The Roots of Racism in Waldorf Schools
By Dan Dugan, revised September 1, 1996
I. Introduction
Waldorf schools are a worldwide system of primary and secondary schools founded on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. In some countries they are funded by the government. Until recently, all Waldorf schools In the USA have been private. Missionary activity by Anthroposophy, the sect which carries on Steiner’s work, has resulted in the founding of a few public alternative Waldorf schools, and a growing number of charter schools.
Waldorf schools are often wracked by controversies which break out when parents discover strange or offensive beliefs or practices. Some of these incidents involve allegations of racism in the curriculum or in a teacher’s treatment of students. This article illustrates, by quotations from Rudolf Steiner and his followers in Anthroposophy, that a benevolent but paternalistic racism is inherent in the movement.
Waldorf teachers study a lot of Steiner. Steiner’s teachings are pervaded by a racial mythology that he and the Nazis derived from Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy. Though he differed with the Nazis on nationalism and tactics, Steiner also made much of the superiority of the Central European soul and of the German spirit, in comparison with other ethnic groups. Early Nazi ideologists drew inspiration from Steiner’s teachings (see below, Goodrick-Clarke, 1992). Though the Nazis banned Anthroposophy, this does not necessarily confer sainthood. The Thule Society, another source of Nazi mythology, was also banned at the same time. These groups were suppressed as rivals, rather than opponents, of Nazism.
Steiner expressed high ideals about the unity of humanity. In 1909 he wrote that the “anthroposophical movement, …must cast aside the division into races. It must seek to unite people of all races and nations and to bridge the divisions and differences between people and various groups of people. … [W]e must get beyond the illnesses of childhood and understand clearly that the concept of race has ceased to have any meaning in our time” (Steiner, 1909, UH pp. 11-13). But at the same time he promulgated a mythological theory that humanity evolved and continues to evolve through ever higher races.
I have not searched out obscure sources for these items. All of the books cited are either on display in the bookstores of Waldorf schools, used as teaching guides, or promoted through Anthroposophical presses whose catalogs are distributed at the schools and teacher training colleges. I question whether, despite their high ideals and good intentions, teachers whose training includes proto-Nazi racial mythology can avoid bringing this misinformation into the content of their lessons, and into their relationships with the children.
II. Quotations: Race in General
The items in each section are in historical order. Steiner’s works are given their original dates. His titles are coded for brevity; please see the references below for the actual editions used. For transmission by wire, italics in originals are rendered *thus*, and dashes by two hyphens “–“.
* Quotations marked with an asterisk are from works which were required reading for teacher trainees at Rudolf Steiner College, 1993-1994.
“The Ancestors of the Atlanteans lived in a region which has disappeared, the main part of which lay south of contemporary Asia. In theosophical writings they are called the Lemurians. After they had passed through various stages of development the greatest part of them declined. These became stunted men, whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the earth today as so-called savage tribes. Only a small part of Lemurian humanity was capable of further development. From this part the Atlanteans were formed.
“Later, something similar again took place. The greatest part of the Atlantean population declined, and from a small portion are descended the so-called Aryans who comprise present-day civilized humanity. According to the nomenclature of the science of the spirit, the Lemurians, Atlanteans and Aryans are *root races* of mankind. If one imagines that two such root races preceded the Lemurians and that two will succeed the Aryans in the future, one obtains a total of *seven*.” (Steiner, 1904, CM p. 48)
* “Besides their character, families, nations and races have also their destiny. … Besides the separate individuals, a very real family and national group soul and racial spirit is at work in the life of a family, a people, or a race. Indeed, in a certain sense the separate individuals are merely the executive organs of these family group souls, racial spirits, and so on….In the truest sense, everyone receives his alotted task from his family, national or racial group soul.” (Steiner, 1904, KHW pp. 240-241)
* “[P]eoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation. Man must finally appear in harmonious perfection.” (Steiner, 1904, KHW p. 252)
“We are within the great Root Race of humanity, which has peopled the earth, since the land on which we now live rose up out of the inundations of the ocean. Ever since the Atlantean Race began slowly to disappear, the great Aryan Race has been the dominant one on earth. If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth Sub-Race of the great Aryan Root Race. The first Sub-Race lived in the distant past in Ancient India. And the present-day Indians are descendants of that first Sub-Race, whose spiritual life is still extant in the ancient Indian Vedas. The Vedas are indeed only echoes of the ancient culture of the Rishis. At that time there was of course no writing yet – there was only tradition. Then came the second, third and fourth Sub-Races. The fourth Sub-Race adopted Christianity. Then, halfway through the Middle Ages, we see that the fifth Sub-Race formed itself, to which we and the neighboring nations belong.” (Steiner, Rudolf. The Temple Legend: Freemasonry and Related Occult Movements: Twenty Lectures given in Berlin between 23rd May 1904 and the 2nd January 1906. (1904-1906) Trans. John M. Wood, Edited E.M. Lloyd. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985, p. 220)
“[W]hat the etheric body comprises derives from the maternal element, as handed down from generation to generation, so that every man bears in his own etheric body the legacy of the maternal element, and in his physical body, that of the paternal element. Now, by reason of consanguinity, the inheritance, perpetuating itself from etheric body to etheric body, was very potent, and from it derived the old faculty of clairvoyance. The offspring of endogamy inherited with the related blood the old capacity for wisdom in the etheric body. But as blood became more and more mixed–as a result of increasing intermarriage among tribes–the possibility of handing down the ancient wisdom diminished; …the mixing of different bloods obscured the ancient wisdom more and more… We are, of course, still involved in this process of deterioration taking place in the human blood because, in as far as it has its origin in an ancient epoch, it will follow its lingering course to the end of *Earth* evolution.” (Steiner, 1909, GSJ p. 226)
“[A]s a consequence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, human blood became ever less fitted to provide the faculty of seeing the outer world in its true light: a steady increase in illusion was bound up with the blood’s deterioration, with the dissolution of blood as it had been in the age of consanguinity, with the blood’s dispersion and destruction by miscegenation. No longer could man consult the old wisdom he had once possessed as a legacy… Had it not been for the intervention of the Christ influence, he would ultimately have lost his whole heritage of ancient wisdom by being gradually reduced to complete dependence upon the outer sense world and its impressions.” (Steiner, 1909, GSJ p. 244)
“It is indeed very uncommon–note that I am saying uncommon, though it does not always have to be so–that a soul belongs to the same community on earth through a number of consecutive incarnations. Souls pass from one earthly community to another…we have one example of souls actually assuming the same nationality a number of times. That is the case with the people of Central Europe. These Central European peoples include many souls that are incarnated among them today and have also been incarnated in the Germanic tribes in the past. This is a fact we are able to trace.” (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 57)
“The Western European peoples have become very much crystallized in their national characteristics, but in the case of the German people this cannot happen because of the peculiar nature of the German folk spirit. The result is that German attitudes will always have to remain more universal than those of other peoples. These things relate to profound realities in the spiritual world.” (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 176)
“The German spirit…is prepared for a truth that reveals itself to be true out of itself, not requiring external verification. The German spirit is prepared for this and evidence of this may be found everywhere. The thoughts of those who were truly working within the essence of the German spirit have always taken the form of considering truth to be an inner gift of the human soul.” (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 104)
“What has to come about for the civilization and culture of the future will only come about if the German folk spirit finds souls that transplant the Christ impulse into their astral body and ego the way it can indeed be implanted there in a state of full conscious awareness. It has to come about through harmony being established, by uniting with that which is consciously achieved in Central Europe–more and more consciously.
“This will need not just one or two centuries, but a very long time. The time needed…I would say counting from the year 1400. Adding two thousand years to 1400 we get the approximate time when something will emerge in the evolution of the earth that has had its seeds in the German life of the spirit…That is the intention of the cosmic intelligence…For the moment the East is very far indeed from achieving this. The very best of them still fall far short. Short sightedly, they still refuse to accept what Central European culture in particular is able to give.” (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 62)
“Not only is it characteristic of Hindu thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in part cleanse Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way that the Christ impulse can enter.” (Steiner, 1915, CRLA p. 11)
“[The purpose of the Opium War] is not to help certain people make millions and grow rich but to prevent certain souls who would have come from the spiritual world round about now, to strengthen the cultural forces of Europe, from incarnating yet, and instead to surreptitiously fill European bodies with Chinese souls…In a great many European people a disharmony between soul and body has been brought about in the way I have just described…Seen in this way, that Opium War meant the switching of a soul element from a part of the earth to which it belonged–and where it might have been of use, because it would have fitted–to another part of the earth where it could become a tool for forces whose designs are by no means necessarily beneficial for mankind.” (Steiner, 1916, KU1 p. 270)
“[B]ecause our etheric bodies differ in their constitution, composition, and structure in the cosmos, there would have to be seven groups of human beings. This is the fact we gradually arrive at when we investigate the relationship between our etheric body and our physical body with the methods of spiritual science. Now this difference is connected with the racial diversities on the earth. Basically, because of this difference in etheric bodies, the several races can always be reduced to the number seven.” (Steiner, 1916, UH p. 74)
“[V]arious types of human beings would have appeared one after the other. However, Lucifer and Ahriman…fought against this harmonious tendency of development in the evolution of humanity…Thus, forms that should have disappeared remained. Instead of racial diversities developing consecutively, older racial forms remained unchanged and newer ones began to evolve at the same time. Instead of the intended consecutive development of races, there was a coexistence of races. 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 as I have described it.” (Steiner, 1916, UH pp. 74-75)
“[T]he ancient Greeks dreamed of a uniform, perfect, beautiful type of human being that should have developed. This development did not occur because Lucifer and Ahriman preserved older racial forms that had developed, so that there was a coexistence of races rather than a succession.” (Steiner, 1916, UH p. 76)
“The most characteristic sign of the time is the belief that when a group of individuals have set up some trashy proposition as a general program–such as the unity of all men regardless of race, nation or color, and so forth–something has been accomplished. Nothing has been accomplished except to throw sand into people’s eyes. Something real is attained only when we note the differences and realize what world conditions are.” (Steiner, 1920, SSFSF p. 122)
“[T]he representative people for the development of the consciousness soul, hence for what matters particularly in our age, is the Anglo-Saxon nation. The Anglo-Saxon people are those who through their whole organization are predisposed to develop the consciousness soul to a special degree. The prominent position occupied by the Anglo-Saxon nation in our time is indeed due to the fact that this nation is especially suited for the development of the consciousness soul.” (Steiner, 1921, MTA p. 195)
* “Even the savage is affected by nature, but the laws of nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts fructified by intuition of the more highly developed man.” (Steiner, 1922, T p. 31)
“You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. … It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish.” (Steiner, 1922, HI-1, p. 86)
* “No doubt about it, the soul becomes corrupted through using the French language…It is also possible at the present time that the French will even ruin their own blood, the very element which has kept their language going as a corpse. That is a terrible thing the French people are doing to other people, the frightful cultural brutality of transplanting black people to Europe. It affects France itself worst of all. This has an incredibly strong effect on the blood, the race. This will substantially add to French decadence. The French nation will be weakened as a race.” (Steiner, 1923, CT-3 pp. 87-88)
* “The girl L.K. in class 1…is one of those cases that are occurring more and more frequently where children are born and human forms exist which actually, with regard to the highest member the ego, are not human at all but are inhabited by beings who do not belong to the human race…They are very different from human beings where spiritual matters are concerned. For instance they can never memorise sentences, only words. I do not like speaking about these things, as there is considerable opposition about this. Just imagine what people would say if they heard that we are talking about human beings who are not human beings. Nevertheless these are facts. Furthermore, there would not be such a decline of culture if there were a strong enough feeling for the fact that some people, the ones who are particularly ruthless, are not human beings at all but demons in human form.
“But do not let us broadcast this. There is enough opposition already. Things like this give people a terrible shock. People were frightfully shocked when I had to say that a quite famous university professor with a great reputation had had a very short period between death and re-birth and was a re-incarnated negro scientist.
“But don”t let us publicise these things.” (Steiner, 1923, CT-4 pp. 36-37)
“[T]he European sort of invention is impossible for either the Chinese or the Japanese.” (Steiner, 1924, EEM p. 77)
“[W]e are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. The savages have developed into what they now are–with their superstitions, their magical practices and their unclean appearance–from states originally more perfect. The only superiority we have over them is that, while starting from the same conditions, we did not degenerate as they did. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. Mankind, though to begin with it looked more animal-like, was highly civilized. … Just as the present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower.” (Steiner, 1924, EEM p. 126)
There is evidence that Nazi ideologists drew from Steiner’s teachings. According to Goodrick-Clarke:
“Here [*Ostara*, July, 1908] he [Gravell] outlined a thoroughly theosophical conception of race and a programme for the restoration of Aryan authority in the world. His quoted occult sources were texts by Annie Besant, Blavatsky’s successor as leader of the international Theosophical Society at London, and Rudolf Steiner, the Secretary General of its German branch in Berlin.” (Goodrick-Clarke, 1992, p. 101)
In the next three items, South African Anthroposophists (Picard, Downer) apply Steiner’s teachings to their situation in South Africa. From a book distributed in the U.S. as resource material for Waldorf teachers preparing a unit on Africa:
“According to Rudolf Steiner, certain regions of the earth are connected with the Historical development of the human being. One of these regions or centres, as they are better called, where cosmic influences played their part was situated in the interior of Africa. All terrestrial forces emanating from the soil, that influence man during his early childhood, were particularly active in those centres… Man’s environment has the strongest impact on him during his early childhood, and this particular environment imprints the characteristics of his childhood upon him for the rest of this life… Thus the black negro race is determined by these childhood characteristics. Another centre where cosmic influences were particularly active was located in Asia but there the etheric formative forces of the earth impressed permanently upon man the characteristics of adolescence. There the brown and yellow races came into being, the brown race specifically imprinted with the characteristics of the child from the age of seven years to fourteen years; the yellow race with those of the youth from fourteen to twenty-one years. In a similar centre in Europe, the characteristics of maturity were imprinted upon the race and in America those of the older human being and even old age. Dr. Steiner calls this a UNIVERSAL LAW.
“Coming back to the black race which had its centre in the interior of Africa, the Spirits of Form–the Exousiai–and the Abnormal Spirits of Form (who as you will remember are those Higher Beings who forsook their promotion to a higher hierarchy to perform a special duty), were centred in Mercury. Hence we may call the black race the Mercury Race. Although the seeds for this race were already planted in Lemuria, its concrete formation occurred in early Atlantis. From there the race spread across Africa and “crystallized,” as Dr. Steiner put it, into the Ethiopian race as an expression of an impulse from the Mercury Oracle or, if one prefers, the Mercury Mysteries in Atlantis. In these Mysteries, the abnormal Spirits of Form worked specifically in the glandular or lymphatic system. Everything that characterised the Ethiopian race stems from the fermentation of the Mercury forces in the glandular system of the people. Dr. Steiner taught: “What transforms the undifferentiated universal human form into black pigmentation and wooly or frizzy hair, is the consequence of their activity.”
“Whereas Mercury dominates, so to speak, the glandular system, Venus dominates the nervous system, Mars the blood and Jupiter the senses. Hence the specific characteristics of Venus–brown race, Mars–yellow race, and Jupiter–white race…
“In lectures presented by the late Dr. Max Stibbe, who made an extensive study of race relations in South Africa, it was mentioned that the Mercury Mysteries in Atlantis soon degenerated, with the result that the Negro race was deprived of those spiritual impulses that introduced initiatives. Migrating from Atlantis, the blacks entered Africa at the mouth of the Congo river. Some of them went to North-West Africa, the rest journeying to the East and the South. The life forces of the black race are so strong that they absorb all light. The warmth of the cosmos is, so to speak, boiling inside them, hence their particular metabolism, their strong desires, instincts and emotions. Their skin is coarse (large-pored) and their limbs extraordinarily strong, in comparison with which the development of their thinking is much weaker. Their strong life forces see to it that of their soul functions, WILLING is by far the most strongly developed. Their metabolism is dominated by the liver, hence the frequent liver diseases–and other glandular disturbances–among blacks. They are rigidly imprisoned in the fire of their metabolism and their physical as well as etheric body is hardened.” (Picard, 1987, pp. 113-114)
“[Apartheid] failed badly…in spite of the fact that Apartheid is a law of nature and as such a divine law of the Bantu. It failed badly because the Apartheid philosophers like Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd approached the problem in a purely intellectual way. They did not, or possibly could not, realise how easily Apartheid leads to discrimination. The true meaning of Apartheid is NOT discrimination. Not at all, Mutwa [Zulu author Credo Mutwa] declares. The true meaning of the word is: ‘to distinguish between two things without deciding which is best, while discrimination means to distinguish by deciding which is best.’…Apartheid in South Africa though practised in a more humane way than in many black African states must be condemned as a feasible constitutional possibility; not because its principle is wrong but because human nature is such that Apartheid automatically turns into discrimination–and discrimination soon leads to suppression.” (Picard, 1987, pp. 126-127)
“‘Aryan’ is a name that comes out of occult tradition and has often been used by Rudolf Steiner. The Aryan is the spiritual European, the being who with an individualised ego, has a developing consciousness soul directed towards balancing wisdom with morality. This is taken to the point where the personality is drawn from this balance, where wisdom and morality form as it were, a chalice and there is not just wisdom for wisdom’s sake! During this century an extreme form of outward racial connotation has been given to the term Aryan, particularly by Adolf Hitler who by materialising the spiritual task and nature of the Aryan attempted to create an evil counterpart to true spiritual evolution.
“The Aryan type works through the European race in general although he may incarnate within another race as a sacrificial gesture to assist in the destiny of that race. This can happen to assist the individualizing of personalities in that race so that their unique qualities are freed to contribute towards mankind’s future. The immediate cultural task lies with the Aryan.” (Downer, 1987, p. 189)
Recent teacher training manuals show the racial myth is being maintained and taught:
“In ancient times Persia was inhabited by two different peoples, the Aryans and the Turanians. The Turanians, yellow with small cunning eyes, worshipped the god Ahriman, the prince of darkness. The Aryans saw their god in the light of the sun, and named him Ahura Mazdao, the Great Light.” (Wilkinson, 1992, pp. 16-17)
“When it was time for Zarathustra to leave the earth, he climbed the mountain…As he turned to look back at the earth, he had a vision of things to happen in the future. He saw the Aryan peoples marching on victoriously towards the west…” (Wilkinson, 1992, pp. 17-18)
“Noah had three sons, Shem (Sem), Ham and Japhet. Three races are named after them. Shem or Sem means ‘the name’ and implies an ego quality. The Jews are Semites. Ham means ‘the dark one’ and the Egyptians and Canaanites, with whom the Israelites had to contend, trace their descent to him. Japhet means ‘the beautiful.’ The Greek and Nordic peoples are the Japhetites, bearing new spiritual impulses.” (Wilkinson, 1993, p. 23)
III. Quotations: The Jews
The items in each section are in historical order. Steiner’s works are given their original dates. His titles are coded for brevity; please see the references below for the actual editions used. For transmission by wire, italics in originals are rendered *thus*, and dashes by two hyphens “–“.
* Quotations marked with an asterisk are from works which were required reading for teacher trainees at Rudolf Steiner College, 1993-1994.
* “The family [for which Steiner was a live-in tutor, in Vienna, ca 1880] was Jewish. In their views they were quite free from any sectarian or racial narrowness, but the head of the family, to whom I was strongly attached, felt a certain sensitiveness about any expression of a Gentile in regard to the Jews. The flame of anti-Semitism which had sprung up at this time caused this feeling.
“Now, I took an interested part in the struggle which the Germans in Austria were then carrying on in behalf of their national existence. I was also led to occupy myself with the historical and social position of the Jews. Especially earnest did this activity become after the appearance of Hamerling’s Homunculus. This eminently German poet was considered by a great part of the journalists as an anti-Semite because of this work; indeed, he was claimed by the anti-Semites of German nationality as one of their own. This did not concern me at all, but I wrote a paper on the Homunculus in which, as I thought, I expressed myself quite objectively in regard to the position of Judaism. The man in whose home I was living, and who was my friend, took this to be a special form of anti-Semitism. Not in the least did his friendly feeling for me suffer on this account, but he was affected with profound distress. When he had read the paper, he faced me, his heart torn with innermost sorrow, and said to me: ‘What you have written here in regard to the Jews cannot be explained in a friendly sense. This, however, is not what strikes me, but the fact that, in view of your close relation with us, you could have had the experiences which induced you to write thus only in connection with us and our friends.’ He was mistaken; I had formed my opinions altogether on the basis of an intellectual and historical survey; nothing personal had slipped into my judgment. He could not see the matter in this way. His reply to my explanation was: ‘No, the man who teaches my children is, after this paper, no “friend of the Jews.”‘ …To all this was added the fact that many of my friends had taken on from their national struggle a tinge of anti-Semitism in their view of Judaism. They did not look sympathetically upon my holding a post in a Jewish family; and the head of this family saw in my friendly mingling with such persons only a confirmation of the impression he had received from my paper.” (Steiner, 1925, CML pp. 142-143)
“Thus we have two different races of mankind. The one consists of the original descendants of the Elohim, the sons of Cain, who are called the Sons of Fire. They are those who till the earth and create from inanimate nature and transform it through the arts of man … Abel was a shepherd. He held firmly to what he found, he took the world as it was. There is always this antithesis between people. One sticks to things as they are, the other wants to create new life from the inanimate, through art. … It is the Sons of Fire who have to work into the world the wisdom, beauty and goodness from the all-embracing universal throught, in order to transofrm the world into a temple.
“Jehovah is also called the God of created form, the God who turns what is living into a living force, in contrast with that other Elohim who creates by charming life out of what is lifeless. To which of these does the future belong? That is the great question of the Temple Legend. If mankind were to develop under the religion of Jehovah, all life would expire in form. … [T]he point in time has now arrived when man himself must awaken the dead to life. That will happen through the Sons of Cain, through those who do not rely on the things around them, but are themselves the creators of new forms.” (Steiner, 1905, TL p. 142)
“[C]onsciousness of this group-soulness existed preeminently among the ancient Hebrews. A person who consciously felt himself to be a member of this people understood, ‘As an individual human being, I am a transitory phenomenon, but there lives in me something that has an immediate connection with all the soul essence that has streamed down since the days of our progenitor, Abraham.'” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 10)
“It takes a certain kind of brain to express such faculties as Zarathustra possessed. That is, he had to be born into a body that had inherited the qualities making it an appropriate instrument for such faculties. … This perfectly adapted physical organization was the contribution of the ancient Hebrews to Christianity.” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 33)
“[T]he faculties having to do with reasoning not related to clairvoyance, with evaluating the world by measure, number and weight–faculties that aim not at seeing into the spiritual world but at understanding sensory phenomena–were first implanted by the spiritual world in the individuality known as Abraham or Abram. … Abraham’s mission, however, was not a teaching or method of clairvoyant perception but something bound to the brain. Thus, it could be transmitted to later generations only through physical inheritance. The mission given to Abraham depended on being transmitted physically from one generation to the next, that is, the perfected organization of Abraham’s brain had to be inherited by his descendants generation after generation.” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 36)
“The Hebrews were chosen to develop the faculties for observation of the outer world. Nevertheless, every new development contains also atavistic remnants of earlier things. That is why everything that was not purely in the blood and still recalled ancient clairvoyance had to be excluded for the sake of the transmission of the new outer-directed faculties. Thus, the Hebrews always had to exclude what came as an inheritance from other peoples.” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 41)
“It was the special faculty of the ancient Hebrews to turn what is inherited down through the generations into a more and more perfect instrument so that finally a body could be produced that could be the instrument for Christ who would incarnate in it. … They had to receive through external revelation even those things other peoples received through direct inspiration…Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and the Jews attained through external means the knowledge they needed about the spiritual worlds.” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 44)
“The Babylonian Captivity was the time when the astral body of the Hebrews developed, and what gives this astral body its impulse in the final fourteen generations of the forty-two was implanted into it then. That is why the Hebrews were led into the Babylonian Captivity where, six hundred years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was incarnated as the teacher in the Mystery schools of the Babylonians. There, the most prominent Hebrew leaders came in contact with Zarathas, the great teacher of that era. Zarathas joined them and became their teacher. From him the Hebrew leaders received the impulse that, in their last fourteen generations, prepared them for the birth of Jesus.” (Steiner, 1909, UH p. 46)
“[Jesus felt]: All the forces of soul which I believed had been bestowed upon me lead only to the realisation that in the evolution of the Jewish people there is no longer the capacity to reach the heights of Divine revelations.” (Steiner, 1913, FG p. 67)
“The fact that Jehovah could not free himself from the spirits he had evoked led to the transition of the Old Testament thinking into the atheistic science of the modern age. This in the field of social thinking has become marxism or something similar.” (Steiner, 1918, TCT pp. 32-33)
“Since, for the life between birth and death, what is connected with the breathing remains unconscious, the Jewish culture was a folk culture, not an individualized culture of humanity. It was a folk culture in which everything is related to the descent from a common tribal father. Jewish revelation is, in its essential nature, a revelation adapted to the Jewish people, because it takes account of what is acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only through an unconscious element, the breathing process.
“What is the result of this fact in our critical times? The result is that those who will not become adherents of the Christ wisdom that brings into the human being the other element, acquired during the life between birth and death apart from the breathing process, wish to continue in their relationship to the Jehovah wisdom and to have humanity established only on the basis of folk cultures. The present clamor in favor of an organization consisting of individuals from mere peoples is a retarded ahrimanic demand for the establishment of such a culture, in which all the peoples represent only folk cultures, that is, Old Testament cultures. The peoples in all parts of the world are to become like the Jewish Old Testament people. This is the demand of Woodrow Wilson.” (Steiner, 1918, TCT pp. 165-166)
“[T]here must gradually develop in humanity what is connected with the true Christ impulse, and what is related to the mere Jehovah impulse must be superseded.” (Steiner, 1918, TCT p. 167)
“Christ Jesus appeared amongst a people who worshipped Jahve or Jehovah, that Jehovah-God who is connected with all that is natural existence…Jahve is that God who can never, if man is connected with Him alone, give man his completeness…He does not give man the consciousness of his rebirth…So we see how modern humanity is led away and diverted from Christ Jesus for Whom there is no distinction of class, nation or race, but for Whom there is only a single humanity. We see how the thoughts and feelings of modern humanity have been led aside to that which has already been overcome by the birth of Jesus Christ…And if it was the *one* Jehovah that the Jews worshipped when Christ came, then the modern nations have returned to *many* Jehovahs…In a beautiful way does the Christmas tree lead us back to man’s origin; in an ugly and hateful way does the national Jehovah principle lead us back. In reality that which is only a Jehovah, through an unconscious lie, is often addressed as Christ, and the name of Christ is thus misused.” (Steiner, 1920, SNI pp. 4-5)
In *Invisible Africa*, a resource book on Africa for Waldorf teachers, a South African Anthroposophist links Judaism and the materialistic spirit Ahriman:
“By the third epoch, the races had become established with the one-sidedness which is still apparent today. As we previously suggested, the spiritual European consciousness soul aspirant (Aryan) is not tied to the one-sided racial political climate of our modern world whether for or against racialism; both miss the main issue.
“The Aryan can be found in any race, just as much as any race member can be found to have incarnated as an outward European. As we previously suggested, racial collectiveness for its own sake is not conducive to cultural development in our age. The world appears to be isolating us [South Africa], but in reality the opposite is true. We are being withdrawn to preserve what Europe can no longer do.
“The Jehovah Ahriman forms are casting their light over Europe even over the most protected of corners and individuals. The danger lies with individuals when the consciousness soul is flung back into its old moon astrality. Then wisdom is sought for wisdom’s sake and becomes to the dismay of their soul, enhanced information. The individual should seek the inner light of enquiry. But the social political sphere shows the easier path of moral indignation for matters outside, which the world media happily supply [sic].
“What we call the news media are pictures of the nervous system of the being referred to above (Jehovah Ahriman). They evoke emotional responses for matters that have no cosmic counterpart, thus trapping the individual more into a web of baleful light where even anarchy can appear artistic.” (Downer, 1987, p. 195)
A present-day Israeli Anthroposophist writes:
“The tragic karmic bonds that unite the three [peoples: Germans, Russians and Jews], when experienced in the light and warmth of the present Christ Revelation, reveals profound mysteries of the past, present and future destiny of the Christ impulse and the Ego development of humanity. (The Jews represent the past, the Germans the present, and the Russians the future of this impulse.)” (Ben Aharon, 1993, p. 53)
IV. References
Ben Aharon, Josaiah. The Spritual Event of the Twentieth Century: An Imagination: The Occult Significance of the 12 Years from 1933-45 in the Light of Spiritual Science. London: Temple Lodge, 1993.
Downer, Graham. “The South African Paleolithic Age.” Invisible Africa: A search for the Grail in Africa–Selected Essays. Kenilworth, Republic of South Africa: Novalis Press, 1987, p. 188.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York, New York University Press, 1992.
Picard, Hymen W.J. “Some Thoughts on Race Relations.” Invisible Africa: A search for the Grail in Africa–Selected Essays. Kenilworth, Republic of South Africa: Novalis Press, 1987.
Steiner, CM
Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. (1904) Trans. Karl E. Zimmer. Blauvelt, New York: Steinerbooks, 1987.
* Steiner, CML
Steiner, Rudolf. The Course of My Life. (1925) Trans. Olin D. Wannamaker. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1951.
Steiner, CRLA
Steiner, Rudolf. Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman. (1915) Trans. Peter Mollenhauer, Ph.D. Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1978.
* Steiner, CT-3
Steiner, Rudolf. Conferences with the Teachers of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart 1922 to 1923: Volume Three: Being the end of the Fourth Year. (1923) Trans. Pauline Wehrle. Forest Row, U.K.: Steiner Schools Fellowship Publications, 1988.
* Steiner, CT-4
Steiner, Rudolf. Conferences with the Teachers of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart 1923 to 1924: Volume Four: Being to the end of Dr. Steiner’s visits to the School. (1924) Trans. Pauline Wehrle. Forest Row, U.K.: Steiner Schools Fellowship Publications, 1989
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Steiner, Rudolf. The Gospel of St. John And Its Relation to the Other Gospels. (1909) Trans. Samuel and Loni Lockwood, rev. Maria St. Goar, ed. Stewart Easton. Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1982.
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Steiner, Rudolf. Health and Illness: Volume I. (1922) Trans. Maria St. Goar. Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1981.
* Steiner, KHW
Steiner, Rudolf. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. (1904) Trans. George Metaxa, revised by Henry B. and Lisa D. Monges. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1947.
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Steiner, Rudolf. The Karma of Untruthfulness: Volume One. (1916) Trans. Johanna Collis. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1988
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Steiner, Rudolf. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy. (1921) Trans. Maria St. Goar. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1987.
Steiner, SNI
Steiner, Rudolf. The Search for the new Isis the divine Sophia. (1920) Trans. not given. Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1983.
Steiner, SSFSF
Steiner, Rudolf. Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms. (1920) Trans. Maria St. Goar. Ed. Alan Howard. New York: Anthroposophic Press,1986.
* Steiner, T
Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. (1922) Trans. Henry B. Monges, Revised by Gilbert Church. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press, 1971.
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Steiner, Rudolf. The Challenge of the Times. (1918) Trans. Olin D. Wannamaker. Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1941 (undated edition post 1961)
Steiner, UH
Steiner, Rudolf. The Universal Human: Four Lectures given between 1909 and 1916 in Munich and Bern. (1909-1916) Trans. edited by Christopher Bamford and Sabine H. Seiler. Anthroposophic Press, 1990.
Wilkinson, Roy. Teaching History: The Ancient Civilizations; India; Persia; Egypt and Babylonia; The Fourth Cultural Epoch: Greece and Rome. Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 1992.
Wilkinson, Roy. Commentary on the Old Testament Stories. Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 1993.