----- Original Message -----
From: anthranthroposophy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2004 9:58 PM
Subject: [anthroposophy] Fire Poltergeists
FIRE POLTERGEISTS RESUME RAMPAGE
IN SICILY
"Mayor Spinnato is sounding
desperate for an answer. 'Someone wrote to me saying the solution
was to sacrifice a black goat and collect its blood,' he said,
'At some point, that's going to start looking like a good idea.'"
End quote
So in looking for a scapegoat
people turn to the very black-magic-blood magic which was practiced
by Alistair Crowley in Klingsor country with the torturing and
killing of living beings. The appropriate attitude towards animals
is loving kindness the exemplar and template of which was St
Francis. Only so may the black magic sign of the goat be reversed.
The answer and the solution surely lies a lot nearer home, in
the human being him/herself; perhaps in our passion sullied human
blood. Rudolf Steiner gave the means for purifying the blood
in the Rose Cross Meditation. Bradford has written of the burning
Roses of George MacDonald's Curdie. If the Roses do not burn
on the Hearth of the Cross, elemental and magical fires may well
burn elsewhere and find energy in the electro magnetic field
fast forming around the earth. Salamanders have a special relationship
to the animal kingdom, arising out of that kingdom and working
with especial power for good where love arises between man and
animal. When the human 'I' works into the blood through such
a meditation, burning, cleansing and purifying it takes hold
of the soul and transforms it through the power of the Holy Spirit.
So that new faculties arose in Curdie when he plunged his hands
into the fire - an ability to discern true human or fallen animal
qualities in those he met. When the human 'I' selfishly turns
back, circling on itself it becomes the Ring of fallen power,
used for evil ends. It may be that our spiritual faculties are
not developed enough to be certain of the exact cause of such
mysterious fires, but we can make a few informed guesses in the
light of Anthroposophy and our own experiences. Can we, as humanity
at large really expect to go rampaging across the face of the
Earth, the Body of Christ, without the least reverence or sensitivity,
killing, exploiting and torturing human, animal, plant and mineral
in our unmitigated greed, sold for a few pieces of silver, selling
it to Ahriman to do with as he will without a backlash from the
elemental kingdom who must be working desperately to balance
what they can and heal what they may without the human being
as helpmeet, and where this is not possible, externalize what
otherwise would burn, consume and scar us on a soul level? Rudolf
Steiner once remarked upon our 'rudeness' to the elemental and
spiritual beings who surround and live alongside and indeed within
us, and whom we pass by and ignore as if they were not there.
Our rudeness they may forgive, as these beings, living in the
etheric world anointed and enlivened by Christ are mostly by
nature forgiving and ever ready to work and co-operate with us
where possible, even longing for our recognition and good will,
which would greatly magnify the effectiveness off their activity
for good. Our despoiling of their environment, not only the physical
but more importantly the astral and etheric atmosphere which
we pollute with our desires, passions and lies has consequences
that go far beyond their powers of kind forgiveness. Elementals,
pushed down into the sub-ethers, denied their passage to the
hierarchies through the portal of human consciousness, can turn
very nasty. They can be made into Orcs, to use what is now a
popular terminology.
Quote from 'Secret Fire - the Spiritual Vision of J R R Tolkien'
by Stratford Caldecott.
"Tolkien wrote a letter
to his son Christopher in 1944. Referring to the news of his
son's first solo flight with the RAF, so different from the silent
skimming of the birds that men dreamed of attaining when they
sought to fly, he remarks: "There is the tragedy and despair
of all machinery laid bare." "
Caldecott continues -
"Within the Lord of the
Rings, Isengard under the wizard Saruman illustrates the 'tragedy
and despair' of reliance on technology. In the modern world,
we have seen the devastating and dehumanizing effects of a purely
pragmatic approach to nature. The Romantic movement, from Blake
and Coleridge to Barfield and Tolkien, believed there must be
an alternative. Goethe even tried to lay the foundations for
it: he called it a 'science of qualities'. At the end of his
wonderful essay 'The Abolition of Man', CS Lewis writes of a
'regenerative science' of the future that 'would not even do
to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do
to man himself. When it explained, it would not explain away.
When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole.......'
Lewis here echoes Tolkien's concern with technology. He compares
Francis Bacon with Marlowe's Faustus. For modern science and
black magic alike the goal was power..... The magician's bargain
tells us the price of such power over the forces of nature: our
own souls. For says Lewis 'If man chooses to treat himself as
raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be
manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite,
that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners.'
The conquest of nature turns out to be our conquest by nature,
that is to say by our own desires or those of others; and the
master becomes, in the end, a puppet. In letter 131 Tolkien contrasts
the 'magic' (technology) of the Elves with that of the Enemy:
the goal of the former is Art, whereas the aim of the latter
is 'domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation'. The devices
of the elves are benign. They work with the grain of nature,
not against it. Tolkien is not opposed to technology per se,
but to the kind that issues from a certain mentality out of control.
The desire for power, he writes, leads to the machine (or Magic)
the use of our talents or devices to bulldoze other wills."
End quote from "Secret
Fire" the spiritual vision of JRR Tolkien by Stratford Caldecott
published by Darton Longman and Todd.
The author, Caldecott, is
a deeply committed Catholic, and writes for various Catholic
publications, and so has a certain stance or angle, (Interestingly
he leaves out a passing mention of Dr Steiner in the above quote
from Lewis) and in my view claims too much of Tolkien for Catholicism,
but the book does contain much that is of interest when brought
into relation with an Anthroposophical world view. Lewis could
not bring reincarnation into relation with Christianity, and
rejected Anthroposophy and so missed much, although he also saw
and knew much out of his own inner being. Tolkien, with his repeated
childhood dreams of the deluging of Atlantis, which he ascribed
to a 'racial memory' drew deeply on those very past lives in
the same way in which he admitted drawing on the early years
of his present life.
Quote from Tolkien
"One writes such a story
(Lord of the Rings) not out of the leaves of trees still to be
observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows
like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out
of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long been
forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much
selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal
compost heap; and my mould is evidently made largely of linguistic
matter"
end quote
It was also made largely of
a deep love of Nature and especially of trees, and it is typical
of the man that he uses such a wonderful example as the Cosmic
Compost Heap, with all its alchemical and starry processes and
its absolutely down to earth richness and necessity. As students
of anthroposophy, we know that the Earth shall be mechanized
and die, that the fallen Life Ether will be employed in a dark
technology that is still in its earliest stages. "Evil,"
said Rudolf Steiner "Is in its infancy" and so is its
technology. However an etheric 'elvish' technology must also
arise so that the Earth may reach its goal and harvest what will
be transformed into Jupiter. Rudolf Steiner always brings us
the means of countering, of balancing, of compensating rather
than fighting, and so we need not fear. Our power as individuals
and more especially as associations of free individuals is very
great.
Rudolf Steiner -
"Are human beings able
to help these elemental beings in some way or other? That is
the great question that was put by the Holy Rishis. Are we able
to release them? Yes, we can. For the deeds of man on earth are
nothing but the external expression of spiritual processes. Everything
we do here is also of importance for the spiritual world. Let
us consider the following. A man stands in front of a crystal,
a lump of gold or the like. He looks at it. What happens if a
person simply stares, simply Looks at some object by means of
his physical senses? A continual interplay arises between man
and the bewitched elemental being. That which is bewitched in
matter and man are in some way related to one another. Let us
assume, however, that he merely stares at the object so that
he only takes in what is impressed upon his eye. Something is
continually passing from these elementals into man, and it goes
on from morning until night. As we look out into the world, hosts
of elementals, who were, or who are continually being bewitched
into the processes of densification, are continually entering
into us from our surroundings. Now let us assume that such a
person, as he stares at an object, has not the slightest inclination
to reflect about what he sees, or to let the spirit of things
live in his soul. He takes the easy road; he goes through the
world but does not digest his experiences spiritually by means
of thoughts and feelings. He remains a mere spectator of the
physical, material world. In that case, the elemental beings
enter into him and remain there.They have gained nothing in the
world process and have merely transferred their seat from the
outer world into that of man. But now let us take a man who digests
his impressions spiritually by thinking about them, and forming
concepts about the underlying spiritual foundation of the world.
That is, a man who does not merely stare, but ponders over its
nayture, a man who feels the beauty of things and ennobles his
impressions. What does such a man do? As a result of his spiritual
activity he redeems the elemental being that streams towards
him from the outer world, thus raising it to its previous state.
He releases the elemental being from its enchantment. So through
our spiritual activity, we can release beings who are bewitched
and lead them back to their former condition, or we can imprison
them again in our inner being without any transformation having
taken place in them. Throughout the whole of man's life on earth,
elemental beings stream into him. It depends on him whether they
remain unchanged or whether he releases them. What happens to
elemental beings who have been released by man's activity? To
begin with, they too, inhabit man. Even those who have been released
dwell in man until he dies. When a person goes through the gate
of death, there is a distinction between those elemental beings
who merely entered into him and have not been led back to the
higher elements, and those who, through man's activity, have
been guided back to their former condition. Those who have not
been transformed have gained nothing by wandering from the outer
world into man; others are able to return to their former condition
after man's death. During life on earth man builds a cross roads
for elementals......What happens when a man looks at a material
object and fathoms its true nature so that the elemental being
is thereby released? Spiritually the reverse course is taken
from what occurred formerly. Whereas originally smoke arose out
of the fire, man now creates fire out of smoke spiritually. The
fire, however, is only released at his death. We can now understand
the profound spiritual meaning of ancient rituals of sacrifice
when considered in the light of the primeval, divine spiritual
science. Imagine the priest kindling the flame, and the rising
smoke, the object of the sacrifice, as it is accompanied upwards
by prayers. What really happened in such sacrifices? The priest
stood at the altar where the smoke was produced. There, where
the solid emerged out of the warmth, a spirit was bewitched,
but as a man accompanied the process with prayers, the spirit
went over into him and was released into the supersensible world
after his death."
end quote from The Spiritual
Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World - lecture
1 12/4/1909
Working with the various etheric
technologies which we have previously discussed is more than
ever essential, as is the moral healing and lifting of the soul
which can be effected through the study of Spiritual Science,
gifted to us for this time of need by the Christian Initiate
from the realm of the Divine Sophia.
Go gently, Jan