I'm wondering, if Ahriman worka through the structures of language, whether Kabbalah itself or other numerological approaches to language wouldn't also belong to the same Ahrimanic impulse?
Moreover, the insistence both on eradicating indigenous languages (or restoring them) feel like they brush up against what you're sharing here. Each of these languages is a case for a particular view of the world — and even for making the world in that image. For example, Iceland has the oldest most intact European language and has the largest population that still sees fairies. Or consider Gaelic and the perception of other elemental beings. English seems distinctly disposed NOT to see such beings, though there are exceptions (e.g., Findhorn). Reflexively thinking in ways we inherit are unfree, and I imagine figures like Jacob Boehme who found themselves forced to invent terminology to articulate their experiences because their thinking didn't fit the "algorithm" they were offered — even though Boehme's language remains primarily German, he seems to be doing something radically different than most native German authors. “One needs only to know Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme to know theosophy. Everything that they wrote is given from a deep spring, with immense deepness and magic power.” - Rudolf Steiner (Berlin, 3rd May 1906)
But the notion of language itself being "algorithmic" gives me pause, at least on the surface, as it seems to impute to language something we only relatively recently popularized — much as describing the universe as a clock after inventing mechanical clocks or describing brain as a kind of computer. Does this not run the danger of thinking according to the spirit of our age?
Perusing the link about Jesuits both in the Catholic Church and the Anthroposophical Society — much more to consider — I find myself often needing to emphasize the intellect (hopefully not as "intellectualism") in Anthrosophical circles. I see pedantic memorization and regurgitation, but this hardly seems to approach my understanding of the Intellect in its neoplatonic sense. Accusations of "intellectualism" I often hear within Anthroposophy, most often, unfortunately, from people who also insist "no one is right or wrong" and yet who read nothing but Steiner, seeking glosses instead of experiencing the world and studying it.
Admittedly, the Anthrosophical types I tend to encounter are a bit different as a biodynamic farmer where wishywashy new age hippie speculation and vague amorality often predominate. But even here doctrinaire attitudes and rote memorization seem to wish to create an Anthrosophical "Vatican" out of Steiner's work. When I visited and spoke at the Goetheanum, I got no impression of Jesuit spies, but I was appalled at the mechanical attitude whereby they would read aloud and arbitrary lecture from Steiner because he said X on the same day of the month some hundred years ago. I've watched as people consistently make terrible choices, ones that, yes, if I were trying to destroy the biodynamic movement I would choose myself! Perhaps I'm just not paranoid enough, but in this point I do not see any spies but rather witness people whose souls are so deprived of inspiration that they can only see the dumb choices.
The Intellect is not the priority, though it is essential for sifting through and organizing our intuitive insights. Reason can only organize what it receives, but organize it must. Similarly, Steiner reminds his audience consistently that an ordinary rational person can correct a clairvoyant, especially if that person has more experience in a given field. These days the abrogation of the intellect altogether seems to me a far graver error for our times. Executive function is being abandoned and anything anyone can imagine is instinctively, and without circumspection, believed to be true merely because there is a strong feeling for it. Between psychedelics, social media, and rampant illiteracy, I do not see an excess of Intellect (in its best sense) but a deluge of superficial imaginations, usually polluted by bodybound wishful thinking.
I only have questions here, and do not yet have a more to share. Please don't take these as criticisms of the whole. I must give the rest of this considerably more attention but thank you for your time in this. There is much to contemplate.
I'm quite interested in the redacted Virgin Mary section. Can you direct me to that?
There are other redacted sections (with no editor's note), for example, some of Steiner's less palatable comments on race vanish online but can be found in old print editions.
The archive is being curated, though I doubt by anyone who is a strictly speaking a Jesuit. Jesuitical? Certainly! After all, it is the Jesuits who posit there is no such thing as "mortal sin" (because it requires full knowledge of the gravity and no one grasps that) so literally anyone can take communion (venial sins being all forgiven during the Kyrie).
That KIND of "jesuitical" thinking, which uses words like crowbars to get a specific utilitarian effect, not for their living meaning or objective truth value, infuriates many Catholics and similarly within Anthroposophy should as well. But this is a kind of thinking that is ultimately nominalistic. As Steiner suggested (somewhere) materialists can only think of spiritual things as mere words. But that viewpoint is a self-fulfilling prophecy: treat living soil like a dead substrate and it still BECOMES a dead substrate.
This is already too long, which you must forgive. You've given me a lot to think about. Think you again
Very interesting. I consider myself honestly as a novice in anthroposophy, you turn a corner and there’s a whole new realm you never heard of before. I don’t know what I don’t know.
Any of these grammatical approaches to language, especially numerological, has to be Ahrimanic, surely. Ahriman loves laws and rules, and also lives in number. As Steiner says, you can’t avoid Ahriman, so you just have to do your best to humanize your language. I trained in applied mathematics, so I love numerology, I keep Cheiro’s Book of Numbers close to hand (as did Elvis, his copy is up on eBay).
Each language has its own genius and is a treasure, it’s calamitous that we are losing so many languages. I actually think this is somewhere where AI could actually be useful, compiling living dictionaries etc.They did this in New Zealand.
In the Fifth Gospel, the transformation of Mary that happens at the moment of Baptism, is where they censored it. I read this very quickly in Foyle’s bookshop in 1988 and I remember that passage quite clearly. I think Marie Steiner was involved earlier in suppressing material from those lectures, I really hope we see the whole of this series one day.
There’s so much going on here, it’s difficult to focus, but for me, the Threefold Social Order (or Organism, as he often calls it) is Steiner’s single greatest gift, and it’s quite secular and comprehensible. The best feature of the TSO is that really all it requires is consciousness. This idea really needs to get put out to the world, so whatever anyone says, this is the one Steiner proposition that I put out on all channels.
Well you've been studying Anthroposophy almost as long as I've been incarnate this time. I would especially be interested in a compilation of censored bits from Steiner, as I'm sure others would be to! More later, traveling
So, you've been researching anthroposophy since I was 7. Sir, thank you. I appreciate that and I look forward to learning more. I too have found that language is the great two edges sword: a meaning maker and a meaning destroyer. The proverbial cave of the human intellect.
I’d love to see this unpacked through the lens of “The people of the Book” abrahamic religions, also Zoroastrianism and “the people of the word” Judaism
“Ahriman” is the Persian term used by Zoroaster to describe this demonic power. Steiner is the greatest source on the real Zoroastrian history. Read his account of the two Jesus children — the one that was visited by the three kings from the east (Persia) was the reincarnation of Zoroaster. Steiner is the only person who reveals these truths, which make so much sense when you see the complete story.
This other Rudolf Steiner archive has been recently made available. It is still in beta version, but seems relatively complete (371 volumes · 29 publications · 993 articles · 4909 lectures)
I'm wondering, if Ahriman worka through the structures of language, whether Kabbalah itself or other numerological approaches to language wouldn't also belong to the same Ahrimanic impulse?
Moreover, the insistence both on eradicating indigenous languages (or restoring them) feel like they brush up against what you're sharing here. Each of these languages is a case for a particular view of the world — and even for making the world in that image. For example, Iceland has the oldest most intact European language and has the largest population that still sees fairies. Or consider Gaelic and the perception of other elemental beings. English seems distinctly disposed NOT to see such beings, though there are exceptions (e.g., Findhorn). Reflexively thinking in ways we inherit are unfree, and I imagine figures like Jacob Boehme who found themselves forced to invent terminology to articulate their experiences because their thinking didn't fit the "algorithm" they were offered — even though Boehme's language remains primarily German, he seems to be doing something radically different than most native German authors. “One needs only to know Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme to know theosophy. Everything that they wrote is given from a deep spring, with immense deepness and magic power.” - Rudolf Steiner (Berlin, 3rd May 1906)
But the notion of language itself being "algorithmic" gives me pause, at least on the surface, as it seems to impute to language something we only relatively recently popularized — much as describing the universe as a clock after inventing mechanical clocks or describing brain as a kind of computer. Does this not run the danger of thinking according to the spirit of our age?
Perusing the link about Jesuits both in the Catholic Church and the Anthroposophical Society — much more to consider — I find myself often needing to emphasize the intellect (hopefully not as "intellectualism") in Anthrosophical circles. I see pedantic memorization and regurgitation, but this hardly seems to approach my understanding of the Intellect in its neoplatonic sense. Accusations of "intellectualism" I often hear within Anthroposophy, most often, unfortunately, from people who also insist "no one is right or wrong" and yet who read nothing but Steiner, seeking glosses instead of experiencing the world and studying it.
Admittedly, the Anthrosophical types I tend to encounter are a bit different as a biodynamic farmer where wishywashy new age hippie speculation and vague amorality often predominate. But even here doctrinaire attitudes and rote memorization seem to wish to create an Anthrosophical "Vatican" out of Steiner's work. When I visited and spoke at the Goetheanum, I got no impression of Jesuit spies, but I was appalled at the mechanical attitude whereby they would read aloud and arbitrary lecture from Steiner because he said X on the same day of the month some hundred years ago. I've watched as people consistently make terrible choices, ones that, yes, if I were trying to destroy the biodynamic movement I would choose myself! Perhaps I'm just not paranoid enough, but in this point I do not see any spies but rather witness people whose souls are so deprived of inspiration that they can only see the dumb choices.
The Intellect is not the priority, though it is essential for sifting through and organizing our intuitive insights. Reason can only organize what it receives, but organize it must. Similarly, Steiner reminds his audience consistently that an ordinary rational person can correct a clairvoyant, especially if that person has more experience in a given field. These days the abrogation of the intellect altogether seems to me a far graver error for our times. Executive function is being abandoned and anything anyone can imagine is instinctively, and without circumspection, believed to be true merely because there is a strong feeling for it. Between psychedelics, social media, and rampant illiteracy, I do not see an excess of Intellect (in its best sense) but a deluge of superficial imaginations, usually polluted by bodybound wishful thinking.
I only have questions here, and do not yet have a more to share. Please don't take these as criticisms of the whole. I must give the rest of this considerably more attention but thank you for your time in this. There is much to contemplate.
I'm quite interested in the redacted Virgin Mary section. Can you direct me to that?
There are other redacted sections (with no editor's note), for example, some of Steiner's less palatable comments on race vanish online but can be found in old print editions.
The archive is being curated, though I doubt by anyone who is a strictly speaking a Jesuit. Jesuitical? Certainly! After all, it is the Jesuits who posit there is no such thing as "mortal sin" (because it requires full knowledge of the gravity and no one grasps that) so literally anyone can take communion (venial sins being all forgiven during the Kyrie).
That KIND of "jesuitical" thinking, which uses words like crowbars to get a specific utilitarian effect, not for their living meaning or objective truth value, infuriates many Catholics and similarly within Anthroposophy should as well. But this is a kind of thinking that is ultimately nominalistic. As Steiner suggested (somewhere) materialists can only think of spiritual things as mere words. But that viewpoint is a self-fulfilling prophecy: treat living soil like a dead substrate and it still BECOMES a dead substrate.
This is already too long, which you must forgive. You've given me a lot to think about. Think you again
Very interesting. I consider myself honestly as a novice in anthroposophy, you turn a corner and there’s a whole new realm you never heard of before. I don’t know what I don’t know.
Any of these grammatical approaches to language, especially numerological, has to be Ahrimanic, surely. Ahriman loves laws and rules, and also lives in number. As Steiner says, you can’t avoid Ahriman, so you just have to do your best to humanize your language. I trained in applied mathematics, so I love numerology, I keep Cheiro’s Book of Numbers close to hand (as did Elvis, his copy is up on eBay).
Each language has its own genius and is a treasure, it’s calamitous that we are losing so many languages. I actually think this is somewhere where AI could actually be useful, compiling living dictionaries etc.They did this in New Zealand.
In the Fifth Gospel, the transformation of Mary that happens at the moment of Baptism, is where they censored it. I read this very quickly in Foyle’s bookshop in 1988 and I remember that passage quite clearly. I think Marie Steiner was involved earlier in suppressing material from those lectures, I really hope we see the whole of this series one day.
There’s so much going on here, it’s difficult to focus, but for me, the Threefold Social Order (or Organism, as he often calls it) is Steiner’s single greatest gift, and it’s quite secular and comprehensible. The best feature of the TSO is that really all it requires is consciousness. This idea really needs to get put out to the world, so whatever anyone says, this is the one Steiner proposition that I put out on all channels.
Thanks so much, a very interesting read.
In many ways completely unrelated except for the attempt to imagine new aspects of Occult Science in nature, here's my risky attempt: https://open.substack.com/pub/jpibiodynamics/p/biodynamic-alchemy-old-sun-new-earth?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=rt9cv
Well you've been studying Anthroposophy almost as long as I've been incarnate this time. I would especially be interested in a compilation of censored bits from Steiner, as I'm sure others would be to! More later, traveling
So, you've been researching anthroposophy since I was 7. Sir, thank you. I appreciate that and I look forward to learning more. I too have found that language is the great two edges sword: a meaning maker and a meaning destroyer. The proverbial cave of the human intellect.
These strike me as some of the most remarkable observations in the history of humankind, the closest to truth I think I’ve read yet.
I’d love to see this unpacked through the lens of “The people of the Book” abrahamic religions, also Zoroastrianism and “the people of the word” Judaism
“Ahriman” is the Persian term used by Zoroaster to describe this demonic power. Steiner is the greatest source on the real Zoroastrian history. Read his account of the two Jesus children — the one that was visited by the three kings from the east (Persia) was the reincarnation of Zoroaster. Steiner is the only person who reveals these truths, which make so much sense when you see the complete story.
This other Rudolf Steiner archive has been recently made available. It is still in beta version, but seems relatively complete (371 volumes · 29 publications · 993 articles · 4909 lectures)
https://rudolf-steiner-online.de/app.html#ga
Silence is Golden.
Thanks for this post. Resonant thoughts here: https://open.substack.com/pub/urphanomen/p/logos-in-the-mirror-llms-golems-and?r=2at642&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web