Tomberg and Anthroposophy

[AshvinP]

It doesn't seem like there is much that you caution Rodriel about anymore, in the middle of this seemingly nuanced, but actually compounded, and ultimately radical veering you have recently undertaken. For me, it’s evident how this escalating indulgence to an indispensable role of the Church resounds strongly with your older self, the one which didn’t yet know PoF, according to your descriptions of it. Yet, the matter is, at its bare core, so limpid. Steiner has demonstrated through his own life how it is now possible for every normally constituted human soul to deeply know Christ regardless of any connection whatsoever with the institution of the Church. His upbringing and education were not in the least Catholic, but scientific. And he arrived at the living Christ by the willful development of his soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing alone. This is the powerful novelty, the gift evolution has granted humanity with, and the path of freedom that everyone is tasked with emulating today.

Any workarounds aiming at discarding this truth - no matter how much infused with subtleties, nuances, half-inversions of full inversions, and the like, disparage the gift of the Hierarchies, and mortify human potential itself. The Church is, at the very least, irrelevant to the understanding and accomplishment of the task that lies before us. Christ addresses each of us directly. This is reality, not all the disguised speculations about the role of the Church. The Church is irrelevant today, no middleman makes any sense anymore. And the spectacle on this thread, the arcanic approaches, the subtle reversed interpretations of dogma and symbols that “we must understand” and “we need to grasp", is no poetry to my ears, but rather borders on indecency, in its retrograde effect of blurring the truth and the task which in this very moment strives to be kept alive within human hearts and minds.

I'm sorry, but this is exactly the fanaticism and absolutization that I was referring to above, which carries a much greater threat of fragmenting and dampening the Impulse than anything the Church can do right now. At the end of the day, the 'evil Catholics' who are working from the background to cleverly trick us and divert the Impulse remains completely hypothetical, while the threat of 'militant Anthroposophy' is unfolding before our eyes. Conclusions about the Church are sought as ends in themselves, which means the thinking process has rigidified and has lost interest in patiently orienting to the subtle aspects of its evolution. This is exactly what the adversarial forces wish for, more than anything else. The conspiracy theories about the RCC taking over the world are often smokescreens for this much more subtle dampening of the Impulse.

During the unspeakable horrors of WWII, the Church was more relevant than ever for many souls, while the militant Anthroposophists who had declared the Church irrelevant faded into the background and were of little use. They could only sit by and watch it happen, and later try to fit it into their narrative of "progress". This attitude of superiority plays a huge role in making many esotericists fundamentally incapable of strengthening the Impulse in a way that can translate across a wider spectrum of collective life. It is the opposite of how the living Christ should be experienced as addressing us and the World. If we want a better expression of that, we could contemplate the following from Salman, who is extremely nuanced in his perspective on VT and the 'Catholic project':


"With his Tarot book, Tomberg gave a new Christian direction to French Hermeticism. For many years, the book did not have a noticeable influence in the Catholic church. (however, there is a photo of Pope John Paul II showing on his desk the Herder edition of Meditations, for which Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote an introduction). But that seems now to be changing more and more. Contemporary Catholics have come to give credence to Tomberg's view that the church needs the esoteric "dimension of depth" to keep stimulating its psychic and spiritual development. After all, ever since the close of the Middle Ages, we have lived in the epoch of the Consciousness soul, the epoch in which becoming free persons is the theme. Both Tomberg's articles and writings from his Anthroposophical days, and the wisdom of his Meditations and later works can support the development of the Consciousness soul. Meditations amounts to a school of Christian Hermetic-Platonism in which we can develop our imaginative, inspirative, and intuitive consciousness." (Harrie Salman)

[Federica]

It doesn't seem like there is much that you caution Rodriel about anymore, in the middle of this seemingly nuanced, but actually compounded, and ultimately radical veering you have recently undertaken. For me, it’s evident how this escalating indulgence to an indispensable role of the Church resounds strongly with your older self, the one which didn’t yet know PoF, according to your descriptions of it. Yet, the matter is, at its bare core, so limpid. Steiner has demonstrated through his own life how it is now possible for every normally constituted human soul to deeply know Christ regardless of any connection whatsoever with the institution of the Church. His upbringing and education were not in the least Catholic, but scientific. And he arrived at the living Christ by the willful development of his soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing alone. This is the powerful novelty, the gift evolution has granted humanity with, and the path of freedom that everyone is tasked with emulating today.

Any workarounds aiming at discarding this truth - no matter how much infused with subtleties, nuances, half-inversions of full inversions, and the like, disparage the gift of the Hierarchies, and mortify human potential itself. The Church is, at the very least, irrelevant to the understanding and accomplishment of the task that lies before us. Christ addresses each of us directly. This is reality, not all the disguised speculations about the role of the Church. The Church is irrelevant today, no middleman makes any sense anymore. And the spectacle on this thread, the arcanic approaches, the subtle reversed interpretations of dogma and symbols that “we must understand” and “we need to grasp", is no poetry to my ears, but rather borders on indecency, in its retrograde effect of blurring the truth and the task which in this very moment strives to be kept alive within human hearts and minds.

I'm sorry, but this is exactly the fanaticism and absolutization that I was referring to above, which carries a much greater threat of fragmenting and dampening the Impulse than anything the Church can do right now. At the end of the day, the 'evil Catholics' who are working from the background to cleverly trick us and divert the Impulse remains completely hypothetical, while the threat of 'militant Anthroposophy' is unfolding before our eyes. Conclusions about the Church are sought as ends in themselves, which means the thinking process has rigidified and has lost interest in patiently orienting to the subtle aspects of its evolution. This is exactly what the adversarial forces wish for, more than anything else. The conspiracy theories about the RCC taking over the world are often smokescreens for this much more subtle dampening of the Impulse.

During the unspeakable horrors of WWII, the Church was more relevant than ever for many souls, while the militant Anthroposophists who had declared the Church irrelevant faded into the background and were of little use. They could only sit by and watch it happen, and later try to fit it into their narrative of "progress". This attitude of superiority plays a huge role in making many esotericists fundamentally incapable of strengthening the Impulse in a way that can translate across a wider spectrum of collective life. It is the opposite of how the living Christ should be experienced as addressing us and the World. If we want a better expression of that, we could contemplate the following from Salman, who is extremely nuanced in his perspective on VT and the 'Catholic project':


"With his Tarot book, Tomberg gave a new Christian direction to French Hermeticism. For many years, the book did not have a noticeable influence in the Catholic church. (however, there is a photo of Pope John Paul II showing on his desk the Herder edition of Meditations, for which Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote an introduction). But that seems now to be changing more and more. Contemporary Catholics have come to give credence to Tomberg's view that the church needs the esoteric "dimension of depth" to keep stimulating its psychic and spiritual development. After all, ever since the close of the Middle Ages, we have lived in the epoch of the Consciousness soul, the epoch in which becoming free persons is the theme. Both Tomberg's articles and writings from his Anthroposophical days, and the wisdom of his Meditations and later works can support the development of the Consciousness soul. Meditations amounts to a school of Christian Hermetic-Platonism in which we can develop our imaginative, inspirative, and intuitive consciousness." (Harrie Salman)

You have not read what I wrote, Ashvin. There is no need to see the RCC as evil, as I wrote. It is simply irrelevant (as the misguided Anthroposophical Society also is). I am no defender of the Anthroposophical Society, as opposed to the Church, and you already know this very weell, don't you. The RCC has been made irrelevant by the limpid facts we all have before our eyes. Every normally constituted human being has the potential to know Christ directly today. This is the reality I am pointing to. So please do not distort what I've expressed. That such a distortion is spelled out in your post - again and again attention is directed at the Church rather that at the truth of the evolved human potential - is but a confirmation of the blinding and missguiding/missguided indulgence I have pointed to. You are literally obnubilated by the Church (and the beings who sustain it).

[AshvinP]

You have not read what I wrote, Ashvin. There is no need to see the RCC as evil, as I wrote. It is simply irrelevant (as the misguided Anthroposophical Society also is). I am no defender of the Anthroposophical Society, as opposed to the Church, and you already know this very weell, don't you. The RCC has been made irrelevant by the limpid facts we all have before our eyes. Every normally constituted human being has the potential to know Christ directly today. This is the reality I am pointing to. So please do not distort what I've expressed. That such a distortion is spelled out in your post - again and again attention is directed at the Church rather that at the truth of the evolved human potential - is but a confirmation of the blinding and missguiding/missguided indulgence I have pointed to. You are literally obnubilated by the Church (and the beings who sustain it).

Alright, Federica, I won't insist that you have characterized the RCC as evil, only "irrelevant", which is equally out of touch with the facts and prideful, in my view.

What's interesting to me is that the 'truth of the evolved human potential' and the 'potential to know Christ directly today', is exactly what I have been trying to convey to you on other threads and which you were often arguing with me about. For example,


"I agree, these are three distinct phases: preliminary, HHU, and clairvoyance. And I too remember how often Steiner refers audiences to his books. Yes, the preliminary phase implies the risk that the intellect never steps aside. But without it, there is simply nothing to contextualize HHU, to allow it to surge. I think it's necessary to play with fire in these times."


If you think about this carefully, you will see how it is very much the same as the Church being needed to maintain the sepal health of the intellectual soul, except transferred to Anthroposophical communities. When I pushed back on this stance with references to the truth of the evolved human potential, as we can experience that potential in our own imaginative process, you were being equally as dismissive and argumentative as you are being now. Everything I was saying then was equally irrelevant, misguided, indulgent, and so on. So, I'm sorry, I can't take your statements of me being 'obnubilated by the Church' and backwards beings too seriously, as statements made in good faith, out of even the slightest attempt to understand the perspective from which Rodriel or I am speaking.

[Federica]

You have not read what I wrote, Ashvin. There is no need to see the RCC as evil, as I wrote. It is simply irrelevant (as the misguided Anthroposophical Society also is). I am no defender of the Anthroposophical Society, as opposed to the Church, and you already know this very weell, don't you. The RCC has been made irrelevant by the limpid facts we all have before our eyes. Every normally constituted human being has the potential to know Christ directly today. This is the reality I am pointing to. So please do not distort what I've expressed. That such a distortion is spelled out in your post - again and again attention is directed at the Church rather that at the truth of the evolved human potential - is but a confirmation of the blinding and missguiding/missguided indulgence I have pointed to. You are literally obnubilated by the Church (and the beings who sustain it).

Alright, Federica, I won't insist that you have characterized the RCC as evil, only "irrelevant", which is equally out of touch with the facts and prideful, in my view.

What's interesting to me is that the 'truth of the evolved human potential' and the 'potential to know Christ directly today', is exactly what I have been trying to convey to you on other threads and which you were often arguing with me about. For example,


"I agree, these are three distinct phases: preliminary, HHU, and clairvoyance. And I too remember how often Steiner refers audiences to his books. Yes, the preliminary phase implies the risk that the intellect never steps aside. But without it, there is simply nothing to contextualize HHU, to allow it to surge. I think it's necessary to play with fire in these times."


If you think about this carefully, you will see how it is very much the same as the Church being needed to maintain the sepal health of the intellectual soul, except transferred to Anthroposophical communities. When I pushed back on this stance with references to the truth of the evolved human potential, as we can experience that potential in our own imaginative process, you were being equally as dismissive and argumentative as you are being now. Everything I was saying then was equally irrelevant, misguided, indulgent, and so on. So, I'm sorry, I can't take your statements of me being 'obnubilated by the Church' and backwards beings too seriously, as statements made in good faith, out of even the slightest attempt to understand the perspective from which Rodriel or I am speaking.

Again, you change the game. Sure I have indicated the evil sides of the Church before, but my post today, as I said, is to point to the bare core of the question. Which is that we don't even need to talk about what the Church is or is not. And how evil it is. Because this is irrelevant, ultimately. It distracts from the truth that Steiner has now brought to the forefront, of the possibility for every human being to come to know reality directly, as he did.

[AshvinP]

Again, you change the game. Sure I have indicated the evil sides of the Church before, but my post today, as I said, is to point to the bare core of the question. Which is that we don't even need to talk about what the Church is or is not. And how evil it is. Because this is irrelevant, ultimately. It distracts from the truth that Steiner has now brought to the forefront, of the possibility for every human being to come to know reality directly, as he did.

Obviously, the question to explore in this thread has revolved around how the Church and VT fit into this possibility of knowing reality directly. Now, if your position has become to mystically erase all details of this topic as irrelevant, so there is nothing left for us to think through, only monolithic opinions to rest satisfied with, then I must reiterate that this stance is exactly what prevents souls from knowing reality directly in our time. It's not the Church, it's not VT, it's not the Anthroposophical Society, or anything else... it's this, which we are seeing right now.

[Federica]

Again, you change the game. Sure I have indicated the evil sides of the Church before, but my post today, as I said, is to point to the bare core of the question. Which is that we don't even need to talk about what the Church is or is not. And how evil it is. Because this is irrelevant, ultimately. It distracts from the truth that Steiner has now brought to the forefront, of the possibility for every human being to come to know reality directly, as he did.

Obviously, the question to explore in this thread has revolved around how the Church and VT fit into this possibility of knowing reality directly. Now, if your position has become to mystically erase all details of this topic as irrelevant, so there is nothing left for us to think through, only monolithic opinions to rest satisfied with, then I must reiterate that this stance is exactly what prevents souls from knowing reality directly in our time. It's not the Church, it's not VT, it's not the Anthroposophical Society, or anything else... it's this, which we are seeing right now.

Please note that I find myself completely in line with what Cleric has posted in this thread. Surely - despite your emerging distancing from his views - you wouldn't call his posts monolithic, mystical, etc, would you? As I see it, in my initial post today I have said nothing that was not principally there in Cleric's posts in this thread. The bare core of the question is that one. Only the vocabulary is different. The RCC is irrelevant. Not absolutely irrelevant, of course. But irrelevant to the purpose of knowing the living Christ for man. Not needed - in Steiner's words. Or in Cleric's words: our allegiance is first and foremost to the Living Christ within us. The Church is secondary.

[AshvinP]

Again, you change the game. Sure I have indicated the evil sides of the Church before, but my post today, as I said, is to point to the bare core of the question. Which is that we don't even need to talk about what the Church is or is not. And how evil it is. Because this is irrelevant, ultimately. It distracts from the truth that Steiner has now brought to the forefront, of the possibility for every human being to come to know reality directly, as he did.

Obviously, the question to explore in this thread has revolved around how the Church and VT fit into this possibility of knowing reality directly. Now, if your position has become to mystically erase all details of this topic as irrelevant, so there is nothing left for us to think through, only monolithic opinions to rest satisfied with, then I must reiterate that this stance is exactly what prevents souls from knowing reality directly in our time. It's not the Church, it's not VT, it's not the Anthroposophical Society, or anything else... it's this, which we are seeing right now.

Please note that I find myself completely in line with what Cleric has posted in this thread. Surely - despite your emerging distancing from his views - you wouldn't call his posts monolithic, mystical, etc, would you? As I see it, in my initial post today I have said nothing that was not principally there in Cleric's posts in this thread. The bare core of the question is that one. Only the vocabulary is different. The RCC is irrelevant. Not absolutely irrelevant, of course. But irrelevant to the purpose of knowing the living Christ for man. Not needed - in Steiner's words. Or in Cleric's words: our allegiance is first and foremost to the Living Christ within us. The Church is secondary.

You may see it that way, but I think that Cleric's criticism applies equally (if not more) to your current version of Anthroposophy as it does to the Catholic project. Your interpretation of Steiner's words has become the unquestionable ambassador of the 'Living Christ'. That is what I tried to point out in my post before, but it will be difficult to see that if everything I write is axiomatically deemed irrelevant. This is a huge danger and obstacle for those who truly seek the Living Christ. It is certainly problematic to unconditionally submit one's soul life and spiritual seeking to the trellis of the Church and remain comfortable with that, but it is even more problematic to do the same thing with "Steiner's words" unconsciously and imagine that we are 'free spirits', as is so common now.

Likewise, we would never hear the words "we don't even need to talk about what the Church is or is not" exiting Steiner's lips, in terms of understanding higher realities. Instead, we find lecture upon lecture exploring the spiritual foundations of the Church cult and dogma, how they all point to the concrete course of life across the threshold. These are not optional, secondary details that we can brush by or ignore if we want to have any living orientation to the Christ being in recent history, including what he is still doing in the here and now. I'm not sure if there is even any point adding more quotes, but here is an interesting one:


"The concept of the seven sacraments is certainly not arbitrary. What is arbitrary is to limit these seven sacraments to two. This happened at a time when people no longer had a feeling for the inner numerical constitution of the world. It is these things, of course, that make truly serious Catholic priests, especially those in religious orders, such opponents of Protestantism. They all consider it to be a form of rationalism, something that knows nothing. There are genuine spiritualized natures among the clergy – the Jesuits, aren't they, they are prepared – I found one among the clergy of Monte Cassino, Father Storkeman, with whom I also spoke about Dionysius the Areopagite, who showed me the altar where he usually says mass. He spoke to me about his feelings at mass, and you could see that it had nothing to do with the usual confession of the Catholic Church.

And another time, in Venice, there was a patriarch who was a terrible fellow. Another, a younger cleric, preached, and I could see occultly that the one who had preached was truly spiritualized. The sermon was also really very fine. It is precisely through the ceremonial that individuals who stand out show themselves. I also saw one read the mass on the lower ground floor [of a church] in Naples, where I could really see the transubstantiation that underlies the Catholic transformation. It is actually the case that when transubstantiation is performed by a real priest, the host acquires an aura. Now, you may believe that or not, I can only relate it.

There is no need to hold back [saying this]: there is an inner reality to the cult, that is undoubtedly the case. You can see the damage in Catholicism when you see what it has been, and what was lost in the rationalist period."

[Cleric]

So I guess I would ask you this question: do you think it is possible currently for souls to pass directly from Sentient Soul life to moral imagination? Because that is what you seem to be suggesting with your images. Or do you perhaps suggest that the Michael community on its own is sufficient to provide the necessary Intellectual Soul development, such that the Peters of the world will be duly tended to?

On the first: no. On the second, it really depends on what you mean by the Michael community. I would say that in a deeper sense, as we move forward in time, only those who have a true living understanding of reality will be able to help others in the proper way. And by this, I don't mean formal members of the anthroposophical society. I truly mean people who are awakened and alive within the depth, flow-centric axis of reality. Otherwise, it will be the blind leading the blind.

Here's another example of what I mean when I say that the times are changing and the cave is not the same cave as a thousand years ago. The Santa figure is an example of bad pedagogy. In fact, it almost seems as designed to be an initiation into materialism. When the child discovers that it has all been a lie, it is only one of the instances (another is religion, for example) where the imagination is gradually constricted to the area of cold facts and struggle for survival. On the other hand, we know how much Wisdom is contained in the old legends and fairy tales. They also contain fantastic images of creatures and worlds, but they can nevertheless be grown with. They can be understood at different levels, and when the child grows up, it doesn't feel that it has been lied, but that a certain language has been used that clothed reality in imaginative pictures.

When speaking about the Church dogma, we've been mentioning mainly reincarnation, but the vision for the Second Coming is also a matter of concern. I know far less about Catholicism than you, and I'll be happy to hear your firsthand view, but from what I'm familiar with, the Coming is indeed expected as an Event - sudden, singular, universal. Something 'objective', that will be there for all to see. Now, this may have been an appropriate image until now, but in our materialistic age, it becomes a serious hindrance. Let's leave aside its sudden and universal nature (which is enough of a problem) and consider how it is taken in a very sensory-like way (even though it is expected that the whole world will be transmuted together with the event, thus everything will probably be more spiritual). But even more importantly, such a way of grasping things secretly shapes how the soul relates to the Christ, how it conceives of him. When we expect the Savior to manifest in his glory, as something that every eye can see, it is habitually understood (thanks to materialistic inertia) that He is there, in front of us, we see him in his reality. For people who have an esoteric grasp on the matters, it is obvious that one can never find their true concentric relation with Christ's I-ness when they expect his full reality as a being over there.

In my view, this is an example of pedagogy that has gone bad in the course of time. Even though it is rooted in the Truth, today, in the form it is taught, it becomes a trap. It enmeshes the soul in spatiality in a way that is difficult to overcome. The whole inner relation with the Christ is not as it should be for our age. Now one may say, "But there's no other choice for these souls. They need to be introduced to the Christ through a spatial imagination." But this is not true. This is something that humanity must have learned thousands of years ago, when Yahve commanded the Hebrews not to make an image of him. He was to be conceived only intuitively. Furthermore, we have an example that we can speak very concretely even about these difficult matters. I quote again:

This Christ is coming now to visit the minds and hearts of men. He will demolish all prisons; He will obliterate all false teachings - everything that destroys man's mind and heart, that brings confusion and anarchy, that paralyzes human life. He is the living Christ who brings life, light and freedom to all souls, who uplifts and awakens in them love toward all.

When I say that Christ is coming now, some might think that He will come outwardly. Christ will not come outwardly, He will come neither in the form of a man, nor in any other form.

...

Remember, Christ is a manifestation of divine Love. And He will come as an inner light in the minds and hearts of men. This light will draw all toward Christ as around a great center.

The opening of men's minds and hearts, and the inner acceptance of Christ - this will be the second coming of Christ to the earth.

...

Humankind is presently passing through a new phase of its development. A new form of Love is coming. We ask, “When will God come and reveal His Love to us?” This Day is coming. For some, this Day has already come. Have you ever raised silkworms? Do all form their cocoon in a single day? No, some do it sooner, some do it later. For some of the “silkworms,” this Day has already come.

I don't quote this as an agitation, but only as an example - that the Impulse has manifested in different ways, and it can reach even the simple souls without erecting an obstacle. In our age, even the simple sentient soul can make something of the fact that the Christ will manifest as 'inner light in the minds and hearts of men' and that his coming will not be a singular event marking the end of the Earthly world, but the gradual transformation of human beings, leading to higher forms of consciousness and a new culture. It would not be that difficult to grasp what the quotes above say even for a random person on the street (at least on the surface level, that is, they wouldn't sound like an alien language). We do not need to have read tons of spiritual science. Such truths can be administered quite directly today, because even the simple soul today has a different experience of what having a heart and mind means, than the simple souls of millennia ago. Even the simple soul is much more egoic than it used to be the case for a similar level of development.

Sure, no expression is immune to misunderstanding. The simple man will barely say, "Oh, I got it. It's perfectly clear now, I know exactly what the Christ is." Of course not. Yet, this small seed is one that the soul can grow with, without reaching a point when John has to tell it, "Now, forget these misleading images you've been nourishing, because they won't help you on the deeper path." But with BD's image, which is practically phenomenological image, we can go very, very far.

And thus, again, the peculiar nature of the Catholic project. One cannot help but have the sense that what we accomplish with our right hand in leading souls to the depths of truth, we hinder with our left hand by affirming the dogma in place. It's almost like a physician who, with one hand heals, but with the other, willingly or unwillingly, ensures that there's a steady flow of patients.

Let's be clear that MoT, in particular, can be read quite independently of the Catholic context. Even though VT hints that Christian Hermeticism ultimately leads to and confirms the Church, I think everyone will agree that this is a quite small aspect of the whole book. And as I have said before, as an Imaginative guide, this book does a really excellent job. The reason I'm not as enthusiastic about it as, for example, Ashvin, is simply because of my scientifically oriented past (seeking the Theory of Everything). I've always sought a way to get a sense for the big picture, the fundamental principles, the seed of the fractal, and then explore how the details fit in. Of course, in estoreism it is a fact that such a big picture can initially be nothing else than an abstract, mental experience. But still, it is once again something to grow with. As for Tarot, it is a great exercise, but I highly doubt it could have been effective for me as a first approach. Not to mention that it ultimately does not go into the big picture (in the way, for example, Occult Science does). One needs a kind of faith that all these Arcana are somehow unified. For example, VT speaks of the different bodies, but one will hardly get a sense of why exactly such bodies (which we can only get by examining the Cosmic aeons). We need a kind of trust in the Hermetic Wisdom, that this is simply how things are. Speaking of that, although we speak of VT's approach as softer and easier than facing spiritual science head-on, I think we should appreciate that it is nevertheless far from being 'for everybody'. In fact, to approach a book like MoT, one must already have largely already accepted the existence of the occult and seek to expand and deepen their understanding.

Once again, I'm not writing these things like throwing stones from the other side of the fence. I spend a lot of time meditating, immersing myself fully in the inner experience of the Catholic, of VT, and all others, with much seriousness and even joy. What I write here is the result of these intersections, resonances, and dissonances of the experiences. I'm not saying that one cannot cultivate moral life within the Church, but in the form it transmits its truth, in our age, I think it creates more obstacles to a proper experience of reality and true inner cohesion with the Sun-Being. Thus, in the face of the impulse that has manifested in the beginning of the twentieth century in concrete Teachings, I think we're simply ignoring the facts if we insist that Church dogma is still the best way to educate souls.

Speaking about personal experience, Rodriel, would you mind telling about in what order you encountered Catholicism, Steiner, VT? Was Catholicism your default faith? Then maybe you found spiritual science, which put you at odds with your faith, but then VT restored it? Or you started with Steiner from a religiously non-affiliated ground, then VT, who convinced you to convert to Catholicism?

[AshvinP]

Let's be clear that MoT, in particular, can be read quite independently of the Catholic context. Even though VT hints that Christian Hermeticism ultimately leads to and confirms the Church, I think everyone will agree that this is a quite small aspect of the whole book. And as I have said before, as an Imaginative guide, this book does a really excellent job. The reason I'm not as enthusiastic about it as, for example, Ashvin, is simply because of my scientifically oriented past (seeking the Theory of Everything). I've always sought a way to get a sense for the big picture, the fundamental principles, the seed of the fractal, and then explore how the details fit in. Of course, in estoreism it is a fact that such a big picture can initially be nothing else than an abstract, mental experience. But still, it is once again something to grow with. As for Tarot, it is a great exercise, but I highly doubt it could have been effective for me as a first approach. Not to mention that it ultimately does not go into the big picture (in the way, for example, Occult Science does). One needs a kind of faith that all these Arcana are somehow unified. For example, VT speaks of the different bodies, but one will hardly get a sense of why exactly such bodies (which we can only get by examining the Cosmic aeons). We need a kind of trust in the Hermetic Wisdom, that this is simply how things are. Speaking of that, although we speak of VT's approach as softer and easier than facing spiritual science head-on, I think we should appreciate that it is nevertheless far from being 'for everybody'. In fact, to approach a book like MoT, one must already have largely already accepted the existence of the occult and seek to expand and deepen their understanding.

Just to comment briefly here, I hope that I have never given the impression that MoT is supposed to be 'easier' than 'head-on' spiritual science. In fact, I have been trying to emphasize how it is practically the same as PoF and Knowledge of Higher Worlds in terms of raising the bar. I can't recall where exactly, but I remember reading that VT himself spoke of MoT as inspired by and a continuation of KHW. In a certain sense, VT was trying to do the same thing for religious dogma that Steiner attempted to do for standard philosophical-scientific concepts (and religious dogma as well) - that is, to redeem them from their spatialized anti-pedagogical nature and transform them more into the aesthetic style of myths and legends. I'm sure you would agree that we would only end up with santa clause upon santa clause if we approached the spatialized pictures of Occult Science without at least somewhat transformed consciousness, just like when approaching the dogma of Second Coming. I can only imagine how many Waldorf children have failed to take any interest in esoteric science precisely for that reason, because later, as adults woven into materialistic culture, they reflected upon the images and felt deceived. Occult Science would simply be experienced as a more 'souped-up' version of materialistic science, theology, and metaphysics, which however, is 'proven wrong' at every step.

In that sense, each individuality took upon themselves the task, sometimes seemingly impossible, to become a bridge from within these already established arenas of souls, finding creative ways for souls to penetrate to deeper spiritual foundations through the images rooted in sensory-conditioned intuitions. The fact is that billions of souls already live with the misleading dogma pictures, and new souls incarnating into Catholic (or other religious) families will absorb them as well., just as those living with and absorbing misleading scientific pictures of reality by default. Some initiative must be taken to help transform the perspective on these images of reality, and it's clear that many souls will not even consider listening to BD about the second coming. For the same reason, most of these souls probably won't consider contemplating Tomberg, either. But that shouldn't stop us from trying to introduce them to BD, Tomberg, Steiner, and whoever else has done genuinely spiritualizing work in this domain.

[Kaje977]

I hope my input here doesn't come out of nowhere, but I would like to point something out again: MoT has definitely chosen an approach that is very similar to that of Franz Bardon, but omits one crucial element: the will to act or, the pneumatosophy. Tomberg rightfully sees the tarot cards not only as a mere card game, as a tool of divination or as "card reading", but recognizes in each of the cards a complete system of initiation. Each individual tarot card conceals an entire initiation system that could fill thousands of pages of books. I see it that way too, and many occult authors as well. Cleric's response to this seems to be what I also (subtly) perceived: Tomberg describes above all how it feels or what it is like to go through the initiation system, he prepares the soul. It is very mystical and emotionally charged, it is made tangible, but it remains, so to speak, in such a mystical image. It is not really made tangible, or rather, it is not specifically stated how it can be brought to life within oneself, because it seems like that Tomberg holds a very old and traditional position (that is quite common in Hermeticism) of gatekeeping the secret due to the danger of people messing with it in an irresponsible manner. And yes, such individuals existed and do exist. But they also will and do pay a price for it.

The crucial problem, as I see it, is stimulating the "will to act". Tomberg seems to practice a form of psychosophy, as Cleric described it a few pages ago. Bardon combined the two elements of psychosophy and pneumatosophy (and it is certainly no coincidence that the breathing process plays a very important role in Bardon's work too). E.g. the breathing techniques for accumulating the elemental qualities within the (astral) body is one such case. And, of course, such accumulation requires preparation of the soul, otherwise the elemental qualities will, without a doubt, increase negative character traits. For instance, it's possible to accumulate the fiery quality into your astral body. Technically, you already have such an accumulation all the time, such a current flow through you. You only increase it, and then it circulates around your traits and the affine traits related to the fiery quality will respond the less you have got hold of them or remain in the blindspot. Say, a person who easily gets upset and angry about something would be much more irritable than usual if he were to accumulate the fiery quality within himself. Everything would start to irritate him stronger than ever and get angry, and it's even worse if the person doesn't really notice the increase of his negative trait until someone else points it out. The point is that Soul Wisdom and Spirit Wisdom need to go hand in hand.

Another thing I do notice is the refrain from interferring with the karma of another person in Hermeticism. It is the act of helping and guiding another person, but without judging or swaying them away from their path. It's an interesting perspective, but even moreso in regards to spiritual inner activity, but I think it is and should be our duty to intervene in some way, actually. Not in a way that deviates them from their path, but instead opens up the possibility for them to get a more enliving, conscious experience of their own path and what it entails. And then it is the decision of that person whether they will now change trajectory after recognizing consciously what's possible, what's not, what it entails and what it does not, etc. So, not persuading them into another path or label, but giving them the instruments in order to make their own fully, conscious free decision.