Thomas Vaughan. Steiner emphasizes the fact that man urgently needs to come into harmony with the world, himself and the universe through a spiritual science specifically tailored to his nature. Anthroposophy is an attempt to create such a science.
ANTI-CHRISTIAN STRATEGIES — “My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years,” said Abraham Lincoln a century and a half ago. “What are the fruits of Christianity? Bigotry, superstition and persecution,” said president James Madison nearly two centuries ago. “For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm,” said Voltaire 220-odd years ago. Quotations of this sort by the wisest leaders and shapers, extending as they do back through the millennia, should serve as a skull and crossbones over the door of the church.
Xtianity, obviously, is the worst of all worlds (with the possible exception of Islam). On the one hand, it exhorts its believers to live vicariously, to reach for nothing, inasmuch as Christ has done all the work of redemption for them. In this way it thoroughly discourages individualism, especially in its most creative aspects. On the other hand, it pledges salvation to the dregs of mankind — the lowest ranks of morality — to the mindless and the vicious. Thus it espouses egoism at the cheapest level.
Arrogant Xtians are fond of saying, “You can’t have it both ways.” By that they mean that you can’t accept the interconnectedness of everything and at the same time believe in the separation of the individual. But Xtianity, founded as it is on the veneration of stupidity, has always confused paradox with inconsistency.
The wise man leans neither on belief nor on non-belief. The whole issue of God/Not-God is unnecessarily dichotomous, as is our analysis of morality/immorality. The Either-Or world is dangerous. Indeed, it is so dangerous, that even to proceed in a line midway between this Scylla and Charybdis is to hem oneself in by unwanted limitations. “God” is a word that has yet to be defined and even the question of divine singularity vs. plurality is debatable. It is a common conceit that Monotheism is a step forward from Polytheism and one which some serious metaphysicians are finally beginning to deplore. The Initiate may declare that there is but one “God,” but he means that in a quite different sense from the common notion of exclusivity.
Monotheism (see MONOLATRY) always leads to monolithism. We are one another only by differing from one another. It is uniqueness that makes us “divine.” It is quite possible to deny the existence of “God” without elevating man (in his present condition) to apotheosis). There is, for example, the teaching of Pantheism, in which all plants, animals and, in fact, matter itself, are all equally God. This is also “one” God.
Anti-christians are admittedly defensive about “Salvation through Christ.” First of all, non-Christians insist, there can be no salvation without crucifixion (that is, one’s own sacrificial death, not that of some 2000 year old personage of legend) and second, Christ is a type of supraconsciousness already potential, but undeveloped, in all men and women. It must not be confused with the crazed folk hero invented by manic evangelism nor with the self-pitying figures depicted in stained glass windows. The Christ level of consciousness is, in fact, certainly not available to the average, plastic-coated, postmodern illiterate, whose vision scarcely extends beyond that of an insect and whose tenacity is no firmer than a worm’s pull. Therefore, to make salvation available to all men on a believe-as-you-go basis, is idiotic And finally, the Galilean-Mode is only one of many modes of consciousness — most of which are a lot more interesting. (See 666.)
ANTIMATICS — Fanciful science invented by Lem, with propositions such as: “No number is equal to itself” and “There is no such thing as ‘Nothing’.”
ANTI-OCCULT STRATEGIES — Because of Hitler’s occult interests, anti-occultists have tried time and again to establish that all those from whom he adapted his twisted ideas were themselves fascist and racist. Similarly, in the 1930’s everyone was tagged with either the Communist or Fascist label, whether deservedly or not. Attempts to link Hitler to the sympathies of Aleister Crowley, HPB, Jung and the rest are constantly being forced upon gullible and confused people. The fact is, the Nazis used anyone and anything they could to gain power, as do all villains. Accusations against the occult, however, invariably come down not to anti-semitic practices, but, on the contrary, to a tendency to question Christian authority. Even Nietzsche, the 3rd Reich’s most esteemed philosopher, though a strong enemy, it turns out, of the Catholic Church, was deeply opposed to Anti-Semitism.
Jung’s essay in 1936 on Wotan is often cited in which he simply stated that the God of the German people was not Jesus, but Wotan. That the Nazis could take inspiration from that is hardly Jung’s fault as he merely pointed out the obvious. Evil imagination can take what it needs from any source and we might with far more Justification have accused the Vatican of Pro-Fascist tendencies. The charge against Mme. Blavatsky is equally irresponsible. A careful scrutiny of her writings will reveal a deep and abiding affection for the Jews, along with an equally strong antipathy for Xtianity. Attempts to link Blavatsky to “Master Race” ideas would seem to fare somewhat better, until we learn that she considered the Aryan, Semitic and Turanian branches to have derived from a common pre-Abrahamic source. And when she speaks of races, she really refers to the reincarnated human race itself. It is true that Gurdjieff spent the war in Paris and survived the German occupation, but he did not survive through collaboration and he undoubtedly put himself in great danger by devoting his time caring for elderly, impoverished refugees. As for Crowley, the fact that Mussolini shut down his Cefalu Lodge and that the German Gestapo put his Golden Dawn Society on the “Enemies of the Reich” list speaks for itself.
ANUBIS — The dog or jackal-headed Egyptian God who served as guide to the underworld and weigher of the dead man’s heart for its truthfulness.
APO PANTOS KAKODAIMONOS — Greek banishing mantram (“Depart from me all evil demons!”).
APOCALYPSE — We are aware that the Muslims insist that there can be no Universal Eschatonic Implosion until the world has endured “40 years of rain.” We would remind them that we have endured more than forty years of the “rain” of nuclear radiation and pollution. Aztec prophecies place the end of the world in the 20th Century. The Great Pyramid is said to contain, in its mystical measurements, similar predictions in stone of which the last is Sept. 17, 2001 AD. 2000 is commonly believed by Western Civilization to be the year of the Eschaton. The date given by Nostradamus, on the other hand, is slightly pre-millennnial, 1999. This is just 13 years prior to the end of the great 160,000-year Mayan Cycle and Terence McKenna’s Timescape Zero (based on Ancient Chinese cycles), both at 2012 C.E. And although many others cite 2020, there are interesting reasons for seizing on 1999.
First of all, there is a scientific reason. As meteorologists have noted, the 11-year sunspot cycles which serve to heat the earth, have not only been increasing in severity, they have progressively exacerbated the greenhouse effect. This resulted, during the drought of 1988, in the first of the summer-long record-breaking temperatures. In ’99 the sunspot activity could well have a cataclysmic effect.
Metaphysically, however, there are more compelling reasons. Since the exact interface between the end of the Christan Aeon of Pisces and the beginning of the Humanist Aeon of Aquarius is impossible to pinpoint, we are thrown back on sheer numerology. 1+9+9+9 = 28 = 2+8 = 10, numerologically and Pythagoras-wise ten is the number of perfect completion. In other words 1999 is the natural completion of the Aeon, whereas 2000 is simply a thousandfold manifestation of the Duality, Two — that epitome of evil amongst numbers. (From the cosmic point of view, the end of the world isn’t necessarily evil.) The date, January 16, 1999 adds up to 9. That date is also Julian Day number 2,451,195, which adds up to 9 as well. Ironically enough, most computer projections of disaster, based on current ecological trends, ozone levels, demographic patterns, etc., predict the peak somewhere between January, 1999 and September, 2013 — by which time the populaton of the earth will be nine billion and the “end” of the human yardstick on this planet will have come.
And, although the Bible stipulates that “no man knoweth the day or the hour” of the last day,