Guten Morgen. Ich freue mich sehr, nach sechs Jahren Pause wieder hier bei den Festspielen zu sein und ich bedanke mich nochmal herzlich bei Eckart Böhmer für die Einladung. Ich war 2004 zum ersten Mal hier und bin seitdem mehrmals hier anwesend. Es hat mich zunehmend ermutigt zu sehen, wie Eckarts Arbeit und die seiner Kollegen hier in Ansbach und anderswo diesen Impuls kultiviert haben, Möge er lange fortbestehen! Im Jahr 2022 konnte ich nicht dabei sein, aber Eckart hat freundlicherweise meinen Text vorgelesen. Dieses Jahr bin ich dabei, um meinen Beitrag selbst vorzulesen, muss mich aber wie immer entschuldigen, daß ich ihn vorlese, da mein Deutsch nicht gut genug ist, um mich frei auszudrücken. Das wäre zu anstrengend für Ihre Ohren! Da ich aber sicher bin, daß das, was ich vorlese, trotzdem hier und da in unnatürlichem Deutsch ausgedrückt sein wird, bitte ich Sie, diese Entschuldigung anzunehmen.

    “Wohin gehst du? Woher kommst du? Wenn dich jemand fragt, hoffe ich, daß du antworten kannst. Wohin gehen sie, die Leute da drüben? Woher sind sie gekommen? Wenn jemand sie fragt, weiß ich, daß sie es nicht antworten können. Wohin gehe ich? Woher komme ich? Wenn mich jemand fragt, weiß ich, daß ich antworten kann.” Diese sind Worte aus ein Musikstück daß das Titel „Where“ (Wohin) trägt  – ein Stück daß ich hatte sehr gern als Student an der Universität in den frühen 1970er Jahren. Damals war ich ein Fan einer Band namens Tony Williams Lifetime. Das war wohl die allererste Jazz-Rock-Band. Diese einfache Worte, habe ich später festgestellt, sehr viel mit der menschlichen Verfassung und der Frage nach der Identität zu tun haben. Die waren Fragen die, meines Erachtens, eng verbunden mit dem Thema ,Kaspar Hauser‘ sind. Sie haben an meine 18-jährige Seele sehr angesprochen. „Wohin gehe ich? Woher komme ich? Wenn mich jemand fragt, weiß ich, daß ich antworten kann.“ Damals konnte ich auf diese dritte Frage tatsächlich noch nicht antworten. Aber die Fragen drückten die Zuversicht und die Hoffnung eines jungen Menschen aus.

Das Album hiess “Emergency” (Notfall, Notlage). Die Telefonnummer, die man in England bei einem Notfall anrufen muss, ist 999. In den USA ist es 911. Hier in Deutschland 110 und 112, nicht wahr?  Wir stehen alle jetzt am Rande des Abgrunds eines großen Konflikts in Europa, nicht nur des Krieges zwischen Russland und der Ukraine, sondern eines Krieges zwischen Russland und der NATO: Russland und dem Westen. Es ist sogar möglich, daß in diesem Konflikt China einbezogen wird und die Krise zu einem echten Weltkrieg werden könnte. In einem solchen Fall ist es natürlich auch möglich, daß Atomwaffen irgendwann eingesetzt werden.

    Ein Krieg zwischen Russland und dem Westen war im Gange, als Kaspar Hauser am 29. September 1812 geboren wurde. Die Nachricht von seiner Geburt wurde dem Kaiser Napoleon überbracht, der damals in Moskau saß und vergeblich auf die Kapitulation von Zar Alexander von Russland wartete. Wahrscheinlich, sind seit 2022 insgesamt mindestens 500.000 Menschen im russisch-ukrainischen Konflikt schon ums Leben gekommen.  Napoleon hat etwa 600.000 Mann nach Russland geführt. Nur die Hälfte davon waren Franzosen, die andere hauptsächlich Deutsche und Polen, aber auch einige Niederländer, Belgier und Italiener. Es war eine Armee aus Mittel- und Westeuropa, die versuchte, Russland zu erobern.

    Mitten in dieser europäische Katastrophe wurde der kleine Prinz Kaspar von Baden hineingeboren, der Adoptivenkel Napoleons, dessen Adoptivtochter Stéphanie de Beauharnais die Mutter Kaspars war. Gaspard war der Name, den seine französische Mutter, eine kaiserliche Prinzessin, ihm geben wollte, aber er war zum Zeitpunkt seines angeblichen Todes zwei Wochen nach seiner Geburt noch namenlos, obwohl er eine Nottaufe erhalten hatte. In Wirklichkeit war er jedoch nicht tot, sondern entführt worden  – ausgetauscht gegen ein anderes, sehr kränkliches Kind. Es war dieses Kind, das zwei Wochen nach der Geburt von Prinz Kaspar gestorben ist, und dieses Kind wurde dann als der tote Babyprinz angekündigt. Das war eine öffentliche Lüge, die vor Kaspars Eltern, dem Großherzog und Grossherzogin von Baden, verborgen wurde. Die Nachricht von seinem Tod wurde auch an den Kaiser Napoleon weitergeleitet, der zu diesem Zeitpunkt seinen langen und katastrophalen Rückzug aus Russland angetreten hatte. Der große Kriegsmann Napoleon am anderen Rande Europas, dessen Handlungen das Schicksal von Millionen von Europäern so drastisch beeinflusst hatten und noch beeinflussen sollten, wurde auf diese Weise  sowohl über die Geburt als auch über den Tod dieses Säuglings informiert. Sieben Jahre nach Napoleons Tod, wurde in Nürnberg, im Herzen Europas, nicht der Kaiser Europas sondern das Kind Europas zu den Herzen der Leute genommen. In der Tat hatte Napoleon, für seine eigenen politischen und militärichen Zwecke die Ehe von Kaspars Eltern, Stéphanie de Beauharnais und Carl von Baden, arrangiert; das Ehepaar selbst hatte einander nicht heiraten wollen.

    Die deutsche Truppen, die Napoleon zum Einmarsch in Russland gezwungen hat, stammten aus Staaten, die nun zu Napoleons neuen deutschen Satellitenstaat, dem Rheinbund, gehörten, den Napoleon anstelle des alten Heiligen Römischen Reiches geschaffen hatte. Das Reich hatte er sechs Jahre zuvor auflösen lassen. Also, im Hintergrund der Geburt von Prinz Kaspar geschah dieser Krieg des Westens gegen den Osten.  Wenn wir uns heute, 212 Jahre später, mit dem Leben von Kaspar Hauser befassen, sehen wir erneut einen ähnlichen Krieg vor uns. Das ist bemerkenswert. Es war auch tatsächlich die Zeit in der Kaspar Hauser lebte, als Russland, besonders für die englische Elite, das “Feindbild” wurde. Diese Sichtweise auf Russland hatte sich in England bis zur Zeit Kaspar Hausers Tod 1833 schon durchgesetzt. Nach der Untergang Napoleons gab es für die englische Elite eine zentrale Frage im Mittelpunkt der auswärtigen Angelegenheiten, nämlich: “Wer könnte jetzt noch Indien von uns wegnehmen?” Die englische Antwort lautete: “Russland”. Dies war der Beginn der englischen Russophobie oder Russlandhass die seither bis heute anhält, eine paranoide Phobie, die sich auf die anderen englischsprachigen Länder dann ausgebreitet hat. Die verantwortliche Antwort auf diese Phobie kann nur m. E. gefunden werden, wenn wir ernsthaft zu fragen beginnen: „Wohin gehen wir? Woher kommen wir?“ Und dazu zwei andere Fragen: wie sind Ost und West eigentlich verwandt? Und wie haben sie sich getrennt?

Napoleon und Kaspar Hauser –  eine größere Polarität als diese beiden Figuren kann man sich kaum vorstellen – und doch sind sie miteinander verbunden, nicht zuletzt durch Napoleons eigenes Handeln. Um eigenen politischen und militärischen Zielen zu dienen, zwingt er Kaspars Eltern zusammen und er erweitet die Größe und Autorität Badens, des Staates, den das junge Ehepaar Karl und Stéphanie  gemeinsam regieren sollen.

    Nach der französischen Revolution und in der napoleonischen Ära stellte sich für viele denkende Menschen die Frage: Wie würde sich Europa im 19. Jahrhundert weiter entwickeln?  Würde es sich in traditioneller Weise entwickeln, wie zum Beispiel im Mittelalter oder im 18. Jahrhundert, das heißt, durch Krieg? Würde es sich durch brutale Wildheit und Abschlachten weiterentwickeln? Seit dem Stammesdenken des sogenannten finsteren Zeitalters vierzehnhundert Jahre zuvor, hatte sich die Völker Europas sich in eine Vielfalt politischer Staaten entwickelt. Von Stamm zu Staat. Wie würde es im neuen 19. Jahrhundert weitergehen? Einige der jüngeren europäischen Erleuchteten wie Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller und Novalis hatten bereits im späten 18. Jahrhundert begonnen, sich ein neues friedliches, harmonisches und vereinteres Europa vorzustellen, das nicht, sozusagen, vom Geiste des Mars, sondern vom Geiste der Philosophie oder vom Geiste des Christentums geprägt sein würde.

    Während des vorhergehenden Jahrtausenden hat sich allmählich der Einfluß des Christentums in Europa vertieft. Dann seit der Renaissance und besonders in der Zeit von 1760 bis 1830 war auch der Einfluß der griechisch-römischen Welt in Europa sehr stark. Als Reaktion auf diese Rückbesinnung auf die klassische Kultur der Antike und den damit verbundenen universalistischen Rationalismus und Intellekt schwang das Pendel in gerade dieser Zeitabschnitt in die entgegengesetzte Richtung: Partikularismus und Gefühlsleben, Nationalismus und Romantik.

    In diesselber kurzen Ära im deutschsprachigen Raum sehen wir damals eine wahre Konstellation bemerkenswerter Persönlichkeiten, die in vielen Bereichen der Gesellschaft aktiv waren und eine enorme Kreativität und Beweglichkeit des Denkens und Inspiration mitgebracht haben, die nur als zutiefst menschlich und heilend beschrieben werden kann. Etwas ganz Ausserordentliches ist in Mitteleuropa in jener Schwellenära geschehen, als die Aufklärung in die Romantik überging, etwas wirklich Außergewöhnliches. Man braucht nur einige der berühmten Namen aufzuzählen, die in dieser Zeit ihre Wirkung enfaltet haben: Kant, Klopstock, Lessing, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Hölderlin, Mueller, Tieck, Schelling, Caspar David Friedrich, Hoffman, von Kleist, die Gebrüder von Schlegel, Schleiermacher, die Gebrüder von Humboldt, Brentano, von Arnim, Eichhorn, Schinkel, die Gebrüder Grimm, von Weber, Uhland, Heine, Schopenhauer, Schubert.

    Und dann ist in diese kulturelle Atmosphäre Mitteleuropas, die von dieser bemerkenswerten Geisterkonstellation befruchtet worden war und immer noch befruchtet wurde, 1812 in Karlsruhe ein namenloser Zähringerfürst geboren, der angeblich bald gestorben ist, doch Jahre später ist als Kaspar Hauser wieder aufgetaucht. Dieser Zähringer-Prinz hätte Großherzog von Baden werden sollen, dem schon damals wohl zukunftsweisendsten Staat Deutschlands, und dieser Prinz, hätte er nicht entführt und dann später ermordet worden, wäre im Vormärz 1848 in seiner 36 Jahr, in der Blüte seines Lebens sein. Die Charaktereigenschaften, die er auch nach seiner Entlassung aus der Einkerkerung an den Tag legte, und die wundersamen Fortschritte, die er in seiner Entwicklung zu einem jungen Mann machte, lassen erahnen, was für ein Fürst und Herrscher er hätte werden können. Anders als der nur ein Jahr ältere Sohn Napoleons, den sogenannten ‚König von Rom‘, der bis zu seinem Tod 21 Jahre lang vom österreichischen Kanzler Prinz Metternich in einem goldenen Käfig sozusagen  im Wiener Schloss Schönbrunn gefangen gehalten wurde und der von Krieg und Soldaten, militärischem Ruhm und der Nachahmung seines Vaters des Kaisers Napoleon immer träumte, zeigte dagegen Kaspar Hauser nichts  militärisches oder kriegerisches sondern erstaunliche Fähigkeiten zur Offenherzigkeit, zum Zuhören und Lernen von Mensch und Natur, zur Geselligkeit und künstlerischen Kreativität.

    Wäre diese als Sohn des Großherzogs Karl von Baden geborene Individualität nicht zwei Wochen nach seiner Geburt entführt worden und wenn er seinem Vater als Großherzog gefolgt wäre, dann wäre er, wie gesagt, 1848-49, zur Zeit der Revolutionen und des Frankfurter Parlaments, 35/36 Jahre alt gewesen. Natürlich könnte man einwenden, daß Kaspar Hauser, wenn er nicht entführt und fast 12 Jahre lang eingekerkert worden wäre und seine Entwicklung nicht so behindert worden wäre, dann hätte er  die bemerkenswerten Charaktereigenschaften und andere Talente nicht gezeigt, die später nach seiner Entlassung aus der Haft so offensichtlich waren. Aber angesichts des Charakters seines Urgroßvaters Karl Friedrich, seiner Mutter Stéphanie de Beauharnais und seiner Schwestern, ja sogar seines Vaters – dessen Charakter sich nach Jahren der jugendlichen Ausschweifung nach der Geburt seiner Kinder deutlich verbesserte und dessen Verhältnis zu seiner Frau, das anfangs sehr schwierig war, sich in den letzten 7 Jahren seines Lebens, bevor sie durch eine Ermordung auf grausame Weise beendet wurden, ebenfalls stark verbessert hat  – vor diesem ganzen familiären Hintergrund ist es zumindest denkbar, daß der junge Fürst Kaspar zu einem guten Fürsten, einem sehr fähigen Herrscher, und einem Mann von eher sozialer als kriegerischer Natur geworden wäre – einem Mann, der mit seinen persönlichen Eigenschaften und dessen Familienverbindungen sich über den ganzen Kontinent erstreckten, viel mehr aus den Möglichkeiten des Frankfurter Parlaments von 1848 hätte machen können als etwa Otto von Bismarck, der zwar bei der Versammlung anwesend war, dem aber fehlte die Vorstellungskraft, die historische Bedeutung des Ereignisses zu ergreifen. Bismarck, in seinen späteren Handeln an der Spitze der preußischen Außenpolitik ist er zu den alten kriegerischen Methoden zurückgekehrt. Es ist daher zumindest denkbar, daß Kaspar Hauser als Fürst mehr Konstruktives für den Frieden und eine gesunde Entwicklung in Europa hätte leisten können, als es die beiden “martialischen Realisten”, Napoleon und Bismarck, oder der träumende “Schwanenkönig”, Ludwig der Zweite von Bayern, vermochten.

    Man könnte weiter einwenden: Selbst wenn Kaspar Hauser zum Großherzog von Baden aufgestiegen wäre, wie hätte er, ein einziger Mann, als Fürst dieses kleinen Staates Baden die Geschicke Mitteleuropas maßgeblich beeinflussen können? Aber ein anderer deutscher Fürst eines noch kleineren deutschen Staates, der nur sieben Jahre nach Prinz Kaspar geboren ist, der würde die Geschicke eines viel größeren Staates, ja eines Weltreichs, maßgeblich beeinflussen. Das war Prinz Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, der 1840 die junge Königin Victoria, die Herrscherin des Britischen Empire, geheiratet hat. Albert und Victoria  waren beide im 21. Lebensjahr. Es würde hier zu weit führen, auf den Einfluss einzugehen, den Prinz Albert auf die Kultur und die Entwicklung des viktorianischen Großbritanniens in vielerlei Hinsicht ausübte, aber es genügt zu sagen, daß dieser Einfluss sehr groß war. Der englische Geheimratssekretär, Charles Greville, hat über Albert geschrieben: „… es ist offensichtlich, daß er, während sie [Viktoria] den Titel trägt, in Wirklichkeit die Funktionen des Souveräns ausübt. Er ist in jeder Hinsicht König“, und nach Alberts Tod 1861, im Übrigen am 14. Dezember, dem selben Tag in 1833 des tödlichen Attentats auf Kaspar Hauser, hat Benjamin Disraeli, der spätere Premierminister, über Albert gesagt: „Mit Prinz Albert haben wir unseren Souverän begraben. Dieser deutsche Prinz hat England einundzwanzig Jahre lang mit einer Weisheit und Energie regiert, wie sie keiner unserer Könige je gezeigt hat.“ Noch in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts war es möglich, daß ein einzelner Herrscher einen einzigartigen Einfluss auf die Geschicke seines Landes ausüben konnte.

    In die kulturgeschichtliche Atmosphäre in Mitteleuropa die ich früher erwähnt habe, wurde also der Prinz von Baden hineingeboren, dessen Individualität, ich, dem deutschen Historiker Karl Heyer anknüpfend, möchte als „quecksilbrig“, „merkurial“ bezeichnen, womit Heyer meint, daß sie dem Bereich des Mittleren, des sozial Heilsamen angemessen ist.

   Wenn ich dies über Kaspars Charakter und die Möglichkeiten für Baden und für Deutschland wenn er tatsächlich Großherzog von Baden geworden wäre, vorlege, dann will ich nicht in einer sentimentalen und morbiden Weise beklagen, daß Deutschland sozusagen seine Schicksalsfähre verpasst hat. Vielmehr geht es mir darum, den unterschiedlichen Charakter von Kaspar Hauser gegenüber Napoleon zu kontrastieren: den merkurialen gegenüber den martialischen. Bei dem Versuch, die Geschichte zu verstehen, scheint es mir wichtig, das Kontrafaktische, das Gegenteilige, in einem geschichtlichen Prozess zu erfassen: nicht nur zu sehen, welche Wege ein Volk oder eine Gesellschaft in einer bestimmten Epoche eingeschlagen hat oder als Reaktion auf eine bestimmte Krise eingeschlagen hat, sondern auch, welche Wege nicht genommen wurden – zu spüren oder zu sehen, was in einer bestimmten Epoche möglich war, welche Alternativen da waren. Auf diese Weise können wir etwas aus der Vergangenheit lernen, das sich auf die Gegenwart oder Zukunft anwenden lässt. Es ist doch immer möglich, nicht wahr, daß unterwegs auf einer Reise können wir feststellen, daß wir irgendwo, irgendwann vorhin falsch abgebogen sind, und dann können wir noch einmal darüber nachdenken, welche Abzweigung wir hätten nehmen sollen.

Im Jahr 1920 (22/23.10.1920 GA 200, Dornach) hat Rudolf Steiner über ein europäische Dreigliederung ausgeführt  – nicht die übliche europäische Dreigliederung, die sich auf den Osten, die Mitte und den Westen Europas bezieht, oder die andere Dreigliederung vom Kulturleben, Rechtsleben und Wirtschaftsleben sondern eine, die mit den Volksveranlagungen und Aufgaben dreier westeuropäischer Völker zu tun hat: der Deutschen, der Engländer und der Franzosen. Darüber hat der Historiker Karl Heyer Folgendes geschrieben; ich zitiere:

Die Deutschen haben die Veranlagung für das Geistesleben, die Franzosen für das Juristisch-Staatlich-Politische, die Engländer eine solche für das Wirtschaftliche…. Hier haben wir einen bedeutsamen Hinweis auf einen wichtigen Komplex, auf den es dabei ankäme. Die Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts erscheint also insofern als die  Geschichte dessen, was in Bezug auf dieses notwendig gewesene… Zusammenleben und Zusammenwirken der drei genannten europäischen Völker geschehen oder nicht geschehen, von der Entwicklung gleichsam erstrebt in Wirklichkeit aber kontrekarriert worden ist. Ganz auf der Linie eines solchen Zusammenwirkens und Sichergänzens der Völker hätte gelegen was wir … über ein Zusammenwirken  zwischen dem Politisch-Formgebenden des Franzosentums und dem Geistigen (bzw. Geistig-Sozialen!) Mitteleuropas meinten. Dem  hätte sich  als das Dritte  an- oder eingliedern mögen die Wirstschaftsmission der Briten, die von vornherein auf die grösste Weltweite veranlagt war…. Man kann tief empfinden, wie ein solcher  wahrhaft zeitgemässer und produktiver Zusammenklang der Völker und der sozialen Lebensgebiete von Europa ausgehend das...[moderne] Zeitalter sachgemäss hätte vorbereiten und in diesem dann heilbringend auch in die grösseren Weltzusammenhänge ausstrahlen können. Und gerade an einer solchen Gestaltung der Dinge hätten den denkbar grössten Anteil  diejenigen Impulse nehmen können, die von der von uns  gemeinten grossen spirituellen  Individualität [Kaspar Hauser] hatten ausgehen wollen. Hier wäre im eminentesten Sinne ihre Wirkenssphäre gewesen.

Also, wir können in den drei  Völkern, die Franzosen, die Briten und die Deutschen,  eine gewisse Dreifaltigkeit beobachten. Die drei Völker  haben alle keltische und germanische Wurzel, und auch einige römische Wurzel damit.

England

Allerdings ist noch ein wichtiges Element im britischen Volk  das der Wikinger. Diejenige Wikinger die nach die britische Insel und nach Irland gesegelt und sich niedergelassen haben waren Dänen und Norweger. Die Wikinger waren  von der harten Welt des kalten Nordens geprägt: kühn, erfindungsreich, rücksichtslos, gewinnsüchtig, und kommerziell orientiert -  Plünderer und Händler: „raiders and traders“, wie wir im Englischen sagen. Die waren Völker mit großer Fähigkeit zur Zusammenarbeit für gemeinsame Ziele, die sie z. B. für ihre Seereisen benötigten, aber die Wikinger waren auch Menschen mit großem persönlichen Ehrgeiz, so daß sie sich bei ihrer Ankunft in einem fremden Land oft trennten und eigenen Wege gingen.   Die Wikinger die nach England gesegelt sind versuchten 250 Jahre lang, England zu überfallen, dann sich dort niederzulassen und das ganze Land zu erobern. Im Jahr 1066 gelang es ihnen endlich. Die Normannen waren selbst Wikinger, die sich erst 150 Jahre zuvor im Nord-Frankreich niedergelassen hatten. In Nordengland, wo viele Wikinger einsiedelten, gibt es ein Sprichwort: „where there’s muck, there’s brass“, was soviel bedeutet wie „wo Dreck ist, d.h. guter Boden, da kann man Geld machen“. Die Wirtschaft, der Handel, der Land- und Eigentumsbesitz – all das wurde mit der Zeit zum Mittelpunkt der englischen Kultur. Entstanden ist das englische Parlament um den König mit Steuern zu versorgen. Die erste wirklich globale Handelsgesellschaft der Welt, die East India Company, war nicht nur eine Handelsgesellschaft, sondern sie darstellte fast ein Staat in sich selbst, mit eigener Armee, eigenen Hochschulen und anderen Einrichtungen. 250 Jahre lang war diese Gesellschaft, unterstützt von der Royal Navy, die treibende Kraft des britischen Empire. Ursprünglich aber hatte das wesentlich nicht so viel mit Religion oder Politik sondern mit dem Wirtschaftsleben zu tun.

    Anders als bei den Deutschen, die Philosophie ist keine englische Stärke und im Musikalischen 200 Jahre lang, in den Jahrhunderten der britischen imperialian Ausdehnung und Industrialiserung hindurch, brachten die Engländer keine nennenswerten Komponisten hervor. Anders als in Frankreich, haben die Engländer keinen Respekt vor den Intellektuellen. Im politischen Leben in England,  hat in den letzten drei Jahrhunderten wenig entwickelt. Die Engländer halten an ihren langjährigen Traditionen fest, an ihrer Monarchie, ihrem Respekt für die Zentralregierung, ihrem Zweiparteiensystem und ihren besonderen parlamentarischen Eigentümlichkeiten und Gewohnheiten. Sie neigen dazu, politischen Neuerungen zu misstrauen oder sie zu meiden. Im Gegensatz zu den Franzosen neigen die Engländer dazu, der Autorität zu gehorchen, auch wenn sie viel murren, und sie haben Revolutionen vermeidet. Die gelegentlichen Unruhen sind bald vorbei; der lang anhaltende Bergarbeiterstreik in  1984/85 war eine Ausnahme von der Regel. Nur einmal in englischen Geschichte, im Bürgerkrieg der 17. Jahrhunderts, sind sie als Volk politisch außer Kontrolle geraten. Dabei wurden sie unter anderem zum ersten Volk in Europa, das seinen König nach einem Prozess öffentlich hingerichtet haben.

Frankreich

Im deutschen Form des Namen des Landes der Franzosen  - Frankreich – steht das Wort ‚Reich‘. ‚Frank’ oder ,Franken’ heißt etymologisch kühn, wagemutig, offen oder frei. Das ‚Reich‘ in Frankreich erinnert uns daran, daß der französische Staat oder das französische Königreich bis in die Zeit Chlodwigs, des merowingischen Franken, und seine Beziehung zum Papsttum und zum Erbe Roms zurückreicht. Wir können an Karl den Großen und sein fränkisches Reich denken und daran, wie die Franken allmählich zu Franzosen wurden. Oder auch an Ludwig IX. und sein erhabenes Konzept des französischen Monarchen, daran auch, wie Philipp der Schöne (Philipp IV.)  die Anfänge des modernen, zentralisierten, bürokratischen Staates geschaffen hat und wie Ludwig XI. den französischen Staat konsolidiert hat. Dann kam der politische Absolutismus mit Franz I. und „L’etat c’est moi“ von Ludwig XIV. Dann die Vielfalt des einflussreichen französischen politischen Denkens im 18. Jahrhundert, mit Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Desmoulins, Robespierre  und Babeuf bis hin zum Code Napoleon, Saint Simon,  de Tocqueville und Comte. Die Franzosen haben im Laufe der Jahrhunderte ein Genie für politisches, juristisches, militärisches und diplomatisches Denken bewiesen.

     Im Napoleon Bonaparte zeigte sich eine ausserordentliche Individualität ganz anderer Art im Vergleich mit derjenigen von Kaspar Hauser. Kein Franzose, sondern ein Korse, ein Mann, der buchstäblich vom Mittelmeerraum stammt, und dessen Vorname an die vulkanische Stadt Neapel erinnert und der das französische mit dem italienischen Element verbindet. Napoleon versucht, Europa auf eine Weise zu vereinen, die es seit der Römerzeit nicht mehr gegeben hat – d.h. mit den alten, traditionellen Methoden des Mars, Methoden die die Römer der Antike sicherlich anerkannt hätten. Wie die römische Legionäre, ehrten die Truppen Napoleons ihre Adlerstandarten. Zum Erstaunen seiner Zeitgenossen reiht Napoleon sich sehr schnell in die Riege der militärischen Genies ein, zu denen gehören Gestalten wie Alexander der Große, Hannibal, Julius Cäsar und Dschingis Khan. Dagegen ist Napoleon aber auch ein moderner Mensch, indem er aus keiner hohen Position in der Gesellschaft stammt, sondern  aus eigener Kraft seinen Weg an die Spitze geschafft hat. Nach seiner Niederlage im Jahr 1815, gefangen auf der britischen Atlantikinsel St. Helena, wie Prometheus an seinen Felsen gekettet, und im Rückblick auf eigenen Leben, betont Napoleon, daß sein wahres Ziel die Einigung Europas, die Schaffung eines neuen Europas, gewesen sei. Doch war Rudolf Steiner der Ansicht, daß Napoleon – so Steiner – „seine Lebensaufgabe vergessen“ hatte: Anstatt zu versuchen, die Europäer auf eine neue und moderne Art und Weise zusammenzubringen, die die wunderbare Vielfalt der europäischer Kulturen, Religionen und Lebensweisen friedlich widerspiegeln würde, und die alten dynastischen Staaten in neue und lebendige Strukturen merkurialisch verwandeln könnte – anstatt auf der französischen innewohnenden Veranlagung zum gesellschafts- politischen Denken aufzubauen und diese weiterzuentwickeln, versuchte Napoleon, die Europäer zusammenzuzwingen,  - angeblich im Namen der neuen Ideale der französischen Revolution  - und die Europäer in ein neues, intellektuell-geprägtes, einheitliches, effizientes System zu zwingen, ein System aber das gleichzeitig mit Blut, Familie und Dynastie eng verbunden war – die alten Merkmale der Welt des Mittelmeers, von Griechenland und Roms, der kriegerischen italienischen Fürsten der Renaissance und der konkurrierenden Blutlinien der Mafiafamilien. Napoleon setzt eigene Familienmitglieder an die Spitze mehrerer europäischer Staaten. Stéphanie de Beauharnais war auch eine von ihnen. Er wendet sich im Laufe seiner Karriere gegen die meisten europäischen Königreiche, einschließlich des Papsttums, versucht aber, sich selbst zu einem neuen, unheiligen römischen Kaiser von Europa zu machen. Er wagt es – dieses Phänomen Napoleon, das gleichzeitig so modern und doch so atavistisch erscheint – die Krone auf eigenes Haupt zu setzen. Er schafft das alte Heilige Römische Reich ab und errichtet stattdessen ein neues, vereinfachtes römisches Reich nach einem einheitlicheren Muster, das sich an den Praktiken des nachrevolutionären Frankreich orientiert. Was wird erzwungen aber durch die modernen Armeen und den Geist des Mars heißt… Uniformität. Diese war bereits im 18. Jahrhundert von Frankreich aus nach Mitteleuropa eingedrungen – im Militärgeist des Preußens von Friedrich dem Zweiten, zum Beispiel. Doch Napoleon versuchte, diese Uniformität und Zentralismus noch viel weiter und tiefer voranzutreiben.  In diesem Sinne sagte Rudolf Steiner daß Napoleon seine Mission vergessen hatte; er hatte vergessen, wozu er eigentlich gekommen war  nicht im geographischen Sinne sondern im geistigen –  und doch können wir in seiner Biographie und in seinen Worten und Taten, trotz seines großen Einsatzes von Gewalt, Beispiele dafür sehen, was er vergessen hatte.

In den Worten von Karl Heyer: „dieser Auftrag hing namentlich dahin in seiner kommenden Inkarnation einen wesentlichen Beitrag zu einer friedlichen Einigung Europas zu leisten….Nehmen wir nun aber einmal an…Napoleon hätte seinen Auftrag nicht vergessen, sondern wie vorgesehen in dessen wahren Sinne gewirkt, dann hätte er aus spirituellen Impulse eine Einigung  Europas herbeigeführt. ER, der selbst ja ein Umfassenderes repräsentiert als nur Frankreich, hätte aber offenbar das, was als besondere, politisch formende sozialbildnerische Fähigkeiten und Kräfte im Franzosentum lebt, in den Dienst einer grossen zeitgemässen Zukunftsmission gestellt und so von dieser Seite her das neue… Zeitalter vorberitet und damit zugleich das, was dessen soziale Auswirking ist…Napoleon wäre, so können wir es vielleicht ausdrücken, ein wahrer „Vater Europas“ geworden. An diese Wirksamkeit Napoleons hätte jene grosse Individualität [Kaspar Hauser], die sich 1812 in dem badischen Erbprinzen, Napoleon schicksalhaft so nahe, verkörperte, anknüpfen können, sie in voller Harmonie  mit ihr weiterführen und ergänzen aus der Kraft des wahren mitteleuropäischen Geistes, aus der Kraft insbesondere des deutschen Geisteslebens  heraus. So hätten dem mehr Politisch-Formhaften starke spirituelle Inhalte gegeben werden können und dem Ganzen eine Wendung in das Soziale, eben im Sinne eines Übergangs zu dem bevorstehenden neuen Zeitalter… Aber Napoleon „vergass“. Er wurde nicht ein wahrer „Vater Europas“, sondern der vielfache Inaugurator des Gegenteils oder der Gegenbilder dessen, was in seinem wahren „Auftrag“ gelegen hätte, ein Inaugurator nämlich des Materialismus, des Militarismus, des Nationalismus, ein mächtiger Förderer des Einheitsstaats im funktionellen Sinne. …Napoleons Vergessen  liegt ganz auf der gleichen Linie  wie die Fehlentwicklung der französischen Revolution, deren Erbe er bekanntlich wurde. Sein Vergessen und diese Fehlentwicklung gehören eng zusammen. Und zusammen erzeugten sie jene Zerr- und Gegenbilder dessen, was aus der grossen positiven Inspiration  des Zeitalters hätte inauguriert werden sollen, und machten es dessen Gegnern, die aus ihrem egoistischen Machtstreben heraus eine solche neue Welt gar nicht wollten, leicht, zum Kampfe gegen die Revolution und Napoleon mit vieler Berechtigung aufzurufen und diesen Kampf schliesslich zum siegreichen Ende zu bringen.“

    Was ist dann in Frankreich, Deutschland und Großbritannien durch das Vergessen Napoleons und die Beseitigung Kaspar Hausers geschehen? Karl Heyers Antwort, die mir sehr treffend zu sein scheint, ist Folgendes:

    Frankreich kam nicht hinaus über seinen „Etatismus“, und es wurde zum grössten Impulsator des Nationalismus. Statt eine grosse europäische politische Mission auszuüben, verfiel es der routinehaften   Politikasterei. Deutschland fand nicht einen geistgemässen Weg vom  deutschen Idealismus  und vom Goetheanismus in das Politisch-Soziale. Die Impulse der grossen Individualität, die sich hier verkörpert hatte [d.h. in Kaspar Hauser], blieben unausgelebt, und die Wirkungen davon erstanden auf allen Gebieten. Englands… Wirtschaftsmission wurde zunehmend  in den Dienst einseitiger Machttendenzen im Sinne eines weltwirtschaftlichen Imperialismus gestellt und geriet immer mehr in den Bannkreis materialistischer, die Welt gewissermassen wirtschaftlich „überfremdender“ Impulse.

[Bild: David Newbatt]   

Kaspar wurde geboren, als Napoleon im Alter von 43 Jahren gerade in die Phase eingetreten war, die manche Biographieberater als die Mars-Phase der menschliche Biographie bezeichnen, d.h. die Zeit von 42-49, die für viele Menschen die Zeit der Krise mitten im Leben darstellt. Als Napoleon 1821 gestorben ist, befand sich Kaspar, damals 9 Jahre alt, in der Merkur-Phase seines eigenen Lebens. Die Merkur-Phase dauert von 7-14 Jahre alt. Es war für Kaspar eine Zeit, die er in fast völliger Dunkelheit und Stille durchleben musste.

     33 Jahre nach dem Tod Napoleons haben die Westmächte England und Frankreich, unter der Führung von Kaiser Napoleon (III.) dem Dritten mit dem Krimkrieg (1853-65) ihren Angriff auf Russland – die gleiche Aggression die Napoleon Bonaparte führte als Kaspar Hauser 1812 geboren wurde – und 1860 führten die beiden Mächte gemeinsam Krieg gegen China. 33 Jahre nach Kaspar Hausers Tod hat Bismarcks Preußen im Österreichisch-Preußischen Krieg von 1866 Österreich besiegt. Man kann sich fragen: War dies vielleicht die Folge der Abwesenheit in Mitteleuropa des heilenden Einfluss, dessen Möglichkeit 33 Jahre zuvor abgeschafft worden war? Das dualistische Staatswesen, das als Österreich-Ungarn bekannt ist, war eines der Ergebnisse dieses Krieges.  Es basierte auf der gemeinsamen Herrschaft von zwei Volksgruppen – von den Deutschen und den Magyaren – über viele andere, kleinere Gruppen und führte schließlich zu dem politischen Konflikt auf dem Balkan, der 1914 den Auslöser für den Ersten Weltkrieg gebildet hat.

    Es könnte sein daß Napoleon dazu bestimmt war, seine Rolle in der europäischen Geschichte zu spielen, bevor der Merkur-Geist Kaspar Hausers seinen heilenden Impuls zur Geltung bringen konnte. Wir haben es hier also mit zwei gegensätzlichen Figuren zu tun, einer Mars-Figur und einer Merkur-Figur, deren Schicksale dennoch durch die Französin Stéphanie de Beauharnais miteinander verbunden sind.

1836 wurde in England der erste Band eines bemerkenswerten und äußerst komplexen Buch über die Geschichte der Religionen in aller Welt und die Verbindungen untereinander veröffentlicht. Der Autor war ein liberaler Richter, Godfrey Higgins, der vier Monate vor Kaspar Hauser gestorben ist. Higgins war Freimaurer und stand in enger Verbindung mit dem herausragendsten englischen Freimaurer seiner Zeit, dem Herzog von Sussex, dem sechsten Sohn von König Georg dem dritten. Vom Jahre 1813 war der Herzog 30 Jahre lang bis zu seinem Tod Großmeister der englischen Freimaurerei. Er betrachtete sich selbst als kosmopolitischer Mensch der Aufklärung und setzte sich dafür ein, alle verbliebenen christlichen Bezuge aus der Freimaurerei und ihren Ritualen auszulöschen, nicht zuletzt, um die nichteuropäische Prinzen und Herrschern im Britischen Empire den Beitritt zur englischen Freimaurerei zu erleichtern. Nach Godfrey Higgins’ ‚bescheidene‘ Meinung waren er selbst  und der Herzog die sachkundigsten Freimaurer in England.

     Sein Buch, an dem er 20 Jahre lang täglich 10 Stunden arbeitete, hat den Titel Anacalypsis und sollte zeigen, daß alle Religionen einen gemeinsamen Ursprung haben. Ein Hauptmerkmal dieses einflußreichen Buches (unter anderen wurde die Gründerin der Thesophischen Gesellschaft, H.P. Blavatsky, durch das Buch viel beeinflußt) betraf den so genannten Neros-Zyklus von 600 Jahren oder 7200 Sonnenmonaten (solar Monaten?) in der menschlichen Entwicklung. Dabei handelte es sich um einen Zyklus von Konjunktionen der Sonne und des Mondes; nach 600 Jahren würden sich Sonne, Mond und Sterne alle in den gleichen zu einander relativen Stellungen befinden wie 600 Jahre zuvor. Higgins, der sich auf frühere Schriftsteller und Astronomen gestützt hat, z.B. Flavius Josephus und Giovanni Cassini, berichtet, daß etwa alle 600 Jahre ein bemerkenswerter Führer, Lehrer oder Reformer geboren wird – ein Avatarfigur, sozusagen. Der Neros-Zyklus wird nicht von diesen besonderen Menschen verursacht; der Zyklus bereitet sozusagen den geistigen Boden der Menschheit vor, auf dem solche großen Persönlichkeiten wirken können. Higgins spricht von dem persischen König Kyros dem Grossen und von Buddha, Apollonius, Jesus und Mohammed, auch von den religiösen Reformern um das Jahr 1200 nach Christus, und der nachfolgende Zyklus, sagt er, war um 1800 begonnen. Der Neros-Zyklus war keineswegs weit bekannt, außer bei Esoterikern oder Forschern wie Higgins selbst.

     Thomas Henry Burgoyne, ein solcher Esoteriker später im 19. Jahrhundert, hat auch viel von dem Higgins-Buch gelernt.  1885/6 hat er geschrieben daß die großen Individualitäten, die mit der Vollendung eines Neros-Zyklus erscheinen „vergleichsweise unbekannt in der Welt ihres Wirken entfalten  werden; diese Menschen werden von denen, die sie kennen, als gewöhnliche Individuen angesehen werden; sie werden die übelste Verfolgung durch das Element erleiden, das die Kraft der Prinzipien fürchtet, die diese besonderen Menschen hinter sich lassen werden. Ihre besten Freunde werden, obwohl sie über das wahre Wesen dieser Menschen im Unklaren sind, ihre Wirklichkeit erst dann begreifen, wenn sie weggegangen sind … erst dann werden diesen Menschen vollständig bekannt sein, wenn sie das Tal des Todesschattens durchschritten haben und diese Welt keine Macht mehr hat, sie zu schmeicheln oder sie zu verurteilen.“

    Thomas Henry Burgoyne war jedoch selbst kein Heiliger. Er war eine der führenden Persönlichkeiten einer kurzlebigen, aber unheimlich einflußreichen anglo-amerikanischen okkulten Gruppe in den 1880er Jahren, der hieß der Hermetischen Bruderschaft von Luxor. Das Wesentliche dabei ist, daß solche Esoteriker, ob in den oberen Rängen der Gesellschaft wie der Herzog von Sussex und Higgins oder von niedrigerem Status, wie Burgoyne, sich dieses Neros-Zyklus und des Auftretens großer Lehrer alle 600 Jahre seit mindestens 600 v. Chr. bewußt waren. Sie wußten, daß um 1800 eine oder mehrere große avatarähnliche Figuren auftauchen würden, um einen neuen kulturellen Impuls zu bringen. Wenn man über ein solches Wissen verfügt, kann man es je nach dem eigenen ethischen Standard nutzen, um solche Gestalten zu identifizieren und zu unterstützen oder sie zu blockieren oder sogar zu töten.

    Graf Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, einer der engsten Schüler Rudolf Steiners hat im November 1916 geschrieben, daß „jene Kreise, die alles verheimlichen und auch heute noch versuchen zu verheimlichen, was im Zusammenhang mit dem Schicksal von Kaspar Hauser geschehen ist, jene Mitglieder der westlichen Logen und Jesuiten sind, die seit mehr als 150 Jahren, aber nachweislich seit Januar 1802 in ihren führenden Organisationen zusammenarbeiten“…. In Süddeutschland, so Polzer,  war „der geistige Boden gut vorbereitet worden durch all jene Persönlichkeiten, die wir als Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Herder und andere kennen. Kaspar Hauser sollte gleichsam alles um sich versammeln, was in diesem so vorbereiteten geistigen Boden existierte. Aber das war von jenen Kreisen (den westlichen Logen und den Jesuiten) nicht gewollt. Sie konnten ein zur Bewusstheit erwachendes Zentrum nicht dulden, wenn sie nicht auf ihre Macht und ihre Machtansprüche verzichten wollten. Ein Geist wie derjenige Goethes macht ihnen Angst. Die Herausforderung von Napoleon hat diesen Kreisen sich zu einem Bündnis für die angestrebte Weltherrschaft auf den Gebieten der Ideologie und des Handels zu bilden, gezwungen. Napoleon hatte ihre Bemühungen bereits vereitelt; er war es, der die beiden Strömungen im Grunde zu einer Vereinigung gezwungen hat. Die ideologischen und spirituellen Angelegenheiten wurden ausschließlich in die Hände der Jesuiten gelegt; die kommerziellen in die Hände der anglo-amerikanischen Logen des Westens.“  [zitiert aus Tradowsky, Kaspar Hauser oder das Ringen um den Geist]

    Es ist höchst bemerkenswert, daß sich die Freimaurer in Großbritannien während des heftigen und erbitterten Kampfes zwischen der Freimaurerei und dem Papsttum während des 19. Jahrhunderts 1755 in zwei rivalisierende Fraktionen gespalten hatten und auch die Gesellschaft Jesu 1773 vom Papsttum selbst verboten worden war, und dann, genau in der kurzen Zeit nach dem Sturz Napoleons und nach Kaspar Hausers Geburt, 1813-1816, wurden die Freimaurer in Großbritannien 1813 von zwei Söhnen des Königs wiedervereinigt. Das wurde von dem Herzog von Sussex und seinem Bruder, dem Herzog von Kent, durchgeführt; der Herzog von Kent  war der Vater der späteren Königin Victoria. Nach diese Wiedervereingung der englischen Freimaurer 1813, dann kam die Wiedereinsetzung der Gesellschaft Jesu vom Papst im Jahre 1816.

    Polzer-Hoditz schreibt daß was „durch Kaspar Hauser beabsichtigt war, wurde durch die Menschheit zu Fall gebracht. Auf diesen ‚geplanten‘ Trümmern hat das Schwarz-Weiß-Prinzip die Oberhand gewonnen.“ durch die Menschheit zu Fall gebracht   - das heißt durch die Pläne dieser beiden Gruppen, die Freimaurer und die Jesuiten. Heute hat sich die Lage zwar etwas geändert, aber nicht in ihren Grundzügen. Das Papsttum, das seit dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil Ende der 1950er Jahre zunehmend von der Freimaurerei unterwandert wurde, hat sich insbesondere unter Papst Franziskus den sogenannten globalistischen Werten des Westens, d.h. der führenden Freimaurerländer USA, Großbritannien und Frankreich, angeschlossen.  Inzwischen bilden Russland und China den anderen Pol des von Polzer-Hoditz erwähnten dualistischen Schwarz-Weiß-Prinzips. Das war nicht von Russland  gewollt. 2000 hat Putin  US Präsident Bill Clinton gefragt ob Russland  ein NATO Mitglied werden dürfen und Clinto hat gesagt „Nein, Sie [Russland] sind zu groß.“ Nach 2008 und besonders nach 2014 wurde vom Westen her zunehmend Russland nach Osten abgedrängt und zusammen mit China erzwungen.

    Heutzutage sprechen Russland und China von einer neuen Weltordnung der Multipolarität, die ihnen zufolge die behauptete unipolare Vorherrschaft des Westens ablöst. In Wirklichkeit aber vertreten die Führerschaften der beiden östlichen Giganten nichts Neues, sondern nur Formen des alten politischen Autoritarismus und der ideologischen Starrheit, die sich neue technologische Masken überziehen. Währenddessen von innen heraus verrottet allmählich das von den USA geführte Imperium des Westens und seiner Satelliten in Europa, das selbst keinerlei neue gesellschaftspolitische oder wirtschaftliche Ideen entwickelt hat. 1916 hat Polzer-Hoditz geschrieben daß die Pläne der beiden Gruppen, der Freimaurer und der Jesuiten, der beiden veralteten hierarchischen Organisationen,  „werden … zu immer tragischeren Katastrophen führen, weil keiner von ihnen der menschlichen Entwicklung Rechnung trägt.“ „Die Freimaurerei“ – heute heißt,  gleichfalls wie zu Kaspar Hausers Zeiten, Großbritannien und Amerika und in geringerem Maße Frankreich, während der jesuitische Impuls heute hat sich nochmal nach Osten „verlagert“ sozusagen, nicht nach Russland und Preussen wie im 18. Jahrhundert,  sondern diesmal nach Russland und China, selbstverständlich nicht die Jesuiten selbst als Priester, sondern der jesuitische Impuls in Gestalt von politisch-theologischen Obrigkeitsbürokraten – ein jesuitähnliche Impuls, unterstützt von einer ausgefeilten Technologie westlicher Ursprungs die zu Überwachungszwecken verwendet wird.

    Was einen wirklich neuen, einen echten von Mitteleuropa ausgehenden Impuls auf dem Kontinent angeht, so hat es seit den 1830er und 40er Jahren keinen solchen Impuls mehr gegeben. Rudolf Steiners Bewegung für einen dreigliedrigen sozialen Organismus war zwar ein solcher, aber die Bewegung hat nur vier Jahre, von 1919 bis 1922, gedauert. Ansonsten sind die einzigen „neuen“ umfassenden sozialen Impulse, die aus der Mitte Europas, aus Deutschland und Italien, ausgingen, der Kommunismus und der Faschismus gewesen. Und meines Erachtens, hatten beide nicht wirklich etwas mit den eigentlichen Geister ihrer Völker zu tun. Der in diesen beiden innewohnende Geist ist rein atavistisch – purer Kollektivismus und Autoritarismus. Leider ist dies das geschichtliche Szenario, mit dem wir uns seit der Ermordung von Kaspar Hauser, dem Sieg der Reaktion und dem Aufstieg der totalitären sozialen Formen nach 1848 auseinandersetzen müssen.

Zum Thema der Weltmacht

Zu diesem Hauptthema der Weltmacht gehört die Rivalität zwischen Frankreich und England.  Der Krieg zwischen England und Frankreich der 1815 in der Schlacht bei Waterloo beendet ist, erschien damals als nur der kürzlichste der vielen Kriege zwischen den Engländern und den Franzosen zu sein – obwohl er sich eigentlich als der letzte herausstellte. Die Rivalität und erbitterte Feindschaft zwischen den englischen und französischen Eliten, die ihre eigenen Völker wiederholt in diesen langen und zerstörerischen Kriegen hineinzogen, ist wie schon gesagt im Jahr 1066 mit der normannischen Eroberung Englands begonnen. Sie setzte sich mit den hartnäckigen Bemühungen der anglonormannischen Elite um die Eroberung Frankreichs während des Mittelalters fort  - die können als ein langer Rachefeldzug seitens der anglonormannische  Elite für den Verlust der französischen Gebiete angesehen werden  - und nach dem Scheitern dieser Bemühungen hat das Ringen zwischen die beiden Eliten noch weitergegangen  mit dem bereits erwähnten diesmal erfolgreichen Streben der britischen Elite, die Vorherrschaft Frankreichs in Europa zu bekämpfen und die Stellung  Frankreichs in der Welt überhaupt im  18. und 19. Jahrhundert umzustürzen.

   Man kann sehen, wie der Kampf zwischen diesen beiden Kulturen, die keltische, germanische und einige wikinger Wurzeln haben, Teil der grossen, umfassenden, tiefgreifenden Bewegung der europäischen Geschichte bildete, die Bewegung oder die Welle die langsam vorgerückt hat vom südlichen Mittelmeerraum in der römischen Zeit allmählich nach Norden, nördlich der Alpen in den germanischen Raum vordringend, dann im Mittelalter nach Frankreich und die Niederlande und schließlich nach der britischen Insel. Anthroposophisch ausgedrückt hat dies mit dem Übergang im frühen 15. Jahrhundert von der Epoche der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele zur Epoche der Bewusstseinsseele zu tun, die auch vom 4. zum 5. postatlantischen Zeitalter oder vom Widder- zum Fische-Zeitalter genannt werden.

    Wie gesagt, war Napoleon in Moskau, als ihm die Nachricht von Kaspars Geburt am 29. September 1812 überbracht wurde. Napoleon hoffte, durch seinen Einmarsch in Russland das Bündnis zwischen seinen beiden großen Weltrivalen Russland und England zu brechen. Napoleon wußte auch, daß die Grundlage von Englands wirtschaftlicher Macht in dem Handel mit Indien lag und daß er, wenn er Russland erobern könnte, die Briten in Indien besiegen und diejenige französische Stellung in Indien wiederherstellen könnte, die Frankreich im Siebenjährigen Krieg in den 1750er Jahren verloren hatte. Die Briten in Indien zu besiegen, war das Endziel seiner Expedition nach Ägypten im Jahr 1799 gewesen, die mit einem Fehlschlag beendet ist.

    Der Einmarsch seiner Grande Armee in Russland ist auch mit einem Fehlschlag beendet und 1815 wurde Napoleon von der englischen Regierung nach St. Helena geschickt. Für London und Wien schien das Ungeheuer endlich besiegt zu sein.  Doch im folgenden Jahr, 1816, tauchten Nachrichten auf, die – für diejenigen, die sie deuten konnten – indirekt darauf hindeuteten, daß Napoleons Adoptivenkel, der Sohn von Stéphanie von Baden, nicht, wie vorher angekündigt, kurz nach seiner Geburt gestorben war, sondern irgendwo in Gefangenschaft gehalten noch lebte, wahrscheinlich in Süddeutschland. Auch Napoleon  - nur 47 Jahre alt  – lebte noch, und daher darstellte er für seine Feinde in London, Wien und Paris potenziell eine grosse Gefahr. London und Wien wollte nur Ordnung, Stabilität, Ruhe in Europa. Überall war die alte Ordnung wiederhergestellt, die Aristokraten saßen wieder fest im Sattel. Deswegen lebte 1816 in einem „vergoldeten Käfig“ in Schönbrunn Palast in Wien unter den wachsamen Augen Prinz Metternichs gehalten -  – der fünfjähriger Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte,  Napoleons eigener Sohn, der ehemalige König von Rom und jetzt der sogenannte Herzog von Reichstadt  – wie Kaspar Hauser, auch einer Spross von zwei Kulturen. Für London, Wien und Paris war es äußerst wichtig, daß jeder, der in irgendeiner Weise mit Napoleon in Verbindung stand, daran gehindert wurde, den Weg zu einem europäischen Thron zu finden.

     Napoleon ist 1821 gestorben doch 1830 kam es zu einer wichtigen Entwicklung in Bezug auf diese Weltmachtwurzel zwischen Frankreich und England: Die so genannte Julirevolution ist in Paris ausgebrochen und stürzte Lord Stanhopes Freund, den ultrakonservativen französisichen König Karl X., der letzte König der Bourbondynastie, der dann nach England zum zweiten Mal in seines Lebens ins Exil fliehen musste. Aber danach hat kein Napoleonide den französischen Thron bestiegen; der neue König der Franzosen war Louis Philippe, der Sohn des ehemaligen Herzogs von Orléans. 1789 hatte der Herzog die Revolution gegen seinen eigenen Bruder Ludwig XVI. unterstützt. Der Herzog von Orléans war ein führender Freimaurer gewesen; ein guter Freund des englischen Establishments und hatte große Geldbeträge von den Briten erhalten.

    Die Briten waren sehr stark in die Vorbereitung der ersten französischen Revolution verwickelt, nicht zuletzt durch diesen revolutionären, anglophilen Herzog von Orléans.  Um etwas von diesem Hintergrund zu ergreifen, sollen wir Graf Stanhopes Stellung im Geflecht der britischen Weltpolitik und der Interessen des britischen Empires verstehen.

Der Lord Stanhope in der Geschichte Kaspar Hausers war der vierte Graf Stanhope. Die Politik seines in Schweizer Genf aufgewachsenen Vater, dem dritten Graf, war radikal und sogar revolutionär. Der dritte Graf Stanhope Charles war ein Mensch der rationalistischen Aufklärung, ein Fan von Voltaire, Rousseau und dem revolutionären Frankreich überhaupt und wurde von vielen in England als exzentrischer Radikaler und sogar als Volksverräter angesehen. Mit Deutschland hatte er wenig zu tun. Sein Sohn Philip Henry, der 4. Graf Stanhope, war dagegen stark von seinen Erfahrungen im deutschsprachigen Raum in der Zeit von 1801 bis 1835 geprägt und stand sozusagen mit beiden Beinen in der Welten der Aufklärung und der Romantik. Obwohl er einige französische Freunde und Bekannte hatte, lehnte er Frankreich als Staat entschieden ab und sprach sich sogar einmal für dessen vollständige Auflösung aus. Im Gegensatz zu seinem Vater, und vielleicht als Reaktion auf dessen strenge radikale Politik, betrachtete Philip Henry Stanhope sich selbst als ein „alter Tory aus der Schule von Mr. Pitt“. D.h. vom Premierminister William Pitt dem Jünger. Im britischen Parlament hatte dieser Stanhope wenig politisches Talent. Er war ein ebenso exzentrischer Ultrakonservativer wie sein Vater ein exzentrischer Ultraradikaler gewesen war; fast alle politische Anliegen unterstützt von Philp Henry sind gescheitert. Das Scheitern seiner politischen Karriere im Parlament war ein weiterer Grund, warum er sich für die Laufbahn eines politischen Agenten für die britische Regierung auf dem Kontinent entschieden hat. Der lange Streit mit seinem Vater hatte ihn seiner finanziellen Sicherheit beraubt. Seine wachsende Familie mußte er ernähren und außer den gesellschaftlichen Umgangsformen eines Aristokraten zusammen mit einer gewissen klugen Schlauigkeit in seiner Manipulation der Gefühle vieler Menschen und auch eine Begabung, sich Fremdsprachen anzueignen, hatte er keine Talente.

     Stanhopes Familie war durch Heirat eng mit der Familie des berühmten, im 1805 gestorben britischen Premierministers William Pitt dem Jüngeren verwandt. Stanhopes Urgroßmutter war die Tochter von Thomas Pitt, der das Vermögen der Familie Pitt in Indien durch den Erwerb eines riesigen Diamanten gemacht hatte. Stanhopes Halbschwester Hester, 17 Jahre jünger als Pitt und eine merkwürdigen Persönlichkeit an sich, viel tapferer als ihr Bruder, war mütterlicherseits die Nichte von William Pitt und hatte eine sehr enge, aber nicht sexuelle persönliche Beziehung zu dem Premierminister. Tatsächlich lebte sie bei ihm zwei Jahre vor Pitts Tod als  persönliche Sekretärin und Haushälterin. Durch ihre familiäre Verbindung zu den Pitts und ihre persönliche Beziehung zu William Pitt, dem Mann an der Spitze der britischen Regierung, konnte die kluge und wagemutige Hester 1801 heimlich die Flucht ihres Halbbruders Philip Henry vor dem tyrannischen Vater nach Deutschland arrangieren, wo Philip Henry in Erlangen* sein Studium fortsetzte und Deutsch lernte. Dies war ein weiterer Grund, warum Stanhope’s Vater William Pitt hasste: Er hatte sich in den Streit zwischen Vater und Sohn eingemischt.

[*Warum Süddeutschland und Erlangen? Das hat auch mit Pitt und mit Hester zu tun.  Francis Jackson war ein Freund von ihr und auch ein Diplomat in Pitts Dienst. Als junger Mann hat Jackson in Erlangen  studiert und dort ein gutes Verhältnis zur Markgräfin Sophie-Karoline von Ansbach-Beyreuth pflegte.]

     William Pitt der Jünger war ein politisches Genie, dessen persönliche Gaben diejenigen  seines Vaters William Pitt des Älteren, des ersten Graf von Chatham in den Schatten stellten. Pitt der Ältere hatte den britischen Staat im Siebenjährigen Krieg gegen Frankreich in den 1750er Jahren geführt. Tatsächlich waren beide Pitts Kriegsführer, aber im Vergleich mit sein sehr tüchtiger Sohn, der die imperiale Politik seines Vaters nur festigt und weiterführt hat, kann man den älteren Pitt mehr als den Architekt des britischen Empires betrachten. Der ältere Pitt war Mitglied einer politischen Fraktion, die als die Patriot Whigs bekannt war, auch Cobhams Cubs (Jungtiere?) genannt. Ein „cub“ ist ein junger Bär, und „Cobham“ hier bezieht sich auf Lord Cobham  – Richard Temple, den Anführer der Fraktion. Er war der Befehlshaber des älteren Pitt in der Armee gewesen und war auch eine Art Ersatzvater für ihn. Die Familien Pitt und Cobham waren auch durch Heirat miteinander verbunden wie auch die Pitts und die Stanhopes. Dieser Lord Cobham kann als der eigentliche Architekt des britischen Empire bezeichnet werden. Er verfolgte ganz bewusst die Politik, Frankreich als Weltmacht zu verdrängen – die Franzosen überall auf der Welt anzugreifen und zu besiegen und ihre Kolonien und Territorien zu erobern, so wie Rom systematisch versucht hatte, Karthago zu besiegen und zu verdrängen. Cobham verbreitete seine Ideen über seine Fraktion und vor allem über William Pitt den Älteren. Dieser Pitt der Ältere hat Cobham als seinen Mentor betrachtet.

    Man kann sagen, daß William Pitt der Jüngere das Empire gerettet und den Grundstein für den größten Sieg über den alten Feind Frankreich und dessen phänomenalen Führer Napoleon gelegt hat, aber es ist auch nicht übertrieben zu sagen, daß William Pitt der Ältere das Empire überhaupt erst geschaffen hat. Dies ist zweifellos der Grund dafür, daß Großbritanniens führende außenpolitische Denkfabrik Chatham House nach ihm benannt ist und in seinem ehemaligen Londoner Haus noch tagt (10 St. James Square).

William Pitt der Jüngere war zwar ein fortschrittlicherer und sozialliberalerer Politiker als sein Vater, aber auch ein Imperialist und ein Tory. Er fortsetzte die Weltpolitik und die Empire-Idee seines Vaters, und daher auch das Konzept Cobhams: nämlich, England muss das Gleichgewicht der Kräfte in Europa halten, nicht zuletzt um zu verhindern, daß eine europäische Macht in der Lage ist, auf dem Land- oder Seeweg, Englands Kontrolle über Indien zu bedrohen. Auf diese Weise soll England weiterhin die Welt beherrschen. So wie Pitt der Ältere den Sieg Großbritanniens über das königliche Frankreich im Siebenjährigen Krieg, in Nordamerika und Indien anführte, so führte sein Sohn Pitt der Jüngere den Kampf Großbritanniens gegen das revolutionäre und dann napoleonische Frankreich. Wie gesagt, als großer Bewunderer des revolutionären Frankreichs, Stanhopes Vater Charles hasste Pitt; im Gegenteil, aus Verbitterung über seinen Vater und aus Abscheu vor dem revolutionären Frankreich, kannte sein Sohn Philip Henrys Bewunderung für Pitt keine Grenzen.

    Nach dem Sturz Napoleons 1815, als Frankreich aus Sicht der britischen Elite sozusagen unter Kontrolle gebracht worden war, können wir beobachten, wie sich die Interessen der konservativen konterrevolutionären britischen und französischen Eliten in den folgenden Jahrzehnten immer mehr deckten, bis zu dem Punkt – 33 Jahre nach dem Tode Napoleons – an dem Großbritannien und Frankreich 1854 im Krimkrieg eine gemeinsame amphibische Invasion auf der Krim-Halbinsel durchgeführt haben. Dann in den 1860ern auch gemeinsam Invasionen in China und in Mexiko durchgeführt haben. Die alte Spannungen zwischen den beiden Mächten blieben jedoch bestehen und führten 1898 in der Faschoda-Krise in Ostafrika fast zu einem Krieg zwischen den beiden. Dennoch kam es dann 1904 zum Entente Cordiale-Abkommen und 1914 zum Zusammenschluss gegen Deutschland. Während des Ersten Weltkrieges kooperieren die beiden westlichen Alliierten unter anderem bei der Aufteilung des Nahen Ostens im Rahmen des berüchtigten Sykes-Picot-Plans und bei der Sabotage der Bemühungen der weißen Armeen, die Bolschewiki im russischen Bürgerkrieg zu besiegen. Die Folgen dieser beiden Aktionen sind noch heute in Gaza und in der Ukraine zu spüren. 1939 zögerte Frankreich, ohne britische Führung, Massnahmen gegen Deutschland zu ergreifen.

    Im Juni 1940 haben Teile der britischen Elite mit Unterstützung Churchills sogar vorgeschlagen, die beiden Länder zu fusionieren, um Deutschland besser bekämpfen zu können, aber es war zu spät; die französische Streitkräfte sind zusammengebrochen. 1947 setzten die Amerikaner Frankreich unter Druck, dem UNO-Teilungsplan für Palästina und der Gründung des Staates Israel zuzustimmen. Das anschließende französische Votum für den UNO-Plan war entscheidend. Auch wenn ihre Rivalität im Nahen Osten anhielt, haben die Franzosen und die Anglophonen den Staat Israel seither grundsätzlich unterstützt. Heute sehen wir, im Nahost und in der Ukraine wie Macrons Regierung immer noch versucht, ihr Gesicht zu wahren, indem sie allerlei möglichen französischen außenpolitischen Initiativen vorschlägt, aber letztendlich hat sich Macron auf die Seite der USA und der NATO geschlagen. Macron und andere französische Staatsoberhäupter vor ihm und die französische Elite im Allgemeinen haben versucht, die Verherrlichung Frankreichs stellvertretend durch den französischen Einfluß in der EU fortzusetzen. Mittlerweile, haben die Briten für den Austritt aus der EU entschieden haben. Letztlich aber haben sich aber sowohl Großbritannien als auch Frankreich den USA und den amerikanischen außenpolitischen Imperativen de facto unterworfen – so wie Bayern und Baden sich Napoleon unterworfen haben.

    Der Krieg Englands gegen das revolutionäre und napoleonische Frankreich, der mit dem Sieg bei Waterloo 1815 scheinbar seinen Höhepunkt erreicht hat, war nur ein Teil eines viel längeren Kampfes zwischen den beiden Völkern, ein Kampf der über 800 Jahre zurückreichte und im 18. Jahrhundert zu einem Kampf um die Weltmacht geworden war. Die britische Elite hatte beobachtet, wie das französische militärische und politische Genie immer wieder sehr talentierte Persönlichkeiten hervorgebracht hatte, die eine echte Herausforderung für die englischen Pläne und Ambitionen darstellten: Philipp der Schöne, Jeanne d’Arc, Franz I., die Kardinäle Richelieu und Mazarin, Ludwig XIV., Lafayette, Napoleon Bonaparte. Nach 1815 schien es immer möglich, daß Frankreich eine weitere solche Figur hervorbringen könnte. In diesem langen geschichtlichen Kampf, der sicherlich nicht bei Waterloo zu Ende kam, spielte Philip Henry der vierte Graf Stanhope, nicht zuletzt durch seine Familienverbindungen mit den Pitts, eine nicht unbedeutende Rolle für die alte hierarchische Ordnung Englands die noch einhundert Jahre existieren würde.

Nachwort  Ich komme jetzt Schluss.

Im Jahr 2012 gedachten alle, die sich für die Geschichte von Kaspar Hauser interessieren, seiner Geburt in Karlsruhe 200 Jahre zuvor. Im Jahr 2028 werden wir den zweihundertsten Jahrestag seines Erscheinens auf dem Unschlittplatz in Nürnberg begehen, dem Platz, der nach dem Kerzenwachs benannt wurde, das aus dem Schlachten von Unschuldigen stammt. Im Jahr 2033, 200 Jahre nach seinem Tod in Ansbach in der Nähe des Denkmals zum Ansbacher Dichter, Johann Peter Uz, der am Reichsgericht in Nürnberg tätig war, werden wir uns an Kaspars trauriges Ende fünf Jahre nach seinem bemerkenswerten Auftritt zu Pfingsten auf dem Unschlittplatz erinnern. Dieses Gebiet, das die geographischen Orten der 21 Jahren des Lebens  Kaspar Hausers – Karlsruhe – Beuggen – Pilsach – Nürnberg – Ansbach – umfasst, liegt im Herzen Europas.

    Im Jahr 2033 werden auch Christen auf der ganzen Welt der 2000 Jahre seit den zentralen Ereignissen gedenken, die das Christentum ausmachen: die Kreuzigung, Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu Christi und dann das Pfingstereignis 10 Tage nach seiner Himmelfahrt. Diese Osterereignisse bildeten den Höhepunkt der dreijährigen öffentlichen Predigt-, Lehr- und Heilstätigkeit Christi, die mit seiner Taufe im Jordan im Jahr 30 begonnen hatte. Und im Jahr 2030, werden wir auch dieser drei Jahren die mit der Taufe begonnen haben, gedenken. Wir sehen auch, wie seit mindestens 10 Jahren nun, daß das Jahr 2030 und die Dekade der 2030er sehr stark im Fokus der Welteliten stehen. Wir sehen, wie sich die Krise erneut in der Region Israel/Palästina aufbaut, die in der Nähe des salzigen Toten Meeres liegt. Nördlich der Region befindet sich das horizontale Schwarze Meer und südlich davon das vertikale Rote Meer. Im Westen liegt das Mittelmeer (die Mitte der Erde). Das Gebiet liegt im Herzen dessen, was als „Weltinsel“, d.h. Eurasien und Afrika zusammen, bezeichnet wurde. Von den traditionell kollektivistischen Gesellschaften Ostasiens bis zum Hyperindividualismus in der USA im Westen liegt Israel/Palästina im Herzen von Zeit und Raum auf diesem Planeten, und die Ereignisse von vor 2000 Jahren bilden die Grundlage unserer globalen Chronologie.

    Die deutschsprachigen Länder liegen im Herzen Europas, und der Raum Nürnberg/Ansbach liegt im Herzstück dieser Länder. Im 19. Jahrhundert repräsentierten die Staaten Baden und Bayern die Polarität in Süddeutschland zwischen Liberalismus und Konservatismus. Nach 1848 bestimmte die österreichisch-preußische Nord-Süd-Rivalität einen Großteil der deutschen Angelegenheiten. Nach 1948 war Deutschland 42 Jahre lang in Ost und West geteilt: Westdeutschland, das von den individualistischen USA kontrolliert wurde die bis nach Kalifornien reichten, und Ostdeutschland, das vom kollektivistischen Russland kontrolliert wurde das bis nach Wladiwostok reichte. Israel im globalen Sinne und Deutschland im europäischen Sinne – beide sind Herzensgebiete, Kreuzungsgelände und haben als solche daher im Laufe der Zeit viel gelitten.

    In beiden Fällen, in Israel vor 2000 Jahren und in Deutschland vor 200 Jahren, wurde ein Unschuldiger von einer Gesellschaft verfolgt und getötet, die sich ihn nicht genug anerkannt hat, nicht genug um ihn gekümmert hat. Innerhalb von etwa 100 Jahren nach dem Ereignis in beiden Fällen wurde die betroffene Gesellschaft durch die damaligen Weltmacht zerstört. Die Verwüstung wurde jedoch nicht nur durch diese Weltmacht – römische Legionen und anglo-amerikanische Bomben – verursacht. Auf das, was der Schriftsteller Jakob Wassermann die Trägheit des Herzens nannte, folgte für diese beiden Gesellschaft die Konsequenzen dieser Trägheit, nämlich die Hinwendung zu Materialismus, Militarismus und einem nationalistichen Fanatismus. Die Juden wandten sich den nationalistischen Zeloten zu und griffen zweimal – 66 n. Chr. und 132 n. Chr. – zu Gewalt und Krieg, um die Römer zu vertreiben und ein geeintes Königreich wiederherzustellen. Nachdem die Juden mehr als 100 Jahre vor Christus die griechische Dynastie der Seleukiden durch Krieg besiegt hatten, glaubten zu viele Juden, sie könnten die Römer auf die gleiche Weise besiegen. Im Krieg von 66-73 gegen Nero und Vespasian jedoch haben die Juden auf katastrophale Weise versagt. Der Tempel in Jerusalem, der fast 1000 Jahre lang das Zentrum und der Mittelpunkt ihrer Religion war, lag in Ruinen.

    Aus dieser Katastrophe haben die Juden damals wenig gelernt und deswegen haben sie etwa 60 Jahre später erneut gegen die Römer in den Krieg von 132-136 erhoben. Dieser Krieg hat zu noch größeren Verwüstungen geführt. Danach, wurden den Juden sogar verboten, Jerusalem zu betreten. Die Stadt wurde  nach der Familie des römischen Kaisers umbenannt. Über ein Million von Menschen sind in diesen beiden Kriegen des nationalistischen Fanatismus gestorben.

     In den 1840er bis 1940er Jahren war in Deutschland das gleiche Muster zu beobachten. Mit Blick auf den Westen, auf die französischen Modelle des einheitlichen Staatsnationalismus und des Militarismus und auf die britischen Modelle des Kommerzes, der Industriemacht, des Kolonialismus und des Flottenwesens versuchten die Deutschen, ein geeintes Reich um das Bild des Schwertes herum zu errichten, das vom gigantischen Hermannsdenkmals im Teutoburger Wald hochgehalten wurde. Die Errichtung des Denkmals begann 1836, drei Jahre nach Kaspar Hausers Tod, und wurde 1875 abgeschlossen – im Jahr des Todes Georg Friedrich Daumers. Der Schöpfer des Denkmals war Ernst von Bandel, der hier in Ansbach im Jahr 1800 geboren wurde.

    Bandels Kindheit war von der französischen Besatzung und der Befreiungskriege sehr beeinflußt und seine Gesinnung wurde stark national-patriotisch. Zuerst wurde von Bandel durch die Wittelsbach-Könige Maximilian I. und Ludwig I. finanziert, aber er mochte die neoklassizistischen Vorlieben Ludwigs I. nicht und ist 1834 nach Berlin gezogen – ein symbolischer Schritt vielleicht. Ironischerweise richtete sich der ganze Geist des Hermannsdenkmals gegen den Westen, gegen Frankreich, doch das Zweite Reich, das Bismarck-Reich, war in vielerlei Hinsicht durch und durch westlich geprägt, anstatt sich auf einen echten deutschen Kulturgeist zu besinnen. Die letzten drei Jahre von Kaspar Hausers Leben waren eine Zeit des nationalistischen Eifers in den deutschen Staaten, inspiriert nicht zuletzt von der Pariser Julirevolution von 1830.

    Der Nationalismus und Militarismus gipfelte im preußischen Sieg über Frankreich 1871 und in der Reichsgründung im Spiegelsaal des Palastes von Ludwig XIV. in Versailles. In Anton von Werners berühmtem Gemälde Ausruf des deutschen Reiches auch als  Die Proklamation des deutschen Kaiserreiches gekannt, sehen wir, daß der Mann, der neben Wilhelm I. von Preußen steht und der das „Hoch“ für ihn als den neuen deutschen Kaiser anführt, Großherzog Friedrich I. von Baden ist, der Sohn von Leopold und Sophie von Baden, und der Enkel von Reichsgräfin Luise von Hochberg mit dessen Ehrgeiz die ganze Geschichte angefangen hatte. Großherzog Friedrich war mit Luise von Preußen verheiratet.

   Und wir erinnern uns, daß es preußische Truppen waren, die 1848 die Revolution in Baden niedergeschlagen haben und Leopold und Sophie als Großherzog und Großherzogin wieder einsetzten. Wir erinnern uns auch, daß der Neffe von Großherzog Friedrich und der Enkel von Leopold und Sophie Prinz Max von Baden war. Prinz Max wurde der letzte deutsche Reichskanzler, der 1918 Deutschland auf der Grundlage der 14 Punkte von Präsident Woodrow Wilson kapitulieren gelassen hat. Rudolf Steiner war 1918 zweimal mit Prinz Max zusammengetroffen und hatte versucht, ihn davon zu überzeugen, den Krieg auf der Grundlage einer echten mitteleuropäischen Konzeption – des dreigliedrigen sozialen Organismus – zu beenden.  Stattdessen hat Prinz Max aber sich entschieden für die abstrakte Konzeption, die von der neuen Weltmacht des Westens gepredigt wurde, nämlich  die 14 Punkte.

    Fast genau 100 Jahre nach Kaspar Hausers Tod hat Adolf Hitler die Macht in Deutschland übernommen, und nur 12 Jahre später war die Verwüstung Deutschlands vergleichbar mit der Verwüstung von Judäa im Jahr 136, nach zwei schrecklichen Kriegen gegen die damalige Weltmacht.

    Das jüdische Volk, oder zumindest die jüdische Elite, hat in drei kurzen Jahren nicht erkannt, wer in Jesus Christus da anwesend war. Sie wendeten sich von ihm ab und schlugen stattdessen den Weg des Mars ein, gegen eben jene Macht, die damals im Wesentlichen die Kräfte des Mars und des Materialismus darstellte. 1800 Jahre später hat das deutsche Volk, oder zumindest die deutsche Elite, nicht erkannt, wer in jenen 5 kurzen Jahren in Kaspar Hauser da unter ihnen anwesend war; sie haben nicht auf die im Wesentlichen spirituellen Fragen geantwortet, die Kaspar Hauser auf jeden einzelnen Mensch stellt – Wer bin ich? Wer bist du? Woher komme ich? Wohin gehe ich? Sie wendeten sich von Kaspar und von diesen Fragen ab oder zumindest haben sich zu wenige von ihnen mit solchen Fragen beschäftigt und stattdessen haben sie denjenigen Weg genommen, der sie letztendlich gegen eben diejenige weltliche Macht führte, die in der modernen Epoche im Wesentlichen die Kräfte des Mars und des Materialismus darstellt.

    Man kann diesen Kräften nicht mit denselben Mitteln entgegentreten, die sie selbst einsetzen. Verwandelt werden können sie nur durch Feuerbachs Geist der glühenden Wahrheitssuche, durch Daumers Geist der liebenden Imagination, durch Tuchers Geist der fürsorglichen Verantwortung und durch Kaspar Hausers Geist des offenherzigen Zuhörens und der Zufriedenheit. Wer bin ich? Woher komme ich? Wohin gehe ich? Gerade in den Jahren 2028 bis 2033 werden die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt und nicht zuletzt die Menschen in Deutschland erneut Gelegenheiten gegeben, über diese Fragen nachzudenken.

     Können wir nicht spüren, daß Jesus Christus in einem globalen, makrokosmischen Sinn und Kaspar Hauser in einem mikrokosmischen Sinn, Opfer waren, die Schicksale umkehren können? Mit dem Christus war es das Schicksal unzähliger Einzelner, aber es war sicherlich auch das Schicksal der Welt und der Menschheit als Ganzes. Durch Kaspar Hauser sind es vielleicht auch die Schicksale einzelner Menschen, die durch seine Geschichte verändert werden, aber für mein Empfinden, und ich bin mir sicher, auch für das Empfinden einiger von Ihnen heute, war es auch das Schicksal eines Volkes, das in den 19. und 20. Jahrhunderten durch die Beseitigung Kaspar Hausers verändert wurde – und zwar nicht zum Besseren. Aber wenn sich genügend Menschen in diesem Land zu Kaspar Hauser zuwenden und entdecken würden, was sein Leben und sein Opfer tatsächlich bedeuteten und immer noch bedeuten, dann würden sie ihn nicht nur als ein trauriges Opfer sehen, sondern als Opfer für ein besseres Deutschland, ein besseres Europa, ein bessere moderne Mensch. Ein Mensch, der ständig auf der Suche nach dem ist, was er wirklich werden kann; ein Mensch, der immer im Werden begriffen ist und deshalb nie aufgibt.

Ich danke Ihnen herzlich für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit und Ihre Geduld.

Part 1 of the article is here: http://threeman.org/?p=3182

IN the presence of Rudolf Steiner during his visit to Britain in the late summer of 1923, on 2 September the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain was founded, and Daniel N. Dunlop proposed that Rudolf Steiner become its president for life, which Steiner accepted. After a lecture he held later that day, Steiner gave this verse to the members of the Society in Britain:

I gaze into the darkness. In it arises Light – living Light.

Who is this Light in the darkness? It is I myself in my reality.

This reality of the I does not enter into my life on earth; I am but a picture of it.

But I shall find it again when, with good will for the Spirit,

I shall have passed through the Gate of Death.

The Goetheanum, at Dornach, Switzerland, the fruit of ten year’s hard work destroyed by arson on 31 December 1922, had lain in ruins since the beginning of the New Year. The situation in a postwar Germany beset by hyperinflation was absolutely dire – hunger, poverty, corruption, crime, decadence, extremist political violence – and nationalist attacks had prevented Steiner from lecturing there in 1923. But he felt that the summer school at Penmaenmawr, north Wales, in particular was one of the most significant episodes in the story of the anthroposophical movement and frequently referred to it as such. Seeds were planted there, not least in relation to the anthroposophical medical work, which were very positive for the future: light in the darkness.

Our present circumstances today in 2024, on the surface, look very grim. Doomsayers abound. For some three decades, many have been predicting catastrophe for humanity and nature as a whole through a climate crisis centred on ‘greenhouse gases’, notably CO₂, allegedly caused by ‘man-made’ (now renamed anthropogenic) ‘global warming’ (now renamed ‘climate change’). With each passing year, their warnings have become ever more shrill, to the point where we are now being urged to eat insects instead of animals, because animals’ gaseous methane emissions are adding to ‘climate change’. Others have warned that since the banking crash of 2007-2009, we have been standing on the edge of a financial precipice which might collapse beneath us at any time. Then there are those who have been telling us over the past ten years or so that ‘democracy’, which looked so triumphant in the 1990s, is now tottering, through corruption and apathy, towards authoritarianism. The techno-utopian Transhumanists and their techno-dystopian opponents, from their differing optimistic and pessimistic perspectives, both declare that humanity will be replaced in this century by artificial intelligence and cyborgs. Most recently, the political instruments of the global elite urge us to prepare for war against Russia, and possibly China, apparently forgetting that this is not 1939 and that those two countries, like the West, possess nuclear weapons supposedly capable of destroying much if not all life on the planet. Clearly, in such circumstances, one needs cool nerves.

Steiner pointed out many times that disasters and catastrophes in the modern age, such as the First World War, which he lived through, have occurred and will go on occurring because of the onset of materialism in our thinking around the year 1600, its subsequent application to all aspects of culture and our failure to wake up to this fact. In particular, he urged that without awareness of the activities of spiritual beings, including those of the human so-called ‘dead’, historical and contemporary events could not be understood. The spiritual world, after all, is not ‘up there’ or ‘over there’ or ‘beyond’, it is all round us; we are moving through it all the time, but we don’t see it, just as we don’t see the objects in our bedrooms when we lie asleep in our beds. We are not conscious of them, but they are there nevertheless.

In daily life, when we look at another person, we see the body, but we do not see the soul, the spirit, the ‘I’ (the kernel, the essential self of the human individuality) and yet they are invisibly associated with the person’s body. Likewise, when we observe the planets in the heavens, we see the ‘heavenly bodies’ of Mars, Jupiter or Saturn, for example, but we do not physically see the spiritual beings associated with those planetary bodies. Both modern and ancient spiritual science, however, speak of the existence of spiritual beings associated with the heavenly bodies and not only with the planetary bodies we can actually see but also with the regions or spheres which the orbits of those planetary bodies delineate. In other words, the planet is but an indicator of a zone, region, layer, or sphere – if we imagine our solar system rather like an onion with thick layers – and the beings of our solar system have their habitations in the layers of the onion but are able to move freely throughout the various layers.

                                                        The Saturn-Jupiter conjunction Dec. 2020

The 800-year cycle of Saturn and Jupiter

Saturn is the planet traditionally associated with the past, with restriction, limits and boundaries  and with the beginning of the solar system, while Jupiter is traditionally associated with the future, with prosperity and expansion of all kinds). The 60-year invisible equilateral triangle patterns formed by the meetings of these two giants (3 meetings, or conjunctions, every 60 years) rotate around the Zodiac over a period of approximately 800 years, as noted by Renaissance astronomers such as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.¹ They recognised this 800-year periodicity as signifying the birth of a new and particular historical and cultural impulse. Approximately every 400 years there is a particularly close conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter. These ‘super-close’ conjunctions mark the midpoint, or the onset of the descending phase of the 800-year cycle of conjunctions.

What is meant by ‘descending’ here? Each 800-year cycle passes through four phases: Saturn and Jupiter conjunctions occur for approximately 200 years in Fire signs of the Zodiac, then for 200 years in Earth signs, followed by 200 years in Air signs and finally, 200 years in Water signs – always in this order. The new historical and cultural impulse launched by a new 800-year cycle always begins with a Fire sign (Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius). Over 400 years this new impulse builds in momentum to a certain peak and then begins gradually to fade over the following 400 years. In 1603 a new 800-year cycle began (in Sagittarius); we are still in that cycle today, but the super-close Saturn-Jupiter conjunction of December 2020 was important because with that conjunction the two giants began to meet in Air signs, which they will do for the next approximately 200 years. Four years ago, we therefore entered the descending arc of the historical impulse that had begun in c.1603. We can see this impulse as the impulse of materialistic natural science that began with the likes of Bacon, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

The previous 800-year cycle had begun (again in a Fire sign, Sagittarius) in October 809. In the West, we can see that the impulse that began at that time was that of the political power of the Papacy in relation to the ‘new’ Roman Empire, founded when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne ‘Roman Emperor’ on Christmas Day 800; (the term Holy Roman Empire was not used until 1254). This universalist impulse of Papacy and Empire reached its mid-point, or high point 400 years later with the conjunction of April 1206. Two years earlier, in the so-called 4th Crusade, the ancient Byzantine Empire – the direct successor to the Roman Empire in that it had been founded by the Emperor Constantine I (‘the Great’) who had moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium and first renamed the city Nova Roma (New Rome) in 324 and then in 330 Constantinople, after himself – was extinguished by the Crusaders of the West as a favour to the Venetians and their Doge (Duke), Enrico Dandolo (1120–1205), who had long wanted to see the Byzantine Empire destroyed; he had been blinded there in his younger days. He was a man, incidentally, whom Steiner identified as “an incarnation of the ahrimanic spirit”.² So, the older form of universalism, the old Roman Empire, which had been transferred to the East by Constantine and had come to represent a continuation of the Greek (Orthodox) rather than the Latin (Roman Catholic) spirit, was extinguished by the Catholic Crusaders of the West and many of the relics, works of art and precious documents of Constantinople were transferred to Venice and other places further West.

                                                                             Pope Innocent III  r. 1198-1216

In the Christian world from 1204 onwards, the ‘newer’ universalist impulses of the Italian Papacy (most of the Popes were Roman or Italian aristocrats) and of the Western Roman Empire of the Germans were dominant. But that moment of the apparent triumph of Latin Christianity over the Greek ‘Romans’ of the East in 1204 – Rome’s triumph over its old rival Constantinople – proved to be the moment when the cosmic scales began to swing the other way into the second half of the 800-year cycle that had begun in Rome, with the Pope’s coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800. 1206 was the beginning of the end of the newer universalist impulses of Papacy and Empire, even though the two most prominent rulers of the next 20 years were very outspoken representatives of those same universalist impulses: (see pics.) Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) and Frederick II, who was King of Germany from 1212 and Roman Emperor from 1220 until his death in 1250.³

                                                                                 Frederick II, 1194-1250

                            King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212

King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220, King of Jerusalem from 1225.

Outsize figures of tremendous ambition and overweening claim for the institutions they ruled, the two men frequently clashed with one another. Frederick was excommunicated several times by the Popes and was called preambulus Antichristi (predecessor of the Antichrist) by the Vatican and by his contemporaries stupor mundi (the astonishment of the world), so from 1220 to 1250 a man was Roman Emperor in the West who his contemporaries clearly felt was extremely unorthodox and radical, a most unusual genius in some ways but also immoral, or even amoral, not least because of his bizarre ‘scientific’ experiments on live human beings and his employment of Muslims and Jews at his court.

While the universalist claims of Papacy and Empire, which arguably had their roots in the Pope’s coronation of Charlemagne in 800, seemed in the ascendant in the West c.1206, with both Pope and Emperor making claims of their sovereignty over almost everyone in Europe, in the East universalism was also about to rise to its zenith, in a way that would make the claims of Pope and Emperor seem insignificant. This would combine with another fact of cosmic history that is referred to by Steiner many times but had been known of by European esotericists for at least four or five centuries before him – the cycle of the rulerships of seven archangels over approximately 350-400-year periods throughout history. Archangels are normally associated with groups (tribes, clans, peoples, nations) of human beings, as distinct from Angels, who ‘guide’ individuals, but there are seven named Archangels, each associated with a particular planetary sphere, who have the special task of guiding those peoples who have a particular ‘leading role’, for about 350-400 years, within larger historical epochs of 2160 years which relate to the apparent passage of the Sun through the Zodiac.⁴ In 1190 (according to Rudolf Steiner, but 1171 according to Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim in 1508)⁵ the Archangel Samael, associated with the planet Mars, took over the rulership of humanity from the Archangel Raphael, associated with Mercury. The 13th century then, was the first century of the age of the Mars Archangel Samael.

How does this relate to our time 800 years later? 1226 saw the first Saturn-Jupiter conjunction after the midpoint of the great Saturn-Jupiter conjunction cycle that began in 809. The 1226 conjunction occurred in Aquarius, an Air sign. What was the midpoint of the Saturn-Jupiter cycle through which we are living in the 21st century and which began in 1603? It was the December 2020 conjunction. The last Saturn-Jupiter conjunction to appear as close and as visible as the one at winter solstice December 2020 occurred in March 1226. In terms of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions then, 1226 relates to 2020; these two conjunctions were both close to, or at, the midpoint of an 800-year cycle. The 809-1603 grand cycle can be described as that of the impulse of political and religious universalism, its rise and fall. The 1603-2398 grand cycle can be seen as that of the impulse of materialistic natural science, a universalist impulse of another kind, which seeks to universalise the claims of materialism in all areas of life, beginning with natural science in the 17th century. There is a resonance then, between the 13th and the 21st centuries. In 1226 and 2020 these two broad 800 year-long cultural impulses were at their peak but beginning to head downwards.

The Mongols and Mars

Astronomer Patrick Hartigan at Rice University in Houston,⁶ USA notes with regard to the 1226 conjunction that “[f]or perspective, Genghis Khan was still roaming Asia then.” A particularly interesting observation! Genghis Khan, who arguably could be called the most martial warlord who launched the most martial, even genocidal empire in recorded history, died the following year (1227) whilst on a campaign against the Western Xia (the Tangut kingdom of northwest China) who his forces subjected to genocide. Born in c.1162 just before the beginning of the Mars Archangel period began, Temüjin – the name comes from a root meaning ‘iron’⁷ – took the name Genghis Khan (‘master of the ocean’, i.e. ‘universal ruler’) and had been declared Great Khan of all the Mongols in 1206, the year of the previous Saturn-Jupiter conjunction and the turning point conjunction in the 800-year cycle from 809 to 1603. Steiner pointed out that two of the most significant things about the Mongol invasions of the 13th century – quite apart from their effects on the history of China and India – were the Black Death (and its many ramifications) throughout the vast continent of Eurasia some 100 years later and the ‘discovery’, or rather re-discovery, of America by Europeans in 1492;⁸ we can then realise the world-historical significance of the 13th century.

Campaigns of Genghis Khan and his generals 1209-1227

In short, this was the time when humanity began to be aware of the world as a whole. The Mongols not only killed millions of people across Eurasia, often in the most brutal fashion, –and along with it a psychic shock wave that still rumbles in the subconscious of many cultures – but they also created the largest empire the world had ever known and the most extensive trade network in history to that point, which went from Korea in the East to what we now call Ukraine in the West, underpinned by their roads and postal service and ‘policed’ by their terrifying armies and the brutal but very clear laws of their empire. In fact, they created the first truly Eurasian political and economic system, which also facilitated many cultural contacts. In the Holy land at various times in the 13th century from 1220s onwards the Mongols confronted the forces of the Islamic Near East and the Christian Crusaders of Europe who launched six Crusades in the 13th century⁹ ostensibly to defeat the Muslims in Palestine. In the last year of the century the Mongols successfully raided in Syria and Palestine as far south as Gaza. In that tumultuous century, for the first time ever, three religious and cultural spheres were meeting each other on a large scale. In the Mongol armies were Mongol worshippers of their native sky god Tengri, Buddhists, pagans and animists of various kinds, Christian Nestorians, Persian and Central Asian Muslims, and Chinese Taoists and Confucians. East Asia was meeting the Middle East and Europe for the first time. Much of Asia, from East to West, was united under a single, universal ruler, while the Crusades, the first few at any rate, united European nobility more loosely, under the papal banner.

This meeting in the 13th century between Europe, the Middle East and the Far East would lead to much remarkable cultural, literary, and artistic fructification among those human spirits who were developed enough to sense something of the meaning of what was happening in this historic cultural confluence, which ostensibly was occurring for martial reasons but actually concealed something much deeper. Some 1250 years before, in the Holy Land, the Christ Event had occurred against the background of a dominant universal empire within which Romans, Greeks and Jews struggled to live together in Palestine. In the 13th century, this time along with Muslim Arabs, Egyptians and even Mongols and all those who came along with them, Romans (European Crusaders), Greeks (Byzantines) and Jews were struggling and striving with one another once more in the same region. Amidst all the conflict, much observation and mutual learning also went on. Out of all this came the great 13th century Gothic cathedrals of Europe, the poetry of the minnesängers and the troubadours, the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230), the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and numerous other cultural and artistic impulses, including Jewish kabbalah and Arabist-influenced Aristotelian thought. A number of versions of the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat (aka Bilawhar and Budhasaf – a Christianised version of the story of Gautama Buddha) appeared in numerous versions in European culture in the 13th century. The Austrian poet Rudolf von Ems (c. 1200-1254) wrote a version, which was described by the 19th century writer Heinrich Heine as “perhaps the flower of religious literary creativity in the German Middle Ages”. Marco Polo noted the similarity between the tale of “Sakyamuni Burkham” (as he called the Buddha) and St. Josaphat.¹⁰ The story would find its way into Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play, La vida es sueño (Life Is A Dream – c.1630), a classic of Spain’s “Golden Age” of drama, not long after the end of the 800-year Saturn-Jupiter cycle. Finally, in 1265, soon after the end of the “short period of spiritual darkness”, the great Dominican philosopher and teacher Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who both combated Islamic philosophical thought and also made use of precious Arab translations of Aristotle, began to write his key work Summa Theologica, which he worked on till the end of his life but did not finish. In this universal work he sought, not least through his understanding of Aristotle, to create a harmonising balance between reason and faith, which would sustain Christian theology in the face of the challenges of heresy, Islam and Nominalism. Aristotle too almost fell foul of the doctors of the Church, despite being regarded as one himself, but in later centuries he became an authority in European academic life. Nevertheless, this attempt by Aquinas to harmonise reason and faith soon came under sustained attack from Nominalist philosophers in the 14th century as the materialist impulses of Mars grew ever stronger in western philosophy. Nominalists had a utilitarian approach to universal concepts, regarding them as mere convenient labels without any spiritually real content.

The 13th century and our time

Today, 800 years on from the 13th century, in an age driven more by economic competition than by military conflict, we see similar East-West cross-cultural influences arising even more intensively. China is part of the BRICS economic bloc alongside Russia, India and Iran, and has deepening economic relations with most of the countries of the Middle East and Europe as it develops its vast Eurasian transport infrastructure network known as the ‘Belt and Road’, or colloquially, ‘the New Silk Road’. Trains run from Shanghai to Düsseldorf and London. The Chinese state-owned COSCO Shipping company operates the port of Piraeus in Athens. China also conducts regular military exercises with Russia and China has a large military base in Djibouti at the southern entrance to the Red Sea as it develops its interests in Africa and the Indian Ocean region.

                                                              New (‘iron’) silk road map

The Chinese are not Mongols, of course. In the 13th century, they had a rich civilisation of millennia behind them and regarded the Mongols as barbarians. The Chinese were farmers and city dwellers; the Mongols were nomadic pastoralists. Nevertheless, from the esoteric perspective, all the peoples of northeast Asia such as the Mongols, Han Chinese, Tibetans, Manchurians, Koreans and Japanese have since Atlantean times all belonged to ‘the Mars race’, and it is no accident that they are known for martial arts.¹¹ Despite the differences between the Chinese and the Mongols, we see nevertheless, how in waves of 800 years –, waves determined not by climate change and CO₂ but by cosmic and spiritual forces – a certain kind of vigorous impulse has suddenly and rapidly spread across Eurasia from the Far East to Europe: the Huns in the 5th century, the Mongols in the 13th century, and the Chinese today in the 21st century.

                                                                              Mongol warriors

In the 13th century, the civilisation of the Islamic Near East, hard-pressed between the European Crusaders and the Mongols, came close to suffering collapse some 600 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. The 600-year-old Abbasid Caliphate was destroyed when the Mongols took Baghdad, and there were efforts between the Christians and the Mongols to combine against the Muslims but they came to nothing, and eventually, most Mongols in Central and West Asia adopted Islam. The Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine (southeastern Galilee) in 1260 – it was the first time the Mongols had suffered a major defeat. Islam survived the Mongol storm.

Today, there are those who are concerned that the encounter between the ‘Christian’, the Sinic and the Islamic worlds in our time might result in another world war, centred this time on Israel and Palestine. They point to the serious plans being made in Israel by religious extremists to rebuild the Third Temple, which would involve the destruction of Islam’s third holiest site, the al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount.¹² Some claim that a letter supposedly written by Albert Pike, a prominent mid-19th century American Freemason in 1871 to Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian nationalist activist, prophesied that there would be three world wars in the future and that the third would break out in the Holy Land through a struggle between “Political Zionism” and “Islam”. This ‘prophecy’ has spread around much of the Internet, but researcher Terry Melanson has shown conclusively, however, that it is a fake that can be traced back to the famous arch-hoaxer, Léo Taxil¹³ (real name: Marie-Joseph Jogand-Pagès, 1854-1907).

Meanwhile, there are similarities between the Crusader territories in the Holy Land in the 13th century and the State of Israel today in that both were formed by considerable numbers of people from Europe – people from a different civilisation – who moved to what was then overwhelmingly the Muslim majority land of Palestine and took much of it by force (1098, 1948). In the early 13th century, the Crusaders expected to remain in the Holy Land, and in 1226 Emperor Frederick II managed to conduct the Sixth Crusade (1226-1229) without fighting and successfully negotiated the peaceful return of Jerusalem to the Crusaders (the city had been lost to Saladin in 1187). Yet by the end of the century, after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Crusaders had been forced out of the entire Holy Land, never to return.¹⁴ The foreign invaders were thus expelled after almost 200 years of occupation, but the Muslim world had also suffered a tremendous blow in the region: in 1258 the Mongols had utterly destroyed Baghdad, capital of the Muslim world since 750, bringing to an end the Arab “Golden Age”; this was another world-historical event.

The Ottoman Turks would soon take the place of the Arabs as the main standard bearer for militant Islam. The ancestors of the Turks (Oghuz Turks) were originally from east central Asia and were related in language and religion (Tengriism) to the Mongols; according to some scholars, genetic evidence shows that Mongolia was actually the original homeland of the Turkic peoples. The Ottoman Turks migrated from central Asia to Anatolia (central Türkiye today) in the 13th century and by the very end of that century, the House of Osman had established itself as a principality in western Anatolia, from where in the next century the Osmanlis (Ottomans) would launch their attacks into the Balkans and eventually take Constantinople in 1453. Today, 800 years after their arrival in Anatolia, the Turks, having been blocked from joining the EU, are looking to bring together the Turkic peoples of Asia from Türkiye to Kyrgyzstan, in a loose confederative association.¹⁵

The Mongol Empire itself soon fell victim to the separative and warlike impulse of Mars. Civil war among the descendants of the Shengwu Huangdi – the ‘Holy Martial Emperor’ Genghis Khan – broke out some 33 years after his death, and by the time of the death in 1294 of his grandson Kublai Khan, who ruled from Dadu (in Mongolian – Khanbaliq, modern Beijing), this most universal of empires, the largest land empire in history, had already fragmented into four khanates: that of Kublai in East Asia and China, the Chagatai khanate in central Asia, the Golden Horde in northwest Asia and southern Russia, and the Ilkhanate in southwest Asia and Iran. Their struggles against each other and against their own enemies would determine much of the history of Asia throughout the rest of the 800-year Saturn-Jupiter cycle until the early 17th century.

The ‘heretics’ of the 13th century

In 1226, the year of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction that corresponds to that of 2020, King Louis VIII of France led his armies on crusade against the Albigensian (Cathar) ‘heretics’ and their supporters among the nobility of the Languedoc region of southern France. There was something almost Asiatic and Buddhistic about the Cathars, who sincerely wished to remove themselves as soon as possible from what they saw as a world of pain, a veil of tears, a material realm of illusion which, they believed, had been constructed by a satanic Demiurge. The previous crusade in 1209-1216 had been a private affair conducted with the Pope’s blessing by the nobles of northern France¹⁶ greedy for land and treasure and, despite appalling bloodletting by the ‘crusaders’, had ended in failure with the death of the crusaders’ leader Simon de Montfort and the defeat of his son. The crusade of 1226-1229, however, was conducted by the king of France and lasted only three years. Despite the death of the king in 1226, the crusade was successfully concluded by his wife, Queen Blanche, with the utter defeat of the Cathars and their supporters and the beginning of a century of persecution of the Cathars until they were finally extinguished in 1321. The fortress of Montségur was the last Cathar stronghold to hold out, until 1244 when, after a year-long siege and eventual surrender, some 200 Cathars surrendered themselves to be burned alive at the foot of the mountain fortress.

But here too, we see the beginning of the end for the forces of orthodox universalism. The 13th century witnessed the Church’s almost desperate attempts to stamp out what it considered to be an increasing number of heretical groups: the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Bogomils, Fratelli, Apostolic Brethren, Brethren of the Free Spirit and others. There were various differences between these groups, but they all tended to focus on the individual coming to Christ rather than on merely accepting the authority of the Church and its doctrines, and many were millenarian in spirit, believing that the end of the Age or the end of the world was nigh. In this sense, these heretical groups of the 13th century were the forerunners of the European proto-Protestant and Protestant groups of later centuries. Steiner describes how the spiritual sphere of Mars in the spiritual world is that sphere where we experience the spiritual archetypes of the mineral, solid aspect of the physical world.¹⁷ The materialism with which our own age is still so sorely afflicted is deeply bound up with the spiritual sphere of Mars –- the planet that draws Elon Musk and so many others in our time who are keen to go to Mars.¹⁸ The impulse of the Mars sphere and the Mars Archangel is therefore one of separation, fragmentation and individuation: this can frequently bring conflict but also the courage that puts iron in the blood and enables the individual to stand up for ideals and against oppression. Furthermore, since the year 1604, the spiritual sphere of Mars has been undergoing a profound transformation.¹⁹

There was one group which, unlike the others mentioned above, did not become visible in the 13th century and if the Church had known of it, would no doubt have sought to suppress it. This was the beginning of the Rose Cross impulse somewhere in central Europe, most likely southwest Germany, around 1250. Steiner describes the process in a series of lectures given from September 1911 to December 1912:²⁰ “The middle of the 13th century”, he says “was the beginning of a new culture. At this time a certain low point in spiritual life had been reached. Even the most highly developed could not approach the spiritual worlds”.²¹ This sense of a dark age in which genuine spirituality was almost unattainable was also shared at that time in Japan.

A detour – Japan in the 13th century

Before continuing with the Rose Cross theme, let us first cast a sideways glance at 13th century Japan that will provide further evidence of the nature of the 13th century. At the end of the 12th century, as the Age of Mars was dawning across the world, the samurai warrior class had firmly established its control over Japan, supplanting the rule of the Emperor and his courtiers who remained only nominally in charge. The centre of power had shifted from the imperial capital in Kyoto in central Japan to the samurai stronghold of Kamakura, just south of what is today Tokyo. For most of the 13th century (1203-1333) the samurai family of the Hōjō regents (shikken) ruled Japan on behalf of the Emperor. One Emperor, Go-Toba, rose against them in 1221 but was easily defeated and exiled. In 1232, the Hōjō regency council imposed Japan’s first military code of law, the Goseibai Shikimoku, which remained in force for 635 years. In 1274 and 1281, the Hōjō regency, with ‘a little help’ from divine winds (kamikaze) – seasonal typhoons – managed to beat off two attempted invasions by large Mongol invasion fleets. Japan remained independent and not subject to the Mongols – a fact of world-historic significance. Direct universal rule in Japan – that of the Emperor – was undermined and defeated by the samurai warriors decades before the barons in England temporarily imposed their will on King John and made him sign the Magna Carta document of rights in 1215. In Japan, the warriors ruled in the monarch’s name while paying him lip service. These were signs of the new Mars Age.

Buddha statue in the 13th cent. samurai capital, Kamakura,

with cherry blossoms, the symbol of the samurai

It is symptomatic that in the ‘Mars culture’ of Japan in the 13th century, several new sects of Buddhism emerged at that time. None of them featured the complex esotericism of earlier schools – all were marked by great simplicity of practice: the Sōtō Zen sect founded by Dōgen (1200-1253) in the 1230s, with its central practice of shikan taza – seeking satori (enlightenment) simply sitting facing a blank wall, focusing only on one’s breath; the Nichiren shōshū sect founded in 1253 by Nichiren (1222-1282) urged its followers to focus on chanting only the title of the vast Lotus Sutra: Namu myōhō renge kyō (Devotion to the Ineffable Dharma of the Lotus Sutra) and to aggressively proselytise other sects in debate by the technique of shakubuku (‘break and subdue’); the Jōdō and Jōdō Shinshū sects founded by Hōnen (1133-1212) and Shinran (1173-1263) respectively both emphasised the fact that humanity was now living through the Mappō (the final, degenerate age of the Buddhist cycle of Time, when people find it hard to live according to the Buddhist Law – Dharma), so Buddhists could only depend devotionally on tariki (the power of the Buddhas and the saints) not jiriki (one’s own power) and could only seek to constantly keep in mind (13th century ‘mindfulness’!) and chant the name of Amitābha Buddha (the Buddha of Infinite Light in the West) endless times: Namu Amida Butsu (Devotion to Amitābha Buddha), in order to be saved and be reborn in his ‘Pure Land’ (Jōdō). Such practices of the new Japanese Buddhist sects were all characterised by simple acts of will, which reflected the new Age of the Mars Archangel, and not by knowledge of sutras, philosophy, precepts, or by techniques of imagination, visualisation, symbolic gestures and postures etc as in the older Buddhist sects that were reflective of the previous Ages of the Mercury (Raphael) and Jupiter (Zachariel) Archangels.

The Beginnings of the Rose Cross in the 13th century

In the Christian West there were certain parallel developments among new sects that the Church was wary of, such as the Order of the Franciscans (founded 1209), or else actively persecuted, such as the Waldensians and Cathars (the Albigensian Crusades (1209-1229), and also teachings such as those of the hugely popular and respected Italian preacher, Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) who taught, on the basis of his millenarian interpretation of the Book of Revelation, a doctrine of Three Ages: the notion that after the Age of the Father and the Age of the Son, from around the year 1260, humanity would soon enter the final Age, that of the Holy Spirit when the Church would become unnecessary, and when infidels and Christians would unite. This notion of the Age of the Holy Spirit would have huge resonance in Europe among religious radicals, especially in the religiously fervent 16th and 17th centuries.

In both East and West then, in the middle of that 800 year-long cycle of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, people felt that their era was a momentous and very difficult time in history. The coming of the awesome Mongols who destroyed so many kingdoms, including the venerable ones of China, Arabia, and Russia – Genghis Khan called himself “the punishment of God”²² – seemed to bear that out. The dark period of spiritual void in the first half of the 13th century of which Steiner spoke came to an end, however, around 1250-1260, the very time when the unitary Mongol Empire split, and in Europe, hidden and in a secret, unnamed place, the seeds of the Rose Cross movement began when, according to Steiner, “a 13th came to join the 12” and to be initiated by them. This initiation “could take place only after the short period of darkness had run its course.”²³ (Nb. this was in the middle of the 13th century) : a pious and fragile youth who had been incarnated at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and who would later be known as Christian Rosenkreutz was educated and brought up by 12 initiates who represented the seven ages of Atlantis, the subsequent four post-Atlantean epochs,²⁴ and the intellectual knowledge attainable by the culture of the 13th century. These 12 “were conscious that the external Christianity of the Church was only a caricature of the real Christianity. They were permeated with the greatness of Christianity although in the outside world they were taken to be its enemies. Each individuality worked his way into just one aspect of Christianity. Their endeavour was to unite the various religions into one great whole. They were convinced that the whole of spiritual life was contained in their 12 streams, and each one influenced the pupil to the best of his ability. Their aim was to achieve a synthesis of all the religions…”²⁵ The youngster grew greatly in spiritual stature but physically, he wasted away until he lay near death. The 12 gathered in a circle around him, ministering to him, praying over him. After a while, he awoke, transformed in body and spirit. Over a few weeks he then revealed to them what he had learned from them but in the light of a new revelation he had received: the vision of the etheric Christ such as Paul had seen on the road to Damascus. “This new form was as though given by Christ Himself. What he now revealed to them, the 12 called true Christianity, the synthesis of all the religions, and they distinguished between this Christianity and the Christianity of the period in which they lived.”²⁶

The initiated one died “relatively young”, but his life (etheric) body remained within the spiritual atmosphere of the earth, from where it could inspire the 12 and their pupils “so that it could form the occult Rosicrucian stream”, and it became once again part of the new etheric body of the 13th when he reincarnated again in the next century, in the year 1378.²⁷ According to the first Rosicrucian Manifesto, Fama Fraternitatis (1614), after travelling for years in the Near East, N. Africa and Spain, he returned to Germany and in 1413, aged 35, started to teach his own pupils of the Fraternity of the Rose Cross in ‘the House of the Holy Spirit’ and send them out into the world, where they worked outwardly as unpaid medical doctors. In 1604, one year after the close conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter of 1603 which began the new 800 year cycle in the Fire sign of Sagittarius, one of the members of the small Rosicrucian circle in Tübingen, southwest Germany, Johann Valentin Andreae, aged just 17, wrote down the inspired work, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, which was published in 1616 in Strasbourg. In that same year 1604, according to the Roscrucian legend in the Fama Fraternitatis, the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz was discovered.

From its seed-like beginnings at the end of that short period of great spiritual darkness in the 13th century which had begun with the Age of the Mars Archangel (the sack of Constantinople, the Albigensian Crusade, the Mongol invasions across Eurasia…), a completely new spiritual and social impulse that sought to unite Spirit and material Nature – on the basis of the individual’s free research and efforts – now, 400 years later in the early 17th century, began to emerge into the light and make itself known. What the 12 had learned from the 13th in the 13th century, the new Christian knowledge revealed by the young Christian Rosenkreutz, they put into the form of symbols and passed on to their pupils. Eventually, these symbols were published in the early 17th century by the alchemist Adrian (or Hadrian) Seumenicht (1603-1638) alias Hinricus Madathanus Theosophus in a book titled The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, which was republished in 1785 in Altona, near Hamburg (Altona was then ruled by Denmark). They represented Rosicrucian wisdom expressed in an outer pictorial symbolic form appropriate for the early 17th century. With Anthroposophy, Steiner sought to recast Rosicrucian wisdom in a cognitional form appropriate for our time that works with natural objects and mantras.²⁸

The Rosicrucian alchemists of the 17th century meditated on the deeper meaning of salt, mercury and sulphur on the path of spiritual development and understood the role of these three in relation to natural processes of salt formation, dissolution and combustion.²⁹ They knew also how these processes in the macrocosm relate in turn in the microcosm to spiritual purification of all that putrefies the soul, spiritual love that dissolves all hatred and coldness, and spiritual sacrifice that devotes us to God just as in past aeons of the world the lesser gods made sacrifices to the gods above them and Christ Jesus sacrificed Himself for us and for the greater glory of His Father. These qualities of purification of thought, the dissolving power of love, and the will to sacrifice self to what is higher we can see in three of the characteristic movements that appeared in Europe in the 13th century: the Dominicans with their focus on the purification of thought, the Franciscans with their empathy for all beings, and the Cathars, who gladly sacrificed themselves for each other and for God.

After the intense darkness of the first half of the 13th century a living light emerged in the twelvefold initiation of the young individuality who became Christian Rosenkreutz. In his lectures on esoteric Christianity and Christian Rosenkreutz, Steiner describes how in an event unique in history twelve streams of knowledge were synthesised, harmonised and bestowed upon the ‘I’ of this young human individuality: the wisdom of Atlantis and of the four post-Atlantean epochs up to his own time, as well as the experience of beholding Christ in the etheric world such as Paul had had on the road to Damascus. This living light that would become Christian Rosenkreutz was not intended for the world of the Middle Ages but for the modern age that began in the early 15th century. From the Rosicrucian manifestos of 1614-15 we learn that Christian Rosenkreutz started his European ‘school’ in the year 1413 when he was 35 years old. What began with his initiated I, after the darkness of the 13th century, was destined gradually to permeate modern culture and unite science, art and religion and, according to Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz has reincarnated again in each century since then to help his impulse develop and benefit humanity. When, with good will for the spirit, we shall have passed through the desert of materialism that is our modern age and witnessed the transformation of the martial spirit,³⁰ we shall surely find Christian Rosenkreutz waiting to welcome us in the age that is to come.

Notes

1. See Irma von Lorentz, Sternenrthymen in der Geschichte (Star Rhythms in History) 1986, pp. 111-123.

2. R. Steiner lecture of 16 July 1918, GA 181.

3. See map 1200-1250: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

4. Every 72 years the Vernal (Spring) Point (Equinox) – i.e. the relationship between the Earth, the Sun on the Spring Point day, and the constellation ‘behind’ the Sun on that day passes through one degree of the Zodiac. When the constellations are considered to be 30 degrees each in span then 30 x 72 years = 2160 years i.e. it takes 2160 years for the Spring Point (SP) to ‘move’ through one constellation or sign of the Zodiac. Today, the SP is at about 5° of Pisces and will therefore enter Aquarius in about the year 2375.

5. In his book A Treatise on the Seven Secondary Causes i.e. Intelligences, or Spirits, Who Move the Spheres In Accordance with God, published in 1515 and presented to Emperor Maximilian I. Trithemius insisted  that each of the seven planetary rulerships always lasts 354 year and 4 months.

6.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jupiter-and-saturns-great-conjunction-is-the-best-in-800-years-heres-how-to-see-it/

7. Legend has it he was born holding a blood clot in his hand.

8. The shock of the encounter with the Mongols led Europeans to try to find out where they came from. The 21-year-old Venetian Marco Polo thus ended up at the court of Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, in 1275. Polo’s book about his travels in Asia to the Mongol court and its account of China and ‘Xipangu’ (Japan) were read by many in Europe, including one Christopher Columbus…

9. The first was the 4th Crusade, in 1204, which sacked Constantinople. The last was the 9th Crusade, sometimes called Lord Edward’s Crusade, after Prince Edward of England who led it. There were no more Crusades after that. The Crusades therefore ended in the 13th century.

10. The Travels of Marco Polo (Penguin, 1958) p. 257.

11. In his 1910 lecture cycle The Mission of Folk Souls, (Collected Works GA 121) Rudolf Steiner described the origins of the five main races of humanity and their relation to spiritual centres focused on planetary oracles. After its relocation from Atlantis, the Mars oracle was established in northeast China, in the region of what later became Beijing. Before they adopted Buddhism, the Tibetans too were known for their martial abilities and several times defeated the forces of the Chinese empire. The peoples of southeast Asia were guided by the Venus oracle; they are ‘the Venus race’ (see lecture cycle GA 121 above).

12. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), the most significant leader of the worldwide Chabad Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism, apparently told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he would be the last Prime Minister before the coming of the Jewish Messiah and would hand over to the Messiah. The Rabbi urged him to accelerate the arrival of the Messiah. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgeWVgNGeAA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5t22DZjlQ

13.https://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2015/01/10/albert-pike-to-mazzini-august-15-1871-three-world-wars/

14. In 1917 British and French troops did return, however: in the secret 1916 arrangement between Britain and France (the Sykes-Picot talks) the two countries agreed that Palestine and Jerusalem should be ruled jointly between them, but later, the British persuaded the French that the city should be under ‘international’ control and then in September 1918, under British control. Eventually, the region and the city came under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which was given to Britain and lasted until British withdrawal in 1948.

15. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/turkic-council-eyes-forming-united-states-of-turkic-world/2192579 and: https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/organization-of-turkic-states-seeks-to-unite-europe-with-asia/

16. See Part 1 of this article, New View #109, Oct. – Dec. 2023, pp. 20-27.

17. See R. Steiner, Theosophy (1904) Chapter Three: 3. The Spiritland – The First Region, and R. Steiner lecture of 1 April 1913, (Collected Works GA 141, titled Between Death and Rebirth).

18. Steiner pointed out that this connection between materialism and Mars is the deeper reason why Christian Rosenkreutz sent the spirit of Gautama Buddha to the Mars sphere c.1600 where, in the year 1604, Buddha performed for the inhabitants of that sphere a task similar to that of Christ Jesus on earth in the Mystery of Golgotha. There is no space here to enter further into this topic.  See R. Steiner, Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz (RSP, 1984), pp. 173- 85. Lecture of 18.12.1912.(GA 130)

19. See n. 18 above.

20. Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz (GA 130: German title: Esoterische Christentum und die geistige Führung der Menschheit).

21. R. Steiner, lecture of 27 Sept. 1911, Neuchâtel (in GA 130).

22. “O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” As quoted in Tarikh-i Jahangushay [History of the World Conqueror] by Ala-ad-Din Ata-Malik Juvaini (ca. 1252-1260), translated by J.A. Boyle (1958), p. 105.

23. R. Steiner lecture of 27 September 1911, GA 130.

24. The Indian (Age of Cancer), the Persian (Age of Gemini), the Egypto-Chaldean (Age of Taurus) and the Greco-Roman (Age of Aries). The 12th was a man “who possessed intellectually all the knowledge of his time, while the others…. acquired their knowledge by returning in memory to their earlier incarnations.” – R. Steiner, lecture. of 27.9.1911, Neuchâtel. (GA 130)

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. This date was given in the Confessio Fraternitatis, the second of the published Rosicrucian Manifestos, in 1615.

28. See R. Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds – How Is It Achieved? (1904).

29. See R. Steiner lecture of 28.9.1911, in GA 130.

30. See n. 18 above: R. Steiner lecture of 18.12.1912 in GA 130.

For Part 1 of the article, go to: http://threeman.org/?p=3182

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, read out Israel’s Declaration of Independence in the Tel Aviv Museum Hall on 14 May 1948; it included the following words:

“In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home. [.…]

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel [the Land of Israel]; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State. Accordingly, we, members of the People’s Council, representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist Movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British Mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”¹

The phrase above  - “national rebirth in its own country”  - is strange because before 1917 few would have denied that the Jews were a nation or a people. They clearly already existed as such and so hardly needed to be ‘reborn’; what was being referred to here was rather, a nation state. The Balfour Declaration issued in the name of the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour on behalf of the government of the UK (following no parliamentary discussion or public debate) in 1917 said nothing about a “national rebirth”. It referred to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; it did not say “the establishment in Palestine of the national home for the Jewish people”. There was no precedent for the term “national home” in international law; it was unclear from the text whether a Jewish state was intended. However, the phrase “in its own country” in the Independence Declaration of 1948 implied that all of Palestine belonged to the Jews. By then, there were some 650,000 Jews in Palestine, far more than in 1917, and most had arrived since the late 1920s. On 3 February 1919 the World Zionist Organisation submitted a statement to the Paris Peace Conference which referred not to “a national home” but “the national home”. The Zionist Statement made much of the Jews’ “historic title” to the land of Palestine, claiming that “Palestine can be made now as it was in ancient times…”, but in ancient times the Jews constituted a kingdom in the land for several periods i.e. an autonomous Jewish State, and this was indeed what the Zionists were always aiming for but which, from the period before the Balfour Declaration on 1917 to the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, they could not officially mention.  The Zionist Statement also claimed that “by violence they were driven from Palestine”, no doubt referring to an expulsion by the Roman Empire, but such an expulsion did not happen; Palestine was by no means devoid of Jews between 136 AD and the arrival of the Muslim conquerors in the 7th century, despite the Romans’ cruel treatment of the Jews after the suppression of the Jewish revolt led by Simon Bar Kokhba  in 132-136 AD.² Galilee was the main Jewish religious centre after 136 AD. And even for centuries before the two disastrous Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66-70 and 132-136 AD, far more Jews had chosen to live outside the Jewish homeland than inside it: “Perhaps three to five million Jews dwelled outside Palestine in the roughly four centuries that stretched from Alexander to Titus… through most of [this] era, a Jewish regime existed in Palestine. The Jews of the diaspora, from Italy to Iran, far outnumbered those in the homeland. Although Jerusalem [and the Temple] loomed large in their self-perception as a nation, few of them had seen it, and few were likely to.”³

     The Declaration of Independence in 1948 acknowledged that the new State of Israel was brought into being by: a) acts of will by Theodore Herzl until his death in 1905 and by the Zionist movement from 1897 until 1948 b) the Balfour Declaration by the UK Cabinet in 1917; c) the Mandate of the League of Nations (1922) d) an “irrevocable” vote by the UN General Assembly in November 1947. It should be noted that, apart from the first of these four factors, the other three all resulted from the actions of the elites of the UK and the USA, which issued the Balfour Declaration, and created both the League of Nations and the United Nations; indeed, the result of the UN vote itself in 1947 was largely due to American pressure on other countries, notably France (see below).

     The sentence in the 1948 Declaration of Independence “This right”  - of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country – “…was re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home”  is problematic, because the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) report of 1947 (Article 160, Chapter II: The Elements of the Conflict) stated that:

“The Arabs have persistently adhered to the position that the Mandate for Palestine, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration, is illegal. The Arab States have refused to recognize it as having any validity. (emphasis – TB)

(a) They allege that the terms of the Palestine Mandate are inconsistent with the letter and spirit of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations for the following reasons:

(1) Although paragraph 4 of Article 22 stipulated that certain communities had reached a stage of development where their existence as “independent nations” could be provisionally recognised, subject only to a limited period of tutelage under a mandatory Power in the form of administrative advice and assistance until such time as these communities would be able to stand alone, the Palestine Mandate violated this stipulation by deliberately omitting immediate provisional recognition of the independence of the territory and by granting to the mandatory Power in article 1 of the Mandate “full powers of legislation and administration”.

(2) The wishes of the Palestine community had not been “a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory Power”, as provided for in Article 22, paragraph 4 of the Covenant.

(b) The principle and right of national self-determination were violated.

(c) The Arab States were not Members of the League of Nations when the Palestine Mandate was approved, and are not, therefore, bound by it.”⁴

“International law”

In the aftermath of the bizarre events of 7 October 2023, when one of the world’s most technologically advanced states, widely regarded as having the world’s most sophisticated intelligence and security system, supposedly ‘failed’ for over seven hours (!) to foil a serious cross-border incursion involving genocidal attacks by terrorists on foot, on motorbikes, in trucks and on paragliders – a circumstance that has largely been overlooked by media and governments around the world but which certainly bears comparison with the equally bizarre events of 11th September 2001 in the USA – many western governments have since frequently stated that “Israel has the right to defend itself under international law” and also that “Israel must abide by international law with regard to the treatment of civilians in wartime”.

      In democratic societies “law” is supposed to be decided by the majority votes of the democratically elected representatives of the populations of those societies. But when it comes to “international law” and international treaties between governments or between governments and international organisations such as the UN, then the populations of those “democratic societies” and their representatives are often suddenly left out. It seems to be accepted, even in democratic societies, that proposals and decisions in these areas are made by the foreign policy and legal ‘experts’ in the countries in question, i.e. by small circles of individuals, and not by the populations or their representatives, most of whom have neither much interest in nor knowledge of international affairs. The consequent result, however, of these completely undemocratic procedures that result in new “international laws” is that the populations of democratic societies can find themselves bound for decades afterwards by “international laws” that they themselves were neither consulted upon nor played any part in deciding or voting on. Furthermore, extra-parliamentary private lobby groups can have considerable impact on governments’ behaviour and decisions with regard to international law.

     How, for example, did the State of Israel actually come about in 1948? It was due to decisions made under “international law”, namely the UN Partition Plan for (Mandatory) Palestine, which was passed by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. The UK, which was one of the abstaining countries, had been granted a mandate in 1922 to administer Palestine by the League of Nations, a body which had not existed before 1919. With regard to these League of Nations ‘Mandates’, it should be noted that on 17 May 1922, Lord Balfour informed the Council of the League of Nations that his government’s understanding of the role of the League in the creation of mandates was that:

“[the] Mandates were not the creation of the League, and they could not in substance be altered by the League. The League’s duties were confined to seeing that the specific and detailed terms of the mandates were in accordance with the decisions taken by the Allied and Associated Powers, and that in carrying out these mandates the Mandatory Powers should be under the supervision—not under the control—of the League. A mandate was a self-imposed limitation by the conquerors on the sovereignty which they exercised over the conquered territory.”⁵

These League of Nations “mandates” were in effect acts of ‘legalised theft’ by the victorious Powers (Britain, France, USA, Japan) after the First World War. Certainly, such acts of theft had not been unusual after wars between colonial Powers over the preceding 250 years, but theft it was nevertheless. Britain and France, as colonial Powers now (in 1919) severely indebted to the USA, proposed to help themselves to colonies and territories governed before 1914 by Germany and Ottoman Turkey, the defeated Powers in 1918, and to do so in accord with their national self-interest. However, the USA, which during the war had become the world’s creditor nation, and under the supposed influence of its ‘idealistic’ and ‘anti-colonialist’ President Woodrow Wilson, insisted that, in accordance with the largely American creation of the League of Nations, the defeated Powers’ former colonies should not be simply transferred to the British and French colonial empires but the peoples in those colonies should be prepared for self-government by those imperial states’ administrations. Such was the League of Nations’ understanding of the “Mandates”.

     On Wilson’s leaving office in March 1921, the new US administration declined to participate in either the League of Nations or the Permanent Court of International Justice, both of which the USA under Wilson had foisted on the world in 1919 and 1920 respectively. Thus, acts of veiled theft⁶ by Britain and France in the Middle East (Britain got Palestine; France got Syria) were followed by American irresponsibility in ‘legitimising’ those acts of theft, determining their nature and then declining to take any further responsibility for those ‘international’ actions. British foreign policy mandarins – since all this of course had nothing to do with British voters, who were not allowed to be involved with any of these processes  - having in effect ‘stolen’ the Turks’ colony in Palestine, were thus saddled by this American-devised institution of the League of Nations with the burden of ‘administering’ the former colonial territory of Palestine for unspecified decades into the future.

A “National Home”?

The British mandarins had, however, earlier imposed further burdens upon themselves, during the world war, when they had given contradictory promises to both Jews and Arabs in order to gain their support against Britain’s wartime enemies. To prompt the Arabs to rise in revolt against the Turks, in 1916 the British elite had promised the Arabs that they would have independent states after the war, which would be ruled by Arab princes. Also, to obtain the support of wealthy Jews both in America and Russia as well as elsewhere, in the war effort against Germany⁷, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour had in November 1917 given a written promise on behalf of the government –  later known as the ‘Balfour Declaration’, which was personally addressed to Lord Walter Rothschild, whom Balfour evidently regarded as the leader of the Jewish Zionist movement in Britain (he was not formally that but was widely regarded by Jews and non-Jews alike as the ‘prince’ of the Jews in the British Empire, one might say)  - that the British government would

“favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and [would] use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

     There would soon be much controversy over the phrase “a national home for the Jewish people” – did it mean ‘a Jewish State’? The evidence seems to be that most of the mandarins involved felt that sooner or later it would indeed mean that, even if in the early years they claimed to deny this.  For instance, the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill would later meet with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann at Balfour’s home in London on 21 July 1921, where

Lloyd George and Balfour assured Weizmann “that by the Declaration they had always meant an eventual Jewish State”, according to Weizmann’s minutes of that meeting. Lloyd George stated in 1937 that it was intended that Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth if and when Jews “had become a definite majority of the inhabitants”, and [former Colonial Secretary] Leo Amery echoed the same position in 1946.⁸

The final draft of the ‘Balfour Declaration’ was made in Balfour’s name, but he had actually had little to do with the text; it was written by Leo Amery, Jewish himself, who had been the secretary and righthand man of the figure who was arguably the most powerful man in that War Cabinet – Alfred, Lord Milner, Minister without Portfolio (1916-1918)⁹. But Amery later

“testified under oath to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in January 1946: ‘The phrase “the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people” was intended and understood by all concerned to mean at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Palestine would ultimately become a “Jewish Commonwealth” or a “Jewish State”, if only Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers.” ¹⁰

Over the following 30 years they did just that. Nor, until 1939, did the UK government seek to prevent them.

How had it come to this? That a people who supposedly had lost their homeland in ancient times were able to regain it some 1900 years later and create a State there? That countless peoples and cultures throughout the world had lost control of or had been driven from their homelands over that same long period, never to return or to regain control of them, whereas the Jewish people had managed to convince ‘the world’  - i.e. the elites of Britain and America, who at that time controlled the destinies of the world and also controlled the UN – that they, the Jews, should be allowed to return to and rule that ancient homeland, but other peoples should not be allowed to return to their ancestral lands? For obviously, if the same principle were applied across the historical board, so to speak, then the world map would look very different: England would have to be returned to the Welsh, for example, and the USA to its native American tribes.

The Age of Gabriel, Arabs and Jews

The answer to the above questions, from an anthroposophical perspective, drawing on the spiritual research of Rudolf Steiner, is this: from the early 16th century, guidance of human history passed from one mighty spiritual being to another – from the Mars Archangel Samael (1190-1510) to the Moon Archangel Gabriel (1510-1879). There are seven such Archangels active in rotation, each ‘responsible’ for an approximately 350-400 year period of history. During the phases of the Moon Archangel Gabriel, humanity turns its attention under Gabriel’s impress, very much to the material world and the demands of physical life, that is, to everything that is bound up with the word ‘incarnation’. This was the period of natural science, of western colonialism and empire, of world trade, capitalism, industrialism and nationalism. It was also the period when the English-speaking people rose to world power and when the influence of Semitic culture – that of the Arab and Jewish peoples – rose to particular power within western culture but especially within English-speaking culture e.g. Britain and, later, the USA. In the 17th and 18th centuries, natural science, often based on translations from the Arab texts, began its march of triumph over the Church. (Interestingly, coffee, imported from Muslim Turkey, accompanied this expansion of the intellect). Deism, a peculiarly English form of philosophical religion, transcendental, abstract, and not a little redolent of Islam and Judaism, became the preferred faith of many ‘enlightened’ Englishmen, not least among the Freemasons, whose occultism and ritual owed much to the Temple of Solomon and to the writings of Jewish Cabalists.  Expelled by King Edward I in 1290 in the Age of the Mars Archangel Samael, the Jews had been readmitted to Britain by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, in the Age of the Moon Archangel Gabriel. By the later decades of the Age of Gabriel, the name of Rothschild was known the world over. Indeed, British imperial power in the Victorian age was unthinkable without it. In the decades after 1810, Rothschild money financed British military campaigns, built British railways, gave financial advice and extended loans to the Royal Family, bought the Suez Canal, steadied the economy and buttressed other British banks. The Rothschilds were also among the first to fund Jewish immigrant settlements in Palestine.

     The success of the Rothschilds in Britain was but a symbol of the rising profile of Jewish culture in British life. Take for example, the 17th century English Puritans; in their religious life they based themselves on the people of ancient Israel and especially on the Old Testament and its strictures. They wore black and white, like the Jews, they covered their heads at all times, they opposed religious imagery, they honoured only the text of Holy Writ and its interpreters, they saw themselves as exiles, fleeing sinful ‘Egypt’ for the God-given Promised Land of America, where they took their fundamentalist values and transplanted them. Their successors in England, the Dissenters, banned from political life, turned to business and industry and became successful capitalists.  These Puritans and Dissenters, later followed by the Methodists and Evangelicals in the 18th century, saw themselves as ‘Israel’, looked to the model of ancient Israel and to the prophets of ancient Israel to read the future and discern God’s Will. They came to believe not only that now they were the new ‘Chosen People’ but that the Messiah would not come again until His ‘ancient Chosen People’, the Jews, had been gathered back in the Holy Land and converted to Christ. Many of the English-speaking Puritans believed that it was the task of the Lord’s (new) Chosen People to enable the Jews to return to the Holy Land. Such notions and interpretations of the Bible took firm root in English-speaking culture during the period 1600-1850 across broad sections of Bible-reading Protestant society, from Low Church Evangelicals and Baptists to High Church Anglicans. Politicians such as David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour were well aware of such interpretations.

     The Age of Gabriel ended in 1879 but its impulse did not stop then; such archangelic impulses are always strongest at the end of their period and continue for several decades until they begin to fade out as the new archangelic wave comes in. Nationalism was thus at a peak in the years 1870-1970, and especially during the time of the two world wars. Jewish influence in the West also rose to a peak in this period, notably in America. It was hardly surprising then that the Zionist movement, the Balfour Declaration, and the effort to found a political State of Israel should also have occurred in this time. It was, strictly speaking, the early period of the Age of the Sun Archangel Michael, but his impulse was only beginning to grow at that time. His is a truly Christian impulse, and the impulse of Christ is the creation of a kingdom that is not of this world.

National motivations

The League of Nations was a typical manifestation of the outgoing Gabrielic and the incoming Michaelic principles. It was founded by the English-speaking elites to serve their own cultures’ national interests and yet it also had a supranational impulse to it. It was a contradiction in terms – an intended supranational institution that was based on the principle of national self-determination! The Arabs protested already in 1919 that the Wilsonian principle of ‘national self-determination’, the supposed cornerstone of the new League of Nations, meant that it was not right that European Powers should presume to encourage Jews to migrate to Palestine which, as ‘southern Syria’ under Turkish rule in the mid-19th century, had had a Jewish population of only some 5-7% as against 80% Muslims and 10% Christian Arabs.¹¹ By the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the population of Palestine was 10% Jewish and 90 % Muslim. ‘National self-determination’ was widely interpreted to mean that Palestine would belong to the majority Muslim Arab population. But the British and American elites had ‘determined’ otherwise, in accordance with their own British imperial or American pseudo-imperial interests. The Arabs were too backward, they felt, to serve those interests in the region, and those interests above all were the security of the Suez Canal and the safe transport of Mesopotamian oil across the region to ports in Palestine, such as Haifa, on the Mediterranean. For the British, the Suez Canal meant the safeguarding of their imperial interests in India and the rest of Asia and southeast towards Australasia. Mesopotamian oil guaranteed the future of the Royal Navy, without which there would simply be no British Empire; this had been the reality since oil had begun to replace coal as the fuel of the Royal Navy shortly before the world war. Britain had plenty of coal but no oil; it therefore needed to ensure control of those regions which possessed plentiful supplies of oil. The Americans would have the same motivation when their native supplies of oil began to diminish in the 20th century. The Jewish emigrants to Palestine were comparatively modern, educated and culturally European, many of them predominantly secular. Their Zionist champions and leaders in Britain, such as Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) and Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), emphasised this fact that the emigrants would render effective service to the British Empire if they were allowed to become the controlling element in the region.

Balfour and his Declaration

A further factor was repeatedly stated by Balfour and the circle around Milner during the First World War and it continued to be of great importance in the interwar period: namely, that Zionism – the cause that since 1897 (the first Zionist Congress, in Basel, Switzerland) had sought a nation state for the Jewish people and later specifically a state in Palestine, the ancient ‘Land of Israel’ as the Zionists called it (Eretz Israel) – was of interest to many influential and wealthy Jews  in the USA, Jews whose support Britain could not afford to lose: on 3 September 1917 Balfour

“pointed out that this was a question on which the Foreign Office had been very strongly pressed for a long time past. There was a very strong and enthusiastic organisation, more particularly in the United States, who were zealous in this matter, and his [Balfour’s] belief was that it would be of most substantial assistance to the Allies to have the earnestness and enthusiasm of these people enlisted on our side. To do nothing was to risk a direct breach with them, and it was necessary to face this situation.”12

     In April 1917 Balfour visited the US and amongst others, met with Louis Brandeis, president of the Zionist Organisation of America and one of US President Wilson’s closest advisors. Balfour gained from Brandeis the impression that American Jews, especially the wealthier ones, supported Zionism.

“According to an account written in 1923 by the British Foreign Office, it was during Balfour’s visit to America that the idea solidified of issuing a statement of support for Zionism: ‘[D]uring this visit the policy of the declaration as a war measure seems to have taken more definite shape. It was supposed that American opinion might be favourably influenced if His Majesty’s Government gave an assurance that the return of the Jews to Palestine had become a purpose of British policy’.”¹³

Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader in Britain, tried to persuade the British government that the Germans, who were allied to Ottoman Turkey, might seek to use the Zionist tactic to persuade wealthy Jews in America to favour pacifism and thus undermine US support for the war which America had only just joined (April 1917). In the autumn of 1917, evidence appeared which seemed to substantiate Weizmann’s claims.

     The only member of the five-man War Cabinet who spoke against a declaration in favour of supporting a Jewish national homeland in Palestine was Lord Curzon, who argued that:

“….important as may be the political reasons … for adopting such a line of action, we ought at least to consider whether we are encouraging a practical ideal, or preparing the way for disappointment and failure….” Curzon claimed that “most of the Jewish agricultural colonies [in Palestine] had not been successful. And that ‘the Arabs have occupied the country for the best part of 1,500 years. . . . They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.’”¹⁴

This would turn out to be prescient on both counts.

 But in the War Cabinet meeting on 31 October 1917, Curzon’s objections were overruled. Balfour

“chose to rest the case for the declaration mainly on its value as propaganda.” He related that “the vast majority of Jews in Russia and America” favoured Zionism. ‘If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal,’ he said, ‘we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.’ The war cabinet then and there authorised Balfour, in his capacity as foreign secretary, to issue a declaration…[It] was issued two days later, with only minor clerical corrections.”¹⁵

The British government’s formal promise of “the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people”  - the Balfour Declaration – was made for the sake of a temporary tactic to gain advantage in time of war. A confidential memorandum in 1924 by the Colonial Office, also showed that the Balfour Declaration was a war tactic. The Declaration, it said:

“had a definite war object. It was designed to enlist on behalf of the Allies the sympathy of influential Jews and Jewish organizations all over the world. The Declaration was published at a time when the military situation was exceedingly critical. Russia had dropped out of the Alliance. Italy appeared to be at her last gasp; and the Germans, freed from anxiety in the East, were massing hugh (sic) forces on the Western front in preparation for the great offensive of 1918. The promise to the Jews was in fact made at a time of acute national danger.” ¹⁶

     Once the Declaration had been made public, however, the British government was stuck with it and felt it could not go back on it. It soon realised after the war was over that it was hoisted on its own petard, although the original reason for the Declaration – its use as a war propaganda tactic – no longer applied. Despite opposition to the Declaration, to the appointment of Herbert Samuel as High Commissioner and to the government’s general pro-Zionist stance from many within the military in Palestine and within the echelons of the Civil Service, the government stubbornly clung to the Declaration, claiming to try to satisfy the demands of both the Zionist and Arab communities.

     The British and French governments issued a hypocritical statement in Syria on 9 November 1918:

“The object aimed at by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the War let loose by the ambition of Germany is the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.”¹⁷ (emphasis – TB)

But in December 1918 the British and French agreed that Britain alone would rule in Palestine, thus changing their secret agreement finalised with the Russians in January 1916 – for which negotiations had commenced in 1915, the Sykes-Picot Agreement – according to which, after the war, Palestine would be administered internationally.

     Other statements by Balfour show the extent of his cynical appraisal of Britain’s self-interest: in an August 1919 memo discussing the Covenant of the League of Nations, he explained:

“What I have never been able to understand is how [our policy] can be harmonised with the [Anglo-French] declaration, the Covenant [of the League of Nations], or the instructions to the Commission of Enquiry … I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs; but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine, it is not now an ‘independent nation,’ nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those who live there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them. In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate,” and: “The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the ‘independent nation’ of Palestine than in that of the ‘independent nation’ of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. The four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”¹⁸ (emphasis – TB)

     Two things, it seems, may have come together here in Balfour’s mind: although as an offshoot of the powerful aristocratic Cecil family with its strong traditionalist High Church Anglican convictions, he came from a very different branch of Christianity than the Welsh Baptist David Lloyd George, the two men, like so many of their contemporaries, had been brought up on the Bible and knew it very well, Lloyd George famously saying he knew the kings and placenames of ancient Israel better than those of England. Both men being romantics at heart, they had a certain penchant for the ancient fate of the Jewish people and both had been seduced by the charm of Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and his appeals to their sense of history and religion with regard to the fate of the Jewish people.

     But both men were also well aware of the power of Jewish finance in Britain, especially since the days of Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836), who had financed Wellington’s victorious Waterloo campaign against Napoleon and much British railway development in subsequent decades. As leading politicians, Balfour and Lloyd George were also aware that Britain’s first Jewish Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) had used his connections with the Rothschild family in 1875 to secure a Rothschild loan that gained for the British government the controlling share in the Suez Canal. Both men too had bent an ear to the practical and strategic arguments advanced by Britain’s first Jewish Cabinet Minister Herbert Samuel, a committed Zionist, who soon after war broke out between Britain and Turkey in November 1914, said that “

by supporting the creation of a Jewish colony east of Suez, Britain could deny that territory to rival foreign powers who might then threaten its control of the Suez Canal…Samuel argued in March 1915 that ‘help given now towards the attainment of the idea which great numbers of Jews have never ceased to cherish through so many centuries of suffering cannot fail to secure, into a far-distant future, the gratitude of a whole race, whose goodwill, in time to come, may not be without its value.’”¹⁹ (emphasis – TB)

The British government would later make Samuel its first High Commissioner for Palestine (see photo below: Samuel right with Balfour centre and Gen. Allenby left.) Serving from 1920 until 1925, he was the first Jew to govern there for 2000 years. Samuel’s appointment was not popular with the Arabs, but he tried to appear impartial and was reasonably successful in his role. However, Jewish historian Bernard Wasserstein wrote that his policy was “subtly designed to reconcile Arabs to the… pro-Zionist policy” of the British²⁰, and Sahar Huneidi, in A Broken Trust – Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (2001), wrote that most of Samuel’s policies in Palestine actually went beyond the notion of  the “Jewish national home” promised in the Balfour Declaration and were aimed at the realisation of a Jewish state.

Allenby (left), Balfour (centre), Herbert Samuel (right)

     Riots broke out a number of times due to Arab feelings of betrayal by the western Allies and against rising Zionist immigration. On 18 August 1921, as the inter-communal situation worsened, although there was no Arab violence directed against British troops in Palestine, the British Cabinet met to discuss the situation, but only the last of the four main points discussed related directly to Palestine:

1) “The honour of the government was involved in the Declaration made by Mr Balfour, and to go back on our pledge would seriously reduce the prestige of this country in the eyes of Jews throughout the world. 2)  The Prime Ministers of Canada and South Africa had recently stated that our Zionist policy had proved helpful in those Dominions. 3) It was not expected that the problem could be easily or quickly solved,

especially in view of the growing power of the Arabs in the territories bordering on Palestine. 4) it was urged that peace was impossible on the lines of the Balfour Declaration, which involved setting up a National Home for the Jews and respecting the rights of the Arab population. The result of this inconsistency must be to estrange both Arabs and Jews, while involving us in futile military expenditure. Against this position it was argued that the Arabs had no prescriptive right to a country which they had failed to develop to the best advantage.”²¹

So, the Declaration had to be adhered to for the sake of Zionist interests in Canada and South Africa and for the sake of the “honour” of the UK government – this after nearly a million Britons had died fighting in the war for that government, often in appalling circumstances  – even though it was recognised that “peace was impossible on the lines of the Balfour Declaration”!

In July 1922, the League of Nations approved the Palestine Mandate, Britain as the mandatory power, and Britain’s implementation of the Balfour Declaration. In August, the Palestine Arab Congress rejected the Palestine Mandate, calling it a violation of Arab rights.

The secret Cavendish report of 1923

Less than a year later, in February 1923 the new Colonial Secretary, Victor Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire (one of England’s pre-eminent aristocrats), had a secret 10-man committee carry out a comprehensive re-assessment of British policy with regard to Palestine,    including the question of whether to retain the Balfour Declaration and even the Mandate. Cavendish concluded in his report to Cabinet after the committee’s findings that despite the difficulties with the project that he admitted was unpopular with Press and public, Britain should continue with both Declaration and Mandate essentially for the sake of the country’s, i.e. the Establishment’s ‘honour’: “repudiating the Declaration”, “breaking a promise made to the Jews in the face of the whole world”, and “returning the Mandate” to the League of Nations would mean that

“We should, indeed, stand convicted of an act of perfidy, from which it is hardly too much to say that our good name would never recover…. We shall stand for all time as the Christian Power which having rescued the Holy Land from the Turk, lacked the strength or the courage to guard what it had won.”²²

Concerns of honour typical of a 13th century aristocrat. No matter that the Declaration no longer corresponds to reality and makes no sense, it had to be continued with – such was Cavendish’s reasoning in effect.

However, Cavendish also came up with two distinctly dishonourable reasons for continuing with the Mandate.  In 1922 Britain had been negotiating a withdrawal from Egypt. In those circumstances, it would suit Britain, indeed it would be vital he said, to retain forces in Palestine, east of the Suez Canal in order to keep a military presence close to the Canal. This self-interested motive went right against the principle of Mandates, which were supposed to benefit the people of the mandated territory not the mandatory Power, but the League of Nations never got to know, because “the Cavendish memorandum… was made public only well after Britain had withdrawn from Palestine”²³ (i.e. after 1948).

     The second dishonourable motive was that Cavendish claimed that the Jews were bringing much investment into the territory and benefiting the economy: “It may well be argued that, by giving them the opportunity of doing so, we are serving the interests of civilization as a whole, quite apart from any sentimental considerations about restoring a scattered people to its ancient fatherland.” But this was untrue, as Jewish investment benefited only the Jewish economy in Palestine, not the Arab. Jewish capital was employed to buy Arab-owned land, and only Jewish labour was allowed on land owned by the Jewish National Fund. A 1921 report for the Zionist Executive noted that:

“the situation might have been less acute had Zionist activity brought the Arabs the material advantages they had been invited to expect from it.”²⁴

      The Cabinet in 1923 therefore concluded that a Jewish national home could not be realised together with the protection of the interests of the Arab population and their eventual independence. Nevertheless, despite this continuing contradiction the Cabinet decided, for reasons of imperial self-interest once again (i.e. the loss of ‘face’ that would result), to go on with the Declaration’s promise of a Jewish national home. The consequence was inevitable conflict between Arabs and Jews, with which Britain, in its straitened economic circumstances after 1945, would not ultimately be able to cope and which finally led to its ignominious departure from Palestine in 1948, the besmirching of its ‘honour’ and ‘name’ notwithstanding, and leaving behind a situation of terrible conflict that is still ongoing a hundred years after the secret Cavendish report of 1923.

The American historian J.B. Quigley commented:

The Cabinet approved the committee’s report, with minor amendments, on 31 July 1923. The report was nothing short of remarkable. Had it been made public at the time, one can only speculate at the furor it would have caused. The British government was admitting that its support for Zionism had been prompted by considerations having nothing to do with the merits of Zionism, or its consequences for Palestine. The government, for reasons unrelated to Palestine, was willing to relegate Palestine to a posture in which inter-communal conflict was all but inevitable.”²⁵

          The Cavendish committee proposed setting up an Arab Agency in Palestine to serve Arab interests and which would operate alongside the already existing Jewish Agency  – but only if the Zionists agreed and if the Arabs agreed to cease all further agitations. News of this proposal was made public, but the Cavendish committee report stayed secret. The public did not know therefore that the Cabinet actually regarded the Mandate as unworkable.

“The statement that was made public read, disingenuously, that the Government had endeavoured so to conduct the administration of Palestine as to do equal justice to the interests of both the parties concerned. …This public statement was directly at odds with the conclusion the Cabinet reached in private. It did not become known that Britain was more concerned about keeping the Mandate than about the advisability of promoting a Jewish national home. It did not become known that Britain had no plans for implementing the Balfour Declaration in a way that was anticipated to yield an acceptable outcome.²⁶

The British government was telling the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in the 1920s that the interests of both communities in Palestine were being served appropriately, but as early as July 1923 its own real assessment was that this was far from the case and was in fact virtually impossible.

     Meanwhile, Jewish immigration continued to rise steadily. The population of Tel Aviv increased from 2,500 in 1920 to 25,000 in 1924, and the overall Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine rose from 90,000 in 1923 to 450,000 in 1940, most arriving after 1929 with the rise of Nazism in Germany; the Arab population was about a million. At the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish population was 650,000. The greatly increased numbers in the 1930s led to major Arab protests, rioting and violence, culminating in the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-39, during which irregular Jewish armed forces collaborated with British troops in fighting the Arabs and after which the British government finally imposed considerable restrictions on Jewish immigration and announced that it would end the Palestine Mandate within 10 years i.e. withdraw. In 1937 the British had announced a plan to partition the territory three ways: an Arab state, a Jewish state and a continuing British Mandate over Jerusalem and the port of Haifa; the British obviously still wanted to control Jerusalem and their oil port at Haifa. These British plans of 1937 and 1939 led to illegal immigration and terrorist violence against the British authorities by the Jewish Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and Irgun (National Military Organisation) movements in the 1940s. The British had finally succeeded in turning both Arabs and Jews against them. Jewish violence culminated in the bombing atrocity at the British HQ at the Hotel King David in 1946 where 91 people were killed and 45 injured.

The Americans and the UN vote in November 1947

After the Second World War, the Labour government, under great economic duress, and considerable US pressure, resolved to quit India and Palestine as soon as practically possible. Meanwhile, the Anglo-American-devised League of Nations had given way in 1946 to the Anglo-American-devised United Nations. How did this body give its blessing to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948?  After the death of President Roosevelt in April 1945, Jewish lobby groups sought to put pressure on the new and inexperienced President to force the British to increase immigration quotas to Palestine. One of them, the American League for a Free Palestine (ALFP), was a front for the Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, and was led by Hillel Kook, a senior member in the Irgun.²⁷ In 1946, with the ghastly film footage from concentration camps in Germany in people’s minds, and many Jews still waiting in miserable conditions in Europe, American Jews were in no mood for compromise. Their lobby pressure was relentless and much money was raised, from Hollywood celebrities and even from the Mafia for the militant Jewish groups fighting the British in Palestine. Kook and others represented those groups’ armed struggle as the struggle of the American revolutionaries for freedom from the British in the 1770s, and as in the 1770s, Kook and his allies did not hesitate to involve the French, setting up a French branch of the ALFP and gaining the support of such luminaries as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Under political pressure from the significant Jewish lobby in New York City, President Harry Truman called for “a viable Jewish state”, and the Republican governor Thomas Dewey urged that “hundreds of thousands” of emigrants be allowed into Palestine. Truman expressed his exasperation at forceful Jewish lobbying, but felt he had to bend towards it, not least because of the number of Bible Belt American Protestant voters who felt they had to help “the Hebrews” regain the Promised Land. A factor here was the very influential Scofield Reference Bible of American fundamentalist minister Cyrus I. Scofield²⁸ (published in Britain by Oxford University Press) that since 1909 had become popular in the USA with its extensive notes to the King James Version. By the end of the Second World War the Scofield Bible had sold more than two million copies. The Scofield Bible’s notes, amongst other things, promoted eschatological dispensationalism  – the notion that God intervenes in human history in discrete historical phases.²⁹

     Jewish terrorist actions grew more daring, ever more violent and more successful. Gradually, as had been the case with the IRA in Ireland in 1919-21, the British buckled under the terrorists’ ever more gruesome attacks and it became ever clearer that they were losing control of the situation despite their heavy-handed efforts to repress the Jewish armed groups. In September 1947 the British announced they would pull out unilaterally on 14 May 1948, whatever the situation and whatever the UN might decide. On 29 November 1947 the UN debated the partition proposal drawn up by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The proposal required a two-thirds majority to pass. New York Jews lobbied effectively both inside and outside the UN building; their focus was on France which until then had taken no clear position. Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), an ardent Zionist and a real powerbroker who had funded Woodrow Wilson to become President in 1912, had advised Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, was a close friend of Winston Churchill and moreover was also a supporter of the Irgun and the ALFP, put direct pressure on the French UN delegate,  Alexandre Parodi, telling him personally that the French stock market would dive if France did not support partition in the UN vote and implying that President Truman might choose to send aid meant for France elsewhere. The clear message was relayed back to Paris. In the UN General Assembly vote on 29 November Parodi voted for partition and so did France’s three neighbours Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Those votes helped to secure the two thirds majority (33-13) for partition. In Palestine, Jews shouted “Vive la France!” but they should rather have shouted “Vive Baruch!” Thus it was that the Zionists got their UN support for the State of Israel they founded on 14 May 1948.

The old rivalry: Britain and France

Meanwhile, French money for weapons for the Jewish armed groups in Palestine continued to arrive in Palestine: in January 1948 the French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault authorised US$26 million worth of arms for the Haganah group.

     Until the very end of the British Mandate in May 1948, the two old imperial rivals Britain and France were still trading blows over the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean that they had been struggling over since the 1870s, when Disraeli had outmanoeuvred France with Rothschild money to buy the controlling shares in the Suez Canal (which had been built by the French!), since 1882, when the British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone had sent British troops to occupy Egypt to consolidate that control of the Canal, and since 1915 when the prickly diplomats Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot had wrangled over delineating British and French spheres of influence and control in the region and had created the infamous Sykes-Picot lines on a map which largely determined the borders of the postwar territories that still exist today and which as recently as 2014 ISIS declared it would erase to recreate the Islamic ‘Caliphate’.

      It was in fact due to Britain’s frustration over France’s determination to gain control over Syria during the First World War that the British government had first lent an ear to Herbert Samuel’s proposal to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. When the Turkish sultan, who was also the Caliph of the entire Islamic world, had declared a Holy War (a great jihad) against Britain in November 1914, Britain had responded by launching a massive imperial assault on Constantinople via Gallipoli the following year. This failed disastrously, so in 1916 the British turned to Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, who was descended from the Prophet Muhammed and as such was the one man in the Islamic world who outranked the Sultan/Caliph, but the Sharif’s price for joining the fight against the Turks was high: it included Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine.

     However, Britain’s allies, the French, insisted on having Syria, even though they did not occupy it. Their claim was based instead on age-long romantic cultural ‘ties’ between France and Syria going back to the time of Charlemagne, the Crusades, and Franco-Ottoman alliances in the 16th and 17th centuries as well as educational and trading links with Syria and Lebanon. The French had also wanted Palestine, but Sykes managed to persuade Picot that Palestine should be governed internationally after the war, a solution that pleased neither of them. The British had at least gained control over the oilfields of Mesopotamia, over the port of Haifa and over Transjordan and the Negev desert which bordered on the Sinai and the Canal. Nevertheless, they would much have preferred France to have gained nothing in the region.

“Resentful that they had been forced into the deal [3 Jan. 1916] by Georges-Picot, they immediately began to look for ways to circumvent it and in particular to plug the gap in their defences left by its unsatisfactory settlement of Palestine. To do so, the British turned to an idea that had been circulating in government circles for a year. This was that support for Zionism – the as yet unsuccessful political campaign to create a Jewish state in Palestine – represented a better way for Britain to secure its position in the Middle East.” ³⁰

     Also, following the failure of the Turks’ attempt to take the Suez Canal via an assault on the Sinai in January 1915, the British recaptured the Sinai but were defeated in two battles at Gaza in the spring of 1917. General Edmund Allenby (a descendant of Oliver Cromwell), then led the British forces in a victorious campaign northwards from Sinai to Jerusalem (Dec. 1917) and Damascus (Oct. 1918). This campaign would not have been successful without the support of the Arab forces of Sharif Husein, led by Col. T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), a close ally of Hussein’s son, Prince Faisal, who was set on independence and statehood for the Arabs.

     The age-old imperial rivalry between England and France going back to the 18th century and beyond that, to the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, thus had a not insignificant hand in the events that led to the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Allenby entered Jerusalem on 7 December 1917, on foot, out of modesty, at the head of the first European army there since the 13th century. He is said to have remarked: “Only now have the Crusades ended”, but he did not allow his press officers to use the words “crusade” and “crusaders” and thought of himself as fighting the Ottomans, not Islam. However, the 20th century Zionist settlers in Palestine were overwhelmingly European, and the Arabs saw them and still see them as such – as modern crusaders of a kind, colonial invaders who must be resisted and ejected, as the Crusaders were, 700 years before. The Zionists, following a nationalist impulse from the Age of Gabriel, and believing in their people’s unique and ancient claim to the land, sought to establish a modern nation state in a land that had been inhabited by others for over a thousand years.

Notes

1 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-declaration-of-independence-may-14-1948/

It may be noted that this essay does not make reference to the Nazi genocide against the Jews 1939-1945. This is because the section of Israel’s Declaration of Independence quoted from David Ben-Gurion’s speech above does not refer to the genocide but rather, to the four factors mentioned on page 19 of this article (the paragraph beginning: “The Declaration of Independence in 1948 acknowledged…”). If the genocide had not happened, the Zionist movement would still have pressed their case for a Jewish State and if necessary, would have fought the British government militarily in order to drive the British out and gain their objective.

2 See The Invention of the Jewish People (Eng. transl. 2009) by Shlomo Sand, Israeli Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, p.181f.

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine#cite_note-247 Notes [t]

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine#cite_note-224

6 The imperial Powers had of course acquired many of their own colonies by other acts of theft, conquest or deception.

7 Previously, many Jews, especially in the USA had been pro-German, and the German government had sought to keep their support.

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

9 More powerful than the Prime Minister Lloyd George, who, in order to ensure the continuance of the war, had been put in power by a coup d’état in December 1916 by Milner and his supporters who had been planning such a move for many months. Milner, a greatly experienced colonial administrator and then banker himself, had deep links to high finance and to the Establishment more widely; by comparison, Lloyd George was merely a gifted political rhetorician and former lawyer, a political opportunist, while Milner followed his own thoroughgoing convictions and credo with regard to Britain’s imperial future.

10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#cite_note-250

11 Cheryl A. Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination. University of Illinois Press, 1989, p. 26.

12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#CITEREFHurewitz1979

13 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1650658. J. B. Quigley, ‘The Perfidy of Albion: Britain’s Secret Re-Assessment of the Balfour Declaration’, Ohio State University, 2010, p. 3.

14 ibid. p. 4.

15 ibid. p. 5.

16 ibid p. 5. This British government Memo was not quite accurate; the Declaration was made on 2nd November 1917, five days before the Bolshevik coup d’état in St. Petersburg. It took at least three months before the Soviets finally sued for peace with Germany on 18 February 1918, and the Germans could then begin “massing huge forces on the Western front in preparation for the great offensive of (21 March) 1918”.

17 op. cit., Quigley, p. 6.

18 https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/60431057?access_key=key-136ulpy32ssl2l27p8nb

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939. (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1952), 340-348 Nº. 242. ‘Memorandum by Mr. Balfour (Paris) respecting Syria, Palestine, and  Mesopotamia’, 11 August 1919.

19 J. Barr, A Line in the Sand – Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East (2011) p. 32.

20 B. Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917–1929 (1978), p. 92.

21 Quigley, p. 11.

22 op. cit., Quigley, p. 13.

23 op. cit., Quigley, p. 14.

24 op. cit., Quigley, p. 14.

25 op. cit., Quigley, p. 18.

26 op. cit., Quigley, p. 19.

27 See  J. Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp. 326-335.

28 Scofield had received much help from wealthy Jews in the creation and promotion of his new Bible, the study notes of which were seen as pro-Zionist. Scofield’s theology was based to a large extent on the dispensationalist teachings of one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren, the Anglo-Irishman John Nelson Darby (1800-1882).

29 These, it was claimed, would include the return of the Jews to Israel and also ‘the Rapture’, the gathering up of “the Church” of the faithful into heaven during ‘the Time of Tribulation’; these would become major themes of Christian fundamentalism and ‘Christian Zionism’ in the USA in the 20th century.

30 J. Barr, op. cit., p. 32.

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 waging against Russia for about 200 years for both exoteric and esoteric reasons. This fourth contribution will round off this series of articles and bring them to a conclusion.

Three long-term goals

In this long struggle, the latest episode, from 2014 until today, has occurred 100 (3 x 33⅓) years after the events of the First World War, which was in so many respects the awful crucible of the modern world. In previous articles I have sought to describe how the elites ruling the British Empire brought about that war to achieve, essentially, three goals: firstly, to consolidate the forces of the English-speaking world (including those of the USA) in order to defeat rising challenges from Germany, Russia and Japan in the 20th century and ensure the continued domination of the world by the elites of the English-speaking peoples for centuries into the future, indeed until at least the 4th millennium, the end of our present age of history, which Rudolf Steiner termed the Age of the Consciousness Soul (1413-3573), and which is known astrologically as the Age of Pisces. This continued domination would require military, economic, technological, and cultural preponderance by the English-speaking world. It would also require political changes to minimise the impact of democratic forces within the English-speaking world and to centralise authority, not least through the operation of some form of world government, through technological means in the hands of an ever smaller, and English-speaking, global elite. These intentions can be seen in the writings, for example, of Anglophone elite members such as the brothers Brooks and Henry Adams in the USA (in accordance with their motto: “civilization = centralization = economy”) and of elite propagandists in the UK such as Lionel Curtis, Philp Kerr, and historian Arnold Toynbee, all of Lord Alfred Milner’s Round Table group (aka the Milner Group), H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley. Real power would be effectively removed from parliaments, where a mere ‘show’ of it for the sake of the media and the masses would continue, but behind the scenes it would be exercised in global or transatlanticist gatherings of the elite, either semi-public, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), or entirely private, such as Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Council of Thirty etc. These private or semi-private bodies would then have national governments and global institutions (UN, WHO, UNESCO, EU, NATO) carry out their will. These intentions have been made manifest, and a prime example of this in our time was the implementation and enforcement across the entire world of governments’ measures ostensibly to combat the COVID-19 global pandemic from 2020 following the “Event 201” meeting at Johns Hopkins University in October 2019, a meeting organised by the WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the collaboration of the WHO and the government of the People’s Republic of China (Gao Fu, a Chinese virologist and immunologist played a key part in “Event 201”; he served as Director of the Chinese government’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention from August 2017 to July 2022). The pandemic supposedly then began in China a month after “Event 201” and quickly spread to Europe, N. America and elsewhere. The absolutely unprecedented scale of the totalitarian controls imposed by most governments in the developed countries from 2020 and followed in 2021 by those government’s allegedly anti-COVID injection campaigns, which in countries that have employed the mRNA injections have been genocidal, served as an effective means of advancing the drive towards world government under the control of the Anglophone elites, as has been made only too clear in the public statements and writings of such figures as Klaus Schwab of the WEF and the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.

The second of the three goals for the First World War that are directly related to the Anglo-Russian antagonism was the emasculation of Russia, and of the Slavic peoples as a whole: their reduction to servitude under the Anglo-American hegemony. This goal had both exoteric and esoteric aspects. The exoteric aspect was that   two  fears had possessed the British elite since the defeat of Napoleon: they had feared first that Russia might be the next contender to take India from British control. India was the key to Britain’s global economic supremacy, as Napoleon had recognised. This fear drove the so-called ‘Great Game’ between Britain and Russia over control of Central Asia in the 19th century and until Indian independence in 1947. The second fear, enunciated by the geographer and geopolitical thinker Halford Mackinder between 1904 and 1919,  was that Russia might combine her huge potential material and human resources with a smaller, more intelligent, more disciplined and efficient people such as the French, the Germans, the Japanese or the Chinese and in such a case, transport networks would be created across Eurasia that would be invulnerable to British attack and eventually a navy would be constructed that could mount an effective challenge to Britain’s Royal Navy and thus to the hegemony of the British Empire. This fear also came to possess the minds of American geostrategists after the USA had assumed Britain’s mantle of global hegemony in 1945. It has been evident, either implicitly or explicitly, in the writings and statements of very influential American geostrategists such as the late Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Friedman. The actions of the US military in Central Asia after 9/11, from 2001-2021, were evidence of this ongoing concern.

Esoteric goal

However, the second of the three goals also has an esoteric aspect, which I briefly alluded to in my previous article in the Autumn 2022 issue of New View (‘The Anglo-Russian Antagonism Part 2’). This esoteric aspect has to do with ensuring that the Slavic peoples, and especially the Russians, will not fulfil their potential to become the world’s ‘vanguard culture’ from the mid-4th millennium onwards but instead, will come under the domination of the English-speaking peoples, whose current ‘vanguard’ status –  which has become overwhelmingly driven by materialistic concerns and ambitions – would under normal conditions come to an end in the mid-4th millennium (the end of the Age of Pisces).

What does it mean that the Slavic peoples have the potential to become the world’s ‘vanguard culture’ from the mid-4th millennium onwards? It means that in the Age of the Spirit-Self (the Age of Aquarius), which, according to Steiner, will follow the Age of the Consciousness Soul (the Age of Pisces), the human ‘I’ (the essential self, the spiritual kernel of the human being), in large numbers of individuals, will have learned to see itself and other I’s as spiritual beings. These spiritualised I’s will then seek to form new communities on the basis not of the old blood ties or traditional religions but out of their own insight. It will be a new age of community based on empathy for others, an age of brother-and sisterhood that we in the West today can hardly even conceive of, just as people in ancient Greece and Rome would hardly have been able to conceive of our modern western individualism. But we can see foreshadowings of this future today in the remaining traditional communal behaviours of non-western cultures, although there such behaviour is instinctive and collective, based on blood ties, whereas in the future (Slavic) epoch of the Spirit-Self it will be based on the moral individualism that will have been won as a result of our current (Germanic) Age of the Consciousness Soul. The seed of this new impulse to new community, new fraternity, Steiner described,1 is already there in the Slavic peoples, who not only have the impulse to community, which all eastern peoples too have to a greater or lesser degree in comparison with the more individualistic westerners, but the Slavs also have a Christian culture. The native Slavic sense of community has been infused with over 1000 years of an empathic Christian sensibility, which one can see especially in the unfolding, for example, of village life in Russia, the nature of the mir, a word which translates variously as community, peace, village, world, cosmos. Russian and Slavic literature is permeated with this empathic sensibility.

The English-speaking peoples are a branch of the larger Germanic group of peoples that originated in northern Europe (Scandinavia). From the late 15th century onwards, these Germanic peoples gradually replaced the peoples of southern Europe as the arbiters of the destiny of the West. The southern Europeans of the Greco-Roman or Mediterranean region had been those arbiters since the 8th century BC (the Age of Aries), but from the 15th century AD onwards, the military, cultural and economic power of the Italian states, Iberia and France (France straddles both south and north) gave way to that of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and eventually England. Steiner described in numerous lectures how in the period of just over 2000 years until the 15th century, Europeans – a sizeable minority of them, at any rate – had learned to think for themselves; this was the key achievement of what he called the Age of the Intellectual-Mind Soul. No longer did they feel the gods or God thinking through them; now they felt that they themselves were thinking. In the following Age of Pisces, from the 15th century, the Germanic or northern European epoch, the focus of development is on the individual human will – how human thinking applies the human will and, essentially, how the individual will becomes morally informed and directed by the human I. This is a very dangerous phase of development, in some ways rather akin to adolescence, because its early stage is usually one of considerable egocentricity and selfishness as well as materialism, a view of life that results from feeling alienated, to a greater or lesser degree, as an individual from the rest of life and the cosmos. We are only 600 years into this Germanic or northern European epoch, the Age of the Consciousness Soul, as Steiner called it, with its American offshoot, and though there have been positive signs of growing human maturity over the past 50 years or so, there is still plenty of evidence of a thoroughly egocentric and competitive, materialistic culture in the West, especially in economic life.

Steiner described that the spiritual counterforces which exist to provide humanity with the resistance it needs to develop inner capacities for love and freedom desire that these egocentric and competitive, materialistic  attitudes and behaviours, (which have become extreme in the age of American hegemony since 1945), should continue on into the next epoch of human development, the Age of the Spirit-Self (aka the Age of Aquarius), indeed that in effect, human development will effectively stop at our present stage.2 Life on earth would then become so miserable and oppressive that most people would no longer wish to incarnate on this planet, or if incarnated, would soon seek to exit this life. This is the goal of those spiritual counterforces who oppose humanity’s growth and development. If it were achieved, the mission or task of humanity and the Earth would be a failure.

These forces, Steiner pointed out, influence the thoughts and actions of those at the helm of the English-speaking countries in the modern age. What is the aim, Steiner asks, of the secretive and semi-visible elite groups operative in the English-speaking world? “They do not work out of any particular British patriotism, but out of the desire to bring the whole world under the yoke of pure materialism. And because…certain elements of the British people as the bearer of the Consciousness Soul are most suitable for this, they want, by means of grey magic [he means the mass media], to use these elements as promoters of this materialism. This is the important point. Those who know what impulses are at work in world events can also steer them. No other national element, no other people, has ever before been so usable as material for transforming the whole world into a materialistic realm. Therefore, those who know, want to set their foot on the neck of this national element and strip it of all spiritual endeavour – which of course lives equally in all human beings. Just because karma has ordained that the Consciousness Soul should work here [in Britain] particularly strongly, the secret brotherhoods have sought out elements in the British national character. Their aim is to send a wave of materialism over the earth and make the physical plane the only valid one. A spiritual world is to be recognised only in terms of what the physical world has to offer.”3 This last point can be understood in the ways in which, in the West, spiritual practice has been taken over by, or put in the service of physical aims e.g. the commercialisation of Christmas and Easter, the turning of eastern spiritual practices in martial arts and meditation from ways of living into ‘techniques’ of supporting ‘health’ – sport and ‘mindfulness’, and more recently, the creation of alternative worlds in virtual reality, Second Life, and the Metaverse in which individuals can supposedly live out their fantasies.

The ruination of Russia

Theodore Roosevelt, US President 1901-1909 and an ardent Freemason, was particularly focused on Russia as the representative of the Slavic race and as the Power of the future which would one day take the place of the English-speaking peoples.  He was concerned about Russia’s advance into southern and eastern Asia, which he felt had to be stopped. At the same time, he was well-acquainted with Russia’s internal problems: its weak government, the poverty and sufferings of its people, the revolutionary forces under the surface. He was therefore confident, as he told his British friend, the diplomat Cecil Spring Rice in 1901, that “the Russian growth – the growth of the Slav – is slow. […] Russia’s day is yet afar off. I think the twentieth century will still be the century of the men who speak English.”4

During the First World War, for example, in his Karma of Untruthfulness lectures of 1916-1917, Steiner repeatedly referred to the pre-war plans and intentions of western occult groups, emphasising the need for the peoples of Central Europe to think about history in long-range perspectives; otherwise, he said, the peoples of Central Europe would always be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the western elites if they were unaware of the bases of such long-range western elite thinking.

Steiner’s response to the intentions of those western elites was given publicly, for example, on 1 Dec. 19185: “What has developed there in Russia [i.e. the Bolshevik Revolution - TB] is basically only a realisation of what is wanted in the West. […] Whatever people [in the West] may say they want consciously, what they are striving for is to found a caste of masters in the West and a caste of economic slaves in the East, beginning at the Rhine and extending eastwards into Asia. […] A caste of slaves, which is to be organised socialistically and which is to take up all the impossibilities of a social structure which are then not to be applied to the English-speaking population.” By ‘impossibilities’ here he meant that a socialist order was regarded by western elites as ‘impossible’, i.e., intrinsically harmful to society and not to be implemented in the West. The history of Russia since 1917, eastern Europe since 1945 and especially China since 1990 bears this out clearly.

Steiner knew that modern history since the 15th century showed that democratic impulses in the West would inevitably lead to the self-assertion of the individual at all levels of society but that due to growing materialism, this would actually result in totalitarian and atheistic communism, as was already evident with the French Revolution after 1789. He knew too that this was known also by the western occult brotherhoods, who had resolved that this inevitable socialism and communism would not be allowed to take over the West. Instead, they would direct such forces from the West towards the East, where they would be more easily adopted because of the traditional eastern proclivity for collectivism and brotherhood. This ‘socialist experiment’ would contribute to undermining the cultural fibre of the Slavic peoples, especially the Russians and thus contribute to preventing them from being able to do what they would otherwise seek to do in the 4th millennium. This was one of the other, more esoteric purposes behind the First World War – the ruination of Russia, which since 1907 had been Britain’s ally but until that date, for nearly 100 years, had been regarded by the British elite as Britain’s premier imperial rival.

“On 23 December 1917 Lord Milner… and Lord Robert Cecil wrote a memorandum, that proposed to the French a division of southern regions of Russia into spheres of influence: France would get Ukraine and the Crimea, while the British reserved for themselves the Caucasus region and the Cossack lands on the Don.”  Milner felt that all means possible had to be employed to prevent the Germans from gaining control of Russian resources; he wrote that in Russia ‘Civil war, or even the mere continuance of chaos and disorder, would be an advantage to us from this point of view.’ ” 6 In 1918 British, French, American and Japanese armies landed in Russia. The British arrived in March at Murmansk and in August at Archangelsk “Over the next three years Russia sank into the chaos of the civil war that Milner had seen as ‘opportune’ for western interests. The interventionist armies did not have the numbers, however, to be able to strike a decisive blow against the Red Army. Indeed, it seemed that they did not even want to strike such a blow. Even Winston Churchill, one of the fiercest opponents of the revolutionaries, was forced to acknowledge on 27 February 1919 that “there is no ‘will to win’ behind any of these ventures”. The whole enterprise resulted not in the victory of the anti-Communist forces but the consolidation of Bolshevik rule.” 7

Scholars such as Markus Osterrieder, Guido Giacomo Preparata, and Antony C. Sutton have detailed how Britain and America deliberately failed to support the White armies in their struggle against the Bolsheviks and instead financed the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War 1917-1922 and afterwards.8 A Russia, whether capitalist or communist, with a strong economy that could rival the capitalist West was not wanted in the City of London and on Wall St. Members of the British and American elites did much to facilitate the arrival – via New York and Canada – of Trotsky in Russia in the spring of 1917; he went on to organise victory for the Bolsheviks in the Civil War. The British “appeared to back” Admiral Kolchak’s White Russian army that sought a democratic federation in Siberia but the British refused to give Kolchak the support he needed to make his Siberian Federation the kernel of a democratic all-Russian State. The British apparently wanted to separate Siberia off from European Russia, no doubt to be able to open it up to exploitation by western interests.9 This motive would reappear in the 1990s.

On 17 October 1918 the deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Lawrence Saunders, wrote to US President Woodrow Wilson: “Dear Mr. President, I am in sympathy with the Soviet government as that best suited for the Russian people.”10 US capitalist interests wanted at all costs to keep German business out of Russia and Russian resources open to themselves. We can be reminded here of the struggle over Russian oil and gas pipelines today and the American determination, reiterated earlier this year by both President Biden and Victoria Nuland of the State Department, to see the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany cancelled; ultimately it was blown up!11 A hundred years ago, the State Department pressed for recognition of the (genocidal) Bolshevik government. In a memorandum for President Wilson’s closest adviser Col. House in February 1918, the State Department wrote that “had the Bolsheviks been recognised by the United States, ‘we would now have control over all of Russia’s raw material reserves and control officials at all border crossings.’ ” 12 The new US mantra now became “Change the Bolsheviks through trade”, rather than through armed intervention. In Britain, Arthur Balfour, Foreign Secretary since a political ‘regime change’ coup in London effected by his ally Lord Milner in Dec. 1916, was concerned only to keep Russia within certain geographical limits and not to intervene in her internal affairs. As the Russian Civil War progressed, the situation became worse for the Whites, and the genocidal Bolsheviks became ever more radical; the Cheka secret police murdered tens of thousands of Russians simply because of their profession or class affiliation, motives similar to those of French revolutionaries at the height of the Terror in the 1790s or of Pol Pot in Cambodia in the 1970s. The Allied tone changed from military intervention to one of the need for containment, of a cordon sanitaire, but above all, of the need to keep Germany and Russia apart – their possible combination identified by Churchill, echoing Mackinder, as “the greatest danger for the future” (16.9.1919). Mackinder himself advocated “a belt of independent, pro-western states of the western and southern Slavs …as a buffer between the Germans and the Russians.” To this end, he proposed the forced ‘transfer’ of Germans east of the river Vistula and out of a ‘cleansed’ Poland.” [This would come in 1945 - TB] The Russians themselves, he said, were at least for one or two generations “hopelessly incapable” of resisting German penetration; “autocratic rule of some sort – i.e., by the Bolsheviks – was therefore ‘unavoidable’, he felt, so that Russia would be able to resist the German temptation out of its own forces.”13

The West thus condemned the Russian  people to decades of imprisonment under Communist rule, which the West itself had facilitated; it was a period which included the murder of countless priests and nuns and the destruction of numerous churches and monasteries, between 100,000 and 200,000 executed in the Cheka’s ‘Red Terror’ of 1917-1922, the state-enforced Holodomor famine of 1932-33 which killed about 4 million Russians and Ukrainians, the inhuman gulag system which killed about 116,000, Stalin’s purges (about a million dead), and worst of all, the approx. 34 million Russians (military and civilian) killed in the colossal invasion by National Socialist Germany (1941-1944), a regime whose rise the West too had facilitated and had appeased in order to create two authoritarian socialist behemoths, the one national, the other international, that could be lured into going to war against each other to ensure that the German and Russian peoples would never in the future combine against the US and the UK.14 For three long years (1941-44) Churchill refused to countenance opening a second front in the West against Nazi Germany until the German armies had wasted themselves in the bloodletting on the Eastern Front, and even then, after Hitler’s defeat, Churchill soon wanted to go to war again, against Soviet Russia, Britain’s ally from 1941-45.

The Russian people were held – ‘contained’, to use the expression of the principal US strategic ‘expert’ on Russia at the time, George F. Kennan – in the Communist gulag for 70 years, and all that time, certain forms of business went on between the US and the USSR, and certain American elitists, such as Averell Harriman and Armand Hammer, of Occidental Petroleum, continued to visit Soviet Russia and cultivate clandestine relations with Soviet leaders. In 1989-91 the West terminated the “socialist experiment” that it had initiated 70 years earlier, and “the Harvard boys” (business ‘consultants’ and ‘advisers’) immediately descended on Russia during the Yeltsin years to loot what could be looted. Meanwhile, as Russia went down, China came up; the next phase of the “socialist experiment” in China had been initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. David Rockefeller had taken care to visit Deng’s political mentor, Zhou Enlai, in China in 1973, the same year in which Rockefeller and his own acolyte, Brzezinski, founded the Trilateral Commission to integrate East Asian elites into their world government plans, and the same period in which “the 1980s Project” got underway under the joint auspices of the Trilateral Commission and the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations – both private organisations. The termination of the USSR was a key element in the project, along with economic shock treatment (which was called “controlled disintegration”) and plans for radical global depopulation.

The intended break-up of Russia

In the 1990s the Russians saw how, along with the rapid decline in their economy and in the health of their citizens, their state lost three huge regions of territory – Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the four smaller ‘-stans’15 of Central Asia – as well as the security of the Warsaw Pact military alliance. They noted that NATO, which had ostensibly been founded in 1949 specifically to ‘protect’ against the Warsaw Pact armies, was not dissolved by the West along with or after the end of the Warsaw Pact; on the contrary, NATO continued to be strengthened and eventually, from the late 90s, to expand towards the East, ever closer to Russia itself. NATO’s first head, Lord Hastings Ismay, Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during the Second World War, had famously said that NATO was created “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” This would still seem to be the intention of NATO today, the Soviet Union now being seen as Russia.  The Russians noted that certain elite organs of the western media began to imagine the further dissolution of Russia, even the loss of all Russian territory east of the Ural mountains, a vast area, such as was prognosticated by the highly influential Rothschild and Fiat-controlled Economist magazine in December 1992, only a year after the end of the USSR. In the same year, Brzezinski wrote in the CFR journal Foreign Affairs (Vol. 71, No.4, 1992) that “Russia’s own unity may soon be at stake, with perhaps the Far Eastern provinces tempted before too long to set up a separate Siberian-Far Eastern republic of their own.” He imagined a threefold division of Russia. From 1991-1994, the pro-Russian majority in Crimea, which had been part of Russia until the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (a Ukrainian) had arbitrarily handed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, sought to become a republic independent of Ukraine, but after the pro-Western Boris Yeltsin had consolidated his power in Russia in 1994, he did not back the efforts of the Crimeans for more autonomy or independence from Kyiv, which was able to reassert its authority over Crimea. However, it would lose that authority in 2014.

This year (2022), an article in the prestigious US journal The Atlantic called for the dismantlement of Russia under the cover of the word “decolonisation”. The article noted that in 1991 the then US Defence Secretary Dick Cheney had “wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.” The article went on to state: “The West must complete the project that began in 1991. It must seek to fully decolonize Russia…. Russian imperialism…presents the most urgent threat to international security. Now the bill of allowing Moscow to retain its empire, without any reckoning with its colonial history, is coming due…. Russia has launched the greatest war the world has seen in decades, all in the service of empire. To avoid the risk of further wars and more senseless bloodshed, the Kremlin must lose what empire it still retains. The project of Russian decolonization must finally be finished.”16

But Putin did not launch his “special military operation” in February 2022  in the service of empire or imperial reconstruction, as western commentators keep on falsely claiming. He launched it because he could see what was coming towards Russia from the West, because the West had effectively taken over Ukraine in an illegal coup in 2014 that had ousted the democratically elected government of President Yanukovych. The new regime in Kyiv had then immediately enforced discriminatory laws against Russian-speaking citizens, who protested against those laws, and when Kyiv showed itself unwilling to respond and instead sent in extreme nationalist militia groups to enforce its will with violence, the citizens of Russian-speaking Donbass and Crimea rose in revolt against the Kyiv regime; what began as a movement for greater autonomy within Ukraine turned into a separatist movement due to Kyiv’s intransigence and its use of violence in Donbass, Crimea and Odessa.17 The West, having achieved its goal through the violent Kyiv coup of February 2014, then became preoccupied with ISIS, the EU crisis and Brexit, but behind the scenes the US was funnelling very large amounts of money and military supplies to Kyiv from 2014 onwards, as well as providing military training. All this Putin had observed. He observed too how the Western media paid little attention for eight long years while Kyiv went on shelling and bombing those it continued to call its own citizens – the people of Donbass. Some 14,000 people had died on both sides by the end of 2021, but those in the West who have been so furious with Russia since February this year have apparently forgotten those eight years of conflict and killing, and Kyiv’s persistent refusal to implement the Minsk Agreement, witnessed and signed by France and Germany, which provided for greater autonomy within Ukraine for the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel recently gave an interview to the German newspaper Die Zeit (7.12.2022) in which she says that “the Minsk Agreement of 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. An illustrative example was the battle for Debaltseve [Jan. 2015]. At the beginning of 2015, Putin could easily have overrun them at that time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do today to help Ukraine.” (emphasis – TB) At the time, the German and the French governments said that the Minsk Agreement aimed to bring peace to Ukraine, but now Merkel says it was to make Ukraine (i.e. the Kyiv regime) stronger i.e., more capable of fighting the Donbass separatists and Russian forces aiding them (e.g. the Wagner private military company) and implies that this is what made Ukraine capable of resisting Russia as it has since 24 February 2022.

Vladimir Putin must then have observed how Volodymyr Zelensky, the comic actor and political creature of Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kholomoisky,  was elected President of Ukraine by 73% of Ukrainians in 2019  precisely on a promise to bring peace in the Donbass, but then in office did no such thing. The Russians had seen the steady build-up of NATO forces ever closer to Russia’s borders, the constant demonisation of Vladimir Putin in western media after about 2004, the unwillingness of western media, after 2016 (the year of Brexit and Trump), to recognise the strong neo-Nazi element in Ukraine although, until then, western media had been paying quite a lot of attention to it. Suddenly that attention fell away, and in 2022 has disappeared completely. On the contrary, the western claim is now that “there are no Nazis in Ukraine! Ukraine has a Jewish president!” Yet those many videos about the various Nazi groups in Ukraine can still be seen online; it’s just that they are not talked about by the western media, for whom it is no longer convenient or expedient to talk about them. The Russians also saw how the West curtly dismissed Russia’s request in December 2021 for comprehensive discussions relating to security in eastern Europe.

Today, western media prefer to talk about the “decolonisation” (i.e. the dismantling) of Russia. Decolonisation has been a leftwing buzzword in recent years since the “Rhodes Must Fall!” statues issue in South Africa (2015) and the death of George Floyd in the USA (2020). Despite its minorities, the Russian Federation is overwhelmingly a white country and a Christian country. The anti-imperialist “decolonisation” narrative therefore easily lends itself to being applied, perversely, to Russia. Perversely, because the aim is to serve the imperial and globalist ambitions of the English-speaking elite.

Recently, Anders Östlund, a fellow at the US State Department-funded Center for European Policy Analysis, and resident of Kyiv, wrote: “Russia’s war against Ukraine will end with the break-up of the Russian Federation. It will be replaced by small, demilitarized and powerless republics with neutrality written into their constitutions.”18

The goal of keeping Germany and Russia apart

Finally, we come to the third of the three goals of the English-speaking elites that they sought to achieve in the First World War and which still determine their policies today: besides the consolidation of the English-speaking countries and the emasculation of Russia, is the goal of the reduction of Germany to puppet status and the prevention of any combination or alliance between Germany and Russia. In esoteric terms, this means the blowing up of any enduring cultural bridge between the present Germanic epoch and the future Slavic epoch. Both these two goals have thus far been ‘impressively’ achieved: millions of Russians and Germans killed in colossal wars against each other, endless soul soil sowed with potential seeds of future resentment and hatred. And yet…. in wars and conflicts both good and bad future karma is created. Countless individuals who were incarnated in Slavic or German bodies 1914-1945 will seek in their next incarnations to understand and overcome what brought them against each other in the 20th century and made them inflict so much pain and suffering on each other.

In this Age of Pisces, the Age of the Consciousness Soul, the German-speaking peoples have the task of upholding the I, whereas the English-speaking peoples are the prime representatives of the Consciousness Soul itself. In European folklore and fairy tales one often sees a hero or heroine with three brothers, sisters or attendants of some kind or other. We also see these figures in Rudolf Steiner’s four Mystery Dramas (1910-1912). These three are the three human soul forces assisting the human I. They can be regarded as the three representatives, respectively, of thinking, feeling and willing, through which the I acts. The Consciousness Soul is that part of the soul through which the will acts, whereas thinking acts through the Intellectual-Mind Soul and feeling through the Sentient Soul.19  Insofar as the English are the people of the Consciousness Soul and the Germans those of the I, conflict between the English and German-speaking peoples therefore signifies conflict between the I as it acts through the will element of the soul, and the I itself: conflict between the I itself and its own will.  The will acts in the world, and so the English-speaking peoples have long been inclined to look outwards into the physical world, whereas Innigkeit (inwardness, intimacy) has always been a prime feature of German-speaking culture. Like other peoples in western Europe, the English took to the oceans in search of adventure and wealth, and eventually created a world-spanning empire, with its physical and scientific underpinnings; in doing so, they played a major role in creating a global consciousness. The Germans, by contrast – although there was considerable emigration to the American continent -  remained for the most part ‘at home’ among their forests, hills and mountains in Central Europe; they created no great extra-European empire but explored the inner world of the mind and soul, from Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner to Goethe, Hegel, and Jung, to name but a few great artists and thinkers. English culture has had a problem with how to deal with materialism and the temptations of external power, which can result when one goes too far out of oneself; action loses contact with the Self, with the I (“Just Do It” – the Nike advertising slogan). German culture, by contrast has had more of a problem with how to deal with delusion and the temptations of fanaticism, either intellectual or emotional, which can result when one goes too far inward; the I becomes fixated, trapped by subconscious entities (Blut und Boden – blood and soil) or else inflated by them. That the peoples of the I and of the Consciousness Soul in Europe should war with one another has been a disaster, for these two peoples of the inner focus and the outer focus respectively should of course work together for the good of humanity.

Beyond the three soul forces of the human I which humanity has been developing over the past several millennia (the Sentient, Intellectual-Mind and Consciousness soul) are the three yet-to-be-developed spiritual forces, which Steiner calls the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man: these are the transformed spiritual counterparts of the three soul forces.  The first of them, the Spirit-Self, the transformed astral body (or Sentient Soul) will be found especially developed by the peoples of eastern Europe, the Slavic peoples, and those in close relation to them (e.g. Finns, Balts, Romanians). The I stands midway between impressions from the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, and the Consciousness Soul is the most developed aspect of the soul; Steiner even called it “the soul within the soul… the truth is true even if all personal feelings revolt against it. That part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called Consciousness Soul”.20 It is the part of the soul in which intuitions from the spiritual world begin to dawn for the individual, who begins to realise that he is not just a thinking, feeling personality (who is also capable of feeling alienated from the cosmos, his fellows and even from himself), but a spiritual individual (who feels and knows himself to be united with the cosmos, his fellows and with all life). The Age of the Consciousness Soul (1413-3573), in which the Germanic peoples (including, of course, the English-speaking peoples) are the “vanguard peoples” is therefore a vital bridging epoch between the soul phase of the development of humanity and the spiritual phase, in which true morality and ethics are integrated within the I through individualised spiritual intuitions. When individuals gather together on this basis, they will form new, morally grounded, communities.

It is therefore crucial that a bridge be built between the properly developed Consciousness Soul Piscean epoch (Germanic) and the subsequent Spirit-Self Aquarian epoch (Slavic). The counterforces seek to destroy this bridge, just as in 1914-1945, they sought – and still seek – to destroy the relationship between the two aspects of the Consciousness Soul epoch – outer and inner, which thus far, have been dominant in the English and German cultures respectively.

In the first lecture of the cycle given in Oslo in 1910 titled The Mission of Folk Souls, in Connection with Germanic/Nordic Mythology, Steiner said: “It is especially important, because the fate of humanity in the near future will bring men together much more than has hitherto been the case, to fulfil a common mission for humanity.” Here he is referring to the Age of the Archangel Michael, one of seven archangels who, one after the other, bring different impulses to humanity in successive periods of 350-400 years. The Age of Michael  began in 1879 and will continue until about 2250.  It is an increasingly cosmopolitan age, in which nationalist impulses will steadily decline under the impact of spiritual idealism, which reflects the all-embracing, all-relating spiritual influence of the sun. Spiritual science sees the sun not as a nuclear power plant but as a threefold community of spiritual beings (traditionally known as Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai) who serve the solar Logos (the Cosmic Christ) and are not only the source of all life and external light on earth and in our solar system, but also the origin of the light of our thinking, which illumines for us and embraces all our inner and outer experience. Michael is traditionally the Archangel of the Sun, as the other six Archangels are those of the other six traditional celestial bodies of our solar system. However, it is noteworthy that Steiner goes on to say that “the individuals belonging to the several peoples will only be able to bring their free, concrete contributions to this joint mission, if they have, first of all, an understanding of the people to which they belong, an understanding of what we might call ‘Ethnic Self-knowledge.’ In ancient Greece, in the Mysteries of Apollo the sentence ‘Know thyself’ played a great role; in a not far-distant future this sentence will be addressed to the folk-souls; ‘Know yourselves as folk-souls’. This saying will have a certain significance for the future work of mankind.” (emphasis – TB)  A people or nation or ethnic group lives between two factors spiritual and natural: the Folk Spirit, or Archangel ‘above’ in the spiritual world, who is responsible for guarding and guiding that people throughout its history, and the more earthbound elements of geography, geology,  climate, history, language and culture, within which the nation lives. This more earthbound natural element forms the ‘folk soul’ of a people. The Folk Spirit, or Archangel, is the spiritual being who oversees and accompanies the destiny of that people. One can think of this as analogous to the physical germ of the human being created by the DNA from its parents, as distinct from the individual spirit that, from the spiritual world, incarnates into and unites with that physical germ sometime after conception, with the difference that Archangels do not reincarnate, as human beings do. In order both to understand how as individuals we might best bring our “free, concrete contributions to this joint mission” and in order that we become able to guard against chauvinist impulses, however subtle, that may be at work within our souls, we need this ethnic self-knowledge of which he speaks in those lectures.

St George and the Dragon

For English people, this includes becoming aware of how deep-rooted the supposedly very English image of St George rescuing the Princess (or Maiden) from the Dragon has been in England since at least mediaeval times21 and how this image may influence the way we look, for example, at foreign affairs and make value judgments accordingly. An obvious case in point is how, under the influence also of the utterly one-sided mass media, so many Britons have taken to flying Ukrainian flags, wearing Ukraine flag badges, and saying “I stand with Ukraine” or the like. Most British people speak few or no foreign languages; indeed, before the 1960s, those who did were often regarded as ‘odd’ or even ‘suspicious’. Until the 1960s this island nation was known for centuries of being very wary of “foreigners”. It is no mere generalisation to say that consequently, the English people, apart from their elites, have had comparatively little interest and little education in foreign affairs for a long time; foreign affairs are complex matters, after all, and may seem far from the lives of ordinary people. Yet whenever the image of ‘the bully’ – not a foreign image at all for the British – is held before them, by the mass media for instance, the image of St. George rescuing the Maiden from the Dragon is never far behind and has often facilely been applied to complex foreign situations where elite interests would wish the English population to support UK government actions that are in the interests of the elite but not necessarily or not at all in the interests of the general population of the UK. One may think of how Belgium and Serbia in 1914, and Poland in 1939 were represented as ‘Maidens’ to be rescued by the English ‘St George’ from vicious, bullying ‘Dragons’.

                                                                                                    First World War recuiting poster

The current conflict in Ukraine is a prime example of this trope, especially when to the images of ‘the bully’ and of ‘St George’ are added the effects of 200 years of anti-Russian propaganda and fearmongering by the British Press, the government and the media. So when Russian troops and tanks crossed what most countries still regarded as the international border of Ukraine 22 on 24 February this year, for very many people in the UK, the issue must have seemed clear-cut: Russia had simply ‘invaded’ Ukraine – a large powerful bully (dragon) was bullying a small underdog (maiden) and must therefore be resisted as firmly as the UK was able. In these four articles in New View, I have tried to show that the issue is far from being so clear-cut, and that the seeming small ‘underdog’ in this case (Ukraine) is in fact a ‘bulldog’ that has been set up for years to bait, ensnare and ultimately enable the destruction of the bull (Russia) in order to serve the deep-rooted exoteric and esoteric interests of the bulldog’s handlers – the Anglophone elites who created and control NATO, the UN, the WHO and yes, also the EU.

If the peoples of the UK – especially the English, for whom the figure of St. George may particularly strike a subconscious chord – can exercise what Steiner called ‘ethnic self-knowledge’ and bring to the full light of consciousness any subconscious motives in their souls that may be affecting their judgments of the current conflict, they may be able to prevent their elites from poisoning relations between themselves and the people of Russia and from destroying the bridge between the Germans and the Russians, and also between the present Germanic and the future Slavic  epochs, that is so important for Europe and for humanity, both today and into the distant future.

Notes

1 See Andreas Bracher (ed.), Kampf um den russischen  Kulturkeim (2014), pp. 343-4.

2 See for example, Steiner’s lectures of 10-11 October, 1918 (Collected Works GA 184).

3 R. Steiner, Karma of Untruthfulness Vol. 2, 15.1.1917, GA 174. We can ask: what are these “certain elements” within the British national character? That is a subject in itself and one which deserves much contemplation about the history of the British people over the past 1000 years at least.

4 M. Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch (2014), p. 929.

5 GA 186.

6 Osterrieder, p. 1346.

7 Osterrieder, pp. 1346-7

8 Markus Osterrieder (Welt im Umbruch, 2014), Guido Giacomo Preparata (Conjuring Hitler, 2005), and Antony C. Sutton (Wall St. and the Bolshevik Revolution, 1974).

9 Osterrieder, p. 1348, n.3523.

10 Osterrieder, p. 1348.

11 27.9.2022. https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/09/28/did-nato-just-blow-up-the-nordstream-pipelines

12 Osterrieder, p. 1349.

13 Osterrieder, p.1351.

14 See G.G. Preparata, Conjuring Hitler (2005).

15 Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.

16https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/russia-putin-colonization-ukraine-chechnya/639428

17 On 2 May 2014, 42 anti-Kyiv regime demonstrators were burned to death in the Trade Unions House in Odessa by pro-Kyiv regime supporters. This atrocity has been largely forgotten by western media.

18 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1513407913611739136

19 See R. Steiner, Theosophy (Anthroposophic Press, 1971).

20 Steiner, Theosophy, pp. 24-25.

21 During the reign of King Edward III, 1327-1377.

22 On 21 February 2022, three days before the beginning of his  “special military operation”, Russian president Putin recognised the independence of the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Most governments under the influence of Anglophone globalist interests (e.g. NATO and EU members) did not recognise these two new states.

Terry M. Boardman Dec. 2022

From Peter to Paul and Alexander

By the end of the 18th century, the two states that were England and Muscovy in 1600 had become the world-spanning imperial powers Great Britain and Imperial Russia – the ‘Whale’ (as Britain was referred to due to its sea power) and the ‘Bear’. From its island point, Britain had expanded over the oceans to almost the entire global periphery, while Russia had simply expanded overland: west to the Baltic, south to the Black Sea and massively east to Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. In the 18th century the British elite were preoccupied with dealing with France and replacing it as the global Power. The Russian Czars after Peter the Great (1682-1725) continued with a gradual westernisation of their country and sought to expand against Muslim powers in the south and southeast, the Ottoman Turks and the Persians. Relations between Britain and Russia had been good on the whole, except during the Seven Years War in mid-century when they were allied to Powers on opposite sides, but their own forces never actually clashed. Real tension only began in the time of Catherine II (the Great) in the 1790s, when William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister in Britain. The British elite, always concerned about their hold on India, so important to the British economy, began to feel that Russia might pose an indirect or direct threat to British control of India because of Empress Catherine’s aggressive policy towards Turkey, which the British saw as a gatekeeper state that served their interests in keeping other European Powers away from British India. When Russia took the fortress of Ochakov (near Odessa) after the Treaty of Jassy (1792), William Pitt aggressively threatened war and equipped a fleet to sail to the region, but the very capable Russian ambassador in London organised a campaign that weakened Pitt’s position on the issue of Anglo-Russian relations and Pitt backed down.

Another problem emerged when the eccentric son of Catherine the Great, Czar Paul I (1796-1801), succeeded her and having first been anti-French – the revolutionary French had publicly executed their king and queen, which the traditionalist Paul did not appreciate –  he shifted to a pro-French, anti-British policy because he felt the British had put undue pressure on his Scandinavian friends in Denmark and Sweden and because in October 1800, the  British Admiral Nelson had taken the island of Malta, traditionally ruled by the Knights Hospitaller, a Roman Catholic Order of which Paul, who was very concerned about chivalric matters, had only recently become the Grand Master, despite his being Russian Orthodox. As Malta was a strategic naval asset in the middle of the Mediterranean, the British did not give the island back. Paul was furious and sought to hit Britain at its weak points – its commerce and its colonies. He allied himself with Napoleon and intended to stop British trade in the Baltic, a vital region for materials essential for the Royal Navy, and combine with the French in a great march to India, a project his new French ally Napoleon had already tried to realise in 1798 with his failed expedition to Egypt. Napoleon knew that India was the key to Britain’s grip on world trade. The British response to Paul’s move was not long in coming; on 23 March 1801, when 20,000 Russian Cossacks were already on their way to India and had reached the Aral Sea, Paul was assassinated by a conspiracy of aristocrats led by Counts Pahlen and Panin, the Hanoverian General Benningsen and the Georgian General Yashvil, together with the three brothers Zhubov, whose sister was the lover of the skilful British ambassador, Charles Whitworth, who provided funding for the plot. The conspirators even managed to get Paul’s son, Czarevitch Alexander, to keep silent about it; he went along, wrongly assuming his eccentric father would not actually be killed. Those men had their own, mostly venal, personal reasons for opposing Czar Paul, but Paul’s dramatic demise was certainly in the interests of British foreign policy.  Ambassador Whitworth’s Russian lover Olga Zherebtsova, in whose house the conspirators had made their plans, soon followed Whitworth to Britain, but there he dumped her and married the wealthy widow of the Duke of Dorset who was worth £13,000 a year and owned the borough of East Grinstead. Needless to say, the new Czar Alexander (1801-1825) immediately recalled his father’s military expedition to British India and returned Russia to an anti-French policy. He did not execute any of the conspirators involved in his father’s assassination.

It was during the reign of the new Czar Alexander I that relations between Britain and Russia headed into the poisonous direction which they have maintained ever since, except for two very brief interludes around World War I (1907-1917) and during World War II (1941-45). The period after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 was when, after a thousand years of gradually approaching one another, the two countries that had now become the Great Whale and the Great Bear entered into a seemingly permanent state of hostility. And it began, at first, because of the British elite’s paranoia about the possible loss of India, a paranoia which later in the 19th century was disguised under the very British term: “The Great Game”.

Russophobia after 1815: The Great Game

It was a dispute over Poland which had prompted the first serious wave of British Russophobia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Lord Castlereagh, the powerful British Foreign Secretary at the time, had strongly opposed Czar Alexander I’s wish to be crowned king of Poland. The anti-Russian, Polish forgery known as the Testament of Peter the Great, first circulated by Napoleon in 1812, accused the Russians of having designs on British India amongst other things. It was first translated into English at this time. Guy Mettan in Creating Russophobia (2017) writes: “The imperialist lobby, increasingly powerful in London, would never thereafter lose sight of Russia and became the most determined adversary of the Russian cause….” By the 1820s, letters, articles and polemics began to appear frequently in the British press about the Russians’ thirst for unlimited expansion and the threats they posed to British interests. The Whigs, who represented the tenets of British free trade and the middle-class liberal opposition to the Tory government, were also vehement in their criticism of Russia, which they regarded as backward, even barbaric and illiberal. Being often anti-monarchical themselves, they naturally opposed Czarist autocracy. This vehemence passed on to the Liberals in mid-century and is still the case today with such media as The Guardian newspaper and the BBC. The forged Testament of Peter the Great was repeatedly alluded to, often without being mentioned explicitly, in absurd charges that the Russians were planning “to take over the world”. Although the British government found itself allied with the Russians over the question of Greek independence from Turkey in the 1820s, the British Press kept up the drumbeat of Russophobia, always suspecting that Russia was intending to take Constantinople and penetrate the Mediterranean, thus posing a potential threat to sea and land routes to India. Then again came the Polish issue, when the Poles rose in revolt against the Czar Nicholas I in 1830, causing great emotion among the English middle classes when the revolt was crushed. Needless to say, then as now, the British middle classes knew hardly anything about actual life in Russia or Poland except what their Press told them. A well-known cartoon by the cartoonist Granville went the rounds featuring a Cossack smoking his pipe, standing amidst Polish corpses. As usual, memories were short: dragoons had  massacred civil rights protesters in Manchester  only 12 years before. In 1833, Russia and Turkey signed a peace deal but this only enraged the British Press, fearful as ever that Turkey might allow the Russian navy into the Mediterranean. In fact, the Russians were just as worried about the consequences of Turkish decline as were the British. The peace deal with Turkey allowed Russia fully to establish control over the region  of Circassia in the Northeast Black Sea region, but the Circassians objected. The British secretly sent weapons to the Circassians but were found out, and the two countries came close to war, but the British backed down, as they could secure no continental allies for a fight with Russia at that time.

The term ‘Great Game’ was coined by a British officer, Arthur Conolly, who tried to get Turkmen tribes to revolt against Russia but ended up beheaded in Bokhara in 1842. Throughout these decades there were numerous intrepid ‘adventures’ by British soldiers, agents and spies in the depths of Central Asia; their exploits, eagerly reported in the Press, fuelled the fires of Russophobia in Britain.

One of these ‘adventurers’ was the enigmatic English discoverer, translator, writer, orientalist, secret agent, diplomat and occultist Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890), widely-travelled and skilled in 29 Eurasian languages. He was a member, together with the novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Lord Stanhope, of the occult group Orphic Circle and regularly accessed ‘the other world’ through his wife Isabel, a medium. Burton said: “I believe the Slav to be the future race of Europe, even as I hold the Chinese to be the future race of the East. In writing politics and history which may live after one is long forgotten, one must speak the truth, and bury repulsions and attractions.”(1) He repeated this at a dinner in the presence of   Lord Palmerston and added that Russia and China would one day fight over Central Asia.”

British paranoia about India and suspicions that the Russians were using the Persians to attack India resulted in the First Afghan War in 1839, which ended so disastrously for the British; they invaded the country but were slaughtered and after eventually recapturing Kabul, they withdrew and peace was restored with difficulty in 1842. The Afghan ruler Dost Mohammed said: “I have been struck by the magnitude of your resources, your ships, your arsenals, but what I cannot understand is why the rulers of so vast and flourishing an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country.” He was clearly not au fait with the imperatives of ‘the Great Game’…

The Egyptian crisis in the early 1840s further stoked British Russophobia. Mettan notes:  “In just 25 years, English public opinion had been completely turned around. From privileged ally, which had entered into war against Napoleon alongside Great Britain out of unwillingness to participate in the anti-English blockade wanted by the French emperor, Russia had become public enemy Number One of the United Kingdom. From great ally of liberal England, the czar had become a barbaric, furiously expansionist despot. From then on, solidly implanted in public opinion, British Russophobia was rapidly going to translate into open warfare. A mere spark might start it.”(2) The cheerleader for British Russophobia, Lord Palmerston, described the struggle against Russia as a “fight of democracy against tyranny” (like British politicians today). The spark came in 1853. An argument over the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine, which was governed by the Ottomans, led to Turkey declaring war on Russia in October of that year. The Russians destroyed a Turkish fleet at Sinope, and the British and French, fearing a Turkish collapse, joined the war and invaded the Crimean peninsula. This war, the only time when British and Russian forces have ever clashed directly, was a watershed in Anglo-Russian relations and poisoned them for over sixty years. The first war that was photographed and reported in detail in the Press, its names and events, its horrors and heroes, victories and disasters, were imprinted on the national consciousness. Countless British street names across the country stem from it.

Britain’s embarrassments in the Crimean War and its subsequent defeats in colonial struggles in Africa only worried British imperialists even more over those six decades. Despite being at a peak of power at the time of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and despite their ever increasing imperial pride and bombast, the British elite knew the empire was fragile, both at home and abroad and that after the 1870s, it was losing out economically to Germany and the USA. Only two years after of the costly victory in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny or Rebellion had broken out which deeply shocked the outraged British, put them very much on the defensive, aware of the Indians’ potential for further uprisings, and greatly increased their sense of racial superiority and psychological distance from the Indians: ‘the Club’ mentality now took over as the British community in India restricted itself more to its own circles.

Meanwhile, the Russians, laying railway lines now, advanced slowly but steadily in these decades across Central Asia from the Caspian Sea towards Afghanistan. As ever, the abiding British fear was the possible loss of India, the source of their national and personal profit, of their civilisational, cultural, religious, professional and racial pride, and of their lust for adventure and self-assertion. The 30-year period 1877-1907 was the high point of the Great Game, as the Russians inched ever closer to India. Disraeli declared Victoria ‘Empress of India’ in 1876, his friend Colonial Secretary Edward Bulwer-Lytton having nationalised the East India Company in 1858. Disraeli also appointed his friend’s son, another Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Viceroy of India under Victoria as Empress of India. In the same year 1876, a major famine broke out in India during Bulwer-Lytton’s viceroyalty; at least 8 million died and Bulwer-Lytton was much criticised for his poor response to the disaster, a response informed by his Social Darwinist views. In 1878 he took British India into the 2nd Afghan War, which was fought for much the same reasons as the first, and in 1879 the empire suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Zulus in S. Africa, another Disraelian imperial ‘adventure’. These years were something of another watershed in British history; for the next 4 decades until 1914 British attitudes towards the Empire were marked by a peculiar hubris, as grandiose dreams of Imperial Federation (1884), a united globe-spanning imperial entity, arose in the imaginations of sections of the imperialist elite, led by the likes of Charles Dilke MP, the historian J.R. Seeley, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Milner and the journalist W.T. Stead.

But along with this growing hubris came a greater awareness of a gnawing weakness vis-a-vis Russia, Germany and America. This awareness led to the diplomatic revolution in British foreign policy that occurred between 1887 and 1907. A complex of factors crystallised in the years 1884-87 that there is not space here to go into, but perhaps the most significant of them was that in 1887 the British faced a looming Franco-Russian alliance in support of a potential Indian rebellion by the Sikh prince Duleep Singh (see pic below), who had been removed from India as a child by the British government and brought up in Britain. He had since rediscovered his Indian roots and wanted to return to India to lead his people in the Punjab. The British saw this as the most serious challenge to the British Raj: the prospect of an Indian rebellion aided by two major European Powers. They managed to weather the crisis, not least because the Czar Alexander III (1881-1894) refused to support Duleep Singh, but it led them to reassess their imperial strategy and foreign policy. They concluded that the joint threat from their long-term opponents France and Russia would have to be met by aligning with those two countries, and the price for this would have to be ditching Britain’s traditionally friendly relations with the enemies of France and Russia, namely, Germany and Austria.

Britain’s national myths

Before proceeding, a very important background motif to the Great Game and 19th century Anglo-Russian relations should be considered. By the end of the wars against Napoleon, Britain and Russia had already embraced their own very significant national myths, both of which, in their differing ways, harked back to ancient Rome. The British elite and many in the British population as a whole, since the country’s victory over Spain’s Armada in the 16th century – which was more of a lucky escape – and its humbling of royal and then imperial France in the 18th and early 19th centuries, its success in planting colonies in N. America and elsewhere, the growth of its overseas possessions, its commercial achievements safeguarded by the world’s greatest navy and supported by its scientific and technical progress and prowess in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, had come to feel that Providence was now blowing in the sails of the British ship of state. Yet there was something of a split in English national consciousness in the late 18th century.  There were those more cynical and self-interested, less concerned with saving their souls and more concerned with maximising their profits, whose values were more influenced by rationalist and classical Roman models. They regarded themselves as realists and ‘down to earth’ and wanted to ‘get on in the world’, whether at home or abroad. These people believed that they accepted the world as it is and sought to profit from it – as it is. One such was Robert Clive, the victorious general of the East India Company’s wars in the mid-18th century. He started in India in 1744 as an office clerk for the East India Company and finally returned home to Shrewsbury in 1767 a very wealthy man indeed, with the equivalent of about £50 million in today’s money, which he himself regarded as a moderate sum, he said, given the opportunities available in India for greater profit. Arguably, no-one did more to cement the structure of British power in India than Clive. Yet when he left India in 1767 he said: “We are sensible that… the power formerly belonging to the soubah [ruler] of those provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority. This name, however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate.”(3) This had also been the attitude of the rulers of the City of London, of whom the globally operative leaders of the East India Company were the foremost, towards the British monarch: to venerate the throne, safe in the knowledge that since the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 or even since the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the throne reigns but does not rule; we, the wealthy men of the City of London, rule. Such was the cynical attitude of the men of power. However, seven years after his return from India, in 1774, aged 49, Robert, now Baron Clive, an opium addict suffering from depression and gallstones, died after slitting his throat with a penknife, a victim of his own success.

From the time of the Elizabethan sailors and adventurers of the 16th century – ‘latter-day Vikings’ like Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh – Britain’s expansion had been driven by lust for profit, by curiosity and love of adventure; such was the case in England’s  southernmost colonies in North America, from Virginia to the Carolinas, but there was also a particular religious motive – most evident in the more northern colonies, from Virginia to Massachusetts – namely, the desire of the Puritans to escape, like the Israelites on whom they modelled themselves, from the wickedness of sinful ‘Egypt’ (i.e. England) and seek their Promised Land in North America. Impressed by the Jews they had met in the Netherlands, the English Puritans in America increasingly came to see themselves as God’s new ‘Chosen People’. Though nominally Christians, they lived their lives especially according to the Old Testament, which meant that many of them, though not all, tended to regard the native peoples among whom they came as ‘Canaanites’, savages beyond God’s grace, who could and should be treated harshly, even genocidally if necessary, as Joshua did with the peoples of Canaan. However, from the 1770s onwards, a new religious movement – that of Evangelical Anglicanism – was abroad in Britain; it gave rise to a new form of the national ‘Chosen People’ myth, and its pietistic Methodist emphasis on the inner life and the new Birth in Christ and the Holy Spirit emphasised the New Testament rather than the Old, challenging the Established Anglican Church, in which many felt religiosity had become a matter of outer forms, ceremonies and compliance with social conventions.  Many people were longing for a religious life of experience that emphasised high moral standards for both clergy and laity. The shock of the loss of the American colonies, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was published in the year of the American Declaration of Independence, the trial of Warren Hastings for corruption in the East India Company, the extravagant decadence of many in the upper class, the growing awareness both of the harshness of the Industrial Revolution and of the evils of the slave trade – all these filled many people with the notion that God was testing and punishing England for its sins. However, despite the new focus on the New Testament, on Christ in the individual soul, and on compassion for oppressed people and slaves, a new sense of conviction emerged among the English that they were after all, God’s Chosen People, a people whose destiny it was to be a light unto the world. ‘He who challenged God, challenged England’ and ‘he who challenged England, challenged God’. The English, it was felt, had been given the mantle of world power by God and must use it ‘properly’. They thus determined to keep that mantle  as long as was ‘proper’ or as long as Providence decreed they should. The Evangelical Anglicans were very active in the anti-slavery movement, which eventually achieved success in the British Empire by 1833. As the Royal Navy patrolled the world arresting slave traders while keeping the oceans safe for British commerce, this gave liberal-minded people in Britain a smug sense of moral superiority, and gradually, the sense of divine entitlement with regard to the Empire, especially after the British State took over the running of India when the East India Company was nationalised in 1858. The mediaeval myth of St. George rescuing the maiden from the dragon came in very handy here to justify the actions of the Foreign Office. No longer was the empire merely a sordid source of profit and wealth, now it was felt, it also had to be a moral and providential crusade to ‘save benighted peoples from tyranny’ or to ‘elevate the natives’ in the Empire beckoned. Grand inflated perspectives of history and imperial destiny and mission loomed. It was now seen as Britain’s task to spread such things as freedom, parliamentary government, law, civilisation and Christianity throughout the world.

Something akin to the fate of ancient Rome occurred in 19th century Britain in its attitude to its empire: the conquests of the Roman Republic had been a no-nonsense, down-to-earth enterprise of straightforward military might, to destroy rivals in the name of survival or to punish recalcitrant client rulers, or else simply to acquire more territories for taxation and mining. The Roman Empire, however, became increasingly pompous and pretentious, less Roman and more Greek and Asiatic in its attitude and values as time went on. A similar transition also happened in 19th century Britain and was reflected in its frequent poor military showing in the second half of the century. The hardnosed harshness of British life in the Napoleonic period and the plain, classical lines of Georgian buildings gave way to a ‘softer’, more Romantic image presided over by that essentially middle-class couple Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert, while their people, or those who could afford it, indulged themselves in nostalgia for the chivalric Middle Ages and the Gothic style, which reflected the ‘new’ Romantic sensibility in the arts and architecture. Or else, as so-called ‘scientific’ racism began to take hold after the 1820s and 30s, other Britons fancied themselves the literal descendants of the ancient Israelites who, it was said by the new British Israelite movement, had wandered from the Holy Land in the form of the Ten Lost Tribes of the Old Testament over to Europe, to northern Germany and Denmark, from where they had settled in England and produced the British Royal Family! Much taken with this idea, Victoria and Albert even had their royal male children circumcised, and royal male heirs apparently continued to be circumcised until the late Princess Diana put her foot down.  While the symbol of Britain in the first half of the century was more the self-satisfied, materialistic, down-to-earth yeoman squire John Bull, in the second half it was more the refined image of the quintessential English gentleman, or else the allegorical figures of Britannia and the British lion.

Rudolf Steiner gave a humorous description of this process in a lecture in February 1920, at which a number of English people were present. He spoke, with considerable irony, of how the empire began with “adventurers, considered rather undesirable at the heart of the empire” who went out to make their fortune and then came home with their wealth. Society looked askance at them but their sons and grandsons ‘smelled’ a little better: “And then empty words take over the thing that is beginning to smell nice. The state takes everything under its wing, becomes the protector, and now everything is done in an honest way. It would be good if we could call things by their proper name, but the proper name very rarely denotes the actual reality.”(4) He was speaking in that lecture about the three periods of imperialism that had developed over the past 5000 years or so. First, there had been theocratic, priestly empires ruled by demigods, god-kings; then military empires ruled by the aristocratic warrior class in which the rulers were no longer god-kings but symbols ruling by divine right on behalf of the deity; this was  already a step down, so to speak; and then finally, since the 16th century, economic empires based at first on trade and stealing other people’s land, but which were then embellished, prettified, ‘tarted-up’ we might even say, with fine, empty words to make the economic empires less, well, embarrassing. Today, we see this same thing in institutions such as the World Economic Forum or in the foreign policy statements of modern governments, and, some would say, especially the British government, where over the past two centuries, hypocrisy has been made into an art of sorts.

Russia’s national myths

Russia, meanwhile, had developed two national myths of its own, one from the past and one from the present. The myth from the past, from the Greco-Roman Byzantine age of Constantinople, was that there had been the first Rome and it had fallen in 476 AD to the Goths and had been replaced by the second Rome – Constantinople – and this too had fallen, in 1453, to the Turks and it had been replaced by Moscow, which had taken on the mantle of Orthodox Christianity. According to this idea, which emerged in Russian ecclesiastical circles towards the end of the 15th century, Moscow had become “the Third Rome”, as   Metropolitan of Moscow Zosimus expressed it in 1492 and  called Ivan III “the new Czar Constantine of the new city of Constantine — Moscow.” The monk Philotheus wrote in the early 16th century: “So know, pious king, that all the Christian kingdoms came to an end and came together in a single kingdom of yours, two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth. (5) [emphasis added]. No one shall replace your Christian Czardom according to the great Theologian” [i.e. St. John the Apocalyptist]. (see pic below) This must have made Russians feel that their country was in some way divinely sanctioned. The Russian Czar – the very name of course comes from ‘Caesar’ – was thus the protector and father of all Christians just as the Byzantine Emperors in the 1000 years after Constantine had regarded themselves. The Patriarch in the Orthodox Church was always subordinate to the Emperor, unlike the Roman Popes, who regarded themselves as above kings and emperors and who until the 1860s were territorial rulers in their own right. Consequently, the impulses of the Russian State were regarded as at least semi-religious in nature, when for example, Russia sought to push the Ottoman Turks out of Crimea or the Balkans. It regarded itself as the Christian Orthodox patron of the southern Slavs.

Furthermore, from the early 19th century onwards, as doctrines of nationalism and racialism began to spread from western Europe and were picked up in Russia, another national myth emerged – the idea of Pan-Slavism in two forms, notably in a Russian imperial, conservative, traditionalist form (as promoted by the Savoyard diplomat Joseph de Maistre, who lived for many years in Russia and exercised a considerable degree of influence as well as in a republican nationalist form.

Pan-Slavism and the Hatred for Russia

This secular nationalist Pan-Slavism was supported by the British elite, as we can see from the book The Ottomans in Europe (1876) by the Turcophile British historian John Mill (Nb. not the philosopher, economist and Member of Parliament, John Stuart Mill). This book gives us a vivid idea of the degree of sheer hatred of Russia that had built up in England in the 19th century (and which is still expressed, albeit rather less viscerally, in the British media today through the regular, Orwellian ‘anti-Russia, hate Putin’ propaganda slots on BBC news and current affairs programmes). After praising the Turks to the skies as “the Englishmen of the East”, Mill says of the Slavs:

“The Slav is almost the greatest failure nature ever made in her attempts to create a civilised man. …. The prime cause of Russia’s weakness lies in the innermost core of the Slav heart. It is void of truth, and this want of veracity threads its rottenness into every department of the State…” […] “For many years past Russia has been, like one of the magicians which we read of in the books of the Occult Brethren, who ‘call spirits from the vasty deep’, with this shade of difference, that they called those they could master and allay. She, by her greed, rapacity, and brutal lusts, has awakened demons which she is quite unable to control. They have taken possession of her body and soul, and they are all imps of blood.” [….] “Russia is…the land of hatreds; of mistrusts, of brutal force, and abject cowardice; of profuse waste in some parts of the public service, of galling wretchedness in others. …The conviction has sunk into the pale, wan heart of Russia that she cannot be worse, and although the Emperor and his party, to some extent, guide and curb the military passion, and keep the peasantry in subjection, this cannot last long; the bloodhounds will slip the collar sooner or later, and then will the cry of ‘havoc’ arise…..” “The Eastern Question has to be solved in blood. It is simply a series of surgical operations, which will have to be performed with more or less skill, and the final question is which of the parties upon whom the amputations are to be performed can best endure the depletion. There are three: Russia, Austria, and Turkey who must go into the operating room; others, especially England, may be dragged in, but for the three former, there is no escape.” […] “The solution, then, or rather the dissolution, of Russia, is the real Eastern Question….it is rather a Northern than an Eastern question.” (7) (emphasis TB)

One can find equally racial invective against Russians and the Slavs in general in the writings of Karl Marx when he was in Britain and collaborating with another inveterate Russophobe, David Urquhart (1805-1877), diplomat, writer and politician, (see pic below) who single-mindedly devoted some forty years of his life to pro-Turkish and anti-Russian propaganda, including starting a newspaper for the purpose, and writing endless articles and letters to the Press.

Mill and those in Britain who thought like him, and they were many, was thus concerned to bring about the break-up of the Russian Empire for the sake of preserving the British Empire of which he and they were immensely proud. We should bear in mind that the only reason that Britons such as Mill actually cared a jot about Turkey is because they regarded it as the gateway to their Raj in India, a gateway they were determined to keep shut to challengers.

Similarly, today it is improbable that the likes of UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and recent British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak care a jot for Ukraine, but they doubtless regard it, as do the higher level geostrategists of the West, as the instrument with which the West can hammer at Russia as well as the channel through which, having failed in Central Asia between 2002 and 2021, the US and UK can hope eventually to penetrate back into Central Asia, as Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated (8). Britons “in the know” in the 19th century, such as John Mill may well have been, were seeking to use what they called republican nationalist Pan-Slavism as a hammer against what they called Russian imperial Pan-Slavism. Republican nationalist Pan-Slavism could, they imagined, be used to draw Russia into a major war with Germany and Austria, a war which would result either in the break-up of the Russian state or in a Communist takeover of Russia, which might also, through civil war, end in the dissolution of Russia. Mill’s book contains maps of future plans for Russia, eastern and central Europe – maps which, he said, were circulating in secret societies that served Russian imperial aims as well as others that revealed the goals of secular nationalist and republican Pan-Slavists such as the Narod Odbrana and Omladina organisations, (9) which represented the nationalist republican heritage of the French Revolution. For the latter groups’ goals to be realised, however, the traditional alliances, friendships and enemies of Britain and France would have to be reversed. Britain’s traditional enemies – France and Russia – would have to be brought together in opposition to Germany and Austria so as to encircle the Central European Powers. And all these remarkable things, hardly conceivable in the 1860s, were actually achieved in the diplomatic revolution mentioned earlier, which was driven through, step by step, between 1887 and 1907, so that by 1907, the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia faced off against Germany, Austria and nominally, Italy. That diplomatic revolution led directly to the First World War seven years later in 1914, a war which began in Bosnia over the issue of Serbia’s nationalist Pan-Slavism which wanted to see a federation of all the South Slavs under Serbian leadership. This was opposed to Russia’s Imperial Pan-Slavism and its still burning desire to recover Constantinople for the Orthodox faith and its own ‘Christian Empire’.

In Ukraine today, the British and Americans have been using the strategic playbook of the late Polish-American geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski to manipulate similar Slavic ethnic hatreds in order to draw Russia into another long war with the intention, as in 1914, of ruining her again. The difference between Russia in the situation of 1876 that Mill was writing about and Russia in 1914 is that by 1914, Russia had developed into a Great Power that both the British and German elites now saw as a major threat to the survival of their own empires. The British were more concerned than ever, as usual, for the survival of their control over India and their world empire as a whole; as Lord Curzon, the Viceroy in India, said in 1901: “As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power”.(10) The German Foreign Ministry, aware of the Russian Empire’s own Pan-Slavist ambitions, understood that Russia regarded Germany and its allies Austria and Turkey as standing in the way of those ambitions, which centred on recovering Constantinople and controlling the Balkans. What the Russians likely did not suspect was that their British ‘allies’ in the Triple Entente were actually planning a war that would destroy, break up, or severely weaken Russia. American historian Sean McMeekin in his book The  Russian Origins of the First World War (2011) was right to point the finger of blame at Russia for turning what could have been just a third Balkan war into a pan-European and world war, but what he failed to see, or did not want to see,  was that it was the British,  concerned for the survival of their world empire that depended on control of India, and the French, still burning for revenge over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, who had for nearly three decades been the two main forces driving the unfolding tragedy that began with the assassin’s bullets at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.  The Germans, Austrians, Russians and Turks all ended up in Mill’s “operating room” for “amputation” as the victims of this Anglo-French paranoia and revanchism.

In 1993 a book was published that bears out the British intentions only barely masked by John Mill in his 1876 book The Ottomans in Europe. The subtitle of that book was “or Turkey in the Present Crisis, with the Secret Societies’ Maps”. According to Mill, those secret societies were the political secret groups that stood behind the Pan-Slavists, namely the republican Pan-Slavist Omladina group, which represented the nationalist republican heritage of the French Revolution, and also the secretive groups that backed Russian imperial Pan-Slavist goals. The 1993 book was The Transcendental Universe by Charles G. Harrison – a collection of six profound lectures on occultism given by Harrison a hundred years earlier in 1893. He predicted “the next great European war”, “the death of the Russian Empire so that the Russian people could live” and also that “the national character [of the Russians] will enable them to carry out experiments in socialism, political and economical, which would present innumerable difficulties in western Europe.” (emphasis TB)

This is what John Mill meant in his 1876 book when he wrote: “if an army of the Emperor [of Russia] should ever fall into another Sedan beyond the Danube, a Commune would very soon be declared in Moscow.” (11) The expectation in occult and political circles in Britain was that communism would soon be coming in Russia and that the West would bring it about. Because of his friendship with Friedrich Eckstein, who was an internationally active Theosophist with his finger on the pulse of what was going on in esoteric circles in London in the 1890s, Steiner was very aware of this agenda at which Mill had hinted and Harrison had stated more clearly. Steiner felt that if people don’t wake up to the lies and deception with which the elite forces of the West must operate, the consequence will be terrible suffering and violence until those elites’ actions are overcome through impulses that stem from the Germanic and Slavic cultures. (12)

On 22 December 1900 in the American magazine The Outlook, readers were told that “the true statesman looks to the future. It is clear to one who does thus look to the future that, as the issue of the past was between Anglo-Saxon and Latin civilization, so the issue of the future is between Anglo-Saxon and Slavic civilizations. [...] The wise statesman will make every provision possible by establishing cordial relations between all the kindred races for the final victory of the Anglo-Saxon type of civilization.”(13) Today in Ukraine, in another proxy war,  we are witnessing that struggle between the Anglosphere and its client states on the one side and Russia (and perhaps China too) on the other.

The last article in this series (http://threeman.org/?p=3104) will consider the Anglo-Russian antagonism from 1900 until today.

Endnotes

1 Markus Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch (2014) p. 927.

2 G. Mettan, Creating Russophobia, p. 191.

3 “Clive, Robert Clive, Baron, Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.   pp. 532–536.

4 Lecture of 20.2.1920, Dornach in Ideas for a New Europe (Rudolf Steiner Press) 1992, pp 57-58.

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow,_third_Rome

6 For illuminating insights into the character of de Maistre, see lecture by Rudolf Steiner, 1 May 1921 in Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy (RSP, 1987).

7 John Mill, The Ottomans in Europe or Turkey in the Present Crisis, with the Secret Societies’ Maps (1876). The full text is available to read at archive.org

8 Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1997) see chaps. 4 and 5.

9 Rudolf Steiner discussed such groups at some length in his lectures of 9,10,11 Dec. 1916, in The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vol. 1 (RSP) 2005.

10 In Nicholas Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (1969), p. 256.

11 A reference to the Battle of Sedan, a major French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

12 For the full Steiner quote, see my article ‘The Anglo-Russian Antagonism Part 1’ in New View #104 July-September 2022, p.17.

13 Markus Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch (2014) p.928.

Terry M. Boardman

 It seems to be the destiny of “the West” to pass through the trials of the lonely and isolated individual who overcomes selfishness and self-assertion to the point where he or she can build new communities together with other individuals who have been through similar trials. This is a very risky and dangerous process which must eventually destroy all the old social forms continued from ancient times. Rudolf Steiner pointed out in 1919 that the mid-point of the 20th century “coincides with the end of the period in which the forces from before the middle of the 15th century – still atavistically with us to some extent – reach their ultimate decadence.” In the western historical context, this means all the legal and social forces of the Greco-Roman period, as well as all those theocratic commandments from ancient Israel, Babylon, Egypt, and Persia. “We are living in a period of evolution when the gods are only too ready to help, if human beings will come forward to meet them. But the gods have to work in accordance with their own laws, which stipulate that they must work with free human beings and not with puppets.”(1)

 While “the West” is going through this dangerous process, it sems to this writer that the East, and other regions of the world, will keep humanity alive, so to speak, while the narrow path towards the new conscious community life is being discovered in the West over the coming centuries. The East, Africa and S. America, will keep humanity alive through the instinctive, still vital but slowly fading forces from the past until the time comes when the West can bring to the East the example of the new communities of free, striving individuals. Precisely because of its ancient heritage and its faithfulness to that heritage, the East will be able to take up this new community impulse and make more of it in the future than westerners will be able to do.(2)

 It is not difficult to recognise that the wave of culture and civilisation has gradually moved westwards from the time of ancient China and India. From the Near East and Egypt, it moved to the lands around the Mediterranean, southern Europe, Greece and Rome. Then from the mid-15th century it moved north beyond the Alps, and since the time of Gutenberg, Dürer, Luther, and Copernicus, it has increasingly been the Germanic peoples of northern Europe who have moved to the fore. According to Rudolf Steiner, From the middle of the 4th millennium, the peoples of eastern Europe, the Slavs, and notably the Russians, (also perhaps the Finns and Romanians) will be in the vanguard of the impulse to new community for the following c.2000 years. But until the 4th millennium, the dangerous drive through the eye (“the I”) of the needle to individualism is being led by the peoples of northern Europe (beyond the Alps) and their American extension across the Atlantic, especially the English-speaking peoples. Part of the danger of this period is that elements within the elite of these peoples, elements who wish to preserve the traditional hierarchies of the past from before the late 18th century, the culture of lords and serfs, seek to hold evolution back at that point of selfish individualism that benefits themselves and to hold down the mass of the population though the use of economic relations and the law. Nevertheless, these elites recognised that ‘the lower orders’ in northern and western Europe and in America would seek to assert their individualism too, and this would lead to the drive for democracy and for new, non-hierarchical social forms. These social, and democratic impulses, the western elites determined, must be held back as far as possible in the West and must be diverted from the West and transplanted to the Slavic East where the instinctive sense for communal life and brotherhood  – everything that is bound up with the various meanings of the Slavic word mir (peace, joy, world, community, village, pronounced ‘meer’) was stronger and would be able to absorb them. With the appropriate use of western propaganda, once transplanted ‘over there’, they could even be made to appear dangerous and threatening to the West, which was to be made into a culture that stands for the rights of the individual as contrasted with those of the community. This polarity would become the basis of the bipolar world of the 20th century, which the current western, anti-Russian propaganda is seeking to recreate.

 Illuminating Observations

An entry, most likely from 1918, from one of Rudolf Steiner’s notebooks sheds much light on this entire process and on the ongoing struggle between Russia and the West: “What forces are confronting each other in this war and for what is it being waged? Driving things forward is a group of people who seek to dominate the earth through dynamic capitalist economic impulses. To these people belong all those circles which this group is able to bind and organise through economic methods. The essential point is that this group knows that on the territory of Russia there is an unorganised collection of human beings who, with regard to the future, bear in themselves the seed of socialist organisation. [By ‘socialist’ here, Steiner does not mean as in political movement or party but as in social community living, social relations - TB.] To bring this socialist seed impulse within the realm of power of the anti-social group is the calculated aim of that group. This goal cannot be reached if Middle Europe, with understanding, seeks an association between itself and this seed impulse in the East. Only because that [anti-social] group is to be found within the Anglo-American world has the present constellation of forces arisen as a temporary phenomenon, which is disguising all the real polarities and interests [by “the present constellation of forces”, he means here the Triple Entente alliance of Russia, Britain and France, who were fighting against Germany and Austria in World War One - TB]. It is disguising above all the true fact that a fight is going on for the seed of Russian culture between the Anglo-American plutocrats and the peoples of Middle Europe. In the moment when this fact is revealed to the world by Middle Europe, an untrue constellation will be replaced by a true one. The war will therefore go on in some form or other until German and Slavic culture have found their way to the common goal of freeing humanity from the yoke of the West.

 There are only these alternatives: either the lies with which the West has to operate if it wants to succeed will be unmasked and people will come to realise that those behind the Anglo-American cause are the bearers of a stream which has its roots in impulses which stem from before the French Revolution and in their  effort to dominate the world by capitalist means, and effort  which only employs the impulses of Revolution as a phrase [or slogan] in order to disguise itself behind them – or people will yield the rulership of the world to an occult group within the Anglo-American world until, from the subjugated German and Slavic region, through rivers of blood, the true spiritual goal of the earth will be saved.”(3)

 In other words, if people don’t wake up to the lies and deception with which the elite forces of the West must operate, the consequence will be terrible suffering and violence until those elites’ actions are overcome through impulses that stem from the Germanic and Slavic cultures. There is a great deal in Steiner’s words here. They point to an elite group in the West which functions economically and seeks world domination i.e., self-seeking economic control through a system of capitalism that is essentially selfish and immoral, concerned only for the profit of owners and investors.(4) These people have insight into the ethnic characteristics of target cultures and seek to use these characteristics to exercise power over those target cultures e.g. the Slavic populations of eastern Europe.

 Brooks Adams

In Steiner’s time such members of the western elite were for example, Lord Salisbury and Lord Alfred Milner in Britain and the Adams brothers, Henry and Brooks Adams, in the East Coast American elite. The Adams brothers were two of those who stood close to the plutocrats of the American ‘Gilded Age’ of the 1890s and 1900s.

 Steiner was well aware of Brooks Adams (pic above) and in his lectures on the causes of the First World War in 1916 (GA 173) Steiner encouraged people to read Brooks Adams’ book The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895) to understand the thinking of these western elitists. In that book we see how Adams sees nations in terms of phases of birth, growth and decay and also considers that there are ‘young’ peoples who are both imaginative inwardly creative and warlike and there are more ‘mature’ peoples who are sober, scientific and commercial. He considered the Russians to be the first kind and the Anglo-Americans the second. The first kind he regarded as backward and the second, as progressive.

Where did Adams go with such ideas? He was already arguing in 1900 that in fifty years’ time (i.e., by 1950) the world would be divided in two poles by the power struggle between the sea-based system of the USA and the land-based system of Russia: “Americans”, he said, “must recognize that this is war to the death, – a struggle no longer against single nations, but against a continent. There is not room in the economy of the world for two centres of wealth and empire. One organism, in the end, will destroy the other. The weaker must succumb.”  He felt that the key to victory in the future “lay in the development of China, which was why the USA had to do everything to bring China under its own economic control and ‘reduce it to a part of our economic system’, before Russia and continental Europe (e.g. Germany) gained possession of Chinese markets. This idea became the theme of his book America’s Economic Supremacy, in which he prophesied the fall of the British Empire and its replacement by the USA,”(5) a notion forcefully argued by James Burnham in his very influential book, The Managerial Revolution in the 1940s. “In 1902 Adams’ next book, ‘The New Empire’, appeared, in which the rise of the USA to world power was again postulated as inevitable. Within the next fifty years, he wrote, the USA would ‘outweigh any single empire, if not all empires combined’.”(6) Here we have the origin of the plans for the kind of US-dominated unipolar order that emerged in the 1990s after ‘the end of the Cold War’.(7)

 Brooks Adams thought that if Asia were to industrialise and become independent, the decline of the USA and Europe would be inevitable, in accordance with the Adams brothers’ motto: civilisation = centralisation = economy. If an independent, decolonised Asia were able to industrialise, it would become more successful at doing this, the Adams brothers felt, because economic efficiency depended on cheap labour which was so plentiful in Asia. Hence the consequences for China and the modern capitalist world of the entry into global capitalism of some 400 million cheap labour Chinese workers after 1990, the result of Deng Xiaoping’s opening up of Communist China to western capitalism. This went back to the ground-breaking visit of US President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to China in 1972 and the visit of David Rockefeller to Deng Xiaoping’s mentor Zhou Enlai in 1973. The Rockefellers were plutocrats with a farsightedness similar to that of the Adams brothers. German historian Markus Osterrieder writes: “For reasons of security alone, therefore, America [or rather, American plutocrats - TB] would in the future have to control Asia, Europe, and indeed the whole world. Brooks Adams had thus shaped the fundamentals of a philosophy of history and geopolitics” upon which the imperialist policies of the US elite could be constructed. …in the summer of 1914, Brooks Adams finally saw all his ideas confirmed and spoke of a war that would last thirty years (1914–1944!) as the necessary result of international economic competition, which would ‘[…] give […] us a new world whoever wins. […] The world, socially and economically, [could] never again be the same as it was before the breakdown of the old order of things which began the war.’”(8)

Osterrieder notes that on 22 December 1900 in the American magazine The Outlook, readers were told that “the true statesman looks to the future. It is clear to one who does thus look to the future that, as the issue of the past was between Anglo-Saxon and Latin civilization, so the issue of the future is between Anglo-Saxon and Slavic civilizations. [...] The wise statesman will make every provision possible by establishing cordial relations between all the kindred races [of the English-speaking world] for the final victory of the Anglo-Saxon type of civilization.”(9)

This was one of the three key aims of the Anglosphere elites in the world war that began in 1914: to unite the English-speaking world in order to secure its dominance in the world. The other two aims were to reduce the economic power of Germany and place it under Anglosphere control (finally achieved in 1945) and to divert socialism (Bolshevism) to Russia where it would become a Marxist socialist experiment there that was not to be allowed to occur in the West. In a lecture of 1 Dec. 1918 (GA 186) Steiner said: “What has developed in Russia [i.e. Communism] is basically only the realisation of what the West wants to take place there. […] Whatever people [in the West] may say they want consciously, what they strive for is to create a caste of masters in the West and a caste of economic slaves in the East, beginning at the Rhine and extending eastwards into Asia. […] A caste of slaves which is to be organised socialistically and which is to take up all the impossibilities of a social structure which are then not to be applied to the English-speaking population.” This was the western elites’ goal in 1917 and was still the goal in the 1990s when Communist China became the workshop of the world.

1917, the West and the Bolshevik Revolution

Raymond Robins, an American economist and labour activist who played a significant role after the Bolshevik Revolution in persuading people in the US to accept Bolshevism in Russia and eventually to establish formal relations between the US and Bolshevik Russia (which did not happen until 1933), said in 1919 before a US Senate Committee formed to investigate Bolshevik propaganda:  “Let us assume that I am here to capture Russia for Wall Street and American businessmen. Let us assume that you are a British wolf and I am an American wolf, and that when this [civil] war is over, we are going to eat each other up for the Russian market; let us do so in perfectly frank, man fashion, but let us assume at the same time that we are fairly intelligent wolves, and that we know that if we do not hunt together in this hour, the German wolf will eat us both up, and then let us go to work.” Robins said on 22.3.1919: “There are only two possible centres for the new economic organisation of Russia: either the Central Empires [i.e. Germany and Austria-Hungary], or America and the Allies. Which shall it be?”(10) Robins declared that the Bolsheviks’ economic formula was “economically impossible and morally wrong” but that he was interested in the Soviet form of government as “an experiment at once tremendously vital in Russia and possibly useful in the history of human progress.”(11) Guaranty Trust, a subsidiary of J P Morgan, was both pressing for recognition of the Bolsheviks and was also funding the “ultra-conservative, anti-Soviet organisation United Americans, which warned incessantly of the danger of a ‘Red invasion’ of the USA and powerfully stirred the rampant ‘Red Scare’”.(12) The Anglo-American financiers funded both sides; Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan also funded Mussolini’s Fascists. The bankers were concerned with power; the means to achieve it were secondary.

Today, we are witnessing in Ukraine a massive struggle: the Five Eyes states of the Anglosphere (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the powerbrokers of the present, vs China and Russia, the peoples of the ancient past and of the distant future, with the financiers of the West seeking to profit from both sides.

The Rudolf Steiner notebook entry from 1918 mentioned earlier refers to the importance to future human evolution of the relationship between central and eastern Europe, between the German and the Slavic peoples. This has to do with building the bridge between the present and future epochs, the bridge between individualistic and communal cultural development.  Consequently, the spiritual forces seeking to frustrate that development have been trying to block such efforts at bridge-building between the German and Slavic peoples, between central and eastern Europe.  The leaders of the West understood well how to involve those two peoples and regions in major wars against each other in the 20th century.

Markus Osterrieder writes that an unpublished note by Steiner from August 1917 reveals that one of the ways in which the British and Americans will seek to dominate the world will be through trying to get the Slavic peoples  to believe that “their national aspirations can be realised under the leadership of the English-speaking peoples and that thereby they can come into an economic  relationship with England and America over the heads of the Germans, that will result in a positive export balance for those [two] countries [Britain and America].” Steiner goes on in the note: “….one has to see how, along secret pathways, England – and behind it, America – has guided Slavic developments in the Balkans with great historical farsightedness, how it has held its hand over Russia, so that Russia has run its politics in accordance with the goals of the English-speaking peoples.”(13) The Poles and the Czechs are two Slavic peoples in particular who have looked to the West for leadership and protection over the past 100 years – with disastrous results in 1938, 1939 and 1968.(14) But the Russians too allowed themselves to be led by the Franco-British Entente into the catastrophe of 1914 and the subsequent Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War which destroyed their society and so much of their culture. This was partly also due to the Russians’ own centuries-old illusions about Moscow being the ‘Third Rome’, that is, the successor to Rome and Constantinople and also to the Russians’ longing to take Istanbul (Constantinople) from the Ottoman Turks. It was also due to Russia’s other, more recent illusion – that of Panslavism, the racial and nationalist dream that had emerged since the mid-19th century to unite all the Slavs of Europe under the Russian Empire, which is what more conservative and imperially-minded Russians wanted,   or else at least to unite the Slavs in a Panslavist federation under Russian patronage, which is what many more liberal nationalist Russians wanted. The British elite knew how to exploit these dreams too: to present the Central European empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary alongside Turkey as Russia’s enemies who frustrated her dreams of Panslavist unity and the taking of Constantinople. By allying herself with France and Britain, these deluded Russians felt, they could achieve their nation’s two dreams.

The British played a key role in the first Russian Revolution through Lord Milner and his Round Table group,(15) MI6 having already supervised the assassination of Grigori Rasputin at the end of 1916(16) because Rasputin was felt to have undue influence over the Czar’s German wife, and Rasputin had always been opposed to the war, which he felt threatened to destroy the dynasty and Russia. The British and the Americans colluded in getting Trotsky to Russia in the spring of 1917 via the USA and providing the funds for his trip(17). Wall St bankers and financiers such as Thomas Lamont of J. P. Morgan and William B. Thompson, Director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, did their utmost to ensure that the Bolsheviks would survive and remain in power through the Civil War and afterwards. Thompson donated US$1 million to the Bolsheviks and declared to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George: “Let’s make these Bolsheviks our Bolsheviks, don’t let the Germans make them their Bolsheviks” – a remark which apparently pleased Lloyd George, who himself provided political backing in the West for the Bolshevik Revolution.(18)  US and British business interests then helped to industrialise the USSR in the 1920s and 30s even while at the same time funding anti-Bolshevik propaganda in the West.(19)

The Cold War

Carolyn Eisenberg of Hofstra University, New York, in her 1996 book Drawing the Line  – The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-1949 details how the western Allies drove the  decision to divide Germany and Europe in the mid to late 1940s. She concludes that “Despite their manifold violations of human freedom, the Soviets were not the architects of the German settlement. It was the Americans and their British partners who had opted for partition with the associated congealment of the continental division.” It is long forgotten, she says, that “the Americans and the British had initiated all the formal steps towards separation…”  The   priorities for “the small circle of Americans who set policy for Germany” did not include weighing alternatives. What drove them “was a conception of national security that took the expansion of West European free trade as an absolute requirement for the United States. Though this reflected the aspirations of large internationally oriented corporations, it was less clearly in line with the predilections of the public, for whom issues of East European freedom and the maintenance of peace held greater salience….The oppressive internal policies of the Soviet Union that were gradually imposed upon the population of East Germany were not the source of the postwar schism….what produced that unwanted result  was an ambitious  American agenda, which was juxtaposed on a European continent that was more impoverished, strife-ridden, and unruly than anyone in Washington had envisioned….Had American officials been more flexible and sought a compromise solution in occupied Germany, it is possible that the Soviets would have blocked or overturned it. But this is something we cannot know since the United States selected a different course. In the wreckage of the Cold War, America has yet to acknowledge responsibility for the structures that it built.”(20)

The Cold War division of Europe and Germany, then, was made in Washington and London, rather than Moscow, and in any case, the division that was forced through by 1949 had already been envisaged by Lord Milner 30 years earlier, in 1919, when he had advocated dividing Germany in two: a western capitalist Germany and an eastern Prussian Bolshevik one. He had already identified in 1919 the young man who he thought would be the best candidate to govern the pro-western half of Germany – the young mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, who in 1949 actually became West Germany’s first Chancellor.(21) The Cold War in Europe was an Anglo-American production.

A year after the disappearance of the USSR, in 1992, Zbigniew Brzezinski (pic above), National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, began his article on the history of the Cold War in the 70th anniversary edition of Foreign Affairs magazine with a reference to the Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz and his often-quoted maxim: “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. The Cold War was a war, Brzezinski wrote, “for control over the Eurasian landmass and…for global preponderance.” The US ‘offensive posture’ in the 1950s, he wrote, “never materialised” because “the American side never fully meant it. The policy of liberation was a strategic sham, designed to a significant degree for domestic political reasons…The policy was basically rhetorical, at most tactical.”(22) In other words, it was intended to fool the citizens of the West as much if not more than the Russians.

 Dividing Russia

In that 1992 article, Brzezinski let some other cats out of the bag: for example, the notion that post-Soviet Russia may be split up: he wrote: “Russia’s own unity may soon also be at stake, with perhaps the Far Eastern provinces tempted before too long to set up a separate Siberian-Far Eastern Republic of their own.”(23) Brzezinski would return to this notion of a Far Eastern Republic five years later, in his key work The Grand Chessboard. But this disintegrated Russia also featured in an article in the British weekly magazine The Economist – a major propagandist journal for the globalist New World Order -  in the winter of that same year 1992.(24) The anonymous Economist writer was imagining the future over the next 50 years and suggested that during that period, all of Russia east of the Ural mountains, a vast territory, would be lost to “a Muslim superstate-like entity” and to China. Russia would revert to its European borders of the 16th century and thus, presumably, could then be integrated into a transatlanticist European Union under the ‘guiding hand’ of the USA and the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

Indeed, this transatlanticist future was the only future that Brzezinski saw for Russia. In the chapter titled ‘The Black Hole’ in his Grand Chessboard book (1997), he wrote about what he called Russia’s “Dilemma of the One Alternative”: all counteralliance options (with China, Iran, Eurasia, the Franco-German axis) “evade the only choice that is left open to Russia. Russia’s only real geostrategic option – the option that could give Russia a realistic international role and also maximise the opportunity of transforming and socially modernising itself – is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlantic Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO. Such a Europe is taking shape….and it is also likely to remain linked closely to America. That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate if it is to avoid dangerous geopolitical isolation.”(25) Brzezinski even dangled the prospect of “ever-closer association with NATO” in front of Russia, but only association, not full membership. Putin asked Clinton about Russian membership of NATO in 2000, but Clinton declined, saying simply: “You’re too big”. Russia, said Brzezinski, “could increasingly become an integral part of a Europe that embraces not only Ukraine but reaches to the Urals and even beyond.” Indeed, Brzezinski’s obsession was “the redefinition of Russia” and the end of what he called “the Russian Empire”. Russia’s refusal to accept Brzezinski’s transatlanticist European future or its refusal to accept Ukraine’s fully partaking in the EU and NATO – and we should remember that behind Brzezinski were the plutocrats of the West, such as his long-term sponsor, David Rockefeller -  would, Brzezinski said, “be tantamount to the rejection of Europe in favour of a solitary ‘Eurasian’ identity and existence. … One cannot predict how fast that process can move, but one thing is certain: it will move faster if a geopolitical context is shaped that propels Russia in that direction, while foreclosing other temptations… Indeed, for Russia, the dilemma of the one alternative is no longer a matter of making a political choice but of facing up to the imperatives of survival.”(26) This was clearly the language of intimidation and the height of hubris by an influential American statesman in America’s ‘unipolar moment’ in the 1990s.

Of course, Brzezinski in the mid-1990s did not foresee Xi Jinping and his vast Eurasian Belt and Road transport infrastructure project, sometimes dubbed “the New Silk Road”, which got underway when Xi came to power in 2013. Today, Russia, despite the sanctions imposed by the West and its puppets since February this year, is very far from the geopolitical ‘isolation’ and ‘solitude’ of which western media continually speak. In 2014, the year that began with the Maidan coup in Kiev, and only a year after Xin Jinping came to power in China, Russia and China signed the giant US$400 billion “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline project to supply Russian gas to China over 30 years. The negotiations had been going on for almost 10 years. The gas started flowing to China in December 2019.

 Russia and The Eurasian ‘Pivot’

When that deal was being negotiated, the western media were often speaking about President Obama’s new “pivot to East Asia” strategy (2012). The use of the word “pivot” was interesting, as it recalled a key concept of one of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s long-dead mentors in geopolitics, the Edwardian geographer Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). In his Grand Chessboard book, Brzezinski referred to Mackinder and his concept and appeared to downplay it, claiming that “geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Asian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy”. But in fact, Brzezinski’s entire book contradicts this claim; his own concerns bear out the ongoing focus in Anglo-American strategic thinking on Mackinder’s original insights. In 1904, the year of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (another British proxy war against Russia), Mackinder, a protégé of Lord Milner and Director of the London School of Economics, had produced a text that soon became famous, The Geographical Pivot of History, in which he advanced his ‘heartland’ or ‘pivot’ theory. A vast area east of the Urals, including most of Siberia and Central Asia extending southward to the Himalayas and China, was the key to world power, Mackinder said, because of its enormous material resources, its water sources and the energies of the many populations that lived in the region and had emerged from it or crossed it over the centuries. Any state that owned this huge territory and could build a network of railways across it would be a land power impregnable to attack from sea powers such as Britain and America, and if it was able to ally with a major coastal power such as China, Japan or Germany, it would have the human and material wherewithal to build a great fleet that could challenge the sea powers for the hegemony of the world.

Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road project is Mackinder’s nightmare come true. To gain access to this pivot or heartland region, Mackinder said, control of eastern Europe was crucial. Today, that means Ukraine, and it is why Ukraine is such an important chess piece on Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard. A Ukraine that is firmly part of the West, integrated into the EU and NATO, which he expected would happen sometime between 2005-2015 would a) make it impossible for Russia to continue as an ‘empire’,  b) encourage Russia to orient, or rather ‘occident’ itself towards the West and c) enable the USA to project power via France, Germany and his ancestral Polish homeland into Ukraine  – much of which used to belong to the Polish aristocracy, to which his own forebears had belonged -  and beyond to central Asia and the ‘pivot’ region. Given that between 2001 and 2021, the USA was gradually pushed out of the several bases it had established in Central Asia for the first time in its history following its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Ukraine became an even more crucial chess piece for the western penetration of Central Asia. Following the outbreak of conflict in the Donbass and the Crimea in 2014 after the Maidan coup, the US began to supply Ukraine with military equipment and training to the tune of US$2.5 billion (2014-Feb.2022), US$400 million of which was in 2021 alone, and since Feb. 2022 it has provided Ukraine with US$5.6 billion in “security assistance”.(27)  “On 28 April 2022, US President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to assist Ukraine, including $20 billion to provide weapons to Ukraine. On 21 May 2022, the United States passed legislation providing $40 billion in new military and humanitarian foreign aid to Ukraine, marking a historically large commitment of funds.”(28) This contrasts with US$40-50 billion a year spent on average between 2011 and 2020 on total US foreign aid per annum, and gives a clue as to how important the US elite consider Ukraine and the current conflict to be. Such figures suggest that the USA is indeed fighting a proxy hot war against Russia, a war in which Ukrainian troops are dying instead of Americans, all in order to achieve Brzezinski’s goal of a Ukraine in the EU and NATO and thus with NATO bases in northern Ukraine and NATO missiles only a few minutes’ flying time (300 miles) from Moscow.

In 1919, Mackinder extended his heartland region eastwards into northern China and westwards to central Europe so that it included all of European Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland and eastern Germany. In fact, his new western boundary line for the pivot region corresponded almost exactly with the Cold War borders of Germany 30 years later. Let us remind ourselves that for Mackinder, the nightmare scenario was if Russia, the impregnable land power, with its huge labour force and its vast material resources, would ally itself with a vigorous, disciplined, intelligent people like the Germans or the Japanese. If that happened, those allies together might be able to create a fleet that could defeat Anglo-American naval power.

Mackinder’s nightmare – the nightmare of the Anglo-American elites – cropped up again in 2015 in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs by the very well-connected geostrategist, Hungarian-American George Friedman, who was then head of the foreign affairs consultancy firm Stratfor. In answer to a question as to whether ISIS was an existential threat to the USA, he replied:

 “The primordial interest of the United States, over which, for a century, we have fought wars   – the First, Second, and Cold War – has been the relationship between Germany and Russia,  because united, they are the only force that could threaten us, and to make sure that that doesn’t happen.”(29)

 A remarkable statement that no British or American politician had made in public before this, it sheds tremendous light on the history of the past 120 years, because it helps explain why the Cold War was the sham that Brzezinski had revealed it to be 23 years earlier. In other words, the purpose of dividing Europe and the world, ‘containing’ Russia without fighting her directly, was not to defeat Communism or even Russia or China, but rather, to keep the energies of Germany and Japan under control, well integrated into the post-war Anglo-American capitalist system, and prevent them from getting close to Russia and China economically or politically. This was exactly what Mackinder had recommended 111 years earlier, in 1904, and was the line that British and American foreign policy had followed with such brilliant success since 1904. The British Entente with France in 1904 led to the Entente with Russia in 1907; the Entente with Russia led to the First World War seven years later in which Russia fought against Germany. From the First World War came the Bolshevik Revolution, Fascism and Nazism, and also the Second World War, in which again Germany and Russia fought each other; the Second World War led to the Cold War and the global bipolar order – the division of the world which isolated the USSR and Communist China from the capitalist system and therefore ensured American economic dominance of the world for 45 years. It also provided the elites of the West with models of authoritarian surveillance and control which could prove useful in the future.

 Chessmasters?

 But those elites, Rudolf Steiner frequently said, were farsighted and possessed occult knowledge of how history works and of the understanding of national characteristics that could be manipulated by those elites. So after exactly 72 years, 200 years on from the French Revolution, the Soviet Marxist experiment in Russia was forcibly terminated by the powers of the West who had begun to prepare the termination in 1972/1973 when the Rockefellers’ Trilateral Commission was founded and the World Economic Forum was established, when the petrodollar era began, when Middle Eastern terrorism took off, and when Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller all visited Communist China. In those years too, the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations in New York, steered for decades by David Rockefeller, set up “The 1980s Project”, one of the key aims of which was to deconstruct the Soviet Union. Rockefeller made sure his protégé Brzezinski became National Security Adviser in President Jimmy Carter’s government, which featured a number of other Trilateral Commission members. The Polish-American Brzezinski just happened to be in post when Pope John Paul I strangely died after only 33 days in office and was replaced by the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, who was soon making connections with the rebellious Polish trade union movement, Solidarnosc. During Brzezinski’s time in office, the Shah was toppled in the Iranian Revolution and replaced with the radical cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, and with the aid of the Muslim world, both Shia and Sunni united in opposition to the atheist communists in Kabul, Brzezinski was able to succeed in ‘giving Russia its own Vietnam’ experience in Afghanistan, as he himself put it.

Caught between, on the one hand, the challenges provoked throughout the Warsaw Pact bloc by the rebellious Poles of Solidarnosc, who were aided by an ‘unholy alliance’ between the Vatican and the Reagan White House(30),  and on the other hand, by a war against the turbulent Afghan mujahideen which dragged on for 10 years, and also rocked by economic pressures on its ramshackle economy trying to compete with the Star Wars missile programme of the USA, the Soviet Union began to implode: the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine in 1986 was a mighty symptom of the looming collapse, then came the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet satellite states 33 years ago in 1989, exactly 200 years after the French Revolution. Two years later, on Christmas Day, the USSR disappeared from history. To the elites of the West, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR was not the great ‘surprise’ that the western mainstream media made out to western publics that it was. This latest upheaval in Russian history had been planned in the West since the early 1970s. Reagan and Thatcher made sure that the threat of ‘socialism’ to the western elites, a threat identified over a century earlier, was effectively buried; in the 1980s trade unionism was emasculated, and the enthusiasms of the 1970s for political socialism waned. The ‘experiment’ to divert the dangers of Marxist socialism away from the West to Russia(31) and the East had ‘succeeded’ and could therefore be terminated; meanwhile, the capitalist ‘experiment’ in Marxist China was about to take off…

In the 1990s there were those in globalist circles in the West who were hopeful that Russia and China could both be integrated into the global capitalist system of the new One World Order and brought under western control. Brzezinski too, appeared to hope that Russia would accept the ‘one alternative’ he prescribed for it in The Grand Chessboard, but it is unlikely that he was sincere in doing so; his great antipathy for Russia leaches out between his sentences in that book and in his subsequent statements over the years. Meanwhile, paranoid Russophobic suspicions remained in conservative western circles; the NATO military alliance, with its dangerous and irresponsible Article 5 in the North Atlantic Treaty (“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…”) was not disbanded, as its communist Cold War counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, had been. NATO’s first Secretary-General, Lord Ismay, had said that NATO had been founded “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. Those have evidently remained the priorities of the western elites until today; they still want to keep the Germans and the Russians apart, the Russians out of Europe and the Americans very much in. With the death of Stalin in 1953, the USSR applied in the following year to join NATO; Ismay opposed the application, comparing Russia to “an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force.” He felt that NATO “must grow until the whole free world gets under one umbrella.” After the end of the (first) Cold War, throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, NATO steadily advanced up to the very borders of Russia despite well-known verbal assurances given to the Russians by western leaders in the early 1990s that this would not happen.  After Vladimir Putin refused to cooperate with or approve of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the western media as a whole turned against him (the more conservative media, ever suspicious of Russia, had always been hostile), and he has been added to the list of western media bogeyman – after Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevich, Osama bin Laden, Muammar al-Gadaffi, Bashar al-Assad, and Donald Trump, the dragons that the English-speaking St. George feels obliged to conquer. But in this latest case, of Russia and Vladimir Putin, the western media and the western elites have perhaps overlooked or else think it of no importance that on the standard of the president of Russia is a double-headed eagle that adorns the tricolour Russian flag and on that eagle’s breast is an image of…..St George conquering the dragon.

The second part of this article (http://threeman.org/?p=3097) will diagnose further deep-rooted aspects of the Anglo-Russian antagonism before attempting to outline a ‘cure’ for this particular social and cultural ‘illness’.

NOTES

1. Lecture of 14.12.1919, in Rudolf Steiner, Collected Works GA 194.

2. For example, the individualistic,  proto-Protestant impulse at the beginning of the modern epoch began in England with John Wycliffe (c.1331-1384) and his followers, the Lollards, but it did not develop into a major social and communal movement in England and was rather easily suppressed by King Henry V (1413-1422) but it spread from England via Queen Anne, the Bohemian wife of the English king, Richard II (1377-1399), to Bohemia where, among the western Slavs, it became a powerful communal force in the Hussite movement (followers of the martyr Jan Hus 1372-1415), that could not be suppressed either by the Vatican or by the Holy Roman Empire and resisted five papal crusades over a period of 14 years (1420-1434).

3. Andreas Bracher (ed.), Kampf um den russischen Kulturkeim (2014) untranslated. The translation in the article above was made by the author.

4. Just two American companies, BlackRock, Inc. and the Vanguard Group, Inc., which are worth at least $US20 trillion, own the commanding heights of the Anglosphere economy:
See:https://www.conservativebusinessjournal.com/2021/11/blackrock-and-vanguard-the-two-headed-thing-that-ate-america/  and https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/who-owns-world-blackrock-and-vanguard

5. Markus Osterrieder, Welt im Umbruch (2014), p. 1224.

6. Osterrieder, loc. cit.

7. For example, the “Defense Planning Guidance of 1992” document by Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy and his assistant, Scooter Libby. This was known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

8. Osterrieder, ibid., pp. 1224-1225.

9. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 928.

10. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 1358.

11. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 1359.

12. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 1361.

13. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 1382, n. 3620. Typed note by Jürgen von Grone, Bundesarchiv Koblenz BAK/NS 15-302, in: Zur Geschichte der anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Dokumente und Briefe. Vol. IV. Ed., Arfst Wagner. Rendsburg 1992, p. 116.)

14. 1938 – Munich Crisis; 1939 – Poland ; 1968 – Prague Spring.

15. Osterrieder, ibid., pp. 1310-1311.

16. See A. Cook, To Kill Rasputin (2005) pp. 215-221.

17. Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974) pp. 21-34; J. MacGregor and G. Docherty, Prolonging The Agony (2017) pp. 453-475;  Osterrieder, ibid., pp. 1316-1318.

18. Osterrieder, ibid., p. 1341.

19. Osterrieder. ibid., pp. 1360-1363; Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974) pp.121-181.

20. Carolyn Eisenberg, Drawing the Line  – The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-1949 (1996) p.493.

21. Osterrieder, ibid., pp. 1442-1451.

22. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 71 No. 4, pp. 31, 37.

23. Ibid. p. 33.

24. The Economist, 26.12.1992-8.1.1993 end of year issue. Article: ‘The Twenty-first Century: A View from AD 2992’. See T. M. Boardman, Mapping the Millennium – Behind the Plans of the New World Order (2nd ed. 2013), pp.104-160.

25. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1997), p. 118.

26.Ibid.,p.122.

27.https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040.

28.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Future_military_aid

29. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeLu_yyz3tc Watch from 53:50.

30. TIME magazine 24.2.1992 : ‘The Holy Alliance: Ronald Reagan and John Paul II’

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,974931-1,00.html

31. See my article ‘2022 – War in Ukraine’ in the quarterly New View magazine Issue 103 April-June 2022, p. 86. Also, C.G. Harrison, The Transcendental Universe (1893, republ. 1993) lecture 2, pp. 98-99.

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 Pluto (lower aspect: annihilation; higher aspects: spiritual intuition and resurrection) in the (Tropical) sign of Capricorn (the sign of government and authority, amongst other things).  By 27 February, Mars and Venus had conjoined with Pluto, and the Ukrainian airforce had already largely been destroyed. On that same day, Mercury was conjunct Saturn, and the Sun was conjunct Jupiter and Neptune:  a significant group of positions for 8 planets! By the 6 March, Mars and Venus, still together, had moved out of Capricorn into Aquarius and away from Pluto; by 9 March, the Mars-Pluto conjunction effect was definitely over. In the following days, Russian military momentum began to slow. But by mid-March, Venus had pulled away from Mars (both still in Aquarius), while Mars began to approach a stressful square relationship (90°) to Uranus (lower aspect: dramatic, even revolutionary shock; higher aspect: spiritual illumination) in Taurus. This stressful square became exact on 22 March; around this time President Biden began claiming – without offering evidence – that Russia might soon start using chemical weapons, which would mean a major escalation. On 26 March at the end of a speech in Poland, President Biden blurted out “For God’s sake, this man [Putin] must not remain in power”, which many took to mean an intention to force regime change in Russia; the US authorities quickly moved to assure the world that Biden had not meant that. At the time of writing, Mars and Venus have reached conjunction with Saturn (in Aquarius), the limiting, disciplining energies of which might be expected to restrain Mars’ aggression, and negotiations in Istanbul between representatives of the combatants appeared to yield some hope for an agreement. Western media have been much given to (over-optimistic?) reporting that the Russian campaign has stalled due to the Russians’ own errors and unexpectedly stiff and brave Ukrainian resistance, and certainly, the Russian armed forces lack recent experience; they have not fought a war on this scale since 1945.(1) In the first week of April, the Mars-Saturn conjunction will be exact, and then by the middle of April, Mars will have moved away from Saturn and into the sign of Pisces, a ‘watery’ sign in which Mars is not normally ‘comfortable’. The end of the Mars-Uranus square by late March, the Mars-Saturn conjunction in early April, and the Mars entry into Pisces (mid-April) may be indications that the fighting will stop and peace may be achieved. However, those who do not want peace may well be aware of those heavenly energies and may strive to oppose them, perhaps by sensationalist fake news stories, in order to keep the war going as long as possible in their own interests. [This happened: the fake Russian massacre in Bucha stories were concocted in the first week of April - TB] The longer the war goes on, the worse the economic consequences will be, not just for Russia and Ukraine but for all of us – given the scale of the West’s sanctions against Russia, Russian countermeasures, and the importance of Russian and Ukrainian raw materials, including food and fertiliser, in the world economy (Russia will very likely insist on payment for Russian energy in roubles or gold), and there may be a spread of military actions beyond Ukraine and even the danger of a nuclear strike by Russia or NATO.

To judge by the coverage of the Ukraine war in the western mainstream media (MSM) and by the statements of western politicians, who have responded to this conflict with the same kneejerk uniform collective reaction that they showed during the Covid crisis, one might think Vladimir Putin woke up one morning sometime between December and February and thought to himself, out of the blue: “I’ll launch an invasion of Ukraine, because the Ukrainian state doesn’t and shouldn’t really exist and is actually part of Russia and I want to reconstruct the USSR. Oh, and also, Ukraine is full of Nazis who have been mistreating the Russians in the Donbass region.” All of this, say the MSM, is sheer fantasy, and a sign that ‘Putin has lost his mind, an unstable autocrat who is a serious danger to the “rules-based world order” like Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi, Assad and of course….Hitler. He, like them, must therefore be ousted, preferably by his own people, whose lives we shall now make miserable by our sanctions against Russia, so that they will overthrow him, which we cannot do because we are afraid that might cause a nuclear war. In the meantime, we shall go on increasing NATO forces on Russia’s other borders to which we have steadily advanced since 1991 and we shall continue to send lethal weapons to Ukraine so that they can fight for their country (and for us) until the last Ukrainian, or Putin, is dead.’ If this sounds cynical, let us recall how many millions of young men the aging politicians of Europe were prepared to send to their deaths in the horrors of the First World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, or let us recall the words of America’s first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who as US Ambassador to the UN (!), declared on the prestigious US TV show 60 Minutes in 1996 that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US sanctions on Iraq was “a price worth paying”.

Countless people in the West have swallowed this MSM version of Putin and the war in Ukraine just as they swallowed the government and MSM line on Covid for the past two years. Or else, if they are anti-Establishment and deride the MSM, they are influenced by social media and alternative websites to believe that ‘Putin, Zelensky, Biden, Xi Jinping and Klaus Schwab are all in it together, as they were with Covid’ and that this Ukraine war is, like Covid, just another step on the path to Schwab’s nightmarish “Great Reset” – the remaking of society worldwide into a totalitarian technocracy ruled over by billionaire globalist elites.

But neither of these two views does justice to the current situation. This war did not just begin this year, nor is it even really a war between Russia and Ukraine, however much it may seem so. It is but the latest phase in a struggle that began 200 years ago when, in the years after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the British elite first really began to identify Russia as their main enemy that could take India  – and thus their world power and much of their wealth – away from them.(2) The deeper roots go back much further even than that – back beyond British involvement in the assassination of Czar Paul I in 1801….beyond British advisors at the court of Peter the Great a century earlier….beyond James I’s planned expedition to land troops in the frozen wastes of northern Russia in 1613 at a time when both England was beginning to expand across the world’s oceans and Russia was expanding across the solid ‘ocean’ of Siberia, eventually to confront each other in Central Asia and North America over 200 years later….back beyond Ivan the Terrible’s rude letter requesting the hand of Queen Elizabeth I in marriage in 1570….back beyond the Anglo-saxon exiles who settled in the Crimea after the defeat at Hastings in 1066….back to the distant 9th century, when Danish pagan Vikings from Scandinavia began the effort (which ended in 1066) to conquer and settle in England and other pagan Vikings from Sweden also accepted the invitation to become the rulers of the pagan Slavs who lived in northern Russia. It was from pagan Scandinavia that the rulers of the English (Vikings and Normans) and of the Russians (Ruotsi  – old Finnish for ‘rowers’) both came, rowing in their longships. Once established, they both ruled over peoples of a different, though not vastly different, stock from themselves: Anglo-Saxons and Celts, and Slavic tribes.

Ukraine 2022 and 1914-18: bullies and underdogs

Today, all eyes are currently on “brave Ukraine”, as in 1914 they were on what the western MSM called “plucky little Serbia” and “gallant little Belgium”, who were cast as fighting for their lives like David against the imperial Goliaths of Austria-Hungary and Germany respectively, or in September 1939 when “brave Poland” was invaded by the military machines first of Hitlerian Germany and then the Soviet Union 17 days later. The British like to side with the ‘underdog’ and against the ‘bully’. But the fighting in Ukraine, which actually began in 2014, is but a symptom of a much larger, world-spanning conflict that has already lasted, and may well yet last, for centuries. Who is actually the underdog, and who the bully? Do they even exist?

As with so much else in the past century, we can relate the pain of Russia and Ukraine today to the events of that crucible of cruelty, the First World War – when Ukraine as an independent state almost emerged but was soon suppressed by the Bolshevik International Socialists, who also suppressed the Russians themselves  – for 70 years. When the fighting in the First World War began, on 28 July 1914, the real antagonists  – Britain, France and Russia – did not enter the fray for several days, and when they did, it was apparently on the same side!

How did the fighting in the First World War actually begin? With Austro-Hungarian shelling of Belgrade on 28 July 1914, following Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia on 23 July. There had been a month of tension between the rather ramshackle Central European empire and the small, pugnacious and prickly Balkan state after the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife on 28 June by a Bosnian Serb nationalist student who was part of a group that had plotted and trained for the deed in Belgrade. The Austro-Hungarians regarded Serbia as a terrorist state that had committed a number of murders and attacks on Austro-Hungarian officials over the years which had increased in the period before 1914, as well the brutal murders of the King of Serbia and his wife in 1903. And indeed, until days before the assassination itself, the murder gang had been aided with weapons and training by the proto-masonic secret society Unification or Death (aka the Black Hand) which was headed by Col. Dragutin Dmitrijevic, the commander of Serbian military intelligence; he had been involved in the killing of the Serbian royal couple in 1903. The Austro-Hungarians also suspected that behind Serbian nationalist aggression against the empire was Russian, British, and French encouragement and support, including weapons supplies. The guns used for the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince were later sourced to Belgium, a country very much under the British wing, and the Serbian officer who had taken them to Serbia had Freemasonic connections with Belgian lodges. The Austro-Hungarians attacked Serbia pre-emptively, expecting that Serbia would soon be the battering ram for the destruction of their empire. The Russians had planned to attack Germany pre-emptively, because Germany’s ally Turkey was about to receive brand new battleships from Britain that could defeat the Russian Black Sea fleet, and the Russians’ main war aim was to take back Istanbul (Constantinople) for the Orthodox faith.(3) Germany too declared war on Russia pre-emptively, thinking that if they did not, then by 1917, Russia would be strong enough to overwhelm them. Germany also declared war on Russia’s ally France pre-emptively, assuming that France would join the war in support of its Russian ally, which France certainly intended to do. The British declared war on Germany pre-emptively, thinking that Germany’s economy would outstrip Britain’s within a few years, even though the Germans had effectively given up the naval race of battleship-building two years earlier. Fear of the future was therefore what drove many of the combatants, just as it has driven Vladimir Putin, who sees Ukraine much as Austria-Hungary regarded Serbia – as a spear that had been aimed at Russia (and Austria-Hungary) for at least two decades by forces in the West.

In lectures in late 1916 Rudolf Steiner pointed out that a “Slav Welfare Committee” organisation “under the protection of the Russian government” had in fact been found to have been sending weapons under cover as far back as the mid-1880s to stir up trouble for the pro-Austro-Hungarian Obrenovich dynasty in Serbia.(4) It was King Alexander Obrenovich and his wife who were murdered in 1903 by Col. Dmitrijevic and his fellow conspirators and replaced by King Peter Karageorgevic, who was more inclined to favour Russia, France and Britain. In 1914, the Triple Entente alliance (Russia, France and Britain) used Serbian nationalism as an instrument to bring about “regime change” in Austria-Hungary and Germany, through the means of a general European war. The British and Americans furthermore, used this same war to force regime change in their ‘ally’, Russia, first by replacing the Czarist regime with a provisional republican government, and then by facilitating the journey of Communist agitator Leon Trotsky to Russia in 1917(5) (via New York and Canada), and by supporting the Bolshevik revolutionaries after their coup in Nov. 1917 and in subsequent years with considerable financial investments in Bolshevik Russia.(6) The so-called “German threat” was but the excuse to get Russia involved in a major war that would lead to the overthrow of the Czarist state.

                                                   Historical Map of Ukraine showing how territories were added to produce today’s state: 1654 -2013

And here we gain an important clue to what the current Ukraine war is all about. To understand why this war is about something far larger than just a war between Russia and Ukraine, we have to make something of a detour back to the circumstances of the First World War, the war from which Ukraine almost emerged for the first time as an independent state in 1918-21. “Brave Serbia”, the ally of Britain, France and Russia in 1914 which was much lauded in the western Press during the 1914-1918 war, had lost a quarter (850,000) of its pre-war population by the end of the war, but that was of little consequence to the Allied elites, who by 1918 had achieved their aims as a result of having stirred up and manipulated Serbian nationalism to become the spark that lit the powder keg: by the winter of 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was no more and its Emperor an exile (the German, Russian and Ottoman empires had also gone under). The western Allies’ ‘reward’ for Serbia was the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (under Serbian leadership) out of the ruins of Serbia and of the Habsburg empire of Austria-Hungary. The break-up of the Habsburg empire was embraced as a war aim during the war by the Allies, notably Britain. Today, Ukraine is being used, just as Serbia was from the 1880s until 1918, and the target this time, taking the place of Austria-Hungary, is another large multi-ethnic state – Russia, which elite forces in the West have long wanted to break up in order to exploit its natural resources.(7) Rudolf Steiner indicated(8) that the war of 1914-18 was not only fought between Britain, France and Russia against Germany; that was the appearance on the physical plane. In the spiritual world it was fought by British and French souls against Russians, due to fundamental differences in attitudes to life and death between western and eastern peoples. Furthermore, he insisted that the key to the future lay in good relations between the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, between German-speaking culture and Slavic cultures, especially the Russians, while the elites of the West sought to prevent this from happening so that the English-speaking peoples could manipulate the destiny of the Slavic peoples into the future.(9)

Western Goals

It is known that, at least as far back as the early 1890s, esoteric circles in Britain were envisaging a great European war that would come about through Slavic nationalism and impulses of Slavic ‘brotherhood’ and would result in a socialist (Marxist) revolution in Russia and “enable experiments in Socialism, political and economical” to be carried out which would destroy the Russian Empire and realise “the dreams of the Pan-Slavists” whose Slavic race was now “beginning to live its own intellectual life” and was “no longer in its period of infancy”. This was spoken of in a lecture by the ‘High Church’ esotericist, Charles George Harrison (1855-1929), in London in 1893(10) as an example of the first two of the ‘three great axioms’ which Harrison claimed were “the foundation of occult science”:

“1. Seven is the Perfect Number

 2. The Microcosm is a Copy of the Macrocosm

 3. All Phenomena have their Origin in Vortices.”

The goal here for the leaders of the Anglo-saxon cultures, who saw themselves as the rulers of the dominant culture in the world in this modern era (since the 16th century), was, according to Harrison, to ensure that English-speaking culture would be the ‘tutor’ and ‘protector’ of the ‘young’ Slavic cultures, so that in the future, the values of Anglo-saxon culture would also be those of the Slavic cultures, and notably the largest of them – the Russian culture.

Harrison spoke approvingly of, and was allied to, the Lux Mundi movement within the Church of England, a movement that emerged in 1889 and sought to unite the High Church wing of the Church of England with the latest developments in natural science and biblical criticism. An elite family that had regarded itself as faithful members of the High Church since the days of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was that of the Gascoyne-Cecils, who had provided Queen Elizabeth and her successor King James I (1603-1625) with their Secretaries of State, the most powerful bureaucrats in the land, and performed the same function for both Queen Victoria (1837-1901), whose Prime Minister three times was the 3rd Marquis of Salisbury Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (aka Lord Salisbury), and for her son, King Edward VII (1901-1910), one of whose Prime Minister was for three years (1902-1905) Lord Salisbury’s nephew, Arthur Balfour.

These latter-day Cecils, uncle Robert and nephew Arthur, very different in character but amateur experimental scientists both, carried through a remarkable diplomatic revolution in British foreign policy over a period of 20 years (1887-1907) in deliberately turning Britain’s two former arch-enemies, France and Russia, into her allies, and her two former most friendly countries, Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary, into her enemies.

What was the purpose of this? It was threefold: to ‘bring to heel’ through a great war both Germany and Russia. Germany was Britain’s rising rival in the modern era; the war would reduce Germany’s economic power and its growing navy, and Russia was the potential rival to the British Empire in the more distant future; the Russian Slavs were to be tamed through the carrying out of those “experiments in Socialism [Marxism], political and economic”, of which Harrison had spoken in 1893. Amongst other things, these would reduce the growing economic potential of Russia and expose it to exploitation by Anglo-American capitalism. The third aim was that  a great war against Germany would serve to bind together the English-speaking Dominions of the Empire more tightly, and the constant threat of a “Red menace” in the decades after the war would frighten the elites in the Dominions and in the United States of America into remaining closely allied to Britain.(11)

Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), arguably more farsighted than his uncle, realised that in the 20th century, British global power could only be maintained in alliance with that other rising power, the USA. This view he shared with the mining magnate and arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), for whom the loss of the American colonies in the American War of Independence had been an unmitigated disaster. In 1891, Rhodes founded a secret society (The Society of the Elect, nominally modelled on the Jesuit Order), dedicated to maintain and expand British world domination and reunite Britain and the USA.(12) To this end, he founded the Rhodes Scholarships, which were centred on what he regarded as the ‘spiritual home’ of the British Empire – Oxford University, notably its Balliol and All Souls Colleges. His successor, Lord Alfred Milner (1854-1925), took Rhodes’ project a major stage further in establishing the Round Table group (aka the Milner Group) in 1909. This group performed effective work in binding together the elites of the Dominions before and during the Great War, in bringing about the (Royal) Institute of International Relations (aka Chatham House) and the Council on Foreign Relations in the USA (1921), the two premier foreign policy thinktanks of the English-speaking world and thus in laying the foundations of what is today referred to as the alliance of “The Five Eyes”, the five English-speaking countries (USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). Thus, although not yet fully realised, the dreams and goals of Rhodes, Milner, Balfour and the men of the Milner Group have been maintained for over 130 years.(13)

In order to secure their goals, it was essential, thought the Cecils and Milner, that any alliance or cooperation between Germany and Russia had to be prevented at all costs, for such an alliance could endanger Britain’s world dominance. This idea was most comprehensively first put forward during the premiership of Arthur Balfour in 1904 by Halford Mackinder, imperial geographer, co-founder (in 1895) and Director (1903-1908) of the London School of Economics. Mackinder’s main idea was that the key to world power was the region he called ‘the Heartland’, the vast region bounded by the Ural mountains in the West, the Himalayas to the South and the mountains of eastern Siberia in the East. This region, then and now so rich in material resources and human populations, could, said Mackinder, if spanned by a comprehensive rail network – (such as China is building across Eurasia today!) – pose an effective challenge to Anglo-American global naval power, as troops and resources could easily be transported to wherever Russia’s enemies sought to put pressure on the country. Furthermore, an alliance between Russia, which controlled almost all of the Heartland, and a more energetic culture such as Germany or Japan, might also be able to bring about the construction of a naval fleet that could defeat the Royal Navy, thus ending the Age of the British Empire.

That this must not be allowed to happen was the fixed intention of those steering the ship of British foreign policy. During Balfour’s premiership, they therefore brought about Britain’s first formal alliance, with Japan in 1902, and just two years later, a war between Russia and Japan, in which Japan was supplied and part financed by Britain (and especially by US banks). The Russo-Japanese War (1904-05, in which the Japanese acted, in effect, as Britain’s mercenaries) blocked Russia’s advance in East Asia, weakened the Czarist regime considerably and laid the basis for the revolutionary upheavals of 1917.  A month after that war began, Mackinder gave the lecture that marked the founding of Anglo-American geopolitics. It was the lecture and article titled “The Geographical Pivot of History” for the Royal Geographical Society and it put forward Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. In 1919, in his book Democratic Ideals and Reality (p. 150), Mackinder summarised his key geopolitical insight in a pithy three-line epithet:

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; [i.e. Eurasia]

who rules the World Island commands the world.

This epithet is a major key to understanding events in the Ukraine today, in the age of China’s Belt and Road transport infrastructure that has been gradually extended since 2013 across Eurasia and into Europe. Mackinder saw that rail networks could both facilitate Russian advances within and beyond Siberia and Central Asia and also facilitate attacks on Russia from its periphery.

Ukraine on The Grand Chessboard

Anglo-American geopoliticians since Mackinder, most notably the Polish-American Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017, National Security Adviser 1977-1981 under President Jimmy Carter) in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard – American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, followed Mackinder’s indications and identified the great importance of Ukraine as the eastern European springboard from which to project power against Russia, and beyond into central Asia. As Brzezinski put it in the book that is one of the most significant texts for understanding the present crisis, “America’s central geostrategic goal in Europe can be summed up quite simply: it is to consolidate through a more genuine transatlantic partnership the US bridgehead on the Eurasian continent so that an enlarging Europe can become a more viable springboard for projecting into Eurasia the international democratic and cooperative order.”(14) We have seen in the wars fought by the US and its allies and proxies in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and now Ukraine the consequences of this ‘projection’ “into Eurasia [of] the international democratic and cooperative order”!  Because America, through its actions in the 20 year (!) Afghan war, ultimately failed, despite much effort, to establish any permanent military presence in the post-Soviet states in Central Asia, and because India has long maintained good relations with Russia and continues to do so, Ukraine became all the more important to the US as the potential ‘springboard’ into Eurasia: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland….” Ukraine certainly occupied much of Brzezinski’s attention in his Grand Chessboard book.(15) It was a crucial ‘chess piece’ for him, and events since 2004 (the Orange revolution) and 2014 (the Maidan coup) have shown that it remains so for the US foreign policy elite today, so much so that the US has shown itself prepared to restart the Cold War in a major way, after Russia’s pre-emptive attack on Ukraine in February this year, although Russia took no similar action with regard to US aggression in the Balkans in the 1990s, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. Only in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, did Vladimir Putin’s tone towards the USA begin to become more confrontational.

Brzezinski (pic. left) wrote in his 1997 book that sometime between 2005 and 2015 “Ukraine….should become ready for serious negotiations with both the EU and NATO.”(16) It was clear to the Russians that the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Kiev in 2004, in which an election result in favour of President Yanukovych was reversed in favour of the US choice, Viktor Yushchenko, signalled American interference. For Brzezinski, Ukraine was crucial to determining which way Russia would go: “The loss of Ukraine was geopolitically pivotal….[and] geopolitically catalytic” (p. 92) “for it drastically limited Russia’s geostrategic options.”(17) The Grand Chessboard, by this scion of a Polish Catholic aristocratic family, is full of a barely suppressed contempt and antipathy for Russia. In the Chapter titled ‘The Black Hole’ (i.e. Eurasia) and the subsection ‘The Dilemma of the One Alternative’, Brzezinski insists that Russia has only one geopolitical alternative: to become part, along with a separate Ukrainian state, of a “transatlantic Europe” in the structures of the EU and NATO: “That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate, if it is to avoid dangerous geopolitical isolation”.(18) “No Russian Ataturk is now in sight”, wrote Brzezinski in 1997(19), failing to spot one Vladimir Putin.

But Brzezinski was disingenuous in holding out the carrots of EU and NATO membership to Russia; they were carrots which the West was never actually prepared to proffer: “And if Russia consolidates its internal democratic institutions and makes tangible progress in free-market-based economic development, its ever closer association with NATO and the EU should not be ruled out.”(20) “Ever closer association” with the EU is not membership, as Turkey, waiting for many decades despite being a member of NATO since 1952, has been forced to experience, and in 2000, US President Clinton responded to Russian President Putin’s suggestion that Russia might join NATO by declining with the words “you’re too big”. In any case, in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine in autumn 1997,(21) Brzezinski proposed that in the 21st century, Russia’s future should be as merely a loose confederation consisting of three states: European Russia, Siberia and a Far Eastern Republic; these states, he claimed, “would find it easier to cultivate closer economic ties with their neighbours”. His geostrategic allies at The Economist had already forecast in late 1992 that China and a mysterious “Muslim entity” would be likely, sometime before 2050, to pounce from the south and east and seize Siberia and any such ‘Far Eastern Republic’. Russia’s refusal to accommodate western, transatlanticist wishes, Brzezinski wrote, “would be tantamount to the rejection of Europe in favour of a solitary Eurasian identity and existence”: “the defining moment for Russia’s relationship to Europe [that is, a US-controlled Europe! – TB] is still some time off [that was 1997; in 2022, the ‘moment’ appears to have arrived – TB] – ‘defining’ in the sense that Ukraine’s choice in favour of Europe will bring to a head Russia’s decision regarding the next phase of its [Russia’s] history: either to be a part of Europe as well or to become a Eurasian outcast, neither truly of Europe nor Asia and mired in its [US-UK-fostered] ‘near aboard’ conflicts”….for Russia the dilemma of the one alternative is no longer a matter of making a geopolitical choice but of facing up to the imperatives of survival.”(22)

Brzezinski’s American rival in geopolitics but ally in American imperialism, geopolitician Samuel P. Huntington (see pic, below left), the author of the controversial book, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), another American who was close to The Economist, saw little hope of agreement with post-Soviet Russia and wrote that:

“The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major differences, ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality, and prosperity. [!!!] A traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia could have quite different goals. A western democrat could carry on an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be virtually impossible for him to do that with a Russian traditionalist. If, as the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal democracy and start behaving like Russians but not like westerners, the relations between Russia and the West could again become distant and conflictual.”(23) [emphasis TB]

When it had suited them of course, the British elite had been very content to have a “traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia” as their ally during the First World War just as they were very content to have “Soviet Marxist” Russia as their ally in the Second World War, although it is true that the first period of allyship lasted only 10 years (1907-1917) and the second only 5 years (1941-1946).(24)

For Brzezinski, there was no sense in which Russia could be a ‘bridge culture’ between East and West; it either had to be in the US-controlled ‘transatlanticist Europe’, as he called it – and by ‘Russia’, he meant essentially European Russia west of the Urals – or it had to be in Asia i.e., with China. The goal set out by Brzezinski and The Economist’s Brian Beedham in the 1990s  – of forcing Russia away from Europe, and towards China, and using Ukraine to do so, with the eventual aim of getting China to attack Russia and amputate much of it, has been a long-term aim of western geostrategy for about three decades now. The appearance on the scene of Xi Jinping and his pan-Eurasian “Belt and Road” plans (2013) might seem to go against this goal, because Russia and China are closer today than they’ve ever been, but we should recall that something like this situation has occurred before – when Britain chose to make its 100 year old enemy (Russia) into its ally – in order to destroy it in a war. By pushing Russia and China together, as they have done since 2004, the western elites can set up yet another global dualism – a struggle between what they like to call ‘democracy vs autocracy’, the ‘liberal, rules-based order’ vs the ‘system of anarchy and barbarism’.

Unless the Taiwan issue causes a major war in the near future between China and the West, eventually, the western elites will seek to persuade China to betray Russia and turn on it. In the early 70s the West did something similar, when Nixon and Kissinger chose to mend fences with Communist China, which had fallen out with its former Communist ally, the USSR, even to the point of armed conflict in 1969. Today, with the current war in Ukraine, the West has begun to suggest to China that it will suffer sanctions if it remains linked to Russia. The hope here in London and Washington is that China will be ‘encouraged’ to turn against Russia, and then, as The Economist predicted in 1992, Russia might well lose its vast Siberian territories with all their precious minerals, rare earths, oil and gas, and European Russia, reduced back to the size of the Muscovy rump state of the first Czar, Ivan IV (the Terrible) in the 16th century, can then be captured by ‘transatlanticist Europe’.(25) In terms of George Orwell’s world picture in his novel 1984 of three competing power blocs and their respective allies: ‘Eurasia’ (Russia) will be overwhelmed by Eastasia (China), which will then face off against Oceania (US-UK-Europe). Just as in the two world wars of the 20th century, the middle term (Central Europe: Germany and Austria-Hungary) is destroyed, leaving the two poles of East and West to face each other in a divided world. It is this grim dualist scenario that the elites of the West are evidently seeking to bring about by undermining and destroying Russia, and since at least 2004 (the Orange Revolution) they have been preparing Ukraine as a battering ram to do it. First, they will seek to compass the destruction of Russia and then, if that is successful, and no doubt with the eventual assistance of India, Japan, S. Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the AUKUS countries,(26) they will move on China and, like Russia, aim to break it up too.(27)

For a detailed discussion of how the West has systematically sought to use Ukraine, in line with Brzezinski’s thinking, to bring down Russia, see Iain Davis’ excellent four-part article series: Ukraine War! What Is It Good For?(28) which studies the historical background, the nationalist background, the Nazi background and the globalist background, and see also the two films about Russia and Ukraine made by US film director Oliver Stone, both available online: Ukraine on Fire and Ukraine Revealed.(29)

In January this year came the failure of an attempted coup in Kazakhstan on Russia’s south Central Asian border,  which was put down with the help of troops from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, which, with Kazakhstan, are fellow members of the Eurasian Economic Union (2015) and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (1992). Perhaps we shall discover in a few years’ time that the January coup attempt was made with support from the West, another failed American attempt to open a bridgehead in ‘the Heartland’ against Russia. Certainly, in early 2019 the RAND think tank (which is financed by the Pentagon) published a plan for a series of offensives against Russia; it was titled Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground :

“We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.”

The RAND report went on to list 6 “geopolitical measures” that the US could take to weaken Russia; 4 of them have already been implemented in the last two years: 1. Provide lethal aid to Ukraine 2. Increase support to the Syrian rebels 3. Promote regime change in Belarus 4. Exploit tensions in the south Caucasus 5. Reduce Russian influence in Central Asia 6. Challenge Russian presence in Moldova.(30)

Zelensky and Arestovych

With the election of the comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky (73% of the vote, pic below) as Ukraine President in 2019, a man backed by the billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who has also funded Far Right ultranationalist groups such as Right Sector, Aidar Battalion and also, allegedly, the notorious  neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, the tense situation in Donbass and between Russia and Ukraine only got worse.(31) Zelensky had promised the electorate he would ease the situation in the Donbass, but he was soon forced to realise that the ultranationalist forces that were part of the Ukrainian armed forces and security State would not allow him to do that, and he had to back down and cooperate with them. Nor did he improve the language rights situation for Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.

One of Zelensky’s very close advisors in the Ukrainian government, Oleksiy Arestovych (see pic. below), a man who is on record as expressing (in 2019) as saying that he was ready for “havoc” in Ukraine if the eventual result would be NATO membership, was asked in 2019 if the war then going on in the Donbass would soon end if Ukraine made a formal application to join NATO, and he replied: “No, we can’t talk about….ending the war here; on the contrary, it will most likely push Russia to [launch] a large-scale military operation against Ukraine, because they’ll have to degrade us in terms of infrastructure and turn everything here into ruined territory so that NATO would be reluctant to accept us.” Interviewer: “You mean that Russia will confront NATO directly?” Arestovych: “No, not NATO. They will have to do this before we join NATO, so that NATO are not interested in us as a ruined territory. With a probability of 99.9% our price for joining NATO is a full-scale war with Russia. And if we do not join NATO, then absorption by Russia within 10-12 years. That’s the whole dilemma in which we find ourselves.” Interviewer: “If you weigh up the options, which is better in this case?” Arestovych: “Of course, a major war with Russia and a transition to NATO as a result of the victory over Russia.” Interviewer: “And what is a “major war” with Russia?” Arestovych then describes (in 2019!) almost all the major moves that have been happening in the conflict that began on 24 February 2022 and then says: “That is what a major war is [i.e. would look like] and the probability of it is 99.9%.” Interviewer: “When?” Arestovych: “After 2020, the most critical years are 2021 and 2022, then 2024-2026 and 2028-2030 will be critical. Maybe even three wars with Russia.” Interviewer: “How can Ukraine get a MAP [membership application plan] with NATO, and not get stuck in a full-scale war with Russia?” Arestovych: “No way, well, except that they [the West] will hit Russia with means that will make it clear that they are not welcome here….sanctions, embargoes….They can make it so that power in Russia will change…..Liberals can come and Russia will again be a good country [i.e. as in the Yeltsin years ! – TB]… Interviewer: Is the option of a peaceful settlement being considered? Arestovych: “No, it won’t happen.” However, Arestovych didn’t think that sanctions would be effective against Russia and pointed to their failure against Iran over 40 years. The only way forward for Ukraine, he said, was war with Russia, and after it would come the reward: NATO membership. He goes on to say: “There is no chance of neutrality in Ukraine. One way or another, we will drift into one or another supranational military alliance. Only, it will be either the “Taiga Union” [Eurasian Union] or NATO. We were in “Taiga” [the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States] and I personally don’t want to. We haven’t been in NATO [so] let’s try [it]. We will definitely not maintain neutrality. This means that the main task is to join NATO, and no social and economic sacrifices are such in the face of this task [emphasis – TB], even if the US dollar goes to 250….the price of joining NATO is likely to be a war with Russia or a sequence of such conflicts. In this conflict we will be very actively supported by the West, – with weapons, assistance, equipment, new sanctions against Russia and the quite possible introduction of a NATO contingent, a no-fly zone. We won’t lose, and that’s good.”(32)

Arestovych comes across as a thoroughly cynical and Machiavellian character who was and is prepared to see his country and people devastated in order to achieve the one goal he thinks necessary to secure its future – NATO membership – even though other goals would be possible for Ukraine, such as what has been called ‘the Finnish solution’. Finland has a very long border with Russia, as does Ukraine, and it has never been a member of NATO. As such, even though it joined the EU, it has enjoyed good, if wary, relations both with the USSR and with the Russian Federation; like Switzerland, Finland maintains a very capable armed neutrality. It has long been, even before joining the EU, a prosperous, democratic country.

But Volodymyr Zelensky and Oleksiy Arestovych have shown no sign of wanting to adopt the Finnish solution for Ukraine. The actions and numerous staged video appearances of comic actor President Zelensky outside at night in Kiev (all too obviously in front of a green screen)  and on video screens in numerous foreign parliaments have so far seemed to go along with the line advanced in Arestovych’s 2019 interview. In 2019 and still today, Arestovych has felt so confident because he knew Ukraine would have the will of western power circles behind it, and so it has turned out. The elites of the West have, on the whole, rallied behind Zelensky and Ukraine as they did behind COVID-19 lockdowns, restrictions and anti-COVID-19 injections – with almost total uniformity. And the response of the western media controlled by those same elites has been as uniform and conformist as it has been over COVID-19.

The Motive of National Survival

Vladimir Putin, for his part, seems prepared to devastate parts of eastern Ukraine (while western Ukraine – a very large region – has so far been mostly untouched by the war) in order to achieve his aims, which he sees ultimately as the survival of the Russian people and the Russian state. It is not so much the Soviet Empire that Putin wants to resurrect as the greatness of the Russian State, which he feels reflects the greatness of the Russian people, and he wants that greatness to be recognised in the world. The Russians are a great people with a great culture, but they, like the Ukrainians, have very little political, and close to zero democratic  experience: only some 30 years, since the end of the USSR.  When faced with the question of national survival, however, most countries have been prepared to flout international law. The USA, for example, did so, in 2003 in invading Iraq, which it spuriously claimed had weapons of mass destruction, and arguably, in 2001, in invading Afghanistan, where, on the basis of all-too fallible evidence, that unhappy country was invaded by the US-led NATO and subjected to 20 years of war and occupation. Afghanistan is thousands of miles away from the USA, whereas Ukraine shares with Russia a border 1,282 miles long. If NATO bases and missiles were installed in Ukraine, they would indeed pose an existential threat to Russia in the event of a war, which is how the USSR saw American missiles in Turkey before the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. With Ukraine in NATO, the distance to Moscow from a NATO missile base in northern Ukraine would be less than the distance from London to Edinburgh, and the missile, if not shot down, would arrive in Moscow in five minutes or less. To preclude a similar such scenario in the western hemisphere, President Kennedy in 1962 threatened the Soviets with nuclear war. They backed down and withdrew their missiles from Cuba, having obtained secret American guarantees that US missiles in Turkey would also be removed. On that occasion, Kennedy was prepared to risk world annihilation; the Russians saved the world from that fate by backing down and doing a deal.

The Struggle for the Seed of Russian Culture

The war in Ukraine is not a simple story of a bully and an underdog, ‘the Dragon Putin and his barbaric Russian hordes vs St. George Zelensky and his noble suffering Ukrainians’ as those under the spell of the mainstream media might be led to think – as they were in 1914 (Serbia/Belgium) and 1939 (Poland) – nor is it a mere distraction from Covid or just the next phase en route to Klaus Schwab’s ‘Great Reset’ dystopia, as many in the anti-Establishment scene think. Some of them see the war in Ukraine as a symptom of a major historical shift in the world order, as the declining American empire seeks to fend off a Russian and Chinese effort to overturn the US-led ‘New World Order’; others see Russia and China as just as bad and as technocratically tyrannical as the West, as we saw during the COVID pandemic. The real war is waged by technocratic elites against all of humanity, they argue, and the Russia-Ukraine War is merely being used by those elites to further their agenda:

“….it is a war between Technocracy and the rest of the world. As the nation state model of government dissolves, it will be replaced by leaders of the corporate world, central bank oligarchs and private financial institutions. During the breakdown of the global supply chain, the financial and currency systems will also break down, allowing central banks emergency powers to replace currencies with a system of digital currencies. Digital currencies require digital identity. Digital identity will enable Universal Basic Income and rationing of all necessities of life. Governments will bow, Technocracy will take over and the Great Reset will be complete.”(33)

However, this war has its own genesis, context and background, and it happens to coincide with the larger global crisis of the 21st century, through which Messrs Schwab, Gates, Musk, Fink & Co. are seeking to take us all into their technocratic, AI-driven One World Order of the “4th Post-Industrial Revolution”. If there is an underdog in this fight, with its back against the wall, it is actually Russia, or rather, Russia is the bear being baited by the dogs of the West who are determined to force the Russian bear to comply with the dictates of  the elites of the Anglosphere and with the intended world government, led by them, which they regard as desirable and inevitable. Ukraine has been used by the West over the past 20 years as the stick to poke the Russian bear, and in his desperate fury, the bear has now lashed out at his brother and sister Slavic nation which he recognises – too late? – has been prepared by the West for aggressive use against him, rather like Japan was used against Russia by the West in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Without the support of the West, it is very likely that Japan would not have triumphed against Russia. On that occasion, Russia was also partly to blame for having expanded imperialistically into northeastern China, where it ran into the ambitions of the equally greedy and imperialistic Japanese. In this early 21st century, however, before 2004 Russia was not seeking to expand its territory. It was the West, in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014, that sought to prepare Ukraine as its weapon against Russia. The hapless Ukrainian people, with little experience of democracy, have been manoeuvred by unscrupulous forces at home and abroad into electing a series of corrupt, oligarch-driven governments who have been subject to western pressure and bribes (not least from Joe Biden and his son Hunter) and who have placed their population at great risk, ready to sacrifice many of them to win NATO membership, the goal of all the pro-western Presidents since 2004: Yushchenko (2005-2010), Turchynov (2014), Poroshenko (2014-2019), and Zelensky (2019 -)

The esoteric aspect of this conflict is that it is the next phase in what Rudolf Steiner called “the struggle for the kernel of Russian culture between the Anglo-American plutocrats and the people of Central Europe”. “The war”, he said, “will… go on in some form or other until the German and Slavic cultures have together united in the common goal of freeing people from the yoke of the West.” This will require us, he said, “to see through and reveal the lies with which the West has to operate if it is to succeed,” one of which is the pretence to champion revolutionary impulses of ‘freedom’ while actually seeking to impose world domination through capitalist methods. Otherwise, he said, if people fail to resist and do not reveal those lies, “they will yield control of the world to an occult group within the Anglo-American world until, through the shedding of blood in the future, the true spiritual goal of the earth will be saved by those in the subjugated German-Slavic region.”(34)[emphasis – RS]

Today, a prime symptom of this ongoing struggle has been the Nordstream II gas pipeline from Russia across the Baltic Sea directly to Germany. Through this pipeline, the relationship between Germany and Russia would have been expanded and developed, and not only in economic terms. But through the West’s response to the war in Ukraine, the German leadership have been prevailed upon to shelve the controversial pipeline, which several US Presidents have been determined to see cancelled. Instead of cheap Russian gas for Germany and the EU, more expansive American gas will now be transported all the way across the Atlantic Ocean by an endless stream of tankers.  This kind of thing has long been the Anglo-American goal: to minimise and terminate as far as possible connections between Russia and Central Europe, in order that the Anglo-American West can take control of Russia and the Slavic East.

The nightmare of a global Technocracy or nuclear annihilation will become true unless a different model of a future society is advanced and becomes widely understood, one that was rejected in Central Europe a hundred years ago because too many people were mesmerised by the power of the state at that time. Even Rudolf Steiner, the proclaimer of that model, known as social threefolding, said a hundred years ago in 1922 that the historical moment for the social threefolding movement, which he had initiated in 1917 and had been publicly proclaiming since 1919, had passed and that it would have to wait another hundred years for another opportunity until the time was again propitious for it. The time for it is now not only propitious but critical.(35)

Notes  
1. They committed some 190,000 troops to the invasion and were supported by 34,000 troops from the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk. Ukraine’s armed forces numbered 209,000 regular troops and 600,000 reservists, 102,000 paramilitary troops and 20,000 foreign volunteers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Foreign_military_involvement
2. See Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, Tournament of Shadows – The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia (2001), chapter 5.
3. See Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, (2011) chaps. 1 and 4.
4. Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol. 1, Collected Works GA 173, lecture of 4 Dec. 1916.
5. See J. Macgregor and Gerry Docherty, Prolonging the Agony (2017) chaps. 30 and 31.
6. See Antony. C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974).
7. See Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard  (1997). He envisaged Russia split into three parts: European Russia, Siberia and a Far Eastern Republic. Ukrainian ultranationalist leaders such as Yehven Karas of the C14 group fantasise about Russia being broken into 5 parts. The whole book can be read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210812092815/https:/www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B7894E857AC4F3445EA646BFFE1_Zbigniew_Brzezinski_-_The_Grand_ChessBoard.doc.pdf
8. See R. Steiner lecture of 28.11.1914 GA 157.
9. Andreas Bracher (ed.) Kampf um den Russischen Kulturkeim [The Struggle for the Seed of Russian Culture] (2014).
10. As in the Anglican ‘High Church’ stream of the Church of England. Harrison’s lectures were republished with a lengthy and very helpful introduction by Christopher Bamford in 1993 by Lindisfarne Press under the title : The Transcendental Universe.
11. Today, the alleged ‘threat’ of the Russia-China axis is being used to justify ever tighter relations between the “Five Eyes” English-speaking countries: US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
12. See Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment (1949) p. 33f.
13. See John E. Kendle, The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union (1974) and W.T. Stead (ed.) The Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes (1902).
14. The Grand Chessboard, p.86.
15. See, for example, Brzezinski on Ukraine: The Grand Chessboard, pp. 84-85, 92, 104, 113-114,121-122.
16. See The Grand Chessboard, pp 84, 121.
17. The Grand Chessboard, p.92.
18. The Grand Chessboard, p.118.
19. The Grand Chessboard, p.120.
20. The Grand Chessboard, p.120.
21. Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 1997, Vol. 76, No. 5.
22. The Grand Chessboard, p.122.
23. Quoted in T. Boardman, Mapping the Millennium – Behind the Plans of the New World Order (1998 and 2013), pp. 139-140.
24. 1907: Anglo-Russia Entente signed; 1917 overthrow of the Czar. 1941 Hitler invaded the USSR; 1946 Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in the USA.
25. The Economist, double issue 26 Dec. 1992 – 8 Jan 1993.
26. AUKUS defence treaty August 2021: Australia, UK and US.  New Zealand and Canada will no doubt join at a later date, thus completing and formalising the defence and intelligence structure of the “5 Eyes” – Orwell’s “Oceania”.
27. A detailed, June 2005 article “How we would fight China” in leading American East Coast Establishment monthly ‘The Atlantic’ by Neocon foreign policy specialist Robert Kaplan: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/06/how-we-would-fight-china/303959/
28. https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-1/
29. E.g.: https://www.bitchute.com/video/vLjA2LucDkuI/  and:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7uquXmOMIg
30.https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf
31. https://pete843.substack.com/p/zelensky-and-kolomoisky?s=r   and:
https://festival-fumetti.com/host-https-www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment
32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xNHmHpERH8
33. https://www.technocracy.news/war-in-ukraine-is-the-wefs-doorway-to-global-technocracy/
34. Andreas Bracher (ed.), Kampf um den russischen Kulturkeim (2014) p. 344.
35. See R. Steiner, Towards Social Renewal (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), R. Steiner, The Social Future (Anthroposophic Press 1972) and Johannes Rohen, Functional Threefoldness: In the Human Organism and Human Society (2011)

If we contemplate the number 23, we can recall that the most famous Psalm in the Bible – Psalm 23 – speaks of man’s confidence in his trust in God’s support. The Koran was revealed to Mohammed over a period of 23 years. Biologists will tell us that normal human sex cells have 23 chromosomes, and astronomers will re­mind us that the earth is tilted at an angle of about 23 degrees to the Sun (actually 23.5). Without that tilting at 23 degrees, the earth’s seasons and hence its human cultures would be totally different from what they are. So both at the microcosmic level of the cell and at the macrocosmic level of the Earth, which is a giant ‘cell’ in itself, the number 23 – the binary and the triad – is a crucial key in the incarnation of the human spirit on the material plane. The binary, with its characteristic feature of division, is the Ur-principle, the blueprint of material reality. In the course of time the ‘matter-realisa­tion’ of that blueprint has led to a materialistic rejection in human consciousness of any non-material reality at all. The triad is that which overcomes this divisive ma­terialism and reconnects human consciousness with the spiritual world, the visible with the invisible. At Easter we can think of the binary as the necessary crucifixion of spirit in ‘matter’ and of the triad as the resurrection of the spirit which gives meaning to the relation of spirit to ‘matter’, and at midsummer we can think of Rudolf Steiner’s beautiful evocation of the triune St John Imag­ination¹ with its picture of the Christ between the Spirit Father above and the Earth Mother below. Because the triad has this healing capacity, ultimately exemplified in the Mystery of Golgotha, this is also why Rudolf Steiner’s threefold social impulse is so important to overcome the socio-economic crisis of the modern age, especially in the current context of worsening US-China relations. I shall return to this later in this article.

The triad and the ninth century

As soon as he became an esoteric teacher in 1902 (which he remained until his death, 23 years later), Rudolf Stein­er made clear from the beginning that his would be the path of Christian esotericism rather than one that fo­cused more on Indian teachings, as in the Theosophy of Annie Besant, centred at Adyar in India. Moreover, Steiner’s emphasis on the Rosicrucian heritage of Central Europe, with its alchemical focus on the triad of salt, mercury and sulphur, meant that a strong threefold, Trinitarian impulse lay at the centre of his teaching and his activity. His life drama reached a peak when in the years 1917-1922 he found himself within a world war in which Central Europe was fighting against the East and the West and in which he personally was increas­ingly drawn into the centre of social and international events. Indeed, by 1914 he was already in a personal relationship with Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, who was in command of all German armies on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. After Moltke died in June 1916, Steiner remained in spiritual contact with his individuality for seven years, the only case in his life of which this is known. Steiner realised that von Moltke had previously incarnated as Pope Nicholas I in the ninth century, whose historic task it had been in that incarnation to clearly separate Eastern and Western Christianity. In the 20th century it had been his will to reunite East and West, but tragically, he found himself having to lead the fight against them both. From 1916 onwards, Steiner drew attention to the historical consequences of the 8th Ecumenical Council of the Church in Constantinople which took place in the ninth century (869). The Council’s anathemas had effectively reduced the Trichotomy of the human being (body, soul, spirit) to a Dichotomy (body and soul only). This focus on the binary nature of the human being had laid the theological and philosophical basis for the bi­nary nature of natural science and materialistic thought that later emerged in the 17th century, notably through the influence of the writings of Francis Bacon and Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648), the ‘father’ of Deism. Throughout his own activities, Steiner urged the modern culture of western civilisation, in effect, to rediscover the Trinity, the essence of the human, the social and the cosmic triad, – or rather, to understand it for the first time² – through the reclaiming of the indi­vidual spirit that could find its own path to the divine. The war itself, he showed, was the consequence of the materialism that had resulted from the errors of the Church in 869, the denial of the individual spirit and the insistence on following the authority and dogmas of the Church. That Council of 869-70 had led first to the Great Schism of 1054 between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches: both Christianity and European culture now appeared to be irrevocably split. A further split occurred with the Reformation, and then came more splits between the adherents of the Reformation. The sickness that had first manifested in the spiritual or theological sphere spread in later centuries to the politi­cal and economic spheres, in revolutions, class conflict, and economic rivalries between nations. Out of these social poisons had come the Great War. Materialism, fear of the spirit, was the great matrix of the war. Capitalism, imperialism, socialism, communism, nationalism and fascism – all were born of that matrix.

Building on his esoteric Christian understanding of the threefold nature of Man (body, soul, spirit), Steiner pointed to the need for a new social reformation in the modern world, which would heal the sickness that had resulted from those deeds of 869-70. The threefolding of society into autonomous but interrelating spheres of economy, politics and culture, which he energetically advocated from 1917, first to the elites, through personal contacts, and then, when the elites ignored him, to the masses of the people in 1919, represented the undoing of the deed of 869-70, and the restoration of the threefold nature of both Man and society. The culmination of Ru­dolf Steiner’s restorative deed for the culture of the West came at the Christmas Conference on 25 December 1923 with his speaking of the Foundation Stone meditation for the first time.

Lotharingia (Middle Francia) 855-869

Lotharingia (yellow)
Italy (pink)
East Francia (blue)
West Francia (grey)
Provence (violet)

The numbers in the date 869 add up to 23. The dates 869 + 1054, when added together, come to 1923. Even the arithmetic of history testifies to the reality of Rudolf Steiner’s deed in that year when he refounded the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference in Dornach, Switzerland on the esoteric basis of the threefold Foundation Stone meditation  From the time of the Coun­cil of 869, dualism came to dominate European culture. This was already reflected politically in the 9th century when Lotharingia (or Middle Francia) was partitioned in 869-70 between the kings of East Francia and West Francia.³ Once again, we see the same dualistic gesture in 869-70: in the East, at Constantinople, a spiritual triad (body-soul-spirit) was reduced theologically to a bina­ry (body and soul only)  at the 8th Ecumenical Council, while in the West, in Frankia, a triad was reduced to a binary politically by the Treaty of Mersen. Rudolf Steiner re­stored the triad to European culture through his work 1917-1923, both philosophically and esoterically in the Foundation Stone, and socially in his advocacy of social threefolding.

The “Great Reset”?

But although the seed of social threefolding was suc­cessfully planted in 1919-1922, it did not grow at that time. The historical moment for it was missed; the An­throposophical movement was not strong and resolute enough to carry it forward; the receptivity of the public to it proved insufficient. There was too much willingness across the political spectrum to allow the unitary State – whether of the twofold order, the twofold, adversarial party system in capitalist countries, or of the ‘onefold order’ – fascist or communist – to deal with the many problems thrown up by the consequences of the war. The historical moment, Steiner said, would not return for a hundred years, after which “a window of the spiritual world would open” to create another opportunity for it.⁴ Not a few Anthroposophers think that time may be now.

And what are we seeing now, in the wake of COV­ID-19? In fact, we are seeing another attempt to ‘reboot’ a onefold order, to create a ‘new’ social consensus under the umbrella of the unitary State. This is being done by appealing to wartime rhetoric of life and death, “fighting the deadly enemy” and national and personal survival – all of which obliges us to “pull together”, we are told, and “do our civic duty” as in wartime⁵, dutifully and compliantly following the dictates of the State. We are told that this crisis will “bring us all together”, make us “stronger together”, “leave no-one behind”, in order to bring about the “New Green Deal” and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, setting up carbon, SARS-CoV-2, China and “white supremacy” as the new scapegoats and enemies to be defeated – objects of fear and hate, in effect, against which all are urged to rally. Since 2016, the era of Trump and Brexit, the media made endless allusions to the 1930s; now, it would seem, we are to believe that we have advanced into the 1940s and are fighting our own version of World War II on the four above-mentioned fronts.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), one of the world’s main breeding stations of globalist capitalism, declares on its website⁶ the need for a “Great Reset”, as if it be­lieves that capitalism must rapidly be transformed into some grand, A.I.-driven, green, egalitarian, socio-eco­nomic paradise inspired by such as Greta Thunberg, Jeff Bezos, and the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQIA+ movements. Establishment media throughout the West echo the WEF’s call; the BBC in Britain promotes the same agenda through its “Rethink” project – which in fact chimes with UN Agenda 21 and its subset, Agenda 2030. Launched on 21 June, the BBC’s “Rethink” project reaches right across the entire BBC programme sched­ules and is obviously designed to ‘nudge’ the populace in the direction that the WEF and the global elite want the world to move. The emphasis is emphatically col­lective – everyone must be included – , conforming to the global elite’s will mediated through the increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic actions of national State governments and through the censorious, freedom-de­nying behaviours of corporate tech companies such as facebook and Google, which are turning the Internet into a glitzier, more subtle version of the controlled and censored media of the Cold War Communist bloc. What is emerging is not only a massive increase in the power of the State through this COVID ‘crisis’ but especially in the cultural sphere, where the ‘identity wars’ are the fiercest, a one-pattern society and culture is developing where only opinions within a very narrow range are tolerated. Any attempt to express dissenting views will have severe legal and/or economic consequences. And all of this is being done in the name of “equality”, “inclusivity”, “diversity”, “combating ‘hate’” and of course, uphold­ing “the science”, a science that is rapidly becoming as dogmatic as the theology of the mediaeval cardinals. Scientists who dissent from the climate change or COV­ID-19 or vaccination orthodoxy are excluded, ignored, or slandered.⁷ “The science” is uniform. Everyone must accept it and conform. No-one must dare to dissent, and everyone will be expected to accept the anti-CoV-2 vac­cine when it arrives, most probably later this year from a British or American laboratory. Otherwise, such vaccine dissenters are likely to be branded selfish ‘domestic ter­rorists’ who are endangering the health of the nation. There will no doubt be calls for them to be excluded from travel and employment opportunities. In short, they will lose some of their civil and human rights, as was the case with religious Dissenters in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. In those days Protestant Dissenters and Catholics were held to endanger and undermine the spiritual health of the nation. This new uniformity will be policed by facial recognition surveillance technol­ogy and probably some form of smartphone-mediated social credit system, as in China, though probably not so blatant, so as to preserve the appearance of democ­racy. The WEF – ostensibly a private organisation – and the US Department of Homeland Security – an arm of government - have already collaborated to produce such a system⁸, which is likely to be rolled out next year.

War drums? Or simply ‘decoupling’ from China?

It is a great irony that all this centralised control and cen­sorship is happening in the West precisely when western elites are using the COVID-19 ‘pandemonium’ to turn against China and identify it as an ‘enemy’ and a ‘threat’. This is happening across the so-called left-right divide, from Donald Trump to Nancy Pelosi, from The Economist to the Murdoch Press, from the so-called quality Press to the tabloids, from Die Welt to Das Bild. “During the recent Munich Security Conference, [Pelosi] replied to [the] question whether she essentially agreed with Trump’s China policy without hesitation and to the surprise of the audience: “Yes.” Pelosi described China as a “government that does not serve our values” and spoke of an “authoritarian form of aggression.” Mathias Döpfner recently wrote in the Ger­man paper Die Welt am Sonntag in an article titled “We have to choose”: “Germany and Europe, together with the USA, should decide to consistently disconnect from China. How this should be structured is one of the most exciting political questions of the future. …The corona recession marks a …unique opportunity to correct a mistake…. In the end, everything is very simple: what future do we want for Europe: an alliance with an imperfect democracy or with a perfect dictatorship? The decision should actually be easy for us. It’s more than money. It is about our freedom, about Article 1, the most beautiful term that has ever been in a legal text: human dignity.”⁹

The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), one of many elite transatlantic think-tanks, and very hawkish on foreign policy, has identified the key areas in which the 5 An­glosphere countries known as the “Five Eyes” (US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada), are overly dependent on China. The HJS advocates active economic ‘decou­pling’ from China as well as a de facto western contain­ment policy towards China. The anti-Chinese rhetoric has greatly stepped up in 2020 with COVID-19 being labelled in rightwing circles as a ‘Chinese virus’ or ‘the Wuhan virus’.

This completely overlooks the fact that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and western governments failed to do their own due diligence with regard to the alleged seriousness of COVID-19. There was no scien­tific need for them to overreact as they did; a number of western epidemiologists and other medical special­ists pointed out¹⁰ in March and April that the virus was not essentially worse than previous seasonal influenza epidemics and would go through a similar process of growth and decline, which it has done. In fact, the an­ti-China rhetoric had been building up for several years. The beginning of China’s colossal “One Belt, One Road” Eurasian transport infrastructure and trade project in 2013 and the signing of the huge 30-year Russia-Chi­na natural gas deal in 2014 were key milestones. From that period onward, talk of a new Cold War began to proliferate in western media, as well as comparisons of the US-China relationship with that between the British and German empires in the decade before the First World War in terms of relations between a rising and an established or declining Power. In those days, German exporters and businessmen were outmanoeu­vring the British even within Britain’s own Empire, so the British resorted to war to redress the balance – first the Boer War (1899-1902), to prevent S. Africa’s gold and diamond mines falling into German hands, and then the two world wars (1914-45)¹¹, to attempt to suppress German competition substantially and bring Germany itself under Anglosphere control.

Today, concerned about Anglosphere inability to compete economically with China in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America, Anglosphere elites are again banging the war drums. Last year, the Rand Corporation in the USA carried out a complex US vs Russia + China war­game simulation assuming war 10-20 years from now, which did not turn out at all well for the US. The lesson the establishment media will no doubt draw from this is that the US needs to further upgrade and expand its military spending, already by far the world’s largest. The author of the RAND report wrote that “$24 billion a year for the next five years would be a good expenditure” to prepare the military for World War III.¹² One can recall Rudolf Steiner speaking of western brotherhoods already planning in the 1890s for a great European war in the near future.¹³

Anthroposophers should not be surprised to see the elites of America and China squaring off against each other at this time, since we are living almost 2000 years after the Mystery of Golgotha, the anniversary years of which will come in 2030-2033 at a time when the mani­festation of Ahriman in human form – the incarnation of Ahriman¹⁴ – can be expected. For China and America are the two cultures in which, according to Rudolf Steiner, the incarnations of Lucifer (c.3000 BC) and Ahriman (very early 3rd millennium AD) historically occur. And in this 21st century, when all of us as mankind, like a human individual aged 21, are to take responsibility for ourselves and the planet, when we are challenged to find and recognise the Christ Being as the Ego of man­kind, Lucifer and Ahriman combine to try to prevent mankind from assuming that responsibility in the right way, that is, in the sense of human freedom. They seek instead, to use the old ways, albeit dressed up in modern rhetoric and modern technology. They seek to have us guided, nudged, led and controlled like sheep by oligar­chical shepherds at the WEF, the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party. They provide, in short, the resistance mankind needs to find its freedom and responsibility.

No surprise then, to see that both China and America were involved in the COVID-19 phenomenon: in the In­ternational Military Games at Wuhan in October 2019; at the Event 201 coronavirus simulation held at Johns Hopkins University in New York at the same time; in the murky financial connections between the US and the Wuhan Institute of Virology – a US$3.7 million research grant to that Wuhan Institute in 2015¹⁵ approved by Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and current­ly the leading medical specialist in the US Coronavirus Task Force; in the close relations between Bill Gates and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: the WHO overreacted to the Chinese and Italian over­reactions to the virus and declared a global pandemic on 11 March. This worked very much in the vaccination interests of the WHO’s second largest donor at the time (now the largest since President Trump announced the cancellation of US funding for the WHO in April), name­ly, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with which Tedros Adhanom has had a close relationship since his time as Minister of Health in Ethiopia 2005-2012. The WHO and many governments around the world influ­enced by the WHO have allowed themselves to be overly affected by the overreaction of the Chinese government to COVID-19 and as a result, lockdowns have been im­posed around the world with all the severely damaging consequences these lockdowns have been having on economies and on the physical and mental health of millions. Mankind has been subjected to a colossal act of vandalism, all to defeat a virus dubbed “terrible”, “dead­ly”, “brutal”, “killer” “plague” by the media. It is a virus which, by itself, has in fact accounted for numbers of deaths on a par with seasonal flu. The American Centers for Disease Control estimated that 46,000 – 95,000 Amer­icans died of influenza during the 2017-18 flu season. At the time of writing, there have been 128,000 deaths in the USA of people with COVID-19¹⁶, i.e. who tested pos­itive for the SARS-Cov-2 virus, but that does not mean they died of COVID-19 itself. Indeed, there has been evi­dence of much manipulation of COVID-19 data to inflate the numbers of deaths due to COVID-19.¹⁷

In 1913 many intelligent people believed that there would be no war between Britain and Germany because the two countries had too many interwoven economic ties and furthermore, because they were both advanced European countries whose educated classes shared many cultural values and habits. One year later, this belief was shown to have been illusory. Yet many people make simi­lar arguments today about the US and China: their econ­omies are too interdependent; they are both ‘mature’ states; they will not risk war in the age of nuclear weap­ons etc. But to repeat, these are the very two cultures of the incarnations of the spiritually polar beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. Billions of dollars have been spent over the decades by US and Chinese institutions and govern­ments in order to ‘understand’ each other’s culture and society better, but if this is done primarily with a view to benefitting materially from the other, and without taking a spiritual view of life into account, it will have no good result, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out in 1922 on the eve of the Washington Conference between the USA, Britain and Japan: “The Asiatic peoples will meet the West with understanding if the West can offer them thoughts of a universal humanity, thoughts that indicate what Man is in the whole universal order and how a social life may be achieved in conformity with what Man is. When the peoples in the East hear that the West has fresh knowledge on those very subjects of which their ancient traditions tell and for the renewal of which they themselves are vaguely striving, then will the way be open for mutual understanding and coopera­tion. If, however, we persist in regarding the infusion of such knowledge into public activity as a fantastic dream of the unpractical, then in the end the East will wage war upon the West, however much they may converse about the beauties of disarmament.”¹⁸ Twenty years later, in the battles in the Pacific, the truth of Rudolf Steiner’s words was very starkly borne out. The growing US-China tensions of the past ten years have shown that the situation between the two countries is only getting worse. Many believe that a state of undeclared cold war already exists between them and that it is only a matter of time before the ‘cold’ becomes ‘hot’. There are various geographical ‘hotspot buttons’ around China that the US is capable of pressing: Tibet, the borders of India, the South China Sea islands, Hong Kong, Taiwan, N. Korea, and relations with Japan.

The Threefold solution: for East-West peace and cooperation

What could serve to avert such a conflict between the collectivist People’s Republic of China and the individ­ualistic USA? A triadic solution, namely, the threefold social organism, which has both collectivist and indi­vidualistic elements within it, would mitigate the perni­cious effects of the extremes of both systems. It does not do away with the essence of capitalism, but recognises the role of the individual in starting economic activity. However, it asserts that the purpose of the economic sphere is to produce goods from the bounty of nature, which is cherished and protected – goods that will serve others; the purpose is not the maximisation of profit for oneself, one’s family or even one’s country. It is to serve other human beings all over the world, as in the mod­ern age the whole world is one interdependent economic organism, although to begin with, economic activity usually starts in one’s own locale. Threefolding does not subordinate any of the three spheres of society (culture, politics, economy) to the other two, and does not seek to mix up all three. On the contrary, it gives autonomy to all three in their own spheres, while enabling them at the same time to interrelate, much as the three physio­logical systems of the human body (nerves, circulation and metabolism) are also separate but interrelate and support each other. The State therefore must not run the economy or the cultural sphere; if it tries to, it will either fail, out of incompetence in those spheres, or it will come into conflict with other States that also presume to run or influence those spheres in their own countries to a greater or lesser degree; this has in the past often led to war, as in 1899 and 1914¹⁹, where private economic inter­ests are identified with those of the State. Equally, eco­nomic interests must not seek to control or influence the State or the political and legal life or the life of culture and the arts and sciences. Neither should the latter try to dictate to politics and the economy, as has happened in some religious communities and states. Each of the three spheres has its own being and life which needs to be respected.

Threefolding first emerged a century ago in Central Europe. It could not succeed then, as too many people across the political spectrum were prepared to allow the State to have its way in all three spheres, even in the cap­italist democracies. But a hundred years later, after much socio-economic pain and suffering, inefficiency and dis­aster, there is now widespread recognition, especially in the West, that some kind of fundamental change is required that goes beyond the egoism both of the indi­vidual and of the political or national group. Communist China has only been part of the capitalist world order for some 40 years, and the wealth it has generated through that participation has enabled both the alleviation of mass poverty and the wage slavery of modern Chinese industrial serfs on the assembly line. It has enabled the enthusiastic creation of many Chinese billionaires and also China’s totalitarian hi-tech surveillance system. China’s current system is a mixture of western capital­ism, western Marxism (with so-called “Chinese charac­teristics”) and traditional Chinese Neo-Confucianism and Legalism. Chinese nationalism and self-confidence is still strong, but the Chinese system is two thirds not their own, and the other third is not modern but ancient and has more in common with mediaeval Tibet or the Vatican than with modern times.

But if the West were to embrace Threefolding – if the State were to restrict itself to its own rightful sphere of law, rights, and defence; if local, regional, national and international economic associations were able to bring both ethics and rationality into the world of business instead of the reckless, inefficient, growth-obsessed, outdated and shark-like economic model we currently have; if the arts and sciences were free from interfer­ence from both the State and from business; if through threefolding, the West were to embrace a social and economic praxis that affirmed both the individual and the community – then millions in China would take no­tice and see that there was a modern alternative both to their own authoritarian mixture and to the old, often inhuman economic ruthlessness of the West. Based on a spiritual understanding of the human being far more radical than anything in Transhumanism, the emergent philosophy of the western elite, this modern alternative of Threefolding offers the way to avert a cataclysmic bi­nary conflict between China (with its allies Russia and Iran) and the USA and its client states in the Anglosphere and the EU. It may already be too late to bring this alter­native forward, but its seeds can at least be sown and its existence brought to the attention of millions, so that after Ahriman’s incarnation has ended, most likely by the mid-21st century, the alternative of Threefolding can be called upon to reshape society.

At this historic time, when Ahriman’s incarnation is about to become manifest, and when the current conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn ushers in a new, 200 year-long era in history²⁰, global elites working through the WEF and the WHO are trying to use false claims about climate change and COVID-19 to bring about a technology-driven, wartime emergency-style, State-led transformation of society that will have the surface ap­pearance of ‘greenness’ and ‘progressivism’ but it will not challenge fundamentals; the elitist 1% and their predatory behaviour will remain, just as they did after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s much-vaunted ‘New Deal’ in the 1930s. FDR in effect injected a dose of socialism in order to save the existing American capitalist sys­tem without fundamentally changing that system. The same is what is being proposed now in, for example, the post-COVID plans of the British government led by Bo­ris Johnson. The global elites’ goal with Agenda 2030 is to bring about a world order that will serve Ahriman’s interests in his incarnation. Those interests require not a threefold society in which the three spheres of culture, law and economy are autonomous but a form of ‘soft’ fascism or communism, a ‘onefold’ world order of ‘onefold’ societies controlled and directed in all three spheres by the State. In 1922 Rudolf Steiner said that he would reincarnate “in 80 years’ time and in America” – the land of Ahriman’s incarnation.²¹ The individuality that was Rudolf Steiner may not be associated with the Anthroposophical Society then but as a Christian esotericist, that individuality will surely somehow stand for Threefolding, for that means, in the modern age, to stand for the cosmic Trinity, and for the real nature of the human being and of human society.

Terry Boardman 2020

Notes

1 Lecture of 12.10.1923, in Collected Works GA 229.

2 Misunderstanding and disputes over the nature of the Trinity in the early Christian centuries had been a major reason for dissension within the Church. Steiner discusses the spiritual background to the debate over the Trinity in his lectures of 23,28,29,30 July 1922 in GA 214 and 16-17 March 1923, GA 222.

3 The Carolingian Empire (800-888) founded by Charlemagne, was divided into three parts between his grandsons in 843 (Treaty of Verdun). When Lothar II, the ruler of Lotharingia (or Middle Francia) , the Empire’s middle portion which ran from Holland in the north to Rome in the South, died in 869, his children were swiftly declared illegitimate, and his two Frankish uncles, Ludwig the German and Charles the Bald, invaded Lotharingia from East Francia and West Francia respectively and divided it between them in 870 by the Treaty of Mersen.

4 See Heinz Herbert Schöffler, Rudolf Steiner’s Millennium Prophecies (Henry Goulden Books, 1999) p. 36

5 See 2013 speech by Al Gore on Youtube in which he says that it was the war, not FDR’s New Deal, that ended the Depression in the USA, and calls for a wartime-style “national mobilisation” to defeat “climate change”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7dWG5ICxAA and also https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/

6 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/

7 E.g. re. COVID-19 – Prof. Bhakdi Sucharit (Ger.), Dr. Anders Tegnall (Swed.),

Prof. Knut Wittkowski (USA), Prof. John Ioannidis (USA), Prof. Sunetra

Gupta (UK), Dr Zach Bush (USA), Dr. Dan Erikson and Dr Artin Massihi

(USA); vaccines – Dr Andrew Wakefield (UK), Dr Judy Mikovits (USA); Dr. Rashid Buttar and Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (USA).

8 See: https://norberthaering.de/en/power-control/eurostar-known-traveller/

9 See: https://chinaresearchgroup.substack.com/p/quotes-from-welt-amsonntag-article    Original text (in German):

https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/plus207687477/Mathias-Doepfner-Wir-muessen-uns-zwischen-Amerika-und-China-entscheiden.html

10 See n.7 above.

11 See John P. Cafferky, Lord Milner’s Second War (2013) and G.G. Preparata, Conjuring Hitler – How Britain and America Made the Third Reich (2005); G.Docherty and J.MacGregor, Hidden History (2013), K.M. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente (1985), E.E. McCullough, How the First World War Began (1999).

12 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-09/us-gets-its-ass-handed-itworld-war-iii-simulation-rand

13 See R. Steiner, lectures 1-4 (4,9,10 and 11 Dec. 1916) in The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol. 1 and lect. 20 (15.1.1917), Vol. 2, Rudolf Steiner Press (2005).

14 See T. Boardman, ‘The Incarnation of Ahriman – When and Where?’ Parts 1 and 2 in TPA Vol. 5/Nos.7/8 Oct/Nov 2019 and Vol. 5/Nos.9/10 May/June 2020.

15 https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-towuhan/

The Institute opened China’s first Biosafety Level 4 research laboratory in 2015.

16 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

17 E.g. https://youtu.be/3Fic2dlKlhw

18 R. Steiner, The East in the Light of the West (G.P. Puttnam’s Sons, 1922) , p. xi.

19 1898 – the Spanish-American War, 1899 – the Boer War; 1914 – the Great War e.g. the Anglo-German arms race and the Berlin-Baghdad Railway: the struggle for the oil of the Middle East.

20 See T. Boardman, ‘…the diseases we suffer on earth are visitations from heaven’ in TPA, Vol. 5/ Nos. 9/10 May/June 2020, p. 11

21 See n. 4 above, p. 15. Also, C. Villeneuve ed., Rudolf Steiner in Britain – A Documentation of his Ten Visits Vol. II, 1922-1925 (Temple Lodge, 2004) p. 737.

2020: Wu of Han, the 140s BC, China, Rome – Then and Now (April 2020)

The following thoughts are offered simply as a stimulus for your own thinking about the present COVID-19 crisis.

Please bear with me through some numbers in the first part until we get to the main point, which has to do with WUHAN and China in our time.

If we think of an astrological Age e.g. the Age of Pisces, known in Anthroposophy as the 5th Post-Atlantean Epoch or the Age of the Consciousness Soul (1413-3573), which lasts 2160 years, then we recognise it as a Time organism ruled by the number 7; there are 7 of these astrological Epochs in each Great Period i.e. we are now in the 5th of 7 Post-Atlantean Cultural Epochs, and there are 7 Periods in physical Earth evolution, of which Atlantis was the 4th, and we are now in the 5th Cultural Epoch of the period known as “Post-Atlantis I” which is itself the 5th Period of Earth evolution as a whole. We are therefore in the 5th Cultural Epoch of the 5th Period of physical/mineral Earth evolution. The Earth had 3 x 7 non-physical/non-mineral Periods before this physical phase of evolution and will have 3 x 7 non-physical/non-mineral Periods after this current, physical/mineral Period.

As a Time organism organised according to the number 7, our current Cultural Epoch (2160 years) consists of 7 phases or stages.  Each of the Cultural Epochs (Age of Pisces, Aquarius etc) lasts 2160 years. Why? Because it takes 72 years for the Spring Point to move through ONE degree of a Zodiac sign, and there are 30 degrees per sign. 30 x 72 = 2160.

We can think of a Cultural Epoch like a musical octave, passing through 7 stages, with a beginning (DO-RE-MI), middle (FA = fulcrum) and end (SO-LA-TI):

DO in the Ist third corresponds to TI in the 3rd third,

RE in the Ist third corresponds to LA in the 3rd third, and

MI in the 1st third corresponds to SO in the 3rd third.

Thus: a musical octave is like a lemniscate (horizontal figure 8) form.

Today, we are currently coming to the end of the RE phase of the 5th Cultural Epoch or octave/Time organism. We can thus compare stages in different epochs. When was the RE phase of the 4th Cultural Epoch, the one before our 5th Cultural Epoch? Each septennial phase lasts 308 years (2160/7 = 308). We are 607 years into our Epoch (2020 – 1413 = 607)

We can compare, for example, the year 2020 in our (5th) Cultural Epoch with the year 140 BC in the 4th Cultural Epoch, because those two years are both 607 years into their respective Epochs i.e. they are both nearly one third (720 years) of the way through their respective Epochs. Our 5th Cultural Epoch began in 1413 BC; the 4th Cultural Epoch began 2160 years earlier, in 747 BC. 2020 AD and 140 BC are thus at the same stage of “growth” within their respective Cultural Epochs, the 5th and the 4th.

140 was the last year of the 140s BC. What happened in that decade?

It was in fact a major turning point in the history of the West. The year 146 BC can be said to have been the key year in that decade. In that year Rome destroyed Carthage utterly after the third and final Punic War (149-146) and also defeated the Greek Achaean League, as well as integrating Macedon under Roman hegemony. All of Greece was now under Roman rule. Rome was now the sole power in the Mediterranean and would remain so for the next 600 years.

In the East, in China, the 140s were also remarkable. We have seen that 2020 AD corresponds to 140 BC, so the year 141 BC corresponds to 2019 AD in which the 7th International Military Games were held in Wuhan (18-27 Oct 2019) (nearly 10,000 participants from 100+ countries)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCdAY-AOG-oand there was the supposed initial breakout of COVID-19  – in Wuhan (Nov 2019).

Why was WUHAN chosen for those international military games?

We know that, as an ancient civilisation, China and its leaders are very conscious of their country’s long history.

On 9 March 141 BC the Emperor known in the West today as   Wu of Han (the “Martial Emperor” of the Han Dynasty) became the 7th Emperor of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) – the same two Chinese characters as in the name of the city of  Wuhan are used for the emperor Wu of Han, but in reverse order. In Chinese he is known as 漢武帝  Hanwu-di, (“Hanwu Emperor”). The order of the first two characters being reversed (武 漢 = WU HAN)). Emperor Wu of Han or Emperor Hanwu was the longest reigning emperor (54 years) until Kangxi in the 18th century AD.

“[Wu’s] reign resulted in a vast territorial expansion and the development of a strong and centralized state resulting from his governmental reorganization, including his promotion of Confucian doctrines. In the field of historical social and cultural studies, Emperor Wu is known for his religious innovations and patronage of the poetic and musical arts, including development of the Imperial Music Bureau into a prestigious entity. It was also during his reign that cultural contact with western Eurasia was greatly increased, directly and indirectly.

As a military campaigner, Emperor Wu led Han China through its greatest expansion. At its height, the Empire’s borders spanned from modern Kyrgyzstan in the west, to Korea in the east, and to northern Vietnam in the south.”  [wikipedia]

[i.e. this was the emperor who expanded Chinese control to approximately the extent it has today in East, West, and South. Only Manchuria and Tibet had still to be added]

The name WUHAN

The etymology section of the wikipedia entry on the city of Wuhan is misleading. It would have us believe that the name simply comes from a combination of the names of the 3 cities that make up Wuhan: Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang. But the HAN in the latter two names is the same character: 漢 The wikipedia entry doesn’t tell us what the characters WU and HAN actually mean.

The traditional (not the current simplified) characters for the meaning of Wuhan are  武漢

In the modern name for the city the second character HAN is simplified: 武汉

The Communists simplified many Chinese characters after 1949. Taiwan does not do this. It still uses the original characters. The many Chinese characters used in the Japanese language (Japanese is written using both Chinese characters AND two Japanese phonic ‘alphabets’) are somewhere in the middle: some have been simplified a bit, many not.

The character 武  WU means  “martial”,“military”, “fighting”.  The Japanese pronounce it BU, as in BUSHIDO, the way of the warrior.

The character 漢 HAN means “Han”, as in the Han Chinese (the majority ethnic population of China), the Han River, and the Han Dynasty which ruled China at the time of Christ: (206 BC–220 AD). This was mostly the time of the Archangel Oriphiel, the Saturn Archangel.His period was 246 BC-109 AD  according to the esotericist Trithemius of Sponheim, and 200 BC–150 AD, according to Rudolf Steiner. HAN is in fact an ancient name for China itself. For example the word kanwa in Japanese means ‘China (and) Japan’, or ‘the Chinese (and) the Japanese languages’. WA is the old Chinese-Japanese name for Japan.

The Japanese use the same Chinese character 漢 in this word KANWA but they pronounce it KAN instead of HAN. In old Japanese the word for the ‘Chinese people’ was KANZOKU, again using the character 漢. The second character ZOKU means ‘people’, as in tribe, clan, ethnic group.

So the characters 武漢 and the name WUHAN mean ‘martial or military Han’ i.e. ‘martial/military China/Chinese people’!

The Coronavirus emerged from China under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in January 2020.

Another meaning of international military game:

See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

Unrestricted Warfare (超限战, literally “Warfare Beyond Bounds”) is a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two colonels in the People’s Liberation Army, Qiao Liang (乔良) and Wang Xiangsui (王湘穗). The book has been well-known in western military and foreign policy circles since soon after its publication. Its primary concern is how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent (such as the United States) through a variety of means. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, this book instead examines a variety of other means.

Consider the differences between the traditional Chinese game of Go and the western (actually Indian) game of Chess. These differences have also long been considered by Chinese and western military strategists since the late 1990s. We all know what was happening in Hong Kong in the second half of last year. The long-running demonstrations there represented a major problem for the government in Beijing. But what was happening in WUHAN last July, 2019? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20vfA6VSpU Protests over air pollution, difficulty of breathing. See this Indian-American MIT-trained doctor, Shiva Ayyadurai’s speculation about how CV19 began. I emphasise – as does he –  it’s  only speculation. But we should at least think about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ7wi6mbhzY “Did CHINA unleash bio-media-warfare on its OWN PEOPLE to CRUSH the Health & Freedom Movement?”

We can recall that it was not ALL of China that was in lockdown, but only Hubei Province, its capital WUHAN and a number of other major cities in the country. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that when it kills, this disease mainly kills older people. Younger people, i.e. those  necessary for the bulk of the workforce and the military, tend not to die of it. So Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai is suggesting the thing started in China for Chinese State purposes, and in other Youtube videos he implies that elite forces in the West, via the WHO, Anthony Fauci, Neil Ferguson, Bill Gates et al, then made use of what was going on in China and the drastic actions of the Chinese government, to get similar measures imposed in western countries for their own purposes. In effect, the West has, in a rapid manner that seems almost coordinated in the West, imitated, to a greater or lesser degree, China’s authoritarian/Communist/Fascist (choose your adjective) methods. And for what? To respond to “a novel disease” that has turned out to be little worse than a bad case of influenza. Novel influenzas, as we know from 100 years ago, can kill millions of people. But COVID-19 kills at a rate hardly greater than regular seasonal influenza over the past 20 years. And yet, because of it, we allowed our governments to be panicked – supposedly by their medical advisers, but also by the WHO  – into imposing the most authoritarian controls the West has known for a very long time, severely damaging our societies and economies  for decades to come and most probably leading to the deaths of far more people through stress and illness resulting from the socio-economic effects of this disease than deaths from the disease itself. I am reminded of the line from the second verse of Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone meditation: “Let there be fired in the East what forms itself through the West”. Besides the positive sense in which Steiner meant this, it could also apply – or be applied  – in a negative sense.

The above has not been written with any intention of “blaming China”, but rather to suggest that populations in both China and the West are led and governed by unscrupulous people in their elites who in the past have often proved that they are prepared to sacrifice thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own people to achieve those leaders’ aims. Despite what is written above, it could still be that an American bio-weapon was in fact used in Wuhan in October/November 2019; but we are not in a position to know yet whether that was indeed the case. If it was, then the powers-that-be in the US may well discover that things will not turn out as they intended.

And if it was a US bio-weapon, a Chinese bio-weapon, or simply a novel coronavirus produced ‘accidentally’ by animal-human transfer as was suggested in the 2011 Hollywood movie “Contagion” and as the western mainstream media today would have us believe, then the Chinese authorities nevertheless chose to respond to the disease either by denial or by deliberately letting it run for a while (Dec/Jan, under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction) and then reacting in a very drastic and over-exaggerated manner to what was itself not such a serious disease but was exacerbated in regions of severe air pollution. They may have reacted in this way because they saw in this “novel disease” a way of killing two birds with one stone – the Hong Kong  protests and the Wuhan environmental protests, either of which could have grown into a much more serious challenge to the regime and, as the regime saw it, could have threatened China’s stability. Equally, they may have decided that China should accept a bit of pain in order for a lot more pain to be self-inflicted by the West. We saw in April already  phenomena such Democratic governors in coastal states of the USA forming pacts to coordinate reopening their economies after lockdown in defiance of President Trump who insisted he had the authority to order any reopening. (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/states-band-together-reopening-plans/index.html).Trump, who was in favour of early reopening anyway, reacted by welcoming State action on reopening, thus sidestepping the governors. COVID-19 has in any case certainly presented the USA and the West as a whole with very serious challenges, and economic damage has been self-inflicted that is likely to be far worse than anything China has suffered.

Terry  Boardman 14.4.2020

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 eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed the city of Pompeii.

                                         Roman Chester (Deva Victrix)

From 1905 until 1972 Chester was the base of Western Command, the regional headquarters of the British Army responsible for Wales and the Northwest of England. My grandfather, who had married one of Britain’s first women soldiers (the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps, 1917), was a civilian manager at Western Command. From 1938 to 1972 the large site of Western Command was located above the River Dee, in front of the secondary school I attended – Chester City Grammar School. It was not a boarding school, nor was it a private school, but the headmaster had a classical and military background and wanted the school to be a worthy rival for the private schools in the local area. The school had all the characteristics of private all-boys’ schools in those days – uniforms for the boys, gowns for the ‘masters’, houses, prefects (elder boys chosen to act as the ‘police force’), Latin and Greek lessons, a rowing club, an Army Cadet Force and ferocious discipline maintained through frequent corporal punishment. We boys regarded the school as something of a concentration camp, an obstacle course through which for at least four years we had to negotiate fights with bullies and thrashings by prefects and masters. Only in the last two years of our time there, from the age of 16, were we suddenly treated by the school system like human beings with views of our own.

However, there were some very memorable ‘masters’, many of them real eccentrics. Some were wounded individuals, with problems left over from their service in the world wars, and some were near sadists, but others were excellent teachers who really taught us to think and express ourselves in debate and writing. Through my interest in history, I had already become fascinated by foreign affairs before I started at the school in the autumn of 1963 and my fascination was only spurred on by school trips to Austria and France. Some three years later, with three classmates, I started a political party. It was a school affair and came out of our debating society experience. We called it the European Nationalist Party, not because we were right-wing nationalists, but because we wanted Europe to become one nation, a United States of Europe, on the American federal model, because that was the only model we could envisage for such an entity at that time. We were naive and idealistic – and ignorant. We didn’t know much about the workings or the origins and intentions of the European Economic Community (EEC), which General Charles De Gaulle, the French President, had recently barred Britain from joining, and which the leader of the Conservative Party, Edward Heath, was keen that Britain should nevertheless still seek to join. Above all, we wanted the USA and the USSR to withdraw their troops from Europe, and to stop interfering in Europe, so that the peoples of Europe could be themselves and find their own way forward, independent of the Great Powers of East and West. Ironically, we felt that way forward should be through imitating the US model.

Britain and the EEC

American models in all things had, after all, been prominent in British life since the war years and were increasingly so. We knew nothing of Rudolf Steiner or of social threefolding, his vision, developed in the last years of the First World War, of a society organised in accordance with its three constituent parts – cultural life, legal/political life and economic life – so that they would be autonomous and not interfered with or dominated by each other, as had been the case for over a hundred years already, with the political State seeking to direct cultural and economic life in both communist and capitalist countries, in different ways. I would know nothing of Rudolf Steiner and threefolding until I was 29. What I did know by the time I left the ‘concentration camp’ in 1970 and went to university in Manchester was that I had a strong animus against any imposed uniformity and authoritarianism, the assumed right of ‘those on high’ to determine the lives of those ‘below’ them.

At university until the end of 1973, I became active in student politics in the Arts Faculty (I was studying history). While I was at university, Edward Heath, who was now the Prime Minster of a Conservative government, renegotiated Britain’s membership of the EEC, and on 1 January 1973, Britain formally joined. I didn’t take much interest in that whole process because besides history, and indeed, almost replacing it, was my new found love of music, for which Manchester in those days was a magnet, and my interest in politics at the local level of our own department. My pro-EEC sentiments had remained from my schooldays, however, and my hitch-hiking trips in western Europe only boosted my youthful fascination for the continent. Europe ¬ at least as far as the ‘Iron Curtain’ ¬ felt like my oyster, and I wanted, with all the self-centred egoism of the 21 year old, to explore and enjoy it – for myself.

At the same time, I had been greatly disappointed by the victory of Heath’s Conservative Party in 1970. It seemed that after the radicalism of the 1960s, the country had opted to return to familiar conservative habits. Britain, despite the much-vaunted youth culture of the 1960s, the hippies (of whom there were really only a few in Britain) and the over-hyped culture of sex-drugs-rock’n’roll, seemed to me like a fossilised place in danger of becoming stuck in the past. Only music seemed to point a way forward for me. Entry into the EEC, in spite of its bureaucrats and legions of men in suits, was welcome, I felt, but it was not a great draw for young people in those days. It was mostly a project for middle-aged men. I remained unaware of the deceptions that had been practised by Heath’s government and by the Civil Service to get the country into the EEC club. Indeed, I would remain unaware of these for many years.

Japan, Britain and Europe

After university I went to Japan, where I worked as an English teacher. There I was so taken up with getting to grips with my job, with the culture and the language of Japan, that I had little time or inclination to give to the question of Britain in the EEC. I was hardly aware of the 1975 referendum in which the British people – finally given a chance to express a view on the issue of membership of the EEC two years after Heath had taken them into it – decided by a substantial majority that they wanted to stay in. As in the 2016 referendum, the financial and media lobby resources of the ‘Remain’ (in the EEC) lobby, far outstripped those of the ‘Leave’ (the EEC) campaign. In other words, in both referenda the British elites were very much in favour of Britain remaining in the EEC/EU. Later, I would discover why.

After being in Japan for about four years, I slowly began to look back towards Britain again. A summer trip there in 1979, in which my Japanese girlfriend and I hitch-hiked the length of the country up to the Isle of Lewis and back down to Cornwall, was a turning point in which I resolved to return. I could see that after the industrial turmoil of the 1970s, the upsurge of feminism, the extreme right-wing National Front, the explosion of punk rock, the country was much angrier, and Margaret Thatcher was now Prime Minister, a much more strident figure than I remembered her from Edward Heath’s government. From that 1979 trip I recall a punk band playing a live set in a pub in London: the lyrics of one of their ‘songs’ seemed to consist of nothing but the refrain: “We hate! We hate!” Hatred was not something that suddenly emerged in British society c.2016.

Nevertheless, despite the ugly aspects of a Britain in seeming decay in 1979, for the first time, I felt I was able to see ‘my country’ objectively – its positive sides as well as the negative, the gentle, beautiful and caring as well as the crass, aggressive and selfish. The years in Japan had separated me inwardly from Britain; something had been severed, and this, I would later realise, was the instinctive connection to the folk soul. When we grow up in a culture and live most of our lives within it and within its language, we are like fish in water. Living abroad for a period of time, certainly more than two years, as opposed to just holidaying abroad, enables us to come out of our own cultural water as we encounter the folk being of the other culture. After a couple of years living in Japan (it may be earlier for others, depending on the person) it seemed to me that I had crossed a certain threshold in my relationship with the country and the various earthly manifestations of its culture, its ways, habits, and characteristics. At this point, the initial openness,  fascination and sympathy many feel on arriving in a new country can give way to antipathy, an awareness of the shadow side of the culture and judgmentalism. The newcomer may integrate this shadow side into his experience and understanding of the culture and choose to remain in the country or he will fail to do so and if he remains, he may become embittered and antipathetic; alternatively, incapable of dealing with it, he will reject that culture and will leave. I thought I had crossed that threshold after my first two years in Japan, but whereas my time there had somehow cut my inner connection to Britain, the trip home in 1979 reopened my eyes to the country, especially to the beauty of its nature and its historical heritage, but now from the outside, as it were. I now felt able to relate to Britain no longer as my country but as another country, albeit as one with which I was familiar. Two years later, then, my Japanese girlfriend and I relocated to Britain and got married in my hometown of Chester. Almost immediately, we encountered Anthroposophy and Eurythmy.

The 1980s

In the 1980s the government of Margaret Thatcher began to pull in two contrary directions with regard to the EEC: on the one hand the British made a signal contribution to the development of the Single Market through the work of Lord Arthur Cockfield, who Thatcher appointed to join the European Commission, but on the other hand, Thatcher felt Britain was contributing too much money to the European Community and gradually shifted during her three periods in office (1979-1990) from her pro-EEC stance of the early 1970s to a stubborn resistance against any further supranational moves towards unification and federalism. In the second half of the 1980s I became interested both in the story of the mysterious foundling Kaspar Hauser (1812-1833), who was dubbed the ‘Child of Europe’, as the newspapers interested all of Europe in his fate, and also in the role played in his destiny by the British aristocratic secret agent, Lord Stanhope. At this time I also developed an interest in Steiner’s ideas about social threefolding. It was through a short-lived British anthroposophical current affairs magazine Shoreline (1988-92) – produced and edited by Charles Lawrie – that I began to inform myself about the European unification project, having already studied Rudolf Steiner’s detailed exposition on the background to the First World War, a series of 25 lectures later published in English as the Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols. 1 & 2.¹ Steiner’s lectures had alerted me to a very different understanding of the history of the 20th century from the conventional one, the one I had become familiar with through my academic studies and the media. I gradually began to realise around the time of the Maastricht Treaty (1991) how the European Union project fitted into long-range and long-held plans for world domination by western elites, plans which went back to the late 19th century. In the early 1990s I wrote several articles about this, which became the basis of my first book, Mapping the Millennium, published in 1998.

From Cold War 1 to Cold War 2

During the 1990s it became clear that, despite the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, America and its allies had no intention of disbanding NATO, which from the first Gulf War (1991) now became the military arm of the American “unipolar world order”. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia (1991-1999) showed all too clearly the connection between the EU and NATO. Then with the rise to power of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 1999, 9/11 and the consequent wars it led to in Afghanistan and Iraq, China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2002, and the emergence of a new non-western economic bloc  – the BRIC² countries – ,  a new bipolar world order, a new East vs West rivalry gradually emerged. In this situation, western Establishment media began to regard Russia and China first as “rivals” then, more recently, as “threats” and to insist on “the solidarity of the West” in the face of these supposed “threats”. This foreign policy stance has not essentially altered with the change from Obama to Trump. Geopolitical commentators have seen similarities in the US-China relationship and the relationship between the British and German empires in the two decades before 1914 – a declining Power (Britain then, the USA now) felt challenged and “threatened” by a rising Power (Germany then, China now) – a very dangerous situation, because the declining Power feels tempted to use political and military means to try and reduce or quash the economic and cultural challenge. These same western commentators emphasised the need for EU countries, almost all of which had by 2014 been drawn into NATO, to remain closely bound to the USA. As the pro-western website Politico recently indicated in an article titled “Europe’s Dependence on the U.S. Was All Part of the Plan” :  the USA has relied upon the EU and the European unification project, which the USA itself stimulated and promoted³, as the political and economic arm of its permanent military presence in Europe.⁴

The western Establishment media would have us believe that “fake news” and “post-truth” began c. 2016 with Donald Trump and Brexit, whereas in fact, while they have existed since the time when mass newspapers first appeared in the late 19th century, they were given a tremendous boost at the time of 9/11 and in the years that followed.

With the end of the (first) Cold War in the 1990s, I realised that what has to be avoided at all costs in the 21st century is another East vs West binary world order such as existed between the eastern communist (extreme collectivist) and western capitalist (extreme individualist) societies from 1917 to 1991. There has to be a middle region between the poles of East and West, and the danger is that Europe, which historically has contained these two individualist and collective poles itself within its own western and eastern regions respectively and is therefore well-suited to play the role of intermediary on the global scale, cannot do so because it has been ‘captured’ by one of the two poles. It is the EU and NATO which have effected this capture and which sustain it.

The USA requires a European Union under its wing, rather like Batman requires his junior assistant, Robin. Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, one of Rudolf Steiner’s closest pupils and a man with a deep understanding of geopolitics and world events from a spiritual perspective, wrote in 1928: “The Middle of Europe is a Mystery space. It requires of people that they conduct themselves accordingly with regard to it. The path of the cultural epoch in which we live leads from the West to the East through this space [of Middle Europe]. […] All old forces lose themselves on this path to the East, they cannot pass further through this space without renewing themselves out of the spirit. If they seek to do so, they become forces of destruction and give rise to catastrophes. It is in this space which, from human knowledge, human love and human courage, that must come about which may then proceed in a healing way towards the East.” ⁵

Western parliamentarianism and other political movements, such as fascism⁶ and communism – all have become perverted or have lost themselves en route in the East because they have not renewed themselves out of the spirit, and they have become forces of destruction in either central or eastern Europe over the past 100 years. The same has been happening with the impulse of the Catholic Church since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s to penetrate the Orthodox regions of eastern Europe, notably Ukraine, and also with the western, American-inspired impulses of the European Union and NATO. The former President of the EU Commission, the Portuguese José Manuel Barroso, said in 2007: “Sometimes I like to compare the European Union, as a creation, to the organisation of empires, the empires, and because we [the EU] have the dimension of the empires. But there is a great difference. The empires were usually made through force, with a centre that was imposing a diktat, a will, on the others, and now we have what some authors call ‘the first non-imperial empire’. We have, by dimension, 27 countries that freely decided to work together to pool their sovereignties…and work together to add value. I believe it’s a great construction and we should be proud of it. At least, we in the Commission are proud of it.” At this point his fellow Commissioner, the Swede Margot Wallstrom, Commissioner for Communications, interjected: “I think, wasn’t it [Jacques] Delors who said, jokingly, that you have to be either a genius or French to understand the construction of it. But I propose something much more useful to citizens [i.e. to help them understand the EU], and that is ‘Solutions United’  – like a football team.”⁷  Wallstrom, a non-academic Scandinavian, may have felt uncomfortable here with the academic Barroso’s reference to the EU as an ‘empire’ and, as more of a professional politician than Barroso, she sought to explain the EU through a more ‘folksy’, media-savvy slogan that she evidently felt was ‘closer to the people’. But her football team analogy not only masks the reality of the EU, it serves to lead attention away from the ‘imperial cat’ that Barroso, perhaps inadvertently, let out of the bag.

The Four Kings, the Palladium and Parsifal

What then must proceed in a healing way towards the East, from Europe as far as China and Japan to build a human bridge between these communities? The insight that, as Steiner put it in what he called ‘the Motto of the Social Ethic’: “The healing social life is found when in the mirror of the human soul the whole community finds its reflection and when in the community the strength of each one is living.” This implies a society in which individuals constantly seek to be aware of and responsive to what is going on in their society and one in which the community values and upholds the qualities of each individual member of the community. This unites the individual and communitarian impulses of west and east, respectively.

Based on this ethical insight is what Steiner called the Fundamental Social Law: “The well-being of a community of cooperatively working human beings is the greater the less individuals demand the proceeds of their work for themselves or, in other words, the more they make over these proceeds to their co-workers and the more their needs are met not by their own work but from that of others.” This calls for insight on the part of individuals, especially those in the West, into how much they depend on each other for their needs to be satisfied. If, given today’s world economy, we really thought of how much we depend, for example, on the work of millions of workers in China to sustain our lifestyle, how could we possibly regard the Chinese as enemies? But China’s authoritarian regime is sustained by a bizarre mix of western Marxism-Leninism, Confucianism and western capitalism, a mixture the Chinese Communist Party likes to call “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Drawing from Goethe’s Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1795) China’s system today, we can say, is neither a golden king, a silver king, nor a bronze king; it is the fourth king in the story – the king who is a mix of the three elements. Steiner described how the three kings are symbols of wisdom (gold/thinking), beauty (silver/feeling), and strength (bronze/willing). Goethe was not thinking of China when he wrote his story in 1795, but we can say that in the case of modern China, the thinking of its rulers is based on Marxist-Leninist thought; its will, the basis of its physical economy, is capitalist, while its social and ethical feeling is still informed by ancient Chinese sentiments, a further mix of Confucianism and Legalism, despite 70 years of Communism. The current Chinese system is a 70 year-old mixed king.

In Goethe’s story, at one point the mixed king cries out with a broken voice: “Who will govern the world?” and the Old Man replies: “He who stands upon his feet”. “I am he”, says the mixed King. “We shall see”, replies the Old Man, “for the time is at hand.”⁸ When Goethe’s story reaches its denouement, and the hidden temple, its dome lit by the sun, has risen from the depths of the river, the three kings stand up one by one but the mixed king collapses into a misshapen lump when the will-o’-the-wisps have licked the gold veins from out of him. The mixed king can also be said to refer not only to the Chinese regime but also to all the unitary nation states of today -  including the nascent super-state that is the EU – where the government seeks to combine and control all three spheres of social life: the cultural, the political and the economic i.e. the spheres of thought, of feeling and of will. Steiner insisted that in the modern world the three spheres must not be controlled by one power, the political government, but must be autonomous, with their own forms of administration. Only in this way can individuals be free in the cultural sphere (the gold king) – through teaching, research and jurisprudence – to contribute to the efficacy of the other two spheres, the political and the economic. The unitary nation state, in which the State functions rather like the board of a corporation, managing and taking responsibility for almost everything, is a hangover from the 18th and 19th centuries, a pre-democratic age when most individual citizens were not trusted by their self-appointed social ‘superiors’ with any or much responsibility. In those centuries and also in the 20th century, the State arrogated to itself ever greater powers, especially in times of war, in order to mobilise and control the population for the war effort. The unitary nation state is a State organised for war, and competitive economic life in the West since the 18th century is predicated on conflict and strife between individuals, companies and nations – in direct contradiction to the real bases of economic life, which are cooperation and service, without which no economic life can take place.

Goethe wrote his Fairy Tale in response to the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man written by his good friend, the poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). The subject of the Letters was the triad of necessity, reason and freedom. “Schiller saw that a harmonious social life could only be founded on the basis of free human personalities” and that “there was an ‘ideal human being’ within everyone. […] the challenge was to bring the outer life experiences into harmony with this ‘ideal’. Then the human being would lead a truly worthy existence.” The French “revolution was driven by a desire for outer social changes to enable human personalities to become free. But both Schiller and Goethe recognised that freedom cannot be ‘imposed’ from the outside but must arise from within each person.”⁹

The EU cannot bring ‘freedom, peace and prosperity’ to Europeans from outside; only they themselves, through their own experience and efforts,  can produce those qualities from within themselves and between each other – if they recognise how those three elements (the three kings) live within themselves as individuals in Europe and between each other. The three mixed kings of the EU, of the PRC and of the USA are bound to fall, most likely in this century, and most likely in that order. Along with them will likely also fall the United Kingdom, the artificial construct that was created only in 1801 during the war against Napoleon’s France and which since the late 20th century has often been dubbed “UK plc” – the nation regarded as an economic corporate entity, engaged in constant economic conflict with other national plcs.

This model of national economic competition and conflict arising from it is what the West has ‘bestowed’ upon China since the time of the Opium Wars (1839-1860). Bestowed with the aid of missionary ‘Christianity’, it has little to do with anything Christian. By contrast, Steiner pointed in 1921, at the time of the Washington Conference between Britain, the USA and Japan, to the story of the Palladium¹⁰, a symbol (actually a wooden statue) of the Goddess Pallas Athena, who was one of the forms in which the ancients understood the Being of the Sun, the Being who had not yet incarnated on the physical plane. With the Palladium, which the Trojans held to be a symbol of divine protection of their city, the priests of Troy taught the people through their rituals about the threefold nature of the cosmic Sun Being  – Light, Life and above all, Love.

The Palladium was later taken to Rome, where it was safeguarded in the temple of Vesta, and its existence was known only to initiate priests and emperors. But its connection with the knowledge of the Cosmic Sun Being was, according to Steiner, what drew early Christians to Rome. Later, the Emperor Constantine removed it to Constantinople, and hid it under the great porphyry Column of Constantine, which was topped by an image of himself in the figure of Apollo. In thus removing from Rome the protective power of the Palladium, goes the legend, Constantine doomed the old city of Rome and also removed from Roman Christianity the last vestiges of an understanding of the cosmic Sun Being, the cosmic understanding of the Christ Logos, the relation between Christ and the Sun, the Logos being the source of Light, Life and Love and indeed of the created world, as the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John makes clear. Christ was and is thus far more than a Messiah, an earthly political ruler for a particular people.

Following Constantine’s removal of the Palladium, however, over the next 1200 years, from Constantine to Henry VIII of England (1509-1547), spiritual and temporal rulership in Europe – the spiritual and the political -  increasingly tended to merge.

Legends tell of a future removal of the Palladium to the Slavic northeast when the East, devoid of its ancient wisdom, will have become utterly decadent. Then it will be the time for the Palladium to receive illumination from the West. The East, its ancient spirituality still alive but decadent, waits for a new light of spiritual illumination and inspiration from the West, but the West is mainly interested, Steiner claimed in 1921, only in economic benefits from the East. If Asia finds in what the West brings to it only bullying, arrogance, and greed, it will increasingly meet the West with antipathy and eventually violence, as happened with Japan in 1941. In terms of the Grail story, however, the Asian Fierifis needs what the western Parsifal has to offer – individual conscience and freedom, the resurrected Sun force within the human individual that brings light and warmth to others – and Asia will recognise these out of the forces of its own declining spirituality, just as Fierifis recognised the quality of Parsifal. Then the ‘Palladium’ in the East, which is currently still in darkness, as we see today in the collectivist forms of Chinese Communism and Indian nationalism, will be able to light up again and be re-enlivened by the Parsifal spirit of the West, which is actually the spirit of Christian conscience and Christ consciousness.

By the time I wrote my first book in 1998, I had realised, as I have argued in these three New View articles on the subject of Brexit, that the EU is a regressive step not only for Britain but for Europe as a whole; it manifests the spectre of ancient Rome in modern times, the gradual emergence of an all-imposing totalitarian spirit via the method of boiling frogs: placing frogs in cool water and gradually turning up the temperature so that not realising what’s happening, the frogs remain in the water until they are boiled alive. The EU, in its relationship with the USA, reduces the global triad of East, Middle and West to a binary: the West (America and Europe) against the East (Russia, Iran, China). Europe is unable to fulfil its proper global intermediary function between East and West because it is bound to America.

The unitary super-nation state that the EU is seeking to become, step by inexorable step, will restrict the free spiritual and cultural life of the individual and make it subject to the dictates of economics and politics. For these reasons, and because I now knew about the extent of the deception and lies that many British politicians of all parties and the media had been telling the British people for 50 years about the EU project and Britain’s entry into it, I now knew that I would have to support exit from the EU in the referendum that was held on 23 June 2016, despite the very dubious nature of the campaign on both sides in the run-up to the event, and the tactical untruths told by both sides in the referendum campaign.

If the British people, against the odds, succeed in leaving the EU and then succumb to the siren song of those Anglo-chauvinists who wish to continue – albeit in a different form  – dreaming the imperial dreams of Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner by further consolidating the relations of the “Five Eyes” countries¹¹ (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) to maintain the financial and military domination of those English-speaking countries in world affairs, then the British people would only be taking a different path backwards towards the spectre of Rome. If, however, they can resist those siren voices, then perhaps they can be an inspiration to the other peoples of Europe to withdraw also from the delusional EU neo-Roman ‘empire’ construct of Monnet and Barroso, Macron and Merkel, so that the peoples of Europe can eventually set about creating a truly threefold European associative community that is appropriate for this modern epoch.

This European associative community, open to the world for research and economic relations, though not to free mass movement of economic migrants, would thereby maintain a real ‘diversity’ of European cultures, rather than become a single conformist unitary state in which the cultural, political and economic spheres are increasingly uniform. It would be based on something like Steiner’s Motto of the Social Ethic and the Fundamental Social Law – a threefold European community that can indeed function as a healing, helpful intermediary between East and West.

Terry Boardman

Endnotes

1 Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2005.

2 Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

3 See my first article in this three-part series in New View Issue #90, Jan.-Mar. 2019.

4 https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-dependence-on-the-us-was-all-part-of-the-plan-donald-trump-nato/

5 T.H. Meyer, Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz – A European (Temple Lodge, 2014) p. 249.

6 The word fascism comes from the bundles of rods (fasces) containing an axe held by the lictors, the official bodyguards who protected Roman magistrates wherever they went. The axes symbolised the power of capital punishment. Fasces can be seen flanking the Speaker’s chair in the US House of Representatives.

7 Youtube: Euractiv TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Ralocq9uE

8 Interestingly, the words “Stand up!” feature strongly in “The March of the Volunteers” – the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China.

9 See Tom Raines, New View summer 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20070929202046/http://www.newview.org.uk/green_snake.htm

10 Rudolf Steiner, The Sun-Mystery in the Course of Human History  – The Palladium, Dornach, 6.11.1921, Collected Works GA 208.

11 So called because they only share certain highly classified intelligence data amongst themselves and not even with their NATO allies. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes