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With thanks to Mike B. for the tip and for the following show notes.
Jasun starts the New Year off proper from the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain with a mashup of Rudolf Steiner clips read by Dale Brunsvold of rudolfsteineraudio.com. Jasun is kind enough to chime-in with his two cents here and there. All this makes for what I think is a quality episode of The Liminalist. Even better than the Simone Weil shows from 2018.
Part One: Sleepwalking through History (0 – 34 mins)
A quick disclaimer, the emancipation of language in the social realm, scientistic materialism : putting the horse before the driver, the space between the physical & the spiritual world (you, man), doctor sleep : the ego/I and the astral body during what we think of as waking life, I eat Earthly forces like you for breakfast : the physical and etheric bodies, sleepwalking through history, feeling the living dead.
Part Two: You Can Work When You’re Dead (34 mins – 1 hr 2 mins)
Translating the impulses of the spirit world through awareness, what the dead can no longer reach, do you see what I see? do you hear what I hear ?, the land of no filters and dream cookies, you can work when you’re dead, “I believe cats to be spirits come to earth” – Jules Verne, are you aware that everything matters ?, the dead are always there – waves don’t die, feeling all the living and the dead, the direct and indirect connection of souls.
Part Three: Letters to the Dead (1 hr 4 – 1 hr 24 mins)
Words should lead to reality, a mosh-pit of insatiability, between death & a new birth, sleeping destiny, the dead : seen and not seen, generations generate, the original impulse, reading to the dead, don’t burn yourself on that materialism – it’s hot, angels or airwaves, if you can summon it , you don’t want to.
Part Four: Where Our Nerves Cannot Follow (1 hr 28 mins – end)
The Angeloi and the transmutation of the animal nature, dead skin mask, spatio-temporal probes of a vast protuberance, consciousness that extends into the angelic, plant & animal kingdoms, no big deal, the ephemeral effervescence, where our nerves cannot follow, etheric organs and your chariot through the gate of death, successive Earthly lives in the cosmic rhythm, transforming the centaur, the dead come calling, the carpet of the senses, putting the pure idea before the action, the centaur is released early on good behavior, a closing caution from Jasun: let it go to your feet.
Outtake:
Songs: “Primitive,” “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine,” & “Chasing Time” by Joy Zipper; “Chango” by Federale; “Little Puppet Thing” by Terry Allen.
for the record, I listened to “Waves” by Kanye West about 7 times while typing all this up
I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it went down
Hmmm . . . Daniel Pinchbeck will be giving a presentation on Steiner later this month. Funny how these things coalesce in the environment.
oh dear; with promoters like that, who needs debunkers?
“Quick ! Steiner is getting popular YouTube and we need to tell people what to think about him before they read it.”
“What’s Pinchbeck doing ? He’s good at ruining things.”
doubly funny because it’s true
Interestingly I have noted an uptick recently in articles deriding Steiner and Steiner schools for supposed racist content.
It really does not serve Anthropsophy well to deny the racist content of Steiner’s teachings. I know it’s quite counter-intuitive, but in my experience, owning up to Steiner’s actual racism is the first step toward grasping Steiner’s moral philosophy of “Ethical Individualism.”
For without being able to distinguish the individual from the collective, or in Steiner’s terms: the individual ego from the collective/tribal Group Soul, then the problem of racism will only get worse and divide us even further.
Rudolf Steiner actually spoke of the “Mission of White Humanity” which of course is misunderstood today because by white humanity, he meant not the color White but rather the delicate color he called Peach-Blossom, which is the color of ennobled human skin when it balances the forces of darkness (Ahriman) and the forces of Light (Lucifer.)
This balancing act is what he means by the Christ-Impulse and here is a quote from a lecture he gave in Stuttgart on Feb 13, 1915.
But it was for the sake of bringing down the spiritual impulse that Christ became flesh in a human body. And the characteristic of the mission of white humanity, in general, is to carry down the spirit, to impregnate the flesh with the spirit.
Man has his white skin that the spirit may work in the skin when it descends to the physical plane. The task of our fifth culture-epoch, prepared through the preceding four epochs, is to make the outer physical body a shrine for the spirit.
I would call it the Mission of Peach-Blossom Humanity which is akin to Europeans “carrying the white man’s burden” of the Negro a century ago. Only today, I would call it the Peach-Blossom People’s Burden.”
do charges of racism have any meaning in an age when it is racist not to be anti-racist, and in which even the assertion, or even suggestion, of inherent differences between races, or racial types, is ipso facto racist – unless it be black and brown people good, white people bad?
Nakai, only some of us ever notice this.
Really enjoyed this episode. I can see if this may not be the type of show many of your listeners might be into but it struck a definitive and helpful chord with me for sure. I’m completely onboard with this particular format for as long as you feel the need to do it. The subject matter is really resonating with me, and reapproaching the Aeolus-style lucid view from the headspace in which you’re currently at provides (for me anyway) a lot of comfort and security in an environment normally packed to the brim with a destabilizing mania whenever it’s expressed. I’m trying to deal with the feeling of that mysterious elusive “something” hard at work in the world right now in a way that allows me a sense of grounding whilst maintaining the space to process it in all it’s mad bad glory, which can be a difficult balancing act. Your treatment of Steiner’s material in this episode did just that for me… the tricky tightrope walk of dead seriousness and grounding, irreverent humor done with aplomb, style and grace.
R. Steiner. I don’t know a great deal about him except that he had some interesting explanations concerning life, death, the soul, communication between organic substances, and the notion that we work after death. I wonder if he spent much of his days daydreaming. Nothing wrong with that.
He is quoted as proclaiming that one day doctors will give us medicine that will eliminate the soul. I have always believed that we are given a soul when we are conceived, still others have said to me that we don’t get a soul, one is not bestowed upon us until we take our first breath. I certainly don’t claim to know, but Steiner did say the drug would need to be administered at birth.
A doctor I follow who is enamored by Steiner speaks of the power of communication through Faerie Tales. There may be something there. The power of the myth is intriguing.
PS: Cats. Love them. I could always tell whether a man was a psychopath or not by the way he treated cats. I should get one.
I love your humor Jasun
Thank you for the recent podcast/lecture. I have not finished the listening all the way through as I am certainly taking my time to be able to understand the concepts as best I can on an intellectual level but there is an element that I immediately get on a symbolic level and don’t have a way to explain how it makes sense. Needless to say I am very appreciative of Jasun delivering the information in this way. And I indeed see the cross over with DO’s Transmission.
I have had an awareness of Steiner for a while as not too far from where I live and close to a place where I lived in my youth are 2 Steiner Schools. Some of my contemporaries at the time attended them and from time to time I have met people from Steiner schools. My general impression had always been that they are slightly withdrawn from the world and outwardly artistic (no bad thing).
In note to some of the comments above it is a shame that Daniel P is promoting Steiner, ultimately people will find their own path and meaning and if it starts there then whatever. When I browsed Steiner on the internet in the last few years most relevant searches are usually BBC articles trying to debunk Steiner schools noting that he was a racist based on his work on intelligence in relation to skull shapes. You cant throw the baby out with the bathwater as the saying goes, so wherever the promotion comes from we should be glad.
on another note I have not heard the Seeds for some years now, they were a staple band in my subcultural inclinations of the late 80s and early 90s, you could find me and my cohort bopping and shaking to such tunes down at the Basement Club in Brighton, sadly no longer there as it closed in the late 90s 🙁 Needless to say, I ended up going down a nostalgic rabbit hole on Spotify following the musical interlude.
Jasun,
why is it that you slow down the music that you play as if it has gone through fucked up cassette player?
Or is it that you are playing the tune via a fucked up cassette player, insert lol emoji here!
Thanks
I did slow down Joy Zipper’s version of Primitive but that’s the only time I have done that….
Jasun,
I’m gratified to see you grapple with Steiner’s anthroposophy and I realize that I can be of service to you and your community of Liministas here so I hereby volunteer to appoint myself as the “Steiner Answer Man” for you all. I first discovered Steiner in 1976 through reading Ravenscroft’s Spear of Destiny book and became a devoted Steinerista since that time.
In fact, the reason I came to Los Angeles in 2003 was to teach math and physics at the Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge, a school nick-named the Hollywood Waldorf school because of its many celebrity parents. (I will not be dishing on them but may name-drop some allusions.)
I’m also still moderately fluent in German so I can address many of the sticky translation questions that bedevil the reading of his works. At various times, I have lived in the oldest Steiner community in the USA, at the 3-Fold Farm in Spring Valley, NY as well as attending Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento where I had my Waldorf Teacher Training in the early 1980s. I’ve also taught at the Waldorf School of Garden City, Long Island, NY, attached to the campus of Adelphi University.
So that’s enough “credential burnishing” for the moment. I’d like to address your concerns and questions that you raised during this podcast, but before doing that, I’d like to set a context for the lectures that you have been listening to as read by Dale B.
Steiner is the original Liminista because the phenomenon of the “Threshold” is central to his teaching which is always and ever the need to balance two polar opposite extremes which you know as Lucifer and Ahriman.
The lectures you follow above were given between 1917 and 1919. They presume a grounding in the basics of anthroposophy, so I think a chronology of Steiner’s development is needed to orient yourself to the later advanced teaching, especially about what Steiner characterizes as the authentic communication with the dead, not the false and misleading spiritual materialism of mediumship, channeling and/or hypnosis.
First I’d like to get at the important distinction between Theosophy and Anthroposophy by noting the pivotal experience in Steiner’s life that precipitated his exit from Theosophy and the creation of Anthroposophy.
Born in 1861, Steiner was 38 years old when he had his own personal “Enlightenment Transmission” or, as some say, his “Come to Jesus” moment in Berlin in 1899. He describes this event in his autobiography as a “spiritual standing before the Mystery of Golgotha in a most solemn inner festival of knowledge.” The German is “Erkenntnis-Feier” which could be translated as a “celebration of cognition.”
As a philosopher, prior to this event, Steiner had prepared his cognition through his positing human thinking as a spiritual activity, but only when it is freed from the brain, not bound to the brain. (This helps explain the spiritual interruption of the material nerve process described early in the podcast.). Also note that Golgotha means “Place of the Skull” for it is the skull that contains the brain upon which spiritualized thinking is literally crucified upon the cross (dendrites) of all those material neurons, killed by the fully conscious thinking process but resurrected by the unconscious will in the spiritual activity of love.
Annie Besant appointed Steiner the President of the Theosophical Society in Germany in 1902 but it was her declaration in 1907 that the Krishnamurti boy (whom Steiner called “that Hindu lad”) was the reincarnation of Christ which caused Steiner to reject Theosophy and go his own way, launching anthroposophy in 1912.
Excellent introductory summation. As the song goes, “Tell me more, tell more.”
What was Rudy’s love life like?
Jasun,
Steiner’s love life is a bit complicated, but I am preparing a response. May not get to it today.
Amazing, Tom !
Can you do a quick run down of how before The Mystery of Golgotha the “individual” didn’t exist like we think of ourselves today ?
Something about the change from generational consciousness (Shem son of Noah son of Lamech, etc) to the individual/I consciousness – it’s pretty sticky stuff. I think I remember it from the Apocalypse of St. John lectures. (CW104)
Thanks !
Hi Mike,
Just a quick note on generational consciousness then vs. individual consciousness now.
We read in the OT that Methuselah is the oldest human being who ever lived, reaching 969 years of age. The way Steiner interprets that is to say that the generational memory of the being Methuselah lived for 969, but there were at least 12 human beings who lived and died, say around age 80, who each had the name Methuselah, but that each one of them would inherit intact the “Methuselah Memory” with each successive incarnation.
But in order for us humans to evolve individualized ego consciousness today, we had to break down that generational memory and, as the Greeks said: “cross the Rover Lethe”, the River of Forgetfulness and develop total amnesia about our past lives. Only then could we focus on the external material world to develop our individual ego-consciousness.
Once we pass through the total amnesia, then we are primed to remember our actual past lives, but only by using more developed spiritualized forms of cognition that could only be developed from our experience in the material world.
One interesting thing Steiner said is that an individual cannot come to know his past lives on his own. Another person must bring him that knowledge. This is the path to the future, which we might call today the “wisdom of the crowd,” or “hive mind” but the difference is that individual ego-consciousness is still valued highly, but it must break out of its narcissistic prison of enchantment by the physical (read Ahriman’s) world.
Thanks, Tom.
I always liked the Steiner riffs about Christ. The hacking of the Earth’s astral body that gives us all a piece of the same Self – or something like that.
It reminds me of the Gita : “O Arjun, I am seated in the heart of all living entities.”
Thanks for this, Tom. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall reading that Steiner was disgusted by Leadbeater’s pederasty.
After reading Prisoner of Infinity I came up with a hypothesis that Krishnamurti’s mystical experiences were probably a kind of euphoric dissociation from the trauma of his abuse by Leadbeater.
Hi Luke,
You’re right. Steiner did comment on Leadbeater’s pederasty. I’m searching for the quote. And your insight about Krishnamurti’s dissociation is pretty plausible.
I’m interested in you and Jasun doing an episode on the Waldorf schools, with particular emphasis on your time in Hollywood. As in . . . why do celebs feel the need to put their kids in Waldorf schools vs. other exclusive private schools?
Jasun . . . do you see the baton being offered? 🙂
I think celebs, tech guys etc. know how damaging screen time is for kids. Waldorf schools discourage electronic media. The parents that I’ve met while my son attended were at least trying to limit video games,movies. They also focus on handiwork, form drawing, creativity.
Hi Vincent,
Fun fact for you. Here is a NYT article from 10 years ago about the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos. It is nicknamed the Silicon Valley Waldorf School because so many of the parents are ultra-high techies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html
The school was founded in 1984 by Remote Viewing pioneer Hal Puthoff and his wife Adrienne Kennedy who were married in the Church of Scientology in the late 60’s.
At the time of its opening the school needed $25,000 to launch. Hal Puthoff came to the rescue. He sat down the Board of Trustees of the school and taught them Associative Remote Viewing. They then used this training to play the Silver Futures market and within 3 weeks, they had earned $26,000, more than enough to open the school.
That’s interesting – thanks Tom
Hi Tim,
I’m not sure we can really generalize about celebrity parents and the schools they choose for their children.
Anyway, here’s a listing of 222 famous Waldorf alumni and parents all over the world
https://www.thewaldorfs.waldorf.net/publicreports/php/FamousParentsByNames.php
At my school, I suppose I could name-drop a few, some of whom I met, most I heard about: Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Phillips, Lenny Kravitz, Melissa Ethridge, Howie Mandel, Cathy Guisewite, Paul Newman & Joann Woodward, Julianne Margulis. Jennifer Aniston is the most famous one from the Steiner School in NYC.
Here’s an article comparing Waldorf and Montessori schools re: celebrity parents
https://owlcation.com/academia/Waldorf-or-Montessori
But I doubt there’s much grist for Jasun’s Hollywood Hell Mill.
“But I doubt there’s much grist for Jasun’s Hollywood Hell Mill.’
Maybe, but I’d still be interested.
I still see maybe one or two connections with the creative class and their choice of schools. in Jasun’s Hell Mill, he mentions the one acting camp, where, of course, the future creative class denizens establish their networks (and substance dysfunctions). I wouldn’t say the same thing about Walforf (or Montessori) schools, but I have to wonder about those schools being conduits for future networks.
Check out the other Krishnamurti, U.G. Like the train that roars past my house that perfectly interrupts any conversation, affectionately thought of as the great equalizer.
J – I thought the new pod was great. I’m hoping for a Steiner series.
I’ve been listening to Dale’s pod for awhile and you framed Steiner’s approach in a very effective way. I think my understanding is more clear. Throughout I felt like Steiner’s work lines up nicely with Dave’s and you said something similar in the pod. I imagine you’ll be doing a pod with Tom – V
Vincent – a Steiner series is intriguing possibility and could go a number of directions… I already feel the yeast bubbling as the sugar hits it and am prepping the next batch of spelt flour and dried chili pepper…
Question (for anyone really): ought I to be discouraged, encouraged, or something else by the strange “sync” of Daniel PInchbeck announcing an “interpreting Rudy” event mere hours after I posted this pod?
Is there a conceptual trap in this project that someone like DP’s mirrored interest is flashing back at me? And if so, does that make the project more or less worthwhile?
What have you (Vincent, but also anyone) got from Rudy’s words and how does it translate into practical meaning and value for you? Is it different from other kinds of occult knowledge and if so, how?
to Tom: I am up for a pod if you are, perhaps in a couple of weeks and if there is still sufficient mutual interest, after you have been Q & A-ed to the limits of your patience.
I’m not convinced it’s the Steiner material that I am responding to but rather Dale’s understanding of said material transmitted through his voice.
That being said, I think you should do podcasts with Tom and Dale and move on to something Pinchpenny ISN’T doing.
thanks; I am trust-assuming that I already am, with this pod; but to know that for sure would entail checking out the fool’s gold more closely – a possibly onerous and impractical task
Jasun – regarding pinch-a-penny – what would you do if he started attending Dave’s meetings?
To Pinchbeck’s credit in the early/mid 2000’s he was writing about Crowley being a sick dude and not a healthy path to go down. In fact that is how I became familiar with Steiner, as DP wrote something along the lines that it says a lot about our culture when Crowley is considered an occult/spiritual hero by many, but Steiner is relatively unknown.
yes I recall reading that; what I wonder (question for Tom) ism what did Rudy have to say about psychedelics?
Pinchbeck’s disservice to Steiner, if any, is that he falls short of exemplifying the positive influence of anthroposophy, and most of what he advocates strikes me as very far from congruent with Steiner’s teachings.
Jasun, I can’t find anything that Steiner ever said about psychedelics. He did speak about the effects of nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, opium on the human organism, body, soul and spirit. He even once mentioned hashish eaters, but the clear message is that such drugs work in various ways to de-stabilize, even destroy the delicate investiture of the individualized human ego as King sitting on the “throne” of the physical body. (Again this is part of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull and this throne may very well be the pineal gland or some such locus in the brain.)
Thus he would reject anything related to the dissolution of the ego or the ego-death that many psychedelics promise.
i presumed as much, his teachings being as sensitive, gentled, and body-centric as they were.
Hi Tom, I really appreciate your additions to this week’s podcast experience here in comments. As I listen to the second half of the show you have helped me get a better grip on Steiner.
His words go right to my body, some felt sense, but when my mind attempts to analyze confusion tends to set in.
My question is on the date 1879,
Steiner mentions it a lot here.
What is he talking about?
that date landed for me first of all at a literally unconscious level; I dreamt about visiting a small town and interacting with some dark-skinned female ancestors and became aware that the year was 1879; then when I woke, listening to Steiener/Brunsveld audios, some point soon after RS mentioned that year; most likely I heard him mention it in my sleep, since he mentions it a lot, but even so it felt like a strangely precognitive dream. 1879 in Rudy’s weltanschaunng was a turning point year in relation to the influence of what he calls “the spirits of darkness” in human affairs/society. It is also mentioned in the clip I put on YT about the vaccination. Maybe Tom can say more.
OMG, Jasun! Are you in tune with the Zeitgeist, or what! Do you realize that, of all the photos of Rudolf Steiner that you could have chosen to grace the header of this webpage, the one you did choose was taken when Steiner was 18 years old in the year 1879?
It is the equivalent of Steiner’s High School yearbook picture, taken upon his graduation from the Realschule just before he entered the Vienna Institute of Technology — which was the MIT or CalTech of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time.
So why is this year 1879 so important to Steiner? And now to you? Anthroposophy could be easily characterized as the “Cult of the Archangel Michael.”
According to Steiner, there are 7 Archangels who share sequentially in being promoted from their normal Archangelic level to the next rank of Archai (aka Time-Spirit, which in German is, ta-da! Zeitgeist!), where each one rule over specific historical epochs of humanity for about 3 to 4 centuries.
The Archangel Michael’s rulership of our age commenced in the fall of 1879 (around the time of his Feast Day celebrated in the Catholic Church on Sept 29, Michaelmas Day). It will continue until the 23rd Century when Oriphiel takes over.
Now you mentioned 1879 in the context of the “fall of the spirits of Darkness.” This represents the epic struggle of Michael against the Dragon (now Ahriman), a struggle that was taking place in heaven or on the spiritual worlds between the years 1841 and 1879.
Now the good news is that Michael was victorious against the Spirits of darkness in 1879 and cast them out of heaven. The bad news is that they all fell to earth where they are free to infiltrate us unsuspecting humans.
However, the best news is that precisely because they now live among us, we are able to develop our cherished human individual freedom by learning to oppose them. Of course, they have the upper hand in the social realm, inspiring materialism and rejection of spirituality. . . .
Rather than go on, I would like to introduce you to the writings of Jeremy Smith who is a fellow Brit and writes the Anthropopper blog. Here are two fine posts from 2016 where he explicates the Archangel Michael’s role in anthroposophy.
https://anthropopper.com/category/archangel-michael/
Thanks Tom
another wee “sync” with Greg M linking to anthropopper in the last blogpost…
…thoughtful emoji face thing…
The year the ‘Dual Alliance’ was founded, one of the contributing factors to the First World War?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Alliance_(1879)
Meant as reply to Joe B.
Interesting, thanks Martin.
Oh no, here we go, too many syncs and not enough blinks? Curious to see how this thread divulges the spirits of witch we inhabit-at?
Hmm, I’m pulled back to Dave’s triad of identity, ancestors, spaciousness; loosen that I-dear and enter the players; now we’re open to the dance of ants. The spirits-of-the-age are crying-out to be heard and hear we are for the most part confused about what is taking place in shape.
A union can be had of spirits/ancestors with spaciousness/consciousness, then may we reconcile the two, and now we can enter the dragon. To reference tonight’s open floor dance class, we may dance and may we then be danced.
I call upon the author to explain (Dave) and wish to recognise that there’s no harm in harmony-shoutout out to void denizen and his seance fiction, currently with 7 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Given the global lockdown I recommend any willing readers to try a 5 rhythms class online…
eurythmy !
Steiner is garbage. Many years I spent on his books. I live down the street from the North American Anthroposophy Center in NYC. Spent time there. RS a very creative cat who loved, as they do, to control his followers with nonsensical garbahge, with promises never delivered- kept just out of reach- study harder!! Definitely a cut above the usual cult leader. A racist like Blavatsky, because of this his books have had to be edited from the original German. Not quite as giant a fraud as she was…unbelievable garbage there. As René Guenon called her –
“a pure creation of British Intelligence”. Mumbo jumbo like Steiner’s is part of the ‘confusion technique’ of hypnosis. See L. Ron Hubbard etc. for more of that. His promises of cosmic consciousness and immense spiritual rewards are all-too-familiar. Spear Of Destiny got me hooked too as a youngun, with its 75% what did he call it “visioned history”? .
To RS’s credit: biodynamic farming is way cool, I practiced it but he just cribbed it from astrology and added in good contemporary farming/gardening practices with a teeny twist. Do give him credit for his architecture and use of concrete- ahead of its time. Give him credit for influencing Joseph Beuys, but JB is also now pretty much on my “shit list” as dear Mom used to call it, as well. Don’t get me started on Marcel Duchamp. Sadly, my shit list needs continual updating! Jasun you put Casteneda and Cohen there for me! Thanks for that dude.
Steiner was a shitty artist, a shitty writer, with a mysterious unknown death at a relatively young age. I used to think the Grateful Dead were pretty cool too, when I was 18. Pinchbeck probably still pretends to listen to them when he pretends to need a chill break from Tool. He’s a straight company man.
But since RS could access the Akashic records at will, know all about anything he ever wanted to know about- including all of your personal history- I guess i better give him a pass and stand up and applaud, because that is just SO AWESOME! But Jerry Garcia was a better guitar player, and LC writes better songs. Peace
Axolotl, Gingko! Welcome to the Steiner Destiny Matrix Hive of Auticulture! Check out this incredible synchronicity that just happened because you precipitated it and it has a Steiner lesson for you to learn! Jasun will be pleased because it vindicates Sections 2 & 3 of this Podcast. Wowza!
As I read through your comment, I was nodding and guffawing because I too consider Steiner to be a terribly earnest but terrible artist and writer. Performance eurythmy? Gag me with a wooden spoon! But that was also his design, but I digress.
Since you mentioned the North America Anthropsophy Center in NYC, a place I hadn’t visited in possibly 15 years, I went to Google the address which as I recall was close to 14th St. & 7th Ave. so I guess you live in the West Village?
(See, I’m an Anthropod old-timer (a native New Yawker, BTW, growing up in Inwood — Took the A Train to Dyckman-200th St.) who loved to visit the old location of the Apop Library at 211 Madison Ave. right around the corner of the Empire State Building on 35th St. before they moved it all upstate.)
So anyway, I Google the Steiner Bookstore there and look at the page that pops up with this message
http://anthroposophynyc.org
Gene Gollogly, the recently elected president of Anthroposophy NYC, has crossed the threshold at the age of 70 on January 7, 2021, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He suffered a heart attack at his home in Great Barrington and died at the local hospital. His daughter was present.
Good Golly Miss Molly! Gene Gollogly just croaked 6 days ago! Sorry I should speak in the dialect of Classical Anthropsophese: Our dear friend Gene Gollogly crossed the threshold just about a week ago.
So there you have it, gingko. Your Steiner rant here just brought us knowledge of the recent death of Gene Gollogly — someone I met and knew briefly years ago and I’ll bet you met him too! So with Steiner, you see, there’s more than just run of the grist mill synchronicities; somehow they invariably involve the dead and beg the question of how do we correctly communicate with those who have died?
Back in 1984, I had a conversation with Uncle Owen Barfield himself who was visiting Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento. When I asked him about the legacy of Steiner for the future he replied in a New York minute, I mean, heartbeat: “The proper communication with the dead.”
Fuckin’ A or what, gingko? Thank you for bringing Gene into our group.
I think I heard “Gemüt.” Gemüt = nature, disposition, temperament
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/german-english/gemut
This is interesting, to hear you take on Steiner, and read the comments. I would certainly tune in for future Steiner episodes. He’s a confounding fellow. I spent nearly 5 years of my twenties living in Steiner communities; organic farms where we lived with and shared all aspects of daily life with developmentally disabled adults and children. It was an immersive experience. I’m at a distance from Steiner now, don’t consider myself an anthroposophist and have some feelings of ambivalence towards it, but it had an undeniable impact on me and I try to maintain an attitude of openness. I experienced both positive and negative aspects of anthroposophy during my time on the Camphills (as the farms are called). At best, it was a deeply inspiring, transformative and “initiating” experience, amongst people who truly walked the walk.
I certainly had moments studying Steiner, or just through being in the environment, where I felt deep in my gut that he was transmitting some truth deeply relevant to these tumultuous times.
As an aside, I knew a fellow years ago with debilitating schizophrenia. One day he approached me with his head cocked at an awkward angle and an agonized expression on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he had, in his words, “a large etheric centaur” perched on his head and he was trying to deal with it. Maybe he was on to something?
Matthew- yes I think so! I’ve had the same experience with a friend’s mother. Her letters were pure poetry of the etheric realms, IMHO. Or plain reportage. Peace, G
(sorry for double post on this. I’m kinda rusty)
Always happy to help Tom! I think I heard you on Willam Ramsey once no? I’m liminal- half in Chelsea half in the Village.
Every cult has it’s positive aspects. The Mormons kept herbal medicine alive in the mid 1900’s after Rockefeller chopped off it’s head. Being plants, they grew back. But those wack job pedophiles helped keep her alive! How’s about that?
The question is: What isn’t a cult? Who isn’t in a trance? Is society possible without it? I would argue no. Hypnosis is everywhere always. But false promises and deception for power/kontrol are where I draw the line personally. But I am an idealist according to that birthday book.
Dr. Elena Michaels (SUPER INTELLIGENT) discusses her time in Los Angeles with the Source Family and Father Yod.
From: William Ramsey Investigates.
SPOILER ALERT: SHE STILL DIGS FATHER YOD! and Bill R interrupts her too much!
https://www.spreaker.com/user/williamramsey/dr-elena-michaels
peace! b
http://drelena.com/
Matthew- yes I think so! I’ve has the same experience with a friend’s mother. Her letters were pure poetry of the etheric realms, IMHO. Or plain reportage. Peace, G
Should i leave or commit , comet with the dead. Interesting diction , never before has one heard the dead pronounced undead as though there is only displacement of mass. The dead are with us . The dead. I will go shopping today and be trivial..trivious . The dead . I,ll have a little breeze over the chess computor. The dead .
A little tale , my memory may have altered but near the Steiner school in West Sussex, Forest Row there were two deaths..but maybe 4 in one year. I believed the story for upon a week and then i,m not sure about it. There were definitely 2 major accidents ..as i write with (the dead) 2 were in the same year but whether both were ex Steiner pupils ? perhaps 4 is too many the Dead can change that . Let it be 2 .The Dead.
Blood does not drip if burnt at the stake
love me you must, love me too late
Love this direction you are going in. Thanks for all your work.
Came across this the other day in Toynbee’s abridged ‘A Study of History’: “An essential difference between civilizations and primitive societies as we know them (the caveat will be found to be important) is the direction taken by mimesis or imitation. Mimesis is a generic feature of all social life. Its operation can be observed both in primitive societies and in civilizations, in every social activity from the imitation of the style of film-stars by their humbler sisters upwards. It operates, however, in different directions in the two species of society. In primitive societies, as we know them, mimesis is directed towards the older generation and tow ards dead ancestors who stand, unseen but not unfelt, at the back of the living elders, reinforcing their prestige. In a society where mimesis is thus directed backward towards the past, custom rules and society remains static. On the other hand, in Societies in process of civilization, mimesis is directed towards creative personalities who command a following because they are pioneers. In such societies, ‘the cake of custom’, as Walter Bagehot called it in his Physics and Politics, is broken and society is in dynamic motion along a course of change and growth.”
TL;DR: the defining feature of modernity is the subordination of ancestral voices to abstract breakthroughs. Whereas ‘primitives’ immtiate their forebears who exist as a kind of ever-present background, as moderns we seek our identity in the immediate and often foreshortened realities delivered to us via Hollywood/the mass media. As I see it, this leads to a kind of a cultural ‘flatness’ where the society we inhabit ceases to have depth. There is only the emerging edge of innovation which occasionally opens out in front of us, but whose gap or rupture is quickly closed as we rush in to fill the void with our adoption of its norms. A good example of this might be the rapid adoption of smart phones, or how everyone quickly picked up alphanumeric texting when it first appeared.
How exactly this fits in with Steiner I’m not entirely sure (I haven’t read enough of his work yet). But he’s obviously onto something similar when he talks about the presence of the ancestors, and there’s certainly a link with 12 Maps of Hell re: mimesis and adoption of trending personas to fill the vacuum left by the expulsion of more stable, familiar identities.
Thank you Oly. I’ve been pondering these ideas for several days and will continue to do so for a bit longer. Seems I’m not lost in my head after all.
J’nia
No worries J’nia. Let me know if you have any thoughts. (Still trying to wrap my head around this all myself!)
Oly.
Thanks Oly. I was intrigued by, and horrified by the social experiments presented in my Sociology classes many years ago now which provided a filter through which I now view our society at large. (Millgram, The Stanford Experiment, Skinner, The Genovici case, etc.) for example indicate to us that it is the situations that extract our more base selves; the self we inherited from our ancestors. We don’t learn these abhorrent behaviors, for the most part so they must come from somewhere else.
Some say that we inherited a sin nature, a virus if you will from Adam and Eve when they fell from grace. Is this now our very own genetic disposition or bent toward anti-social behavior? Is anti-social behavior applauded when society accepts it as “a new normal?”
For nearly a year now the world has been immersed in a grand social experiment, the likes of which we have never seen, and to make matters worse our responses are being recorded. (The Truman Show)
Are we civilized or is it merely a persona that we wear in public but privately despise? I read Psychopaths need to take a holiday every so often because the mask is so uncomfortable. The mask of sanity is always ill-fitted.
The cultural flatness we experience has become more pronounced over the past year. “they”, the normies now loudly castigate, malign and actively thwart the voices and actions of the critical thinkers among us, the outsiders, the innovators. We likely all learned in kindergarten that standing out is dangerous. Conform or else.
To conform is anathema to me.
J’nia
That’s a really interesting post! Not exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my initial post,
but I agree with your concerns re: the ethical anonymity of people who obey without question.
To reiterate what I said before, I meant ancestors as in tradition (but also in the ambient sense of an ancestral past) and innovation as in the cult of the pioneer-genius, which arguably began around the start of the Renaissance. It seems like we’ve now eradicated our link to the past through the worship of innovation at the cost of everything else. Although I quoted Toynbee in the original post, I think this overlaps with Spengler’s thesis that there’s a kind of onward thrust to western culture that seeks depth in its own forward-momentum. The way I envision this is that small pockets of potentia open up ahead of us, only for us to rush into the fill the gap as soon as they open (i.e. lightening quick adaptation to new technologies) thus maintaining the prevailing norm of cultural flatness. This is also links in with Mark Fisher’s writing on the sense of cultural inertia with modern media, particularly music – the feeling that things have moved forward, but that we haven’t really gotten anywhere. A track made with the latest software might sound polished and up to date, but fundamentally is no different in composition to a track made 50 years ago. You could apply the same analysis to film too, coming back to Jasun’s thesis, even applying the sense of ‘cultural flatness’ to the characters themselves, Gosling in Drive, Eastwood’s The Man with No Name.
On a more fundamental level, and coming back to your own post, I think the degree to which a society becomes dangerous is probably the same degree to which a society is estranged from its own depth-background, i.e repression of dreams/history/ancestry/how things were done in the past. I suspect totalitarian societies where people exhibit Milgrim-like behaviours are ones in which nightmares are being exploited by those in power, which can only work when enough people are sufficiently estranged from their own psyches. I seem to recall this was the loose thesis behind Adam Curtis’ Power of Nightmares, but I don’t remember him doing much with it other than pointing out the expediency of fear as a tool for politicians. Then again, it’s just as likely obedience is hard-wired in us via our pre-human ancestry. I imagine politics for our simian ancestors would have been dictatorship by a single male, with democracy being a fairly late add-on in the culture-stage of our evolution. The Trump/Maga cult obviously shows that there’s a desire for an authoritarian strongman even within the first world, amongst people who are neither sick nor starving.
Just a few ideas in no particular order.
Oly.
Thanks again Oly
History, written history at least demonstrates over and over again that we want a savior. We need a savior, any one, someone who will lead, in what direction? An empty promise or two will suffice. Vision, truth, doesn’t matter so long as fear is diminished, whipped into submission, and replaced with some sort of hope. Even an empty hope will do, for a time. Obedience may be the true enemy of us all, in the long run.
Cheers, J’nia
I am surprised to see Steiner described as being particularly concerned with the body : my understanding of his ideas and work is that they were all focused on a kind of mind-spirit connection/channeling/research, no?
What is body-like about his work? What have I missed?
I didnt address this as I didnt know where to begin, there is so much emphasis on the body in Steiner. I did address this in a recent Men’s group meet, maybe I will find the clip and share it
https://media.auticulture.com/wp-content/uploads/steiner-body.mp3