This is a representation of the basic Rosicrucian image:

A black cross with a single rose at its heart.

[Image taken from Ernst Lehner's SYMBOLS, SIGNS & SIGNETS 

(Dover Publishing, 1950), p. 116.]

This is an elaboration derived from the Rosicrucian image above:

Here we find a black cross with seven roses,

enclosed in a pentagram.

Often, in various systems, 

the pentagram is a symbol for the human being. 

The letters surrounding the image, EDN - ICM - PSSR,

stand for 

Ex Deo nascimur - In Christo morimur - 

Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus,

which is Latin, meaning

We are born of God - We die in Christ - 

We are made alive by the Holy Spirit

[Image taken from the cover page of Steiner's book

THE SUBMERGED CONTINENTS OF LEMURIA AND ATLANTIS

(Rajput Press, 1911).]

The rose cross of Christian mysticism stems from 

the similar cross of Jewish mystic (Qabalistic) tradition.

Here, that cross encloses a pentagram.

The meaning of the Qabalist rose cross is, of course, 

different from that of the Rosicrucian cross.

The Qabalistic roses grow on the Tree of Life,

and their petals represent the infinite variety of creation.

[Image taken from J. C. Cooper's AN ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA 

OF TRADITIONAL SYMBOLS

(Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 143.]

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Here is an item from the Waldorf Watch News page

(a Quote of the Day with commentary):

“If you do not use your own powers [for improvement]...the ground you stand on will be pulled out from under your feet. The purified world will develop over and beyond you [i.e., spiritual evolution will continue without you]. You will be excluded from it. If this is your choice, then yours is the black path. But those from whom you separate yourself tread the white path ... [The] temptation of personal salvation on the ‘black’ path is the greatest we can conceive of. The white path, on the other hand, does not seem tempting at all. It does not appeal to our egotism ... Thus those seeking salvation only for themselves will almost certainly choose the black path ... [W]e must not expect occultists on the white path to provide any instructions on the development of the egotistic I [i.e., to encourage egotism].” — Rudolf Steiner,  HOW TO KNOW HIGHER WORLDS (SteinerBooks, 2002), pp. 204-205.

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Waldorf Watch Response:

Waldorf schools usually claim that they prepare their students to become free adults, able to make their own choices. This is a fine ideal. But in the belief system upon which Waldorf schools stands — Anthroposophy — there is really no such thing as freedom as we in the West normally understand it. Your options are these: the evil (“black”) path or the good (“white”) path. [1]

Steiner himself spoke of freedom; he himself held it up as a goal. But how much freedom do you have if your only options are the path of evil and the path of virtue? [2] Anthroposophy effectively eliminates any real power of choice, given that evildoers will pay an enormous price (they will lose their souls), while good-doers will reap an enormous payoff (they will evolve upward toward ultimate divinity). If you understand these alternatives properly, as described in Anthroposophy, there is only one choice you can reasonably make: It is to embrace Anthroposophy, which lays out for you the white path.

Steiner’s conception of freedom, such as it was, was Germanic or — if you prefer — fundamentalist. Steiner wanted to help us free ourselves of our low, ignoble tendencies. Good people rise above their egotistic desires and work for the good of all, not just for their individual gain. [3] They “free” themselves of egotism. This is excellent. Surely we should want to free ourselves in this manner. But this sort of “freedom” is very different from the proactive ability to make choices among a range of potentially beneficial options. Anthroposophy offers no such range of options. You can walk the black path and go to your doom, or you can walk the white path (i.e., the path laid out by Steiner) and go to your reward.

When children graduate from Waldorf schools, they are — in theory — free to decide how to live the rest of their lives. But if the schools work as Steiner intended, Waldorf graduates will have been molded to prefer a single path, the one-and-only good path, the path of Anthroposophy. Of course, not all Waldorf graduates become Anthroposophists. Waldorf schools often fail in their effort to “free” students of the desire to go astray. But Waldorf schools strive to succeed at their self-appointed, often clandestine, messianic task. They work to point students down the true path, as defined by themselves, which means as defined by Rudolf Steiner.

[For more on all this, see “Freedom”, “Who Gets Hurt”, “Sphere 8”, “Hell”, “Here’s the Answer”, and “Spiritual Agenda”.]

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Footnotes

[1] Steiner’s use of the terms “white” and “black” is loaded. White is good, black is evil. In his day, such usage was common and, perhaps, acceptable.

[2] Anthroposophists sometimes suggest that there are differing lanes on the true path, and we can freely choose among them. This is not, however, the legacy Steiner established. Steiner identified various approaches that, he said, had been appropriate at prior stages of human evolution but that were no longer adequate. The right path for modern people, he generally indicated, is Rosicrucianism. By this, he meant Rosicrucianism as reworked by himself — that is, Anthroposophical Rosicrucianism (i.e., the white path). Indeed, all approaches and teachings that he affirmed in any way were approaches and teachings that he reworked to suit his own vision. All of the older true approaches led to the new true approach, the one true path now.

Why did Steiner identify Rosicrucianism, instead of Anthroposophy itself, as the true path? It boiled down to the same thing. Steiner claimed that Anthroposophy is not a religion but a science — specifically, the “science” of using clairvoyance to study the spirit realm. As a science, Anthroposophy is not, in itself, a body of religious or spiritual practices (although, contradicting himself, he often indicated that it is this). He claimed that Anthroposophy is the objective body of knowledge we need for our religious or spiritual endeavors. This is why he was prepared to see a separate church established, the Christian Community, which uses the “knowledge” provided by Anthroposophy to inform its faith. [See “Christian Community”.] The Christian Community is the religion, Anthroposophy is the science underlying the religion. Likewise, Steiner designated Rosicrucianism, rather than Anthroposophy itself, as the correct path for spiritual aspirants today: Rosicrucianism is the path, Anthroposophy is the light illuminating the path. But in fact, as defined by Steiner, there is scarcely a hair’s breadth of difference between Anthroposophy, the Anthroposophical Christian Community, and Anthroposophical Rosicrucianism. They are all the same path, the path laid out by Steiner. They are the path defined by Steiner's occult doctrines.

[3] In accordance with Germanic tradition, “all” may be the tribe, the nation, or the world.

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.AFTERWORD

Here are three more statements by Steiner, bearing on the subjects we have been considering. I won’t comment on them; I’ll just invite you to consider them in whatever light you choose.

“Buddha transferred his work to Mars in the year 1604 ... Christian Rosenkreutz had known what the work of Buddha on Mars would signify for the whole Cosmos, what his teachings of Nirvana, of liberation from the Earth would signify on Mars. The teaching of Nirvana was unsuited to a form of culture directed primarily to practical life. Buddha's pupil, Francis of Assisi, was an example of the fact that this teaching produces in its adepts complete remoteness from the world and its affairs ... Christian Rosenkreutz realised that for a certain purification needed on Mars, the teachings of Buddha were pre-eminently suitable ... The souls on Mars were warlike, torn with strife. Thus Buddha performed a deed of sacrifice  ... He was as it were the lamb offered up in sacrifice on Mars and to accept this environment of strife was for him a kind of crucifixion. Buddha performed this deed on Mars in the service of Christian Rosenkreutz.” [1]

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“I wrote an article on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and I drew attention to the fact that it was written down by a boy of seventeen or eighteen. The boy himself understood not a word of it. We have external proof of that. He wrote down this Chymical Wedding from beginning to end. The last page is not extant, but he wrote down the whole of the Chymical Wedding, without understanding a word of it. If he had understood it, he would have been bound to retain the understanding in later years. The boy, however, became a pastor, a good, honest pastor of the Württemberg-Swabian type, who wrote exhortations and theological treatises which are distinctly below the average, and very far indeed from having anything to do with the content of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Life itself proves to us that it was not the Swabian pastor-to-be who wrote this Chymical Wedding out of his own soul. It is an inspired writing throughout.” [2]

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“Many ascetic nuns celebrated mystical marriages. I will not enter into the nature of these inner mystic unions today; but something took place in their inner being which could afterwards only be expressed in words. In a sense it was something that subsisted in the ideas, feelings and also the words in which these were clothed. In contrast to this, Valentine Andrea, as the result of certain conceptions and Spiritual connections, wrote his Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz. This chymical — or, as we should say today, chemical — marriage is also a human experience, but when you go into the matter you find that this does not only apply to a soul-experience but to something not merely expressed in words, but which grips the whole man; it is not merely put into the world as a soul experience, for it was a real occurrence, an event of nature, in which a man accomplishes something like a natural process. Valentine Andrea in The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz, meant to express something that was more permeated with reality than the merely mystical marriage of Mechthild of Magdeburg, who was a mystic. The mystical marriage of the nuns only accomplished something for the subjective nature of man; by the chymical marriage a man gave himself to the world. Through this, something was accomplished for the whole world; just as something is accomplished for the whole world by the processes of nature. This is again to be taken in a truly Christian sense. Those who thought more real thoughts, longed for concepts through which they could better lay hold of reality, even if only in the one-sided way of the old alchemists — concepts through which they could better grasp reality, ideas in fact which were really connected with reality. The age of materialism has at present thrown a veil over such concepts; and those who today believe they think aright about reality are living in greater illusion than these despised men at the time of the old alchemists, who strove for concepts which should help them to master it.” [3]

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Footnotes

[1] Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1950), lecture 7, GA 130. 

[2] Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, Vol. 1 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), lecture 12, GA 235.

[3] Rudolf Steiner, COSMIC AND HUMAN METAMORPHOSES (Spiritual Research Editions, 1989), lecture 4, GA 175.

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[Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001.]

[Rudolf Steiner Press, 2000.]

The advice may seem strange, coming from me,

but I urge you to buy and study several 

books of Rudolf Steiner's teachings.

Perhaps you will be won over — 

perhaps you will conclude that

Steiner offered the world great wisdom. 

Or perhaps you will reach

a very different conclusion.

— R.R.

  [R.R.]