A journey to the center of Anthroposophy

Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian mystic and occultist, was the founder of Anthroposophy, a spiritual movement with a family likeness to Theosophy, yet very different in many ways. For instance, Steiner emphasized the role of Jesus and the Christ Being, while laying claim to the Rosicrucian mantle. The Theosophists were more into India and Tibet (or whatever they understood of it). A similarity between the two movements is the “evolutionary” perspective, where the entire cosmos is slowly evolving towards higher degrees of spirituality and perfection.

Rudolf Steiner's literary output was enormous, and “The Interior of the Earth” is one of probably hundreds of books containing his speculations on various issues. It contains excerpts from Steiner's writings and speeches on the interior of the Earth, plus two pieces on the same subject by his followers. The material in this slim volume is very strange, and even the editor admits that it might sound like science fiction!

Steiner gives an “esoteric” interpretation of the subterranean spheres, claiming that large parts of the Earth's interior consist of astral substance, passionate emotions or pure evil. His descriptions of the various layers of our planet's core layers doesn't seem entirely consistent, and he admits that it's exceedingly difficult for clairvoyants to penetrate the subterranean spheres. An interesting admission from a person whose entire spiritual-religious system is based on such clairvoyance! It's not clear to me how the interior of a physical planet can have well-defined spiritual, astral or emotional layers neatly packed on top of each other? Difficult, indeed.

To simplify Steiner's scenario somewhat, the interior of the Earth encompass many negative or evil layers, which are the domains of Ahriman, a demon depicted as a greenish devil in Steiner's mystery plays. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are caused by karmic connections. Even innocent people can be killed by such karmic-induced cataclysms, since they might be connected to the negative karma of an entire group, of humanity as a whole, or of the spiritual hierarchies. At one point, Steiner claims that people killed by “natural” disasters of this kind will be reborn as very spiritual people. At another point, he rather suggests that earthquakes are a karmic punishment for excessive materialism – that's why there were so few of them during the High Middle Ages (sic).

Each layer of the Earth corresponds to a specific “station of the Cross” or event during Christ's passion. The task of Jesus Christ was to redeem the Earth itself. These evolutionary-spiritual impulses will be brought to fruition in a distant future, when humanity manages to redeem itself and hence redeem the entire Earth, extinguishing the evil at its core…

I'm not sure how to rate this extreme material, but somewhat provocatively, I decided to give it, ahem, five stars. :-0

This is a journey to the center of Anthroposophy.