined in Prokoffief’s treatment of Sophia, and I will seek to give credit where credit is due, but one who takes it upon himself to speak for Anthroposophy and Anthroposophia as an official representative must be held to the highest possible standards, ones not necessarily incumbent upon lesser mortals. But even the ignorant, even the naïve, are capable of asking perfectly good questions on occasion, and noting what the more sophisticated may have overlooked. In my trade as an automobile mechanic, I try and hold to the principle that there are no dumb questions, only dumb answers. If I don’t satisfy my clients that I know what I’m talking about, I go hungry.

Would that there was such immediate feedback happening in the much more consequential areas of spiritual life!

SP is out of his depth; not because his methodology is wrong, only that it is inappropriate for the subject at hand and is internally imbalanced. A full-court press by the left-brain cannot; will not, force Sophia to yield anything of value, for what proceeds from the Mother requires a different mode, not just of treatment, but of perception. SP does not see what there is to be seen, for what is needed is not clearer intellectual analysis (for there is precious little real thinking present), but deeper responsiveness. SP does not realize that the search for the elusive gemut lies in accessing what we have already accomplished in the past; in the development of the denigrated and maligned sentient soul. Like the fabled unicorn which flits intermittently through the landscape, the elusive gemut only teases the preoccupied mind. Realizing truly enough that too much sentient soul is bad, he makes the mistake of assuming that none is better, and throws the baby out with the bath water.

Does he know how to woo his Lover? For all the emphasis placed in Anthroposophy on clear thinking (which is different from mere conceptualization or abstraction), in this field of the divine feminine (which he even disputes as having legitimate existence) a little bit of intellectual analysis goes a long way. It is not apparent that SP’s thinking, at least as it appears on paper, has gone down into his heart, or past it, into his gut. This, I suggest, is what makes his prose so opaque and abstract. It is not idiomatic. It is not grounded.

His treatment is as dry as dust and embarrassing to read – not reflective of the warm, dark, fertile, and non-linear Chaos of Sophia and the Deep Mother. He is a Peeping Tom, with the purient factors sublimated into a violent intellectuality.

Some conclusions and observations:

1. Many anthroposophists will probably buy this book, but most will not read it all the way through.
2. Many will wonder what is wrong with them that they have not been able to follow SP into his rarified heights, and will doubt their own process. This exacerbates the default tendency of any organization to generate a split between elite experts and credulous followers: the genesis of the same jesuitism of excessive, subliminal, and in effect manipulative influence that provokes such vitriol by Mr. Prokoffief himself. The pot is in no position to be calling the kettle black.
3. No one will get even so much as a hint that Sophia, no matter how high she reaches, comes to us from below, that there is where her wellspring is to be found. 4. Sophia is Consort to Christ, mysteriously yet recognizably, in the truest heirosgamos, and not his appendix, daughter, or stepchild. This is an intuition absent from the book, and one almost explicitly denied.

5. I believe that he is wrong in stating that gender-aspects do not exist on levels beyond the astral. Of course, ideas themselves are clearly neuter (and these are almost exclusively what SP deals with), but the beings that generate them are not, at least not to my vision. They are fully sexual, without the distortions of a uni-polar sexuality demanded by material incarnation. As circumstances require, they can appear with any combination of aspects displayed. I suggest that it is not their ‘sexuality’ that is symbolic, but ours, in that not polarity, but complementarity, of an ever more mobile and flexible sort, continues and becomes more sublime and dynamic the higher up (and down) one goes. Is it inevitable that we project some of our “gender biases’ onto them? Sure. Is this so bad? I think not, especially if we use the opportunity to encounter them in a way not exclusively mental and one that opens us up to learning from them how they wish to be perceived. It is not without significance that Steiner used the word “intercourse” to describe encounters with spiritual beings. To subject any spiritual being – but especially an Underworld being – to an abstract and pre-formatted celestial-hierarchical placement, even a Steiner’s (especially one as well thought-out as a Steiner’s!) without an especially heavy counterbalance of some sort, is to crucify it; “to dismember her and cast her out into space….” (Steiner’s The New Isis lecture). Which is exactly what the wise men of Jesus’ time did; the learned loved their schemas more than the living reality and look what happened. It wasn’t the untutored peasants that crucified Jesus, it was the ones who knew exactly – in the abstract – what to look for.
6. While Christ easily comes down to us from ‘above’, She is so much more easily approached in her aspect of rising up from underneath. To treat Sophia in the context of Celestial Hierarchy is to attempt to fit a round peg in a square hole. SP certainly tries. Much better to treat of her in the context of the chthonic mysteries of which she is the Chief Initiatrix. Check out the last of the Michael letters and the lecture in the last First Class lesson (recap). These significant indications in RS’s last communications invite us all to investigate a whole different mode of perception not ‘authorized’ in what was fully developed in the fragment of the Michael School able to be actualized in the years of Steiner’s all-too-brief stay with us. (Much more on this in this writer’s much more lengthy Short Circuit essay)
7. His use of the term ‘sobornal’ to describe the nature of vast composite beings (Anthroposophia in particular) is interesting and perhaps even useful; natural if one is describing Underworld beings from out of an OverWorld context, but needlessly complex and superfluous if one is able to appreciate them in their whole and undivided autonomous natural condition. Underworld beings are not “at home” in the celestial OverWorld, and visa versa; their aspect there is selective, partial, diffuse, and prone to misinterpretation. They are there only for particular service to the resident beings, and may behave awkwardly as they move about in that realm. On the other hand, hidden aspects of their natures may be more readily perceived. In general, it seems that Underworld beings become more diffuse as they operate in progressively higher and higher realms – Sophia as the close helpmeet of the celestial Creator: Wisdom, is hardly a being at all, so diffuse and expansive is her willingness to be at the disposal of the vertical impulse: Prokoffief indeed can see her everywhere. But someone who is everywhere and everything is also almost nowhere and nothing, at least to the mortal mind – the theologies (and associated disputes) multiply like rabbits. Met on her back porch, she is someone to share a quite moment with. OverWorld beings in the Underworld, on the other hand, seem not to become diffuse, but to become more and more pointed and focused as they penetrate downward, concentrated onto decisive applications of tremendous selectivity and power. This is a complementarity which cannot be anticipated or extrapolated by the purely ‘Aristotelian’ and over-extended approach of SP.
8. One interesting question which is raised by this discussion and which can thereby receive a potentially much richer and more nuanced answer is the one of the relationship between Sophia and Anthroposophia. Sophia, even if she is the celestial aspect of the Chthonic Daughter, still trails threads of her UnderWorld origin. What of Anthroposophia? Does She have a chthonic root? I have no reason to doubt SP’s data, derived from Steiner’s scattered observations – I am quite willing to accept it on face value – but what does it mean? His format makes his descriptions seem partial and deficient in a particularly unsatisfying way, and my questions on this score are still unanswered.
9. Where was SP in the sixties and seventies? Did he learn nothing from the Cultural Revolutions that swept the world in those heady days? His Anthroposophy is straight out of the 1920’s: witness his description of Anthroposophia as “supersensible man” (emphasis added). Knowing that in the spiritual life, what does not go forward goes backwards, where does this leave Mr. Prokoffief?

The publication of SP’s book has provided a good opportunity to directly confront some of the predominant ossifications within the standard anthroposophical approach to ‘higher realities’. At present it is a devolved mode, reduced in the present instance to a classic reductio ad absurdam; a self-devalidating example of an old patriarchal worldview. It is perhaps fortunate that SP has absented his personal self to such an extent from this material and stands as a spokesman for his view of Anthroposophy and for his interpretation of the dead-weight factor of “der Doktor’s” legacy, for it makes debate on the issues much easier.

For my part, the only real part of this legacy is “If he did it, so can I!”, for he did do it well, and gave so much inspiration….

PS: my computer spell-check gives “Overworked” for “OverWorld”…..”from out of the mouths of babes….”

Stephen Clarke, 1998 (rev. 2005)

PS: Also, there is so much material out there in the public domain about so many different aspects of Sophia – Prokofieff makes no reference to any of it, to examine how it might support his observations or to demonstrate how his own work amplifies or corrects that of others. Why not? It seems that he is content to make his splashes in a very small pond, one that has grown smaller, not larger, since Seiner’s death. The fact that Sergei Prokofieff’s “method” and work-product has attained such prominence in Society circles indicates answers to this conundrum.

1 Sergie O. Prokofieff: The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia. Temple Lodge, London, 1996 (from the German edition of 1995).