Steiner Predicts

Don't take Richard Seddon's statements too seriously. Our focus is on Rudolf Steiner's teachings. Seddon is useful to us mainly because he provides an example of the sort of "scholarship" exercised by Steiner's admirers. This is the thinking and worldview Waldorf schools lure kids toward.

I know that everything I've reported so far on this site has been crystal clear. The following report may vary from that high ideal — it may not make a lot of sense. This comes with the territory in SteinerWorld. We need to experience Anthroposophical thought in all its pristine incoherence.

OK: ORIPHIEL

"From the early twenty-third to the late twenty-sixth century the ruling Archangel is Oriphiel, the Archangel of the Saturn sphere." [1] Trouble. Oriphiel last presided over the decline of Greek civilization. Next he will preside over our misery.

Pause a moment. "The Saturn sphere." Hmm? Whenever Rudolf Steiner and friends speak of “spheres,” they toy with our patience. For instance: “The Saturn sphere is really the last one that we ... enter, since Uranus and Neptune do not enter our picture.” [2] This statement contains either more or less than meets the eye: • Saturn, as a planet, is certainly spherical. • As a sphere of influence, Saturn may perhaps be considered quite round. • Then again, Saturn might be considered an evolutionary stage, which comes around and goes around.

The very most ancient stage of earthly evolution was, according to Steiner, "Old Saturn," although the use of this monniker gives us almost zero information. “[W]hen we contemplate the past, present, and future of the earth's evolution, we may speak of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions.” [3] Each evolutionary stage or "sphere" gets reiterated in each successive stage/sphere, BUT in using terms such as "Saturn" "It must be distinctly understood that these occult terms are not to be associated in any way with the names used to designate the members of our present solar system." [4] One might wonder, then, why these inapplicable names were applied, and why in other passages Steiner seems to associate these names quite clearly with the members of our present solar system. But that's what makes occult terms occult.

Let's get back to our immediate future, the 23rd to 26th Centuries, when Oriphiel will loom large. The impending primacy of Oriphiel is bad news: “The Age of Michael began in 1879. After that comes the Age of Oriphiel, when great conflicts will rage among human beings.” [5] Somewhat confusingly, “Oriphiel” is not among the archangels mentioned in the Bible. He isn't even in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In any case, there’s a lot of trouble coming: “Conflict and suffering are therefore inevitable. The Antichrist will even be called ‘Christ’ by his followers. But all true Christians, knowing that Christ does not incarnate again in physical form but only in the etheric, will oppose him with all the strength at their command, a strength that will be enhanced by practice. This is a very real battle to replace Christ by Ahriman [a terrible demon] for the remaining 6000 years of the Post-Atlantean epoch.” [6] Hard to joke about that. Big, big trouble.

Fortunately, all of us will be long dead before the s--- hits the fan (although, if we believe in reincarnation ... ):"The sixth Post-Atlantean cultural age, the so-called Russian age, extends from 3573 [AD] to 5733." [7] The Russian Age? Apparently Russia will make a major comeback about 1560+ years from now. But be of good cheer. The Russian Age will be followed by the American Age. But don't be of too much goodish cheer: The American Age will culminate in the War of All Against All.
 
This will help clear things up: "[W]hen things of the physical world of the senses cease to be all-important and fade into shadow, human beings will either find that the physical is vanishing while they remain incapable of believing in the spiritual realities before them or they will be able to believe and preserve for themselves an awareness of these spiritual realities — and for them there will then be no spiritual death." [8]
 
Avoiding spiritual death sounds like a good idea, although waiting till the Sixth Age for this to be offered may be a stretch. As for "the physical world of the senses," that's what some of us call reality. And as for the term "Age," each Epoch consists of several long stretches of time called Ages. To help orient you, allow me to state that we currently in the Fifth Age of the Fifth Epoch. (This makes it easy to remember: 5 of 5. This will be on tomorrow's pop quiz, so pay attention, you there in the back row.)
 
No matter what row you're in, brace for the following venomous statement: “White mankind is still on the path of absorbing spirit more deeply into its essence. Yellow mankind is on the path of preserving the period when the spirit is kept away from the body, when the spirit can only be sought outside of the human-physical organization. But the result will have to be that the 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.” [9]
 
This is a prediction of what we may rudely call a race war. But as he did so often, Steiner confuses matters. Here, he switches from spewing vile on “yellow” mankind (in the original German, "die gelbe Menschheit") to a more generalized racism encompassing all of “colored mankind” (“der farbigen Menschheit”) — so exactly who is going to fight whom is a bit vague. But Steiner sometimes used "yellow" and "colored" interchangeably, which kind of clears things up.

Obviously, I shouldn't joke about anything so vile. Racism is horrific in every conceivable way. So let's move on to a different point. The timing of the predicted  conflagration is oddly uncertain: “This great culmination of egotism known as the war of all against all, is to take place at the end of the seventh post-Atlantean epoch ....” [10] This contradicts what we learned above, that the war will come at "the transition from the fifth cultural epoch to the sixth." Here's a handy rule to bear in mind: Steiner contradicted himself frequently. Seddon manfully attempted to systematize Steiner's bunk, but to what end? (Or did Seddon introduce additional contradictions?) Nonsense is nonsense, and hateful racist crap is hateful racist crap.

An important point: Note that the coming horror is the war of "all against all." Who will be involved? All of us. Everyone. Every race, every group, every individual. When Steiner predicts horror, he goes all the way.

ENDNOTES

[1] THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH AS FORESEEN BY RUDOLF STEINER {hereafter TFOHATEAFBRS [memory aid: tofu hate afterburners]}, p. 29.

[2] Rudolf Steiner, AT HOME IN THE UNIVERSE: Exploring Our Suprasensory Nature (SteinerBooks, 2000), p. 74.

[3] Rudolf Steiner, AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE (Anthroposophical Literature Concern, 1922 — facsimile edition, Kessinger Publishing), p. 384. For a sketchy summary of ancient spheres, see Gary Lachman, RUDOLF STEINER (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2007), pp. 143-147.

[4] AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE, p. 114.

Unless we are willing to throw up our hands and concede that for Steiner, words have no real meaning (always a possibility), we need to work at understanding his use of planetary names such as Saturn or Old Saturn. Steiner said that the descriptions he gave in AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE are shifty: they are "deeply immersed in Maya and Illusion". [Rudolf Steiner, THE INNER REALITIES OF EVOLUTION (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1953), p. 21] One of his advocates adds, "Steiner admits that in his written accounts he had to descend into the trappings of maya in order not to 'startle' the public." [Gary Lachman, THE SECRET HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Lindisfarne Press, 2003), pp. 288-289.] This raises at least two possibilities. • Steiner's use of planetary names is misleading, or • his denial that planetary names refer to planets is misleading. Lachman argues that when Steiner spoke of "Saturn," Steiner meant the planet Saturn, in some sense. I agree. If Steiner wanted to avoid startling us, his use of planets' names was obviously not the way to go: The idea that we once lived in, or on, or around, or during Saturn is surely startling. The poop Steiner tried to shield from our eyes is something else. In brief, Steiner used the names of planets because that's what he meant, in a sense, as it were. (Lachman argues that "the real character of our previous planetary existences has ... to do with certain moral or existential states of conscious" [p. 289] that presumably would shock general readers.)

 
[5] Rudolf Steiner, THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL: HIS MISSION AND OURS: Selected Lectures and Writings (SteinerBooks, 1994), p. 31.

[6] TFOHATEAFBRS, p. 29.

[7] TFOHATEAFBRS, p.41.

[8] Rudolf Steiner, EASTER: An Introductory Reader (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007), p. 129.

[9] Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES {The Spiritual Background of the First World War}, p. 38.

[10] Rudolf Steiner, READING THE PICTURES OF THE APOCALYPSE (SteinerBooks, 1993), p. 12.