Saturday, September 8, 2018

Druids and Anthroposophists



"The Druids" is a collection of relatively short articles by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. Steiner discusses the Druids, the "Mysteries of Hibernia" and Celtic Christianity. As usual, his approach is non-scholarly. Steiner's real or imagined insights into ancient Celtic religion are based on his "spiritual science", or occult powers of clairvoyance and ability to read the so-called Akashic records. While the articles are relatively easy to read, they can't be properly understood without a working knowledge of Steiner's entire spiritual cosmology - a much harder nut to crack!

The two first articles, "The Druids at Penmaenmawr" and "The Sun Initiation of the Druid Priests and their Moon Science", deals most directly with the Druids, or rather with Steiner's view of this Celtic priesthood, whose real activities and ideas are lost to history. Steiner believes that the Druids are part of a phase in human evolution when clairvoyance was more common than today. The Druids could still see and comprehend the spirit-forces at work in nature and the universe. Steiner's worldview is animist, and he believes that various spirit-beings are literally responsible for everything from the growth of plants to the Ice Ages or storms. He even believes that the giants of Nordic mythology are real beings! The Druids, thanks to a "Sun initiation" into "Moon science", comprehended all this and used the polarities between constructive and destructive spirits to make medicine, etc. Somehow, I get the impression that Steiner is painting the ancient Celtic Druids as idealized, modern Anthroposophists!

However, he also says that the evolution of consciousness couldn't stop at the Druids, who were oblivious to the spiritual energies of the future ("Jupiter" in Steiner's convoluted terms). The next step in this evolution was the introduction of the mysteries of Odin or Wotan, which in Steiner's scenario came from north of the Black Sea. The mysteries of Wotan introduced the idea of death, a real death to which the Druids were oblivious (they simply held that everything transforms, and hence nothing dies). Even later, the Mystery of Golgotha showed not only that death is real, but also that there is a reality of resurrection. These themes are not expanded upon in detail, however.

In "The Mysteries of Ancient Ireland (Hibernia)", Steiner expounds on the supposed mystery religion of the Celts, claiming that it gave the initiates knowledge of both pre-existence and life after death. He even claims that the initiates had a spiritual vision of Christ, long before the actual incarnation of Christ in Palestine. Presumably, the mystery cult of Hibernia is therefore a substantial advancement on the basic animism of the original Druids. In "Celtic Christianity: The Heritage of the Druids", the author wraps up the story by claiming that the Celts knew about Christ spiritually before mankind got to know him physically in Palestine, and that Celtic Christianity is therefore a logical continuation of the Druids and the Hibernian mysteries. Not only that, the ancient Celts saw the passion of Jesus in the form of spiritual visions (or "pictures" - sic) when it actually occurred in Palestine. Therefore, Ireland is one of the most important regions in the world, spiritually speaking.

"The Druids" could be of some interest to those studying modern attempts to reconstruct the ancient religion of the Celts, and perhaps also to true believers in such projects. However, it only skims the surface of the vast and often unwieldy worldview of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy.

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