Average Cost Of A Partial

The anthroposophical schooling in the early work of Rudolf Steiner

first time available online: the essay "The anthroposophical schooling in the early work of Rudolf Steiner's" from the Yearbook of anthroposophic criticism 1997th The article by Lorenzo Ravagli examines the philosophical roots of the esoteric training pathway in the Goethe scriptures, the moral and philosophical works gnoseological Steiner before the turn of the century.

The anthroposophical schooling in the early work of Rudolf Steiner

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What Painkillers Can I Take For Hernia

esotericism as a manifestation of modernity

By Lorenzo Ravagli

that New Age and occult anti-modern, and especially the history of the Fascism and Nazism are, is a myth that Corinna Treitel in a 2004 study published in ruins. Treitel, currently a professor at the University of St. Louis, Missouri, studied in her book, * the question of why the "occult" (for Treitel a collective term for a variety of esoteric interests) 1870-1914 in the German language into a mass movement and was how important it exercised in the formation of a specific German modernity.

revisions

Until recently, historians thought the German "occult" especially so for significant because they thought him the National Socialism to explain. George Mosse put this hypothesis, which was introduced by Georg Lukács, 1961 to the point and put the route set for his successor when he wrote: "In Germany, presented the re-discovery of the unconscious - a reaction to the ruling Tatsachenpositivismus - the reason for the totalitarianism of the 20th Century. This reaction combined the deep-rooted romantic flow with the mysteries of the occult and the idealism of action. What kind of actions it was is written with blood in the annals of history. "To this day, among historians that the myth of education are required to view spreads, romance, Antipositivismus, the return of the unconscious - in short, the irrational - would, opened the way to Auschwitz.

But this view seems increasingly doubtful because of recent research. In particular, the study by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke on the occult roots of Nazism have shown that the ariosophs, who were blamed for Hitler's racial madness, the occult only fixtures so far in their world view than to promote their already existing views about race and nation appeared. During Hitler's racism was ariosophs approval, pushed him from the occultism of ariosophs.

more accurate the historian, the ethnic milieu of the turn of the century explored the clearer the need for a decoupling of occultism and Nazism. Ekkehard Hieronimus has in the "Handbook of the Nationalist Movement" Liebenfels subject to a detailed analysis and found that its impact was negligible on the National Socialism.

The research of the last fifty years, "about" occultism and Nazism "or" occult and nationalist milieu made it clear that there were some ideological and social relations between Hitler and ariosophs circles, but it has made equally clear that these relations were of minor importance. The study of German occultism has shown above all that was contained in it much longer as proto-Nazism.

occultism and theosophy

Treitel break with the ideologically-related subordination of the occult in the VB. She looks in two different areas of cultural practice movements that are only partially wetted. The occult and the Nationalist movement appear to instructing in the historical facts view as two reform movements which sought between the founding of the German Reich and World War I, therefore, to address the new challenges of modernity, which all cast so far by each other. The occult is particularly a key figure in German modernism. (Of course, these insights are not only for the occult in Germany but also in other countries, in which he played a similar role).

What applies to the occult is also true to Theosophy (Treitel uses the term "occult" as other researchers the term "Western esotericism"). The "theosophy" (itself a "next track") is an integral part of modernity and is not opposed to it, not more any event, as the modern stands in contrast to himself. From its beginnings in the 1880s until their final suppression by the Nazis 1936-37 followed the Theosophical movement, a project of cultural renewal through occult methods and proved to be very open to a wide spectrum of reformist trends and political objectives. As with the occult and theosophy has the quasi teleological framework are extracted, in which it is often set incorrectly. The research on the connection between Theosophy and ariosophy that can be used as a kind of fear driving the former are considered to have, although a wealth of information on the ariosophy brought to light, neglecting the mainstream of German theosophy, however. This was much more widespread, effective and rich socio-politically diverse than the ariosophy. Looking at the Theosophy as part of general history and culture is not restricted by the search for the origins of Nazism, it offers illuminating insights into the reform movements of the century. Too often, historians of this reform milieu only from the point of derailment later considered and sought in it only for evidence of a lack of liberal and proto-fascism. This is particularly true of theosophy, in the traditionally liberal ideas in the context of occult modernity have been reformulated.

Theosophy and liberalism

The German theosophy is inseparable from liberalism. The classical liberalism believed in the inevitability of progress and the central importance of the sanctity of the individual. He was averse to any church that claims rose to absolute truth, and sought a built-in stand-less society in which all citizens would be equal before the law. In the late 19th Century made these liberal goals through accelerated industrialization and the political unification of Germany in question. Liberalism and progress were for many groups of Germans who had been part of the clientele of liberalism, no longer synonymous. Many therefore transferred their sympathies to other social or political movements, including the theosophy that formulated the old liberal ideas of development, progress, social harmony and the sanctity of the individual in spiritual terms again. The grant of Germany to Theosophy at the end of the 19th Century can be read as an implicit criticism of a political liberalism that had betrayed himself, as an attempt to essential elements of programmatic liberal in the broad field of modernist experiments of cultural transfer.

The Theosophical Society (or the Theosophical Society) provided a milieu in which many of the reformist and experimental concerns of the late 19 and early 20 Century could thrive. These included the emancipation of women, pacifism, the clothing reform, prison reform, Antivivisektionismus, vegetarianism and the movement for the liberation of India.

The universal brotherhood and the "races"

The early Theosophists saw themselves as spiritual vanguard of the cultural innovation of modern life on occult basis. Critical of the rampant materialism and the spiritual impoverishment of their intended time, then they, the "sixth root race" to realize the "universal brotherhood". This would unite people from all over the world, without regard to their religion, race, nationality, class or gender. It would recognize the spiritual nature of mankind and bring again to advantage. This universal brotherhood trying to achieve in two ways. Convinced that valuable parts of an ancient knowledge of the spiritual foundations of humanity among the peoples of the world were scattered, they encouraged a comparative study of religions, philosophies and sciences to reveal the hidden truths that were contained in them. They encouraged the study of the occult forces which lay dormant in the souls of individual members. They were convinced that these two methods could enlighten humanity about the true nature of reality and unite all nations in a harmonious community that would be on your way to reunification with the pure spirit.

It would also be wrong to to ignore the overlap between the theosophical and the nationalist movement, as it is wrong to overstate the relationship between the two. Only eight groups used in Germany ariosophy, the nationalist version of the Theosophical occultism, while more than fifty much larger groups were part of the mainstream of Theosophy. Despite this overlap of individual movements were not identical. Their basic difference was ideological. While theosophy was looking for a new religion that would unite all mankind, not universalist followed the Nationalist movement goal. She was looking rather for a race-specific Religion that would only satisfy the spiritual needs of Ariogermanen. Racism and anti-Semitism primed the racial worldview, which in theosophy was never the case.

This does not mean that considerations about race played in the German theosophy does not matter. Theosophy mixed in an often inconsistent type of biological racial and spiritual terms. Theosophists have taken the view that race to which we belong have to do primarily with the personal spiritual maturity, and simultaneously claim that biologically understood breeds such as the Indian Aryans had attained a very high level of spiritual maturity. Rudolf Steiner, it was Treitel, often expressed the view that white Europeans had reached a higher level of spiritual development than the African or Asian races. On the other hand, he got no less frequently emphasizes the spiritual unity of all peoples. In addition, one must add, he has seen the Indian culture as the highest, never reaching synthesis of spiritual wisdom.

Even if you think racial terms and certain prejudices in the mainstream of German theosophy so Treitel conclusion, that those have never installed anti-Semitism or racism in the core of their worldview.

The contrast between ariosophy and theosophy

Quite the contrary, the founder of ariosophy, Guido von List. His mixture of racism, nationalism, and occultism influenced the ideology of the German Order and its successor, the Thule Society, which showed in 1919, the German Labor Party, the forerunner of the National Socialist Party.

The question is, what ariosophy and theosophy in common and what is not. The names indicate a difference. coined in 1905 by Liebenfels, played "ariosophy" on Theosophy. The altered root indicated, however, an important basic difference: not the target of a theosophical knowledge of God was there in the ariosophy, but the knowledge of the Aryans. The ariosophs appealed Although also for occult knowledge, but with entirely different objectives. While the Theosophists believed that the main purpose of the "Great White Brotherhood" is to share her occult knowledge with the entire humanity and promote spiritual enlightenment - without regard to race, religion or gender - was the appointment of ariosophs on the occult in Unlike the Theosophical universalism. For her occult knowledge was a means of establishing a pure-bred and broken down by gender roles society.

Despite some connections between ariosophy and theosophy were convinced ariosophs anything but neutral on the Theosophy and the main currents of the occult. The nationalist ideology Richard storm complained for example, the theosophy and anthroposophy, to seek the spiritual subjugation of Germany. In particular, the theosophical concept of world religion puzzled him because he diverted his attention from the view of the fact that each race had a unique religion, the expression of their blood is. What distinguished ariosophs of the Theosophists, was their emphasis on the outstanding significance of race and blood, which the former are characterized as members of the nationalist movement.

The connections between theosophy ariosophy and the early nationalist movement can hardly be considered as a basis for Treitel used for generalizations, they point to causal connections less because of the enormous cultural and political movement of the theosophical thought in the early 20th Century. Most significantly it appears that those ethnic groups who used theosophical terms, neither the theosophical cult of the self, yet took the ideal of universal brotherhood.

The genuine enmity of the Nazis against the occult

As for the spectrum of the Nazi reaction to the occult, then Treitel challenges the idea that the occult was a "paradise of fools have been" and against the argument put forward by Walter Laqueur Opinion have in the higher echelons of the National Socialism of the occult dilapidated somnambulist only as swarming. Hitler, Himmler and Hess were not yet somnambulist mystics. Himmler consulted although "seer, but as a police chief and head of the SS, he also commanded to wipe a twelve-year campaign, which aimed at the occult movement in Germany. A thorough examination of sources shows that the story was the relationship of the Nazi regime on the occult history of escalating hostility. After 1933, representatives of the regime cultivated the occult as a dangerous current outdated superstition regard, the charismatic leader of the public led astray. In contrast to the authorities of the Weimar period they saw in the occult but also an ideological challenge, as he promoted a destructive individualism and a dangerous internationalism, which was contrary to Nazi ideology.

That still talking individual relations with Nazi occultists, is not due to their sympathy for the occult, but on more trivial reasons. Hitler feared for his life as he could get cancer. Therefore, he was in September 1934 a dowser, the State Chancellery scanned for dangerous ground radiation. Nevertheless, Hitler hated the occult.

Hess was a supporter of the wedge natural science, homeopathy and a healthy diet. Above his bed hung a magnet, which he hoped he would deflect harmful rays. He regularly consulted astrologers, underwent magnetic therapies, and consulted a clairvoyant. But it is precisely these preferences were the starting point for the regime in May 1941 to denounce him as mentally ill when he was flown to England on their own initiative to close in the West a separate peace. Joseph Goebbels used the personal inclinations of Hess to represent him in public as one of the occult dilapidated insane. He suffered from hallucinations, which on its Consultations with astrologers, the influence of mesmerists and other occultists declined.

Even Himmler was interested in his life to natural healing. This interest resulted in Dachau that he had set up a medicinal plants garden. His interest was grounded biographically. He suffered for years from severe abdominal cramps, the school of physicians could not be cured. Finally, he consulted in the 1920s, a specialist in Chinese medicine, Felix Kersten, who gave him relief. Since then, he was a supporter of alternative medicine. In 1940, after the outbreak of war, forced him to serve as Kersten, Himmler's personal physician. From Kerstens later published memoirs it is clear that Himmler consulted an astrologer during the war, even if it has its predictive capabilities are not particularly trusted. He also considered himself the reincarnation of a medieval troubadour. In the 1930s, Himmler also had a relationship talk to the seer ariosophs Karl Maria Willigut. This relationship is the most intensive contact between a member of the Nazi elite and the occult dar. Wiligut in the 1920s had his "discovered visionary" talents, which he attributed to the "ancestral memory", from the Guido von List the Sehertum said, the blood might therefore are entitled to a kind of Erberinnerung that it Wiligut allowed to look back into the past ariogermanische. This example can be seen that, even spiritual abilities have been reinterpreted by the Ariogermanen racist. Between 1924 and 1927 Wiligut due to paranoid schizophrenia and megalomaniac was interned in a mental hospital in Salzburg. 1933, he led one of his colleagues at ariogermanischen Himmler, who in September under the name of Karl Maria Weisthor to head the Department of Prehistory and Early History of SS appointed Race and Settlement Office. Wiligut designed the SS Totenkopf Ring Himmler in 1935 and convinced them that Wewelsburg convert to a training center of the SS. 1939 Wiligut forced to resign after information about his psychiatric past became known.

as evidenced by the cases of Himmler and Hess, is that certain occult beliefs and practices actually have to find the entrance to the top of the regime, which is not surprising, since the occultism in the early 20th Century in Germany had become a mass movement. But in the end, they point to no more than vague personal inclinations. Hess was certainly interested in natural healing and some practical applications of the occult, but there is no evidence that he had embarked on his expedition to England under the influence of unnamed seer. Himmler undoubtedly consulted astrologers and alleged seer, but there is no evidence suggest that the advice given to him, ever influence important political decisions were taken. Wiligut has indeed taken on the appearance of SS influence, but not to the murderous racist policies of the police chief. It would be a mistake to generalize these individual cases, and to represent the entire Nazi elite had shared the occult interests of Hess and Himmler, or that Nazism and occultism ultimately collapse into one. Rather, many members of the Nazi elite were against the occult set extremely hostile, a hostility which increased after the flight from England still Hess.

One of the most fanatical opponent was Goebbels. For it was clear that Hess "a victim of his" Grasfresserei and become healers of mind was. The measures taken by the regime after the flight to England against the occult, commented Goebbels in his diary in May 1941 with the remark: "The whole weird dizziness is now eradicated. The miracle workers, the darlings of Hess, under lock and key. "For any form of occultism Hess was nothing but a superstitious return to the Middle Ages and the plague spot on the body of the people. Goebbels took in this regard, a rationalist position to us from today's "enlightened" polemics against the New Age is not unfamiliar.

Other Nazis agreed totally agree with Goebbels. Martin Bormann was his rejection of the occult in a secret report in connection with the scandal of Hess also clear. The occultists, so Bormann, uses medieval methods to spread discontent among the masses by predicting Germany's imminent defeat.

What was the ideological source of Nazi hostility to the occult?

occultism as a conspiracy against the German people

The answer lies in the history of the nationalist movement came not from the few members of the Nazi elite. The nationalist movement was largely in agreement that Germany a renovation needed, but disagree on the way to this renewal. The occult was one of the bones of contention. While ariosophs such as Guido von List in occultism saw a means of salvation German spoke against them. The criticism that this second group practiced the occult, found later entrance into the grounds set out by the Nazi regime justified the persecution of the entire German occultism.

Already in the 1920s and 1930s, there were leading nationalist theorists, the occult and Freemasonry interlinked and the forces were that were involved in an international conspiracy against the German culture. For them a the most serious crimes of Freemasonry the spread of a dangerous cosmopolitanism in the 19th Century, the emancipation of the Jews had made possible. Such views were in 1933 part of the official ideology. The regime saw the Masons as dangerous enemies of the Third Reich. The hostility of the Nazi regime against the occult is due to the hostility of the nationalist movement against Freemasonry.

The main theorists of the Masonic criminality was Alfred Rosenberg. In pamphlets like "The Guns of Jews Through the Ages" (1920) and "The crime of Freemasonry" (1921) he argued that the Germans were the victims of an international conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons, which advocated a universalist humanism, which is alien to the German soul.

Rosenberg was responsible for the link between Judaism and Freemasonry. Mathilde Ludendorff added to this duo the occult. She saw in the Jews, Freemasons, occultists and the Catholic Church, the main enemies of the German people. Supported by her husband, Erich Ludendorff, the former Supreme Command leader, she was able finally to raise the occultists to ideological opponents of the Third Reich. Their hostility towards the occult went back to their student days in Munich, where she had allegedly experienced patients with occult activities become ill were. Her first publication was a general attack against the leaders of the scientific study of occult phenomena, Albert of Schrenck Notzing.

Ludendorff was not just a critique of Schrenck Notzing posts, but extended it out to a general settlement with the entire occultism, after having been converted in the early 1920s, the nationalist thinking. Since the founding of the Federal Tannenberg 1926, this criticism more acute. The contamination of the German people by the occult in their view was advanced dangerously far. Astrology seemed to her as a Trojan horse, by the Jews and Freemasons were trying to subjugate the German people. As long as the racial mix is allowed, astrology will celebrate triumphs. In 1933 they expanded their suspicion on spiritualists and anthroposophy. She made the racial slanders of the 1920s, after which Helmuth von Moltke had lost the battle of the Marne, because he influenced by the occultist Rudolf Steiner had succumbed to popular. Occultists have now been assigned to Germany's enemies, who were responsible for the stab. After 1933, the identification of Freemasonry, the occult and Judaism as the official doctrine of the police state.

The story needs to be pursued here any further. One can read in the book by Treitel. The site also informative chapters on the significance of the "occult" (The Age) for the development of German modernism in psychology and art. * Corinna Treitel

: A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the Modern German

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Customeize My Desert Eagle

knowledge, the new Inquisition

heresy-hunting and the intellectual origins of modern totalitarianism

By Lorenzo Ravagli

In 2006, one of the leading American Esoteric researcher, Arthur Versluis *, a study of the intellectual history of modern totalitarianism, published in the no can go by, the barbarism of the 20th Century to understand wants. He followed their tracks back to its beginnings in ancient and medieval Christianity.

The origin of totalitarianism lies in the idea of orthodoxy, the idea that there is one correct, generally applicable truth, and the deviation from this truth, the heresy is a dangerous evil that of the Church, the guardian of orthodoxy must be pursued and punished. Their sharpest expression of this idea in the Catholic Inquisition. The organization and procedures of the Inquisition laid the foundation for the totalitarianism of the 20th Century. In the 19th

Century, Versluis, established "secular" thinkers a Tradition of defending the Inquisition and in the 20th was the phenomenon of the persecution of heretics in the totalitarian systems of communism and National Socialism again. The methods that were used by the Catholic Inquisition experienced their resurrection. Joseph de Maistre to Lenin, by Carl Schmitt and Theodor Adorno to Satanism-panic in the current U.S. Versluis followed the trail of the heretic hunters. In today's justifications of the U.S. state of emergency in the face of Islamist threat, he also provides the features of a antihäresiologischen discourse.

For Versluis is no doubt that after the two main forms of totalitarianism, communism and fascism, the essence identical are: connected totalized, centralized state power with the extinction of individual human rights. But their modus operandi shows few differences: secret police, secret arrests, torture, show trials, forced confessions to public, public executions, concentration and labor camps. Totalitarianism is the "face of evil," whose archetypal form in the struggle of the Catholic Church against the so-called Gnosticism in Western history in her debut appearance.

The original literal sense, the heretic anyone who chooses (from the Greek "hairein"), someone the freedom of individual choice for can claim increases, and at least some of the dogmas of the church accepted. The heretic is committed to something, but from the perspective of the Church, he denies something. The moment in which a historical community of faith sets a binding commitment, it creates the possibility of heresy. In the first centuries of Christianity were of the Gnostics an individual, internal access to religious truths, which pluralism and diversity single lock. Had the pluralistic model of Gnosis enforced, it would not heretics, but only if dissidents. The consolidation of the Church as an institution created by a dogmatic teaching mandatory first heretics. With Irenaeus, Tertullian and Epiphanius began to denounce the dissenters in the Church. the Gnostics Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Dionysius the Areopagite had prevailed against the dogmatist, had its quest for the transcendence of the subject-object opposition, upon which the heresy-hunting, the establishment of a persecuting Christianity prevented. But Tertullian, who denounced the persecution of Christians by the Roman state, the thought-forms of the pursuing state took over in his struggle against the Gnostics and launched the historic transition from the persecuted Christian church to be pursued. Anti-Gnosis, historicizing and rationalization went into this one.

solidified in the Middle Ages, the belief Heresy is an invention of the devil. She made the torture and murder of heretics possible since they now represent the arch enemy of God. In the Inquisition, the Prosecutor was also judge. In it, the church joined with the state power. She defined deviant thinking as a crime. Persecution of heretics of all stripes since then tried to force the unity of thinking: Think forced shows the specific nature of totalitarian evil . Dissidence is therefore a criminal act, because totalitarian systems "Ideokratien idea gentlemen are. Ideokratien are monistic and totalistic, they insist on the use of ideology in any area of life, Pluralism is anathema to them. The totalitarian State is an attempt to secularism in all spheres of life and extend the only way to achieve this is to impose a totalitarian ideology that brooks no single dissenter. In a Ideokratie is the greatest conceivable crime is dissent. The dissenters proves itself by its existence that the totalitarian construct that is imposed on the Company, is a lie.

Totalitarian discourse in the 20th Century

Two examples of totalitarian discourse from the 20th Century, Versluis examined more closely, were addressed here: the anti-gnostic Eric Voegelin and the polemic polemics antiesoterische Theodor W. Adorno. The anti-gnostic Obsession conservative circles in the second half of the 20th Century is due to Eric Voegelin, is a threat to the modernity of the social order. Following Voegelin appear on interpretations of Gnosticism as a political religion of the Soviet Union, Communism, Hitler or Stalin. But what is referred to in these publications as Gnosticism has nothing to do with the real Gnosis. The truth is that Gnosisbild Voegelin and his imitators identical to the proto-totalitarian, anti-heretical fantasy that Tertullian and others have produced by their polemic. Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 it was possible to defend that caricature of the Gnosis, which goes back essentially to Hans Jonas. But at the end of the 20th Century is the simplistic characterization of Gnosticism as dualistic and pessimistic acosmic largely discredited in academic research. To make the Gnosticism for the modern totalitarianism responsible for how Voegelin does this appear in the light of current knowledge as bizarre. The anti-gnostic polemic

Voegelin

In his essay "Science, Politics and Gnosticism Voegelin claimed in 1958 that the goal of the Gnostic always the destruction of the old world and the transition to a new one. The Gnostics would use the knowledge escape from this world. Salvation through self-knowledge, then Voegelin possess their own magic and this magic is not harmless. The order of the world does not change just because you think they are bad and try to escape it. The attempt to destroy the world, destroy not the world, but multiply the chaos in society. Voegelin sees in Gnosticism is a form of knowledge which does not differ substantially from others. In reality, gnosis is knowledge of God or the excess over the subject-object opposition. She seeks the unification of the knowing subject and of the divine revelation of content. Revelation presupposes a revealer of what the allegation of self-redemption the soil extracts. Gnostics speak constantly of the necessity of divine revelation and the interaction of the human will and divine grace. Voegelin seems totally absurd the allegation, the Gnostics, strive to destroy the world. There is no single piece of evidence in the historical texts of the Gnostics, that such destruction of the world would be sought. Instead, it goes in the Nag Hammadi corpus always around the inner spiritual experience and its contrast with worldly or political power.

are completely bizarre, the associations that Voegelin between Gnosis and Nietzsche produced. In the "cruelty of the intellectual conscience, speaks of Nietzsche, see Voegelin a Gnostic motif. In Gnosticism the human remains excluded from the transcendent. The Gnostic will to power stumble on the wall of being, which had become a prison. Without reference to any form of authentic gnosis Voegelin writes Nietzsche here a Gnosis, which is excluded from the transcendent. The Gnostic striving for domination, by rule would be God to be God, the Gnostics take the pain of deception and self-mutilation on themselves. Hegel is appointed by Voegelin on Gnostic. The reason: The Gnostic striving for control over the being to obtain this power, he construct his system, the formation of systems is a specifically Gnostic Of thought. The syllogism, which Hegel makes it a Gnostic is: The Gnostics had systems Hegel had a system, which Hegel is a Gnostic, - yes, all Systembildner are Gnostics. It is a mystery, as Voegelin came to the conclusion of the Gnostics strive for world domination, where he claimed at the same time, he was trying to escape her. With the real gnosis, the target for inner enlightenment and union with the Divine, Voegelin syllogisms have to do absolutely nothing.

Voegelin it's not about a knowledge of historical Gnosticism. He is pursuing a different agenda. What is clear when his work "The new science into consideration by the policy." In Chapter about the "Gnostic revolution, the fall of Puritanism," he said, the entire Reformation, the Modern as a whole, must be interpreted by Gnostic movements as the successful infiltration of Western institutions. Puritanism was simply Gnosis. Given the enmity of Calvin and Calvinism against the mysticism or any Gnostic idea must assume Voegelin had thought Calvin and Calvinism are Gnostic in all its Feindchaft against Gnosticism - this is precisely the form of rhetorical twist which Voegelin otherwise the Gnostics accused.

Under the title "substitute religion" Voegelin extends from the charge of Gnosticism to the entire modern world. Now everything bad is "gnostic. "In Gnostic movements we see such movements as the belief in progress, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism and Nazism," so Voegelin. The ubiquity of Gnosticism is a logical consequence if one assumes as Voegelin, Gnosticism was involved in the project of the abolition of the order of being, that order in the transcendent Divine enshrined, and they strive to replace them by a world-immanent order of being, completion, in the realm of human action lies. If the concept of Gnosis is long enough, it can be at the end to any attempt by a social Reform relate.

Voegelin's hidden agenda: the defense of Catholicism, in which he sees the essence of Christianity is clear in his correspondence with Alfred Schutz. 1953 Voegelin writes of protection for him was the true Christianity of Catholicism. Protestantism and modernity are not gnostic in its view of Catholicism.

One of the fundamental errors Voegelin is the confusion of Gnostic with end-time movements, the advent of the millennial kingdom, or the attainment of paradise on earth, expected in the historical time in history. This confusion is all the more remarkable given that Gnosticism is just for a temporality of Christianity to Fought back. Fundamental to the Gnosis, the distinction between the faithful, in the outer church saw the final realization of Christianity in history, and the knowing that their achievement and were present in the heart of everyone is convinced.

Voegelin wrote Why the Gnosis to those objectives which it had distanced itself in truth the most? Where the tradition of historical eschatological expectation has instead originate? In Catholicism. Joachim of Fiore created in the High Middle Ages, the vision of a story that unfolds over the three ages of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He foresaw the near arrival of the Third Reich, and this Expectation of a millennial kingdom is the whole of Christianity own. It could with more justice say that this hope of a millennial kingdom is a result of the loss of Gnosis (the vertical perspective of a direct spiritual enlightenment for everyone). In the emergence of a hierarchical social entity, with its emphasis on the historic faith and the sole mediation of the church is the historical origin of the end-time expectation. The Gnostics emphasized the need for individual spiritual experience, they had no secular or historical goals. Where this Gnostic uranium lie disappears, the historical and eschatological, hierarchical church is in evidence, The fighting followed the Gnostics, and kills.

If you realize that Voegelin accuses the Gnostics, which will be added to the truth of Catholicism to the load must, they see only the full extent of the rhetorical inversion, which is based on his Antignostizismus. It serves to disguise the real origins of totalitarianism. The Gnostics were in history, the dissidents, the persecuted - and not the holder of the official Church of God, from whom they were persecuted. Modern totalitarianism has its origins in the historical end of expectations totalistic Church Christianity, which followed every different religious view mercilessly. The Marxist and fascist Belief in the state, to a classless society or a thousand-year Reich to justify virtually any means to achieve them, even the mass murder rooted in the Christian end-time expectation. The historical line of development does not proceed from the Gnostics to the totalitarian systems of the 20th Century. It runs from the apocalyptic expectations of the millennial kingdom within Christianity over the Hegelian evolutionism to the belief of Marx, the realization of a utopian society was imminent in the near future. And it was not far from Marx to Lenin and Stalin to Hitler and the extermination of all those who were regarded as parasites.

The anti-gnostic is the individual spiritual life that goes on inside the people, opposed, he considered the Gnostics as the enemy and indeed marks the emergence of a modern intellectual totalitarianism, fought each search for inner peace, or any orientation in a spiritual world. This new totalitarianism the whole life trying to be restricted to this world. The heirs of the perpetrators of yesterday are the militant secularists who fight every form of spirituality. They are the successor to the Inquisition and the 20th Ideokratien Century.

The antiesoterische Adorno's polemic

Adorno is arguably the most influential intellectuals of the 20. Century. As a member of the Frankfurt School, he was instrumental in the development of the left "cultural criticism." A central theme of his confrontation with National Socialism is his criticism of "irrationalism" which he embodied above all in the "occult" and looked. Adorno's attacks on the occult, a closer look reveals an example of the Antiesoterismus the Left, which is an exact mirror image of the inquisitorial tendencies of the Right.

Adorno was convinced that National Socialism was to lead to the collapse of anti-rational or irrational forces in the Company. His fight against the supposedly irrational authoritarianism of astrology and the occult in his eyes was a struggle against those intellectual currents that had allowed anti-Semitism and Nazism. The view is now widespread, many leading figures of the Nazi era - including Hitler, Himmler and Hess - occult inclinations had. In fact, National Socialism grew out of a milieu that was standing in a loose connection with the occult. To this medium were the Thule Society, various "Aryan", pseudomythologische groups, anti-modernist, neo-pagan, vegetarian and other communities, which are broadly defined as irrational, if not could even call occult. Adorno was convinced the enemy of the rational and humane is the irrational and inhuman, so must the irrational in modern society to be destroyed to prevent the return of the Nationalsoziallismus. From this view, his "theories evidence against the occult" (1946-47, reissued in Minima Moralia). Amazingly,

is completely overlooked by Adorno in that the occultists - along with the Jews - in European history far more on the side of the persecuted, as a place to which the pursuer. When Adorno died of the same rhetorical inversion, as Voegelin and others? Fundamental to Adorno's criticism of his occult belief is of its irrationality, its absolute contrast to the rational. This dualism is typical of the logic of the Inquisition. Adorno objectifies the occult and the occult in a way reminiscent of the argument forms of anti-Semites. In his polemic antiesoterischen found just gross generalizations, cartoons, half-truths, logical fallacies and lies, as in the former.

is in his "Theses against occultism" Adorno on far-reaching claims. The tendency to occultism is a symptom of regression of consciousness. The awareness has lost the power to think the Absolute and Relative to endure. Monotheism falls into an after-mythology, "the spirit" of merging in spirits and lose the ability to recognize that the latter did not exist. The covert forces of society fooled their victims with false prophecies and after thousands of years of education returning to humanity in again the panic, the domination of nature by traffic, to a rule of man, all the horrors of, meet the man ever had to suffer by nature.

Adorno remains a more detailed definition of guilty, what he means by occultism. Obviously, he thinks primarily of spiritualism, to the media and soothsayers. He also speaks of a born-again animism, which negates the alienation, which he himself caused I, for which, he offering a non-existent experience. But why an "animistic" or "occult is" experience per se non-existent? Just because it says so? Assertion without proof, no argument. As Adorno comes from the claim that the occult is a symptom of regression to the other, the domination of nature had been wrong in the rule over the people - and that has to do the one with the other?

Adorno makes a return to magical thinking responsible for totalitarianism. But the relationship between them is not established by him. His claim that the hypnotic effect of magical objects to the same totalitarian terror, both would be the time of a hanging in the air. His explanation is bizarre: the chart as directed by the central office to the citizens and the numerology prepare them for the statistics of the management and price control. Finally, the integration turn out as the ideology of disintegration into power groups, which cut off each other. Whoever stumbled was lost. A user of Tarot cards is an SA member equate? It is completely incomprehensible because of what logic we should get from the oppressed and marginalized in the form of the occult, astrology and the Kabbalah numerology to the directives of a central office or the statistics of the administration. And as for the power groups As for the cancel each other: the "occult" is in the history of the West in general on the side of victims of such Aurottungen found. Heretics and witches were the oppressed, the marginalized, the victims of the Inquisition. But miraculously they turn in Adorno in the privacy of the bureaucracy from which they are pursued in the perpetrator that they pursue. to

Without realizing it reproduces, Adorno in his rhetoric antiesoterischen the argumentation of anti-Semitism. Occultists associated with him with unsavory, anti-social edge phenomena, reveal the forces of decline, a "disease of consciousness", for which the Waste from the world of phenomena to intelligible world, the occult is unhealthy in a barbarous manner. The occultist, according to Adorno would bring the world in accordance with its own decadence. to "The" power of the occult in his view, "like fascism" are "not merely" pathic, both are related through their model of thinking together. Instead, there is a relationship between anti-Semitism and Adorno's attack on the occult.

The occult is to Adorno's infamous dictum "the metaphysics of the stupid." Spiritualism, which he equates the occult, had not brought to light, late notices as grandmothers. Towards the end of his theses with Adorno remains a global interpretation of religion, according to which the great religions of the fate of the deceased either with thoughtful silence, or taught the resurrection of the body. They have always maintained the inseparability of the spiritual and the physical. There was nothing spiritual in them that was not anchored in sensory perception or demanded physical performance. The other hand held occultists - Adorno - this view for not facing, made about the idea of resurrection funny and not intended for release.

This reasoning is not only because of strange, because spiritualism is usually accused of He does not distinguish sufficiently between this world and the hereafter, but also because the occult is something untestellt what you can not blame him historically. Even a superficial knowledge of the history of esotericism can teach you that the relationship between the physical world and the spiritual world was a central theme for the New Age and that the idea of a "Geistleiblichkeit" in it still plays a major role.

Adorno concludes with the assertion that the idea of the existence of ghosts is driven to an extreme expression of a bourgeois consciousness. This thesis is not that far away from Marx, for whom the religion was the opiate of the people.

Adorno's theses a collection of confusion and generalizations are mixed with a disturbing bitterness that borders on nihilism. It was hard to understand how someone who was with the rhetoric of anti-Semitism so familiar, this rhetoric in his own polemics antiokkultistischen reproduce so unrestrained. Versluis says Adorno tried theses' is no more necessary to understand the occult or appropriate to show how the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are striving to understand the Jewish culture or Jews.

The antiokkultistischen resentment Adorno vagi to the present day through 'critical' literature. In particular, radical secularists have his voice and made his own argumentation. In the confessional literature produced by them also the view of Marx returns that religion is opium for the people, except that religion now replaced with occult or New Age.

The deeper reason for the convergence of right and left polemics

Although Voegelin and Adorno from two opposite sides are, but they are in agreement in a fundamental error. Somehow, they try "Gnostic" or "occult" for the rise of totalitarianism to blame, even if, as recent research has shown that occultists were in fact the first victims of the Nazis, they were suppressed, imprisoned and killed. If Voegelin's thesis that the Gnostics were responsible for the left or Marxist totalitarianism, would contain a grain of truth, how is it possible that are influential left or Marxist authors just such Antiokkultisten or anti-Gnostic, as their opponents in the rights? Voegelin and Adorno both make the claim that Gnostic occultists or were responsible for totalitarianism, but both remain the evidence for its assertion guilty. In Adorno can be the same ideological spirit of the Inquisition see how in Voegelin. Adorno hated Nazism, Communism Voegelin, both looking for an ideological and political scapegoat the can they blame for that which they abhor. Occultism and Gnosticism are ideal scapegoats because they carry a lot of historical burden around with them, they adhere to centuries-old suspicions, but they remain vague and indefinite, and are therefore very suitable as objects of contempt, because of its vagueness. Everyone knows that occult or Gnosticism are "bad, even if hardly anyone knows exactly what to mean.

Voegelin and Adorno were desk workers, which was limited to an intellectual witch-hunt. The practical consequences of such demonization settled since 1933 in Germany observed (details in the below-mentioned publication by Corinna Treitel). The moral implications of Voegelin's and Adorno's polemics are more serious, as both were published after 1945.

For Adorno, Voegelin and all those who still attach the rhetorical constructs of "progress" and the "Enlightenment," the "occult" is an easy target and a convenient scapegoat. Occultists represent the "overcome superstition" of the past, the "Dark Ages and are therefore of left and right-wing ideologues who use the rhetoric of progress, which they justify the transition to a future utopia, like as targets of their eradication campaigns chosen, where the "regressive" forces trying to eliminate the Company.

Anti occultism is a separate phenomenon that is observed both in rights as in the left. The lure of ideological inquisition and political scapegoat rituals on both sides of the spectrum of the same size and the natural victims are often the "occult." With their rhetoric antiokkultistischen the right and the left reproduce - usually unconsciously - the language and reasoning patterns of their predecessors in the Inquisition and the witch hunters in the early modern period.

It is easy to understand why conservative writers who were close to the Catholic Church, as Voegelin, or Carl Schmitt, consciously or unconsciously, the Inquisition, as an intellectual and political role model took over. But why leftists such as Adorno and his imitators?

Anti occultism and the anti-New Age are deep into the thinking of the 20th Century interwoven, both in rights and in the left. Communists and Nazis continued the earlier practice of the Church, those representing supposedly "irrational," "occult" or "heretical" beliefs, persecuted and destroyed. In reaction against the "irrational" aspects of Nazism Adorno was exactly the kind of rhetorical Demonization continues to operate the Nazis against unpopular minorities. And in his crusade against the irrationalism Adorno overlooked the terrible role of rational industrialism played in the Nazi regime: what else were the gas chambers, as industrial death chambers? Anti occult and anti-New Age are so deeply rooted in the foundations of Western society, that even by mystics and occultists are hardly noticed that recognize above all the critics, the centuries-old exclusion tactics are no longer as such, even if they are in their tradition. Virtually no one in the left camp seems to have the unpleasant origins and implications of Adorno's remarks anti-occultism, as an alternative you almost tacit or explicit consent affirmations of his prejudices. course you have to reject the occult. But the unconscious such prejudices are, the greater its power. The esoteric research has set out to educate about such prejudice.

* Arthur Versluis is Professor of American Studies at Michigan State University, editor of Esoterica and the founding president of the Association for the Study of Esotericism.

Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisition : Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism
Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the Modern German

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