Canto Two: What is the Collective Imagination?

What is the Collective Imagination?  and what does that have to do with the Mysteries of the Holy Mother?

Not easy questions to answer, so the reader’s patience is hoped to be evoked.  I will try to be brief, and links will provide more detailed offerings.

Here is something I wrote from one (of several possible) point of view:

The below was sent to John Beck and John Bloom,
to see what they would do/say. Their replies are at the End.

Pagan (Platonist) Anthroposophy

Owen Barfield, in his seminal “Speaker’s Meaning”, proves through language studies that all the oldest religions only named reality, given that languages in their youth are purely literal.

One implication of this fact is that the most primitive religions – the earth-religions – were correct in every detail, although as various as are clusters of stars in the heavens, given the significance of geographical regions&peoples decorating the whole surface of the Earth. Differentiation is essential.

The Platonists to which Rudolf Steiner referred, in his prediction about the Culmination Event, were pagans. Which really only means that they worshiped/adored/cherished Everything, knowing the Totality of this Cornucopia comes from the Mother.

From the American Platonist Stephen Clarke’s: “Rudolf Steiner’s “Mexican Mysteries” Re-Imagined … Introduction, 2017” [ http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Clarke5.html ]

Thus, successive precipitations of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and Earth evolutions (simply an alternate vocabulary for the traditional kabbalistic worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation & Existence as depicted in shorthand in Genesis) can be seen as having their parallel “tree-rings” in the building up of successive inner-earth layers corresponding to Saturn, Sun, Moon, and, finally, the surface world of Nature, all inhabited at their core and in every particle by divinity in its immanent maternal aspect.

However, … in Central Europe, with its long history of immature Christianity and the woeful dualism of good&evil, Steiner was constrained – again in harmony with the variety of peoples and geographical/ethereal regions out of which the Earth surface is composed. He – Steiner – was serious medicine for the culture that birthed scientific materialism – all is matter, there is no spirit – a medicine that needs to be precise and focused … no room for mystical and magical operations.

Still Steiner managed to hide in plain sight, the Seven Earth Mysteries, sprinkled with fairy dust, and slyly described as abstract “forces”, in a situation that in other contexts he pointed out that there are no abstract (ethereal formative) forces, only Beings and their collective Will. [What happens if you unite in the soul generalized versions of the wisdoms of the Sections as a single whole?] All were rooted in accompanying magical acts done by Steiner – not too hidden from view, yet not really noticed.

Even in the beginning the language used was an open obvious evocation: Lucifer Gnosis. The Foundation Stone, that was laid in the Earth, begins with an open air magical ceremony, acknowledging the Spirits of the Four Directions, just as is still done today in the Pipe Ceremony of the Lakota Sioux.

By connecting to Freemasonry Steiner tried to keep something alive, among those Lodges who acknowledge the still real role of Rite. Ultimately he then helped generate a new priesthood and ritual work in the Christian Community, at the request of the local folk with pastoral responsibilities.

He spoke of Anthroposophia – a female emphasis, and of the dangers that would befall the Anthroposophical Society were the members to lose sight of the essence – a Way of Seeing Anthroposophy as the Mother from which all else, including spiritual science, was being born.

“When we are in a position to assimilate anthroposophical knowledge not only through reading and listening, but when we are more and more able to experience the content of anthroposophy in our heart, in our feelings, then it is as if living, cosmic beings enter our souls.  Then, anthroposophy will appear to us increasingly as a living being.  And we will become aware that something is knocking at the threshold of our heart saying, ‘Let me in, because I am you yourself; I am your true nature, your very humanity.”

or …

“In Anthroposophy it is the Truth that matters. In the Anthroposophical Society it is the Life that matters.”

In what sense are today’s earth-religions true brothers&sisters of Anthroposophy? While their sciences are visionary/mystical, and magically evocative, they are still “sciences” as anyone knows who studies those ancient teaching outside a Steiner-only wisdom.

The already immortal Beings are the same, only the names vary. All the same, it is humanity that is the leading edge of change. Our hungers, whether vain or exulted, rule our destinies.

Owen Barfield points out in his “Saving the Appearances: a study in Idolatry”, that language reveals the human being becoming the leading edge of the incarnation of the Logos into&through earth-reality, most notably when around 250 to 300 years ago, the word “self-consciousness” first appears in English.

Steiner, necessarily originally constrained, needs to be freed. The baleful dichotomy of evil&good needs to be laid to rest. This is the mission of the Platonists, which are being born from the Aristotelians. The Culmination Event is ongoing … the whole world is pregnant with it, including the Anthroposophical Society, which mostly needs to get occasionally intoxicated and dance much more frequently.

Why? Ahriman so loves rules and procedures over daring and adventures. Joy and/or humor is not in his repertoire.

The logical problem is this: There is the either/or idea(1) of “evil”, and another idea(2) of “good”, … and then there is the meta(above)physical idea(3) of both/and or: = “good&evil” – qualities that cannot be separated out from each other, their opposition only apparent – an “appearance” as it were.

Heaven&Earth ~!~ Flute&Drum ~!~ Breath&Blood. the Emerald Tablet: “The above from the below, and the below from the above – the work of the miracle of the One. And things have been from this primal substance through a single act. How wonderful is this work! It is the main (principle) of the world and is its maintainer. Its father is the sun and its mother the moon; … “

In the Americas, the earth-religions know the secrets of the will. Fire and Water cannot be separated. The path to the Mother involves surrendering to the own dark&wild. Occasionally dancing intoxicated is a necessary antidote to a paralyzed from too much reading mind and soul, afraid to physically express joyous freedom of personal essence.

Feelings move us. Feelings see/know.

For millennia folks slowly left the more wild regions of the earth, slowly coagulated more and more in cities, billions now crowded together – yet there&surviving. Meanwhile Western Civilization is dissolving into a yet to be created&new – a social organism of wide variations, while the no longer viable nation states slide to their inevitable defeat, through the machinations of the multi-national heartless corporate cultures.

The political wars, especially in the Americas, very much need to be infused from the Earth-ground upward, with spiritual knowledge. Women, carrying the Mother&Friends are already on the march. Changes surge from within, and youth have such glorious forces, if we can get them to attend to the wisdom acquired over the years from their grandmothers.

Still, nothing stops the music. Nothing impedes free culture expression, which is always defiant of excessive form. At the glorious mixture of the social commons travelers wander, some forced (parents fleeing with children), others doing good in loco perentis. Many carry Anthroposophy (conscious and instinctive) in their hearts, yet always dangers … for Anthroposophy itself is dissolving away from its: the best Way is the highest Road, becoming Americanized into: the Way that Works will have to do, no time for the will to be any longer asleep, hardly dreaming.

Anthroposophists need to recognize that as the new pagan/mother mysteries are coming forth, physical life is getting harsher, water and food more scarce, … so that what Steiner gave needs to wash the feet of the local latent ancient culture. Steiner didn’t know those Other Cultures, as well as his own, which leaves to true scientists of the spirit the task to investigate all the ancient truths.

Everyone will recognize in their own local great myths, the roots that are modernized&science-touched in bio-dynamics, Waldorf education, anthroposophical medicine, … in all of the newly refreshed sciences&arts&letters, …

… but Europe must no longer engage in any form of spiritual/cultural imperialism&colonization. Goethe is interesting, but Everywhere Else in the world there are different cultural giants, and as we know, the Divine Mystery wastes nothing.

Anthroposophy – the truth – arises from the individual, through family, and then into community, because that is where/how the future always emerges – out of individuals. To live on the Earth, of wondrous variations of culture&language, is to discover that each ancient Way to the Mother remains valid.

That Place, where any particular People live, that’s were the deepest memories are of the ancient ones, who like the rose are still themselves, whatever names we sell/buy/preach … this is the secret of the return of the Moon. Echo-Born borne from seeds deep in the mysteries of the earth and of the will.

Do you want to know what Anthroposophy is, … answering that question means to seek to know what Others most need. Anthroposophy can’t be carried in a bucket of books, only in the warmed perceptive evocations of a heart. Magic is real. We use it everyday, although tending to mislabel its arts.

The Moon is Returning Now, for those with eyes to see, and ears to hear: “Medicine Woman is Here” [ http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/moon~%21~earth.html ]

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http://www.lulu.com/shop/joel-wendt/american-anthroposophy/ebook/product-17518135.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/joel-wendt/american-anthroposophy/paperback/product-3098718.html

Replies of John Beck (Director of Communications of the Anthroposophical Society in America), and John Bloom (current General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America).

Hey, Joel,
Good to hear from you. Very interesting thoughts and observations.
And you know, it is very important that you are engaging and carrying these thoughts, along with a few other people. Why do I say that?
What gets missed (I’ve done it many times myself) is that this Anthroposophical Society is a tiny thing. We haven’t been able to organize the resources even to meet the more obvious opportunities. Dornach is a substantial center but it is smaller, I would estimate, that the typical community college in the US. There are over 1400 of those. And the ASA is about the size of a regional animal welfare society.
So I think a great many things can only be carried right now as seeds, by passionate individuals like yourself. If we are short in other resources, we are long in people who really dig into things.
I would mention that the AGM last fall in Phoenix was really planted in a space of living Native American culture, a palpable presence. And I met a radiant old man who creates curriculums and was working to interest tribal schools in Waldorf methods. So we have two pages on that in the latest being human. That would begin to be a foundation for recognizing the gifts the ancient cultures can still bring.
Best wishes to you,

John
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Joel,

Thanks for taking the time to write this and for the depth of thought. The question of where and how anthroposophy stands in the world right now, and how it can be of real service in support of each person’s humanity is at the forefront of my daily work. So I much appreciate the vision that you are holding.
Be well,

John Bloom
General Secretary

Anthroposophical Society in America
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another Point of View – underlying rules of the Collective Imagination

There are laws of soul and spirit, … we – humanity – do not yet appreciate.

Mind&Consciousness are everywhere, and always interconnected.

Tradition calls the arena of passive or active interconnection: the Threshold.

Porous Mind is a more modern instinctive sense of this.

Imagination has no edges.

When the brain dies, you don’t.

Art&Culture are the highest expressions of the Imagination, although as every poet knows, the real cannot be named, having already named itself …

Still, if we examine the visual arts that appear in movies, television, computer games, and the secret wet dreams of the military industrial insanity, just Who is watching who?

Recently these visual interconnecting forms of media have become more and more haunted with trolls & other nasty prying eyes&minds. The NSA watches where they should not. Social Media is profit driven, and we are sold to advertisers. Nation States play seriously wrong/headed games, with each other, and where we are the counters on the game table.  How many workers&consumers – robot and otherwise – does it  take to bring the fantasy powers of gods&goddesses to earthly human  beings living in towers and  castles?

Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere turns out to be more like Faerie, a realm of Ancient Legend.
{The noosphere (/ˈnoʊ.əsfɪər/; sometimes noösphere) is the sphere of human thought. The word derives from the Greek νοῦς (nous “mind”) and σφαῖρα (sphaira “sphere”), in lexical analogy to “atmosphere” and “biosphere”. It was introduced byPierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 in his Cosmogenesis.}

Science Fiction has limits that Fantasy does not. The former rumored invisible realms are more and more making a direct appearance in what we are taught is physical reality, but which “the real” is everywhere joined together by OUR acts of thought and thinking.

Why? Because of the dark inside us all. Our artists&shamans travel there regularly, and this unknown/forgotten/wanting to be remembered Dark calls out to us … will our fears overwhelm our chance for joy?

Modern Literary Arts&Crafts have modern masters, who surpass the old, but not forgotten masters. The individual human being – having their own imagination, has the same access as everyone else to the Collective Imagination, which is a Realm Visible to the Mind’s Eye.

In all of US, the real leaks through, via the imagination, which at the threshold of the porous mind becomes a land of long ago & still there … waiting for us to come home … Faerie never left us, we just left Faerie for a time.

You garden is filled with gnomes {earth}, undines (water), sylphs (air), and salamanders {fire}, whether we choose to honor them or not. The Whole of Nature has an invisible inside greater than the Whole Universe. Stars walk among us, for we ourselves are a star between death and birth.

– two examples –

In the movie Arrival, the spirits of the Air, sing a song to/through the open mind of the writer/creator.

Ships materialize out of no-where into our where. They live in a world of levity, not gravity, and we are helped to make the shift of consciousness, but carry with us the need to look for material effects and causes.

Watch clouds, for our Skies speak to us all the time, we’ve just forgotten what the most ancient folk knew directly to their own experience – All is Holy, and just in what it is it sings the songs of its own names.

In being open to the language clouds speak (even now), the woman language-empath not only transcends space, by time as well, such that even though she knows the future, she still rides the dragon of feelings thereby unleashed.

We all ride that dragon on our way to our next incarnation, until we choose to no longer do so. The Bodhisattva Vow: I will remain on the cycle of time, and set aside the goal of Nirvana, until all sentient beings can be so enlightened.

We can learn to perceive the world in a new way, by our choice alone – no one’s life should be owned by another. We are One, via the Collective Imagination, in the creation of which, we participate. How we choose to identify / name / define / meet / know / dance-with the domain of our personal biography is ours to create, although when we look upon this world of ours, we must not pretend we did not have a hand in its making, still …

We are Envoys out of time, … all of us (see discussion in the appendix of the TV series on Netflix: Altered Carbon, and the hints via Richard Morgan of what it means to wake up in a world where no one dies any more (mostly).

Then there is the recent – more generally viewed -TV sensation (from Netflix as well):

Stranger Things   for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxyRG_tckY&t=1s

In an ordinary town, [intentionally very much in the mood of honoring Spielberg’s insights into the 1980’s in America], encounters an unknown dark. A kid disappears, another appears out of nowhere. Families and officials get seriously frayed at the edges.

Yet, there is something in the children that is indomitable.

All the dramatic issues are exact anticipations of what will happen in our future as the Underworld of Faerie, named in this wonderful art: “the upsidedown”, appears to us everywhere. There are no false notes in this composition – good&bad all impossibly mixed together – yet, what we call/name/understand as real life under extraordinary circumstances.

This representation out of the collective imagination is revealing a coming real encounter with Fe Spirits – something all over the world, both as horror and as humorous fancy. Monsters made by human’s even more monstrous, to the point of silly/goofy/sad lost to their own humanity ….

The arts are having Trump&Company for lunch, and the gods&goddesses of chance&fortune (the real Loki, Raven, Coyote, and Friends), a Greek Tragedy for which we are audience getting to participate – everyone gets enough rope to hang themselves by ….

Ordinary consciousness is wise beyond all the vain fancies of modern materialistic science (all is matter, there is no spirit – called in John I: the anti-Christ spirit, which denies the Father and the Son).

In Stranger Things the intellect runs wild, yet still captures the right thing to do via the heart …

This fear of the unknown dark is artistically represented, to/by those who visit there, as a kind of dark, shadowing, anti-life, alternate face of ordinary sense reality. Mirror like, but without color.
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Then there is this “Tales from the Heart: the Collective Imagination“
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/clarkefivesong.html