Review: Karmic Relationships V.3

Karmic Relationships V.3 by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For Anthroposophy, there are seven archangels. Gabriel is one of them, and Michael is another. Each one has to do with certain qualities, and they trade off taking control every three hundred years.

Steiner says that in the three hundred years ending in 1870, Gabriel was in charge. He has to do with heredity, and so with that era nationality, race, and ethnicity were huge concerns. We are now in an age of Michael. Michael rules the principle of intelligence, and until the 9th century AD, all intelligence came directly from him. Intelligence didn't belong to human beings - we just received it. But since the 9th century, intelligence has descended to the individual level. It is *ours* now when it wasn't before. Where before we were mirrors, now we are lamps. No more do we treat learning as a gift from above; now everyone can post tweets and Facebook statuses about their opinion and assert it to be their own intelligence. For Michaelic intelligence has descended to earth, and that's really dangerous.

Why? Because with the personal-ization of intelligence, the possibility has arisen for us to be blind to the spiritual. Every Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett can be blind to spiritual realities and pronounce it common sense. This is the influence of Ahriman, an evil god who *is* materialism, whom Steiner describes as biting, cynical, and overwhelmingly intelligent. He wants to make all intelligence purely earthly, purely personal. And if the state of the world is anything to go by, he's doing really well.

But Michael has a plan. Ever since his intelligence started descending to individual earthly humans, he has assembled legions in the spiritual worlds to bring light again to earth. According to Steiner, Michael assembled a spiritual school of sorts in the 15th century, where he taught them the plan to go into the world and express divine intelligence again. This school was "acted out" in the spiritual world though imaginations at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. And becoming in 1870, it came to earth, and it got bigger and bigger until the end of the twentieth century (still in the future for Steiner). Among other things, it came to earth as Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy is a manifestation of the Michaelite impulse to reclaim personal intelligence and subsume it under the cosmic intelligence he personfies. Where we are locked inside our skulls, Anthroposophy urges us to see intelligence *in* the world, out in the open, where neither walls nor skin color nor even skin separates us. It is the impulse of universality, where light cleaves unto light.

But not only Anthroposophy. If you recall, Mormonism started at that time. Mormonism longs to gather Israel, to seek out the hidden flecks of light everywhere, to help the captive daughter of Zion "arise from the dust." For this dust is Ahriman, and whenever Mormons redeem the dead, establish converts, minister to their wards, or otherwise gather Zion, they are freeing Michaelic light from it.

And more: Sufism, with definite trans-debominational tendencies, really exploded in Africa in the eighteenth century, and Swedenborg notably predicted that it would and that it was planned. Moreover, Swedenborg himself spoke of a great "Last Judgment" that occurred in the eighteenth century. And then of course there's any number of spiritual movements since then that long to gather and integrate light.

Steiner writes that those who are karmically predestined to help in this battle between Michael and Ahriman will know who they are because they are drawn to Anthroposophy. They will find it hard to cope with the world; their ego and astral body (the soul) will be disconnected from the etheric and physical bodies. They will seem maladapted. But this is a deception. For these souls have the capacity to be more decisive than others; their karma, and thus their happiness and well-being, depends on this sense of initiative and resolve. But they are afraid of being tainted by Ahrimanic powers by doing this, like a bee afraid of the sting recoiling to itself if it stings a threat. But no matter. If you are reading this, you are connected by threads of fate, however slight, to this Michaelic impulse. I suspect many of you will see yourselves here. If so, know that you are therefore called to a fight where you will help Michael reclaim the world from the devil of porn, selfies, and fast food. No longer hide in the shadows! Be bold, put down your phone. Go and do!

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