The Western Hemisphere

Everything having to do with North America, especially the United States, in the light of anthroposophy, is not only complicated but at closer analysis so thoroughly dark and sinister that I initially wrote my notes on this in Norwegian and shared them with a limited circle of readers -- among other reasons, because they touch upon Norwegian history in a special way that will become evident below.

Rudolf Steiner on America

When approaching the Mystery of America in the light of Rudolf Steiner's works, it's easy to be carried away in such a manner that it's experienced as being pulled into an abyss. This experience is particularly strong if the material referenced below is studied when living in the United States, and the longer one has lived there, the more deeply one has become entrenched in the so-called "American experience," the more intensely the sense of being pulled into an abyss is felt, if one really absorbs the gravity and seriousness that is contained in such communications.

Let me start off with something very simple that many people have probably noticed without thinking about it. Static electricity is much more powerful in North America than in Europe. That is, if you walk on a carpet with leather soles and then touch a metal door handle, you get an electric shock. This is also experienced in Europe and elsewhere on the globe, but the phenomenon is definitely strongest in North America and may increase the closer one gets to the magnetic North Pole in Canada.

This has to do with earth radiations in general, in this case electromagnetic fields in particular. Such phenomena influence the growth, physiology, and health of the inhabitants.

In this context I would like to begin by referring to an excerpt from GA 178, where Rudolf Steiner describes Hidden Forces in the Being of Man or, The Ahrimanic Double With Special Reference to America. I have chosen the second lecture in this cycle, from November 16, 1917 in St. Gallen, with the title, The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine.

The excerpt is quite lengthy, so it should be commented as we plug through it before moving on to the next source. Let me just mention at the start here that I do my best to avoid involved discussions and speculations about what Steiner talks about with regard to secret lodges in the West. The reason for this is that after a sensational catastrophic event took place in the United States nine years ago, popular brainstorms with regard to such things have taken off so completely that it has become impossible to talk about conspiracies without being run down by loud, passionate hyperenthusiasts and fanatics who attribute all such planning to the external, material plane without mentioning the threshold of consciousness with a single word.

This virus began among rural Arab hillbillies in Pakistan and Afghanistan who swallowed everything said by their imans, namely that the entire terror attack was masterminded and carried out by Jews with stolen Saudi identities -- in conjunction, of course, with the Bush-administration in Washington. After that it spread like wildfire through France and from there all over the United States and became mainstream. I have no comment on this, except to say that my own perspective has always resonated with those of Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and other academics and investigative reporters of the same caliber.

To explore conspiracies, the other side of the threshold must be considered. I may get into that in a later blog, which would be a very demanding undertaking. It's inevitable that certain aspects of Western occult conspiracies are touched upon in passing when topics like the present, and the previous one, are explored, but I only include what is absolutely necessary and leave the rest for special treatment in a future article if time and opportunity permits.

Geographic Medicine

Rudolf Steiner:

"The earth, which is known only as a skeletal system, is a living organism. As a living organism it works upon the beings who walk around on it, including human beings themselves. And just as the human being is differentiated within regarding the distribution of his bodily organs, so the earth is also differentiated regarding what it develops out of its living nature, by which it influences the people who walk around on it. When you think, you are not exerting your right index finger or your left big toe but your head. You know perfectly well that you do not think with your right big toe; you think with your head. Thus things are distributed in the living organism, which is differentiated. Our earth is differentiated in the same way. The same things do not at all stream out everywhere from the earth onto its inhabitants. In the different regions of the earth, something entirely different streams forth. There are different forces, among them magnetism and electricity, but also forces that enter more into the realm of the living. All these forces come up out of the earth and influence people in the most varied ways at different points on the earth. They influence the human being in various ways according to the geographical formation.

"This is a very important fact. What the human being is initially as body, soul, and spirit has really very little direct relation to these forces that work up out of the earth. But the double about which I have spoken chooses to be related to these forces that stream up out of the earth. And indirectly, by way of mediation, the human being as body, soul, and spirit stands in relation to the earth, and to that which rays out at various points. This is due to the fact that his double cherishes the most intimate relationship to what streams forth there. There beings that take possession of the human being as Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian beings a short time before he is born have quite highly developed tastes. Some of these beings are especially pleased with the Eastern Hemisphere: Europe, Asia, Africa. They choose to make use of the bodies of human beings born there. Others choose bodies born in the Western Hemisphere, in America. What we have as a dim image in our geography is for these beings a living principle of their own experience. They choose their dwelling place according to this.

"From this you will see further that one of the most important tasks of the future will be to foster again something that has been interrupted: geographic medicine, medical geography. With Paracelsus it was torn away from the ancient atavistic wisdom. Since then it has hardly been nurtured because of materialistic views. It must take its place again, and many things must become known again if we are to come to know the connection of the illness-producing being in man with earthly geography, with all the fusions, with all the outward radiations that emerge from the earth in the various regions. It is very important for the human being to become acquainted with these things, for his life depends on it. In a very definite way he is inserted into this earthly existence by this double, and this double has his dwelling place within, within the human being himself.

"This has become so infinitely important only in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and will become especially important to human beings in the very near future. For this reason spiritual science must now spread, and this is now especially important because the present time calls upon the human being to reach an understanding of these things in a conscious way in order to find a relationship to these things. The human being must become strong in this epoch in order to adapt his existence to these beings.

"This epoch began in the fifteenth century, our present period beginning in 1413. The fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin, began in 747 B.C. and lasted until 1413. This was a time when a milder incision in history took place. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch began at that time, and we continue to live in it now. Only gradually is it bringing forth its special characteristics in our time, although these have been in preparation since the fifteenth century. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was chiefly the Intellectual Soul (Verstandes- und Gemütseele) that was developed; now it is the Consciousness Soul that is being developed in the general evolution of humanity.

"When the human being entered into this epoch, the guiding spiritual beings had to consider his special weakness in relation to this double. Had the human being taken into his consciousness very much of everything connected with this double, it would have gone badly, very badly for the human being. Already in the centuries before the fourteenth century, the human being had to be prepared by being protected, so that he would take in very little of what was suggestive in any way of this double. Therefore the knowledge of this double that existed throughout earlier ages was lost. Humanity had to be guarded so that it would not take up anything of the theory of this double; not only this, however, but it had to come in contact as little as possible with anything connected with this double.

"For this purpose a very special arrangement was required. You must try to understand what developed at that time. In the centuries preceding the fourteenth century, the human being had to be guarded from this double. The double had to be gradually withdrawn from man's circle of vision. Only now is he gradually permitted to come into it again, now when the human being must adapt his relationship to him. A really significant arrangement was required, which could be attained only in the following way. Since the ninth or tenth century, conditions in Europe were gradually adjusted in such a way that the European people lost a certain connection that they had formerly, a connection that was still important for human beings in earlier centuries, the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Beginning in the ninth century and especially from the twelfth century on, the entire shipping exchange with America with the kind of ships there were at that time, was abolished.

"This may sound very strange to you. You will say, 'We have never heard anything like this in history.' In many respects, history is just a fable convenue a legend; for in earlier centuries of Europe develop ships continually sailed from the Norway of that time to America. Of course it was not called America it had a different name at that time. America was known to be the region where the magnetic forces particularly arose that brought the human being into relation with this double. For the clearest relations to the double proceed from that region of the earth that comprises the American continent. And in the earlier centuries people sailed over to America in Norwegian ships and studied illnesses there. The illnesses in America brought about under the influence of earthly magnetism were studied by Europe. And the mysterious origin of the older European medicine is to be sought there. There one could observe the course of illness that could not have been observed in Europe, where people were more sensitive with regard to the influence of the double."

(Geographic Medicine, Hidden Forces in the Being of Man or, The Ahrimanic Double With Special Reference to America (GA 178) -- Lecture II, The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine, St. Gallen, November 16, 1917)

In a different lecture I don't recall the reference to, Steiner mentions that these sea voyages to America always started off the coast of Jæren in Rogaland (Norway). Of course much of this is puzzling, first of all that the Vikings, who in spite of their incredible craftmanship in ship building seem to have been quite primitive, had ancestors or predecessors who conducted medical research more than a millennium before the age of science. Complicated and fascinating are also the connections in Europe at that time, especially between Rome and Norway through Ireland in the way Steiner describes it:

"Then it was necessary for the connection with America to be gradually forgotten, and this was essentially brought about by the Roman Catholic Church through its edicts. And only after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was America rediscovered in a physical, sense-perceptible way. This was only a rediscovery, however, which is so significant because the powers that were at work actually achieved their purpose: that nothing very much should be reported in the record of the ancient relations of Europe with America. And where it is reported it is not recognized, it is not known that these things relate to the connection of Europe with America in ancient times. The visits were nothing more than visits. That the Europeans themselves became the American people (as is said today when the expression 'people' is confused with 'nation' in an incomprehensible way) was possible only after the physical discovery of America, the physical rediscovery of America. Earlier there were visits that were made in order to study how the double plays a very special role in the differently constituted Indian race.

"For a long time before the beginning of the development of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, Europe had to be protected from the influence of the Western world. This is the significant historical arrangement that was cultivated by wisdom-filled world powers. Europe had to be protected for a long time from all these influences; and it could not have been protected if the European world had not been completely shut off from America in the centuries before the fifteenth century.

"The effort had to be made for a long time in the preparatory centuries to give something to European humanity that carried the finer sensitivity. You could say that the intellect, which had to take hold of its proper place in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, had to be very carefully protected in its first appearance. What was supposed to be revealed to it had to be presented to it very gently. Often this refinement was similar to the refinement of education, where sound measures of punishment are also applied, of course. Everything to which I am referring pertains, of course, to greater historical impulses.

"Thus it happened that Irish monks in particular who were under the influence of the pure Christian-Esoteric teaching developed in Ireland, worked in such a way that the necessity was perceived in Rome to cut Europe off from the Western Hemisphere. For it was intended that this movement arising in Ireland should spread Christianity over Europe in such a way, in these centuries before the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, that people would not be disturbed by all that was emerging from the sub-earthly regions in the Western Hemisphere. Europe was to be kept ignore of all the influences from the Western Hemisphere.

"This is a good Place to speak about these conditions. Columban and his pupil Gallus were essential individuals in the greatly significant mission movement that sought its success in Christianizing Europe by surrounding Europe at that time with spiritual walls, and allowing no influence to come from the direction I have indicated. Individualities such as Columban and his pupil Gallus, who founded the city where I am lecturing today and from whom it gets its name (St. Gallen) saw above all that the tender plant of Christianity could be spread in Europe only if Europe were Surrounded by a wall, as it were, in the spiritual respect."

Here Steiner mentions central historical personalities who played key roles in spreading the Christ Impulse from Ireland to the rest of Europe, including Norway. Olav Stokland writes quite comprehensively about this in his book Av Norges Indre Historie ("Of Norway's Inner History" according to Tazfish).

Steiner:

"Behind the processes of world history lie deep mysteries filled with significance. The history taught and learned in schools is only a fable convenue. Among the facts most Important for an understanding of modern Europe is this one: that from the centuries when Ireland began to spread Christianity in Europe until the twelfth century, the Roman Church worked on the problem at the same time through papal edicts, which gradually forbade shipping between Europe and America, so that Europe completely forgot the connection with America. This lapse in memory was needed so that the early period of preparation in Europe for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch could be developed in the right way. And only when the materialistic period began was America discovered again to the West, as is related today. From the East, America was discovered under the influence of the greed for gold, under the influence of purely materialistic culture, which simply must be taken into account in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and to which man has to find a suitable relationship."

It's a little misleading to imagine that North America was populated by Europeans exclusively because they were greedy for gold, but that's not what Steiner is saying. He is talking about the crucial discovery made by Christopher Columbus in 1492. This greed after gold primarily characterized the South Europeans; besides, Columbus was an arch-brutal conquerer who represents the worst in the history of colonialism, with devastating consequences for the natives of the Americas.

Columbus Ship

With regard to man's relationship to earth-energies and his Doppelgänger and so forth, Steiner continues in his lecture:

"In Eastern Europe there is relatively little inclination purely toward what streams out of the earth. The Russians, for example, are fervently connected through the soil, but they receive quite special forces out of the soil, forces that do not come from the earth. The secret of the Russian geography consists of the fact that the Russian receives from the earth the light that is first imparted to the earth and then reflected back again from the earth. The Russian actually takes from the earth what streams toward it from outer regions. The Russian loves his earth, but he loves it because to him it is a mirror of the heavens. Because of this the Russian, even though he is so territorially minded, has something in this territorial inclination that is extraordinarily cosmopolitan although today this remains at a childlike stage — because the earth, moving through space, comes into relation to every possible part of the earth's environment. And when a person receives into his soul, not what streams upward from below in the earth but what streams downward from above and then upward again, then it is different from receiving streams directly from the earth, which are placed in a certain kinship to human nature. But what the Russian loves in his earth, with which he permeates himself, gives him many weaknesses, but above all it gives him a certain ability to conquer that double nature of which I have spoken previously. Therefore he will be called upon to offer the most important impulses to the epoch in which this double nature must finally be subdued, in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch."

This is very interesting: In the sixth post-Atlantic epoch, or Sub Race, i.e. in about 1500 years, which according to Steiner will emerge on Russian soil, the subduing of the Doppelgänger-nature will be one of the major tasks for humanity. After this sixth epoch, however, a seventh and final epoch in our present cycle, or Root Race, will take place on American soil and lead to The War of All Against All and the destruction of the entire great epoch after Atlantis. I'll come back to this in connection with a different quote. Our own calculations would indicate that this seventh post-Atlantean epoch begins towards the end of the sixth millennium and lasts perhaps almost into the ninth millennium -- a very long time ahead indeed, but it's our own future we are talking about.

Rudolf Steiner continues:

"A certain portion of the earth's surface shows the closest kinship to these forces. If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm. For these forces are geographic; they are not ethnographic, not national, but purely geographic forces. There is a region where the force streaming up from below has the most influence on the double, and where, because with the outstreaming forces it enters most into kinship with the double, it is again imparted to the earth. This is the region of the earth where most of the mountain ranges run, not crosswise, from east to west, but where the ranges primarily run, from north to south (for this is also connected with these forces) where one is in the vicinity of the magnetic North Pole. This is the region where above all the kinship is developed with the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic nature through outer conditions. And through this kinship much is brought about in the continuing evolution of the earth."

In our own time, with lots of travel and moving, there are certainly many people who have experienced personally that which Steiner describes here: "If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm." This is not likely to happen during weekend trips and short business travels, but by absorbing the environment during at least seven years, i.e the time it takes for every single cell in the body to be replaced through the nutrition consumed where one is living. If in addition to this, one allows oneself to be assimilated into the thoughts and feelings of the population, one should notice that which Steiner describes here when one has spent at least seven years on another continent later. An initiate, on the other hand, can undoubtedly harvest such experiences immediately.

The Andes

What he says here about the direction of the mountain ranges is also of tremendous interest, because this can indicate that the magnetic North Pole influenced the formations of the Rockies and the Andes in a far distant past, when the lava cooled off. When we take into consideration that this theme about impulses and forces from the Western Hemisphere is a concern for our entire post-Atlantic epoch, such details are important.

"Today the human being should not move blindly through earthly evolution; he must be able to see through such relationships. Europe will be able to come into a proper relationship with America only when such conditions can be understood, when it is known what geographical determinants come from there. Otherwise, if Europe continues to be blind to these things, it will be with this poor Europe as it was with Greece in relation to Rome. This should not be; the world should not be geographically Americanized. First, however, this must be understood."

This stern warning against the Americanization of Europe and the rest of the world came from Rudolf Steiner in October 1917, when Bolshevikism came to power in Russia as a social experiment planned in England and sponsored by American banks. There were many reasons why Rudolf Steiner, who was generous to a fault towards his sworn enemies, was yet so mercilessly brutal every time he talked about president Woodrow Wilson. He said once that he wondered what Woodrow Wilson's brain would be worth if he wasn't sitting in the White House chair(!)

Wilson was showered with blind homage, tribute, and fanfare, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, and looked up to as a role model and one of history's greatest presidents by all his successors in the White House, in spite of the fact that historical analysis can probably establish that his political actions were pivotal for the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression that in conjunction with the frustration and poverty that raged in Germany after Wilson's humiliating, disrespectful, and inconsiderate armistice of 1918 paved the way for Hitler's rise to power -- also through sponsorship by American and German banks. But the truth that the world is easily deceived cannnot be clearer than when those who lead the world into ruin are awared the Nobel Peace Prize. Rudolf Steiner could not foresee the detailed ultimate consequences of Wilson's policies, but he saw clearly that it could lead to catastrophe for Germany and Europe.

Woodrow Wilson

In lecture 16 from GA 346 (The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, Dornach, September 1924), Rudolf Steiner does however mention that The Beast would rise in 1933, the very year Hitler came to power, based upon some work on a certain comet done by Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann Littrow a century earlier.

Steiner says:

"In 1832 a well-known astronomer, Littrow, published a treatise that was very interesting. I can still recommend studying it, even today; it is most interesting and its complicated calculations are entirely correct. Here was someone who knew what he was talking about. He made a calculation that took every possibility into account. He worked out that in 1832 there could not yet have been a calamity caused by a collision, but he said that if everything remained as it had been when the comet’s course was plotted when it was still a single body and not yet split, then a calamity would definitely occur in 1933; 1933 is what he said. So if the comet had remained as it was, then there would definitely be a catastrophe in 1933 in which all the oceans would spread over the earth in huge floods, making life on earth die out. Instead, the comet has disintegrated; in tiny particles it has been absorbed by the earth, the earth has nourished itself on this cosmic substance. So instead of a collision in 1933—that year is not far off now—what the earth has absorbed is spiritualized by other substances, and the spiritual rises up. The earth digests the comet and something spiritual rises up. Dear friends, spiritualized cometary substance does indeed rise up in the earth in this way from time to time."

Rudolf Steiner is speaking, of course, on the basis of John's Apocalypse, and in this case Chapter 13, where the Beast is described. The connection between such Beings and astronomical phenomena like comets are of course interesting, but it's beyond the scope of this article. I'll only mention what Steiner here said about 1933, but we should keep in mind that the spiritual properties of comets can also be benign and bring healing forces that are needed by humanity at certain points in evolution, like when we have to accustom ourselves to live in an urban environment saturated with electronics.

Rudolf Steiner on September 20, 1924:

"The Beast will be let loose from its imprisonment in the earth; that is what the comet is in the cosmic sense. That the Beast will be let loose is significant for the development of human beings. Such things are exceedingly powerful realities, great and significant points in the evolution of humanity and of the earth.

"In 1933, dear friends, there would be a possibility for the earth and everything living on it to perish if there did not exist also that other wise arrangement that cannot be calculated. Once comets have taken on other forms calculations can no longer be accurate. What needs to be said in the sense meant by the apocalyptist is: Before the Etheric Christ can be comprehended by human beings in the right way, humanity must first cope with encountering the Beast who will rise up in 1933. This is what the apocalyptic language tells us. Here a view of the spirit unites with a view of nature. What is there in the cosmos becomes clear to us in its fundamental spiritual character. Take the way the peasants described what they saw in 1872 as they stood and watched the shower of light, and add to it what the spirit tells us as I have described it, and compare this with many of the descriptions in the Book of Revelation, and you will see that even the very words used match one another. You will see that the Book of Revelation is speaking of actual natural events."

These historical remarks are a sidestep from our main topic, but the crucial moment in time at the end of the first world war, when Steiner spoke a great deal about such things, is very important. It was at the change of the last century, around 1900, that American leaders began to discuss the possibility of an empire, an unsurpassed world power, in all seriousness. The first world war facilitated America's expansion into Europe, although Great Britain still held the guardianship of global imperialism, which was taken over by the United States after the second world war with Winston Churchill's blessing.

Of course it is very easy, especially for Scandinavians and other West-Europeans, to feel comfortable and satisfied with the strong role of leadership that America has assumed in the world, with the entire entertainment industry and all the business initiatives, not to mention all the safety or security lots of people may be feeling because the American military industrial complex with its 750 military bases around on the globe appears to be so conscientious, considerate, selfless, altruistic and idealistic. They're taking care of the world and protecting it from evil and injustice at such great self-sacrifice because they love freedom and democracy and follow God's voice.

The uncritical embrace of the United States is comfortable because up until this point, our corner of the world has been invited to the party of the good, rich, and mighty and has therefore not experienced any of the suppression, exploitation, torture, war crimes, and genocides conducted by the CIA, which has been meted out on a daily basis to people living in less favored regions.

However, this should not give cause for antipathy or aversion against various influences and dependencies that exist, nor should it spur the cultivation of national or regional vanities. Time and time again, Rudolf Steiner emphasized that what is really needed and absolutely sufficient, is that one becomes aware, conscious, cognizant, knowing, of important phenomena and facts because they concern our relationship to the threshold and our double, our Doppelgänger. Nothing except knowledge of these things provide the counterweight required, and it is the lazy reluctance or indifference in this area that can easily lead to even greater catastrophes.

Rudolf Steiner continues in the same lecture:

"Yesterday I called attention to the necessity for spiritual science really to penetrate also into social and political concepts. For America's endeavor is to mechanize everything, to drive everything into the realm of pure naturalism, and gradually to extinguish European culture from the earth. It cannot be otherwise. Obviously geographical concepts are not concepts of a people as such. It is only necessary to think of Emerson in order to know that nothing is intended here as characteristic of a people. But Emerson was a man of European education through and through. This simply shows the two opposite poles that are developing. Precisely under such influences as have been characterized today, people such as Emerson develop, who develop as they do because they confront the double with complete humanity. On the other hand, people are developing such as Woodrow Wilson, who is a mere sheath of the double, through whom the double himself works with special effectiveness Such people are essentially actual embodiments of the geographic nature of America."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here it may be appropriate to insert a comment that a certain criticism of Rudolf Steiner may be justified, at least from a superficial or exoteric point of view, when he is accused of Eurocentrism. In Ralph Waldo Emerson, he saw a progressive soul in harmony with his Time Spirit, and the same may be said of Emerson's protégé Walt Whitman, who for the sake of simplicity may be called the American version of (the Norwegian national poet) Henrik Wergeland. But these connections are extremely complicated. The history of the United States is not only characterized by the greed for gold that Steiner is talking about -- a characterization that fits Central and South America better than North America because a major weakness for the Spanish was their love of plunder and gold while they despised hard work, which became the bastion of North America's superior wealth. The history of the United States, on the other hand, is a story of violence, genocide, slavery, and wars, and this has continued to exercise tremendous influence upon culture, politics, and economic priorities to this very day. And before we move on, we should also take a brief look at our own cultural heroes Emerson and Whitman from Noam Chomsky's perspective:

"Of course, Saddam Hussein could never in his wildest imaginings have the ambition of the Jacksonian Democrats -- and this ambition was imbued with extreme racism, including from leading figures. I mean, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, were explaining why we had to conquer Mexico because of the backward, ignorant Mexicans could never do anything and we could liberate them and free them and so on."

The Mexican Mysteries

But now we are going to penetrate even deeper into the dark and sinister occult secrets of the Western Hemisphere, namely the Mexican Mysteries that took place two thousand years ago -- in other words, contemporaneously with the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine, in the region now called Mexico.

Rudolf Steiner tells us:

"Now I have already mentioned that something is coming to expression from two sides, even geographically, that will burst like a storm into our calm and peaceful evolution in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, predisposed as it is to calm and peace. I pointed to one of these directions when I told you how Genghis Khan was inspired by the priest who had seen a descendant of the 'Great Spirit' of old Atlantis. I also indicated how a certain ahrimanic attack was launched from the West through all that followed the discovery of America. It has been overcome in a certain respect but continues to live on in it as a resistant force. One must not think that things that are not seen are not there. Because what the ahrimanic powers took in hand in the Western Hemisphere did not come to outer physical earthly reality, our fifth post-Atlantean culture has been saved from the first attacks. But it goes on living in a sort of spectral form. It is there and impresses itself into men's impulses. People know nothing of it, however, and are unaware that it lives in and inserts itself into their impulses. Now it is only through placing pictures side by side that I can really lay a foundation for concepts that you must gradually create and form for yourselves in meditation. It would not be easy to find concepts in the present fund of ideas to explain what actually lives in the urges and impulses below the threshold. They push up, to be sure, into the ordinary soul life but they are normally covered over and unperceived in modern normal life."

(Inner Impulses of Evolution, The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templar (GA 171), Lecture III: The After Effects of the Atlantean Mysteries in America and Asia, Dornach, September 18, 1916)

Here it may be challenging to grasp what Steiner is talking about when I have pulled a piece of text out of its context this way, but it should become clear through the text that follows below, especially when it can also be linked to geographic medicine as described in the previous excerpts above.

"Upon the soil of the Western Hemisphere that was now trodden through the discovery of America, quite special conditions had gradually been taking shape in the course of past centuries. The general population inhabiting those parts was far from attaining the qualities that had meanwhile been developed in the Eastern Hemisphere of Europe and Asia. A people lived in the West who stood far removed from the intellectual capacities that had evolved in the Eastern Hemisphere, but among them were a great number of individuals who had been initiated into certain mysteries. Before the discovery of America, there were mysteries of the most varied kind in the Western Hemisphere and they had a large following for the teachings that came from them. Like a single central power whom all followed and obeyed, a kind of spectral spirit, a descendant of the "Great Spirit" of Atlantis, was revered. This spirit had gradually assumed an ahrimanic character because he still worked with forces that had been right in Atlantis or were already ahrimanic there.

"When the Atlantean spoke of his 'Great Spirit,' he expressed it, as we have seen, in a word that sounded something like the word 'Tao,' which is still preserved in China. An ahrimanic, caricatured counterpart appeared in the West as opponent of the 'Great Spirit Tao' but he was still connected with him. He worked in such a way that he could only be made visible through atavistic, visionary perception but whenever they desired his presence, he always showed himself to those persons connected with the widespread mysteries of this cult so they could receive his instructions and commands. This spirit was called by a name that sounded something like Taotl. Taotl was thus an ahrimanic distortion of the 'Great Spirit' — a mighty being and one who did not descend to physical incarnation. A great many men were initiated into the mysteries of Taotl but the initiation was of a completely ahrimanic character. It had a quite definite purpose and goal, which was to rigidify and mechanize all earthly life, including that of humans, to such a degree that a special luciferic planet, which has already been referred to in these studies, could be founded above earthly life. The souls of men could then be drawn out to it, by force and pressure."

At this point I should warn the reader most strongly with regard to what follows, because it is extremely revolting, so be prepared. And yet, it is very necessary that these things become widely known in our time.

"As we described yesterday, what the ahrimanic powers were striving for in the civilization of Rome was only a feeble echo of what those who, under the leadership of Taotl, set out to attain, and this in much fuller and wider measure by means of the most frightful magical arts. The goal they aimed to achieve was to make the whole earth a realm of death, in which everything possible would be done to kill out independence and every inner impulse of the soul. In the mysteries of Taotl the forces were to be acquired that would enable men to set up a completely mechanized earthly realm. To this end, one had, above all, to know the great cosmic secrets that relate to what works and lives in the universe and reveals its activities in earthly existence. You see, this wisdom of the cosmos is fundamentally in its wording, always the same, because truth is always the same. The point is, however, whether or not it is received in such a way that it is employed rightly.

"Now this cosmic wisdom, which was intrinsically not evil but held holy secrets hidden within it, was carefully concealed by the initiates of Taotl. It was communicated to no one who had not been initiated correctly by the Taotl method. When a candidate had been initiated in the correct way, the teaching concerning the secrets of the cosmos was then imparted to him. Now, it was necessary for him to receive these secrets through initiation in a quite definite mood of soul. He had to feel in himself the inclination and desire to apply them on earth in such a way that they would set up that mechanistic rigid realm of death. It was thus that he had to receive the secrets. Nor were they communicated except on one special condition. The wisdom was imparted to no one who had not previously committed a murder in a particular manner. Moreover, only certain secrets were communicated to the candidate after the first murder, but further and higher secrets were imparted to him after he had committed others.

"These murders, however, had to be committed under quite definite conditions. The one to be murdered was laid out on a structure that was reached by one or two steps running along each side. This scaffold-like structure, a kind of catafalque, was rounded off above and when the victim was laid upon it, he was bent strongly back. This special way of being bound to the scaffold forced his stomach outward so that with one cut, which the initiate had been prepared to perform, it could be cut out.

"This kind of murder engendered definite feelings in the initiate. Sensations were aroused that made him capable of using the wisdom later imparted to him in the way that has been intimated above. When the stomach had been excised, it was offered to the god Taotl, again with special ceremonies. The fact that the initiates of these mysteries lived for the quite specific purpose that I have indicated to you, imparted a definite direction to their feelings. When the candidates to be initiated had matured on this path and had come to experience its inner meaning, they then learned the nature of the mutual interaction between the one who had been murdered and the one who had been initiated. Through the murder, the victim was to be prepared in his soul to strive upward to the luciferic realm, whereas the candidate for initiation was to obtain the wisdom to mould this earthly world in such a way that souls would be driven out of it. Through the fact that a connection was formed between the murdered and the initiated — one cannot say 'murderer,' but 'initiated' — it was made possible for the initiated to be taken with the other soul; that is, the initiated could himself forsake the earth at the right moment.

"These mysteries, as you will readily admit, are of the most revolting kind. Indeed, they are only in accord with a conception that can be called ahrimanic in the fullest sense. Nevertheless, certain feelings and experiences were to be created on earth by their means. Now, naturally, the evolution of the earth would not continue if, over a considerable part of its surface, mankind and an interest in mankind should completely die out. The interest in humanity, however, did not quite die out even there because other and different mysteries were founded that were designed to counteract the excesses of the Taotl mysteries. These were mysteries in which a being lived who did not come down to physical incarnation but also could be perceived by men gifted with a certain atavistic clairvoyance when they had been prepared. This being was Tezcatlipoca. That was the name given to the being who, though he belonged to a much lower hierarchy, was partly connected through his qualities with the Jehovah god. He worked in the Western Hemisphere against those grisly mysteries of which we have spoken."

As we see, Rudolf Steiner pointed out himself that these Mysteries were extremely revolting and nauseating. We should however pay a little attention to a discrepancy with regard to a certain detail here, between Steiner's description and the ordinary, or "orthodox" historical conception of these rituals. In Stewart C. Easton's foreword and Frédéric Kozlik's introduction to GA 171, these things are mentioned, and one comes to the conclusion when reading this that the occult content in that kind of practice here described, is hidden later on for posterity; tradition tells us, therefore, that the heart was cut out instead of the stomach. The secret here concealed consists of the fact that the will is seated in the stomach, and it was the will to future physical incarnations that should be killed in order to make the victim seek his abode in a luciferic sphere instead of continuing his earthly evolution.

Here all kinds of questions may arise of course. If the intention behind the whole scheme was to implement a total mechanization of human society globally, why would this goal be served by comprehensive depopulation? I'm reminded of an old classical Norwegian psalm that they still keep singing in the Lutheran state church, written by Petter Dass. One line goes like this: "God is God if all lands lay waste / God is God if every man lay dead." You go figure it out. To my father, who was an agnostic, this was pure nonsense. To me to. Absurd. Yet they sing it in church. Everything lifeless, only "God"? Or as Taotl wanted it, only Ahriman? How should he carry out his plan to make the earth thoroughly intellectual through and through with no physical brains Even to make robots, human beings are needed.

Anyway, the Doctor continues:

"The teachings of Tezcatlipoca soon escaped from the mysteries and were spread abroad exoterically. Thus, in those regions of the earth, the teachings of Tezcatlipoca were actually the most exoteric, while those of Taotl were the most esoteric, since they were only obtained in the manner described above. The ahrimanic powers sought to "save" humanity, however — I am now speaking as Ahriman thought of it — from the god Tezcatlipoca. Another spirit was set up against him who, for the Western Hemisphere, had much in common with the spirit whom Goethe described as Mephistopheles. He was indeed his kin. This spirit was designated with a word that sounded like Quetzalcoatl. He was a spirit who, for this time and part of the earth, was similar to Mephistopheles, although Mephistopheles displayed much more of a soul nature. Quetzalcoatl also never appeared directly incarnated. His symbol was similar to the Mercury staff to be found in the Eastern Hemisphere, and he was, for the Western Hemisphere, the spirit who could disseminate malignant diseases through certain magic forces. He could inflict them upon those whom he wished to injure in order to separate them from the relatively good god, Tezcatlipoca. The powerful onslaughts were thus prepared in the West that were to be made upon the world of human impulses.

"Now at a certain time a being was born in Central America who set himself a definite task within this culture. The old, original inhabitants of Mexico linked the existence of this being with a definite idea or picture. They said he had entered the world as the son of a virgin who had conceived him through super earthly powers, inasmuch as it was a feathered being from the heavens who impregnated her. When one makes researches with the occult powers at one's disposal, one finds that the being to whom the ancient Mexicans ascribed a virgin birth was born in the year 1 A.D. and lived to be thirty-three years old. These facts emerge when, as stated, one examines the matter with occult means. This being set himself a quite specific task.

"At this same time in Central America another man was born who was destined by birth to become a high initiate of Taotl. This man had in his previous earthly incarnations been initiated as described above and through the fact that he had many, many times repeated the procedure involving the excision of the stomach, which has been described to you and which there is no need to recapitulate, he had been gradually equipped with a lofty earthly and super-earthly knowledge. This was one of the greatest black magicians, if not the greatest ever to tread the earth; he possessed the greatest secrets that are to be acquired on this path. He was faced directly with a momentous decision as the year 30 A.D. approached, namely whether or not, as a single human individual, to become so powerful through continuous initiation that he would come to know a certain basic secret. Through knowledge of this secret he would have then been able to give such a shock and impetus to the coming evolution of man on earth that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs would have been thrown into terrible darkness, with the result that what the ahrimanic powers had striven for in these epochs could have come into existence.

"Then a conflict began between this super-magician and the being to whom a virgin birth was ascribed, and one finds from one's research that it lasted for three years. The being of the virgin birth bore a name that, when we try to transpose it into our speech approximates Vitzliputzli. He is a human person who, among all these beings who otherwise only moved about in spirit form and could only be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, in actual fact became man, so the story goes, through his virgin birth. The three year conflict ended when Vitzliputzli was able to have the great magician crucified, and not only through the crucifixion to annihilate his body but also to place his soul under a ban, by this means rendering its activities powerless as well as its knowledge. Thus the knowledge assimilated by the great magician of Taotl was killed. In this way Vitzliputzli was able to win again for earthly life all those souls who, as indicated, had already received the urge to follow Lucifer and leave the earth. Through the mighty victory he had gained over the powerful black magician, Vitzliputzli was able to imbue men again with the desire for earthly existence and successive incarnations."

So this was taking place contemporaneously with the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine, at exactly the same time it seems, and may almost resemble a mirror image of that Mystery. Here one may speculate about the origin of some weird American Christian myths, like in Mormonism, the Latter Day Saints, the church which controls most of Utah and is perhaps best known for their choirs and their underwear. This religion has a strange origin, the story about Joseph Smith who had a revelation in New York in the 1820's by an angel who gave him some golden plates with Egyptian characters and helped him translate this text into Elisabethan English, i.e. the language of Shakespeare and the King James translation of the Bible from 1611. And one of these strange Mormon teachings says that when Christ had died on the cross, he did not spend those three days before his Resurrection in the realm of the dead, but in America to preach the Gospel to the Indians. So Christ spent 72 hours among native Americans between his death and resurrection. The Mormons claim Biblical support for this teaching where Christ says:

"And other sheep I have , which are not of this fold: them also I must bring , and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." ( -- john 10:16)

Personally, I have learned to take everything coming from America with regard to religion, spirituality, and metaphysics with a very large lump of salt, and I have to say the same about all claims to initiation and clairvoyance. Americans are excellent in the technical, practical, and economic realms, and also in their artistic and academic endeavors because they strive to expose the big deception, but religiously, spiritually, metaphysically, and philosophically, the forces coming from American soil are programmed, so to speak, to mislead humanity and spread lies, although a distinction clearly needs to be made between geography and people. This is intimately connected with those secrets that are described in this article with regard to the Western Hemisphere.

Rudolf Steiner continues in his lecture:

"Nothing survived from these regions of what might have lived on if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit. The forces left over from the impulse that lived in these mysteries survived only in the etheric world. They still exist subsensibly, belonging to what would be seen if, in the sphere of the spirit, one could light a paper over a solfatara. The forces are there under the covering of ordinary life, which is like the surface crust of a volcano.

"So, on one side, what came from the inspirer of Genghis Khan entered into the forming of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and, on the other, what worked on as the ghost or spectre of the events that had taken place in the Western Hemisphere. No more than a feeble echo was left of this when the Europeans discovered America. But it is even known in ordinary history that many Europeans who set foot on Mexican-American soil were murdered by the decadent priesthood, which, though no longer as evil as in earlier times, still cut out the stomach, as I described. This was the fate of many Europeans who trod the soil of Mexico after the discovery of America, and the fact is even known to history."

As already mentioned, exoteric history has altered this description by exchanging the stomach with the heart, but enough of that. Steiner continues:

"In Vitzliputzli these people revered a Sun being who was born of a virgin, as I have said. When one investigates it occultly, one finds that he was the unknown contemporary in the Western Hemisphere of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can, indeed, also describe these things superficially as modern people like to do to avoid giving pain. If, however, one desires real knowledge, the one must cast a fleeting glance upon these concrete facts of the past, as we have done today. Yes, when we regard this modern human soul, we see how below, in the direction of the subsensible, and how above, in the direction of the supersensible, it is exposed to great and serious dangers, and how forces play in that remain unknown. Yet it is good that they remain unknown because it is only in this way that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can develop. The veil must be lifted now so that consciousness may be added to what still remains unconsciousness, because enough time has passed since America has been discovered. Otherwise, if consciousness did not gradually enter, these forces would become paramount, and the relatively beneficent conditions of the time of unconsciousness would turn around and become the curse of humanity. After all, many things, which in the way they have made their appearance have proved a benefit, bear the inherent tendency to become a curse to mankind."

Anthroposophical Madness

Here it is important not to be taken in by materialistic thought forms in connection with "a curse to mankind" -- that is, by concentrating exclusively on power politics, invasions, wars, torture, fraud, exploitation and so on. In this context Leonard Cohen has come up with an interesting comment, namely that we don't like America today, but we will like much less that which comes after America -- whether it means China or whatever. It's also wise to be exercise restraint regarding speculations about present-day activities of Western secret lodges because the theme has a tendency to spark off pure madness from anthroposophists who are struggling with their sanity. Many of these draw their conspiracy speculations in a strong anti-Semitic direction, i.e. they claim a Jewish global conspiracy reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which everybody knows was a forgery directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews) and the Nazi propaganda against Jews in the 1930's. Some of them are even open and consistent Holocaust deniers. These are in fact Western antthroposophists and may be ragarded as an attack against the movement from within, not necessarily because wacky ideas infect the rest of the movement, but because they give the opponents wind in their sails when accusing anthroposophy of racism, anti-Semitism, and Nazism.

And yet, touching that which Steiner describes as the activities of the Western lodges is something that cannot be avoided, for the simple reason that these lodges are comprised of initiates with complete knowledge of all these occult secrets and know how to abuse such knowledge. This is what results in severe political and economic corruption and abuse all over the world, but because the conspiracy theorists, including the anthroposophical ones, have fallen completely for materialistic interpretations of external events, their texts sometimes resemble babbling from psychiatric patients. I have said many times during the last decade that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the madness that will be let loose in the nearest future -- not at least from anthroposophical quarters!

In other words, the topic of secret lodges and their activities seem unavoidable, but personally I'll save this hot potato for a future article with absolutely no promises.

America's Future

At this point, it may be a good idea to take a look at what Rudolf Steiner said about America's future. The following quote has been excerpted from a lecture given in Berlin on October 31, 1905 (GA 93a), i.e. a few years before Steiner began to experience opposition and enmity -- which first emerged from the theosophists in 1907 and Max Heindel's plagiarization and slander etc., and then broke out for real in 1911 after the lecture series From Jesus to Christ (GA 131).

"World-egoism proceeds from the Anglo-American Race. From that direction the whole Earth will be overlaid with egoism. It is from England and America that all the discoveries come that will cover the Earth like a network of egoism. So it is from there that the whole Earth will be covered by a network of egotistic evil. But from a small colony in the East [The Slavonic peoples.] there will be developed, as though from a seed, new life for the future.

"The English-American civilisation consumes European culture. The sects in England and America represent nothing other than the most incredible conservation of what is old. But such Societies as the Salvation Army, the Theosophical Society and so on, come into existence just there, in order to rescue souls from decadence, for race evolution does not run parallel with soul evolution. But the race itself is going towards its destruction. Within it is the seed of the evil race."

(Foundations of Esotericism, GA 93a, Lecture 28, Berlin, 31st October 1905)

These are really harsh words about America from Rudolf Steiner. Most people who feel very pro-West are likely to shake their heads and say that here Rudolf Steiner's prejudices are coming out -- his Sentral-Eurocentrism etc. Closer analysis will reveal that he was right, however, and that he was not exaggerating. In that context, it's very difficult to avoid getting into the secret occult lodges of the West and their indiscriminate manipulation and abuse of those geographical and evolutionary forces and powers we have been talking about. And here one may very well begin with external events, e.g. by referring to John Perkins' books: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004) and The Secret History of the American Empire (2007). Or Chalmers Johnson's Blowback Trilogy: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

Now I will handpick an interesting quote from GA 186 (Die Soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit In reänderter Zeitage) from December 1 1918, with the almost indigestible title The Mechanistic, Eugenic, and Hygienic Aspects of the Future. It was at this time that the West had conquered Central Europe for real, and here Steiner is talking about how the evil lodges of the West are striving in a conscious and calculating way to hinder the development of higher faculties among peoples in other parts of the world (i.e. among populations outside the English-speaking countries):

"These capacities appear differentiated, distributed among the humanity of the world, but at the same time in such a way that they intertwine. Through this intertwining will the future social bond of community life be determined throughout the world. But there are hindrances against the development of these capacities. These hindrances are manifold in character, and their action is really complicated.

"For example, in the case of the people of the Central countries and the Eastern lands it is an important hindrance to the evolution of these capacities, especially their evolution in a knowing way, when strong antipathies against the people of the Western countries are active within them. Then these things cannot be viewed objectively. This is a hindrance in the evolution of these capacities.

"But the potentiality of developing another occult capacity is also even strenghtened in a certain way if it is developed out of a certain instinct of hatred. This is a strange phenomenon. We often ask ourselves, and we are dealing here with something that must be considered quite objectively, why such senseless abuse has been practiced in the Western countries. This also comes out of the instinct leading toward these capacities. For what constitutes the profoundest impelling forces in Western occultism is fostered by nothing more powerfully than by the development of feelings that are untrue but are sensed as in some way holy, and that can represent the people of the East and especially those of the Central countries as barbarians. The potentialities of material occultism, for example, are fostered by the attitude of mind constituting the so-called crusading temperament in America. This consists in the feeling that America is called to spread over the whole earth freedom and justice and I know not what other beautiful things. Of course, the people there believe that. What I am saying here has nothing to do with fault finding. The people believe that they are engaged in a crusade, but this belief in something false constitutes a support working in a certain direction. If a person should consciously make an untrue statement, he would not have this support. For this reason, what is now happening is tremendously helpful on the one side and a hindrance on the other in the development of those capacities that we must assert to be still latent at the present time in the case of most individuals who bear within themselves the will toward evolution in the future and are destined to influence profoundly the social structure of humanity.

"Just think how everything that is happening at the present time is rendered luminous and transparent with understanding and insight when you fix your attention upon those backgrounds, and realize clearly that the subconscious instincts dealt with in our reflections lie back of everything that is constantly uttered today in a conscious way.

"The most important fact in this connection, however, is that it is precisely the English-speaking peoples who, by reason of quite special evolutionary processes, possess occult centers where these things are known."

(GA 186: Die Soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit In reänderter Zeitage [12 lectures from Nov 29. to Dec 21. 1918]: 1. des. 1918: Die Entwickelung mechanischer, eugenetischer und hygienischer okkulter Fähigkeiten in der Zukunft.)

Three lectures by Dr. Steiner from GA 178 (Dornach, Nov 1917) about the dark occult activities of Western lodges are available through this link.

Here it becomes very clear that political considerations are very inadequate to shed light on such things. However, what Steiner says above about the crusading idealism in America is worth close attention: Namely that it's nonsense, a big lie, which is mankind's bounden duty to recognize in our time. But the world wants to be deceived and led to believe that the so-called leadership of the United States is a blessing for the planet.

Ahriman's Physical Incarnation

Last but not least we ought shed some light on American Christianity. And to approach this topic, we should keep in mind that Ahriman's physical incarnation is approaching, and that this will take place in the West, i.e. on the Western Hemisphere, probably in the United States. This event is of enormous significance, and it is absolutely inevitable because it is part and parcel of cosmic law: First we have Lucifer's incarnation in China, which became the origin of all old, primeval, so-called pagan wisdom; after that, we have the incarnation of Christ in the Middle East, and now very soon we will have Ahriman's incarnation in the West.

Ahriman

Rudolf Steiner tells us:

"The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a supersensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with ‘supersensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’ -- but that is not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

"Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation."

(The Ahrimanic Deception, Zurich, October 27, 1919, GA 193)

Many people may be thinking primarily about the natural-scientific, atheist superstition in connection with the ahrimanic deception, but fundamentalist Christianity stands in a very special position and must not be underestimated.

In the same lecture Rudolf Steiner says:

"These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come into existence."

In the United States, this homely "Old Time Religion" Christianity is an enormous cultural industry with its own radio stations, bookstore franchises, Bible universities and colleges, and gigantic church communities. In Norway, these are known as Evangelical Free-Churches, i.e,. Saron's Valley and so on, where the pastors, theologians, and youth leaders take their education in the United States.

American visions about the so-called "rapture" are a mixture of Bible verses, belief in flying saucers (from the 1940's), Star Trek (from the 1960's; see my article on Star Trek here) and so on, because Jesus is thought of as an astronaut expected to arrive in a star ship and beam onboard his elect, those who hold the correct religious beliefs, before he proceeds to torture unbelievers and heretics (like us) with all kinds of apocalyptic horrors and plagues. In addition to that, the core of Western protestant theology and eschatology is about the United States being God's favorite nation on earth and about Israel being God's chosen people. It doesn't matter if the true believer is Norwegian, Russian, Indian, or Nigerian; they will all confirm, regardless of their own nationality and ethnicity, that the United States is God's favorite country and that Israel is God's own land. Other people are Satan's children who don't have the right to live if they get uppity -- except those who are saved and born again, of course, because they echo their indoctrination whenever they speak. And God's own governments can of course never do anything morally suspect, because the ways of the Lord are always beyond reproach and holy.

American patriotism runs on slogans like "My country right or wrong," which is equivalent to "My mama drunk or sober." And very soon Satan Himself will come, or Ahriman, who will be believed by his followers to be Jesus the astronaut. Then Doomsday rolls in, and the lights go out.

American Christianity and Islam

In 1924, the last year he was able to give lectures before his health put an end to it, Rudolf Steiner revealed a very important secret about Woodrow Wilson:

"Open your history books, and you will find that the year 711 was of great significance in the situation between Europe and the Arabism that was storming across Spain. Tarik, Commander of the Arabs, sets out from Africa. He comes to the place that received its name from him: Gebel al Tarik, later called Gibraltar. The battle of Jerez de la Frontera takes place in the year 711. Arabism makes a strong thrust across Spain at the beginning of the 8th century. Battles are fought, and the fortunes of war sway hither and thither between the peoples who have come down into Spain to join with the old inhabitants, and the Arabs who are now storming in upon them. Even in those days the 'culture,' as we would say today, of the attacking Arabs, commanded tremendous respect in Spain. Naturally, the Europeans had no desire to subject themselves to the Arabs. But the culture the Arabs brought with them was already in a sense a foreshadowing of what flourished later in such unexampled brilliance under Haroun al Raschid. In a man such as Tarik there was the attitude of soul that in all the storms of war wants to give expression to what is contained in Arabism. What we see outwardly is the tumult of war. But along the paths of these wars comes much lofty culture. Even outwardly a very great deal in the way of art and science was established in Spain. Many remains of Arabism lived on in the spiritual life of Europe. Spain itself soon ceased to play a part in the West of Europe. Nevertheless the fortunes of war swayed to and fro and the fighting continued from Spain; in men such as Spinoza we can see how deep is the influence of Arabist culture. Spinoza cannot be understood unless we see his origin in Arabism.

"And then this stream flows across to England, but there it runs dry, comes to an end. We turn over the pages of history, and after the descriptions of the conflicts between Europe and the Arabs we find, as we read on further, that Arabism has dried up, externally at any rate. But under the surface this has not happened; on the contrary, Arabism spreads abroad in the spiritual life. And along this undercurrent of history, Tarik bears what he originally bore into Spain on the fierce wings of war. The aim of the Arabians in their campaigns was most certainly not that of mere slaughter; no, their aim was really the spread of Arabism. Their tasks were connected with culture. And what a Tarik had carried into Spain at the beginning of the 8th century, he now bears with him through the gate of death, experiencing how as far as external history is concerned it runs dry in Western Europe. And he appears again in the 19th century, bringing Arabism to expression in modern form, as Charles Darwin.

"Suddenly we shall find a light shed upon something that seems to come like a bolt from the blue — we find a light shed upon it when we follow what has here been carried over from an earlier into a later time, appearing in an entirely different form.

"It may at first seem like a paradox, but the paradox will disappear the more deeply we look into the concrete facts. Read Darwin's writings again with perception sharpened by what has been said and you will feel: Darwin writes about things which Tarik might have been able to see on his way to Europe! — In such details you will perceive how the one life reaches over into the next.

"Now from times of hoary antiquity, especially in Asia Minor, astronomy had been the subject of profound study — astronomy, that is to say, in an astrological form. This must not, of course, in any way be identified with the quackery perpetuated in the modern age as astrology. We must realise the deep insight into the spiritual structure of the universe possessed by men in those times; this insight was particularly marked among the Arabians in the period when they were Mohammedans, continuing the dynasty founded by Mohammed. Astrological astronomy in its ancient form was cultivated with great intensity among them.

"When the Residence of the dynasty was transferred from Damascus to Baghdad, we find Mamun ruling there in the 9th century. During the reign of Mamun — all such rulers were successors of the Prophet — astrology was cultivated in the form in which it afterwards passed over into Europe, contained in tracts and treatises of every variety which were only later discovered. They came over to Europe in the wake of the Crusades but had suffered terribly from erroneous and clumsy revision. For all that, however, this astronomy was great and sublime. And when we search among those who are not named in history, but who were around Mamun in Baghdad in the period from 813 to 833, cultivating this astrological-astronomical knowledge, we find a brilliant personality in whom Mamun placed deep confidence. His name is not given in history, but that is of no account. He was a personality most highly respected, to whom appeal was always made when it was a question of reading the portents of the stars. Many measures connected with the external social life were formulated in accordance with what such celebrities as the learned scholar at the Court of Caliph Mamun were able to read in the stars.

"And if we follow the line along which the soul of this learned man at the Court of Mamun in Baghdad developed, we are led to the modern astronomer Laplace. Thus one of the personalities who lived at the Court of the Caliph Mamun appears again as Laplace.

"The great impulses — those of less importance, too, which I need not now enumerate — that still flowed from this two-branched stream into Europe, even after the outer process had come to a halt, show us how Arabism lived on spiritually, how this two-pronged fork around Europe continued its grip.

"You will remember, my dear friends, that Mohammed himself founded the centre of Mohammedanism, Medina, which later on became the seat of residence of his successors; this seat of residence was subsequently transferred to Damascus. Then, from Damascus across to Asia Minor and to the very portal of Europe, Constantinople, the generals of Mohammed's successors storm forward, again on the wings of war, bearing culture that has been fructified by the religion and the religious life founded by Mohammed, but is permeated also with the Aristotelianism which in the wake of the campaigns of Alexander the Great was carried over from Greece, from Macedonia, indeed from many centres of culture, to Asia.

"And here, too, something very remarkable happens. Arabism is flooded, swamped, by the Turkish element. The Crusaders find rudimentary relics only, not the fruits of an all-prevailing culture. All this was eliminated by the Turks. What was carried by way of Africa and Spain to the West lives on and develops in the tranquil flow, so to speak, of civilisation and culture; points of contact are again and again to be found.

"The unnamed scholar at the Court of Mamun, Haroun al Raschid himself, Tarik — all these souls were able to link what they bore within them with what was actually present in the world. For when the soul has passed through the gate of death, a certain force of attraction to the regions which were the scene of previous activity always remains; even when through other impulses of destiny there may have been changes, nevertheless the influence continues. It works on, maybe in the form of longing or the like. But because Arabism promotes belief in strict determinism, when the opportunity offered for continuing in a spiritual way what, at the beginning, was deliberately propagated by warlike means, it also became possible to carry these spiritual streams especially into France and England. Laplace, Darwin, Bacon, and many other spirits of like nature were led forward in this direction.

"But everything had been, as it were, damped down. In the East, Arabism was able to knock only feebly at the door of Europe; it could make no real progress there. And those who passed through the gate of death after having worked in this region felt repulsed, experienced a sense of inability to go forward. The work they had performed on earth was destroyed, and the consequence of this between death and rebirth was a kind of paralysis of the life of soul. — We come now to something of extraordinary interest.

"Soon after the time of the Prophet, the Residence is transferred from Medina to Damascus. From there the generals of the successors of the Prophet go forth with their armies but are again and again beaten back; the success achieved in the West is not achieved here. And then, very soon, we see a successor of the Prophet, Muavija by name, ruling in Damascus. His attitude and constitution of soul proceed on the one side from the monotheism of Arabism, but also from the determinism which grew steadily into fatalism. But already at that time., although in a more inward, mystical way, the Aristotelianism that had been carried over to Asia was taking effect. Muavija, who sent his generals on the one side as far as Constantinople and on the other made attempts — without any success to speak of — in the direction of Africa, this Muavija was at the same time a thoughtful man; but a man who did not accomplish anything very much, either outwardly or in the spiritual life.

"Muavija rules not long after Mohammed. He thus stands entirely within Mohammedanism, within the religious life of Arabism. He is a genuine representative of Mohammedanism at that time, but one of those who are growing away from its hide-bound form and entering into that mode of thought which then, discarding the religious form, appears in the sciences and fine arts of the West.

"Muavija is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed, but one whose thinking is no longer patterned in absolute conformity with that of Mohammed; he draws his impulse from Mohammed, but only his impulse. He has not yet discarded the religious core of Mohammedanism, but has already led it over into the sphere of thought, of logic. And above all he is one of those who are ardently intent upon pressing on into Europe, upon forcing their way to the West. If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power, but this was already blunted, was already losing its edge.

"When such a spirit later passes through the gate of death and lives on, the driving force also persists, and if we follow the path further we get this striking impression. — During the life between death and a new birth, much that remained as longing is elaborated into world-encompassing plans for a later life, but world-encompassing plans that assume no very concrete form for the very reason that the force behind them was blunted.

"Now I confess that I am always having to ask myself: Shall I or shall I not speak openly? But after all it is useless to speak of these matters merely in abstractions, and so one must lay aside reserve and speak of things that are there in concrete cases. Let the world think as it will: certain inner, spiritual necessities exist in connection with the spread of Anthroposophy. One lends oneself to the impulse that arises from these spiritual necessities, pursuing no outward 'opportunism.\ Opportunism has, in sooth, wrought harm enough to the Anthroposophical Society; in the future there must be no more of it. And even if things have a paradoxical effect, they will. henceforward be said straight out.

"If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson.

"In a shattering way the present links itself with the past. A bond is suddenly there between present and past. And if we observe how on the sea of historical happenings there surges up as it were the wave of Muavija, and again the wave of Woodrow Wilson, we perceive how the undercurrent flows on through the sea below and appears again — it is the same current.

"I believe that history becomes intelligible only when we see how what really happens has been carried over from one epoch into another. Think of the abstraction., the rigid abstraction, of the Fourteen Points. Needless to say, the research did not take its start from the Fourteen Points — but now that the whole setting lies before you, look at the configuration of soul that comes to expression in these Fourteen Points and ask yourselves whether it could have taken root with such strength anywhere else than in a follower of Mohammed.

"Take the fatalism that had already assumed such dimensions in Muavija and transfer it into the age of modern abstraction. Feel the similarity with Mohammedan sayings: 'Allah has revealed it'; 'Allah will bring it to pass as the one and only salvation.' And then try to understand the real gist of many a word spoken by the promoter of the Fourteen Points. — With no great stretch of imagination you will find an almost literal conformity.

"Thus, when we are observing human beings, we can also speak of a reincarnation of ideas. And then for the first time insight is possible into the growth and unfolding of history."

(Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume I, GA 235; Lecture 10, Dornach, 16th March, 1924)

I quoted a long passage from this lecture because it's a very interesting and informative history lesson on a subject that's very important for all Europeans today, when we are experiencing a renewed cultural challenge by the Arabic stream through Islam. But the crucial point here is how this Arabic thrust into Europe came back in a new and more advanced form through Woodrow Wilson, whom Steiner has also described as a mere shadow of his double. Monotheism was first introduced to the world by the Jews, through Judaism. Through the prophet Mohammed, this monotheism assumed a more extreme form, more onesided, because although Mohammed's angel "was not one of the best Angels although he was a very wise one," as Steiner put it in a lecture without title or reference, he did away with the trinity (Moon, Sun and Saturn disguised as Father, Son and Spirit) and proclaimed only one god that everybody must obey because Scripture (the Quran) says so. This type of monotheism means that the Word is not made flesh, like in Christianity, making each human being the carrier of divine truth; instead, the Word is made Scripture, a book, and this book must be obeyed unconditionally. The same principle applies, of course, to American Christianity. And the one and only god to be obeyed is not one of unconditional, self-sacrificing love, but a god of brutal justice, vengeance, and war: The god of the Old Testament. So Steiner's observations shouldn't come as any surprise when he said:

"Man may sense the Divine but may have no possibility to sense the Christ. In this respect we do not differentiate carefully enough today. We are satisfied with words, also in other spheres. For, if we test today the actual spiritual content of the view of many human beings of the occident and are not influenced by their words — they say they agree with Christian precepts, they believe in the freedom of the will, and so forth — we shall find that the whole configuration of their thinking contradicts what they thus express. Only through their participation in cultural life have they become accustomed to speak of Christ, of freedom, and so forth. In reality, my dear friends, a great number of human beings living among us are nothing but Turks; for the content of their faith is the same as the fatalistic content of faith of the Mohammedans — although this fatalism is often described as a necessity of nature. Mohammedanism is much more prevalent than we think. If we do not focus our attention upon the words but upon the spirit-soul content, we shall find that many Christians are Turks. They call themselves 'Christians' even though they cannot find the transition from the God they sense to the Christ."

The Mission of the Archangel Michael, GA194, IV: The Culture of the Mysteries and the Michael Impulse. Self-knowledge and its Permeation of the Three Strata of Consciousness, Dornach, 28th November, 1919)

And take this very interesting passage from an unidentified lecture:

"Just think how abstractly, how brutally, how heedlessly investigations are made into these things today and you will realize what is really lacking and has been killed, in spite of the fact that Arabism did conserve much of the wisdom, conscientiousness and skill of ancient times. It has been killed because Moon, Sun and Saturn—this Trinity which was then disguised as Father, Son and Spirit — disappeared and was repudiated by Arabian thought in Mohammedanism with the words: 'Away with this Trinity. Mohammed proclaims only one God!' (Mohammed himself did not say this, but the Angel who inspired him, did. He was not one of the best Angels although he was a very wise one.) And so we see that all differentiations in the world are allowed to disappear; things which ought to be known are darkened and our medicine has become an Arabian-Mohammedan medicine. European humanity was incapable of discovering the truth. Today these things must be known or mankind will go to pieces."

("Lecture IV" Dornach, April 24, 1924)

The working of the Arabic stream through the West as an integral part of the Western political, economic, and cultural power structure is extremely complicated. Because this also involves the history of Europe, I'll postpone further discussions until I get enough relevant material for a different article.