G.A. Bondarev
The Crisis of Civilization

 IV. Out of the History of the Main Spiritual Streams of Humanity

This chapter will look alternately at the reactionary occult forces that have become atavistic and other forces at work in social relationships today which have led to their total breakdown.

We turn to Rudolf Steiner’s encompassing teaching concerning the development of the world and humanity, in which he has shown how human nature in its complexity was formed gradually through many metamorphoses. Even in the earthly condition man remained in the lap of the divinity for long ages, carried and guided by the beings of the divine hierarchies. Gradually God and man became estranged. Centres were created – the oracles and mysteries – where man could come into a mediated relation to God.

Around the middle of the Atlantean epoch the free will began to awaken in the human being and since then the guidance has gradually passed over into his own hands. Human aberrations and arbitrariness arose among men that also affected the relationship between man and God. Black magic arose next to white magic. Errors increased in proportion as the human being learned to use his rational intellect and supersensible perceptions gradually diminished. The task of cultivating a legitimate, conscious connection to God grew more complex because man increasingly felt the right to freely determine his goals, and a multifaceted, secularized cultural-historic life of humanity began to emerge.

Today we experience the final stage, the epoch of the consciousness-soul. From a spiritual point of view it is dominated by three streams that propel the impulse of Christianity forward. One leads through Latinism with its religious-dogmatic content; the second passes through Central Europe bringing Goetheanism as the Christianized form of the methodology of science and aesthetics born out of the intricate differentiation of thinking consciousness; the third has taken the esoteric path since the founding of Christianity. Joseph of Arimathia carried it from Palestine to Ireland, from whence it spread across Europe. It is complemented by what as esoteric schools of Christianity was carried into Hellenism by the Apostle Paul. Knowledge of the Holy Chalice entered the world of the burgeoning new Europe. It found its expression in secularized form in King Arthur’s Round Table.

The esoteric schools of Europe that turned to Christianity saw a seamless transition from the old to the new Mysteries, in which the path to a conscious, individual relationship to Christ, the Lord of the earth, was taught. The leaders of the schools followed the tradition that found its expression at the beginning of the consciousness-soul period in Rosicrucianism and whose task was expressed by Rudolf Steiner as to be active in the sense of the whole development of humanity (June 10, 1910, GA 121).

Rosicrucianism was already prepared before the dawn of Christianity. It owes its special form to the influence of the initiate Dionysios Areopagita who established the mystery-wisdom of Christianity in the esoteric school of Paul in Athens (June 6, 1907, GA 99).

The streams of the Areopagite and of the Holy Grail have much in common. One might say that they are two stages of one stream: the stages of preparation and service. Anthroposophy is a direct continuation of this most important spiritual direction. Esoteric Christianity combines in it with another spiritual stream that goes the path of secular culture and is known as Goetheanism. A time will come when esoteric Christianity will pervade all the Christian churches and lead them to unity, to synthesis.

When we speak of the major streams of European humanity that come down to us from the distant past we are dealing with the pre-history and history of Christian civilization. It is not at all justified to say that the arrival of Christianity meant a renunciation of the entire heathen past. On the contrary, it is deeply rooted in this past which is by no means confined to the history of the old Jewish nation.
The coming of Christ was anticipated in all mystery centres of antiquity. But not all were equal to the enormous metamorphoses unleashed through it in the nature of man and in the surrounding world. To this day humanity is still labouring at the task. True and false hopes, aberrations and secret wishes of antiquity reach down into our time, seeking a realization that is often impossible because they have hopelessly lost their connection to the present. 

Anyone truly concerned for the good of the world would do well to come to clarity about this. Such a person would be well advised to understand that already in the Mysteries of antiquity everything essential was determined by the emergence of the ‘I’-consciousness. This principle was particularly visible in the period when even in the outer cultural life it was possible to elaborate the first stage of the individual soul – the Sentient Soul. This was the old Egyptian epoch.

Regardless of all that is important and meaningful brought by the old Egyptian culture, it nevertheless carried within it a seed of decadence and was doomed to ruin. In those times already the teachers of the Mysteries, the priests, began inappropriately to interfere in life after death by fettering souls to the physical by means of mummification. These souls could not free themselves from the earth and enter Kamaloka. A special kind of spiritual being inhabited the mummies, with whose help the priests were able to gain knowledge of the guiding principles of humanity’s development and the secrets of nature. This method of gaining knowledge was a kind of dark magic.

The Chaldean culture remained aloof from these mysteries of old Egypt. The old Hebrews detested them for the same reason, but through roundabout ways, by way of Moses for example, much of what was Egyptian could still flow into the Old Testament (Sept. 24, 1922, GA 216).

It is not justified to regard the Egyptian mysteries in the epoch of their decline only critically. For, in order to be able to retain leadership over their nation, the priests were truly in need of revelations from the spiritual world. However, supersensible experience was extinguished in the souls of those people who acquired the individual ‘I’. After the Mystery of Golgatha, around the 4th and 5th century, the last imaginations of the supersensible were lost. Man understood that his soul would simply grow empty if he were to continue to receive his ideas from revelation. He therefore now began to win his ideas through knowledge of nature and later through experiment, though he still retained his striving to draw knowledge directly from the supersensible.

Out of this thirst people began to conserve not mummies but old, mainly pre-Christian, rituals. These took place in occult secret Orders and Lodges. In the rituals and ceremonies held there – Rudolf Steiner says – there is an extraordinary amount of what was already contained in them in antiquity. But just as there were those among the Egyptian initiates who brought a wrong element into the education of man and the guidance of humanity out of the communications of the spirits indwelling the mummies ... in just such a way a wrong impulse is present in the mummified ceremonies of many occult Orders, to achieve this or that in the leading and directing of humanity (ibid.).

In modern times there arose again in Orders and Lodges the ancient intention to take the spiritual world by stealth and draw the knowledge needed for the pursuit of aims that do not serve the interest of humanity as a whole.

Rudolf Steiner confirms the Freemasons’ claim that their movement is a continuation of the secret societies and brotherhoods of the Greco-Latin cultural epoch (Oct. 23, 1905, GA 93). We could add, of the Third, the Egyptian epoch too, if by this we mean the period of the decline of the Mysteries that continued into the Fourth cultural epoch.

The phenomenon of Freemasonry as a whole is many-layered. In earlier times it had, through a peculiar linkage of conditions, a relation to Manichaeism. The Masonic tradition of naming themselves ‘Sons of the widow’ originated here. A certain connection between Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism exists also (Nov. 11, 1904, GA 93). Freemasonry’s importance lessened in proportion as the world was determined increasingly by the rational element. It is lost entirely in today’s Fifth cultural epoch (Dec. 2, 1904, GA 93). It began to devote itself to the entirely inadmissible conservation of old rituals and now lays claim to the leadership of humanity as a whole.

Today, says Rudolf Steiner, the Masonic Lodges of the ‘Grand Orient’ have up to 96 degrees. The occult degrees in the real sense begin with the 87th degree but no-one can attain them (Dec. 16 and 23, 1904, GA 93). So-called John- Masonry has three stages: apprentice, journeyman and master. It is regarded as the lower kind of Freemasonry; Scottish Freemasonry with the Misraim or Memphis Rite, apparently conserved from the time of old Egypt, is considered high degree Masonry. The John-Masons on the other hand look upon this claim as a comedy, serving only to mask ordinary ambition, a striving for spiritual aristocracy (Jan. 2, 1906, GA 93). John-Masons still speak today ... of how important wisdom, beauty and force are, but they no longer know that through them are formed the ether-body, the astral body and the I together with their organs (Oct. 10, 1905, GA 93a).

Various symbols are employed in the Masonic Lodges: triangle, circle, set- square etc. and one often speaks of the ‘Master Builder of all worlds’. Rudolf Steiner comments: when we turn to the 9th, 10th, 11th century and look at the civilized world within which these secret societies, the Freemasons’ Lodges, spread as an elite in civilization, we find that all the instruments that today lie as symbols on the altar of these Masonic Lodges were used to build houses and churches ... Speeches are delivered in the Lodges of the Freemasons in relation to these objects that have altogether lost their connection with life’s practice and all kinds of wonderful things are said ... that are completely foreign to outer life, the outer practice of life (Dec. 1919, GA 194).

Not too long ago, however, it was not only mummified rites and ‘cultural coquetry’ that made up the content of Freemasonry. At least into the first half of the 19th century, there still existed very serious connections of Orders in which more was imparted than, for example, the average Freemason receives from his Order today. They were able to transmit more because a certain longing in the hierarchy of angels exists to grasp the world of sense that is not immediately accessible to spiritual beings. And so the angels sent human souls, before they started on their path to earthly incarnation, so to speak as a test to still-existing serious occult Orders (Sept. 24, 1922, GA 216).

Goethe belonged to a Lodge devoted to this serious kind of occultism. The other honourable citizens of Weimar – relates Rudolf Steiner –, at most with the exception of Wieland, Chancellor von Müller and a few others – were members of the Lodge just like anyone else. Whoever holds a proper office in Weimar has no choice but to go to church on Sunday and is at the same time, though this is exactly the opposite, a member of the Lodge (ibid.).

The membership of outstanding personalities like Mozart, Fichte, Beethoven etc. has to be viewed in a similar light. It is common practice among Freema- sons today to take every opportunity to point to the membership of persons of genius. They carefully avoid mention of the fact that these were the exceptions within the general poverty of the content of Freemasonry. We should also re- member how truly gifted people like Fichte broke off their connection with the Lodges.

In order to characterize Freemasonry as it still existed in the 18th century a work that every Freemason will accept as reliable will now be quoted. George Sand (actually: Amandine-Lucie-Aurore Dupin), the outstanding French writer, knew Freemasonry very well ‘from the inside’. In her novel The Countess of Rudolstadt she lets the heroine Sibylle Wanda, who is able to change the decisions of even the highest ranking of the Lodges through her speeches, report the following. While speaking of her son, Count Albert, who occupies a high degree in the Lodge of the Rosicrucians, she says that he came into contact with the various elements that make up the brotherhoods of Freemasons. He saw aberrations, prejudices, hypocrisy and even dishonesty beginning to invade the sanctuaries, already in the grip of the madness and the vices of the century (emphasis by the Present Author). And further: With bitterness he turned against the methods used in the furtherance of our cause. He demanded that we should immediately stop acting in secrecy and compelling people through fraud to drink from the cup of spiritual rebirth.

‘Remove your black masks’ – he said –, ‘step out of the cellar vaults. Wipe out the word secret from the tympanum of your temple – you stole it from the Catholic Church ... Do you really not see that you are using the means of the Jesuitic Order?’ 1 etc.2

These are weighty, significant words. They were written in the 18th century, which was yet to be followed by the 19th and 20th. In the second half of the 19th century Charles William Heckethorn – a great expert on the occult, including the Masonic communities, and himself a Freemason of apparently no mean rank, wrote with even greater emphasis than George Sand concerning the decline of Freemasonry. In the introduction to his book The Secret Societies of all Centuries and all Lands we read the following: Where freedom reigns secrecy is no longer needed for the accomplishment of great and useful aims. Secret societies were once needed for its triumph, now only open unity is needed in order to maintain it.

Heckethorn makes a statement at the end of his book that is instructive for his own time as well as for ours. Egoism, partly cool calculation, vanity, worthlessness, gluttony and the urge to secrecy under the pious pretence of brotherly love and enlightening activity – this is what draws people into the Lodges today. The ease with which people who are not worthy are accepted into the Lodges and the frequent repetition of these occurrences, the neglect of the statutes, the enmity generally brought towards any brother who presses for renewal, the difficulty in removing members who arouse aversion in us, the introduction of bogus regulations and the deceptiveness of the regulations themselves, designed to awaken curiosity without satisfying it, the emptiness of the symbolism, the worthlessness of the secret that is finally revealed to the candidate and his barely-concealed distaste when he is finally admitted, to look behind the scenes, only to find an entirely rotted canvas whose front is adorned with a grandiose landscape – all this clearly affirms that the Lodges have expelled Freemasonry. Like the Orders of monks and knights they have become superfluous.

There is hardly anything more to add. He ‘exhausted’ the topic, we can say in all earnestness, and whenever Freemasonry is spoken of we must now bear in mind that nothing but the name is left. Or, rather nothing but the lesson is left, which must be drawn from it by anyone who wants to socialize his spiritual-occult interests in one way or another. ... ‘Madness and evil’, ‘secrets’ ... the accusations against Freemasonry made by George Sand and Charles William Heckethorn will be further discussed with reference to Rudolf Steiner.

The moral fall of Freemasonry bears within it the greatest tragedy – the loss of the spiritual striving of humanity, without which human existence loses all meaning. The divine hierarchies open themselves to this striving. The connection to them has a character appropriate to the tasks of the time in each epoch. Let us take as an example the relation, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner, between the excarnate human souls and the human fellowship dedicated to spiritual striving on the physical plane. It stands in diametric contrast to that prevailing in old Egypt where one fettered the human souls that wanted to leave the earth to the earthly. Now one seeks for souls approaching incarnation. Lodges exist to this day however in which the pernicious magic of the Egyptian priests is still practised. The true nature of Christianity is deeply connected to the Mysteries; its power originates in the Mystery of Golgatha. It transforms the old science of initiation into a new one at whose center stands the God of the human ‘I’ – the Christ –, who became man on earth, suffered death and rose again. He is not a teacher, philosopher or Hierophant in a figurative sense. He is the highest God Himself. He became the center of the new Christian mysteries; by comparison all else is of secondary, supporting significance, or – pure atavism.

The brotherhood of the Servants of the Holy Grail, the medieval Templars, the French ‘heretics’ – the Albigensians, Waldensians and Cathars –, and finally the Rosicrucians (the ‘true’ ones, whose community never had more than twelve members) – all provided or sought access to the new Christian mysteries in a way appropriate to the epoch. Access to these mysteries at the present time can be provided by Anthroposophy alone.

In earlier centuries a stream existed within Freemasonry in which political intrigues were not spun in order to make compromises with a clear conscience, but where one seriously devoted oneself to self-improvement and spiritual striving. The Lodges of this persuasion were called Rosicrucian; they were always a thorn in the flesh to the politically-oriented Lodges.4

The true Rosicrucians often used Freemasonry to bring new impulses into cultural-historical development. Through the Lodges the impetus was given to the unfolding of the epoch of Enlightenment. They also provided very strong impulses to prepare European culture for the unavoidable passage through the epoch of materialism. Freemasonry had yet another positive task to fulfill: it created a counter-balance to the deadening influence of the Papacy on the spiritual life of humanity.

There was a time when all spiritual strivings appropriate to their epoch, coming into inevitable conflict with the dogmatizing spirit of Latinism, led without exception to the Lodges. The Rosicrucians therefore came to the rescue when Freemasonry was moving towards decline and destroyed itself from within.

At the beginning of the 15th century, as Rudolf Steiner relates, Christian Rosenkreutz taught a small circle of initiates and gave them the so-called Temple Legend, which later formed part of the ideology of all Lodges. In it the secret of two families of human beings is revealed – the descendants of Cain and of Abel. It is here that the spiritual battle of humanity actually begins. The sons of Cain are – in the sense of the legend – the sons of those Elohim who ... lagged somewhat behind during the epoch of the Moon. The epoch of the Moon is concerned with Kama. This Kama or fire was permeated by wisdom at that time ... Some of the Elohim did not stop at the marriage of wisdom and fire; they went beyond this. And when they formed man they were no longer filled with passions, so that they instilled in him a quiet, enlightened wisdom. This is the actual Jahve- or Jehovah-religion, the wisdom that was entirely without passion. The other Elohim, in whom wisdom was still united with the fire of the Moon period, are those who created the sons of Cain.

Thus we have in the sons of Seth the religious people with their enlightened wisdom and in the sons of Cain those who have the impulsive element, who are set aflame and can develop enthusiasm for wisdom. These two families of mankind are creative through all races, through all times. Out of the passion of the sons of Cain arose all the arts and sciences, from the Abel-Seth-stream all clarified piety and wisdom, without enthusiasm (Nov. 4, 1904, GA 93).

The cosmic-evolutionary background of the important spiritual streams of humanity we are here concerned with is made fundamentally visible in this legend. And now we are also shown the sources of the conflict of the sons of Cain, who people the Lodges and Orders, with the sons of Abel – the theologians and clerics; the descendants of Hiram-Abiff and those of the priest-king Solomon.

The stream of esoteric Christianity has always taken up an intermediary position. It works for restoration of the brotherly bond between Abel and Cain, for the realization of an organic synthesis of wisdom and enthusiasm with piety and love. It is the stream led by Christian Rosenkreutz, the present form of which – Anthroposophy – was created by Rudolf Steiner. It is based on the fact that Christ became man, which caused the old piety – according to Rudolf Steiner –, a piety given from above, so to speak, to be replaced by another that was laid into ... that element which came to earth through Christ. Christ is not me- rely wisdom, He is love incarnate:56 a lofty divine Kama that is at the same time Buddhi; a pure streaming Kama that desires nothing for itself but in infinite devotion directs all passions outwards... Buddhi is Kama in reverse. Through it a higher piety prepares itself within the type of men who are pious, the sons of wisdom, but now it can also be enthusiastic. This is Christian piety (ibid.). This is how Rudolf Steiner formulated the fundamental principles and tasks of anthroposophical life and activity, a life and activity peculiar to Anthroposophy alone and not comparable to any other – one that is sovereign in the highest sense.

The sons of Cain made great efforts to reconcile themselves with Abel through the creation of a temple for humanity out of earthly science and art. But the element of the personal, of the intense unfolding of egoism in the present cultural epoch, leading to the war of each against all, has corrupted the temple-builders also and installed in their temple ‘merchants’ of the new kind who render impossible the fulfilling of the tasks of humanity on the path of Freemasonry. With the arrival of Anthroposophy many honest Freemasons have drawn the logical conclusion and left the Lodges.

Freemasonry has been in steady decline since the 18th century. It was increasingly governed by simple and vulgar imaginations of humanity’s development and corresponding means of influencing it. Unquestionably prepared in the Lodges, the French Revolution set out to realize the Christian teaching of the kingdom of God in a base outer way. Rudolf Steiner says concerning the Revolution: the spiritual teaching of Christianity: all men are equal before God was ... converted into a purely worldly teaching: all are equal here (in every respect). This is why Christian Rosenkreutz, in his incarnation as Count Saint-Germain in the 18th century, became the guardian of the innermost secret of the Bronze Sea and of the Golden Triangle (spoken of in the Temple Legend). From the height of his position in Freemasonry (a high degree attained by no-one before him) he warned: Humanity should develop slowly (ibid.). In other words – he turned against the Revolution. Through a lady-in-waiting of Marie-Antoinette he tried to move the king to a series of measures to prevent the revolution. European humanity would then have been able to go through the epoch of materialism and emancipation of the personality less tragically, without enormous bloodshed and social chaos (including the fate of Russia). Subsequent events have confirmed the rightness of Saint-Germain’s attitude.

Despite the depth of the spiritual truths taught by Christian Rosenkreutz – as Count Saint-Germain – there was no wish to understand him in the circles of Freemasons and he was denied a following. On the eve of the French Revolution he said: He who sows wind will reap a storm. According to Rudolf Steiner he had already made this statement in antiquity and it had been recorded by the prophet Hosea (Hosea 8,7). It applies to our European cultural epoch also, for it means: you will free man; the incarnated Buddhi will unite himself with your freedom and make all men equal before God. But the spirit (wind means spirit = ruach) will first become a storm (war of each against all; ibid.). For this very reason the perfecting of human nature was of paramount importance in the Lodges with a spiritual orientation. But this cannot be changed suddenly, through a revolution.

The history of all Orders, brotherhoods and Lodges oriented toward Christianity reveals one thing in common. Their period of flowering always lasts for as long as pure spiritual enthusiasm is able to hold man’s lower nature in check, and the service of the spirit and mankind forms the main content of the religious or occult fellowship. As soon as factors of power, enrichment etc. appear, a decline invariably sets in.

In George Sand’s novel we find the extraordinarily instructive confession of the man who accompanies Konsuelo on the path of initiation. In the large numbers of greedy, inquisitive and boastful seekers after truth one finds so few serious, steadfast, upright souls, so few who are worthy of receiving the truth and are able to grasp it.7  We, the people of the 20th century, are eyewitnesses to the catastrophic swelling of the storm of ‘the war of each against all’. We see how the freeing of the personality unleashed hell in souls and spills over into social life, ready to extinguish all seeds of a living, free spirit.

This process took a deeply tragic turn, beginning in 1879 when the Archangel Michael overcame the dragon –Ahriman – and cast him down from heaven to earth. The ‘sons of Cain’ now found themselves in a particularly perilous situation and a new Rosicrucian, the great initiate Rudolf Steiner, offered assistance to the Freemasons, as Count Saint-Germain had done before him. He took on the highest degree of Freemasonry and gave the Lodges a new cult, a ritual that, had it been accepted by a sufficiently large number of Freemasons, would have renewed the movement, and given it an influx of pure spiritual forces. The hopes of those who have tried to find the spirit on this path would also have been fulfilled. But it was rejected. The forces of darkness, whose power within Freemasonry had in the meantime already grown too great, again intervened. A certain Yarker, who wielded great power and influence in the Lodges started a campaign of defamation against Rudolf Steiner, which forced him to withdraw.

Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography: in retrospect it is obviously easy to ponder how much ‘wiser’ it would have been not to connect with an organization that can later be used by the slanderers. But I would like to remark in all modesty that I still, at the age in question here, belonged to the company of those who assumed that the paths followed by those with whom I had to do were straight and not crooked (GA 28, chapter 36).

The defamation spread by the others continues to this day and have reached their apogee in the last two decades (only the actions are still awaited). In books and articles Rudolf Steiner has been made an ‘Illuminate’, then a member of an occult-political secret society of the kind of the notorious ‘Thule’, where he is supposed to have had a session with Adolf Hitler himself.

The outrageous lie, spread by members of Lodges as well as by Jesuits and Bolsheviks, takes on a world-wide character despite the fact that Rudolf Steiner’s relations to the Lodges are well documented. They were described by Marie Steiner, and a special volume of five hundred pages (GA 265) in the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner is devoted to the theme.8

On another occasion Rudolf Steiner attempted to give to the theosophical movement a Christian-Rosicrucian direction appropriate to our time. He wrote No-one was left unclear about the fact in the Theosophical Society that I would only bring forward results of my own supersensible research. For I spoke of this at every opportunity ... And I wanted to show that in the old mysteries cultic pictures of cosmic events were given which then took place in the Mystery of Golgatha on the plane of history, as a fact transposed from the cosmos to earth.

Nowhere was this taught in the Theosophical Society (H. P. Blavatsky opposed Christianity). With this view of things I stood in complete contrast to the current dogmas of Theosophy, before I was asked to be active in the Theosophical Society (GA 28, chapter 30).

But here too, leading personalities in theosophical circles set abhorrent machinations above divine wisdom.9 Rudolf Steiner had to leave. So he founded the Anthroposophical Movement in order to act in the sense of the development of humanity as a whole (June 10, GA 121).

The situation in the world is now such, that the other two spiritual streams, the ‘people of the churches’ and ‘the Lodges’, lead the great tasks of humanity in a continuous battle over world history behind the scenes, and will continue to do so. But to find a solution – is no longer given to them! From now on these tasks can only be fulfilled within the stream of esoteric Christianity that in the 20th century has taken the form of Anthroposophy.

This stream has already been all-determining. It was active in high Scholasticism for a time in the teachers of the ‘School of Chartres’. While Rome instigated the crusades it opposed this religious-political imperialism. The Rosicrucians inspired the ‘apostle’ of materialism, Francis Bacon, and the sarcastic master of the thoughts of the epoch of Enlightenment, Voltaire. Rosicrucianism, the bearer of Theo-Sophy, sought to make fruitful connections to the Theosophical Society. It sought to let flow new forces into the great work of the builders of the temple of humanity. But at the same time esoteric Christianity has its own individual character. It is the stream of world-wide synthesis, whereby in the future:

Male and female wisdom will be reconciled;
Cain and Abel will embrace in brotherhood;
Love and wisdom be united in one man.

These three tasks are fulfilled in today’s world by Anthroposophy – it has the form of esoteric Christianity corresponding exactly to the conditions of the world. It would be catastrophic for any human being if, belonging to this movement, he did not fulfill the above-mentioned tasks or if he tried to do so with the help of one or the other form of atavistic occultism. Such a person brings chaos and destruction into our movement. He harms it and at the same time makes his own destiny more difficult, his own karma hopeless.

Rudolf Steiner said even of the Christian Community: its founders were not seeking the anthroposophical path, but a specifically religious one (GA 37, p.397). And if this movement for religious renewal were, for shortage of members, to look for them among the ranks of the anthroposophists, then the impossible would be done, something that would of necessity lead to the ruin of both movements (Dec. 30, 1922, GA 219). This was said about the Christian Community – what would one have to say about those who seek to combine membership of the Anthroposophical Society with membership of Orders or Lodges, or who try to combine Anthroposophy with yoga, Cabbalism, with the practical magic of Papus, Gurdjieff etc., etc.?

Involvement in Anthroposophy requires the highest sense of responsibility because its tasks are so great that even the divine hierarchies look into the world through it. Whoever has found his way to Anthroposophy will always need to bear this in mind. He should explain just as clearly to those who are only approaching Anthroposophy that this Society should not resemble a railway-station where anyone may come and go at their leisure and do whatever they please (which is not even allowed at a railway-station).

The Society should not be restricted to a small circle of people but it should always be based on the principles given by Rudolf Steiner. These principles will always remain the same, though the manner of their realization in the world will of necessity change, just as the world is continually changing. But precisely here lies the danger of the lower human nature that inclines to arbitrariness and can even falsify the actual ‘principles’. This danger can be met effectively only through spiritual wakefulness, through continuous intensive study of Spiritual Science and free discussion of the most important phenomena of life today.

There will come a time when human beings who unite the phenomena of Francis of Assisi and Goethe in one person will find their way into our circles; then it will be easier for us all to work. We have an example already, actually a still greater one. – Rudolf Steiner himself, of whom a noble anthroposophical heart once said:
You, who opened to us the way to the Christ

Can he not be an example to us? – Not a sentimental one, not one for display, but a personal one in the realm of deepest being, in a time when, in anticipation of the great union of Manas and Buddhi, we strive in soul and spirit for the union of wisdom and morality.

Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the higher Self, is the mystery – says Rudolf Steiner – that will be revealed when the sixth root-race (the Slavic-German cultural epoch) is sufficiently mature. Then Christian Rosenkreutz will no longer need to stand there admonishing us. Everything that has meant battle on the outer plane will find peace through the Brazen Sea (the union of wisdom with the fire of the astral sphere, with the fire of transformed passions), through the sacred Golden Triangle (Atma-Buddhi-Manas; this is the sign of the Triune God)

This is the course of world history into future times. What Christian Rosenkreutz with his Temple Legend had carried by the brotherhoods into the world is what the Rosicrucians (the Anthroposophists – we can now rightly say) have taken up as their task: to teach not only religious piety but also science to the world and to gain knowledge not only of the outer world but of the spiritual powers also, and to enter the Sixth Round from both sides (Nov. 4, 1904, GA 93).

These then are our tasks. One question alone remains. Who among us is capable of fulfilling them? And what are we to do with all those who have not yet made contact with the fifth cultural epoch or who are not even mature enough for Christianity? Of course no-one may be turned away; we have no right to leave human beings to their own devices. For if we do so they fall prey either to the forces that aim to destroy civilization, or to their own everyday inclinations. We can help people to grow stronger only through learning to understand them. The members of the anthroposophical movement must feel that every human being who is able to stand on his own feet finds in his ‘I’ the power of Christ, which is a joy to all but not an object of envy. In Anthroposophy leadership and teaching activity are permitted, but they should never become an end in themselves or a means to exercise power over others or even to hold them up to ridicule. This is the situation of the present cultural epoch. It will be addressed again in a later chapter.



Notes:

 1 George Sand, The Countess of Rudolstadt, chapter 34.

 2 I advise all anthroposophists to read this novel. A variety of other remarkable revelations can be found in it too. The companion says to Konsuelo on her way to the initiation: We are forced to make use of symbols and subterfuge ... Europe is riddled with secret Societies ... The key to these Societies lies with us and we strive to take over their leadership unbeknown to most of the members ... You will meet powerful personalities and make them into our allies. The means for attaining this goal will be the subject ... of a special science that we will teach you to master; in raising our souls to our holy zeal, we have to enter into a compromise with some laws of clear conscience.3

 3 Ibid., chapter 31.

  4 Russian Freemasons of the 18th Century tell of this.

 5 In the Initiation conversation Konsuelo says: Christ – he is a God-Man whom we venerate as the greatest philosopher and greatest saint of olden times ... We may call him the redeemer of men in the sense that he taught his contemporaries truths which have hitherto revealed themselves to us only dimly!

 6 Ibid., chapter 38.

 7 Ibid., chapter 31.

 8 Of the most recent publications on this topic the article by Irene Diet Anthroposophical Society and Freemasonry (Info3, No. 3-1995) is worthy of mention. She describes: Rudolf Steiner did indeed join – even if purely outwardly – the Memphis- and Misraim Order of Freemasonry on November 24, 1905, led in Germany by Theodor Reuss. But in so doing he was merely observing, as when he joined the Theosophical Society three years earlier, an occult law regulating the development of occult communities: the law of continuity. This law says that those who wish to act in the sense of the progress of humanity must consciously place themselves into the living stream of past, present and future; into a stream of time where that which lies in the future ‘rests on the past’ ,just as what is past has to learn to ‘bear what lies in the future’. For, it is only out of this conscious standing in the ether of time that – since the Mystery of Golgatha – a ‘strong presence in the present’ can arise ... It would have been possible to ignore the Order only if it had itself ’rejected a mutual understanding’ (GA 265, p. 68). Since this was not the case but, on the contrary, an offer had been made to him on their part, Steiner had no other choice in view of the above- mentioned occult law than to join the Order. – But he wishes this step to be understood solely from ‘the standpoint of occult loyalty’: out of the condition laid down prior to his entry, that any relation he engaged in with Reuss and his Order would have to retain an exclusively outward character. Marie Steiner also bears witness (and who could be better informed about this question?): The acquisition of the charter was the only contact that took place between Dr. Steiner and the Society of Freemasons. Rudolf Steiner has never been a Freemason nor received any directives from that side (GA 265, p. 102).

 9 Annie Besant had proclaimed the youth Krishnamurti as the reincarnated Christ





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