The Idea of the Threefold Society
at the Dawn of the Third Millennium
© Terry M. Boardman March 1999
This essay
first appeared in The Future Is Now - Anthroposophy at the New
Millennium
(Temple Lodge Publishing,
London 1999)
The 2nd millennium, which gave birth to innumerable dualisms, is
about to give way to the 3rd, but the dualism of the waning age
remains strong. On the global scale, the growth of Islamic
fundamentalism as a reaction to what is perceived to be American
neo-colonialism, and the American response to the Muslim world, has
opened up the prospect of a new and pernicious spiritual bipolarity to
replace that of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the European Union
seems set to become the battleground between two different visions: a
unitary superstate under Franco-German control (a new Carolingian
Empire, with connections to the Vatican) or the European province of a
Transatlantic Union of States under the effective control of the USA.
In his book "The Tainted Source - The Undemocratic Origins of the
European Idea"(1), John Laughland speaks of the conflicting ideas
that compete for the future: the Anglo-American or the Continental
European, which he largely identifies with the Germanic: "In
contrast to Continental European constitutional theories or practices
which assume or aspire to political harmony, the British and American
systems realise that conflict is the stuff of life...the British
parliamentary system gives absolute priority to the principle of
disagreement by ensuring that there is always an opposition."(2).
Laughland goes on to contrast the Anglo-American and Germanic views of
the economy. The latter, he says, quoting the economist Ralf
Dahrendorf, "is based on industrial discipline, the 'discipline
of rigid organisation, the habit of subordination and obedience' which
had been the principle behind the training of the Prussian
pattern.' It requires a bureaucracy to design lines of action and to
control their execution." The Prussian unification of Germany in
the 19th century by the economic means of the Zollverein (customs
union) he considers to be the model for what he claims is the current
German unification of Europe. The Zollverein was based on the
ideas of Friedrich List, the Prussian economist who advocated an
active (Laughland would say dirigiste) role for the state in
the development and protection of national economic life. By contrast,
the Anglo-American model, Laughland says, "brings about an
optimal result through competition between the interests involved: it
requires the game to have rules, and neutral referees to apply
them."(3) Laughland's ideas mirror those of many in the
elites of the West.
At the dawn of the third millennium therefore, we see
some dangerous and seemingly irreconcilable new polarities emerging in
the spiritual, political, and economic realms. At the same time,
there is also the phenomenon of new and confusing mixtures of the
three spheres. This is evident in the British government's desire -
under both Conservative and Labour administrations - to blur the
boundaries between the state, education, and the economy by
establishing a national curriculum, control of the content and method
of teaching practice, and a joint Department of Education and
Employment.(4) It is also evident in the collapse of amateur
sports and the takeover of football by major corporate interests such
as media mogul Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Manchester United,
arguably the world's most popular football club.
From both the right and the left of the political spectrum there
are voices demanding that government should step in to control and
supervise the rampages of global capitalism or else to manage it more
effectively. There are those in the Anglo-American world who,
when seeking to attack the philosophical bases of the European Union,
laud free market capitalism, yet when that same western model of
capitalism runs into trouble, they run for help to the very people
they criticise - to politicians, and demand that governments
bail out big business. As the world economy seemed to be heading for
the rocks in the Autumn of 1998, Suzanne Moore wrote in "The
Independent" newspaper (11.9.1998) that: "Globalisation
isn't inevitable: we can do someting to stop it...it is not true that
governments cannot stop such huge global forces, that there are no
alternatives.They can sign up to treaties and deals that limit the
power of multinationals. They can intervene, as laisser-faire
capitalism does not prove to be the most efficient weay of organising
things, and it looks increasingly as though they will have to." Clearly,
she had only just woken up to the fact of a global economy some 80
years after Rudolf Steiner was already speaking of it as an
estbalished fact. At the same time Anatole Kaletsky wrote in "The
Times" (10.9.1998) an article entitled 'Farewell Laisser-faire
Capitalism' in which he argued that
...political institutions have a legitimate and indispensable
role in managing the capitalist system....Why do most people, like me,
believe that capitalism is an incredibly robust system that will
survive every conceivable crisis with a bit of help from the
Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and other policymaking
institutions?' ...capitalist economies cannot always rely on
pure market forces if economic stability and political consent are to
be preserved. Governments must accept responsibility for preserving
stability and managing macroeconomic demand. How exactly governments
do this - through interest rates, taxes, currency management or
whatever - depends on ever-changing conditions. But the fact that
capitalism requires some degree of external management is impossible
to dispute - and fortunately, the imperatives of global capitalism's
self-preservation invariably bring to play the forces of political
stabilisation when the system as a whole is under threat...What is
certain is that the era of laisser-faire ideology is fading.
Capitalism's own incomparable instinct of self-preservation will see
to that.
Kaletsky speaks here of the end of laisser-faire, a mode of early
capitalist economy that was rising in the 1840s which, according to
Rudolf Steiner, was the peak of individualism and materialism. Yet
Kaletsky's solutions repeat the instincts and language of that period:
"the King is dead! Long live the King!" The spectre of
Darwinism - itself a philosophy based on British economic models of
the late 18th century, is clearly discernible behind Kaletsky's words.
They are also misleading in that the Federal Reserve and the European
Central Bank are not political institutions, though the media
often present them as if they were.. The barrenness of these ideas,
from both the social democratic left and the hard 'liberal' right in
face of the challenge of modern globalisation point to the degree to
which so much thinking at the end of the second millennium is still
influenced by the spirit of the 8th Ecumenical Council of 869 which in
effect declared the individual human spirit to be anathema and reduced
the human entelechy from a Trichotomy to a Dichotomy: the human being
no longer was held to consist of spirit, soul, and body, but of body
and soul only, the soul having a few spiritual faculties, which, from
that time on were to be guided by church dogma and authority,
that is, by religious 'experts and specialists' and not by each
individual's own insight and initiative. And so, as the current
business paradigm seems patently unable to cope with the successive
crises produced by global capitalism, the media call plaintively or
stridently for government experts and specialists to rush to the
rescue. The false dualisms and false mixtures of the three realms
which live in this kind of thinking are based on the out-of-date
thinking of the 1840s and earlier epochs
Although the very name 'Third Way' suggests that there is a sense
among contemporaries that the way forward into the third
millennium has something to do with the number 3, there is little
clarity in mainstream media discourse as to what that way really could
be. Communism and the Anglo-American model of free market capitalism
have both failed to solve the spiritual, cultural, political, and
economic problems of the modern world that have arisen as a result of
the Industrial Revolution. In the wake of the Cold War, many are wary
of relying on any new overarching 'big idea' that can illuminate the
right way forward. In this essay, I shall argue that, finally, after
80 years, the time is now ripe for the idea of the threefolding of
society, put forward by Rudolf Steiner at the end of the First World
War - an idea which could not be realised then due to the failure of
imagination of his contemporaries.
The Origins of Threefolding in Anthroposophy
Rudolf Steiner developed the idea of the threefolding of society
during the First World War as an answer from Central Europe to what he
saw as the twofold danger that threatened Europe at that time from
East and West: Leninism from Russia and Wilsonism from America. By
Wilsonism, he meant in particular the idea, rooted in the experience
of western nations like Britain, France, Spain and the USA,
that national polities should be coterminous with linguistic and
ethnic communities: one state, one language, one people, and, for the
most part, one religion. Claiming to be based on the principle of
national self-determination - a nationalist principle Steiner argued
was rooted in an Old Testament vision of society as monolingual and
monoreligious - Wilsonism thus ignored the historical
experience of the more cosmopolitan multi-ethnic states of Central
Europe. This cosmopolitanism, which meant living together and getting
on with others who are not of the same stock or religion as oneself,
Steiner saw as essential for a healthy society in the coming century.
Subsequent events have surely proved him right, as the insistence on
the right to national self-determination has caused untold misery in
the 20th century and has led to all kinds of abuses and crimes
in the name of national pride and glory.
But the idea of the threefolding of society was not just a
momentary response to a particular set of historical circumstances. It
grew naturally out of Rudolf Steiner's evolving insights into the very
being of Man. During the war he realised that Man's three soul
faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing were rooted in the
three physiological systems of the head and nervous system, the
rhythmic system of the heart and lung, and what he called the
system of metabolism and limbs, especially the legs. This realisation
constituted a grounding in thought of the threefold nature of Man into
the physicality of the body, whereas previously Steiner had spoken
about the overall threefold nature of Man: body, soul, and spirit, and
of the threefold nature of the soul (sentient soul, intellectual-mind
soul, consciousness soul) and spirit (spirit-self, life spirit,
spirit-man). All of this, of course was rooted in his view of Man as a
microcosm, a reflection of the threefold nature of the spiritual world
with its three hierarchies of spiritual beings. Steiner's revelation
of the threefold nature of the spiritual world, of society (in the
three realms of culture, law, and economy), and of Man are at
the Christian and Trinitarian heart of Anthroposophy which stands
under the banner of the Archangel Michael, who since 1879 has
not only been the Ruling Hierarchical Spirit of the Age, or Time
Regent(5), but has also been rising in spiritual status from the rank
of Archangel to that of an Archë. The knowledge of the threefold
nature of the Cosmos, of human society and of Man's being is
at the heart of what Michael desires Man should learn about himself in
this 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. As the anthroposophical historian Peter
Tradowsky put it:
...in this year (1917) not only did the ahrimanic impulse
clearly establish itself on a historical level, but above all, Rudolf
Steiner made the threefolding principle available to man's knowledge
and incorporated it into the living current of earthly history as a
direct expression of Michael's activity. (6)
During the years when he was bringing forward the idea of the
threefold society, Rudolf Steiner also began to speak about profound
historical phenomena on the earthly and spiritual planes intimately
related with threefolding and with our time: about the events of the
4th century AD, notably in and around the year 333; about the events
of the 7th century and the year 666; and about the events of the 9th
century and the year 869(7) . The threefold social movement which
arose out of Steiner's insights failed as a social impulse in
the years 1918-1921. He first brought it as idea in
1917-18 to representatives of the governments of Austria-Hungary and
Germany, but, while they may have seen something of its truth,
they failed to act upon it. It then came forward as deed in
1919: a campaigning group arose within the anthroposophical movement,
but this too failed due to the lack of anthroposophical maturity
and imagination among its members. From 1917 Rudolf Steiner spoke ever
more about the three opponents of the threefold impulse: in Wilsonian
Americanism from the West thinking was attacked and became
materialistic; in Jesuitism in the Centre, the feeling life was
attacked and put to sleep, while human equality was denied by
hierarchy; and Leninism from the East stimulated animal-egoistic
instincts to rise up and overpower the will.
At the same as he spoke about these 'three beasts of the abyss',
Rudolf Steiner's revelations about the Being of Michael also increased
and culminated in the last two years of his life when he spoke
of the threefold impulse of Michael in Autumn when awareness
naturally arises of the separation of body, soul, and spirit, in
contrast with the unitarian mood of Springtime when all tends to
become pantheistic(8). The year 1923 culminated in the great Michaelic
Festival of the Christmas Conference heralding the triumphant
resurrection of the anthroposophical impulse after the disasters of
the previous year. At its heart was the threefold mantram, The
Foundation Stone of Love, which condensed all Steiner's revelations
about threefold Man and Cosmos in mantric form. This was followed by
the establishment of the Michael School on earth, the Lessons of the
First Class, and the lectures and letters known as the Michael
Mystery.
Despite all this, there were those in the Anthroposphical movement
who thought that the threefolding of society was no longer relevant,
after its failure in 1918-21, or that it had been relevant only to the
circumstances of those years. Threefolding would have to be 'prepared'
, they said, by decades or generations of Waldorf education first, or
else it would have to be 'modelled' on micro-scale in anthroposophical
communities. They forgot that Rudolf Steiner had ever maintained that
the impulse to a threefold society was living in the unconscious will
of modern humanity. It did not cease to do so simply because of
the failure in 1918-21. There is much evidence today that this
correct. In 1989-90 after the Berlin Wall came down there was much
talk about whether there was a 'third way' possible between East and
West. Francis Fukuyama in his infamous book "The End of
History" insisted that there was not and that West was best. In
the 1990s we saw the emergence of three giant economic blocs, the
European Union, the North Atlantic Free Trade Area, and the Asia
Pacific forum for Economic Cooperation. In the late 1990s we hear of
the much-vaunted 'Third Way' of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Ferocious
battles reminiscent of the 4th century take place on the Internet
about the nature of the Trinity. The General Anthroposophical Society
has seen increasing controversy over its own nature: is it threefold
or not, and should it be?
The Structure of History - What time are we living in now?
In Britain, the Millennium is going to be celebrated by a huge
exposition inside the giant dome that has been specially
constructed for the purpose at Greenwich, the site of the
determination of global space and time. Tony Blair's New Labour has
continued this Conservative Party project and supports it
enthusiastically. Tony Blair has said of it:
"This is our Dome, Britain's Dome. And believe me, it will
be the envy of the world...I want every child in Britain to be a part
of the millennium experience. I want today's children to take from it
an experience so powerful and memories so strong that it gives them
that abiding purpose and unity that stays with them through the rest
of their lives...Greenwich is the place the millennium begins...if it
was Berlin Mean Time, don't you think the Germans would do
likewise?"(9)
It is well-known that there have been many American influences on
'New Labour' and that British foreign policy in its essentials has not
changed one jot in its principle of partnership with Washington. Tony
Blair echoes the words of Michael Heseltine, former Tory Cabinet
Minister when he says that he wants London to be Europe's financial
centre. Successive British governments have served the cause of
Americanism, and while it is beyond the scope of this essay, a clear
thread can be shown to exist from the days of Cecil Rhodes and his
vision of a world dominated by an Anglo-American Empire to day's
synchronised Anglo-American foreign policy and the increasingly
symbiotic relationship between British and American big business.(10)
This global imperialism of Rhodes and his successors is a corrupted
inversion of the Michaelic
impulse of supranational cosmopolitanism, which is always such a
feature of Michael's period of rulership in history. Another such
corruption is the institution of the United Nations, which was
conceived and created by the American foreign policy elite to serve
the purposes of global imperialism, the establishment of a New World
Order that can serve as the temporal vehicle for the incarnation
of Ahriman, the stage upon which he can act.
Another great centraliser, the Roman Emperor Justinian, sought
during the First Christian millennium, when the Catholic Church strove
to be the One Faith, to unite his realm in a New World Order by a
symbolic architectural dome - that of the church of Hagia Sophia (Holy
Wisdom, or Holy Spirit), which he had built in AD 537. The circle, of
course, like the Round Table or the stars of the EU flag, is an image
of unity, of perfection. It can either be an image of unity in
diversity, or else it can be the image of the monolith, a
dull and numbing uniformity of spirit. This latter is what Justinian
sought: one Church, one people, one Emperor. Insofar as Tony Blair and
his colleagues seem content to follow the American lead in culture,
political thought, and business practice and economic theory, their
dome too will be filled with the spirit of Justinian, he who codified
Roman Law and whose church pronounced reincarnation to be anathema. We
can, however, hope for other outcomes. Jonathan Glancey, in The
Guardian newspaper (25.2.1998) wrote: ... the best of British
thinking in 2000 and beyond is likely to be somewhere other than at
Greenwich. It may even be in the far from hollow heads of young
people, who, brought up in the age of mass entertainment, branding,
and corporate ideologies, wish to think for themselves.
As Rudolf Steiner pointed out on many occasions, since 1899 mankind
has been crossing the threshold of the spiritual world, albeit mostly
unconsciously. Since the discovery of the application of electricity
in the 1780s, electro-magnetism in the 1840s and atomic energy in the
1930s, mankind has been entering deeper into the world of
subnature than was possible with the microscope. In 1879, with the
defeat by Michael of the Ahrimanic spirits of Darkness, those spirits
were cast out of the sublunary realm of the spiritual world and took
up their abode on Earth in human heads, inspiring a tremendous wave of
technological development. Then, in 1900, began the reopening of the
doors of clairvoyant perception, which had been shut since 3000 BC.
Clairvoyance began to reoccur naturally to increasing numbers of
people who were, however, not in a position to understand it. This
means that while still in physical bodies, humanity is living
increasingly in the conditions of the spiritual non-physical world.
After death, there is a separation of the three soul forces of
thinking, feeling, and willing, which had been bound up together in a
'unity' in the physical body. This can, if it is not understood and
worked with in a healthy way, lead to one-sided extremes of behaviour
such as extreme intellectualism and abstraction, fanaticism and
intolerance in the realm of feeling, and violence, crudeness
and cruelty in will activity. We are living in the midst of all this.
Since the 1960s especially, all remaining elements of 19th century
culture and social behaviour have been rapidly disappearing.(11)
A new culture, driven largely by the new technologies is appearing,
one that seems on the surface very confident and capable, and
yet which is profoundly unsure of itself. It is in many ways a heroic
culture which is fascinated by the forces of evil in Man - those
forces, which unbeknown to most, have been let loose on the earthly
plane since 1879. Heroic - because it rises to self-awareness by
facing and dealing with those forces.
We are approaching the end of the second millennium, the
epoch of dualism in religion, politics, and economics, and also the
end, in the year 2030, of the second seventh of the 5th Post-Atlantean
epoch (1413-3573; like all the Great Epochs, it lasts 2160 years)
which began in 1722. So, both on the macro- and the microhistorical
scales, we are moving from the number 2 to the number 3. Finally, we
are arriving at the stage of Egohood for the new 'christened' mankind.
Each century consists of a 3 x 331/3 years, or three cycles of the
etheric life of Christ Jesus. This new
historical periodicity, which since Golgotha has been written into
the Earth's time body, corresponds to a single year in the life of the
individual human being. This accounts for the significance of the 4th,
7th, 9th, 14th, and 21st centuries - for they are the times of the
emergence of 'christened' mankind's physical sense of self, etheric
body, 9th year crisis astral body, and ego respectively.(12)
Clearly, the idea of the threefolding of society corresponds to the
deepest needs of the times. Old dualisms such as capitalism vs.
communism have failed, and so many modern problems are the result of
the confusion of the three realms of culture, law, and economy. The
need for a threefolded society which works with the changed spiritual
circumstances of the times is paramount. The members of the General
Anthroposophical Society, which was founded by the preeminent
Michaelic initiate of modern times to be the guardian chalice
for the Michael Impulse, need to recognise this fact, rally to it, and
bring forward the threefold social idea in all ways possible. The
threefold social order is the big idea of our age, but since
Rudolf Steiner's death, it has hardly spoken its name. Indeed,
until 1935, the masthead of "Das Goetheanum"
weekly magazine read: "Das Goetheanum - Wochenschrift für
Anthroposophie und Dreigliederung", but in that year the words
"und Dreigliederung" were removed and have been absent ever
since. Whatever reason they may have been removed for, it is high time
they were restored, to signal the Society's will to be the
banner-bearer of the impulse of social threefolding. But this, of
course, can only happen if the members have that will.
How to proceed for future social healing?
How then can Society members bring forward the idea of threefolding?
We need to base our actions for society securely on the Foundation
Stone. and specifically on the last verse:
Light Divine
Christ Sun
Warm
our hearts;
Enlighten
Our heads;
That good may arise in
What we
From our hearts would found,
In what we
From our heads
Would guide
Into willing.
Since Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, we need to shed
light on the evolution of consciousness, paying particular attention
to the illumination of the events of the 4th (AD333), 7th
(AD666), and 9th centuries (AD869). This means working out of spirit
remembering, finding ways to communicate the anthroposophical
truths about evolution that we first learned in the supersensible
School of Michael and which were first set down by Rudolf Steiner in
earthly form in his book "Occult Science - An Outline".
Then there is the need to work out of spirit-awareness, to find
ways to help ourselves and our contemporaries to find a path through
the confusion of the present times. For this we all need to be as
aware as possible of what arises in our consciousness from moment to
moment, so as to be able to maintain ourselves in a state of dynamic
equilibrium between the efforts of the adversaries Lucifer and Ahriman
to mislead us. Here Rudolf Steiner's book "Philosophy of
Spiritual Activity" can be our best guide. Finally, we need
to show how to advance to spirit-envisioning, revealing how
anthroposophy can be the basis for a healthier future social life. The
future archetypes for this were given to us in the supersensible
Michael Cultic Imaginations at the end of the 18th century which were
'earthed' by Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and the Idealists of that time,
notably in Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful
Lily. Here Rudolf Steiner's books "Theosophy" and "Knowledge
of the Higher Worlds" can help us, for these represent
the spiritual ideals of the present and future shining before us.
And just as the Green Snake became illumined from within by the
gold she had eaten, so anthroposophical knowledge needs to fill and
enlighten the serpentine Beast of our times. Who is that beast? None
but the Media, the media who control most of contemporary knowledge
and have the increasing tendency to make all knowledge utterly
materialistic. The Media it is today that 'mediates' knowledge
into social action, for good or ill, and has become a kind of bridge
between the two. This beast is not all bad, far from it, but its
nature is to crawl on the ground, for it works primarily (even the
print media these days) with the subterranean forces of
electronics. If left to go its own way, if the ideas of anthroposophy
do not permeate it, it will inevitably slide into materialism.
In his lectures to the West-East Congress in Vienna 1922, Rudolf
Steiner spoke of Europe-Asia as 'the problem' of modern times and
Europe-America as 'the solution'. By this he meant that Europeans were
preserving the dessicated remnants of an ancient Asian spirituality in
the dusty abstractions of their intellectual, political, and religious
systems. The future lay rather with the will to create out of nothing.
And this willingness he saw in the youthful energies of the Americans.
It is no surprise therefore to learn that it is an American
anthroposopher, Joel Wendt, who has articulated best this need for
Anthroposophy to enter the belly of the Media. Wendt has written: (13)
What else have politicians, terrorists, single interest groups,
businesses etc. been fighting to control and manipulate? Within Media
the People come to common (equalized) self knowledge and mutual
understanding. Within Media the idea of the State and of the rights
and duties of citizenship come to common form. Media shines light on
the activities of the State, and media personalities (with varying
degrees of consciousness and moral integrity) believe they act thus
for the People. However we turn our thinking, if we remain pictorially
descriptive of the dynamics of social life as these actually play
themselves out in the political-legal sphere we will come to the
perception of the threefoldness of State-Media-People.
It is a risk, Wendt says, to enter this realm, but a risk that
should be taken, a nettle that should be grasped if the Media serpent
is not to continue merely to slide in the dust.
Media, if its present condition is clearly understood, is young;
i.e. it is still undergoing formative developments, and functions
today with a kind of moral or spiritual immaturity. In this sense
Media may take one of two different courses of future development. It
may become a kind of moon center, rigid, arid, not light
originating, but rather only able to reflect those impulses which come
to it from the outside. Or, it may become a sun center, a
source of warmth and understanding, a medium of creative forces
flowing into the social order and carrying both in deed and in word a true image of man as a being of soul and spirit. I imagine then,
Media becoming a sun, a true heart of the heart of the social
organism, so that the common understanding of the People will
find a renewed vision of the State. In Media a song can yet be heard,
the song of the truly free man, the moral man. In this way the
rigidification, the mechanization, the image spell-binding of the word
will be overcome, and a true understanding given to Western
civilization of the Idea of the Threefold Social Organism as a dynamic
social form already latent in human social existence in the
West....There is of course no predicting how events will proceed, yet
it seems clear to me that this historic moment is pregnant with
certain kinds of potential. Just as there is great risk of a further
fall into materialism, so as well there is much possibility for
spiritual transformation. If we do not blind ourselves with a kind of
threefold dogma (for example, that the first need is to free the
spiritual cultural life), but instead truly perceive the actual
dynamics. then as far as I am able to hold in pictorial thought, the
ripe moment lies in bringing moral transformative forces to the
thinking active within the Media, to bring a song to life just here in
the heart of the heart of the social organism.
Here speaks a true American voice - a voice of idealism and the
will to courage.
The Israeli author and lecturer Jesaiah Ben Aharon now lives in
America and he has urged us, in this Age of the Second Coming of
Christ, to learn from the experience of the disciples at the time of
the First Coming 2000 years ago.(14) First their minds were
awoken from slumber and ignorance of what had happened at Golgotha and
afterwards by the tongues of fire at Pentecost. This was for them a
festival of knowledge. What did they then do? They went out into
the marketplace and began speaking to the people in languages
each could understand. Finally, they set about creating a new
community - the community of Christians. We see here the threefold
archetype: the spiritual experience of the "I", the
considerate and respectful dialogue of "I and you", and the
social life in cooperation of the "we". This, Ben
Aharon avers, is what we in the Anthroposophical movement also need to
do with respect to the wider world beyond our all-too-narrow confines.
Otherwise, the fact of the Second Coming, of the Etheric Christ,
might well be ignored by mankind, which would be an unmitigated
disaster.
It will be necessary then, for us to study the idea of the
threefold society, understand it, build enthusiasm for it within the
Anthroposophical movement, and then realise it within the
Anthroposophical Society. If we fail to do this at least, and put
our own house in threefold order, so to speak, we will hardly be in a
position to speak to others about social threefolding. Paul Mackay has
spoken of the three stages of development within the
Anthroposophical movement since the Christmas Conference, each of 33
years: 1923 - 1956 - 1989. In the first phase, 1923 -1956, the
individual element was strong; this was the 'angelic' phase, when the
movement was signally affected by the karmic relationships between
leading members. Then came the 'archangelic' period, 1956 - 1989, when
Anthroposophical communities sprang up in profusion and were deepened,
but remained somewhat inward, apart from the rest of society -
'islands of culture', as it were. Now, since 1989, we have been in the
'archaic' period when Anthroposophy has to broaden to embrace the
world and develop a truly global consciousness that can parallel the
ahrimanic aspects of the economically and technologically-driven
globalisation that has been the much-trumpeted mark of the 1990s. This
period will last until 2022. During it, Anthroposophy will have to
plunge into the world if it is to have a meaning that is anything
other than sectarian.
On the 30th November 1919 in Dornach, at the height of his activity
to bring forward the impulse of threefolding, Rudolf Steiner said:
During the first two decades of the Anthroposophical movement in
Central Europe we could allow ourselves to carry on in the sleepy
sectarian way that has been so hard to combat in our circles and is
still deeply lodged in the attitudes of those of the movement. But the
time is over when we could allow ourselves such sleepy sectarianism.
It is profoundly true, as I have often emphasised, that we must be
absolutely clear about the world-historical significance of the
Anthroposophical movement...
Does the Anthroposophical movement have no world-significance
today, because Rudolf Steiner is not here to lead it in person?
Because most people in the world have never heard of it? Or do we feel
that those words of 1919 are truer today than ever, and that they need
to be answered?
Notes
1 Warner Books, 1997
2 ibid. p204
3 ibid p105
4 I have argued elsewhere that the much-vaunted Third Way,
loudly trumpeted by Blair and Clinton, is but a chimera. There is not
the space here to discuss this. See my article in the magazine Transintelligence
Internationale (inaugural issue Feb-Mar. 1999)
5 The last Michaelic Age was c.600-200 BC
6 Tradowsky, "Kaspar Hauser", p225
7 In this development of Man in the Christian era, of the
new Christian humanity, one might say, we can see parallels with the
unfolding life of the child 4,7,9, but the elaboration of this is
beyond the scope of this essay
8 See his Lectures on the Cycle of the Year GA 223
9 Guardian 25.2.1998
This page was created by Terry
Boardman Dec. 1999
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