Steiner on a mission

“The Mission of the Folk-Souls in relation to Teutonic Mythology” is a collection of lectures by Rudolf Steiner given in Christiania (Oslo), the national capital of Norway. The book is often used by critics of Anthroposophy to prove that Steiner was a racist and White supremacist. While Steiner does take an “essentialist” view of the current races of man, and claims that the Germanic and Slav nations are the most advanced in terms of spiritual evolution, his full view of race and nation are complex. They hardly fit the standard racist or nationalist discourses.

Thus, Steiner claims that races didn't exist on Atlantis, nor will they exist in the future. He believes that all humans must emancipate themselves from the influence of their Folk Souls at a certain stage of spiritual development. He also believes that racial diversity is something positive under present circumstances and has an obviously respect for Indian civilization. Steiner notoriously supported Germany during World War I, but in 1910 (when these lectures were given), he speaks positively about the British Empire and its Folk Soul, claiming that the British are spreading parliamentary democracy around the world! It's also interesting to note that Steiner, often accused of being a German nationalist, considered the Slavs to represent the next and higher stage of spiritual evolution. He speaks especially highly of Russian mystic Soloviev.

But yes, the lectures also contain ideas many will consider Euro-centric or Germanic-centric. Europeans represent “the Jupiter forces”, and “Jupiter” is the name of the next evolutionary stage of Earth. Europeans, Germanic Europeans in particular, are developing the ego and the Consciousness Soul, something necessary for the next stage of evolution. Steiner believes that “Teutonic” (Germanic, particularly Norse) mythology contain a lot of secret esoteric codes which, properly interpreted, yield a message similar to that of Anthroposophy. For instance, Thor is the god who gave humans an ego, Loki is Lucifer, the murder of Baldur by Hödur symbolizes the end of the old clairvoyance, the Fenris Wolf is Ahriman, and so on. Steiner is particularly fond of Vidar, the god who eventually defeats Fenris. In other texts, Steiner associate Vidar with the second coming of Christ.

Readers of Steiner's lectures will be struck by several things. One is the animistic worldview. Rather than seeing humans as products of various cosmic-spiritual forces, Steiner sees them as products of actual, personified spirits (he calls them angels). At one point, he even claims that solar eclipses are caused by a literal Fenris Wolf chasing and swallowing the sun! Of course, only clairvoyants can see what is really going on at the cosmic backstage… Another typical Steiner trait is the sheer complexity of his worldview, with a long list of different angelic beings overseeing human evolution, “abnormal spirits” who nevertheless plays a positive role, various historical epochs recapitulating each other in bewildering fashion, speculations about lost continents such as Atlantis and Lemuria, etc. This leads us to the third item I wish to draw attention to: the complete lack of external evidence for most of Steiner's claims. To take just one example, how do we know that one of the seven Elohim from the Sun, Jahve, entered the Moon? The founder of Anthroposophy does claim that all his statements can be tested and independently verified by other spiritual researchers, but in practice Steiner has always been the prophet or guru of the movement he founded. Personally, I was struck by the contradiction between the “Western” claim that individuality or individualism is something positive, and the (arguably) more collectivist claim that the Slav spirit is the next stage of our evolutionary sojourn.

“The Mission of the Folk Souls” may be too in house for most people, but students of esoteric lore might perhaps find its approach interesting, even if they eventually decide to disagree with it. Hence, I give this somewhat curious tome three stars.