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In Defence of Rudolf Steiner – A Response to J. Paul Greenaway
This article was written as a response to J. Paul Greenaway’s article Is “spiritual science” science? The flawed legacy of Rudolf Steiner published in the Comment section of the UK Column website on 25 May 2023. UK Column declined to publish the article, and so it has been published here. J. Paul Greenaway’s waspish hit-piece on Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) (published on the UK Column website on 25 May 2023) is an odd thing. I shall not try to give an organised and systematic form to a piece which does not have such form. Instead, I...
read moreThree Kings and the Sun Demon
This article first appeared in New View magazine Issue #108 July-Sept 2023 To the majestic heights of summer The Sun’s brilliant being arises It draws my human feeling out And into its vast expanse of space. Intuitively, within my soul A sense is stirring that dimly tells me: In future time you will understand That you now were perceived by a being divine. from Rudolf Steiner, The Calendar of the Soul, 10th week 9-15 June There are two moods in “Summer” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” suite which most aptly portray in...
read moreThe Number 23
This article first appeared in New View magazine #107 April-June 2023 People born in the middle of a century, like me (1952), tend to look back to the beginning of the century, the time of their grandparents’ youth, as well as to the end of the century, the time of their own maturity and old age and also of their own grandchildren. As someone interested in history since childhood, this has always been true for me. As a 12 year old already I had become fascinated with the First World War, was aware of the dangers of nuclear war and also...
read moreThe Anglo-Russian Antagonism Part 3 (Conclusion)
This article first appeared in New View magazine #106 Jan.- March 2023 In the three articles I have written in New View magazine this year about the conflict in Ukraine, a conflict which has broken out 33 years after the momentous events of the year 1989, and 233 years after the outbreak of the French Revolution, I have tried to show something of the deeper background to the Ukraine conflict which, I have argued, is actually a proxy war, an episode in a much longer-lasting war that the West, or more specifically, the Anglosphere, has been...
read moreThe Anglo-Russian Antagonism Part 1
To heal an illness, we must first diagnose it correctly; we must understand what is causing it. What then are the roots of the Anglo-Russian antagonism that we see going on related to the conflict in Ukraine? For while the local conflict there appears to be one between Russians and Ukrainians that has its own history in the decades and centuries of uneasy relations between those two Slavic peoples, it is also part of a much larger conflict between English-speaking culture – or rather between the elites who have been steering...
read more2022 – War in Ukraine
This article was first published in New View magazine No.103 April-June 2022 This year, which happens to be the Year of the Tiger in the traditional Chinese calendar, the month of March (in the western calendar) was dominated by the movements of the planet after which the month is named – Mars. When Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on 24 February, Mars (lower aspect: aggression; higher aspect: courage and daring) was conjoined with Venus, and the two fast-moving planets were approaching conjunction with the very slow-moving...
read moreThe Incarnation of Ahriman – When and Where?
This is a revised and slightly extended version of a lecture given by the author at a Der Europäer seminar in the Basel Stadthaus, Basel, Switzerland, 23.11.2019 and published in The Present Age magazine (Vol. 5 Nos. 7/8 Oct/Nov 2019 and Vol. 5 Nos. 9/10 May/June 2020) Rudolf Steiner gave 8 indications about the incarnation of Ahriman in the latter part of 1919. Before I turn to these 8 indications I would like to draw attention to some earlier remarks of his which can perhaps be seen as ‘preliminary’. On 16 July, 1918 (GA 181),...
read moreNATO’s 70th Birthday and UN COP 25
This article was first published in New View magazine Winter Issue 94 Winter Jan – March 2020 To form any judgments about a phenomenon in contemporary events we can keep in mind three elements – the context of the event (awareness of how the event relates to the past), wakefulness (awareness of what’s going on now in relation to the event) and insight (understanding how the event relates to what seems to be approaching us from the future). With these in mind, let us consider two recent contemporary events: NATO’s celebration of its...
read more“UNITE Behind the Science” of Greta Thunberg?
This article was first published in New View magazine, Issue 93 Oct-Dec 2019 It is a challenge in today’s world to think for oneself when from all sides of our electronic public arena, from news broadcasts and current affairs programmes to dramas and advertisements one is being bombarded by the same messages, day in, day out. It is hard enough for supposedly educated mature, middle-aged people who were brought up in the world of print culture and private thoughts and imaginations to think for themselves in this situation, let alone...
read moreBrexit as a Spiritual Question (3) A Personal View
This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 92 July-Sept. 2019 Chester, a city in the northwest of England on the border with Wales and some 17 miles from Liverpool, was the largest base of the Roman army in Britannia during the Roman occupation. The name Chester comes from the Latin castrum, which means fortified military base, camp or fortress. The city, which the Romans called Deva Victrix, was founded by the Roman Army in 79 AD, 46 years after the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was also the year of the...
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