by Dr. K.R. Bolton
April 16, 2014
from
NewDawnMagazine Website
|
DR. KR BOLTON has
doctorates in theology and related areas, Ph.D. honoris causa,
and certifications in psychology and social work studies.
He has been widely
published by the scholarly and broader media
on a variety of subjects.
He is a 'contributing
writer' for Foreign Policy Journal, and a regular writer for New
Dawn. Books include: Revolution From Above (London: Arktos Media
Ltd., 2011), Stalin: The Enduring Legacy (Black House
Publishing, 2012), 'Introduction' to Oscar Wilde's The Soul of
Man Under Socialism (Black House, 2012), with books pending on
the conflict between tradition and counter-tradition,
and psychopathy in
Left-wing politics.
The below article appeared in New Dawn No. 136 (Jan-Feb 2013). |
For those who believe there is an 'occult' or 'spiritual war' taking place
between forces of 'light' and 'darkness', or 'good' and 'evil', and that
this 'war' manifests on the material and mortal planes politically,
culturally, spiritually, and economically, it is often surprisingly
difficult to discern the affiliations in this 'battle', with the multitude
of occult Orders, Schools and personalities.
These often use similar or even identical
terminologies and symbols, and draw on the same traditions and origins.
In such a situation well-meaning people are
easily duped into supporting long-range aims of which they do not
understand.
Occult War - Adepts
'Black' & 'White'
The definition of 'good and evil', or 'light and dark', metaphysically can -
from an esoteric perspective - be regarded as a dichotomy between those who
seek a higher spiritual path for mankind, and those who seek to enchain man
to matter.
This dichotomy is well portrayed in the standard
depictions of 'The Devil' trump in the Tarot Major Arcana.1
Paul Foster Case, founder of the Builders
of the Adytum, gave a particularly apt explanation:
In its most general meanings, it signifies
Mammon and thus big business, the conventions of society, the injustice
and cruelty of a social order in which money takes the place of God, in
which humanity is bestialized, in which war is engineered by greed
masquerading as patriotism, in which fear is dominant.
Students of astrology will have no
difficulty in seeing how this corresponds to Capricorn, the sign of big
business, and the sign of world fame.2
One sees in this Trump a male and female human
each starting to take on the appearance of wild beasts - with horns and
tails - enchained to a solid block, representing matter, with the Devil
enthroned.
As Case states, it is symbolic of the reign of
Mammon, which is ushered in by materialistic doctrines such as Capitalism
and Marxism, keeping humanity focused on lower pursuits in the guise of
'progress' and 'freedom'.
Occultists such as René Guenon, Aleister Crowley and Julius Evola3 have
sought to identify contending Schools as 'White' and 'Black' Brotherhoods,
or as 'Right' and 'Left' Hand Paths.
Given the confusion that exists - because individuals and occult currents
that are diametrically opposed often claim to represent the same traditions
- the biblical injunction 'by their fruits ye shall know them' is the best
formula for identifying motives, although this also is often obscure.
For example, the notorious English occultist
Aleister
Crowley, whose 'evil' antics played up to the tabloid press,
could easily be regarded as a 'Black Adept'.
Although Crowley claimed to work in the
tradition of, among others, and for unclear reasons, the 18th
century Black Adept
Adam Weishaupt and his crypto-Masonic
Illuminati, Crowley sought to expose the spiritual war that was taking place
between the 'White' and 'Black' Adepts,4 while his
doctrine of Thelema is antithetical to the doctrine of
the Illuminati.5
Also, while having been a Freemason, as was
Eliphas Levi,6 Rene
Guenon 7 condemned the Black Adepts who had subverted and
redirected
Masonry.8
Steiner and The Ahrimanic Deception
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of Anthroposophy, whose influence
has gone far beyond 'occult' circles for his prominence in alternative
education, architecture, and organic agriculture, was one of those seminal
personalities who believed in the existence of such an 'occult war'.
Again, as with Crowley, difficulties are
encountered due to Steiner's own affiliations with Freemasonry.9
However, Steiner, like Guenon, Evola, Levi and
Crowley, forthrightly sought to expose a Dark current at work within the
secret societies, and in particular within Freemasonry, whose influence was
being directed in the world politically.
In a 1919 lecture delivered in Zurich entitled 'The
Ahrimanic Deception', Steiner stated that,
"a great part of mankind today is already
under the control, from one side or another, of Ahrimanic forces of a
cosmic nature which are growing stronger and stronger."
Steiner had an unusual perception of what he
called the "Luciferic Impulse," which he stated manifested on Earth in 3000
BCE.
The Luciferic Impulse prepared the way
for the "Christ Impulse" in Steiner's cosmology. Both 'Impulses' began to
fade and mankind has therefore become increasingly materialistic.
Steiner stated this Ahrimanic Deception
emanates from an actual being:
The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a
supersensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of
Lucifer.… The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in
the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch.
If we look at the confused conditions of
recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic
conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.10
While the Luciferic Impulse pushed
humanity into what Nietzsche might have called the Dionysian passion that
gives birth to arts and brings humanity outside of itself, albeit, according
to Steiner, with a "false spirituality,"
"Ahriman is the power that makes man dry,
prosaic, philistine - that ossifies him and brings him to the
superstition of materialism."11
Ahriman would seem to equate with the Christian perception of
the Antichrist.
The Christ Impulse balances the two
poles, in what in some respects seems akin to a Hegelian dialectic.
And the true nature and being of man is
essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer
and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to establish this
equilibrium…
[T]he Ahrimanic influence has been at work
since the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength
until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western
humanity.12
Preparing the Way for
Ahriman
The relevance of this concept of the Ahrimanic Deception in regard to an
'occult war' for world rule, is that:
Now it is characteristic of such things that
they are prepared long in advance.
Ahrimanic powers prepare the evolution of
mankind in such a way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman when he appears
in human form within Western civilization… Ahriman will appear in human
form and the only question is, how he will find humanity prepared.
Will his preparations have secured for him
as followers the whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or
will he find a humanity that can offer resistance.13
The way in which humanity looks at the cosmos
under the Ahrimanic Deception is not with the spiritual awe and sense of
place of those of past Civilizations, including, we could add, those of
Gothic man in Western Civilization's cycle of youth, as the
philosopher-historian Oswald Spengler pointed out,14
but as merely part of a mechanical and mathematical process.
Steiner said of this:
Today man gazes from his earth up to the
star-world and to him it is filled with fixed stars, suns, planets,
comets, and so on. But with what means does he examine all that looks
down to him out of cosmic space?
He examines it with mathematics, with the
science of mechanics. What lies around the earth is robbed of spirit,
robbed of soul, even of life. It is a great mechanism, in fact, only to
be grasped by the aid of mathematical, mechanistic laws...15
We might state of this Ahrimanic Deception
that it motivates Rationalism and Materialism, the dominant ideologies of
the Late West.16
Steiner warned that the Ahrimanic Deception aims
to imbue Man with "scientific superstition," an "external illusion," that
while necessary (it was far from Steiner's intent to repudiate the sciences)
has made what we can identify as Rationalism and Materialism into a dogma.
The second method of the Ahrimanic Deception is to split society into
contending factions. Steiner aptly identified Marxism, a product of
Scientism, as a primary method of the Ahrimanic Deception.
Since the times of the Reformation and the Renaissance the economist has
emerged as the new priest into the increasingly materialistic world, while
Steiner also pointed out that Christian religion had also become
desacralized.
Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely
the handymen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine
that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the
economists.17
Steiner next alludes to a very important matter, the power that
the bankers
have assumed:
In the nineteenth century the 'economical' man is replaced for the first
time by the man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century
there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps
every other relationship.
One must only be able to look into these things
and follow them up empirically and practically.18
This statement provides the key to the history of the 'modern world' for the
past several hundred years, and the human agency pushing for a world state -
a 'New
World Order' - enchained to the dead weight of matter.19
The power of the international banking cabals
prepares the way for an Ahrimanic World Order by reorienting the spirit of
Man:
If men do not realize that the rights-state
and the organism of the Spirit must be set against the economic order
called up through the economists and the banks, then again, through this
lack of awareness, Ahriman will find an important instrument for
preparing his incarnation.20
Role of Secret
Societies
The 'Ahrimanic Deception' equates with what Guenon and Evola referred to as
the 'Counter-Tradition'.
The secret societies it uses behind the
façade of the Perennial Tradition are the 'Anti-Tradition'. Steiner lectured
on the role of these secret societies in the occult war.
While referring to both the "humanitarian works" and the spiritual evolution
that is supposedly at the foundation of
Freemasonry,21
Steiner, like Levi, Crowley, Evola and Guenon, also spoke of the manner the
'Ahrimanic Deception' operates through Freemasonry.
Steiner even went further than anti-Masonic
'conspiracy theorists' such as Nesta H Webster 22 and the
eminent Scottish scholar, Prof. John Robison,23 himself a
Grand Lodge Freemason, both of whom accepted English Masonry's innocence of
intrigue. Steiner, however, made a particular point of discussing the
origins of Continental Masonry in the English Lodges.
Despite its repudiation of 'irregular' Grand
Orient Masonry that predominates on Continental Europe and Latin America,
English Grand Lodge Masonry, stated Steiner, was also involved in a struggle
for world power.
He said the British Government was subverted by
the secret societies, and that in particular foreign affairs was taken over
by "an inner committee."24
Steiner, in tracing the origins of Grand Orient
Masonry to the Grand Lodge, wrote that:
But everywhere in a different way, in many
places outside the actual British realm, Freemasonry pursues exclusively
or mainly political interests. Such political interests in the most
palpable sense are pursued by the 'Grand-Orient de France', but also by
other 'Grand Orients'.
One might now say: what has that to do with
the English?… But view this in conjunction with the fact that the first
High-degree Lodge in Paris was founded from England, not France!
Not French people but Britons founded it;
they only wove the French into their Lodge…25
After listing the Lodges that were founded under
the impetus of the English Grand Lodge, from Spain to Russia, Steiner adds
that,
"these Lodges were founded as the external
instruments for certain occult-political impulses."
These impulses included,
Although Steiner admits these began without
"evil" intent (which I would dispute), they "continued their underground
work in many different forms," after being driven underground.
Steiner alludes to the disingenuousness of Grand
Lodge Masonry in being able to say:
'[L]ook at our Lodges, they are very
respectable - and we are not concerned with the others'.
But if one can see through the historical
connection and the driving forces in an interplay of mutual opposition
to one another, then it is indeed high British politics that is
concealed behind it.27
Of the "occult-political" societies, Steiner
observed they serve a materialistic aim behind the façade of spirituality:
what Guenon and Evola called "Anti-Tradition," and Levi called "profanity."
These "various Orders" are,
"not spiritual, because of their purposes
and goals."
They are the secret societies that work in the
name of "democracy" and a "universal republic" (as did the Jacobins and the
Illuminati).
Steiner warned:
If one wants as a person of modern times to
see clearly in order to meet the world openly and understand it, then
one should not let oneself be blinded by democratic logic, which is
justified only in its own sphere, or by phrases concerning democratic
progress etc.
One would have also to point to the
interposing of something that reveals itself in the attempt to give
rulership to the few through the means available within the Lodges -
namely, ritual and its suggestive effect.28
While genuine mystical lodges exist(ed) - even
Guenon sought initiation in them, as did Steiner - both pointed out that one
must be cognizant of those Orders with mystical trappings and claims to
ancient pedigree as a mask for other motives, as they are,
"often nebulous, maybe even fraudulent"…
"For power is of special importance for these secret societies, not
insight."29
Footnotes
1. For example, the popular 'Rider-Waite
Tarot Deck'.
2. Paul Foster Case, Oracle of The Tarot: A Course on Tarot Divination,
Chapter 6, 'The Major Trumps: 15. Le Diable', http://tarotinstitute.com/free/Oracle2.pdf.
3. Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins, Inner Traditions, 2002, 250-251.
4. Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Falcon Press, 1983, 66.
5. K R Bolton, 'Aleister Crowley as Political Theorist', Crowley:
Thoughts & Perspectives Vol. II, Troy Southgate, editor, Black Front
Press, 2011, 5-27; Keith Preston, 'The Whole of The Law: The Political
Dimensions of Crowley's Thought, ibid., 68-84.
6. Eliphas Levi, The History of Magic, translated by A E Waite, 1913,
Rider, 1982, 310. Levi in condemning the "profanity" of Freemasonry and
its involvement in political subversion, including the French
Revolution, was doing so as an initiate of the 18°, the Rosicrucian
Degree. This is indicated in a footnote to his History of Magic, where
he states: "Having attained by our efforts to a grade of knowledge which
imposes silence, we regard ourselves as pledged by our convictions even
more than by an oath.… and we shall in no wise fail to deserve the
princely crown of the Rosy Cross…." (286). Levi here states that he was
staying true to what he considered the genuine Tradition of Masonry,
whilst condemning what he saw as the perversion of Masonry by the
Counter-Tradition. His reference to the Masonic oath attached to the
'Rosy Cross' indicates he had reached as far as the 18° of Knight of the
Pelican & Eagle & Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of Heredom.
7. Robin Waterfield, René Guenon & the Future of The West, Sophia
Perennis, 2002, 21.
8. René Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, New
York, Sophia Perennis, 2001, 260-261.
9. 'Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?', www.fourhares.com/freemasonry/Steiner_and_masonry.html
10. Rudolf Steiner, 'The Ahrimanic Deception', Zurich, 27 October 1919,
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/AhrDec_index.html
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Oswald Spengler , The Decline of The West, George Allen & Unwin,
1971. Spengler, writing in the early 20th century, contended that
history is not lineal-progressive, but that each Civilisation is
self-contained and goes through its own analogous organic cycles of
birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. During the latter epochs of a
Civilisation, culture becomes ossified and materialistic and
money-thinking dominates. This is the cycle of present Western
Civilisation. Broadly, the historical-cyclic theories of both Steiner
and Spengler can be used in tandem.
15. Rudolf Steiner, 'The Ahrimanic Deception', op. cit.
16. Vide, Spengler, op. cit.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. For the political agendas of the International Bankers, including
the connections with Marxism, see: K R Bolton, Revolution from Above,
Arktos Media Ltd, 2011.
20. Rudolf Steiner, 'The Ahrimanic Deception', op. cit.
21. Rudolf Steiner, 'The Work of the Secret Societies in the World',
Berlin, 23 December 1904, http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19041223p02.html
22. Nesta H Webster, Secret Societies & Subversive Movements, Britons
Publishing Co., 1964, Chapter 6, 'The Grand Lodge Era', 128-129.
23. John Robison, 1798, Proofs of a Conspiracy, Western Islands, 1967,
'Introduction', 6.
24. Rudolf Steiner, 'The Karma of Untruthfulness', 'Rudolf Steiner
Archive, GA 173', 18 December 1916, www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/index.php?ga=GA0173
25. Rudolf Steiner, 'Karma of Untruthfulness, Part II', GA 174, 8
January 1917, www.rsarchive.org/GA/index.php?ga=GA0174
26 Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Rudolf Steiner, 'The History & Actuality of Imperialism', Dornach,
Switzerland, 21 February 1920.
