The Higher Perception of Occult Economics
 in The Light of the Russian Folk Spirit
 
 

        In the light of the Russian Folk Spirit the following spiritual scientific facts become observable.

        What has been spoken of here as Templar Banking, is spiritualised Templar Banking, a possibility that arises only in the 20th century.   Until the actuality of world economy and  the emancipation of women,  banking was the province of the higher degrees of the Masonic Tradition.   Mark Masonry develops, in Scotland and Germany, at  the time that Adam  Smith begins to craft the academic discipline of modern  economics.   Freemasonry, properly understood, allowed bankers, initiates of these degrees, to lend to "good"men.   The "goodness" of those seeking capital was "guaranteed" through the Masonic tradition.   This is the moral content of the Masonic Tradition.   In effect, the banker did not need to exercise moral intuition himself to any high degree, the morality of the Masonic Tradition exercised it for him.   Many individual bankers who were serious about the spiritual content of the Masonic Tradition did and still do exercise their individual moral intuition to a high degree.

        With the actuality of world economy this old stream of banking wisdom reached an impasse due to its one-sidedness.  What was required was a degree beyond than that of the Masonic Tradition.   Academia, in respect of economic science, was not in a position to supply this.   This requirement reflected a new faculty, the faculty for karmic insight, a further development of the inherent faculty of moral intuition within the banking stream.   This faculty was to appear in isolated places in the 20th century but increasingly in those born after 1950, and it would be appearing in the world at large, outside all previous wisdom traditions.   The spiritualised Templar Banking impulse is one that sees into individual karma and world karma in the economic sphere.

Under the Law of Karma this initiation is also open to women

        The nearest Masonic Degree is the Ark Mariner Degree.   This is a development of the Mark Degree, a degree which deals with the esoteric teaching associated with labour and the just rewards for labour.   The content of the Mark degree has been the subject of all of the conflict of the 20th century.   The Esoteric Ark Mariner Degree became a safe repository for the esoteric teaching that occult communism and then Nazism and Fascism all wished to exploit for black occult ends.

        The jewel of this degree is the dove of peace and rainbow arch.   The esoteric teaching of this degree is deeply veiled and is the teaching of the etheric, that is, the medium in which karma is revealed.   This teaching appears "outside" the Masonic degree structure, in the world at large, in the eternal feminine "outside" the "body" of christian freemasonry.   Thus within Masonic Tradition the Ark Mariner Degree is empty of esoteric content.   This is the degree conferred by a spiritual being, by the eternal Anthropos-Sophia, since Economia is a feminine labour, born at the same time as Democratia, a masculine labour.

        The esoteric jewel of this degree can only be perceived in the etheric where it reveals itself as the Grail Chalice.

        Thus in the spiritualised Templar Banking stream we have to do with an initiation into the etheric where it may appear as the etheric Ark Mariner Degree.   The symbol of this degree is the Anchor, with rope entwined - the ego and etheric thinking.

        Its christian manifestation can be traced back through Parzival to St Paul.   In the Parzival legend it is the symbol adopted by Gahmuret, Parzival?s father, from the Caliph of Baghdad and it leads Gahmuret to Belakane with whom he has a child, Fierefis.   When Gahmuret returns to Europe he marries Herzeloyde and their child, Parzival, is the younger half-brother to Feirefis.   Gahmuret returns to the East and dies there and it is Schionatulander who takes up the Anchor to return to the West.

        To find the spiritual archetypal Anchor experience we have to look to the experience on the road to Damascus and to the "not I, but Christ in me" where the human ego is "anchored" in the divine.   The legend of this degree is "distribution" symbolised by St Paul's Journeys  on sea and land, The Wandering Jew, and the Parzival journeys in the etheric.  Between these  legends we have the symbolism of the Ship, Anchor and Sail.

        The other stream which held safe the esoteric secrets of money, was the Jewish stream in world history.   The Jewish people, as a whole, formed the original Grail Chalice.  The unforgivable atrocity of the Holocaust was the black occult attempt to appropriate the Grail.   How must we understand this?   The attempt was made to block the developing experience of man's humanity to man; the experience the 20th century was maturing.   The intermingling of all the races of humanity was already such in the 20th century that no exclusive bloodline associated with the Grail existed.   All of humanity is now the Grail Chalice and the possibility exists for none to enter his heaven except with his brother of another religion or of no religion at all.   Using economic conditions as its access the counter image of this experience of common humanity was given societal expression on earth in the middle of the century.  It cannot be spoken how much humanity owes to those who walked in all their spiritual beauty into the death chambers of "man's inhumanity to man"  in the 20th century.   These deaths shed continuous light on humanity's conscious encounter with Evil.

        Within the spiritual Masonic configuration of Scotland there is clear indication that the Ark Mariner Degree spoken of here is of The Eastern Star and its roots go back beyond Chaldea and Egypt, though this must be understood as an entirely spiritual designation.   The sophia content of this degree confirms the esoteric Rosicrucian link between Scotland and Russia.

        With all of the above content we arrive at the question, what is the Aesthetics of Economics?

        It is the gift of Middle Europe to East and West.   It is the Beauty of Economia and is the pathway to the wisdom and truths of Economics, (Sophia and Scientia).   In the economic sphere  there are  many possible pathways leading to esoteric and occult knowledge of World Economy.   The path here described  is public and open esotericism and was made  public in the early part of the 20th century in Rudolf Steiner?s work Knowledge of The Higher Worlds, How it is Achieved  where  the Raphael Path is to be found.   There exists also a Michael Path and a Raphael/Michael Path, the Path of Spiritual Science followed here.   The Esoteric School founded by Rudolf Steiner has no spiritual leader or authority within its exoteric manifestation other than the individual ego within the microcosmic sophia of each individual.   The Esoteric School is open to all human beings who seek it directly in the Spirit either within or outwith the exoteric form of the Anthroposophical Society.   It is universal, open to all genuine pupils of the spirit regardless of sex, colour, race or religion.  The knowledge of this School is the Initiation in Freedom, Love and Responsibility, that is, into all that makes us human.  When this knowledge is directed towards economic life there arises the possibility of a transformation of Philanthropy to Philanthropos.

PHILO   ANTHROPOS   SOPHIA

The Love element in economic life, Philanthropy (the highest a moral individual can aspire to in economic life), begins an expansion towards a societal expression of itself, Philanthropos,  love of the cosmic wisdom of human evolution expressed in social forms.
 
 

Selected Bibliography for Part One

Method

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

1.  The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity by Rudolf Steiner
2.  Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception by Rudolf Steiner
3.   Knowledge of Higher Worlds, How It Is Achieved, by  Rudolf Steiner
4   The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper
5.   The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper

Study Material

1. Biographies of

 Daniel Nicol Dunlop
 Walter Johannes Stein
 Elizabeth Vreede
 Marie Steiner
 Ita Wegman
 Helmuth and Eliza von Moltke

2. Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner
3. World Economy by Rudolf Steiner
4. The Mission of the Folk Souls by Rudolf Steiner
5. Europe, A Cosmic Picture by Maria Schindler
6. Proceedings of the Christmas Conference, Rudolf Steiner
   (contains full text of the Foundation Stone Meditation)
 
 

The above books are available from Anthroposophical Publishing Houses.
 

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