©Terry Boardman 14 September 1997

This essay first appeared in the German magazine Info3 in October 1997

Quite some time will have to go by before the British people will be able to gain some real clarity about the nature of the truly bizarre, unsettling and moving experience they went through in the week of 31st August to 6th September 1997 following the death of Diana in a car crash in a Paris underpass. Many agree that in some undefined way, it was indeed some kind of defining moment for the nation. Perhaps one has to go back to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 or the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to find such comparable public shock and soul-searching in response to a great death. The outpouring of emotion that followed the news of Diana’s demise represented an extremely complex event, and what follows in this article can only attempt to unravel some of the strands.

An understanding of what took place can be approached from three directions: a consideration of Diana herself; what the event meant for the British people in their evolution as a people, and lastly, since it was clearly a world-spanning event, what it meant for humanity in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch.  Some British Anthroposophists are already saying that Diana must have been a great individuality in her previous life/lives to have brought about such a world-embracing event. After all, did not 2.5 billion people, a third of the world’s population, watch the funeral? Was she not arguably the most well-loved woman this century? Did she not single-handedly change the destiny of the monarchy, and with it, that of the British nation? Other Anthroposophists have speculated that she was a high soul who had ‘decided’, or rather, her higher self had decided, to ‘leave’ at this time in this way in order to help Britain and the world on in its evolution. After all, did not the Doctor say that when a bucket falls upon our heads, it is because we ourselves have ‘arranged’ for it to do so?

Such premature karmic conclusions need not be justified. Certainly, like Joan of Arc, like Parsifal, Diana was a simple, rather naive, very uneducated soul when she stepped out into her momentous public destiny in 1981 – she described herself as being “thick as two short planks”  – but unlike them, she was not a semi-mythical or religious figure, receiving inspiration from the spiritual world. Rather, she was a young woman who “came through” as an individual, and found herself in the last years and months of her life. As a journalist for “The Times” put it, “The journey from the restrictive embrace of a family to the self-sufficiency of independent adulthood is one we are all supposed to make. Surprisingly few of us actually get there. But Diana did, by force of circumstance”. (1) In front of the eyes of the British people and of the world, on stage before us all, she did what we know we have to do for ourselves in this epoch of individuality: she made of herself an I-land; she I-solated herself, broke free of the constrictions of Moon-bound heredity and finally began to ‘solate’ her I-land. This is one reason why she became an icon for so many, especially many women. They I-dentified with her, either because she did what they could not do, or else because so many saw their own personal struggles, defeats and victories in hers and saw them projected on the biggest of screens through her life.

Diana emerged from a broken aristocratic family (2). Her childhood was deeply unhappy, beset by viciously arguing parents, who divorced acrimoniously. She tried to make up for this by marrying into the Ultimate Family, the one in Europe with perhaps the stiffest code of proto-Asiatic duty and ceremony. But this too broke down. All the Queen’s children have now divorced. We have seen played out in Diana’s life perhaps the main theme of Shakespeare’s plays: the decline of an ancient blood-based spirituality and the emergence out of it of a freer, more self-directed albeit isolated individual. Diana will not be remembered, like Shakespeare, for her immortal lines and speeches; she was no great wordsmith. But she was the consummate director and actress in the play of her own life. The British people’s sense of drama was deeply moved by her sheer theatricality, the way in which she bravely took on her life’s role and mastered it despite such heavy troubles. She was a woman who refused to accept defeat and showed millions how to make the transition from the 4th to the 5th epochs, how to recreate, resurrect yourself.

Born on July 1st 1961, she was a Cancerian. Cancer is the sign of deep emotion, of Mater-realism, of personal attachment to family and nation. She always acted out of her instincts, she said, not out of her head. It is all the more remarkable that she should have acted within a group that represented nation and family to the highest degree and still become an individual. She died in Paris, the city of sentiment and romance with her lover; on arrival at the hospital she was given a thoractomy, and finally died of heart failure. She had herself said, in her famous Panorama BBC interview of 1995, that she wanted to be the “queen of people’s hearts”. Unlike her ex-husband Prince Charles, who is able to live in the realm of the mind and of imaginations, this was a woman of often confused feelings, but increasingly sure instincts. The British people, who live instinctively in the Consciousness Soul mood, instinctively responded to her achievement in self-creation and in the cultivation of her conscience.

Diana and Hamlet
Diana’s tragedy was that she did not live to enjoy her new-found sense of self. At 36, she had only just entered the Consciousness Soul period (35-42) of her life. It is ironic that words from “Hamlet”, of all Shakespeare’s plays, were chosen for the final words at her funeral. Hamlet stood at the interstice of feeling between the 4th and 5th epochs, but he failed at the final hurdle. The tragedy of Hamlet – still regarded in England as Shakespeare’s greatest work – ends only in death. Only in the life beyond can we imagine that Hamlet found true resurrection. Similarly, John Taverner’s music, which included those words from Hamlet, and which was sung as the Welsh Guards, representatives of the military state, carried her coffin out towards the great doors of Westminster Abbey, was mostly dark and depressing. One sensed the eerie approach of death and the mystery of the threshold. Then, as the coffin almost reached the doors, the music and voices exploded in a glorious epiphany of sonic light: “Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you”. Taverner, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, is a modern composer deeply inspired by the ritual and tradition of Orthodoxy. It was as if the music were saying, only in heaven is there rest and resurrection.

Diana was married in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the 5th epoch Baroque church of the British Empire, but her funeral took place in the high mediaeval splendour of Westminster Abbey, a church which actually belongs not to the Church of England but to the royal family itself. It was decided that her funeral should culminate with the spirit of Hamlet and of Orthodoxy, neither of which fully enter into the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Does this  not somehow portend a retreat back into the ancient forms of the 4th epoch, something which contradicts Diana’s own increasingly modern spirit of free individuality. It suggests that the British, or at least their Establishment, are still preoccupied with the dark tragedy of Hamlet and are unable to see beyond it. It suggests that when they tentatively approach the threshold of spiritual realities, they fall back upon ancient eastern precedent, which actually does not mean very much to them.

Few media commentators had much to say about Taverner’s unsettling mystical music; instead, they sang paeans of praise for Elton John’s “Candle In the Wind”, originally written as an elegy for that other blonde English-speaking icon of the global village, Marilyn Monroe. There was nothing overtly ‘spiritual’ about this song; it was a mawkish and sentimental lament of national loss. In his first public reaction to Diana’s death on the morning of 31st August, as he went to church, prime minister Tony Blair said nothing about ‘heaven’, or ‘God’, but gave a purely secular expression of his feelings while at the same time claiming Diana for politics by describing her as ‘the people’s Princess’. Many Britons are so far into secular materialism that it is difficult, even embarrassing for many of them to speak about spirituality or their own spiritual experiences. In this sense they have indeed entered the first stage of the 5th epoch. But they prefer not to think about what is after death or before birth. In death, they turn to the traditional, comfortable, but empty forms provided by the church of the 4th epoch.

Most commentators have claimed that the high point of Diana’s funeral was not Taverner’s ‘spiritual’ music, not even the minute’s silence after it, observed ‘by the whole nation’, but rather the fiery speech of her anguished brother, Earl Charles Spencer. The speech began with a gesture quintessentially English: “I stand before you today the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock.” I stand here; you are there. The individual reaches out from self, through family, and beyond to the world. Rudolf Steiner described how the difference between the English and the French is that “in England the personal element transcends nationalism and seeks to embrace the whole world and to promote everywhere the development of the personality” while “France modifies the national element within the nation state in such a way that the national element tends to transform the inner being of man, to make him other than he is.” (3). But while celebrating Diana’s individuality and covertly criticising the Royal Family for their fixation on outdated duty and tradition, Earl Spencer fell back into family-ism when he promised his dead sister that “we, your blood family will do all we can” to ensure that her boys’ souls could “sing openly as you planned”. Was this not a contradiction in terms, and symptomatic of the British wavering, like Hamlet, between loyalty to blood and affirmation of individuality?

From Victoria Regina to Virtual Reality
But if Diana has become an icon of modern individuality, she was also something of a confidence trick on the I, an eye-con. In 1897 years ago the eyes of the whole world were focused on London for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The letters “VR” (Victoria Regina) were everywhere. 100 years later, the world was again looking to London, this time at the funeral of the most glamorous victim of the world economy. Today, those two letters “VR” are reappearing, but now they stand for ‘virtual reality’. In Victoria’s day, Britain was a country that made things; now the British, especially the young, are mostly interested in images, style, fashion, glamour, soap operas, the media in general.

The media stimulated the creation of the Diana industry (T-shirts, books, crockery, fashion accessories etc) in 1981 with the royal engagement and the ‘fairytale wedding’. Diana became a media obsession essentially because she was pretty, a shy “English rose”. It was the first time in 300 years that the heir to the throne had married an Englishwoman. She was English, pretty, blonde, with big blue soulful eyes that looked up at the camera shyly but demurely, and soon, to their delight, the media discovered she was the first of the royals with a sense for fashion as well. The Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, also suffered a broken marriage and is a tireless worker for charity, but she is not beautiful and has no comparable sense for fashion and glamour.  Diana’s image was placed before the masses in every successive week for 16 years, and then, like a nation of drug addicts suddenly deprived of their blissful fix, the souls of many were left gasping by her sudden and brutal removal from their lives. Her life was actually no soap opera; the British people knew it was real, but they treated it like a soap opera; they could not stop observing it. They became more and more dependent on their heroine and went on buying the paparazzi photos. Amidst the respect, the love, and the gratitude, there has also been a great deal of guilt and remorse. They know that somehow, they too are responsible for the death of their own lovely, vulnerable, young Lady Di.

And not only guilt. During the 16 years of Conservative government British society was radically transformed in ways that painfully affected many communities, families, and individuals. While Margaret Thatcher declared that there is no such thing as society, only individuals, unemployment and crimes of all kinds soared. There were unprecedented riots, random killings and murders of children and defenceless people. Families broke up, drugs ravaged youth, the fear of AIDS threatened, and the recession of the early 1990s brought in deep economic insecurities which still pervade British society despite a seeming economic upturn in recent years. Above all this pain and fear, the image of Diana, glamorous, beautiful, vulnerable, and compassionate floated over the air waves into people’s minds for 16 years, fascinating, comforting, uplifting, inspiring those who needed it. With her death, all that feeling – of fear, insecurity, guilt, sadness of the last 16 years surely rose up with Diana into the spiritual world, perhaps in a similar way to the vast fears which accompanied the assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, a phenomenon indicated by Rudolf Steiner during the Great War.(4)

The question of virtual reality is perhaps the most pressing one for Britain at the moment. National nostalgia and handwringing at the loss of Hong Kong in June and the 50th anniversary of Indian independence in August revealed that the British are still not sure of their role in the world. Despite the loss of Empire, too many Britons still think their country and culture has some God-given right to be dominant, to dictate policy and cultural norms to others. The Foreign Office boasts of Britain being able to “punch above its weight” – which it is able to do only because it supports almost every American initiative: this attitude is virtual reality. Tony Blair and “New Labour” go on about a New Britain and New Values, whilst advocating for the 21st century the dog-eat-dog economic values of the 19th: “Britain can take on the world; we can beat the best!” etc etc. This too is virtual reality. Tony Blair is perhaps the consummate master of soundbite politics in Britain, the politics of the empty phrase. Rudolf Steiner pointed to the pernicious effect of the culture of ‘empty phrases’ 80 years ago and his words are ever more true today (5). When Diana ventured to suggest in August that the Conservative government’s position on landmines had been ‘hopeless’, that one word ignited an enormous media row. In the days after her death ‘The Queen of Hearts’ and ‘The People’s Princess’ were omnipresent phrases throughout the land. 12 days after her death, the Scots voted in a referendum for devolution and their own parliament – an event which may well lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom. But opponents of devolution merely harp on about the need to maintain the Union, as if it must always be preserved forever. They do not observe the course of history or reckon with the natural force of death and transformation; they wish only to keep what exists. This is also not to reckon with the realities of life and death.

The development of computer technology, which has made ‘virtual reality’ a household phrase, has largely taken place in the English language. Britain has the highest divorce and teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, and higher TV, video, and computer ownership rates than any other European country. This year the BBC released its new cult programme for infants – “Teletubbies”, in which children are encouraged to love cuddly alien-like creatures with aerials on their heads and TV monitors in their stomachs. The programme has become phenomenally successful. Of all this virtual reality media culture, Diana, named after the goddess of the Moon, was the preeminent star, and victim.

The I and the Eye
If Germanic culture, as Steiner said, represents the I of Europe, Britain can be likened to Europe’s “eye” to the world. The eyes are the only externalised part of the brain, and the British have used them to look outwards, to the world of senses; they have not tended to look inwards with the eyes of imagination to dwell on their own folk soul or their own spiritual nature.(6) The icon of Diana was created and sustained by the images of the camera. In his funeral oration in Westminster Abbey, the Prime Minister, quoting St Paul (1 Corinthians 13), focused on the theme of love, but it is significant that that verse includes the words: “when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly; but then (when that which is perfect is come) face to face.” It was a cathartic week, when the British had the chance to look into the mirror of themselves, of each other, of their Royal Family and nation, and choose to change. There was indeed a dignified silence in the crowded streets of London as Diana’s coffin went by, a certain nobility of spirit and a flood of affection, warmth, and gratitude as thousands queued in a very British way to pay respects by signing books of condolences and laying acres of flowers. But after this catharsis, will we now at last ‘put aside childish things’?

In these years until 1999 as Pluto, planet of death and transformation passes through the constellation of Scorpio, which rules communal desire, will we realise that the monarchy itself is the ultimate virtual reality and bid it farewell, and that the same may apply to the current form of the United Kingdom itself? This centralised ship of state has been sailing for 1000 years under the captaincy, formerly real and latterly virtual, of this Royal Family, bound by blood. The Titanic, that very symbol of British society and achievement, sank 85 years ago. Britain could have woken up then, but it did not. It has needed the brutal death in the nation’s camera eyes of a beautiful vulnerable princess to bring home the realisation that in this age we are not to live vicariously through stars or starships. Will the British now cease to do this, and turn their eyes and I’s away from soap operas of the TV or Royal variety? Will we seek to become, instead of a nation addicted to virtually real images, an Imagi-Nation, turning their our eyes to the etheric realm in which the Christ awaits us all – in THIS life, not the one beyond?

Media targets: Mohamed and Charles
Only time will tell, but recent developments do not bode well. The media soon began to zero in on their two main targets, Mohamed al-Fayed and Prince Charles. Al-fayed, because as an Egyptian, a Muslim, a nouveau-riche from a poor background, he had the temerity to muscle into the British Establishment in the 1980s by buying many of its favourite playgrounds such as the Ritz Hotel and the Harrods department store and by sponsoring numerous Establishment events at which he could be seen close to the Queen. This foreign billionaire who loves Britain has been denied British citizenship although he lives in Britain and contributes much to the country in the way of investment and employment. He has revenged himself on the Establishment, severely embarrassing the Tory Party by accusing some Tory M.P.s of taking bribes and thus contributing to the Tories’ election defeat this year. And then he came within an ace of marrying his Muslim son to the mother of Britain’s future king. Those forces within the Anglo-American elite who do not look favourably upon any Christian-Muslim reconciliation and prefer to present Islam as a threat to the West would not be happy with al-Fayed’s ambitions. (7) Media organs which propagate their views soon sought to pin the blame for the accident on al-Fayed’s business empire.

While professing to support Prince Charles in his role as the father and protector of the beloved Diana’s children, large sections of the media began to suggest that he be passed over in the succession, and that the new people’s monarchy should set him and his “cold dysfunctional family” aside in favour of Diana’s son Prince William, as if William were not also Charles’ son! One notices that most of the British media put Charles down, and also that he is an individuality who has the capacity to make ordinary people think, because he stimulates new thinking about such issues as architecture, the environment, and business practices, and above all, because he speaks openly about  spirituality, and one  that transcends the narrow bounds of the Church of England. (8) Realising soon after the wedding that there was more money to be made out of the glamorous Diana, the media at first ignored Charles and what came to be seen as his ‘idiosyncratic’ pursuits. After 1988 The Sunday Times (a Rupert Murdoch paper) under the editorship of Andrew Neil led the media pack openly against Prince Charles and the monarchy. This was the time when Charles was speaking out actively on social issues such as architecture. When the marriage became rancorous after 1991, the media flocked to their Princess against ‘the cold-hearted stuffy’ Prince. Against Diana the hunted goddess of the screen, Charles did not stand a chance. And yet it has been his imaginations, his patient and steadfast constructive social concerns that have been of benefit to the nation, more than Diana’s fashion statements and photo-opportunities for charity.

In both his character and his approach to his role, Charles stands between the more ancient rigidities of the old monarchy, and the “American-style people’s monarchy” which the media claim Diana was trying to introduce. One pundit actually wrote in all seriousness that Diana introduced her sons “to the clothes and activities of the modern British weekend: baseball caps, jeans, baseball jackets, hamburger bars and theme parks”! Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Sunday Times, wrote:

“as the years went by, the unassuming English rosebud increasingly resembled an Oprahfied American bloom…she was following an American script, and a highly contemporary one…This is not to say that Diana did not retain her essential British identity. Indeed what was inspiring about her to many Americanised Brits was how she was able to lend to Britishness a new, and distinctly American quality. She was in this sense a New Brit Princess…” (9)

Diana may have broken free from an ancient form of community, but she had no ideas about what to put in its place other than the icons of Americanism. A Diana-style monarchy, a Diana-style Britain in the manner portrayed by the media would cease to be Britain; it would be a virtual reality clone of the USA, and indeed, this is what it is anyway fast becoming. Charles is on surer ground here -a social and cultural ground that is rooted both in his own personal convictions and also in European culture; it is a stance that refuses the tempting uniformities of Americanism. For all these reasons, the media seem determined to undermine him and prevent him from doing what he can to awaken the imagination of the British people. In the Iliad, Helen was a clairvoyant priestess of the Moon Goddess Selene, also known as Artemis, and by the Romans, Diana. Walter Johannes Stein pointed out that Helen was the goddess of the community, and when she was taken away to Troy by Paris, her loss forced her people to develop their own powers of intelligence.(10) It is to be hoped that Diana’s death will help the British to develop their powers of imagination and that they will not reject the contribution Prince Charles can make in this.

Papal Monarchs and Popular Monarchs
What is said here about virtual reality and creative imagination can of course also be applied to humanity as a whole as it faces the third millenium. Trying to spread a uniformity of spirit and block the growth of imagination will be those, like Andrew Sullivan, who seek to flood culture with the virtual realities of Americanism. Aiding them from another direction will be the representatives of Jesuitism, who are constantly  trying to drag us back into the past. Writing in the “Daily Mail” on the day of Diana’s funeral (6th Sept.), Paul Johnson, arch-conservative (yet Tony Blair-supporting) historian and a prominent member of Britain’s Catholic minority agreed that a new “people’s monarchy” was in the air, but felt that Diana had been raised to sainthood by popular acclamation as in the early days of the Church. The people’s voice, he declared,

“has been an idealistic voice, a yearning, anxious, almost despairing voice, begging for the magic of monarchy to be restored, for it to regain its metaphysical dimension…it is startling evidence of the need that millions feel for something numinous, religious, extraterrestrial and infinitive in their lives. The surge of feeling for Diana this week has been a spontaneous collective religious act by the nation. It is a plea: ‘Give us a spiritual dimension. Make our lives meaningful. Show us there is more to existence than getting and spending, earning and acquiring…tell us that life has a purpose and give us an idea what that purpose is.’”

And to whom does Johnson say this plea is directed? To one’s higher self? To Christ? To the Virgin Mary even? No.

“This is an urgent message addressed not only to the Royal Family, but to leaders and opinion formers of all kinds. to political leaders, to the Archbishop of Canterbury (head of the Church of England), to the Cardinal of Westminster (head of Britain’s Catholics), to the Chief Rabbi and all the men of the cloth (other church leaders), and  – yes! – to editors and TV moguls, too.”

Oh you who are in spiritual authority over us, tell us what to think! This is Johnson’s jesuitical message. Such a call for a new mystical popular monarchy that can unite all beneath it needs to be noted in connection with the plethora of publications that have been appearing in the English-speaking world since the international best-seller “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail” came out in 1981, the year of Diana’s marriage. (11) The thread running through these books is the following: ‘Christ did not die on the Cross but sired a family with Mary Magdalene, which later became united with European royal and aristocratic families. Christianity as preached by Paul is a lie. There is no resurrection, but there is the body of Jesus and there is his bloodline. Since Jesus, esoteric groups, such as the Templars, the Priory of Sion, or  the descendants of the priests of the Temple of Solomon have guarded this secret of Jesus’ bloodline, waiting for the time when the blood-descendant of Jesus Christ will be able to emerge and claim his rightful place as King of a united Europe, perhaps even a united Atlantic community. Freemasonry is the true Christianity.’ The Catholic church is the arch-enemy of those who work for this scenario; they work for its downfall.

But the two groups in the age-old struggle between Freemasonry and Romanism, are actually interconnected. Rudolf Steiner drew attention to an agreement made between them around  1802, according to which the Vatican was to have authority over moral beliefs, while the Freemasonic West was to control economic life. (12) “The Messianic Legacy”, the second book by the authors of “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail”, contains in its last 150 pages interesting indications of how American elite forces have gained the upper hand in this bizarre relationship.

Six days before Diana’s death, the liberal British newspaper “The Guardian” reported that the Pope is currently considering a petition put to him by 4.35 million Catholics in 157 countries urging him to declare Mary “Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of all Graces and Advocate for the People of God.” This means that Mary would become in effect equal with Christ in redeeming humanity before God. The blessings from Christ’s sacrifice would come through her. Meanwhile, some 2.3 million liberal Catholics are said to have “endorsed a five-point declaration in favour of shared decision-making, women priests, and a relaxation of the ban on artificial birth control.” When the Pope put the Marian petition to a Vatican commission of Mariologists in June, they rejected it 23 to 0. But the Pope, who is well-known to be devoted to the cult of Mary, could well choose to ignore the commission and make “a grand millenial gesture”. Pope Paul VI did just this in 1968, ignoring his own commission and outlawing the Pill.(13)

When the Vatican declared in 1950 (the year of the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, and seven years before the Treaty of Rome) the dogma that Mary was taken up into Heaven in body and soul at her death, America replied with the blonde media icon Marilyn Monroe, who became a significant star in that year. 33 years later, sightings and visions of Mary were common at Medjugorje in Yugoslavia; America replied with Madonna, the ‘Material Girl’, another blonde media icon, and a stronger blow against Catholicism in that Madonna actually exploited in her ‘work’ the Catholic aspects of her name and upbringing.(14) 14 years on, the Vatican considers making Mary Co-redeemer with Christ, and its greatest human candidate for sainthood, Mother Theresa, dies. The media of the Freemasonic West reply with the death and creation of their own saint and martyr – Lady Di, “the people’s American Princess”. The result in this round of the interminable struggle between Romanism and Americanism, between Lucifer and Ahriman, would seem to be an overwhelming victory for the latter.

Rudolf Steiner was always drawing attention to the fact that world events are constantly taking place within this context of a mighty spiritual struggle in which the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman, of atavistic otherworldliness and materialism, respectively, battle against each other, even as they combine to prevent humanity from recognising the Christ and his reappearance in the etheric realm in our time.(15) We deny Lucifer and Ahriman their victory by cleaving to our own individual spirit, through which we can find the Christ, for Christ is here for individuals, not for ethnic or religious groups. We meet Him here in this earthly life, with which He has united Himself for the duration of Earth existence.

Perhaps the last word can be left to Madonna, whose career has almost run parallel with Diana’s, and who at 39, has entered further into her Consciousness Soul stage of development  than Marilyn Monroe or Diana Spencer were able to do, both dying at the age of 36. At the MTV Video Music awards ceremony on 5th September, Madonna said it with her customary frankness:

“It’s time for us to take responsibility for our own insatiable need to run after gossip and scandal and lies and rumours…it’s time we realised that everything that we say and do has an effect on the world around us…until we change our negative behaviour, tragedies like this will continue to occur…It is all our faults.” (16)

NOTES (GA = ref. nos. of Rudolf Steiner’s collected works)

(1) The Times magazine, p.20  6.9.1997
(2) the Spencers are said to have one of the noblest pedigrees in England, reaching back to the late years of Elizabeth I when Sir John Spencer (d.1610) was Lord Mayor of London.
(3) GA 185, lecture of 18.10.1918
(4) GA 174, lecture of 10.12.1916
(5) GA 196, lectures of 20 and 21.2.1920
(6) For this idea of Britain as the “eye” of Europe, I thank Mark Gartner of Camphill Houses, Stourbridge.
(7) See for example Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”. Huntington has for many years been an influential member of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission (TC), both extremely secretive elite American-run organisations which seek to determine the direction of world progress. For an incisive discussion of the history, methods and goals of the CFR and TC, albeit from a marxist perspective, see Laurence H.Shoup & W.Minter “Imperial Brain Trust – The Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy”, 1977, Monthly Review Press New York, ISBN 0-85345-393-4.
(8) Interestingly, Charles is the first heir to the throne since 1737 to have declined to become a Freemason.
(9) Sunday Times 7.9.1997
(10) The Present Age, p.14, Vol III No 11/12, Nov./Dec. 1938
(11) See M.Baigent, R.Leigh, and H.Lincoln, “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” 1982, “The Messianic Legacy” 1986, Baigent and Leigh, “The Temple and the Lodge” 1989, Baigent and Leigh, “The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception” 1991, all published by Jonathan Cape; L.Gardner, “The Bloodline of the Holy Grail” Element, 1996; C.Knight & R.Lomas, “The Hiram Key” 1996 and “The Second Messiah”, 1997, both from Century Books; R.Andrews & P.Schellenberger, “The Tomb of God”, Warner, 1996; L.Picknett & C.Prince, “The Templar Revelation” Bantam, 1997
(12) See Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, “Memories of Rudolf Steiner”,  Dornach, 1985. From a personal conversation in November 1916. Note that this ‘agreement’ was but 10 years before the birth of Kaspar Hauser.
(13) The Guardian, 25.8.1997
(14) One of her hit songs was titled “Like A Virgin”
(15) For the Second Coming of Christ, the reappearance of Christ in the etheric realm, see R.Steiner lectures of 6.3.1910 and 18.4.1910, GA 118
(16) The Times. 6.9.199

© Terry Boardman

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