A mysterious relationship

Since I'm the only reviewer of Peter Selg's "Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz", I'm going to be relatively kind. However, I admit that this little book really isn't my cup of tea. It's an in-house book for Steiner's followers, i.e. for Anthroposophists. Perhaps it's also directed at other claimants of the Rosicrucian mantle? Selg's message is that Steiner was the true spiritual heir of Christian Rosenkreutz, but the only pieces of evidence he amasses are Steiner's own statements and revelations.

The author claims that the future founder of Anthroposophy had two masters: Rosenkreutz and "Master Jesus". The former worked through Felix Koguzki (a.k.a. Felix Balde), an actual person Steiner encountered in his native Austria. Master Jesus approached Steiner in the guise of an unknown man. It should be noted that "Jesus" is distinct from "Christ" in Anthroposophical speculations. "Jesus" was the earthly personage (previously known as Zarathustra) who prepared an earthly body for the solar-spirit Christ, but apparently left it at the baptism in Jordan. In Steiner's version, Rosenkreutz is a reincarnation of the apostle John, who in turn is the same man as Lazarus. Another important personage has appeared successively as the Youth of Nain, Mani and Parzival. Selg also mentions the curious notion that Rosenkreutz sent Buddha to Mars in order to be crucified (or something to that effect). Apparently, it wasn't to save the Martians, however. Rather, human souls spend some time in "the Mars sphere" between incarnations, and this sphere had to be cleansed by the masters...

Well, I *did* say this wasn't my thing, didn't I?

More interesting is Selg's take on the relationship between Western and Eastern spirituality. On the one hand, Steiner broke with Theosophy and its Mahatmas in order to establish a Western esoteric stream centred on Christ (and, I suppose, Rosenkreutz). He seems to have regarded the Western stream as higher and more evolved than the Eastern ditto. On the other hand, both Mani and Rosenkreutz are really bridges between the East and the West. Mani was active in Persia, based his ideas on Gnosticism and regarded both Jesus and the Buddha as prophets and precursors to himself. Steiner claimed that Parzival had "sought the East". Rosenkreutz is also rumoured to have travelled in the Middle East and North Africa.

Of course, both the Grail knight and the knight of the Rose Cross are purely fictitious characters, but the interesting thing here is the perceived connection between two different streams of spirituality. The point of these endeavours, said Steiner, is to prepare the way for "a new teacher of Christianity" "whose mission it will be to penetrate Christianity more and more with the teachings of karma and reincarnation when the time is ripe for this". Steiner himself? I found this statement interesting, since it seems to indicate that Steiner was self-consciously aware of Anthroposophy being a combination of Christian and Hindu-Buddhist traits. Usually, it's simply portrayed as Western esotericism pure and simple, or Romanticism grown up. But then, Steiner's message seems to have been almost bizarrely brilliant in its complexity...

In the epilogue, Selg implies that Steiner might actually have been channelling both Master Jesus-Zarathustra and Christian Rosenkreutz! However, the author also concedes that we really know very little about Rudolf Steiner's special relationship with the occult teacher of the Middle Ages.

There, I suppose, we have to let the matter rest...