Steiner Predicts

Rudolf Steiner spoke of Vulcan as both a planet and a stage of evolution. For him, these were almost indistinguishable, since—according to him—humanity is passing through developmental stages that are associated with (mediated by, influenced or controlled by, or manifested in the form of) various planets. And if you believe that...
 
In SLEEP AND DREAMS, for instance, Steiner speaks of a god living on the Moon [SteinerBooks, 2003, p. 43]. Steiner quickly catches himself and explains that he is only speaking "imagistically." But then he affirms that the god really is physically there. As far as Steiner's truths go (which isn't far), this is probably the best Steiner could do. In his scheme, the Moon is the physical stand-in for a spiritual reality—as is everything physical, when you come down to it. The spiritual reality is more important, BUT the physical reality does exist, too, in its own relatively unimportant way. Same for the planets, same for everything in the sky: They are all here, in reality, while they also manifest other more significant stuff otherwhere or otherwhen.
 
Here are some relevant passages. They are a trip. To wrap your head around them, it helps to remember that humans and planets evolve. The bodies we have now are not like the bodies we used to have or will have, and the conditions we met or will meet on other planets are different from conditions prevailing today. Or so Steiner would have you believe. But it is also important to know that Steiner said that some important past events were actually quite recent. His sense of time doesn't wash, in other words. Thus, if we take his word for events in/during Atlantis, the conditions that science tells us prevail today on other planets would have prevailed then, such a short time ago. “The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago." [Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 50.] “[T]he majority of [human] souls withdrew from the earth to other planets ... during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came [back] down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies ...." [Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998), p. 36.] Presumably we could exist on Saturn, for instance, in some unearthly human form. Still, knowing the actual conditions on Saturn is informative—I will offer such info, from time to time. Of course, Vulcan raises a whole other set of perplexities. What was/are/will be the actual conditions on a planet that does not actually exist?
 
Here are some more passages in which Vulcan looms:
 
“[W]hat I described in OCCULT SCIENCE—the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth and the future periods of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan—is only present to the Gods in Time.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL, translated by Marjorie Spock, contributor Christopher Bamford (SteinerBooks, 1994), p. 197.] I’ll pass over RS’s pitching of his book. But take note of the plural: “Gods” [sic]. To follow Steiner, you have to be extremely flexible about such matters as the number of planets in our solar system and the number of gods running the show. (Minor aside: Note the last name of the translator. I’m not making this up.)

“The last planet which can still be counted among the series of earthly transformations, and hence follows Venus, is called ‘Vulcan’ by mystery science [for this, read spiritual science, i.e., Anthroposophy, i.e. the occult nonsense that Steiner promised would be in Waldorf schools (see FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 495).]...Not much can be publicly communicated about life on this planet ... only mystery students of the higher order, who may leave their physical body [sic] and acquire supersensible knowledge outside it, can learn something about Vulcan.” [Rudolf Steiner, COSMIC MEMORY (SteinerBooks, 1987).] Shucks. I wanted to hear more about the habits and habitats of Vulcans. Still, we have made some progress: Note “life on this planet [Vulcan].” Not “in” or “at” this stage of evolution: Life on Vulcan.

The teachers at Steiner's Waldorf School, being Anthropophists, presumably believed in Vulcan and all the rest of Steiner's mythology. Within that context, consider the following exchange. A Waldorf teacher asks about a possible summer camp in Transylvania. [I absolutely promise that I’m not making up any of this stuff.] Steiner replies: “That may be possible, but I find it difficult to imagine how...I went to a coffee house in [Transylvania] where you had to scrape the dirt away with a knife. A number of players [sic] came in...There was something Vulcan-like and stormy in their astral bodies; they were somehow all tangled together...The room was next to a pigsty and there was a horrible smell...Everyone gets bitten by all kinds of insects as well.” [Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER,  (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 728.] Ok, ok. Moving on:

“On the planet which will replace our Earth, the whole of humanity will have [the] psychic-consciousness or Imagination, the ‘Jupiter’ consciousness...The seventh state of consciousness is the ‘spiritual consciousness’ or Intuition, the very highest, when man has a universal consciousness; when he will not only see what proceeds on his own planet, but in the whole of the cosmos around him. It is the consciousness man had on Saturn, a kind of universal consciousness [sic], although then quite dull, which he will have in addition to all the other states of consciousness when he will have reached ‘Vulcan’...Each planetary stage is bound up with the development of the seven states of human consciousness, and through what takes place on each planet the physical organs for such a state of consciousness are perfected.” [Rudolf Steiner, UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING, contributor Richard Seddon (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993), pp. 30-31.]

In that passage, Steiner swings back and forth between discussing physical planets (“on his own planet,” “on Saturn,” “on each planet”) and discussing states of consciousness. His explanations of mysteries are often equally circuitous. But note that “physical” organs are developed “on” the planets. Further: Note how Steiner equates clairvoyant powers with “Imagination” and “Intuition”—words that are often used in Waldorf schools, but usually without an explanation of their true Steinerian meaning. It is crucial for parents of Waldorf students and prospective Waldorf students to understand that the teachers at a true Waldorf school subscribe to a belief in clairvoyance.

Note also that the contributor to UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING is the author of THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH As Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner, our own Richard Seddon.

One more note: In the passages we’ve been reviewing, Steiner goes beyond his assertion that humans on Earth can develop “organs of clairvoyance” (“[J]ust as natural forces build out of living matter the eyes and ears of the physical body, so will organs of clairvoyance build themselves....” [Rudolf Steiner, KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS AND ITS ATTAINMENT (Anthroposophic Press, 1944), p. 28.]) Here he states that on “each” planet the “organs” (plural) for levels of clairvoyance or psychic power are perfected. This gives us something to look forward to.

Steiner subscribed to astrology. According to him, all stars, planets, comets, etc., exert astrological influences on humans. The influences of the zodiac’s 12 signs call for especially close scrutiny, because they wax and wane due to the movements of the moon: “The [sign of the] Lion continually influences human beings except when it is covered by the moon...The moon, passing through the constellations at four-week intervals, brings it about that there is always a time in a four-week period when some constellation of the zodiac does not have an influence. With other constellations the influence is always the same...And so you see why the zodiac is more important when we study the starry heavens than other stars are.” [Rudolf Steiner, FROM BEETROOT TO BUDDHISM: translated by A.R. Meuss (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), p. 198.]

As I have argued, Steiner’s version of Christianity was weirdly mixed with paganism. In the following passage, we see Christianity explicitly tied to astrology: “In this next sphere [a Theosophical term transplanted by Steiner into Anthroposophy, indicating a stage of development] man feels in his astral body [one of a true human’s three nonphysical bodies] the forces that come from the constellations of the zodiac; forces come in one form direct from the zodiac and in another form through the Earth, for it makes a great difference whether a particular constellation is above or below the earth...Christ becomes our guide through the zodiac during sleep.”  [UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING, pp. 38-39.] Note that the signs of the zodiac and the earth are here discussed as physical entities. Otherwise, it makes no sense to discuss a sign being “below” the earth (not that any of Steiner’s teachings make much sense). Conflating Christianity and astrology is what people of orthodox faith would call heresy.

Heavenly orbs influence not only man but all things on Earth, including animals, vegetables, and insects. Farmers should certainly take astrological conditions into account when planning their plantings. Steiner here corrects the faulty ideas of others who do not understand astrology as deeply as he does. (He was never shy about admitting that he knew best about everything.) “[T]he sun, as it moves through the zodiac, has the greatest influence upon bees. The changes the sun undergoes as it goes through each sign are transmitted to the bee...this is where there is a connection between the farmers' sowing of the seed under a certain sign of the zodiac and the bees'  finding of substances the plants have prepared for them. Such things aren’t simply pulled out of nowhere; however, the way they are normally presented is very amateurish and misleading.” [Rudolf Steiner, BEES, translated by Thomas Braatz (SteinerBooks, 1998), pp. 81-82.]

Physical phenomena, as we know, have no meaning except as they manifest spirit. Nothing on the physical plane is really real (a precept that, as I have argued elsewhere, can be extremely injurious to children, teaching them that what is real is unreal, while only the unreal is real—a kid could go nuts (or sink into irretrievable mysticism—which amounts to the same thing)). Scientists can come up with ingenious pseudo-explanations for stuff, but only Steiner and his devotees can—thanks to “spiritual science”—lay out the true truth (Steiner frequently and insistently set himself up in explicit opposition to science). Steiner here lays out a third theory of the nature of light (#1: light consists of waves; #2: light consists of particles; #3: light consists of the emanations from the actions of faraway spiritual beings of intelligence and will (the following is from a section titled “Stars and the significance of the zodiac”): “If we look up to the stars, we can say that something streams from them that can be perceived by the human being's sense organs here on earth... [I]t proceeds from beings of intelligence and will whose life is bound up with those stars. The effects appear to be physical because the stars are at a distance [does this make the slightest sense to anyone?]. They are not really physical at all. What you see are the activities of beings of will and intelligence in the stars. I have spoken to you of the ingenious description of the sun given by astrophysicists. But if it were possible to journey to the sun it would be found with amazement that nothing of what is to be expected from these physical descriptions exists...What we see is in reality the working of will and intelligence which at a distance appears as light.” [Rudolf Steiner, AGRICULTURE: An Introductory Reader, contributor Richard Thornton Smith (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2003), p. 35.]  

“You know from the book Occult Science that during the Lemurian [Lemuria was a pre-Atlantis lost land] epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution, that only a few remain on the earth during the Lemurian epoch; that before the actual danger of the mummification of everything human began [by this, Steiner means...oh, skip it], the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” [Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982), p. 36.] I’m very nearly speechless, but unfortunately not quite. I’ll at least point out that Steiner, here, is pitching one of his books again. And I’ll add that Steiner sometimes tried to disguise the weirdness of his doctrines about the planets by saying or implying that his words really apply to stages of human evolution. But at other times—such as what we’ve just read—he was quite clear that he was talking about actual planets and actual colonization of the planets by completely fictitious human beings (he being the author of these fictions, which he claimed were verifiable facts, not fictions).

“Now since the universe is filled with the gaseous substance we perceive in the zodiacal light, this universe would be found to emit all kinds of different smells if organs of smell existed which were even more delicate than that of the dog...such a creature might sniff towards the evening star, and its smell would be different from that of the sun. Then it might smell towards Mercury, towards Venus, towards Saturn...it would get the sun smell, the moon smell, the Saturn smell, the Mars smell, the Venus smell.”  [Rudolf Steiner, FROM SUNSPOTS TO STRAWBERRIES (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2002), pp. 138-139.] In the 19th century, physicists thought that the universe was filled with a gaseous ether. Scientists later tossed out this theory. Despite his clairvoyance, Steiner didn’t see the change coming.

“Mars consists primarily of a more or less fluid mass...Now a great deal is said about the ‘canals’ existing on Mars. But why ‘canals’? There is nothing to be seen except straight lines...Everything for which intervals of years are needed on the earth—as in the case of grubs and cockchafers—is dependent upon Mars. So there you see a significant effect of Mars.” [Ibid., pp. 147-150.] The fluidity of Mars would come as a surprise to NASA, which has operated various rovers on the solid, dry surface of that planet (or stage of consciousness or evolution), trying hard to find even slight traces of any liquid on or under that surface.

Steiner got some credulous folks in the early 20th century to believe things that by now, at the beginning of the 21st century, have been proved to be utterly bogus. Steiner’s “clairvoyance” didn’t enable him to foresee the refutation of his teachings.

As to the ‘canals’ of Mars: The existence of these was declared by the American astronomer Percival Lowell, who misunderstood the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who in 1877 described “canali” (i.e., channels, which might be natural formations) on Mars. Wanting to see the “canals” of Mars, Lowell directed his telescope Marsward and saw what he wanted to see. He published his “findings,” as a result of which multitudes of people believed that there were canals on Mars, probably constructed by intelligent Martians, until the Mariner IV Mars probe—launched in 1964—demolished the theory. Despite his clairvoyance, Steiner did not foresee the discovery of the hard, dry surface of Mars or the complete absence of long, straight lines on that surface. Odd.

As for grubs and cockchafers—ugh—I’ll pass.

“What goes on in the universe between the population of Mars and the population of Venus...relates to the human being...the hidden spiritual interaction between Mars and Venus [is] related to what appears in earthly life as human speech. Physical forces alone would not enable us to speak...Long ago human beings were able to see these things with an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance....” [Rudolf Steiner, RUDOLF STEINER SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998), pp. 98-99.] Populations of Mars and Venus. I’ll pass again. In re. clairvoyance, however, I’ll say this: Steiner frequently said that humans used to possess natural clairvoyant powers. These were generally lost when humanity became more rational. But Steiner is no advocate of rationality. One purpose of Anthroposophy and Waldorf pedagogy is to help humanity develop new, even better, powers of clairvoyance. Can you buy it?

“But where is the actual Buddha, the one who lived as Gautama [Buddha's given name]? He became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth.” [Rudolf Steiner, LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH (SteinerBooks, 1985), p.72.] “The Buddha wandered away from earthly affairs to the realm of Mars. Until then Mars had been the chosen center of forces designated by the Greeks as fearfully warlike. The mission of Mars came to an end in the seventeenth century. Another impulse became necessary and the Buddha accomplished a Buddha crucifixion there. The Buddha Mystery on Mars did not take the same course as the Christ Mystery on earth, but Buddha, the Prince of Peace...was transferred to the belligerent realm of Mars.” [Ibid., p. 207] All this would startle Buddhists, no doubt. But perhaps Christians should be even more shocked. Steiner said that he broke with Theosophy because he wanted to give greater emphasis to Christ Jesus. His religion, Anthroposophy, combines Theosophy with smatterings of Christianity. But notice how he denigrates Jesus. Rather than being the Son of God—and thus one aspect of the triune God—Jesus was just one spiritual guide among others, including Buddha (and Steiner). Jesus wasn’t even the Prince of Peace—Buddha was. And Jesus’s ministry could be equalled by others: Buddha did for Mars what Jesus did for Earth. Curiouser and curiouser. One more note: Note how Steiner took at face value various myths, folk tales, fallacious theories, etc. (Mars is the planet of war, there are “canali” of some sort on Mars, the universe is filled with a “gaseous substance”,  etc.) and tried to weave them together.

Like the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky before him, Steiner erected an edifice of teachings that are, by and large, nonsense (myths, legends, paganized pseudo-Christianity, discarded scientific concepts...). So what is the resulting edifice? By and large, nonsense.