 PREHISTORY 101 What Lies Behind
Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant. The “discoveries” he made using his supposed psychic powers are astonishing. Here's a fine example to get us started: “[T]he moon today is like a fortress in the universe, in which there lives a population that fulfilled its human destiny over 15,000 years ago, after which it withdrew to the moon together with the spiritual guides of humanity ... This is only one of the 'cities' in the universe, one colony, one settlement among many ... As far as what concerns ourselves, as humanity on earth, the other pole, the opposite extreme to the moon is the population of Saturn.” [1]
Have I caught your attention yet? Rudolf Steiner made innumerable detailed predictions about the future. His devotee, Richard Seddon, has pulled together these forecasts along with a thumbnail sketch of humanity's distant past. He lays it all out in his book THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH As Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner. [2] I’ll use it as a sort of tour guide through Steiner’s fantasies. (If you want to wade into Steiner’s own exposition of these things, his book OCCULT SCIENCE - An Outline is a good place to start. I’ll refer to it and other Steiner texts from time to time as we proceed.)  According to Steiner, one of the most important events in mankind's history was the sinking of Atlantis. Yes, Steiner taught that Atlantis actually existed. He also talked a lot about human evolution. He didn't mean the sort of evolution science describes; he meant a weird kind of racial and “spiritual” progress made by good humans. (Bad humans are something else, as we'll soon see.) He said that humanity made great evolutionary strides both before and after Atlantis went under. He also taught that long before Atlantis was destroyed, another lost continent, Lemuria, endured a similar catastrophe. (See Steiner’s books ATLANTIS: The Fate of a Lost Land and Its Secret Knowledge, and ATLANTIS AND LEMURIA.)
But that’s all history. I promised you the future. So here it comes (I’ll skip over the boring 21st and 22nd Centuries). Richard Seddon writes that Steiner taught that “By the start of the twenty-third century, when Michael's Sun-rulership as Time Archangel ends (though he continues as Spirit of the Age for more than a millennium) great changes will obviously have taken place ... [H]uman etheric bodies gradually loosen from the physical, and souls begin to extricate themselves....” [3] I know, I know. Not as exciting as you expected? Well, here’s some more background. Michael is a really good guy. (See Steiner’s book THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL: His Mission and Ours.) Michael's tour as Sun ruler will end by the 23rd Century. Ruling the Sun obviously puts Michael in a central position of power in our solar system. Steiner associated the Sun with Jesus and the Moon with Jehovah, but we’ll leave that for later. Our “etheric” bodies are the lowliest of the nonphysical bodies that real human beings eventually incarnate. (Some human beings are not really human, according to Steiner.) [4] You can find references to the etheric body in many of Steiner’s books. Other creatures besides humans have etheric bodies. Here’s a Steiner quote that is a little surprising: “From spiritual science [i.e., Steiner's new religion] you know that the plant [i.e., any living vegetable] owes its existence to the fact that, besides its physical body, it has an etheric body.” [5]
Let’s pick up the pace. Steiner was big on karma and reincarnation, which connect the past, present, and future. R. Seddon backs up R. Steiner by discussing “our Karmic obligations.” [6]
Steiner also taught that the only reason different races exist is that demons interfered with evolution. The chief culprits were Lucifer and Ahriman. (You about Lucifer, I presume. Ahriman is the great Persian devil, designated by Steiner as the master of falsehood.) These two devils tossed curves into human evolution:
“While there should have been basically only one form of human being ... Lucifer and Ahriman preserved [earlier human types] ... [F]orms that should have disappeared remained ... That is how it came about that physically different races inhabited the earth and are still there in our time although evolution should really have proceeded [unimpeded].” [7]
I apologize for Steiner's horrid views. I also apologize that we haven’t gotten very far into our future yet. We’ll get there, all the way to the dissolution of physical reality and mankind's triumphant... Well, I shouldn't give away the ending, should I? Please keep reading.
I mentioned Lemuria. Human beings lived in Lemuria, but our bodies were somewhat different then. (Bear in mind that in the following sentences Steiner was talking about human beings. Not our evolutionary forebears such as apes, fish, amoebas... Us. Human beings.) “The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.” [8]
Don’t look at me. That’s what he said.
We can wrap up prehistory and then get a preview of our distant future with two more quotes from Steiner:
◊ Helping us to understand why some people are inferior, Steiner said the following: “[I]t was the normal human beings that were ... the most capable of evolving ... [Some abnormal people] gradually wandered to the West and became ... the Red Indians of America ... [Other abnormal people] migrated to the East, and became the subsequent Negro population of Africa ... The human beings who had developed normally lent themselves best to progress.” [9] You see, some people from Atlantis went off track and became red or black (forgive me: Steiner's views, not my own). The ones who stayed on the right evolutionary track carried humanity's hope for future evolutionary progress. You can guess what color their descendants are. [10]
◊ Real, good humans who evolve up and up will earn their reward, while the bad ones will get something else. Here's a preview of a far-distant event. We'll work our way toward that distant period in the subsequent pages on this site. Someday, after Jupiter “reunifies” with the Sun, a new planet will “break away, containing all beings who have resisted evolution and constituting an 'unredeemable moon' ... The part of humanity that has continued to evolve, however, will move on to..." [11] Oops: I'm giving away the ending again. To learn where the good people are headed, stay tuned. — Roger Rawlings
 A map of Atlantis (utterly imaginary, of course).  “If we were to journey back through time to the age that links Lemuria with Atlantis, we would meet with a remarkable sight: gigantic flying lizards with a lantern on their heads...” [Rudolf Steiner, BLACKBOARD DRAWINGS 1919-1924 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2003), pp. 130-131. My sketch of Steiner's sketch, 2009; Steiner arranged the two figures horizontally; I have put them vertically. Plausibility is unaffected.]  Christ is the leading figure in Anthroposophy (Christ as reinterpreted by Steiner, that is). Yet many of Steiner's doctrines come from very different, even incompatible sources. Hinduism is crucially important, for such concepts as polytheism and reincarnation. [Image from http://karenswhimsy.com/.]  Here you see, in schematic form, the beginning of the archangel Michael's reign. The horizontal line separates the astral plane (above) and the physical world (below). The arc from the left represents the reign of Gabriel, which ended in 1879. The arc to the right is Michael's reign, beginning in that year. Trouble, though: Mammon poked his snout in at about the same time. "[I]n November of the year 1879 there occurred on the astral plane something very similar to a birth ... The rulership of Gabriel was replaced by another archangel, under whose leadership we now stand, the archangel Michael. He is the radiant sun that esoteric wisdom lets shine forth on a small band of people ... The radiant leadership of Michael will again be replaced by a dark, horrible age that will begin around the year 2400. Already today simultaneously with Michael a dark god has entered into his rulership: the god Mammon. "For esotericism, Mammon is not only the god of money. He is much more the leader of all vile black powers. And his hordes attack not only human souls, but also the physical bodies of humans in order to gnaw away at them and ruin them. People speak of bacteria a lot more today not because they know more about them, but because bacteria have taken on a very special form today. And in the future they will get the upper hand in a terrifying way. When that black age approaches, then fraternal war will rage in a gruesome way, and poor human bodies will waste away, terribly afflicted by diseases and plagues. The stigma of sin will be impressed on human bodies visible to everyone." [Rudolf Steiner, ESOTERIC LESSONS 1904-1909 (Steiner Books, 2007), pp. 232-233. R.R. sketch, 2009, based on b&w image on p. 232.] In case the forgoing left any doubt, here's a clarification on one point: "Mammon, the spirit of hindrances and darkness, has countless helpers who incarnate as bacteria." [Ibid., p. 208.] The small band to whom Michael radiates esoteric wisdom is, of course, the small group to whom Steiner delivered "esoteric lessons": initiated Anthroposophists. Before pushing ahead, let's take a quick glance at a stage in Earth's history long predating Atlantis: "Try to picture the sun and moon both contained in the earth and oysters that had no shells, but were slime. When lumps of this substance separated off, new oysters developed, and so forth. They were so huge and lay right next to each other so that you could not have told them apart. What did the earth look like at that time? It looked like our brain, whose cells also lie next to each other. They only difference is that these cells die off, whereas in that very ancient time the huge oysters cells were one next to the other, and the sun constantly developed forces, because it was inside the earth. Yes, gentlemen, the earth was here [see drawing], and there was a giant oyster, another next to it, and many other huge lumps of slime, which continuously propagated ... If you had looked at the earth at that ancient time, it would have resembled a gigantic creature that contained within it the forces of the sun and of the moon." [Rudolf Steiner, FROM CRYSTALS TO CROCODILES (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2002), pp. 143-144. R. R. sketch based on sketch on p. 143.] What are we to make of such malarkey? Here's one suggestion: Call it malarkey and walk away. For those of you who want to stick around for more, we’ll pick up the story in “Oriphiel”. On subsequent pages, we’ll move progressively farther into the future, and then branch out to other topics. (If you decide to stick around, that is. I warn you, Steiner doesn't get any more reasonable.)
The tone of several pages here and elsewhere on this site is distinctly one of mockery. This must offend some readers, for which I'm genuinely sorry. I don't expect to convert any Anthroposophists to my point of view, but I hope I may offer some insight to many readers. Having lived with Steiner's teachings, in one way or another, for most of my life, I can honestly say that they strike me as absurd. We can laugh or weep. I choose to laugh. I urge you to join me.
If you want to jump the gun, you can find an outline of our entire evolution — past and future —in the final section of “Matters of Form” on this Web site. ◊◊◊◊ For Steiner's view on abnormality, please use this link: "Abnormal". Quotations there also bear on quack medicine, human freedom, the central position of humans in the cosmos, and the temperaments of nations. ◊◊◊◊
ENDNOTES
[1] Rudolf Steiner, RUDOLF STEINER SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998). p.93. The beings who moved were not humans such as we are now. In Steinerspeak, “human” applies to any spiritual being passing through its “human” stage of evolution. Steiner’s use of language was slippery. Various beings have passed through a human stage, according to Steiner. At this Web site, I mock and deplore Rudolf Steiner's teachings. But all of my references to Steiner's works are accurate. I am serious about the malignancy of Steiner's doctrines, and I take my obligations as a critic seriously. If you have any doubts, I invite you to look up each citation. You'll find each is accurate. Why would I change Steiner's words? They constitute the most powerful argument against him. My references to Richard Seddon's work are also accurate. You could look it up. For a concise summary of Steiner's take on our prehistory, see Gary Lachman's RUDOLF STEINER (Jeremy P. Tauchman / Penguin, 2007), pp. 143-147. To go straight to the horse's mouth, re. both past and future, see Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT SCIENCE - AN OUTLINE (Anthroposophic Press, 1969). A neat summation of both past and future, Steinerwise, can be found in Geoffrey Ahern's SUN AT MIDNIGHT (James Clarke & Co., 2009), pp. 122-139. [2] Richard Seddon, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH As Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner (The Temple Lodge, 2002). [3] Ibid., p. 26. [4] “Imagine what people would say if they heard that we say there are people who are not human beings. Nevertheless, these are facts.” Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 650. Non-human humans may be automatons or demons in disguise; they may have etheric and astral bodies, but they lack the third nonphysical human body, the “I”; they may fall through the floor or evolution and become "nature spirits". [5] Rudolf Steiner, COLOUR (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996), p. 19. [6] THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH, p. 26. [7] Rudolf Steiner, THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN: The Evolution of Individuality (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), p. 75. [8] FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 26. [9] Rudolf Steiner, THE BEING OF MAN AND HIS FUTURE EVOLUTION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981), pp. 118-119. [10] “The white race is the future, the spiritually creative race.”[Rudolf Steiner, VOM LEBEN DES MENSCHEN UND DER ERDE {On the Life of Human Beings and of the Earth} (Verlag Der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1961), p. 62.] [11] Rudolf Steiner, AN OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC SCIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1997), p. 394. This is one of several versions, drawing on different translations, of Steiner’s seminal OCCULT SCIENCE - An Outline (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979).
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