Anthroposophy is a spiritual[1]new religious movement[2] which was founded in the early 20th century by the esotericistRudolf Steiner[3] that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers of anthroposophy aim to engage in spiritual discovery through a mode of thought independent of sensory experience.[4]:3–11,392–5[5] Though proponents claim to present their ideas in a manner that is verifiable by rational discourse and say that they seek precision and clarity comparable to that obtained by scientists investigating the physical world, many of these ideas have been termed pseudoscientific by experts in epistemology and debunkers of pseudoscience.[6]
Anthroposophy has its roots in German idealism, Western and Eastern esoteric ideas, various religious traditions, and modern Theosophy.[7] Steiner chose the term anthroposophy (from Greek ἄνθρωπος anthropos-, 'human', and σοφία sophia, 'wisdom') to emphasize his philosophy's humanistic orientation.[4][8] He defined it as "a scientific exploration of the spiritual world",[9] others have variously called it a "philosophy and cultural movement",[10] a "spiritual movement",[11] a "spiritual science",[12] "a system of thought",[13] or "a spiritualist movement".[14]
The historian of religion Olav Hammer has termed anthroposophy "the most important esoteric society in European history".[36] Many scientists, physicians, and philosophers, including Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, and Simon Singh have criticized anthroposophy's application in the areas of medicine, biology, agriculture, and education to be dangerous and pseudoscientific.[37] Ideas of Steiner's that are unsupported or disproven by modern science include: racial evolution,[38][39] clairvoyance (Steiner claimed he was clairvoyant),[40][41] and the Atlantis myth.[42]
The early work of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, culminated in his Philosophy of Freedom (also translated as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path). Here, Steiner developed a concept of free will based on inner experiences, especially those that occur in the creative activity of independent thought.[4] "Steiner was a moral individualist".[i][43]
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Steiner's interests turned almost exclusively to spirituality. His work began to draw the attention of others interested in spiritual ideas; among these was the Theosophical Society. From 1900 on, thanks to the positive reception his ideas received from Theosophists, Steiner focused increasingly on his work with the Theosophical Society, becoming the secretary of its section in Germany in 1902. During his leadership, membership increased dramatically, from just a few individuals to sixty-nine lodges.[44]
By 1907, a split between Steiner and the Theosophical Society became apparent. While the Society was oriented toward an Eastern and especially Indian approach, Steiner was trying to develop a path that embraced Christianity and natural science.[45] The split became irrevocable when Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, presented the child Jiddu Krishnamurti as the reincarnated Christ. Steiner strongly objected and considered any comparison between Krishnamurti and Christ to be nonsense; many years later, Krishnamurti also repudiated the assertion. Steiner's continuing differences with Besant led him to separate from the Theosophical Society Adyar. He was subsequently followed by the great majority of the Theosophical Society's German members, as well as many members of other national sections.[44][45]
By this time, Steiner had reached considerable stature as a spiritual teacher and expert in the occult.[46] He spoke about what he considered to be his direct experience of the Akashic Records (sometimes called the "Akasha Chronicle"), thought to be a spiritual chronicle of the history, pre-history, and future of the world and mankind. In a number of works,[47] Steiner described a path of inner development he felt would let anyone attain comparable spiritual experiences. In Steiner's view, sound vision could be developed, in part, by practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline, concentration, and meditation. In particular, Steiner believed a person's spiritual development could occur only after a period of moral development.[4]
Second Goetheanum, seat of the Anthroposophical Society
In 1912, Steiner broke away from the Theosophical Society to found an independent group, which he named the Anthroposophical Society. After World War I, members of the young society began applying Steiner's ideas to create cultural movements in areas such as traditional and special education, farming, and medicine.[48]
By 1923, a schism had formed between older members, focused on inner development, and younger members eager to become active in contemporary social transformations. In response, Steiner attempted to bridge the gap by establishing an overall School for Spiritual Science. As a spiritual basis for the reborn movement, Steiner wrote a Foundation Stone Meditation which remains a central touchstone of anthroposophical ideas.[49]
Steiner died just over a year later, in 1925. The Second World War temporarily hindered the anthroposophical movement in most of Continental Europe, as the Anthroposophical Society and most of its practical counter-cultural applications were banned by the Nazi government.[50] Though at least one prominent member of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, was a strong supporter of anthroposophy,[51] very few anthroposophists belonged to the National Socialist Party.[52] In reality, Steiner had both enemies and loyal supporters in the upper echelons of the Nazi regime.[53] Staudenmaier speaks of the "polycratic party-state apparatus", so Nazism's approach to Anthroposophy was not characterized by monolithic ideological unity.[54] When Hess flew to the UK and was imprisoned, their most powerful protector was gone,[55][56][57] but Anthroposophists were still not left without supporters among higher-placed Nazis.[58]
The Third Reich had banned almost all esoteric organizations, claiming that these were controlled by Jews.[59] The truth was that while Anthroposophists complained of bad press, they were to a surprising extent tolerated by the Nazi regime, "including outspokenly supportive pieces in the Völkischer Beobachter".[60] Ideological purists from Sicherheitsdienst argued largely in vain against Anthroposophy.[60] According to Staudenmaier, "The prospect of unmitigated persecution was held at bay for years in a tenuous truce between pro-anthroposophical and anti-anthroposophical Nazi factions."[53]
The anti-esoteric faction ensconced in the SD and Gestapo recognized that they faced influential adversaries in other sectors of the Nazi hierarchy. They knew that Hess and his staff, Baeumler in the Amt Rosenberg, and Ohlendorf in the SD itself were willing to intervene on behalf of anthroposophical endeavors. Minister of Agriculture Darré and Lotar Eickhoff in the Interior Ministry were also seen as sympathizers of anthroposophy, and the SD considered the head of the party’s “Examination Commission for Safeguarding National Socialist Writings,” Karl Heinz Hederich, a supporter of occultists and astrologers.52
Despite these measures, anthroposophist authors were able to write long after June 1941. Franz Dreidax, Max Karl Schwarz, Elisabeth Klein, Johannes Bertram-Pingel, Georg Halbe, Otto Julius Hartmann, Rudolf Hauschka, Jürgen von Grone, Wolfgang Schuchhardt and others continued to publish throughout the war. But serious disruptions were common.
Morals: Anthroposophy was not the stake of that dispute, but merely powerful Nazis wanting to get rid of other powerful Nazis.[61] E.g. Jehovah's Witnesses were treated much more aggressively than Anthroposophists.[62]
Yet, the relative moderation of Heydrich's action, which paled in comparison to measures taken against communists and socialists, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the mentally and physically disabled, continued to reflect the Third Reich's underlying ambivalence toward policing the occult.
Kurlander stated that "the Nazis were hardly ideologically opposed to the supernatural sciences themselves"—rather they objected to the free (i.e. non-totalitarian) pursuit of supernatural sciences.[63]
According to Hans Büchenbacher, an anthroposophist, the Secretary General of the General Anthroposophical Society, Guenther Wachsmuth, as well as Steiner's widow, Marie Steiner, were “completely pro-Nazi.”[64] Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Guenther Wachsmuth, and Albert Steffen, had publicly expressed sympathy for the Nazi regime since its beginnings; led by such sympathies of their leadership, the Swiss and German Anthroposophical organizations chose for a path conflating accommodation with collaboration, which in the end ensured that while the Nazi regime hunted the esoteric organizations, Gentile Anthroposophists from Nazi Germany and countries occupied by it were let be to a surprising extent.[58] Of course they had some setbacks from the enemies of Anthroposophy among the upper echelons of the Nazi regime, but Anthroposophists also had loyal supporters among them, so overall Gentile Anthroposophists were not badly hit by the Nazi regime.[58]
Yet when Hitler threatened to suppress the Anthroposophical Society, its executive council—which had recently expelled much of its membership—chose to collaborate rather than resist. Marie Steiner, Günther Wachsmuth, and Albert Steffen knew of Hitler’s violent intentions toward the Jewish people, since Hitler’s attacks on anthroposophy included the accusation that anthroposophy was aligned with the Jews. Rather than standing in solidarity with Hitler’s other targets, they disavowed any sympathy for Judaism and assured Nazi leaders that both they and Steiner were of pure Aryan heritage.44
Staudenmaier's overall argument is that "there were often no clear-cut lines between theosophy, anthroposophy, ariosophy, astrology and the völkisch movement from which the Nazi Party arose."[65]
By 2007, national branches of the Anthroposophical Society had been established in fifty countries and about 10,000 institutions around the world were working on the basis of anthroposophical ideas.[66]
Etymology and earlier uses of the word
Anthroposophy is an amalgam of the Greek terms ἄνθρωπος (anthropos 'human') and σοφία (sophia 'wisdom'). An early English usage is recorded by Nathan Bailey (1742) as meaning "the knowledge of the nature of man."[67]
Ignaz Paul Vitalis Troxler
The first known use of the term anthroposophy occurs within Arbatel de magia veterum, summum sapientiae studium, a book published anonymously in 1575 and attributed to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. The work describes anthroposophy (as well as theosophy) variously as an understanding of goodness, nature, or human affairs. In 1648, the Welsh philosopher Thomas Vaughan published his Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a discourse of the nature of man and his state after death.[68]
The term began to appear with some frequency in philosophical works of the mid- and late-nineteenth century.[69] In the early part of that century, Ignaz Troxler used the term anthroposophy to refer to philosophy deepened to self-knowledge, which he suggested allows deeper knowledge of nature as well. He spoke of human nature as a mystical unity of God and world. Immanuel Hermann Fichte used the term anthroposophy to refer to "rigorous human self-knowledge," achievable through thorough comprehension of the human spirit and of the working of God in this spirit, in his 1856 work Anthropology: The Study of the Human Soul. In 1872, the philosopher of religion Gideon Spicker used the term anthroposophy to refer to self-knowledge that would unite God and world: "the true study of the human being is the human being, and philosophy's highest aim is self-knowledge, or Anthroposophy."[70]
In 1882, the philosopher Robert Zimmermann published the treatise, "An Outline of Anthroposophy: Proposal for a System of Idealism on a Realistic Basis," proposing that idealistic philosophy should employ logical thinking to extend empirical experience.[71] Steiner attended lectures by Zimmermann at the University of Vienna in the early 1880s, thus at the time of this book's publication.[72]
In the early 1900s, Steiner began using the term anthroposophy (i.e. human wisdom) as an alternative to the term theosophy (i.e. divine wisdom).
Central ideas
Spiritual knowledge and freedom
Anthroposophical proponents aim to extend the clarity of the scientific method to phenomena of human soul-life and spiritual experiences. Steiner believed this required developing new faculties of objective spiritual perception, which he maintained was still possible for contemporary humans. The steps of this process of inner development he identified as consciously achieved imagination, inspiration, and intuition.[73] Steiner believed results of this form of spiritual research should be expressed in a way that can be understood and evaluated on the same basis as the results of natural science.[74][75]
Steiner hoped to form a spiritual movement that would free the individual from any external authority.[75] For Steiner, the human capacity for rational thought would allow individuals to comprehend spiritual research on their own and bypass the danger of dependency on an authority such as himself.[75]
Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach with both conventional mysticism, which he considered lacking the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, which he considered arbitrarily limited to what can be seen, heard, or felt with the outward senses.
Nature of the human being
The Representative of Humanity, detail of a sculpture in wood by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon
In Theosophy, Steiner suggested that human beings unite a physical body of substances gathered from and returning to the inorganic world; a life body (also called the etheric body), in common with all living creatures (including plants); a bearer of sentience or consciousness (also called the astral body), in common with all animals; and the ego, which anchors the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings.[77]
Anthroposophy describes a broad evolution of human consciousness. Early stages of human evolution possess an intuitive perception of reality, including a clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities. Humanity has progressively evolved an increasing reliance on intellectual faculties and a corresponding loss of intuitive or clairvoyant experiences, which have become atavistic. The increasing intellectualization of consciousness, initially a progressive direction of evolution, has led to an excessive reliance on abstraction and a loss of contact with both natural and spiritual realities. However, to go further requires new capacities that combine the clarity of intellectual thought with the imagination and with consciously achieved inspiration and intuitive insights.[78]
Anthroposophy speaks of the reincarnation of the human spirit: that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living on earth, leaving the body behind, and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. After the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving its events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions. A complex transformation takes place between the review of the past life and the preparation for the next life. The individual's karmic condition eventually leads to a choice of parents, physical body, disposition, and capacities that provide the challenges and opportunities that further development requires, which includes karmically chosen tasks for the future life.[78]
Steiner described some conditions that determine the interdependence of a person's lives, or karma.[79][80]
Evolution
The anthroposophical view of evolution considers all animals to have evolved from an early, unspecialized form. As the least specialized animal, human beings have maintained the closest connection to the archetypal form;[81] contrary to the Darwinian conception of human evolution, all other animals devolve from this archetype.[82] The spiritual archetype originally created by spiritual beings was devoid of physical substance; only later did this descend into material existence on Earth.[83] In this view, human evolution has accompanied the Earth's evolution throughout the existence of the Earth.
The evolution of man, Steiner said, has consisted in the gradual incarnation of a spiritual being into a material body. It has been a true "descent" of man from a spiritual world into a world of matter. The evolution of the animal kingdom did not precede, but rather accompanied the process of human incarnation. Man is thus not the end result of the evolution of the animals, but is rather in a certain sense their cause. In the succession of types which appears in the fossil record-the fishes, reptiles, mammals, and finally fossil remains of man himself — the stages of this process of incarnation are reflected.[84]
Anthroposophy adapted Theosophy's complex system of cycles of world development and human evolution. The evolution of the world is said to have occurred in cycles. The first phase of the world consisted only of heat. In the second phase, a more active condition, light, and a more condensed, gaseous state separate out from the heat. In the third phase, a fluid state arose, as well as a sounding, forming energy. In the fourth (current) phase, solid physical matter first exists. This process is said to have been accompanied by an evolution of consciousness which led up to present human culture.
Ethics
The anthroposophical view is that good is found in the balance between two polar influences on world and human evolution. These are often described through their mythological embodiments as spiritual adversaries which endeavour to tempt and corrupt humanity, Lucifer and his counterpart Ahriman. These have both positive and negative aspects. Lucifer is the light spirit, which "plays on human pride and offers the delusion of divinity", but also motivates creativity and spirituality; Ahriman is the dark spirit that tempts human beings to "...deny [their] link with divinity and to live entirely on the material plane", but that also stimulates intellectuality and technology. Both figures exert a negative effect on humanity when their influence becomes misplaced or one-sided, yet their influences are necessary for human freedom to unfold.[4][74]
Each human being has the task to find a balance between these opposing influences, and each is helped in this task by the mediation of the Representative of Humanity, also known as the Christ being, a spiritual entity who stands between and harmonizes the two extremes.[74]
There is a pedagogical movement with over 1000 Steiner or Waldorf schools (the latter name stems from the first such school, founded in Stuttgart in 1919)[85] located in some 60 countries; the great majority of these are independent (private) schools.[86] Sixteen of the schools have been affiliated with the United Nations' UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, which sponsors education projects that foster improved quality of education throughout the world.[87] Waldorf schools receive full or partial governmental funding in some European nations, Australia and in parts of the United States (as Waldorf method public or charter schools) and Canada.
The schools have been founded in a variety of communities: for example in the favelas of São Paulo[88] to wealthy suburbs of major cities;[88] in India, Egypt, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico and South Africa. Though most of the early Waldorf schools were teacher-founded, the schools today are usually initiated and later supported by a parent community.[89] Waldorf schools are among the most visible anthroposophical institutions.[89][90]
Benjamin Lazier calls Steiner a "maverick educator".[91]
Biodynamic agriculture, is a form of alternative agriculture based on pseudo-scientific and esoteric concepts.[92] It was also the first intentional form of organic farming,[90] begun in 1924, when Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures published in English as The Agriculture Course.[93] Steiner is considered one of the founders of the modern organic farming movement.[94][95]
"And Himmler, Hess, and Darré all promoted biodynamic (anthroposophic) approaches to farming as an alternative to industrial agriculture."[96] "'[...] with the active cooperation of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture' [...] Pancke, Pohl, and Hans Merkel established additional biodynamic plantations across the eastern territories as well as Dachau, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz concentration camps. Many were staffed by anthroposophists."[97]
"Steiner’s 'biodynamic agriculture' based on 'restoring the quasi-mystical relationship between earth and the cosmos' was widely accepted in the Third Reich (28)."[98]
Most anthroposophic medical preparations are highly diluted, like homeopathic remedies, while harmless in of themselves, using them in place of conventional medicine to treat illness is ineffective and risks adverse consequences.[100]
One of the most studied applications has been the use of mistletoe extracts in cancer therapy,[101] but research has found no evidence of benefit.[102][103]
In 1922, Ita Wegman founded an anthroposophical center for special needs education, the Sonnenhof, in Switzerland. In 1940, Karl König founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. The latter in particular has spread widely, and there are now over a hundred Camphill communities and other anthroposophical homes for children and adults in need of special care in about 22 countries around the world.[104] Both Karl König, Thomas Weihs and others have written extensively on these ideas underlying Special education.[105][106]
Steiner designed around thirteen buildings in an organic—expressionist architectural style.[107][108] Foremost among these are his designs for the two Goetheanum buildings in Dornach, Switzerland.[109] Thousands of further buildings have been built by later generations of anthroposophic architects.[110][111]
Around the world today are a number of banks, companies, charities, and schools for developing co-operative forms of business using Steiner's ideas about economic associations, aiming at harmonious and socially responsible roles in the world economy.[4] The first anthroposophic bank was the Gemeinschaftsbank für Leihen und Schenken in Bochum, Germany, founded in 1974.[120]Socially responsible banks founded out of anthroposophy include Triodos Bank, founded in the Netherlands in 1980 and also active in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain and France.[121] Other examples include Cultura Sparebank which dates from 1982 when a group of Norwegian anthroposophists began an initiative for ethical banking but only began to operate as a savings bank in Norway in the late 90s, La Nef in France and RSF Social Financein San Francisco.[122]
Harvard Business School historian Geoffrey Jones traced the considerable impact both Steiner and later anthroposophical entrepreneurs had on the creation of many businesses in organic food, ecological architecture and sustainable finance.[123]
Organizational development, counselling and biography work
Bernard Lievegoed, a psychiatrist, founded a new method of individual and institutional development oriented towards humanizing organizations and linked with Steiner's ideas of the threefold social order. This work is represented by the NPI Institute for Organizational Development in the Netherlands and sister organizations in many other countries.[4]
Speech and drama
There are also anthroposophical movements to renew speech and drama, the most important of which are based in the work of Marie Steiner-von Sivers (speech formation, also known as Creative Speech) and the Chekhov Method originated by Michael Chekhov (nephew of Anton Chekhov).[124]
Art
The Representative of Humanity, by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon
Anthroposophic painting, a style inspired by Rudolf Steiner, featured prominently in the first Goetheanum's cupola. The technique frequently begins by filling the surface to be painted with color, out of which forms are gradually developed, often images with symbolic-spiritual significance. Paints that allow for many transparent layers are preferred, and often these are derived from plant materials.[125]Rudolf Steiner appointed the English sculptor Edith Maryon as head of the School of Fine Art at the Goetheanum.[76] Together they carved the 9-metre tall sculpture titled The Representative of Humanity, on display at the Goetheanum.[76]
For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well known in Germany, in part because he lectured widely proposing social reforms. Steiner was a sharp critic of nationalism, which he saw as outdated, and a proponent of achieving social solidarity through individual freedom.[4] A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was widely circulated. His main book on social reform is Toward Social Renewal.[4]
Anthroposophy continues to aim at reforming society through maintaining and strengthening the independence of the spheres of cultural life, human rights and the economy. It emphasizes a particular ideal in each of these three realms of society:[4]
According to Cees Leijenhorst, "Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism."[128]
Steiner did influence Italian Fascism, which exploited "his racial and anti-democratic dogma."[129] The fascist ministers Giovanni Antonio Colonna di Cesarò[130] (nicknamed "the Anthroposophist duke"; he became antifascist after taking part in Benito Mussolini's government[131]) and Ettore Martinoli have openly expressed their sympathy for Rudolf Steiner.[129] Most from the occult pro-fascist UR Group were Anthroposophists.[132][133][134]
According to Egil Asprem, "Steiner’s teachings had a clear authoritarian ring, and developed a rather crass polemic against 'materialism', 'liberalism', and cultural 'degeneration'. [...] For example, anthroposophical medicine was developed to contrast with the 'materialistic' (and hence 'degenerate') medicine of the establishment."[135]
Esoteric path
Paths of spiritual development
According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists, evolving along with the material one. Steiner held that the spiritual world can be researched in the right circumstances through direct experience, by persons practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitiveself-discipline. Steiner described many exercises he said were suited to strengthening such self-discipline; the most complete exposition of these is found in his book How To Know Higher Worlds. The aim of these exercises is to develop higher levels of consciousness through meditation and observation. Details about the spiritual world, Steiner suggested, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, though no more infallibly than the results of natural science.[73]
Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe…. Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst.[136]
Steiner regarded his research reports as being important aids to others seeking to enter into spiritual experience. He suggested that a combination of spiritual exercises (for example, concentrating on an object such as a seed), moral development (control of thought, feelings and will combined with openness, tolerance and flexibility) and familiarity with other spiritual researchers' results would best further an individual's spiritual development. He consistently emphasised that any inner, spiritual practice should be undertaken in such a way as not to interfere with one's responsibilities in outer life.[73] Steiner distinguished between what he considered were true and false paths of spiritual investigation.[137]
In anthroposophy, artistic expression is also treated as a potentially valuable bridge between spiritual and material reality.[138]:97
Prerequisites to and stages of inner development
A person seeking inner development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one's mind. They must be so incorporated into one's being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never conclude anything inwardly about these truths.
Steiner's stated prerequisites to beginning on a spiritual path include a willingness to take up serious cognitive studies, a respect for factual evidence, and a responsible attitude. Central to progress on the path itself is a harmonious cultivation of the following qualities:[74]
Control over one's own thinking
Control over one's will
Composure
Positivity
Impartiality
Steiner sees meditation as a concentration and enhancement of the power of thought. By focusing consciously on an idea, feeling or intention the meditant seeks to arrive at pure thinking, a state exemplified by but not confined to pure mathematics. In Steiner's view, conventional sensory-material knowledge is achieved through relating perception and concepts. The anthroposophic path of esoteric training articulates three further stages of supersensory knowledge, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual's spiritual progress.[140][141]
By focusing on symbolic patterns, images, and poetic mantras, the meditant can achieve consciously directed Imaginations that allow sensory phenomena to appear as the expression of underlying beings of a soul-spiritual nature.
By transcending such imaginative pictures, the meditant can become conscious of the meditative activity itself, which leads to experiences of expressions of soul-spiritual beings unmediated by sensory phenomena or qualities. Steiner calls this stage Inspiration.
By intensifying the will-forces through exercises such as a chronologically reversed review of the day's events, the meditant can achieve a further stage of inner independence from sensory experience, leading to direct contact, and even union, with spiritual beings ("Intuition") without loss of individual awareness.[140]
Steiner described numerous exercises he believed would bring spiritual development; other anthroposophists have added many others. A central principle is that "for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development." According to Steiner, moral development reveals the extent to which one has achieved control over one's inner life and can exercise it in harmony with the spiritual life of other people; it shows the real progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. It also guarantees the capacity to distinguish between false perceptions or illusions (which are possible in perceptions of both the outer world and the inner world) and true perceptions: i.e., the capacity to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements (i.e., viewpoint) and objective reality.[73]
Place in Western philosophy
Steiner built upon Goethe's conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). Steiner added to this the conception that a further step in the development of thinking is possible when the thinker observes his or her own thought processes. "The organ of observation and the observed thought process are then identical, so that the condition thus arrived at is simultaneously one of perception through thinking and one of thought through perception."[73]
Thus, in Steiner's view, we can overcome the subject-object divide through inner activity, even though all human experience begins by being conditioned by it. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Steiner believed he had thus located the origin of free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.[73]
Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner's later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, Philosophy of Freedom.[142] In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome what he perceived as the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by developing Goethe's conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity, that is: natural in that humanity is a product of nature, supernatural in that through our conceptual powers we extend nature's realm, allowing it to achieve a reflective capacity in us as philosophy, art and science.[143] Steiner was one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split in Western thought.[143] Though not well known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, an Oxford group of Christian writers that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis).[144]
Christian and Jewish mystical thought have also influenced the development of anthroposophy.[145][146]
Union of science and spirit
Steiner believed in the possibility of applying the clarity of scientific thinking to spiritual experience, which he saw as deriving from an objectively existing spiritual world.[138]:77ff Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through thinking itself, thus through inner experience rather than empirical observation,[147] as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.[148]
Anthroposophy regards mainstream science as Ahrimanic.[149]
Relationship to religion
Christ as the center of earthly evolution
Steiner's writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes Western tradition as having evolved to meet contemporary needs.[45] He describes Christ and his mission on earth of bringing individuated consciousness as having a particularly important place in human evolution,[4] whereby:[74]
Christianity has evolved out of previous religions;
The being which manifests in Christianity also manifests in all faiths and religions, and each religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born;
All historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably to meet the continuing evolution of humanity.
Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity.[150]
Thus, anthroposophy considers there to be a being who unifies all religions, and who is not represented by any particular religious faith. This being is, according to Steiner, not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and of human history.[74] To describe this being, Steiner periodically used terms such as the "Representative of Humanity" or the "good spirit"[151][152] rather than any denominational term.
Divergence from conventional Christian thought
Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic[ii] elements:
One central point of divergence is Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.
Steiner differentiated three contemporary paths by which he believed it possible to arrive at Christ:
Through heart-felt experiences of the Gospels; Steiner described this as the historically dominant path, but becoming less important in the future.
Through inner experiences of a spiritual reality; this Steiner regarded as increasingly the path of spiritual or religious seekers today.
Through initiatory experiences whereby the reality of Christ's death and resurrection are experienced; Steiner believed this is the path people will increasingly take.[74]
Steiner also believed that there were two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew, the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.[4][154][155] (The genealogies given in the two gospels diverge some thirty generations before Jesus' birth, and 'Jesus' was a common name in biblical times.)
His view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual; he suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life for increasing numbers of people beginning around the year 1933.[156]
He emphasized his belief that in the future humanity would need to be able to recognize the Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of what name would be used to describe this being. He also warned that the traditional name of the Christ might be misused, and the true essence of this being of love ignored.
Theosophy, together with its continental sister, Anthroposophy... are pure Gnosticism in Hindu dress...[157]
According to Jane Gilmer, "Jung and Steiner were both versed in ancient gnosis and both envisioned a paradigmatic shift in the way it was delivered."[158]
As Gilles Quispel put it, "After all, Theosophy is a pagan, Anthroposophy a Christian form of modern Gnosis."[159]
Maria Carlson stated "Theosophy and Anthroposophy are fundamentally Gnostic systems in that they posit the dualism of Spirit and Matter."[160] She also stated that Theosophy and Anthroposophy "are both modern gnostic doctrines."[161]
R. McL. Wilson in The Oxford Companion to the Bible agrees that Steiner and Anthroposophy are under the influence of gnosticism.[162]
Geoffrey Ahern states that Anthroposophy belongs to neo-gnosticism broadly conceived, which he identifies with Western esotericism and occultism.[165]
Was Steiner a Gnostic? Yes and no. Yes, from the point of view that he offered insights and methods for a personal experience of Christ. I have formulated this aspect of his work as his hermeneutical key: ‘not I, but Christ in me’. No, from the point of view that he was not trying to reestablish Gnosticism's practices into a neo-gnostic tradition. Steiner was, in his times, well aware of concerns articulated more recently by Pope Francis about the two subtle enemies of holiness, contemporary Gnosticism and contemporary Pelagianism.[166]
Granted that Steiner included Gnostic elements in his cosmological reinterpretation of Christianity, many of them from the Pistis Sophia, Steiner was not a Gnostic in the sense of someone who held that the world was ruled by a demiurge, that matter was evil, or that it was possible to escape from this fallen universe by acquiring secret spiritual knowledge. To characterize the structure of his thought as derived from Syrio-Egyptian gnosis (Ahern 2010) may be too strong and plays down the fact that he was critical of early Gnostic Christianity as having no adequate idea of Jesus as a man of flesh and blood.[167]
According to Catholic scholars Anthroposophy belongs to the New Age.[168][169]
Elizabeth Dipple stated that Rudolf Steiner's system was a "neo-Platonic, semi-Gnostic, occult anthroposophical system [...] with its allegiance to mystical Christianity, Rosicrucianism and certain versions of spiritualism [...]".[170]
Carl Abrahamsson stated that Steiner posited a gnostic Christ.[171]
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke described Anthroposophy as a [modern] offshoot of Ancient Gnosticism, especially of "the aeons of the Valentinian pleroma".[172]
Steiner's theology is "redemption through sin", he accuses good Christians of killing the spirit of Christianity.[173]
Judaism
Rudolf Steiner wrote and lectured on Judaism and Jewish issues over much of his adult life. He was a fierce opponent of popular antisemitism, but asserted that there was no justification for the existence of Judaism and Jewish culture in the modern world, a radical assimilationist perspective which saw the Jews completely integrating into the larger society.[174][34][175] He also supported Émile Zola's position in the Dreyfus affair.[175] Steiner emphasized Judaism's central importance to the constitution of the modern era in the West but suggested that to appreciate the spirituality of the future it would need to overcome its tendency toward abstraction.
Steiner financed the publication of the book Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg (1919) by Karl Heise[de]; Steiner also wrote the foreword for the book, partly based upon his own ideas.[176][177][178] The publication comprised a conspiracy theory according to whom World War I was a consequence of a collusion of Freemasons and Jews – still favorite scapegoats of the conspiracy theorists – their purpose being the destruction of Germany. Fact is that Steiner spent a large sum of money for publishing[178] "a now classic work of anti-Masonry and anti-Judaism".[176] The writing was later enthusiastically received by the Nazi Party.[179][180]
In his later life, Steiner was accused by the Nazis of being Jewish, and Adolf Hitler called anthroposophy "Jewish methods". The anthroposophical institutions in Germany were banned during Nazi rule and several anthroposophists sent to concentration camps.[1][181]
Important early anthroposophists who were Jewish included two central members on the executive boards of the precursors to the modern Anthroposophical Society,[182] and Karl König, the founder of the Camphill movement, who had converted to Christianity.[183]Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann, who viewed Steiner's social ideas as a solution to the Arab–Jewish conflict, were also influenced by anthroposophy.[146] The non-Aryan, the non-German, and the antifascist members of the direction board of the Anthroposophical Society were purged from it; it is unclear if that happened due to Nazi ideology or for other reasons, but the purge clearly brought the Anthroposophic Society closer to Nazism.[184]
There are numerous anthroposophical organisations in Israel, including the anthroposophical kibbutzHarduf, founded by Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, forty Waldorf kindergartens and seventeen Waldorf schools (as of 2018).[185] A number of these organizations are striving to foster positive relationships between the Arab and Jewish populations: The Harduf Waldorf school includes both Jewish and Arab faculty and students, and has extensive contact with the surrounding Arab communities, while the first joint Arab-Jewish kindergarten was a Waldorf program in Hilf near Haifa.
Towards the end of Steiner's life, a group of theology students (primarily Lutheran, with some Roman Catholic members) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular "to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit".[4] They approached a notable Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, who was already working with Steiner's ideas, to join their efforts. Out of their co-operative endeavor, the Movement for Religious Renewal, now generally known as The Christian Community, was born. Steiner emphasized that he considered this movement, and his role in creating it, to be independent of his anthroposophical work,[4] as he wished anthroposophy to be independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.[74]
The historian of religion Olav Hammer has termed anthroposophy "the most important esoteric society in European history."[36] However authors, scientists, and physicians including Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, and Simon Singh have criticized anthroposophy's application in the areas of medicine, biology, agriculture, and education to be dangerous and pseudoscientific.[37] Others including former Waldorf pupil Dan Dugan and historian Geoffrey Ahern have criticized anthroposophy itself as a dangerous quasi-religious movement that is fundamentally anti-rational and anti-scientific.[192]
Scientific basis
Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in epistemology and very little of his work is directly concerned with the empirical sciences. In his mature work, when he did refer to science it was often to present phenomenological or Goethean science as an alternative to what he considered the materialistic science of his contemporaries.[36]
Steiner's primary interest was in applying the methodology of science to realms of inner experience and the spiritual worlds (his appreciation that the essence of science is its method of inquiry is unusual among esotericists[36]), and Steiner called anthroposophy Geisteswissenschaft (science of the mind, cultural/spiritual science), a term generally used in German to refer to the humanities and social sciences.[193]
Whether this is a sufficient basis for anthroposophy to be considered a spiritual science has been a matter of controversy.[74][36] As Freda Easton explained in her study of Waldorf schools, "Whether one accepts anthroposophy as a science depends upon whether one accepts Steiner's interpretation of a science that extends the consciousness and capacity of human beings to experience their inner spiritual world."[194]
Sven Ove Hansson has disputed anthroposophy's claim to a scientific basis, stating that its ideas are not empirically derived and neither reproducible nor testable.[195] Carlo Willmann points out that as, on its own terms, anthroposophical methodology offers no possibility of being falsified except through its own procedures of spiritual investigation, no intersubjective validation is possible by conventional scientific methods; it thus cannot stand up to empiricist critics.[74] Peter Schneider describes such objections as untenable, asserting that if a non-sensory, non-physical realm exists, then according to Steiner the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness would already be experiences of that, and it would be impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content.[73]
Olav Hammer suggests that anthroposophy carries scientism "to lengths unparalleled in any other Esoteric position" due to its dependence upon claims of clairvoyant experience, its subsuming natural science under "spiritual science." Hammer also asserts that the development of what he calls "fringe" sciences such as anthroposophic medicine and biodynamic agriculture are justified partly on the basis of the ethical and ecological values they promote, rather than purely on a scientific basis.[36]
Though Steiner saw that spiritual vision itself is difficult for others to achieve, he recommended open-mindedly exploring and rationally testing the results of such research; he also urged others to follow a spiritual training that would allow them directly to apply his methods to achieve comparable results.[73]
Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional... But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation."[196]
According to Dan Dugan, Steiner was a champion of the following pseudoscientific claims, also championed by Waldorf schools:
Two German scholars have called Anthroposophy "the most successful form of 'alternative' religion in the [twentieth] century."[199] Other scholars stated that Anthroposophy is "aspiring to the status of religious dogma".[200] According to Maria Carlson, anthroposophy is a "positivistic religion" "offering a seemingly logical theology based on pseudoscience."[201]
According to Swartz, Brandt, Hammer, and Hansson, Anthroposophy is a religion.[202] They also call it "settled new religious movement",[203] while Martin Gardner called it a cult.[204] Another scholar also calls it a new religious movement or a new spiritual movement.[205] Already in 1924 Anthroposophy got labeled "new religious movement" and "occultist movement".[206] Other scholars agree it is a new religious movement.[2] According to Helmut Zander[de], both the theory and practice of Anthroposophy display characteristics of religion, and, according to Zander, Rudolf Steiner would plead no contest.[207] According to Zander, Steiner's book Geheimwissenschaft [Occult Science] contains Steiner's mythology about cosmogenesis.[208] Hammer notices that Anthroposophy is a synthesis which does include occultism.[209] Hammer also notices that Steiner's occult doctrines bear a strong resemblance to post-Blavatskyan Theosophy (e.g. Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater).[210] According to Helmut Zander, Steiner's clairvoyant insights always developed according to the same pattern. He took revised texts from theosophical literature and then passed them off as his own higher insights. Because he did not want to be an occult storyteller, but a (spiritual) scientist, he adapted his reading, which he had seen supernaturally in the world's memory, to the current state of technology. When, for example, the Wright brothers began flying with gliders and eventually with motorized aircraft in 1903, Steiner transformed the ponderous gondola airships of his Atlantis story into airplanes with elevators and rudders in 1904.[211]
As an explicitly spiritual movement, anthroposophy has sometimes been called a religious philosophy.[212] In 1998 People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) started a lawsuit alleging that anthroposophy is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes and therefore several California school districts should not be chartering Waldorf schools; the lawsuit was dismissed in 2012 for failure to show anthroposophy was a religion.[213][non-primary source needed] A 2012 paper in legal science reports this verdict as being provisional, and disagrees with its result, i.e. anthroposophy was declared "not a religion" due to an outdated legal framework.[214] In 2000, a French court ruled that a government minister's description of anthroposophy as a cult was defamatory.[215] The French governmental anti-cults agency MIVILUDES reported that it remains vigilant about Anthroposophy, especially because of its deviant medical applications and its work with underage persons, and that the works of Grégoire Perra which lambast anthroposophical medicine do not constitute defamation.[216] Anthroposophical MDs think diseases are caused primarily by karma and demons, rather than materialistic causes.[216] The Gospel of Luke is their main handbook of medical science; this makes them believe they have magical powers, and that medicine is essentially a form of magic.[216] The professional French organization of Anthroposophic MDs have sued Mr. Perra for such claims; they have been condemned to pay 25,000 Euros damages for abusively suing him.[216]
Scholars state that Anthroposophy is influenced by ChristianGnosticism.[217] The Catholic Church did in 1919 issue an edict classifying Anthroposophy as "a neognostic heresy" despite the fact that Steiner "very well respected the distinctions on which Catholic dogma insists".[218][219] The secular scholar Joan Braune agrees that Anthroposophy is Gnosticism.[220]
Some Baptist and mainstream academical heresiologists still appear inclined to agree with the more narrow prior edict of 1919[221] on dogma and the Lutheran (Missouri Sinod) apologist and heresiologist Eldon K. Winker quoted Ron Rhodes that Steiner's Christology is very similar to Cerinthus.[222] Steiner did perceive "a distinction between the human person Jesus, and Christ as the divine Logos",[223] which could be construed as Gnostic but not Docetic,[223] since "they do not believe the Christ departed from Jesus prior to the crucfixion".[222] "Steiner's Christology is discussed as a central element of his thought in Johannes Hemleben, Rudolf Steiner: A Documentary Biography, trans. Leo Twyman (East Grinstead, Sussex: Henry Goulden, 1975), pp. 96-100. From the perspective of orthodox Christianity, it may be said that Steiner combined a docetic understanding of Christ's nature with the Adoptionist heresy."[224] Older scholarship says Steiner's Christology is Nestorian.[225] According to Egil Asprem, "Steiner’s Christology was, however, quite heterodox, and hardly compatible with official church doctrine."[154]
Statements on race
Rudolf Steiner was an extreme pan-German nationalist, and never disavowed such stance.[226]
Some anthroposophical ideas challenged the National Socialist racialist and nationalistic agenda. In contrast, some American educators have criticized Waldorf schools for failing to equally include the fables and myths of all cultures, instead favoring European stories over African ones.
From the mid-1930s on, National Socialist ideologues attacked the anthroposophical worldview as being opposed to Nazi racist and nationalistic principles; anthroposophy considered "Blood, Race and Folk" as primitive instincts that must be overcome.[227][228]
An academic analysis of the educational approach in public schools noted that "[A] naive version of the evolution of consciousness, a theory foundational to both Steiner's anthroposophy and Waldorf education, sometimes places one race below another in one or another dimension of development. It is easy to imagine why there are disputes [...] about Waldorf educators' insisting on teaching Norse tales and Greek myths to the exclusion of African modes of discourse."[229]
In response to such critiques, the Anthroposophical Society in America published in 1998 a statement clarifying its stance:
We explicitly reject any racial theory that may be construed to be part of Rudolf Steiner's writings. The Anthroposophical Society in America is an open, public society and it rejects any purported spiritual or scientific theory on the basis of which the alleged superiority of one race is justified at the expense of another race.[230]
Tommy Wieringa, a Dutch writer who grew among Anthroposophists, commenting upon an essay by the Anthroposophist Désanne van Brederode[nl], he wrote "It was a meeting of old acquaintances: Nazi leaders such as Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler already recognized a kindred spirit in Rudolf Steiner, with his theories about racial purity, esoteric medicine and biodynamic agriculture."[231][232]
The racism of Anthroposophy is spiritual and paternalistic (i.e. benevolent), while the racism of fascism is materialistic and often malign.[233]Olav Hammer, university professor expert in new religious movements and Western esotericism, confirms that now the racist and anti-Semitic character of Steiner's teachings can no longer be denied, even if that is "spiritual racism".[234]
According to Munoz, in the materialist perspective (i.e. no reincarnations), Anthroposophy is racist, but in the spiritual perspective (i.e. reincarnations mandatory) it is not racist.[235]
Reception by Nazi regime in Germany
Though several prominent members of the Nazi Party were supporters of anthroposophy and its movements, including agriculturalist Erhard Bartsch[de], SS colonel Hermann Schneider, and Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller,[236] anti-Nazis such as Traute Lafrenz, a member of the White Rose resistance movement, were also followers.[237]Rudolf Hess, the adjunct Führer, was a patron of Waldorf schools[56][55] and a staunch defender of biodynamic agriculture.[57] "Before 1933, Himmler, Walther Darré (the future Reich Agriculture Minister), and Rudolf Höss (the future commandant of Auschwitz) had studied ariosophy and anthroposophy, belonged to the occult-inspired Artamanen movement, [...]"[96]
"One of the most insightful contributions to this area is Peter Staudenmaier's case study of Anthroposophy, which has demonstrated the ambiguous role of Anthroposophists in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany."[238] According to Staudenmaier, the fascist and Nazi authorities saw occultism not as deviant, but as deeply familiar.[238]
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the religion of Theosophy and the spiritual movement called Anthroposophy, the Akashic records are believed by Theosophists to be a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just human. They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the mental plane. There is no evidence for the existence of Akashic records, and rigorous scientific research in this field has seen little traction.
The Christian Community is a liberal and esoterically-oriented Christian denomination established in Germany in 1922 by Lutheran ministers influenced by Anthroposophy. As of 2023, it claims approximately 100,000 members in more than 400 congregations.
Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to classify a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and Age of Enlightenment rationalism. It has influenced, or contributed to, various forms of Western philosophy, mysticism, religion, science, pseudoscience, art, literature, and music.
The General Anthroposophical Society is an "association of people whose will it is to nurture the life of the soul, both in the individual and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world." As an organization, it is dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner.
UR Group was an Italian esotericist association, founded around 1927 by intellectuals including Julius Evola, Arturo Reghini and Giovanni Colazza for the study of Traditionalism and Magic. They published monthly series of issues in UR (1927–28) and KRUR (1929) journals, reprinted in the three volumes of the book Introduzione alla Magia quale Scienza dell'Io [Introduction to Magic as Science of the Self] in 1955 and 1971.
The Goetheanum, located in Dornach, in the canton of Solothurn, Switzerland, is the world center for the anthroposophical movement.
Marie Steiner-von Sivers was a Baltic German actress, the second wife of Rudolf Steiner and one of his closest colleagues. She made a great contribution to the development of anthroposophy, particularly in her work on the renewal of the performing arts, and the editing and publishing of Rudolf Steiner's literary estate.
Emil Molt was a German industrialist, social reformer and anthroposophist. He was the director of the Waldorf-Astoria-Zigarettenfabrik, and with Rudolf Steiner co-founded the first Waldorf school. Hence, Waldorf education was named after the company.
Sergei Olegovich Prokofieff was a Russian anthroposophist. He was the grandson of the composer Sergei Prokofiev and his first wife Lina Prokofiev, and the son of Oleg Prokofiev and his first wife Sofia Korovina. Born in Moscow, he studied fine arts and painting at the Moscow School of Art. He encountered anthroposophy in his youth, and soon made the decision to devote his life to it.
Waldorf education, also known as Steiner education, is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Its educational style is holistic, intended to develop pupils' intellectual, artistic, and practical skills, with a focus on imagination and creativity. Individual teachers have a great deal of autonomy in curriculum content, teaching methods, and governance. Qualitative assessments of student work are integrated into the daily life of the classroom, with standardized testing limited to what is required to enter post-secondary education.
The relationship between Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophical Society, co-founded in 1875 by H.P. Blavatsky with Henry Steel Olcott and others, was a complex and changing one. Rudolf Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society on 28 December 1912, and he was expelled from the Theosophical Society on 7 March 1913.
Germany and Austria have spawned many movements and practices in Western esotericism, including Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Ariosophy, among others.
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer was a German Indologist and religious studies writer. He was the founder of the German Faith Movement.
Elisabeth Vreede was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer and anthroposophist.
Massimo Scaligero was an Italian spiritual teacher and member of the UR Group, which gathered occultists and mystics. A mentee of Julius Evola, Scaligero espoused fierce antisemitic views which were combined with esotericism and anthroposophy into a system of "integral racism" with the aim to bring Germany and Italy closer together in the same way it would the spiritual and the biological.
Rudolf Hauschka was an Austrian chemist, author, inventor, entrepreneur and anthroposophist.
Johannes Tautz (30 September 1914 in Koblenz am Rhein to 13 March 2008 in Dortmund, was a historian, religious scholar, anthroposophist, author and Waldorf teacher. He concerned himself with a better understanding of National Socialism and with questions of education in the twentieth century.
Theosophy is a religious and philosophical system established in the United States in the late 19th century. Founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky, and based largely on her writings, it draws heavily from both older European philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Although many adherents maintain that Theosophy is not a religion, it is variably categorized by religious scholars as both a new religious movement and a form of occultism from within Western esotericism.
Frederik Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven, was a Dutch psychiatrist and anthroposophist. From 1923 until his death in 1961 he was chairman of the Dutch Anthroposophical Society. He was a familiar figure in public life and had a considerable influence on the anthroposophic movement, particularly through his numerous lectures and his work as an author, which included the first biography of Rudolf Steiner.
References
Notes
↑ Ethical individualism is the opposite of ethical collectivism (meaning a moral code which is good for everyone).
↑ Gnosticism meaning "In the broadest sense of the term this is any spiritual teaching that says that spiritual knowledge (Greek: gnosis) or wisdom (sophia) rather than doctrinal faith (pistis) or some ritual practice is the main route to supreme spiritual attainment."[153]
Norman, Alex (2012). Cusack, Carole M.; Norman, Alex (eds.). Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Brill. p.213. ISBN978-90-04-22187-1. Retrieved 1 January 2024. [...] continue to have influence beyond the institutional reach of Anthropospophy, the new religious movement he founded.
Frisk, Liselotte (2012). Cusack, Carole M.; Norman, Alex (eds.). Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Brill. p.204 fn. 10, 208. ISBN978-90-04-22187-1. Retrieved 1 January 2024. Thus my conclusion is that it is quite uncontroversial to see Anthroposophy as a whole as a religious movement, in the conventional use of the term, although it is not an emic term used by Anthroposophists themselves.
Cusack, Carole M. (2012). Cusack, Carole M.; Norman, Alex (eds.). Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Brill. p.190. ISBN978-90-04-22187-1. Retrieved 1 January 2024. Steiner, of all esoteric and new religious teachers of the early twentieth century, was acutely aware of the peculiar value of cultural production, an activity with which he engaged with tireless energy, and considerable (amateur and professional) skill and achievement.
↑ AnthroposophyArchived 2021-02-08 at the Wayback Machine , 1998?, Encyclopedia Britannica online. "Anthroposophy, philosophy based on the premise that the human mind has the ability to contact spiritual worlds. It was formulated by Rudolf Steiner (q.v.), an Austrian philosopher, scientist, and artist, who postulated the existence of a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but fully accessible only to the faculties of knowledge latent in all humans."
Regal, Brian (2009). "Astral Projection". Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia: A Critical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p.29. ISBN978-0-313-35508-0. Retrieved 31 January 2022. The Austrian philosopher and occultist Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925) claimed that, by astral projection, he could read the Akashic Record. ... Other than anecdotal eyewitness accounts, there is no evidence of the ability to astral project, the existence of other planes, or of the Akashic Record.
Gorski, David H. (2019). Kaufman, Allison B.; Kaufman, James C. (eds.). Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science. MIT Press. p.313. ISBN978-0-262-53704-9. Retrieved 31 January 2022. To get an idea of what mystical nonsense anthroposophic medicine is, I like to quote straight from the horse's mouth, namely Physician's Association for Anthroposophic Medicine, in its pamphlet for patients:
Ruse, Michael (2013b). Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (eds.). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. p.227. ISBN978-0-226-05182-6. Retrieved 31 January 2022. It is not so much that they have a persecution or martyr complex, but that they do revel in having esoteric knowledge unknown to or rejected by others, and they have the sorts of personalities that rather enjoy being on the fringe or outside. Followers of Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic agriculture are particularly prone to this syndrome. They just know they are right and get a big kick out of their opposition to genetically modified foods and so forth.
Mahner, Martin (2007). Gabbay, Dov M.; Thagard, Paul; Woods, John; Kuipers, Theo A.F. (eds.). General Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues. Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Elsevier Science. p.548. ISBN978-0-08-054854-8. Retrieved 3 February 2022. Examples of such fields are various forms of "alternative healing" such as shamanism, or esoteric world views like anthroposophy ... For this reason, we must suspect that the "alternative knowledge" produced in such fields is just as illusory as that of the standard pseudosciences.
Pattberg, Thorsten J. (2012). Shengren: Above Philosophy and Beyond Religion. LoD Press, New York. p.125. Retrieved 15 August 2024. Worse, he couldn't be a real philosopher either; his theosophy and anthroposophy and the Waldorf humanism in particular were considered pseudoscience or at best pedagogy, not a philosophical system. Steiner's credentials were not university-level professional work. [...] German mainstream scholarship called him an 'autodidact, with a poor teacher' and 'gypsy-intellectual.'144 Not uncommon for practitioners at the fringes of society, he was accused of class treason.
See also Hansson, Sven Ove (20 May 2021) [3 September 2008]. "Science and Pseudo-Science". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN1095-5054. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
↑ Steiner, Rudolf (2002). What is anthroposophy?: three perspectives on self-knowledge. Christopher Bamford. Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press. ISBN0-88010-506-2. OCLC49531507.
1 2 Kugler, Walter (2001). Feindbild Steiner (in German). Stuttgart: Verl. Freies Geistesleben & Urachhaus. p.61. ISBN978-3-7725-1918-5.
1 2 Peg Weiss (Summer 1997). "Kandinsky and Old Russia: The Artist as Ethnographer and Shaman". The Slavic and East European Journal. Vol.41, no.2. pp.371–373.
1 2 Frommer, Eva A. (1995). Voyage Through Childhood Into the Adult World – A Guide to Child Development. Rudolph Steiner Press. ISBN978-1-869890-59-9.
↑ Bagdonavičius, Vaclovas. "Similarities and Differences between Vydūnas and Steiner ("Berührungspunkte und Unterschiede zwischen Vydūnas und Steiner"). [In Lithuanian]. Vydūnas und deutsche Kultur, sudarytojai Vacys Bagdonavičius, Aušra Martišiūtė-Linartienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2013, pp. 325–330.
↑ Jacobsen, Knut A.; Sardella, Ferdinando (2020). Handbook of Hinduism in Europe. Leiden: Brill. pp.1177–1178. ISBN9789004432284. Retrieved 9 December 2022. The philosopher Vilhelmas (Vilius) Storosta, or Vydunas (1868-1953), joined the Theosophical Society and was particularly interested in anthroposophy and its attempts to combine religion, science, and philosophy.
↑ Urushadze, Levari Z. "Zviad Gamsakhurdia – the first President of Georgia". Georgian National Museum. Retrieved 9 December 2022. Gamsakhurdia, although his self-proclaimed Orthodoxy was overlaid with the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, promoted a distinct program of Orthodox Church-Georgian State cooperation in such spheres as education. It is interesting that "Steinerism" has come under attack in Madli [Grace], the monthly newspaper of the Georgian Patriarchate.
Gardner, Martin (1957) [1952]. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover Books on the Occult. Dover Publications. pp.169, 224f. ISBN978-0-486-20394-2. Retrieved 31 January 2022. The late Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthroposophical Society, the fastest growing cult in post-war Germany... Closely related to the organic farming movement is the German anthroposophical cult founded by Rudolf Steiner, whom we met earlier in connection with his writings on Atlantis and Lemuria. ... In essence, the anthroposophists' approach to the soil is like their approach to the human body—a variation of homeopathy. (See Steiner's An Outline of Anthroposophical Medical Research, English translation, 1939, for an explanation of how mistletoe, when properly prepared, will cure cancer by absorbing "etheric forces" and strengthening the "astral body.") They believe the soil can be made more "dynamic" by adding to it certain mysterious preparations which, like the medicines of homeopathic "purists," are so diluted that nothing material of the compound remains.
Fritze, Ronald H. (2009). "Atlantis: Mother of Pseudohistory". Invented Knowledge. London: Reaktion Books. pp.45, 61. ISBN978-1-86189-430-4. For the Theosophists and other occultists Atlantis has a greater importance since it forms an integral part of their religious worldview.
Lachman, Gary (2007). Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Penguin Publishing Group. pp.xix, 233. ISBN978-1-101-15407-6. Retrieved 29 February 2024. I formulated the cognitive challenge I was presenting myself with in this way: How can I account for the fact that, on one page, Steiner can make a powerful and original critique of Kantian epistemology—basically, the idea that there are limits to knowledge—yet on another make, with all due respect, absolutely outlandish and, more to the point, seemingly unverifiable statements about life in ancient Atlantis?
↑ Ahern, Geoffrey. (1984): Sun at Midnight: the Rudolf Steiner movement and the Western esoteric tradition
↑ especially How to Know Higher Worlds and An Outline of Esoteric Science
↑ Uhrmacher, P. Bruce (Winter 1995). "Uncommon Schooling: A Historical Look at Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Waldorf Education". Curriculum Inquiry. 25 (4): 381–406. doi:10.2307/1180016. JSTOR1180016.
Zander, Helmut (2007). Anthroposophie in Deutschland: Theosophische Weltanschauung und gesellschaftliche Praxis 1884–1945 (in German). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p.250. ISBN978-3-525-55452-4.
1 2 Rieppel, Olivier (2016). Phylogenetic Systematics: Haeckel to Hennig. CRC Press. p.246. ISBN978-1-4987-5489-7. Retrieved 3 October 2022. Although in his reply, Himmler pretended to share Astel's assessment of anthroposophy as a dangerous movement, he admitted to be unable to do anything about the school of Rudolf Steiner because Rudolf Hess supported and protected it.
1 2 Douglas-Hamilton, James (2012). "1 Turmoil at the Dictator's Court: 11 May 1941". The Truth About Rudolf Hess. Mainstream Publishing. p.unpaginated. ISBN978-1-78057-791-3. Retrieved 2 October 2022. Organisations which Hess had supported, such as the Rudolf Steiner schools, were closed down.
↑ Sutin, Lawrence (2014). Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p.unpaginated. ISBN978-1-4668-7526-5. Retrieved 9 February 2023. for the Third Reich had outlawed virtually all esoteric groups (alleged to be under covert Jewish control) in Germany
1 2 Staudenmaier 2014, p.174: "Though anthroposophists complained regularly about negative publicity, Steiner's movement received remarkably positive press coverage in the Nazi era, including outspokenly supportive pieces in the Völkischer Beobachter.108 Anthroposophist authors generally encountered few difficulties in publishing their work,109 SD specialists on occult groups made suppression of anthroposophist publications a priority, but met with relatively little success. They argued that misuse of terms such as “race, nation, community, Germanness” by non-Nazi authors, even if sincere and well-meaning, “must be regarded as an attack on the National Socialist worldview.”110 Criticizing “materialist misinterpretations” of Nazi racial theory, they contended that the Nazi conception of race united the biological with the spiritual, the physical with the soul, into one comprehensive synthesis. The SD was especially wary of spiritual groups claiming that Nazism had “adopted” some of their own ideas or that their teachings had all along been in concert with National Socialist precepts. Movements like anthroposophy, from this point of view, represented unwelcome competition."
↑ Staudenmaier (2014: 18, 79). Quote: Though raised Catholic, Büchenbacher had partial Jewish ancestry and was considered a “half-Jew” by Nazi standards. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1936. According to his post-war memoirs, “approximately two thirds of German anthroposophists more or less succumbed to National Socialism.” He reported that various influential anthroposophists were “deeply infected by Nazi views” and “staunchly supported Hitler.” Both Guenther Wachsmuth, Secretary of the Swiss-based General Anthroposophical Society, and Marie Steiner, the widow of Rudolf Steiner, were described as “completely pro-Nazi.” Büchenbacher retrospectively lamented the far-reaching “Nazi sins” of his colleagues.59
↑ Koehne, Samuel (2016). "Revisiting the "Nazi Occult": Histories, Realities, Legacies. Edited by Monica Black and Eric Kurlander. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. 306. Cloth $90.00. ISBN 978-1571139061". Central European History. 49 (2): 281–283. doi:10.1017/S0008938916000492. ISSN0008-9389. S2CID148281372. there were often no clear-cut lines between theosophy, anthroposophy, ariosophy, astrology and the völkisch movement from which the Nazi Party arose.
↑ Die Philosophie des Grafen von Shaftesbury, 1872
↑ Anthroposophie im Umriß. Entwurf eines Systems idealer Weltsicht auf realistischer Grundlage, 1882
↑ Robert Zimmermann Geschichte der Aesthetik als philosophische Wissenschaft. Vienna, 1858. Anthroposophie im Umriss-Entwurf eines Systems idealer Weltansicht auf realistischer Grundlage. (Vienna, 1882): Steiner, Anthroposophic Movement: Lecture Two: The Unveiling of Spiritual Truths, 11 June 1923.
1 2 McDermott, Robert A. (1995). "Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy". In Faivre, Antoine; Needleman, Jacob; Voss, Karen (eds.). Modern Esoteric Spirituality. New York: Crossroad Publishing. pp.299–301, 288ff. ISBN978-0-8245-1444-0.
↑ Trevelyan, George (1981). Operation Redemption: A Vision of Hope in an Age of Turmoil. Turnstone. pp.117–118. ISBN978-0-85500-150-6.
↑ Steiner, Man as Symphony of the Creative Word and Occult Science
↑ Waterman, John (1961). "Evolution and The Image of Man". In Harwood, A.C. (ed.). The Faithful Thinker: Centenary Essays on the Work and Thought of Rudolf Steiner, 1861-1925. Hodder and Stoughton. p.45. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
1 2 Ullrich, Heiner (2000) [1994]. "Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)"(PDF). Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education. XXIV (3/4). Paris: UNESCO: International Bureau of Education: 8–9 [555–572]. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 September 2015.
↑ Lazier, Benjamin (2008). God Interrupted. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press. p.29. ISBN978-0-691-13670-7. By the 1920s gnosticism (the term) had hardly a vestige of an agreed-upon meaning. That gnosticism had returned in some form was a sentiment shared by many, but what that meant was up for debate. Some, notably those on the occult scene inspired by the maverick educator Rudolf Steiner, greeted the new age with enthusiasm.
↑ Lejano, Raul P.; Ingram, Mrill; Ingram, Helen M. (2013). "Chapter 6: Narratives of Nature and Science in Alternative Farming Networks". Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks. MIT Press. p.155. ISBN9780262519571.
1 2 Kurlander, Eric (2015a). "The Nazi Magicians' Controversy: Enlightenment, "Border Science," and Occultism in the Third Reich". Central European History. 48 (4). [Cambridge University Press, Central European History Society]: 498–522. ISSN1569-1616. JSTOR43965203. Retrieved 19 February 2024. Before 1933, Himmler, Walther Darré (the future Reich Agriculture Minister), and Rudolf Höss (the future commandant of Auschwitz) had studied ariosophy and anthroposophy, belonged to the occult-inspired Artamanen movement, [...]
↑ Kurlander, Eric (2017). "MONSTROUS SCIENCE: Racial Resettlement, Human Experiments, and the Holocaust". Hitler's Monsters. Yale University Press. pp.239–240. ISBN978-0-300-18945-2. JSTORj.ctt1q31shs.13. Retrieved 19 February 2024. '[...] with the active cooperation of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture' [...] Pancke, Pohl, and Hans Merkel established additional biodynamic plantations across the eastern territories as well as Dachau, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz concentration camps. Many were staffed by anthroposophists.
↑ Horneber MA, Bueschel G, Huber R, Linde K, Rostock M (2008). "Mistletoe therapy in oncology". Cochrane Database Syst Rev (Systematic review). 2020 (2): CD003297. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003297.pub2. PMC7144832. PMID18425885. The review found that there was not enough evidence to reach clear conclusions about the effects on any of these outcomes and it is therefore not clear to what extent the application of mistletoe extracts translates into improved symptom control, enhanced tumour response or prolonged survival.
↑ Ades TB, ed. (2009). "Mistletoe". American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Therapies (2nded.). American Cancer Society. pp.424–428. ISBN9780944235713. Available evidence from well-designed clinical trials does not support claims that mistletoe can improve length or quality of life.
↑ Weihs, Thomas J. (2000). Children in Need of Special Care. Souvenir Press. ISBN978-0-285-63569-2.
↑ Sharp, Dennis, Rudolf Steiner and the Way to a New Style in Architecture, Architectural Association Journal, June 1963
↑ Sokolina, Anna P. "Biology in Architecture: The Goetheanum Case Study." In: The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture, edited by Ch. Terranova and M. Tromble, 52–70. New York and London: Routledge, 2017. 546p.
↑ Sokolina, Anna. "Modernist Topologies: The Goetheanum in Building." In Modernity and Construction of Sacred Space, edited by Aaron French and Katharina Waldner, 149–168. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024. ISBN 9783111061382 and 9783111062624. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111062624-008.
↑ Raab, Rex; Klingborg, Arne (1982). Die Waldorfschule baut: sechzig Jahre Architektur der Waldorfschulen: Schule als Entwicklungsraum menschengemässer Baugestaltung (in German). Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben. ISBN978-3-7725-0240-8.
↑ Sokolina, Anna, ed., co-author, Architecture and Anthroposophy. (Arkhitektura i Antroposofiia. bilingual ed.) 1st and 2nd edition. 268p. M.: KMK Scientific Press. 2001, ISBN5-87317-074-6. 2010, ISBN5-87317-660-4.
↑ Sokolina, Anna, "The Goetheanum Culture in Modern Architecture." In: Science, Education and Experimental Design (Nauka, obrazovaniie i eksperimental'noie proiektirovaniie. Trudy MARKHI) (In Russian), edited by D.O. Shvidkovsky, G.V. Yesaulov, et al., 157–159. Moscow: MARKHI, 2014. 536p.
↑ Staudenmaier 2014, p.284: "The anthroposophist contribution to spiritual racism in theory and in practice yields new insights into the nature of the Fascist racial campaign between 1938 and 1945."
↑ Leijenhorst, Cees (2005). Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; Faivre, Antoine; Broek, Roelof van den; Brach, Jean-Pierre (eds.). Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism: I. Brill. p.1090. ISBN978-90-04-14187-2. Retrieved 2 January 2024. Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism.
↑ Stein, W. J., Die moderne naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellungsart und die Weltanschauung Goethes, wie sie Rudolf Steiner vertritt, reprinted in Meyer, Thomas, W.J. Stein / Rudolf Steiner, pp. 267–75; 256–7.
↑ Pifer, Ellen (1991). Saul Bellow Against the Grain. Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated. ISBN978-0-8122-1369-0. Retrieved 16 March 2024. See also Steiner's doctoral thesis, Truth and Science
1 2 Tarnas, Richard (1996). The Passion of the Western Mind. London: Random House. ISBN0-7126-7332-6.
↑ Myers, Doris T. (1994). C.S. Lewis in Context. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN978-0-87338-617-3.
↑ Hans-Jürgen Bader, Lorenzo Ravagli, Rudolf Steiner als aktiver Gegner des Antisemitismus, Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen, 2005
1 2 Paddock, Fred; Spiegler, Mado (2003). Judaism and Anthroposophy. Great Barrington (Mass.): SteinerBooks. ISBN978-0-88010-510-1.
Al-Faruqi, Ismail Il Raji (1977). "Moral values in medicine and science". Biosciences Communications. 3 (1). S. Karger: 56–58. ISSN0302-2781. Retrieved 15 March 2024. Medical science is Ahrimanic in that it treats the body solely as a mechanism, having no knowledge of or concern with the etheric structure, that invisible field of force and energy which all too often is found to be the seat of disease.
↑ McClelland, Norman C. (15 October 2018). "Gnosticism". Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma. McFarland. p.100. ISBN978-0-7864-5675-8. In the broadest sense of the term this is any spiritual teaching that says that spiritual knowledge (Greek: gnosis) or wisdom (sophia) rather than doctrinal faith (pistis) or some ritual practice is the main route to supreme spiritual attainment.
↑ Johnson, Marshall D. (1969). Black, Matthew (ed.). The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies with Special Reference to the Setting of the Genealogies of Jesus. London: Cambridge University Press. p.144. ISBN978-0-521-07317-2.
↑ Robertson, David G. (2021). Gnosticism and the History of Religions. Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation. Bloomsbury Publishing. p.57. ISBN978-1-350-13770-7. Retrieved 3 January 2023. Theosophy, together with its continental sister, Anthroposophy... are pure Gnosticism in Hindu dress...
↑ Gilmer, Jane (2021). The Alchemical Actor. Consciousness, Literature and the Arts. Brill. p.41. ISBN978-90-04-44942-8. Retrieved 3 January 2023. Jung and Steiner were both versed in ancient gnosis and both envisioned a paradigmatic shift in the way it was delivered.
Quispel, Gilles (1980). Layton, Bentley (ed.). The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: The school of Valentinus. Studies in the history of religions: Supplements to Numen. E.J. Brill. p.123. ISBN978-90-04-06176-7. Retrieved 3 January 2023. After all, Theosophy is a pagan, Anthroposophy a Christian form of modern Gnosis.
↑ Carlson, Maria (2018). "Petersburg and Modern Occultism". In Livak, Leonid (ed.). A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's "petersburg. University of Wisconsin Press. p.58. ISBN978-0-299-31930-4. Retrieved 3 January 2023. Theosophy and Anthroposophy are fundamentally Gnostic systems in that they posit the dualism of Spirit and Matter.
↑ Carlson, Maria (1996). "Gnostic Elements in Soloviev's Cosmogony". In Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch; Gustafson, Richard F. (eds.). Russian Religious Thought. Russian studies: Religion. University of Wisconsin Press. p.53. ISBN978-0-299-15134-8. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
↑ McL. Wilson, Robert (1993). "Gnosticism". In Metzger, Bruce M.; Coogan, Michael D. (eds.). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford Companions. Oxford University Press. p.256. ISBN978-0-19-974391-9. Retrieved 3 January 2023. Gnosticism has often been regarded as bizarre and outlandish, and certainly it is not easily understood until it is examined in its contemporary setting. It was, however, no mere playing with words and ideas, but a serious attempt to resolve real problems: the nature and destiny of the human race, the problem of *evil, the human predicament. To a gnostic it brought a release and joy and hope, as if awakening from a nightmare. One later offshoot, Manicheism, became for a time a world religion, reaching as far as China, and there are at least elements of gnosticism in such medieval movements as those of the Bogomiles and the Cathari. Gnostic influence has been seen in various works of modern literature, such as those of William Blake and W. B. Yeats, and is also to be found in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner. Gnosticism was of lifelong interest to the psychologist C. G. *Jung, and one of the Nag Hammadi codices (the Jung Codex) was for a time in the Jung Institute in Zurich.
↑ McDermott, Robert A. (1987). "Anthroposophy". In Eliade, Mircea (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. p.320. ISBN0-02-909700-2.
↑ Steiner, Rudolf; Seddon, Richard; Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2004). Rudolf Steiner. Western Esoteric Masters. North Atlantic Books. p.7. ISBN978-1-55643-490-7. Retrieved 2 January 2024. blended modern Theosophy with a Gnostic form of Christianity, Rosicrucianism, and German Naturphilosophie
↑ Ahern, Geoffrey (2009) [1984]. Sun at Midnight. Cambridge: James Clarke Company. p.11. ISBN978-0-227-17293-3.
↑ Hudson, Wayne (2019). "Rudolf Steiner: Multiple bodies". In Trompf, Garry W.; Mikkelsen, Gunner B.; Johnston, Jay (eds.). The gnostic world. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p.510. ISBN978-1-315-56160-8. apud Samson 2023, p.56
↑ G.K. Chesterton Society; G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture (February–May 2000). "A conference on New Age and Christian spirituality"(PDF). The Chesterton Review. XXVI (1&2). Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; South Orange, New Jersey: G.K. Chesterton Society, 1974- G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture. ISSN0317-0500. OCLC2247651. One needs to recognise several things in New Age in order not to over-react: it is not monolithic; it is not a den of demons; nor is it a den of fools. Three main currents need to be taken very seriously, even if they reject being included in the broad term New Age. They are René Guénon's tariqa or school of intellectual Sufism, Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and 'the Work', devised by Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
↑ Pontifical Council for Culture; Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. "Jesus Christ the bearer of the water of life. A Christian reflection on the "New Age"". vatican.va. The State of Vatican: The Catholic Church. Retrieved 18 May 2024. The Age of Aquarius has such a high profile in the New Age movement largely because of the influence of theosophy, spiritualism and anthroposophy, and their esoteric antecedents.
↑ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2013). "Western Esoteric Traditions and Theosophy". In Hammer, Olav; Rothstein, Mikael (eds.). Handbook of the Theosophical Current. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Brill. p.301. ISBN978-90-04-23597-7. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
1 2 French, Aaron (2022). "Esoteric Nationalism and Conspiracism in WWI". In Piraino, Francesco; Pasi, Marco; Asprem, Egil (eds.). Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories: Comparing and Connecting Old and New Trends. London: Routledge. pp.107–123. doi:10.4324/9781003120940-8. ISBN978-1-000-78268-4. Retrieved 2024-03-01. One man inspired by Steiner's lectures during World War I was the enigmatic Karl Heise, who, in 1918, published a now classic work of anti-Masonry and anti-Judaism entitled Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg, which was partially backed by Steiner, who wrote a cagey introduction to the first edition, very cautiously choosing his words and not signing his name (Zander, 2007, p. 991).
↑ Zander 2007, pp.991–992: "Ein weiteres Motiv könnte in der Kollision von Steiners Freimaureraktivitäten mit seinem deutschen Patriotismus liegen (s. 14.3.1). Nach dem Krieg nannte Steiner diesen Punkt sehr deutlich, als er in Karl Heises »Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg«, in der es um die Kriegsschuldfrage ging178, ein nicht gezeichnetes, auf den 10. Oktober 1918 datiertes Vorwort verfaßte, sich also einen Monat vor dem Waffenstillstand und inmitten des Zusammenbruchs des Deutschen Reiches äußerte. »Die Geheimgesellschaften der Entente-Länder«, hieß es dort, hätten eine »die Weltkatastrophe vorbereitende politische Gesinnung und Beeinflussung der Weltereignisse«an den Tag gelegt. Bei der Suche nach der »Schuld am Weltkriege«habe man auch an die Freimaurer zu denken. Dies war nicht nur eine reduktive Lösung der »Kriegsschuldfrage«im Jahr 1918, sondern möglicherweise auch ein Hinweis auf seine Motivlage im Jahr 1914: Steiner hätte sich dann aus Solidarität mit Deutschland aus dem Internationalismus der Freimaurerei verabschiedet179. Andere theosophische Gesellschaften haben diesen Schnitt übrigens nicht so deutlich vollzogen180."
1 2 Staudenmaier 2014, p.96: "The foremost example of a full-fledged antisemitic conspiracy theory based squarely on anthroposophist premises was Karl Heise’s 1919 tome blaming the World War on a cabal of freemasons and Jews. Heise wrote the book with Steiner’s encouragement and founded its argument on Steiner’s own teachings, while Steiner himself wrote the foreword and contributed a substantial sum toward publication costs.101"
↑ Lorenzo Ravagli, Unter Hammer und Hakenkreuz: Der völkisch-nationalsozialistische Kampf gegen die Anthroposophie, Verlag Freies Geistesleben, ISBN3-7725-1915-6
↑ Storr, Anthony (1997) [1996]. "IV. Rudolf Steiner". Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, Simon & Schuster. pp.69–70. ISBN978-0-684-83495-5.
1 2 3 4 5 Dugan, Dan (2002). Shermer, Michael; Linse, Pat (eds.). The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. ABC-CLIO. pp.31–33. ISBN978-1-57607-653-8. In physics, Steiner championed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's color theory over Isaac Newton, and he called relativity "brilliant nonsense." In astronomy, he taught that the motions of the planets were caused by the relationships of the spiritual beings that inhabited them. In biology, he preached vitalism and doubted germ theory.
1 2 Dugan, Dan (2007). Flynn, Tom; Dawkins, Richard (eds.). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Prometheus Books, Publishers. pp.74–75. ISBN9781615922802. Retrieved 21 June 2015. Anthroposophical pseudoscience is easy to find in Waldorf schools. "Goethean science" is supposed to be based only on observation, without "dogmatic" theory. Because observations make no sense without a relationship to some hypothesis, students are subtly nudged in the direction of Steiner's explanations of the world. Typical departures from accepted science include the claim that Goethe refuted Newton's theory of color, Steiner's unique "threefold" systems in physiology, and the oft-repeated doctrine that "the heart is not a pump" (blood is said to move itself).
Swartz, Karen; Hammer, Olav (14 June 2022). "Soft charisma as an impediment to fundamentalist discourse: The case of the Anthroposophical Society in Sweden". Approaching Religion. 12 (2): 18–37. doi:10.30664/ar.113383. ISSN1799-3121. 2. It can be noted that insiders routinely deny that Anthroposophy is a religion and prefer to characterise it as, for example, a philosophical perspective or a form of science. From a scholarly perspective, however, Anthroposophy has all the elements that one typically associates with a religion, for example, a charismatic founder whose status is based on claims of having direct insight into a normally invisible spiritual dimension of existence, a plethora of culturally postulated suprahuman beings that are said to influence our lives, concepts of an afterlife, canonical texts and rituals. Religions whose members deny that the movement they belong to has anything to do with religion are not uncommon in the modern age, but the reason for this is a matter that goes beyond the confines of this article.
Hammer, Olav; Swartz-Hammer, Karen (2024). "NRMs in Comparative Perspective". New Religious Movements and Comparative Religion. Elements in New Religious Movements. Cambridge University Press. p.62. ISBN978-1-009-03402-9. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
Brandt, Katharina; Hammer, Olav (2013). "Rudolf Steiner and Theosophy". In Hammer, Olav; Rothstein, Mikael (eds.). Handbook of the Theosophical Current. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Brill. p.113 fn. 1. ISBN978-90-04-23597-7. Retrieved 23 January 2024. From a scholar's point of view, Anthroposophy presents characteristics typically associated with religion, and in particular concepts of suprahuman agents (such as angels), a charismatic founder with postulated insight into the suprahuman realm (Steiner himself), rituals (for instance, eurythmy), and canonical texts (Steiner's writings). From an insider's perspective, however, "anthroposophy is not a religion, nor is it meant to be a substitute for religion. While its insights may support, illuminate or complement religious practice, it provides no belief system" (from the Waldorf school website www.waldorfanswers.com/NotReligion1.htm, accessed 9 October 2011). The contrast between a scholarly and an insiders' perspective on what constitutes religion is highlighted by the clinching warrant for this assertion. Although the website argues that Anthroposophy is not a religion by stating that there are no spiritual teachers and no beliefs, it does so by adding a reference to a text by Steiner, who thus functions as an unquestioned authority figure.
Hammer, Olav (2008). Geertz, Armin; Warburg, Margit (eds.). New Religions and Globalization. Renner Studies On New Religions. Aarhus University Press. p.69. ISBN978-87-7934-681-9. Retrieved 23 January 2024. Anthroposophy is thus from an emic point of view emphatically not a religion.
Hansson, Sven Ove (1 July 2022). "Anthroposophical Climate Science Denial". Critical Research on Religion. 10 (3). SAGE Publications: 281–297. doi:10.1177/20503032221075382. ISSN2050-3032. Anthroposophy has characteristics usually associated with religions, not least a belief in a large number of spiritual beings (Toncheva 2015, 73–81, 134–135). However, its adherents emphatically reject that it is a religion, claiming instead that it is a spiritual science, Geisteswissenschaft (Zander 2007, 1:867).
Zander, Helmut (2002). "Die Anthroposophie — Eine Religion?". In Hoheisel, Karl; Hutter, Manfred; Klein, Wolfgang Wassilios; Vollmer, Ulrich (eds.). Hairesis: Festschrift für Karl Hoheisel zum 65. Geburtstag. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum (in German). Aschendorff. p.537. ISBN978-3-402-08120-4. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
See also International Bureau of Education (1957). Bulletin of the International Bureau of Education. International Bureau of Education. p.36. Retrieved 9 February 2024. anthroposophy - a religion based upon the philosophical and scientific knowledge of man
↑ PLANS, Inc. v. Sacramento City Unified School District,2:98-cv-00266-FCD-EFB(United States District Court Eastern District of CaliforniaNovember 5, 2010),archived from the original.
↑ See also DWB (2022) [2005]. "anthroposophy". In Louth, Andrew (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4thed.). OUP Oxford. pp.76–77. ISBN978-0-19-263815-1. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
↑ Ellwood, Robert; Partin, Harry (2016) [1988, 1973]. Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America (2nded.). Taylor & Francis. p.unpaginated. ISBN978-1-315-50723-1. Retrieved 6 March 2023. On the one hand, there are what might be called the Western groups, which reject the alleged extravagance and orientalism of evolved Theosophy, in favor of a serious emphasis on its metaphysics and especially its recovery of the Gnostic and Hermetic heritage. These groups feel that the love of India and its mysteries which grew up after Isis Unveiled was unfortunate for a Western group. In this category there are several Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Rosicrucian groups. The Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner is also in this category. On the other hand, there are what may be termed "new revelation" Theosophical schisms, generally based on new revelations from the Masters not accepted by the main traditions. In this set would be Alice Bailey's groups, "I Am," and in a sense Max Heindel's Rosicrucianism.
Winker, Eldon K. (1994). The New Age is Lying to You. Concordia scholarship today. Concordia Publishing House. p.34. ISBN978-0-570-04637-0. Retrieved 6 March 2023. The Christology of Cerinthus is notably similar to that of Rudolf Steiner (who founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1912) and contemporary New Age writers such as David Spangler and George Trevelyan. These individuals all say the Christ descended on the human Jesus at his baptism. But they differ with Cerinthus in that they do not believe the Christ departed from Jesus prior to the crucfixion.12
1 2 Leijenhorst, Cees (2006). "Antroposophy". In Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; Faivre, Antoine; Broek, Roelof van den; Brach, Jean-Pierre (eds.). Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden / Boston: Brill. p.84. Nevertheless, he made a distinction between the human person Jesus, and Christ as the divine Logos.
↑ Etter, Brian K. (2019) [2001]. "Chapter Six The New Music and the Influence of Theosophy". From Classicism to Modernism: Western Musical Culture and the Metaphysics of Order. Routledge. p.unpaginated. fn. 80. ISBN978-1-315-18576-7.
↑ Wieringa, Tommy (8 May 2021). "Groene vingers". NRC (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 7 May 2021. Retrieved 7 February 2023. Het was een ontmoeting van oude bekenden: nazi-kopstukken als Rudolf Hess en Heinrich Himmler herkenden in Rudolf Steiner al een geestverwant, met zijn theorieën over raszuiverheid, esoterische geneeskunst en biologisch-dynamische landbouw.
↑ Martins, Ansgar (2022). Vukadinović, Vojin Saša (ed.). Rassismus: Von der frühen Bundesrepublik bis zur Gegenwart (in German). De Gruyter. p.unpaginated. ISBN978-3-11-070278-1. Retrieved 24 February 2023. Und genau diese komfortable Situation macht es möglich, dass Anthroposophie bis heute eine ganz erstaunliche Auswahl von rassischen und Völker-Stereotypen tradiert, die in ihrer Gründerzeit anscheinend kaum als skandalös auffielen, aber heute den politischen Status des Ganzen verändern. Steiners nationalistische, antijüdische und rassistische Vorstellungen notierten um 1920 nicht einmal linke Kritiker wie Ernst Bloch Oder Siegfried Kracauer, aber sie sickern zum Beispiel auch noch in die jüngere Waldorf-Literatur ein und führen seit den 1990er Jahren periodisch zu erbitterten wissenschaftlichen, journalistischen und juristischen Auseinandersetzungen. Die Argumente Sind seit Jahrzehnten ausgetauscht, das Andauern der Debatte gleicht einem Sich wahnsinnig weiterdrehenden Hamsterrad. Anthroposophen reagieren dabei stets reaktiv auf externe Kritik. Dass Steiner Sich von den wilden Rassisten des 19. Jahrhunderts distanzierte, wird manchen seiner heutigen Anhänger zur Ausrede, um seinen eigenen, spirituell-paternalistischen Rassismus in der Gegenwart schönzureden.4 Einer überschaubaren Anzahl kritischer Aufsätze5 stehen monographische Hetzschriften gegenüber, die Kritiker des „gezielten, vorsätzlich unternommenen Rufmords"6 bezichtigen. Derweil sprechen Sich die anthroposophischen Dachverbände, wenn die Kritik allzu laut wird, in formelhaften Allgemeinplätzen gegen Rassismus aus und gestehen vage, zeitbedingte' Formulierungen Steiners zu.7 Überhaupt dreht Sich die Diskussion zu oft um Steiner. Es Sind jüngere Beiträge, die seine Stereotype in die Gegenwart transportieren.
↑ Staudenmaier, Peter (1 April 2013). "Organic Farming in Nazi Germany: The Politics of Biodynamic Agriculture, 1933–1945". Environmental History. 18 (2): 383–411. doi:10.1093/envhis/ems154.
1 2 Strube, Julian (28 May 2019). "Doesn't occultism lead straight to fascism?". In Forshaw, Peter; Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; Pasi, Marco (eds.). Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p.230. ISBN978-90-485-4285-7. One of the most insightful contributions to this area is Peter Staudenmaier's case study of Anthroposophy, which has demonstrated the ambiguous role of Anthroposophists in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
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