In the early 1990s, I came across a relatively obscure book called "The Spear of Destiny," focusing somewhat upon the subject of the Spear of Longinus, recently discussed, but also on the life and work Christian mystic Rudolph Steiner.
Knowledgeable Christian folks reading this will nastily dispute my characterization of Steiner as a Christian mystic. "He was a member of pre-Nazi Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy crowd, for heaven's sake! And then he invented his own deeply bizarre brand of Theosophy, called 'Anthroposophy.'"
Both things are true -- he was a devotee of Madame Blavatsky's occultist crowd, but he left it behind as absurd. In his study of inner moral development in part by transcendental meditation, Steiner ended-up making a great circle back to Christianity. While he was far short of becoming a sin-confessing, Communion-receiving Catholic, he embraced Christianity as ultimately true in his mystical approach to salvation.
The Nazis feared Steiner, and declared him one of Nazism's chief enemies! This is probably because Steiner exhibited true clairvoyance as a consequence of his successful transcendental meditation. Even before Hitler had emerged into the public eye in the early 1920s, Steiner was issuing press releases warning of the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. At one point a sniper dispatched by Hitler narrowly missed killing Steiner. At another point the Nazis burnt down Steiner's school in Christian mysticism called the Goetheanum.
Among other things, Steiner preached that on the path to moral mastery and bravery, one had to confront a kind of frightening spiritual double barring the way to enlightenment, called Doppelganger.
Steiner drew a picture of a man climbing the mountain of wisdom -- Steiner? Goethe? -- confronting his own frightening Doppelganger, which Steiner wanted to be a stained-glass window in his school of Christian mysticism, the Goetheanum.
About 6 years after I first saw a copy of "The Spear of Destiny," by Trevor Ravenscroft, which includer Steiner's Doppelganger picture, one of my sons was deeply taken at age 9 with drawing what I used to refer to as "sharp-edged beasts," and drew this...
He had never seen my copy of "The Spear of Destiny." Astonished at its similarity to Steiner's sketch, I inscribed my son's name and the date he had drawn his picture at the bottom, and saved it.
About 9 years later, a neighbor's daughter, who I had come to love as my own daughter, also became enthralled at about 7 years of age with generating drawings of "sharped-edged beasts," and she showed this drawing to me...
The production was rougher, due to her tender years, but in some ways the drawing is more like Steiner's. The man is enveloped in a kind of electrical field, like Steiner's man, and the Doppelganger has a horn! I carefully dated that picture, also, wrote the little girl's name on it, and saved it.
When I saw these astonishing pictures, I wondered to myself, "Did Steiner cause this? Did he impact the minds of these children, from the past, to make these drawings, knowing that I would recognize them?
Why would Christian mystic Steiner want to draw the attention of the likes of me?
Maybe because I am the only human being on Earth to connect Steiner's bust of the demon Ahriman...
...with this guy...
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