Woodrow & rudolf
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We can back our way into a consideration of life during Present Earth by heeding the words of Rudolf Steiner denouncing a certain extraordinarily awful President of the United States. That dreadful chief executive epitomized much that is worst about life in the here and now.
73) [Woody and the Demons]
“Woodrow Wilson...describes things magnificently [in his writings], but as though he is possessed by subconscious influences. There is a quality of demonic possession in his writings.” — Rudolf Steiner, HOW DO I FIND THE CHRIST? (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2006), pp. 45-46.
Background: Woodrow Wilson, a scholar and former president of Princeton University, was 28th President of the United States. In 1917, he led the US into World War I against Steiner's beloved Germany. Wilson contributed greatly to Germany's defeat. Almost as bad, he set forth a 14-point plan for peace (which was fraudulent), was influential at the Versailles peace conference (which imposed unjust retribution on Germany), helped found the League of Nations (a joke), and in 1919 won the Noble Peace Prize (a travesty).
According to Steiner, Wilson was possessed by demons; he could not think; he was a plagiarist; he was a pedant, an idol, a secret king, the reincarnation of a Muslim warlord, a typical Westerner, and a spiritual giraffe, among other character flaws.
Here is Steiner's judgment on Wilson after Wilson's death:
74) [Woody, Vlad, and Ahriman]
“We need to be clear that Ahrimanic forces [i.e., demonic forces] are increasingly breaking in upon historical events. Two leading personalities, [Woodrow] Wilson and [Vladimir] Lenin, died from the same illness, both from paralysis, which means both offered an opening for Ahrimanic forces.” — Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 700.
Note: Ahriman is one of the arch-demons in Anthroposophical belief; Ahrimanic forces are Ahriman's foul influences and powers. [See, e.g, Ahriman and Evil Ones.] Here, Steiner explains that Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin (leader of the Communist revolution in Russia) were conduits for Ahriman to spread his dire influences across the Earth.
Woodrow Wilson,
president of Princeton University
and, later,
President of the United States.
[Public domain photo.]
Here are some of Steiner's judgments on Wilson before Wilson's death:
75) [Woody the Nincompoop]
“A Greek would never have uttered so much nonsense about Egyptian conceptions as Woodrow Wilson is able to think in one week about European conceptions — if one can call it thinking!” — Rudolf Steiner, ANCIENT MYTHS (Steiner Book Centre, 1971), lecture 1, GA 180.
76) [Woody the Schoolmaster Idol]
”Schoolmastering is utterly and entirely unable to fulfill its mission today. What ranks as Schoolmastering is completely foreign to the true being of man [except, presumably, in Waldorf schools]. But the world threatens to be ruled by a schoolmaster [Woodrow Wilson], revered through political idolatry.” — Rudolf Steiner, ANCIENT MYTHS (Steiner Book Centre, 1971), lecture 6, GA 180.
77) [Woody the Abstract Thinker]
”[T]he talent for abstraction demonstrated in Woodrow Wilson is the ultimate talent for abstraction in the political field. Those fourteen points of the world's schoolmaster [i.e., President Wilson's peace plan], which in every word bear the stamp of the impractical and unachievable, could only originate in a mind wholly formed for the abstract, with no discernment whatever for true realities ... [They constitute] the humbug of the fourteen points of Woodrow Wilson.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE MYSTERIES OF LIGHT, OF SPACE, AND OF THE EARTH (Anthroposophy Press, 1945), lecture 4, GA 194.
For Steiner, abstract thinking — intellectual thinking — was woefully misleading. Steiner said real knowledge comes from clairvoyance, and true thoughts are "living thoughts" — ideas implanted in us by the gods during our spiritual lives before birth on Earth. [See "Clairvoyance" and "Thinking".] Woodrow Wilson, Steiner alleged, epitomized all that is wrong with modern thought and life.
78) [The Real Woody]
“Muavija [a warrior who led the Islamic assault on Europe] is a representative spirit in the first century after Mohammed ... If you follow the campaigns and observe the forces that were put into operation under Muavija, you will realise that this eagerness to push forward towards the West was combined with tremendous driving power ... If we follow this Muavija, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet, as he passes along the undercurrent and then appears again, we find Woodrow Wilson [sic: emphasis by Steiner; he was saying that Wilson is the reincarnation of Muavija].” — Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, Vol. 1 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), lecture 10, GA 235.
79) [King Woody the Plagiarist]
“I may be allowed to be somewhat outspoken about Wilson...who sits on the throne of America ... [T]he man who now occupies the throne of America drafted [i.e., plagiarized] his most powerful republican document from one issued by the late Emperor of Brazil, Don Pedro, in 1864. Wilson copied this exactly except that the passage, ‘I must intervene in the interests of South America’ is altered to ‘I must intervene in the interests of the United States of America,’ etc., with the necessary recasting.” — Rudolf Steiner, EARTHLY DEATH AND COSMIC LIFE (Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1927), lecture 1, GA 181.
80) [Woody's Long Neck]
“To use a figure of speech employed, I believe, by that deeply spiritual writer, Rabindranath Tagore [a Bengali philosopher and social reformer], the Westerner is pre-eminently a ‘head-man.’ The oriental is a ‘heart-man,’ for he experiences the process of metabolism in his heart; the Middle European is the ‘breath-man.’ He stands in a rhythmic relationship to the outer world through the rhythmic processes within him. Tagore compares the Westerner to a spiritual giraffe because he raises everything into abstractions — into abstractions such as gave rise, for instance, to the ‘Fourteen Points’ of President Wilson. Speaking in the sense of spiritual reality, one feels that the Westerner's head is separated from the rest of his body by a long neck.” — Rudolf Steiner, “The Peoples of the Earth in the Light of Anthroposophy” (THE GOLDEN BLADE, 1980), GA 335.
81) [Empty Woody and Modern Decline]
“[T]he general course of modern civilisation will inevitably involve the disappearance of much that is still greatly to men's taste ... [A] very disagreeable awakening is in store ... [W]hat must be regarded as imminent is a great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks, will be crushed ... [W]e have got to the pitch of having no content at all in our ideas; because this twentieth century has had to give us an example of a man, hailed by vast numbers as a world-leader whose utterances have absolutely no meaning — Woodrow Wilson, who only utters phrases which have completely lost their content.” — Rudolf Steiner, “The Coming Experience of Christ” (THE GOLDEN BLADE, 1952), GA 200.
[R.R.]
What in the world did Rudolf Steiner have against poor Woodrow Wilson? And what, if anything, can this tell us about Steiner?
Wilson was, we must acknowledge, easy to dislike. A self-righteous moralist, he presented himself to the world as both a political and a spiritual authority. Steiner probably disliked Wilson from the moment he caught wind of him. But Steiner's aversion to Wilson certainly increased manyfold after the First World War erupted in 1917. From Steiner's perspective, Wilson committed unforgivable sins. Wilson refused to acknowledge the justice of German's war aims; he failed to accept or comprehend the glorious German national mission and spirit. Almost as soon as the war began in Europe, Wilson demonstrated a deep bias in favor of Great Britain. And, eventually, as US President, Wilson led America into war as an ally of Great Britain — he pitted the material wealth and might of the USA against Germany. Worse yet — far worse — at the end of the war, Wilson presided over the drafting of a peace treaty that severely punished Germany. Steiner could not forgive Wilson's many sins.
Steiner was very much a man of his time and place. An ardent German nationalist, he took his nation's affairs to heart. [See "Steiner and the Warlord".] He was, at least occasionally, chauvinistic, small-minded, and vindictive — like most of us, in our own ways, in our own lands. And that’s the point. Steiner was like everyone else. He was just a joe, a guy, an hombre. He pretended to be far more, and some people believed him. Anthroposophists treated Steiner the way Steiner said the foolish masses treated Wilson: as an idol, a hero, a spiritual savant, a savior.
Steiner despised Wilson; he was furious with Wilson; and evidently he was jealous of Wilson. He doubtless saw Wilson as, in sense, a rival. Steiner and Wilson were much alike, in their dissimilar ways. Self-appointed demigods (as it were), paragons in their own eyes, they were actually deeply flawed individuals — well-meaning, perhaps; idealistic, perhaps; but flawed. Wilson was not the great spiritual champion he mistook himself for. And Steiner was not the great spiritual exemplar he pretended to be. Steiner too was just a guy, just one of the self-important lads, one of the era's would-be movers and shakers. He was a fellow who happened to tell a lot of lies and make many, many amazingly loony statements. He was, in other words, something of a fool — like everyone else, more or less, only perhaps a bit more so. (Most guys don't create phony religions, prescribe quack forms of medicine, promulgate loopy agricultural practices, and the like. Steiner did. Even Wilson didn't go as far off the rails as Steiner went.)
This is an important insight we need to bear in mind. Steiner was just like everyone else, despite his claims. He was worse than most folks, in some ways: He was an Elmer Gantry, a Marjoe, a Jim Bakker. A fake. A fraud. A pretender. But, fundamentally, he was just a guy. And he saw Woody as an appalling competitor for the slot of top banana, the glorious would-be savior of modern mankind.
Here’s another important insight we can gain. Begging your indulgence, I will now return to quote #73, above, and spin it out at greater length. I think you’ll find it illuminating. Comparing the work of Herman Grimm, a German, and Woodrow Wilson, the demonic American, Steiner said:
82 [73 redux]) [Woody and the Demons, Redux] ”I love the way Herman Grimm writes, while Woodrow Wilson’s style is something quite alien and distasteful to me ... I set particular passages of Grimm and Wilson next to each other ... There are sentences and passages which are almost perfectly interchangeable, which are nearly identical word for word ... [But] when two people say the same thing, they are in fact saying something different ... What is strange about the fact that Woodrow Wilson describes [various] things in sentences that seem almost to have been lifted wholesale from the passages of Herman Grimm? In every sentence and passage that Herman Grimm wrote we can sense the personal, individual effort, the struggle. Everything he writes about is expressed from the standpoint of nineteenth century culture, but imbued by the direct promptings of the consciousness soul [a high type of soul described by Steiner]. Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, describes things magnificently, but as though he is possessed by subconscious influences. There is a quality of demonic possession in his writings.” — HOW DO I FIND THE CHRIST?, pp. 44-46.
In this odd passage about an odd subject — the writing styles of Hermann Grimm and Woodrow Wilson — we find Steiner’s entire epistemological method. And we find its unintentional self-refutation. Steiner did not look at things, he tried to look through them to their spiritual essence. But this amounted to projecting his own preferences, wishes, and biases, and then mistaking those projections for objective reality. Grimm and Wilson used virtually the same words, yet Steiner found the results completely different. Grimm good, Wilson bad.
“When two people say the same thing, they are in fact saying something different.” Actually, no. When two people say the same thing, they say the same thing. I don’t want to be frivolous. Of course, slight differences in wording can make large differences. And context can change our understanding. When two people say almost the same thing, in almost the same words, they may actually be saying quite different things. Thus, I would stipulate that Hitler’s celebrations of the German soul were different from the similar celebrations expressed by Steiner. But such differences do not stem from spiritual “realities” ascertainable only by clairvoyance. They are real, verifiable, rationally comprehensible differences that can be discerned in the statements themselves, especially when these are read in the context of the authors' other statements. So, when two people say things that are similar but not precisely the same, their meanings may be significantly different. But when two people say precisely the same thing in precisely the same words, their meanings are the same — identical statements have identical denotations.
Steiner loved Grimm’s work and he found Wilson’s “alien and distasteful.” Quite clearly, considering the context provided by the other quotations I have given, we can see that Steiner felt a deep-seated hostility toward Wilson, at least in part for geopolitical reasons. This had nothing to do with the quality of Wilson’s “soul” (which Steiner, just a guy like the rest of us, could not directly observe); nor did it have to do with any demons inhabiting Wilson’s soul (beings that Steiner, just a guy like the rest of us, could not directly observe — in part because such beings probably do not exist anywhere, inside or outside anyone’s soul). Rather, it is quite clear that Steiner merely projected his beliefs and biases onto the words of Grimm and Wilson. When Grimm said "X," Steiner liked it and embraced it. When Wilson said precisely the same "X," Steiner felt like barfing.
Try an experiment. This is one of the mental exercises I devised for myself when working to undo the occultist conditioning I’d received in a Waldorf school. Look at a photograph and “feel” the qualities in it. For example, look at a photo of an attractive young woman with long, blonde, wavy hair. Now, tell yourself that the woman is German. You may quickly convince yourself that, indeed, only a German would look just like that — an Aryan sort of look, a set of qualities that are distinctly Germanic. Then, without even taking your eyes from the photo, tell yourself a different story: This woman is American, a "California girl," a surfing beach bunny. Yes, yes. You will quickly see that she is a West Coast dream date, unmistakably American. Next, still keeping your eyes glued to the photo, tell yourself that the woman is Russian, a Slav. Of course, distinctly so! Where else but in Moscow or Leningrad could one meet such an ice princess — those cold eyes, those almost Asiatic lips, that wrinkled wintry hair?
I still do this exercise from time to time, and I still find that I can “feel” the differences, the deep “spiritual” truths, within a photo, and I can change them at will, instantly. This is what we humans do all the time. We imagine, we invent, and we tell ourselves that our imagined inventions are real. This is what Steiner did. And it is what we all have to stop doing if we are ever to be rational, and stop hating each other for no reason, and stop following Elmer Gantrys like Steiner.
By the way: I should clarify that I am no fan of Woodrow Wilson. There are many reasons to criticize Wilson. But they are not the imagined spiritual reasons Steiner gave (Ahriman, demons, reincarnation...), nor can they be found in Steiner’s nationalistic rancor.
And, not so much by the way: Notice how Steiner’s “spiritual insight,” fueled by his nationalism, quickly lapses over into racism and horror: Asians are this, Westerners are that; and therefore, in view of such profound racial differences, we face an imminent "great spiritual battle between East and West.” Look again at quotation #81, please, in which Steiner forecasts a war between East and West. He predicted this war on other occasions, as well, and sometimes he couched the forecast in clearly racial terms:
83): “[T]he transition from the fifth cultural epoch to the sixth cultural epoch cannot happen differently than as a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas.” — Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974), p. 38.
No. We must not have any such war. The concept is horrible; it is evil. And to the degree that Steiner preached such bile, his doctrines are evil.
P.S. Back to Herman Grimm and Woodrow Wilson and their identical but completely different words:
84) [Herm & Woody] “I have drawn attention to the same point — how surprising it is to compare the essays on Historic Method by Hermann Grimm, who stood so fully within the German mid-European culture of the nineteenth century, with essays on the same subject by Woodrow Wilson ... [I]t is possible to take over certain sentences from Woodrow Wilson and insert them bodily in Hermann Grimm's essays, for they are almost word-for-word identical with sentences in Hermann Grimm ... The difference is this: in Hermann Grimm, everything — even passages with which one cannot agree — has been struggled for, it has been conquered step by step, sentence by sentence. In Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, it is as though his own inner demon, by which he is possessed in his subconsciousness, had instilled it all into his consciousness ... In our period of civilisation it is even possible for a Professor [i.e., Wilson], dabbling in politics, to write on an important matter something that agrees word-for-word with that which springs from a knowledge of realities; but the word-for-word agreement is not the point. What matters is the region of the human soul [sic; emphasis by Steiner] from which things spring. We must look through the words of speech to the region whence things derive.” — Rudolf Steiner, “Evil and the Future of Man” (THE GOLDEN BLADE, 1985), GA 185.
Perhaps we should look into one another’s souls. But we cannot. And no amount of pretending will change this. We need to try hard to understand one another, but we must do this rationally, on the basis of knowledge and good will, not occult imaginings.