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Steiner and antroposophists speak constantly about their beliefs as "spiritual science", never as "faith". With the concept of "spiritual science" referring to the contents of the Steiner’s lectures and books, which in Antroposophy constitute the only source of knowledge. Antroposophy is marketed as the science of the spirit and the spiritual conditions relating to man. It sounds good, but all the information which is antroposophy is based only on what Dr Steiner reports to have seen with his clairvoyant abilities or which he claims to have read in the "Akasha Archive". The Akasha Archive is according to occultists a kind of metaphysical database of everything that ever has happened in the universe; the person able to read in this archive is therefore potentially omniscient. Steiner deemed his reading in the akasha chronicle to be infallible (he writes time and time again that what he has seen clairyoyantly or read in the Akasha Chronicle is The Truth, and he never expresses any openness to the possibility that it could be the least bit different). Also, Steiner never questions what he perceives clairvoyantly. Antroposophists have blindly taken over Steiner’s cocksure attitude and there is therefore no development possible in Antroposophy: You read still the same 100-year-old books and lectures bySteiner and will be doing so in all future. But peace be with that if what Dr Steiner wrote is unrivalled insights that are beneficial and true for mankind at all times.
Let us therefore look at what Steiner actually teaches with a particular focus on the most fundamental things that are necessary to understand the worldview and view of human beings found in Steiner’s Antroposophy.
Steiner declares: The approach of spiritual science “lets you, from the viewpoint of the occultist, glance over human development to scrutinise the meaning of life.” ("Om Livets Mening", p. 11). What is then, for Steiner, development of mankind? The meaning of life? We will make it clear as we progress, but first we must understand that in the same scripture Steiner explains that humanity has degenerated spiritually since Atlantis until it reached the stage we are at now - our culture is therefore the bottom. Steiner believes that "there again will find an ascension place and that of the spiritual science [...] is there to prepare this ascension" (Om Livets Mening p.12). You are now aware that "spiritual science" is synonymous with antroposophy and Steiner’s teachings, so he clearly believes himself to have a considerable mission...
Mission?
Antroposophist Ulla Kappel wrote: "Understanding of the cultural impulse which it was his [Steiner’s] mission to impart our time, has only just begun." (Weekendavisen, 5/5/1995). Mission? You can, when you hear that word, not help but think of who gave Steiner that mission. The difference between a mission and a personal agenda is precisely that the mission is imposed on one by a higher authority to do a given work in name of this authority. Since Steiner does not have an earthly organization to answer to, and he is the top and sole authority in antroposophy, we have two options: 1) Steiner’s culture-mission impulse is for Steiner to promote his own ideas, but that the ideas are perceived as being of supernatural origin and acquired through super-human means to insight. 2) a supernatural authority has imposed upon him to create and disseminate antroposophy for the spiritual development of humanity and the world. Both options are in full accordance with Steiner’s own worldview and the content of his books and lectures, which will be shown along the way through quotes.
That Steiner has a higher spiritual authority behind him that tells him what he can and cannot say is frequently expressed in Steiner’s lectures. It is not unusual that Steiner is just about to tell something or other, he says is extremely important, but he then stops with the explanation that it "has not yet been allowed to release the information". He does this e.g. in the book Cosmic Memory, Chap. 8, where he explains how difficult it is to tell in plain language about the circumstances prevailing at the time humans did not yet have physical bodies and where the Sun and the Moon had not yet separated themselves from the Earth. Steiner says that these conditions would have been expressed much more precise in “the symbolic sign language used in the mystery schools but that the dissemination of this language has not yet been allowed". We will go into more detail on these conditions of the genesis of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon - as well as the peculiar fact that people at that time did not have physical bodies with skeletons, but bodies made of ether, fire, air and water and that they procreated through a kind of self-cloning or proliferation (this Dr Steiner deals with in details in the book Cosmic Memory).
But who is it that it has told Steiner, what he could or could not speak about? That never becomes clear, but he suggests only with such terms that he is on a confidential basis not only with an even higher insight other than the one in which he mediates, but also that he is on a confidential basis with the master of this insight and that this master tells him what he may or may not speak of. We find in Steiner’s texts that he places three top authorities over various cultural impulses: Lucifer, Ahriman and Christ. Whether Steiner serve one or the other, the reader must decide for himself but one can say with certainty: Just as Steiner talks about how the mission of Christ was to provide an impulse to the Earth ("the Christ impulse"), Steiner and his followers (the antroposophists) believe that it was Steiner’s mission to provide an impulse to Earth. Why the antroposophists do not call this the "Steiner-impulse" is puzzling. Why this neat "spiritual science teaches us..." instead of "Steiner claims that...."?
It is obvious that this rephrasing serves to conceal the fact that Steiner is on a spiritual mission and his lecturing a belief system, and also put a smokescreen over the fact that Steiner’s texts are merely a quantity of claims of often grotesque character (which will be shown in the following). The purpose of such a false marketing of the product can only be that Steiner and his antroposophists thereby can trick the shrewd people of our age to be immediately positive set towards Antroposophy -- and also to get people to send their children in their Steiner schools (Waldorf schools). Furthermore, antroposophists are of the conviction that Steiner’s more bizarre teachings (which represent the bulk of his lecturing) is of such a nature that people are not spiritual developed enough to understand them. Consequently, antroposophists either keep them to themselves, or trivialise them so that people would not tend to think anything bad about Antroposophy or antroposophists.
We will remedy this and in the following give a real and informed explanation of what Dr Steiner believes are scientific facts and which antroposophists market as science.
Steiner established not only antroposophy. He also established "The True Christian Society”. Note the adjective: "The True". This, the "true" of Christian societies, is considered by antroposophists as a kind of preparation to, or a ritual complement to, antroposophy. Even if the true Christian society is formally independent of the antroposophic society, it is based solely on Steiner and his Christology. Also note that Steiner now brings forth the cultural impulse (Antroposophy) which must supersede the Christ impulse and that it is also Steiner’s idea that the true Christian Society gradually shall replace the established Christian church. But what is it that Steiner actually teaches about Jesus Christ and claims is the Truth?
In "From Jesus to Christ " Steiner explain that it is very well what people have believed about Jesus Christ for a few thousand years, but that it is deeply inferior compared to the insight one can acquire if one is truly clairvoyant -- or believe the things Steiner says and which is nothing less than "what actually took place in the development of mankind through the mystery of Golgatha" (From Jesus to Christ, Chp. 3). First we must understand that there was not one Jesus child, but two...
In "From Jesus to Christ" and "The Spiritual Guidance of mankind" (both chap. 3), we are told that one Jesus was a completely normal human being (and not a sage and certainly not a divine incarnation). But apart from being ordinary he was a reincarnation of Zarathustra (Zoroaster). But then after twelve years of age Zarathustra left the first Jesus's body and went over in the second Jesus's body, where Zarathusta remained until Jesus-2 was 30. What then happened with Jesus-1 is not clear or further explained.
Jesus-2 was also a totally normal human being, we are told in "The Spiritual Guidance of mankind" (chap. 3), but there was the special thing about Jesus-2 that Buddha in a not explained way operated in Jesus-2's astral body and submitted "impulses from the spiritual worlds" (which is also not explained in more detail). But Steiner assure us that Jesus-2 in this way was Boddhisattva-Buddha, i.e. the original Gautama Buddha. Steiner also explains that the temple priest who according to the Gospel of Luke recognizes Jesus as his master, was in fact a reincarnation of the Indian Sage Asita, who according to the Buddhist legends was unhappy that he would die before he met the Buddha. Steiner explains that Asita had his ancient desire fulfilled to meet the Buddha, when he met the 12 year old Jesus-2 in which Zarathustra now lived and in whose astral body Buddha was.
Now (according to Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, chap. 1) when Jesus-2 was baptized by John the Baptist, Zarathustra left Jesus’ body together with Jesus's ego, and Christ's ego took over the now empty body. (What is happening with the Buddha, we are not informed). Then Christ operates in Jesus’ body "under constant influence of the entire Cosmos -- he took no steps outside the cosmic forces that worked in him. What here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continuous realization of the horoscope ... And he remained open to the total sum of forces from the spiritual hierarchies which controls the Earth... The forces that were active in him, were the cosmic forces which came from the Sun and the stars; and they controlled his body." ("The Spiritual Guidance of mankind", chap. 3).
It was not Christ, who healed the sick, but "The cosmic constellations" that "through the instrument Christ" "could work on people" (The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, chap. 3). Steiner continues along the same path and writes that "it is equally unlikely that these cosmic constellations repeat themselves as that Christ will come again in a human body". "To be able to provide an impulse to the Earth, this [planetary] conjunction was forced to work through a human body. And as it is true that this constellation cannot occur a second time so it is equally true that Christ will only be incarnated once." (Ibid.).
But because of cosmic laws that Steiner describes in Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, Chap. 1, so it is inexorably so that a human being like Jesus can only be allowed to live three years before he is to be killed. Steiner writes: If "an ego working in connection with the spiritual worlds that man is in between death and rebirth" (and "that children are in, through the first three years of their lives"), then it can only live for three years before the "body is destroyed". After three years "something will appear through the cosmic karma, which will destroy this human organism". "Events therefore had to take place that brought [Jesus Christ's] earthly life to an end". Jesus' death was therefore not a sacrifice but the expression of indifferent regulatory cosmic laws.
In the lectures "From Jesus to Christ " we have repeated more or less the same as above but Steiner leads us up to date on the Christ. In the third and tenth lectures we have it stated that Christ has been assigned a new cosmic task, namely to be "lord of karma". The concept of karma is ancient Indian and refers to the view that everything you do will have a consequence that you have to experience. In other words: something like as you sow you shall reap. Christ would allegedly take over this job as ruler over karma at the end of the twentieth century. And he takes it over after Moses, which had hitherto been karmas lord. "He who in the future will have the task to judge what incarnations will follow in the development of a man, with a view to bring order into the given man’s karmic account, is Christ!". This accounting is something that happens after death where the next incarnation is planned from one’s karma.
Steiner writes in the same text (From Jesus to Christ), that it is not all people who really want to understand what is going on when the day of reckoning comes. But Steiner writes: "if he is an antroposophist he will understand the crux of the matter; otherwise he will have to wait till he comes to Antroposophy and learns to understand it." Steiner makes it clear that it is a part of the world mission of Antroposophy to prepare man "at the physical level so that he can sense this Christ Event either at the physical level or at the higher levels". Steiner believes Antroposophy has an extremely important mission in the world, which is demonstrated by the following: "Those who are not sufficiently prepared at the physical level and who go through the life between death and new birth unprepared, will have to wait until the next incarnation to be further prepared through Antroposophy, to understand Christ." Steiner writes that this situation where Christ is Lord of Karma will last 3000 Years, and it is the purpose of Antroposophy in this era to help human beings prepare themselves for this period.
The way to "the highest" (whatever that is for Steiner, beyond a foggy concept, but it seems to refer to the I) does for Steiner not proceed through Christ, but through Lucifer’s obstructions: You mature by overcoming the limitations that Lucifer subjects you to. Antroposophists seem confused about Steiner relation to Lucifer: H. Ammitzbøll, writes that "Steiner’s whole life and work was dedicated to the fight against Lucifer’s "evil forces”” (Weekendavisen 5/5/95, his inverted commas) while Kirsten Brandt writes about antroposophists relation to Lucifer "we must objectively recognize the operations of the supersensual beings." (Weekendavisen 5/5/95).
The truth is that Steiner does not find that we should reject the devil, as the Christians do, but that we should get to know him better. Steiner further believe that Lucifer and his "sun-gods" is the forces operating in the human higher half (this and sun-gods will be elaborated later).
We cannot understand it from the usual ideas about Lucifer. Steiner sees Lucifer as "the bringer of light". Steiner believe that we have a lot to thank Lucifer for: "If Lucifer had not come, man would have been lacking personal autonomy and would not have had the opportunity to reach freedom" ("Videnskaben om det Skjulte" p. 165). what Steiner understands by 'freedom' is unclear. But Lucifer’s work with the soul serves a higher purpose: emancipator and to bring light. Steiner published a magazine called "Lucifer- Gnosis" (1903-08), which contained the early writings of Antroposophy.
Steiner sees his mission such that he is here to complete the work that Christ, Buddha, Krishna and all the others did not accomplish properly or prepare humanity for. But he has understood Buddhism, Hinduism or the classic Christian mysticism?
In particular in "Om livets mening", "Hvordan man når til erkendelse af de højere verdener", "Christian Rosenkreutz og Buddha’s Mission på Mars", and others he makes it clear that Antroposophy is the pinnacle of Buddhist and all spiritual schools. Let us look at whether it is appropriate.
In the lecture "Christian Rosenkreutz and Buddha’s mission on Mars" Steiner takes us up-to-date on the Buddha and Buddha’s work. Steiner explains that Christian Rosenkreutz in the sixteenth century called a conference on a spiritual level. It was about 200 years after Rosenkreutz died if this mythical figure ever actually lived. Steiner reproduces fairly literally what Rosenkreutz said during this metaphysical conference (p. 10), and Steiner tells us that Gautama Buddha was "the most intimate pupil and friend of Christian Rosenkreutz" (p. 13). Buddha was "by Christian Rosenkreutz sent away from the Earth to Mars. Gautama Buddha leaves the Earth and goes to Mars and in the year 1604 Gautama Buddha’s individuality accomplished a similar deed on Mars as the mystery of Calvary was for the Earth" (p. 14). The reason that Buddha sent to Mars was that the inhabitants of Mars had become so materialistic that the energy from Mars’ residents radiated to the rest of the solar system and had a very negative influence on Earth’s inhabitants. And to remedy it Buddha had to fulfill his mission on Mars.
Steiner explains that Buddhism is "unfit" (Christian Rosenkreutz og Buddha’s mission på Mars, p. 14) here on Earth. He writes: "... what is in Buddhism was not suitable to promote mankinds practical life between birth and death but was of great importance for his soul during the period between death and new birth" (p. 14). Steiner is of the opinion that after man dies on the Earth then "man stands in a certain connection with the other planets. ... humans in the soul world is a time in which man is Moon-resident, then he will be Mercury-resident, then Venus-resident, then Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn-resident and so on out into space. We do not say anything wrong, if we say that between two incarnations on Earth there is embodiment on other planets" (p. 11).
Steiner is of the opinion which in the whole is a characteristic of occultism that: "The I lives in the unique human individuality as the highest divine" (Om Livets Mening p.15); he even goes so far as to criticize Elias for not having made that quite clear in his time - but now Steiner corrects that and makes it clear that "the I contains the highest" (ibid.). That this view is Luciferian should be obvious. It has also nothing to do with mysticism; for the mystic the highest is beyond the I (both the incarnated I, which Steiner calls the ego, and the, according to Steiner, immortal I that reincarnates).
Let me say it quite simply: For Steiner the highest is the I. For Buddhists, Hindus (Brahmanists) and mystics, it is essential to reach beyond the I and realize that in man (your Self), which is higher than the I. And yet Steiner says that his teachings are the essence of Buddhism, Hinduism and mysticism. But Steiner clearly does not know what he is talking about.
Steiner writes: "In this respect Brahmanism is completely consistent with Buddhism that it in the main looks toward the individual that goes through the differences personalities" (Om Livets Mening, p. 13) (he talks about reincarnation). But the fact is that Buddhism and Brahmanism (Hinduism) do not match - except in the fact that they in the main are not interested in that which reincarnates: the Brahmanists will rid themselves of the identification with that which reincarnates and Buddhism does not teach evolutionary reincarnation. Buddha taught that the I in one life and the I in the next are as two separate flames, where one ignites the other: therefore it is not one and the same flame that migrates and develops. The Buddhist wants to realize that he is not the "flame" and therefore that he did not reincarnate. Steiner wants to realize that he is a reincarnating I, which incidentally is considered to be the highest divine in man. There is to Steiner no higher human principle than the I - which is quite exactly the opposite of what Buddhism and Hinduism teaches. Unlike the Buddhists the Hindus acknowledge that there is an I that reincarnates but their overall point is that identification with the I is an illusion that you must rid yourself from. In addition, they teach that when we have reached freedom from identification with the I, then the I will gradual crumble and disappear because it does not have other reality than a temporary energy-manifestation. I must repeat that Steiner is totally wrong and that his lecturing on self-realization either is the expression of complete ignorance or deliberate attempt to mislead. In both cases it testifies to the fact that Steiner was totally identified with the I and in no way had the slightest idea of what mystical realization (Self-realization, enlightenment) is about. Steiner also writes: "Boddhisattva's are in reality highly developed beings that rise up to be Buddhas, but they have fallen down from the avatars, the still higher individualities state" (Om Livets Mening p.13). He mixes Hindu and Buddhist concepts together. Hinduism has no teaching about boddhisattvas, it only in Buddhism that we find that; Buddhism has no teaching about Avatars (divine incarnations), it only Hinduism that has that, and it is in the concept of an Avatar that Avatars cannot fall, as an Avatar is an incarnation of God, nothing less. A Buddha is not a divine incarnation, but a human being who has come to recognition of what we all are and have always been, but do not understand, because we identify ourselves with the ego, the I (the I which Steiner perceives as the highest divine in the human being). Buddhists want rid themselves of this erroneous identification with the I and therefore in no way consider the I the highest divine in man, as Steiner does.
Steiner on the other hand considers "that man must look at his true essence and individuality as something that develops by repeated lives" ("En Vej til Selverkendelse i Otte Meditationer", p. 70). To achieve awareness of the repeated Earth-lives constitutes the eighth, final, "self-realization". For Steiner there is nothing higher than pure identification with I. This is the opposite of what mystics, Buddhists and Hindus teach. Steiner is not humble. He believes that he has grasped all of what the other religions is about - and it is to achieve recognition of and clean identification with the reincarnating I’s immortality. He writes:
"Gnosis and spiritual science speak about this cores eternity and its reincarnation. It is often asked why people do not know anything about his experiences in this other side of birth and death? We should not ask in this way rather as follows: How can we achieve such a knowledge? The right meditation opens the way to it. By its aid one can recollect the experiences that are beyond the birth and death. Anyone can acquire this knowledge; in any of us is the skill to recognize this by one self and to see that which is taught in the real mystery schools, spiritual science, Antroposophy and gnosis." (Hvordan når man til Erkendelse af de Højere Verdener, p. 30)
In this quote it appears once again with all the clarity that Steiner has not understood the difference between mysticism and occultism for everything that he writes about is solely and only traditional occultism ("occultism" means "knowledge about the hidden" just as Steiner even calls his main book, although he misnames it science. It has no scientific method at all and does not lend itself to debate or criticism).
Steiner’s misleading teachigns must be due either to ignorance (what we cannot accuse him for since he was doctor of philosophy and former secretary for Theosophical Society), or an unsavory distortion of the facts to glorify himself, by leading people astray and solicit members to his faith and get them to see him as our times greatest oracle and savior.
A system that is based on one man’s thoughts, you usually call by that persons name. For example Marxism, Calvinism, etc. Antroposophy cannot with any right call itself other than Steinerism. Incidentally when a belief system is based solely on the one man’s thoughts, it is one of the definitions of what a sect is. Antroposophy is a sect, not a science.
Steiner claims repeatedly that everyone can realize what he realized and that he did "research" and carried out "science". Let us examine Steiner scientific method and professional sobriety, to see which fruits his work has produced. One has to wonder at at least four things:
It is thought provoking that Steiner has taken a kind of copyright on the new impulse which replaces the Christ impulse (whether that replacement has happened or not is here immaterial). This is particularly strange in view of the fact that Steiner is a whole generation younger than the founding members of Theosophical Society and that the Antroposophic company is not much more than a sect within the “cultural impulse" that Madame Blavatsky with Theosophical Society set in motion along with C. W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant and others.
You cannot call something science if it overrides any form of scientific method and is beyond any form of scientific verification, documentation, analysis or criticism. This will of course not be aided by the fact that the Antroposophical knowledge body is not obtained on the basis of scientific method, but only consists of a single party’s notions and imaginations - and that this man also never submitted his whims to any form of critical test or verification. He presented them solely in his lectures and books under the name of "truth" without any explanation and demanded of his sect members that they believed in him without further discussion (Agriculture Course, p. 5).
Steiner’s ideas and teachings are impossible to verify (it is therefore absurd to call them science). They are therefore not anything other than allegations. Antroposophy is thus a belief, a religion, not a science. When Steiner calls notions and inspirations “science” it is to dupe people. Antroposophists respond to this criticism by maintaining that Steiner’s absurd teachings only seem absurd because there is no one spiritually developed enough to understand them - and they claim so because it was thus Steiner protected his teachings against criticism.
It is wrong to call Steiner’s work science under any form since you won’t find any scientific method or practice anywhere. Steiner writes in "Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener", in "En vej til selverkendelse I otte meditationer" and mostly in "Videnskaben om det skjulte" that his insight is based on "imaginations". Imagination is the essence of Steiner's “scientific” method: you immerse yourself in an imagination about the spiritual world as it appears to clairvoyant sight until the notion changes character and you sense the spiritual reality behind it. This procedure, which is the closest Steiner comes at a specific instruction on how to reach the same discoveries which he claims to have reached is, to say the least, vague and unclear.
In the foreword to 16-20 printing of "Videnskaben om det skjulte" he writes that "the contents of this book are, in accordance with my emotional mood at that time, given in modes of thought of the same kind as those used in natural science, just continued in such a way that they were suitable to carry a presentation of the spiritual matters". Normally the use of the word “science” is to refer to just the form of cognition that is independent of the emotional moods and imaginations. Whether you prefer the one or the other form of cognition is a personal matter. The point is that when Steiner under the cover of a high academic degree presents purely subjective imaginations and clairvoyances as science, it is misleading and phony.
The sum of Antroposophy is that either you believe Steiner and convince yourself that you are engaging in (spiritual) science, or you are considered by antroposophists to be too spiritually truncated to intuitively sense that Steiner reveals The Truth about manifold topics. The world is therefore divided into those who believe in Steiner (the antroposophists) versus those who don’t and who are considered to be themselves the obstacle in the way to understand the "Scientific" truths on the world's spiritual conditions. It sounds too harsh? Read what Steiner says himself:
Steiner writes about his teachings: "they will be incomprehensible only for those who put obstacles in their own way and are not able to free themselves of the prejudices concerning “the limits of cognition” which our time has created from a false perception of nature." (Videnskaben om det skjulte, p. II). Please note the following and bear with the gnarly wording: "But for an awareness that is without such prejudices, even if it is not able to see that which can be seen, it is yet fully understandable if he who is able to see, produces the cognition in the form of thoughts" (p.(III). To put it another way: Steiner promises that if you fully believe that what he writes is The Truth, then you will also come to recognize that it is true; otherwise you must confine yourself to remain ignorant (this last is basically a threat that if you do not believe in Steiner, then you are doomed to remain spiritually ignorant).
Steiner books have allegedly a revealing effect on the reader who fully believes that the written is true. Steiner continues the above: "Thus these books have such a quality that the reading of them is already a beginning of spiritual tuition. [Reading thereof] strengthens the vital forces and puts them in a position to move closer to the spiritual world” (p. III). Now there are just the problem that the only one who has written these revealing texts is Rudolf Steiner. And it is he himself who proclaims their revealing force and potential.
The situation in the antroposophic society is so that if you do not understand Steiner's writings it is a sign of intellectual and spiritual immaturity - And vice versa it is the consensus that since antroposophists make up a society gathered around Steiner’s writings, it is "evidence" (they think) that they are more spiritually developed than the others who are skeptical or critical about Steiner’s teachings. In such a system you can only strive in every respect to live after the words of the book. The history of the world is full of tragic examples of similar: the Inquisition, fundamentalism, etc..
In Antroposophy you find everything for a new order of society:
A pedagogy. (Waldorf schools with 12 years of schooling), which is based on the occult principles Steiner dictated on human development. These schools seem to have a particular marketing as they push the myth of themselves as schools that support children's creative and individual development. The fact is that they have tight guidelines for when children must draw one or the other way, when they are allowed to draw with red or black, when they must play on instruments with five or twelve tones, when they may learn to think and read (to develop the mental body – despite whether the child longs to learn to read or not, the teacher knows best if the child must wait even for years to learn the alphabet), etc. This is in clear conflict with what is commonly understood by respecting the children's individual development and the need for knowledge here and now (because the teachers know better than the child and believe that the child’s desires and impulses are inferior to what Steiner has said about the development of children, the developmental phases they must go through, etc.).
A medicine and treatment practice. This is very much a kind of homeopathy from astrological aspects interpreted from medieval principles about the relationship between the basic elements and the planets. The liver for example stands in relation to Jupiter and Jupiter stands, according to alchemy, in a relationship with tin. Thus, a bad liver in antroposophy is treated with homeopathic tin. Rudolf Steiner further maintained that (according to http://www.alma-info.com/site/5282.htm, which is the home page of the antroposophic medicine in Denmark ), "you should subject remedies which would be used in the human metabolic system (digestion, liver, kidneys, reproductive system etc.) for a strong heating process (e.g. cooking). Remedies which would work on the human rhythmic system (hearts, lungs, blood circuit etc.) should be extracted at 37º C. Remedies which should work on nervous and sensory system, should not be subjected to a heating processes. In this way we can direct the impact of a given remedy to a specific area".
In addition antroposophic treatment consists in a special magical system of movement called eurytmics, which allegedly can revitalize the physical body through the manipulation of the etheric body and bring the physical and etheric body in harmony with the energies of planets and get ethereal forces to flow, etc.. Fundamentally eurythmics consists in that each letter has a specific body posture. A has a position O another, etc.. And thus one can dance oneself to a healthier ether body and hence a better physical health.
A developmental path and epistemology which in the main is about how to become clairvoyant and come to awareness of one’s immortality in the progress of reincarnations; see the books: "Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?" and "En vej til selverkendelse I otte meditationer").
A ritual practice for human life (The True Christian Society, biodynamic agriculture, etc..) Toddlers should for example have a candle lit at the bedside to keep evil spirits away at night. Their rooms must be painted with translucent colors to attune their spiritual elements after the non-physical forces, etc.. Root vegetables should be sown under one moon phase, while leafy vegetables should be sown under a different moon phase, etc..
An aesthetics. The subjects and execution of the arts must give an idea of how the spiritual worlds appears to a clairvoyant perception. Eutyrmics dancing to imitate the movements of ethereal and astral forces.
An occult ecology. Biodynamic agriculture - which seeks to establish an understanding between the forces of the cosmos, planetary movements and certain spiritual forces and creatures that live in the ground so that they together help the crops grow.
Biodynamic farming has several occult rituals for how to prepare a field for biodynamics, and through these rituals make it desirable for spiritual forces and metaphysical creatures to inhabit the field and help the crops grow. Few are familiar with this side of biodynamics, so here are some of Steiner’s “scientific” preparations. You dig a single one of them in the field that is to be prepared for biodynamic farming. You then allow the preparation to work for a year and then the forces from the preparation will spread to the entire field...
Preparation 500: A cow horn filled with cow dung. Preparation 501: A cow horn filled with quartz.
Preparation 502: A urine bladder of a deer filled with yarrow flowers. Preparation 503: Cow intestines filled with chamomile.
Preparation 505: The skull of a livestock filled with oak bark.
Preparation 506: The visceral sack of a cow filled with dandelions.
These preparations (from 1923) are to be found in Steiner’s book: “Agriculture Course: the birth of the Biodynamic Method", p. 72-99. An example of his argument for recipe 502 is: "The deers urinary bladder is connected with [...] the forces of the cosmos. No, it is even the image of the cosmos. Thus, we are giving the yarrow the necessary force to strengthen those forces that the yarrow already possesses, to combine the sulfur with other substances" (same, p. 93). Steiner's interest in sulfur comes from that he believes "ether forces moves with the help of the Sulphur along the pathways of the oxygen” (same) and "the yarrows homeopathic sulfur content [...] makes the yarrow able to radiate its influence out over a wider area and to greater quantities" (same). Whatever those two sentences mean. Incidentally Steiner gave no explanations or justifications for its preparations and methods: He simply dictated and expected blind acceptance (See: Agriculture Course, p. 5). He also designated preparations on how to liberate one’s field of mice: You should catch a relatively young mice and skin it at a time when Venus is in the sign of Scorpio, then you burn the skin and spread the ashes over the field after which "mice will avoid the field" (Agriculture Course, p. 113). You can do the same against insects, Steiner assures us, apart from the fact that it "is only necessary to rip the skin off if the animal has a spinal cord" (p. 121). Why this is the case we have no explanation. As you see biodynamic agriculture is unfit for vegetarians!
In order to achieve Demeter-labelling, which is the international stamp of approval of biodynamic cultivation, the field must be grown organically and must be treated with the particular preparations listed above (see: Waldin, 2004, p. 73). A number of studies have also shown that organic cultivation is neither better or worse than regular organic cultivation without the use of Steiner's preparations and homeopathic viscera (see: Reeve p. 371). If you doubt that modern biodynamics grow according to the above bizarre methods and principles read Waldin, Thun or Joly (see references).
What does Steiner think about the established worldview? He prophesies in "Christian Rosenkreutz og Buddhas mission på Mars" (p. 8): "It will not be long before we in the future will realize that Copernicus' view on the world of stars is much more wrong than Ptolemaeus'". (Ptolemaeus believed that the planets including the sun rotated around the Earth. Copernicus proved in 1543 that all the planets rotated around the Sun). For Steiner the Earth is the center of our solar system, not the sun.
Steiner further writes also about Copernicus: "With respect to understand spiritual basis the Copernican ideas are the worst instrument that has ever existed in the development of mankind. This situation arises from the fact that all these concepts and ideas of Copernicus are inspired by Lucifer. This is because Copernicanism is one of the last attacks, one of the last major attacks that Lucifer has made in the human development" (Christian Rosenkreutz og Buddhas Mission på Mars, p. 8).
Steiner has written in great detail about the development of the solar system. See e.g. Cosmic Memory, in this work Steiner also explains the formation of the human soul and its development. I summarize in the following:
Far, far back in time the Earth's substance was not solid but liquid, and even earlier it was steam like. Before this the physical element was not yet formed and the Earth consisted of ethereal substance. It was at this time that the human souls arrived to the Earth. Yes, “arrived”, for they were transported to the Earth (Cosmic Memory, chap. 8). As far as I know Steiner does not explain who transported the souls to the Earth. The humans at this time were astral creatures and when they arrived to the Earth they "lapped up the ethereal substance to themselves like sponges" (ibid.). The human body was at this time without limbs and had "form as an elongated ellipse". Reproduction happened as a kind of self-cloning, where the human soul divided into two that were exactly the same. Only after long periods of time as matter condensed, did people assume the form of hermaphroditic creatures. It is also at this time that the human body starts to get a metabolism which produced heat. At this time the earth element is not formed and the Earth consisted of "water, air, light-ether, dry-ether and life-ether" (Cosmic Memory chap. 9). In addition to the souls, that are developing ethereal bodies, there are "other physical entities that have carcasses which consist of air and light-ether mixed with water. These are plant-esque entities." (Cosmic Memory, chap. 9). "There existed also animals of the most various forms, some with bodies of water, other with bodies of air" (ibid.).
Then there occurs "a cosmic event of great importance”. So far the Earth, the Sun and the Moon had not been separated, but then the finest substances separated out and formed the sun. The sun is formed by light-ether, dry-ether and life-ether separating or extracting itself from the Earth (Cosmic Memory, chap. 9). Because the light-element has thus separated itself from the Earth and formed the Sun, the soul needed to develop eyes and metabolism in their rudimentary elements. Later the Moon separated out from the Earth as the coarsest elements extracted themselves.” (Cosmic Memory, Chp. 10).
In addition to the human soul there are “higher creatures" that exercise influence on man. After the Sun and the Moon has separated themselves these creatures become divided into two categories that Steiner describes as follows:
"The Moon Gods had hitherto had influence on the whole human being, but now had only influence over the humans’ lower nature. The lower creatures [...] had influence over his higher half. Thus, man came under a double leadership. His lower nature is under the influence of the Moon Gods; in his developed personality, however, he comes under the influence of the entities that are summarized under the name "Lucifer" which is the name of their Lord." (Cosmic Memory, chap. 10).
Steiner explains further how the "Luficer Gods" stimulate people. "Under Lucifer’s leadership humans should themselves become 'one of the gods'".(Cosmic Memory, Cape. 10). After the sun had extracted from the Earth the humans had to develop "the light in themselves”. Steiner writes:
"This is not only meant metaphorically but also in a very real sense. Since the period with fire fog was over, these spiritual creatures took to continue their activities connected with the sun, in man. So, it is clear where the name "Lucifer" comes from, for it means "the bringer of light"; likewise, it becomes clear why these creatures are called "sun gods" in the mystical sciences." (Cosmic Memory, chap. 10).
In "Occult Science -- an Outline" Steiner explains that our Earth today is in its fifth reincarnation. Steiner writes thus on three of them: "Our Earth is thus a reincarnation of an ancient planet. But the Spiritual Science manages to go even further back
and discover that the whole process has been repeated twice before. Our Earth went through three prior planetary stages and in between there are phases of spirituality. The physical element is more and more subtle the longer back we trace the Earth's incarnations." (Occult Science, chap. 4.1).
How has Steiner come to these discoveries? He says he reads them in the "akasha chronicle", which is an occult record of everything that ever happened. To read in the akasha chronicle you must be very clairvoyant.
In "Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?" Steiner writes about how important it is to develop one’s organs of clairvoyance. These clairvoyant organs are spiritual bodies which is called "lotus flowers" and is the same as the chakras - spiritual power centers known especially from Hinduism. He explains that in order to develop a chakra, one should school one’s emotions through ethics. To be a good human being is thus not an end in itself but a means to become clairvoyant. Clairvoyance is a means to come to the recognition of one’s existence in the higher worlds. That is for its part the prerequisite for the cooperation with the spiritual creatures, "the guardian of the threshold" and others which leads to a conscious immortality in reincarnation.
How does this concern you if you just like the Waldorf schools and would like to have your child in a more 'humane' and 'creative' school?
Creativity means that you are creating from yourself with the freedom to choose your own form of artistic language. Many know the watercolors with liquid colors that slides into each other as light in the fog, you can buy as postcards or posters in all the antroposophical shops. Have you never wondered that they have looked virtually the same in almost a century and asked whether it is a sign of creativity that they will continue to look the same just as long as antroposophy exists?
On Steiner Schools/Waldorf Schools to draw in this way is a discipline all must train because the process and the result creates specific effects in the ethereal and astral body. It is therefore not up to the artist how the result will be. It is given by Steiner as a form and a norm. The pictures have to appear like ethereal or astral bodies. The "creativity" is therefore deeply uncreative. These wet-on-wet watercolors are led per idealized norm into a scene of blurred and misty colors that, when carried out and later viewed, is believed to act as imaginations (i.e. an aid to become clairvoyant, cf. "Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?"). Thus the "creative" watercolor painting is in reality a way to school the children to practice imagination and gradually be led into Steiner’s occult worldview, way of life and epistemology. Steiner teachers will rephrase this to that the watercolor painting helps the children to develop their imagination but it is just another phrase for the same, for the development of imagination forces are synonymous with the development of the astral body. The development of the astral body’s imagination forces is the prerequisite for having success with the imaginations, leading to clairvoyant perception of the metaphysical worlds. The immature human is not capable of seeing directly into the spiritual worlds, but first intuit these worlds through liquid colors and sounds in its soul (cf. Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?).
It is the same with the music: in the minor classes you do not play on regular instruments according your own creative whim, but on special five tone (penta tone) whistles. The given five tones allegedly create special fluctuations in the spiritual elements that corresponds to the oscillations that occur in the spiritual elements when you are connected with the spiritual worlds.
Steiner teachers will counter against the above that the issue is not to make the children clairvoyant, but “that children are led to an experience of letters and numbers through the artistic", "First artistic experience since concept formation" (both Kirsten Brandt, Weekendavisen, 5/5/95). Behind this lies two things: 1) a conviction that it is not appropriate to stimulate children's thinking ability early on – thus, we can find children in Steiner Schools second grade that can’t read and still draw G as a Goose, S as a Snake, etc.; 2) The origin of the “artistic discipline" is not that children must have "artistic" experience first, for the “artistic” covers that the kids first must develop their astral body (i.e. feelings, empathy) before they train their mental body (i.e. concept formation, thinking ability). The Astral body must be developed first as it is that body which has the organs of clairvoyance and places the kids in connection with the spiritual worlds and because of the early development of the mental body allegedly hampers that connection. Steiner writes as follows: You "must not get bogged down in what the different things mean. By such a cogitation you just bring yourself away from the right way". "An artistic feeling is the best to develop spiritual skills" ("Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?", p.35).
Obviously, Steiner sees the spiritual training as a matter of how to become clairvoyant. This is clear from his principal work: "Videnskaben om det skjulte", e.g.: "It is not about giving a person precepts in general for its lifestyle, but to talk about certain emotional exercises which makes it possible for it to observe the super sensual." (Videnskaben om det skjute, p. 182).
That Steiner Schools have more than a hard time including new ideas should be self-evident from the fact that they are based on the century old writings of one man alone, and that the writings give instructions on virtually everything. (This reluctance to revise the given, Steinerian, material, points back to the systems utter unscientific nature and dogmatic character). Thus, Steiner has approved Goethe’s color theory so within the Steiner pedagogy they not only have not incorporated anything that has happened within color theory since, but directly dismisses it as unimportant. Former Steiner school pupil T. Amitzbøll writes on Goethe’s color theory that "Steiner worked from [Goethe’s color theory]. It [is] today quite superior. It is also this color theory which is at the root of the small classes watercolors." (Weekendavisen 5/5/95). More than that: Goethe’s color theory is the basis of everything that has to do with color in antroposophy. The problem is that Goethe’s color theory is really obsolete and it already was in Steiner’s time. If Steiner Schools will live up to their alleged willingness and ability to move with the times they should realize that the Bauhaus people already in the 1920s systematized research in aesthetics and color. Significantly Kandinsky, Itten and Albers, and others, broke with Steiners Art Nouveau inspired aesthetics. One of these revisions of the color theory is such as Johannes Itten’s "Künst der Farbe", first printed 1961 and Josef Albers "Interaction of Color" (1963). It is significant that since Steiner has said Goethe’s color theory is good, so will antroposophists in perpetuity adhere to Goethe’s color theory. So completely is the lack of perception and insight that pupils in Steiner schools are not even presented to the contemporary technical, scientific discussions and therefore cannot believe anything other than that their long-outdated teaching material is superior.
History has taught us long ago that one cannot separate a person’s pedagogy from his view of human beings and his cosmology or his lax handling of facts and traditional philosophies and religions. We know this the best from political totalitarian systems and we find that it now, with Antroposophy, pops up in the form of spiritual totalitarianism.
If you sympathize with Steiner’s basic view of life or not is here irrelevant. In so far as also whether some of his lecturing, behind the whole veil of self-staging as the prophet of our time his works is permeated with, should accommodate some truths. The problem is that Steiner shamelessly distorts the other main religions and philosophies to profit from their glory. It also is that the Antroposophical society markets itself with highly misleading description. And furthermore, that Antroposophy suppresses scientific development and progress from a conviction that Steiner’s opinions are infallible and definitive. I hope that I have made it clear that there is nothing scientific about Steiner’s so-called science. Antroposophists forget that Steiner is long dead and incidentally was neither infallible or omniscient.
Steiner, Rudolf:
"Hvordan når man til Erkendelse af de Højere Verdener?", Antroposofisk Forlag, Kbh. 1986. "En vej til Selverkendelse i Otte Meditationer", sammesteds 1980.
"Videnskaben om det Skjulte", sammesteds 1987. "Om Livets Mening", sammesteds 1964. "Rosenkreutzernes Kristendom", sammesteds 1966. "Reinkarnation og Karma", sammesteds 1975. "Hvordan karma virker", sammesteds 1974.
"Christian Rosenkreutz og Buddhas Mission på Mars", Jupiter, Odense 1985.
"Agriculture Course: The Birth of the Biodynamic Method", Rudolf Steiner Press 2004, Forest Row, UK. Available from The Rudolf Steiner Archive: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Agri1958/Ag1958_index.html.
"From Jesus to Christ, Ten lectures given in Karlsruhe, from 5th to 14th October, 1911", Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1973. Available from The Rudolph Steiner Archive: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Religion/FJ2C73_index.html.
"The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind", Three lectures 1911, Trans. H. Collison. Antroposophical Society of Great Britain, 1921. Available from The Rudolf Steiner Archive: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA015/English/ASGB1921/GA015_index.html.
"Cosmic Memory, Prehistory of Earth and Man", GA 11, Harper & Row 1981. Available from The Rudolf Steiner Archive: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA011/CM2/GA011_index.html.
"Occult Science - an Outline", Antroposophic Press, USA, 1972.
Other authors
Itten, Johannes: "The Art of Color" Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1973. (Siden udgivet i en reduceret version ved navn "Elements of Color")
Albers, Josef: "Interaction of Color", Yale University Press, USA 1971. Waldin, Monty: "Biodynamic Wines", Mitchell Beazley 2004, London, UK.
Reeve, Jennifer, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, John Reganold, Alan York, Glenn McGourty, and Leo McCloskey. 2005. Soil and winegrape quality in biodynamically and organically managed vineyards. American Journal of Enology and Viticulture. 56(4): 367-76.
Thun, Maria. 2000. Gardening for Life-The Biodynamic Way: A Practical Introduction to a New Art of Gardening, Sowing, Planting, Harvesting. Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press.
Joly, Nicolas. 1999. Wine from Sky to Earth. Austin, Texas: Acres U.S.A.
Se iøvrigt Weekendavisen 28/4/95, 11/5/95, 19/5/95 og 24/5/95.