Part of the problem with standing in the Western ruins involves clearing away the fog of spiritual war, which is deliberate and has the effect of turning the conflict into a free-for-all, in which chaos and confusion deepen demoralization. Rudolf Steiner’s work is important in any history of esoterism, however, his reliance on evolutionary terminology and concepts, and the deterioration of Theosophy/Anthroposophy following the acceptance by those movements of modernist or New Age categories of thought, make this a perilous project. Nevertheless, Steiner potentially gives Western minds the ability to cognitively “discern the spirits” and rightly “divide Thoughts”. Specifically, the work of Gemmdy Bondarev is helpful in accomplishing this.
Bondarev’s magnificent chapter on the Mystery of Good and Eviloffers a platform from which we can see what is happening upon the world stage, in a manner compatible to Christianized minds, given that the Anglo-Saxon & the Romanity blocks of mankind were given the task of developing man’s consciousness in a certain direction, thus giving them the Imperium but also exposing them to unique dangers. Corruptio optima pessimi, so they say.
In a nutshell, the teaching is this:
In this era, for which the Christ was necessary to guide and develop man’s increasing Luciferic impulses in the imagination and the growing Ahrimanic dominance of Number/Measure, the specific danger is that a New Trinity will be formed, not from Christ upholding Lucifer with his left hand (from falling into fantasy) and suppressing Ahriman with his right (from reducing everything to King Whirl and the God Number), but from the Asuric powers which will harmonize Lucifer and Ahriman in their own Anti-Christ, to replace Christ. The issue is as much about Higher vs. Lower, as it is, “Good” versus “Evil”.
The Asuras are demons (archai) of the lowest order of angels, spirits of sub-personal impulse, which will attempt at this moment in history the subversion of the Luciferic gift of the ability to choose between Good & Evil, and will use Ahriman to initiate or incarnate a one-world order or earthly paradise, in which man is made comfortable and easy in all of his animal impulses; thus the spiritual degradation will occur unnoticed, apace
To those steeped in Tradition, this sounds not only plausible, but familiar.
Christ knew the danger of this moment, and His descent into hell was designed to redeem the possibilities of Lucifer and Ahriman (higher angelic powers) in order to maintain a balance, only accomplished under the higher “I”. The Asuras, by contrast, need man’s spiritual energies to be directed to lower, or sub-personal ends, in which man will become an animal, and eventually, lower than an animal. They are incapable at this time of being redeemed (they are Legion, and Christ sends them into the pigs), and will collapse during Cosmic Ascension into the “eighth sphere”, or the outer darkness, where there will be Aeons of gnashing of teeth and weeping, as no one knows (at this time) how they will be redeemed, or if anything of humanity they have carved out for themselves will survive this outer darkness to be Recapitulated when the Eighth Sphere is regained.
This is “feeding the Moon” on a vast scale, or something even worse. The Fathers dealt with these creatures in the deserts of the Thebaid, because these misguided angels need man’s energies either to survive at all or simply out of envy (no one really knows for sure – their intentions are not “enlightened”, even to the extent that Lucifer’s were). This lower order of fallen angels is purely demonic and sub-lunary. That is, they cannot expect to be mastered by man (as other fallen daemons may be capable of), but actually have to be “killed” or left behind. They are not nature spirits, angelic archons, or even “daemons”, but sub-personal demons who are seriously retarded, and have “evolved” by degeneration. It is their power that is evident and prime during the Kali Yuga.
The prelude to Anti-Christ is the milieu of a coming earthly utopia in which life is made easy for Shudras and Out-Castes. These peoples identify with the Asuras. They reflect cosmology, by being parasitic, and needing the higher elements to be made lower, so that Life is made easy for them. However, unlike Lucifer or other fallen angels, who were the “gods” of the old myths, they are not “higher” than man in any sense, and it is doubtful whether they can be “taken with us”, so to speak, even on our terms. The Christian Tradition’s solution was to excise them totally, to separate from them. Modern esotericism entertains more hope. This is an interesting question: all agree that they are sub-personal. They may specifically be sub-personal, in particular, to the Western project of generating a sanctified Ego under the direction of Logos, an Ego capable of being “raised up”. This was the basis of the Super-Ego which dominated Western high culture until recently.
Evil acts when Good is exalted (although it appears the other way around to us in the Kali Yuga). Thus, the danger of man as he attempts to redeem his consciousness and integrate his lower and higher I (Alchemy) is that he is exposed to the action of the Asuric forces, in a false Trinity: this is the Reign of Quantity, or the Age of the Anti-Christ, or “Modern Times”. It is a necessary step with laws of its own, one of them being that Man has to be capable of discerning cognitively what is happening in order to clearly resist.
Here is Bondarev on discerning the times, & it would apply interiorly, as well:
The earthly human ‘I’ arises through the combining of these ingredients: thinking, feeling and willing. They all owe their genesis to the earthly existence of man: the higher nerve activity, the sensations and perceptions and a certain unconscious, instinctive force – the will. All three ingredients have a positive and a negative pole: affirmation is opposed by negation, a positive feeling by a negative one, constructive will is opposed by destructive will or absence of will. All this has long been known to the traditional sciences. Spiritual science completes the picture by adding the knowledge of the personified nature of all psychic and spiritual manifestations of man — his qualities. When physiology speaks of the decay of nerve substance during the thought process, Anthroposophy provides in addition the teaching of ahrimanic beings, of their goals and world-mission. When psychoanalysis describes the ‘sludge’ in the soul and the various confusions arising in the human ‘libido’, Anthroposophy places over against this the teachings of the ‘Doppelgänger’—being dwelling in the sub-nature of man, and of reincarnation and karma. The conditions prevailing in the cosmos require of man that he should attain knowledge of the world-battle waged by the Gods against the luciferic and ahrimanic hordes. In this battle the highest God, who passed through death on earth and pointed the way to the final overcoming of the world-dualism of spirit and matter, is on the side of man. But man can follow Christ only in the ‘I’, for He is the God of the human ‘I’. This means that, in his ‘I’, which he lives out in the combined faculties thinking, feeling and willing, the human being should strive for the ideal of the higher life, which brings not impoverishment and loss but enhancement of self-consciousness and the wealth of individual being.
The spiritual elite will have to sharply “discern spirits” in order to brighten the Light sufficiently to discern the second coming of Christ, both to battle Anti-Christ, but also to accept and know Christ – too many Christians will think that the Anti-Christ is Christ himself, or be demoralized. Likewise, many of the esoteric high initiates in the West are like the misguided spirits, and cannot discern the possibility that they have not “arrived”. They are living in a “false heaven”, and are vulnerable to subversion. In fact, in the West, they have succumbed en masse.
This plays out in history, following the triumph of Christianity, as a second temptation:
The new epoch brings yet another problem. If we disregard mass culture, which is already in a terminal state of decline, and we turn to those who, in the face of all hindrances, have found through their connection with esoteric Christianity the strength and ability to balance the working of Lucifer and Ahriman through the impulse of the Christ – the God of the human ‘I’ who reveals Himself through the Holy Spirit when the human being overcomes everything that is national, tribal, racial – we find these people confronted now by the retarded spirits of time, the Asuras. They lie in wait for those who are striving towards the consciousness-soul and cause them to lower this into the sphere of the instincts. For this reason the Anglo-Saxon and German-speaking peoples, whose task it is to bring to birth the ‘I’ in the threefold soul, and who therefore have to master the consciousness-soul, and also those who turn to Anthroposophy, incur the greatest risk in the new epoch. Dangers have always lurked on the path of development, and this will always be the case. But if we expose ourselves to dangers, we should do so with understanding. It is a purely Asuric idea to want to build an earthly paradise where man is not exposed to any risks. The majority of people will be led in the new epoch to a certain degree of individualization. Intellectualism will increasingly become a possession of the broader masses, but for the sole purpose of harnessing these masses completely to mechanized culture, to the extent that the human being will be incorporated as an element into the various mechanical-cybernetic systems of the future, and also, in part, of the present. The ‘Highest’ to which man can look up will be, instead of the Spirit Self, ahrimanic immortality, while the most varied cybernetic-parapsychological refinements will spread over the earth, which not only prolong human life, but also rob souls of the possibility of passing through a spiritual evolution after death. In the last resort it will be possible to convey a not inconsiderable portion of humanity into the sphere of the electro-magnetic energies, the fallen ethers, in order on this foundation to build up an anti-world, an anti-cosmos, which will be placed over against the divine world creation. The initiates of the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon race know of this and look upon such a perspective of development as being quite acceptable. But it is not given to them to understand and become conscious of the fact that there is no place in it for the human soul and spirit, as they are subject to the influence of ritual (ceremonial) magic. Already these people are the virtual rulers of the world. Must we keep silent about all this, and wait patiently for the events to unfold? – May every thinking person answer this question for himself. We owe a certain forbearance to the person who simply does not want to believe all this, who thinks that the world is moved by the chance fortuity of events and the play of arbitrary choice or of the noble intentions of human beings standing in isolation to one another. But it is quite different for those who have grown out of the swaddling bands of their social, political and occult infancy. They should on no account underestimate the significance of present events. Rather, they are such that their significance cannot be estimated highly enough. We are the witnesses and participants in a cosmic mystery drama, the course of which has an immediate bearing on our own destiny.
So we are in the middle of a morality/mystery play. Hence the popularity of such works as Harry Potter. Voldemort is coming back.
1. The goal of those who wish to stand should be to master themselves first of all. Guenon, the Church Fathers, traditional Eastern wisdom, and the insights of Western “mystics” all agree on this fundamental point of discerning the origin and arising of spiritual impulses. In the West, the emphasis on Logos was designed to structure and rule the mass of the inner world, providing a way of discrimination. No Western project will be able to do away with Dogma and Logos, both because of prior shaping and because of the unique Western task of integrating the lower I with the higher I, which implies not a retreat from matter, but its spiritualization. I don’t intend to debate or discuss whether the difference with the East is fundamental or a matter of perspective, as others are more qualified. For the beginning Westerner, it hardly matters, except to point out that Christianity is likely a more suitable vehicle for their climbing of the Ladder than anything else. Part of learning to stand is mastering the fear and fog of our currently engineered situation: God’s winds are still blowing; friends and enemies are not easily discerned, but they can be discerned. Use the Logos to help decide.
2. Secondly, the structuring of society in a Traditional order will have to occur, but it will have to be done voluntarily and in full spiritual freedom and insight. Establishing an outright spiritual tyranny, however desirable from the point of view of the alternative, will not work. However, this doesn’t mean that the accusations will not be made, even if Western man “returns”. As Westerners return to the Eternal Fountain, they will have every name in the Book hurled at them: Fascism, Totalitarianism, Elitism, etc. A patient ability to refute and answer and hold fast (Apologia) will be in order. We will be in the same position of the early Christians, who had to be ready at all times to give a gracious and seasoned answer for the hope within us.
3.Thirdly, one can see that the old religions are not irrelevant, since generic “initiation” doesn’t necessarily solve the problem on a grand scale, but rather opens one to the possibilities of subversion on the astral plane. The post-mortem state is still relevant, and indeed, may be a safer mode of spiritual transit (if Reason is allowed to guide the soul) than outright spiritual baptism during the Kali Yuga. In fact, one might even argue that Christianity is the religion par excellence of the Kali Yuga, in that it does not require elite knowledge, but only that a connection to such be vital (through apostolic succession, angelic influence, and/or esoteric Christianity). It may actually be a “shell” to protect a vulnerable and newly born “ego” for the post-mortem transit. Isn’t this precisely Evola’s point in regard to Roman Catholic theology?
4. Regarding Steiner, if Steiner’s “evolution” is seen as prior in Time, but not in logical priority (as Cologero has written is possible), or in terms of Inner Form, then his views of ascension are not necessarily New Age, but rather can describe the trajectory of man’s development during the dark Age of the Kali Yuga. It is unimportant that he has become a “movement” subject to degeneration: the Roman Church endorsed Vatican II, but this doesn’t mean that the war is over, or that all is lost.
The Chaos of the Asuras is allowed because it will deepen the strength and insight of the newly born Western Ego under Logos, to not only freely choose God, but to even pierce to the possibility of discerning Christ and Anti-Christ, which is a different task than discerning Good and Evil. The old liberal mindset sees only cardboard Good and cartoon Evil. In the coming storm, man will definitively be lead to choose between Higher and Lower, and maybe even Good and Best. Man will acquire Sophia, the gift of judging angels, and discerning/commanding demons.
In the Christian Tradition, we would say, God doesn’t want angels, but “sons”. Perhaps the innocent child, the Ego that looks up to the Heavenly Father, the “sheep of the personality” (Tomberg) is the only inner warrior capable of beginning combat in perfect humility against the infernal forces of the Kali Yuga.
@Matt: http://initiativeforanthroposophy.org/the-events-in-ukraine-and-possible-future-scenarios-essay-2-earthly-and-celestial-russia-part-1/ Also, Google, Beyond Good and Evil, Bondarev, and that will give you a link.
I’m not up to speed on most of the modern day references in this article, but I have an impetus to share some thoughts on some of the thought forms I perceive here.
My perspective comes from having worked with Reichian Applied Sex Economy for over a decade, beginning at about the same time that I dedicated my life to God.
Basically, my issue is with all who employ their thinking faculties principally in order to come to grips with what’s going on and to find their own paths. Which means basically EVERYBODY.
As long as people abstain from initiating the cybernetic (self-guided) process of moving into their physical bodies, as opposed to simply using them as temporary hangouts. Some thought processes cannot begin except through a combined mind-body interaction, and this is something the individual needs to learn for himself – and as part of his social surroundings – and not something that can be attained through the continued intervention of another person (therapist). The latter may be employed to initiate internal process work, but cannot be part of the continued body habilitation process.
When such full-body energetic processes commence, the individual will find themselves not only thinking laterally but, essentially, also engaging power configurations, secularly, spiritually as well as those powered and enforced by society values.
Neglecting to enter into said body habilitation process leaves the human being in either the Luciferian grips, unable to ground intellectual processes in one’s everyday life, or the Satanic/Ahrimanic grips where techniques and numbing desensitization provides the capacity for dealing with matter quantitatively but at the same time deprives the human being of any contact with ethics.
The Asuras are clearly part of the that lower spiritual realm which New Agers yearn to “ascend” away from, yet, our task at hand at this juncture is to engage and integrate EVERYTHING. And this can only be achieved through an integral full-body-mind approach.
We are going to subjugate Lucifer and Satan/Ahriman by animating Sorat, and we must do it from the position of being Crucified, i.e. having internalized the noumenal life of Christ. The we WILL find our vocation in constituting the Kingdom of God on Earth.
The Asuras and the Archons will dissipate as we progressively take possession of our bodies on all levels from the most coarse to the most rarefied in a consolidated and sustained process. This of course includes taking full control of our sexuality, learning to employ it as the advanced social tool it is meant to be when procreation is deprecated and obsoleted,
And to Olavsson’s question wanting to know why leadership in these undertakings must be a “unique western task” the answer is simple: Western intellectual and spiritual traditions, especially as they have also made essential contact with other traditions (Eastern, primitive) constitute the vanguard of humanity in that they have broken new ground that the others have not yet learned to be in. All that the others possess, equally essential in its own right, can be integrated by those inhabiting the vanguard.
Is any of Bondarev’s work available online? It seems a bit hard to find.
The prelude to Anti-Christ is the milieu of a coming earthly utopia in which life is made easy for Shudras and Out-Castes’ who exactly are the shudras and outcastes and do you believe they should be killed off?.
There are some very important points in this article on the occult war and the ability to principally discern between different trends and identify their underlying, hidden forces.
I know that the author did not intend to discuss this, but perhaps someone else will, for I am genuinely interested in understanding it and cannot resist raising the question. How can this “unique western task” mentioned by the author, in terms of spiritual realization and initiatic ascent, be explained from an ‘objective’ point of view of pure metaphysics? It seems arbitrary to me, but this may very well be because of my own lack of insight in this regard. In order to reach any mutual understanding here, we must resort to clear metaphysical principles. The alchemical process described in the article would seem to constitute simply an extension of the human state, to use an expression of Guénon, which is a possibility of many other traditions beside our own, and not the highest possibility.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
I came upon an interesting piece of information, suggesting that Christ was a last manifestation of Aryan Saoshyant who shows up every 3000 years – Saviour from a book of Avesta, making Christianity a branch of Iranian (Aryan) religion. This is why Iranian magi visited Christ.
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aspergers would be along the same lines, yes. ive worked a lot with autistic children and the way they lack abstract thought and how their interests revolve around how something creates a particular sensory response in them as opposed to “what it means” or something, sounds like ahriman coming to life. this is all speaking generally of course. but it is a very strange disorder. and sometimes i wonder about the luciferian type of thinking that schizophrenics seem to exhibit. which was perhaps more pervasive in times past?? not sure what to make of it all exactly just gets me thinking..
How about Asperger’s? Good point!
JC Sunol: You are right, of course, at least in one sense – the Truth has nothing to hide. However, there are different connotations to “secret”; as Cologero and others point out, Truth can hide in plain sight, when men are blind. Of course, there is also the sense of a secret hidden for a purpose, so that men are trained in the finding of it. Also, some things are just unknown, or beyond experience. Christianity presents secrets or mysteries, however, it doesn’t “give a sword to a child”. If you read Bondarev, he makes the claim that Jesuitism and in particular the post Inquisition Church makes “an assault on heaven”, while Freemasonry (also originally uncorrupt) “plays around with hell”. Tomberg makes the astounding claim that Lucifer was redeemed on the cross, in his exposition on Pentecost (and Golgotha). Ahriman, Bondarev teaches, is the particular exoteric form of the Kali Yuga; the perversion of Luciferic power would presumably be in the corruption of Freemasonry, the exaltation of Ahriman (in the West) through the mechanicalness that entered Rome after the suppression of the Templars. But the driving force behind both become the Asuric or lower elements, which utilize the other two. Even this is probably a phrasing in “terms understandable” for our time, and has to be measured against Tradition as a whole.
I do not see real Christianity secret, that is freemasonry which is witchcraft not Christ like
the ahrimanic tendencies of modern times are displayed very starkly in the ever growing autistic population. its hard not to draw a correlation between the drive towards an increasingly materialistic, technological and disconnected society and this disorder.
By the end of KALI-YUGA the lifespan of a man will mean that he is in old age at the late teens, sexual intercourse will begin amongst children of eight and nine and physical bodily forms will be greatly degraded. Mankind will hovel in caves and human flesh will be sold on the open market and cities will be ruled by psychotic dictators.
KALI-YUGA intimates not the goddess Kali but rather the black male demon KALI (pronounced “kuh-lee”) who is KALI-YUGA PERSONIFIED, known within the period of the speaking of the BHAGAVAD-GITA as the powerful ksatriya warrior called DURYODHANA. KALI-YUGA PERSONIFIED entered into the world when KRSNA left his body 5000 years ago and KALI-YUGA first came through the omen of seeing the sign of the SPIKED MACE. KRSNA’s departure and KALI’s entrance onto the earth and thus the beginning of KALI-YUGA is part of the schematics to facilitate the arrival of LORD KALKI “MACHINE-KILLER” avatara of KRNSA who will murder the entire planet in a mass genocide.
At this time SHESHA-NAGA, the thousand-headed serpent who lives at the bottom of the universe in the waters of CHAOS will raise it’s head, shooting flames from it’s fanged mouth, destroying the aggregate cosmic physical manifestation from below. LORD SIVA will open his third eye and from it will come DESTRUCTION, his third eye which has been closed in premeditation of his final purpose as the lord of destruction since the beginning of the KALPA. The black goddess called KALI (pronounced “kah-lee”) will appear like a spectre of blackest night, hovering above the carnage of the fields of battle and feasting on the massive bloodshed, the zenith point of the IRON AGE in which LORD KALKI will act as the GREAT EXTERMINATOR. BHAIRAVS and VEERAN will all appear and act as the parts and parcels of fulfilling the mission which will lead onward to COSMIC DISSOLUTION – the mighty PRALAYA in which all-consuming great BHAIRAV will chime the beginning of paralysis and MAHA-VISNU breathes inward, millions upon millions of universes entering into his pores and into the unmanifest state. We are here to facilitate your participation in preparing for HELL ON EARTH. We are already within the IRON AGE – will you become BHAIRAV or VEERAN and take part in the end-time mission of LORD KALKI? BECOME AN ELEMENT OF EXTERMINATION, THE ABILITY IS WITHIN YOUR HAND – LEARN YOUR PART IN THE RANKS OF THE ELITE DEATH DEALERS ASSISTING LORD KALKI AVATARA, 11TH AND FINAL INCARNATION OF KRSNA/VISNU.
Jacob – Bondarev has some interesting comments on Boehme (which might apply to Swedenborg as well, although he says that the far North folk-souls have been granted a kind of reprieve for the time being). Detachment, as you say, is very important in seeing things more clearly, it’s the sine qua non.
Jason-Adam, I suppose I’ve concluded that in our time, the unique conditions mean that movements QUICKLY become corrupted, if not being corrupt to begin with. I need to research Bondarev’s credentials more, but his words have the stamp of detached Truth:
“Anglo-Saxon political occultism builds on the many thousand years’ tradition of the cultural movement from East to West. Its leading occultists (where and in what form does not concern us here) say: ‘We are the only rightful heirs to the Greco-Latin culture. The Gods themselves, and the stars, look favourably upon us in our striving to rule the world. The time of the Latin race is over, and it must disappear. Central Europe stagnates and keeps us waiting. Admittedly it brings something to culture, but has to be held in a firm grip, its conservatism must be destroyed, it must be economically weakened and politically lamed so that it cannot prevent America from realizing the world rule to which it is destined. As to Eastern Europe, its importance is, in the end, limited to the reserve of genetic forces, which are considerably weakened in the rest of the world.’
The Nordic ideology arose in the wake of the cultural impulse in its movement from the South of Europe to the North. It is to an unimaginable degree reactionary, because it appeals for the restoration of the ancient Hyperborean, if not even the Polarian root-race. Only to Lucifer can the deeper meaning, the content, of an ideology of this kind be known. But its human bearers are only dreaming, they are possessed by it because not a single conscious mind among them is capable of establishing any reasonable relation to that in the highest sense spiritual planetary being of humanity as a unity devoid of all individual characteristics. Nordic ideology also has an ahrimanic component – it is Louhi, the Queen of the North (Kalevala).”
From reading more of his Crisis of Civilization, he makes the claim that the national souls each have a contribution to make, with particular souls taking the lead or Imperium in a given cycle. Thus, the American Empire was built to stop or frustrate the legitimate movement of the Slavic soul to attain purity, which should have given Russia the lead in developing affairs. This explains the concentration of destruction that was aimed at Germany (which currently held the high ground) and Russia (which was destined to be handed the torch).
His views on souls and races seem right as they argue that FOR THE TIME BEING ONLY certain tasks were legitimately falling into the hands of the Folk-Souls. It was imperative, therefore, to substitute an Anti-Christ, which would counterfeit this movement. And so we arrive at today, and the “ideal” of confusion and race-mixing. Satan gets the first move in the chess game, or it looks that way to us. Actually, we’ve just not been paying attention, and God was at work to begin with.
Bondarev even claims that Rome is involved in some of the turmoil, which may be true, and something to keep in mind when considering the Orthodox-Rome debates.
In fairness though it must be pointed out Bondarev was expelled from the Anthroposophical Society, so his views are not the “official” views of anthroposophy.
JA, thanks for the link. Right now, I would say so: I have some kind of call to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy, & am trying hard to interpret that. Reading Apologia Pro Vita Sua at the moment. It’s easy to want things to be work out faster than they are. I think you right about Bondarev: Steiner as read through his eyes seems more lucid & less potentially confusing: glad you share that perception.
Bondarev is really interesting, I’m noticing a lot of correspondences with Mouravieff. Plus he is more conservative and closer to Tradition than most Anthroposophists.
Your posts Logres each week fill my mind with material to be digested slowly and carefully……..
Are you still following the western Orthodox path ?
This website may or may not be helpful http://sophiafoundation.org/
I really enjoyed this one, Logres. From everything I’ve read discernment is very important on the spiritual path. Which is likely why working along with someone more developed on the path is stressed among other reasons of course.
I read some Steiner right before finding Guenon. After reading Guenon, I decided Steiner was at least of lesser importance and abandoned reading him. Of course, he’s an interesting figure much like a Swedenborg, I’m not sure exactly what to think about him. Tomberg must have thought there is some value in his work though.
If so, so much the better.
this is eastern traditions