Finally available in English, Thomas Meyer's major biography of Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz (1869-1945) offers a panoramic view of an exceptional life. One of Rudolf Steiner's most valued and independent-minded colleagues, Polzer-Hoditz was born in Prague - in the midst of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - to an aristocratic family with royal connections. Leaving behind the traditions of his background, he was to become a key actor in Steiner's regenerative 'threefold' social impulses, working tirelessly for a genuinely unified and free Europe. Polzer-Hoditz also fought to protect Rudolf Steiner's esoteric legacy and the integrity of the Anthroposophical Society that had been founded to further his work. Following Steiner's untimely death, Polzer-Hoditz fostered a broad range of friendships and alliances with key figures such as D.N. Dunlop, Walter Johannes Stein and Ita Wegman. In a bid to avoid further division and conflict, he made significant interventions to alter the tragic course of events that consumed the Anthroposophical Society, although he was unable to stop the major split within the membership that was to follow. In the final decade of his life he concentrated his energies on world issues, seeking to influence events in Europe in particular, lecturing widely and writing a number of books and memoranda. In contrast to the destructive 'special interests' of the national and religious groups that craved dominion and power, Polzer-Hoditz sought to build a true understanding between Central and Eastern Europe and to cultivate a spiritual connection with the West. Meyer's book is a pioneering work in biographical literature, structured in four main sections that reflect the stages of an individual's personal development. In the concluding section he studies world events up to the present day, practising a method referred to as a 'symptomatological observation of history', which Polzer-Hoditz himself sought to develop. Much more than a standard biography, Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz presents a vibrantly living picture of how a spiritual individuality can work in human culture and history - in past, present and future. This first English edition is based on the latest German version and features additional material.

Gnosticism, together with alchemy, was for C. G. Jung the chief prefiguration of his analytical psychology. Jung did not simply interpret Gnostic texts psychologically but also cited them as confirmation of his psychology. An authority on theories of myth and Gnosticism, Robert Segal has searched the Jungian corpus to bring together in one volume Jung's main discussions of this ancient form of spirituality. Included in this volume are both Jung's sole work devoted entirely to Gnosticism, "Gnostic Symbols of the Self," and his own Gnostic myth, "Seven Sermons to the Dead." The book also contains key essays by two of the best-known writers on Jungian psychology and Gnosticism: Father Victor White and Gilles Quispel, whose "C. G. Jung und die Gnosis" is here translated for the first time. In his extensive introduction Segal discusses Jung's fascination with Gnosticism, the parallel for Jung between ancient Gnostics and modern Jungian patients, the Jungian meaning of Gnostic myths and of the Seven Sermons, Jung's possible misinterpretation of Gnosticism, and the common characterization of Jung himself as a contemporary Gnostic.

'These Letters ... aim to make John's Gospel accessible to people today as their own gospel, both as a whole and in the details; to illuminate it with the spiritual knowledge of the age and to make it fruitful for life, not only for meditation but also for practical ordering of destiny.' - Friedrich Rittelmeyer. --- A revitalized Johannine Christianity stands at the heart of the work of Christian renewal that was led by Rudolf Steiner in the early twentieth century. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran minister and theologian who helped found The Christian Community in 1922, was a leading figure within this new Johannine movement. Rittelmeyer described John's Gospel as encapsulating '...an indescribable glory of revelation of love. This glory has such purity, delicacy and spiritual power that in it one has the material with which a marvellous new world may be built.' --- Without doubt his most powerful work, Rittelmeyer's Letters on John's Gospel first appeared in a series of publications by the Stuttgart seminary of The Christian Community between 1930 and 1932. Whilst these Letters were originally written with students and local congregations in mind, they provide manifold insights for anyone seeking to glimpse the majesty of John's Gospel. Margaret Mitchell's translation from 1937 has never before been published in book form. Revised here and expanded by editors Alan Stott and Neil Franklin, this volume features additional contributions by Rudolf Frieling and Emil Bock.

'It depends on the human being whether he merely conceives of anthroposophy or whether he experiences it.' - Rudolf Steiner During the Christmas period of 1923-4, Rudolf Steiner refounded the Anthroposophical Society at its headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. This important event, which has come to be known as the Christmas Conference, can be studied on many levels, and its many mysteries have been central to Sergei O. Prokofieff's anthroposophical research over the years. His beginning point has been an enduring question: What did Rudolf Steiner mean when he called the Christmas Conference the 'start of a World-Turning-point of Time'? In this far-reaching work, the author - working from several different viewpoints - guides the reader towards an answer. Prokofieff suggests that the impulse of the Christmas Conference can only be reenlivened today through conscious action by individuals to experience its spiritual essence. Rather than offering dogmatic conclusions, he opens up paths of approaching this goal by throwing light on different aspects of the Conference and what lies at its heart: the Foundation Stone and its Meditation. In particular, Prokofieff explores three key perspectives: the connection of the Christmas Conference with humanity's evolution; the inner relationship of each individual anthroposophist to the Christmas Conference; and the significance of the Conference to Rudolf Steiner himself. Although this is major work of some length, the individual chapters of May Human Beings Hear It! are complete in themselves, and can therefore be studied independently of each other.

Since its first publication in 2008, The Secret History of the World has sold over 250,000 copies and established itself as the authoritative text on the subject of esoteric belief systems and secret societies. Now, with The Illustrated Secret History of the World, this landmark book achieves a new level of authority, adding to its thorough and revealing text more than 350 illustrations-many of them rare-of the symbols, drawings, engravings, paintings, and photographs that are a key part of the world's secret history. This richly illustrated edition features exclusive new material to accompany the original text in a beautiful package and oversized format. The Illustrated Secret History of the World presents a radical re-interpretation of human existence and a view of the world previously hidden from us. Featuring: Alchemists & Freemasons The Illuminati The Garden of Eden The Knights Templar The Looking Glass Universe The Gods Who Loved Women The Green King The Prophets The Sphinx & the Timelock The Neolithic Alexander Zarathustra The Rise of the Magi Lucifer Gnostics & Shamans Mohammed and Gabriel Francis Bacon and the Green One The Rosicrucian Age The Seven Seals & The New Jerusalem And much more . . .

Reassessing human history in relation to the cosmic-earthly events of Christ's incarnation, Rudolf Steiner stresses the significance of both Gnostic spirituality and the legends of the Holy Grail. The 'Christ-Impulse', he tells us, is not a one-time event but a continuous process, beginning well before Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. This mighty impulse is a force that gives impetus to human development, such as with the extraordinary blossoming of free thinking of the last two millennia. Surveying this pattern of evolving human thought, Steiner explains the roles of contrasting historical figures, for example the great teacher Zarathustra, Joan of Arc and Johannes Keplar. We are shown the widespread influence of the clairvoyant prophetesses, the sibyls, who formed a backdrop to the Greco-Roman world. Steiner contrasts their revelations to those of the Hebrew prophets. The lectures culminate in the secret background to the Parzival narrative. Steiner illustrates how it is possible to experience the Holy Grail by reading the stellar script in the sky at Easter. Here, he provides a rare personal account of the processes he utilized to conduct esoteric research. The new edition of these much-loved lectures features a revised translation and an introduction, appendices and notes by Frederick Amrine.

Alternative religious groups have had a profound influence on American history-they have challenged the old and opened up new ways of thinking about healing, modes of meaning, religious texts and liturgies, the social and political order, and the relationships between religion and race, class, gender, and region. Virtually always, the dramatic, dynamic history of alternative religions runs parallel to that of dissent in America.

Communities of Dissent is an evenhanded and marvelously lively history of New Religious Movements in America. Stephen J. Stein describes the evolution and structure of alternative religious movements from both sides: the critics and the religious dissenters themselves. Providing a fascinating look at a wide range of New Religious Movements, he investigates obscure groups such as the 19th-century Vermont Pilgrims, who wore bearskins and refused to bathe or cut their hair, alongside better-known alternative believers, including colonial America's largest outsider faith, the Quakers; 17th- and 18th-century Mennonites, Amish, and Shakers; and the Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Muslims, and Scientologists of today.

Accessible and comprehensive, Communities of Dissent also covers the milestones in the history of alternative American religions, from the infamous Salem witch trials and mass suicide/murder at Jonestown to the positive ways in which alternative religions have affected racial relations, the empowerment of women, and American culture in general.

In this series of previously-untranslated lectures, Rudolf Steiner describes how myths and legends portray humanity's most ancient evolutionary and spiritual history. Folklore presents ancient mystical wisdom in the form of stories - clothed in pictures by initiates - that enable individuals to understand their content in a more intellectual form at a later time. Focusing on Greek and Germanic mythology, the lectures in the first part of this volume cover the chronicles of Prometheus, Daedalus and Icarus, Parzival and Lohengrin, the Argonauts and the Odyssey, and the heroic dragon-slayer Siegfried. From these focal points, Rudolf Steiner discusses a variety of themes - from the mysteries of the Druids and the founding of Rome to the esoteric background of Wolfram von Eschenbach; from good and evil and the unjust death sentence on Socrates to the significance of marriage. The second part of this book features lectures on the nature and significance of the musical dramas of Richard Wagner. Wagner's works, from his earliest attempts to his most mature opera Parsifal, are discussed from spiritual viewpoints. Although Wagner did not have a fully conscious awareness of the deeper meanings of his compositions, Steiner suggests that his shaping of Germanic legends was driven by an instinctive, creative and artistic certainty that accords with deep occult truths.

'The mission of our age is not to reproduce an ancient wisdom, but to engender a new one - a wisdom that points not only to the past but that works prophetically into the future.' - Rudolf Steiner Beginning with ancient Egypt, the pyramids and sphinxes - and a comparison of that epoch with our own - Rudolf Steiner surveys a vast spiritual landscape of human development. In symphonic style, he describes the conquest of the physical plane in post-Atlantean civilizations, the relationships between the various cultural epochs, the human being's connections with the kingdoms of nature and the different planetary bodies, and the relationship of animal forms to 'the physiognomy of human passions'. Through this panoramic vision, we discover how the changed conditions of human consciousness call for a new spiritual understanding today. In her Introduction, Marie Steiner relates the special experience of being a member of Rudolf Steiner's audience for this timeless series of lectures: 'Enormous cosmic pictures were unfolded before the spiritual gaze of the listeners; insights were of such depths of ancient wisdom, views of distant futures of human and world development, that deepest devotion flowed through their hearts...' This new edition features a revised translation, introduction, notes and an index.

Edith Maryon (1872-1924) was a trained sculptor who worked alongside Rudolf Steiner to create the unique sculpture of Christ (the 'Representative of Humanity') at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. One of Steiner's closest collaborators, she was a highly-valued colleague and esoteric pupil. As one of his dearest friends, Maryon kept a busy and detailed correspondence with Rudolf Steiner, in which he confided freely about his personal situation, his lack of true colleagues, difficulties with lecture tours, and the embattled public standing of anthroposophy. Almost invariably, these letters emphasized Steiner's longing for the Dornach studio and their shared work on the Christ statue. Maryon's early death, aged 52 - following fifteen months of illness - shook Rudolf Steiner to the core. He was to die himself less than a year later. With this book, the author's central aim is to illuminate the spiritual signature of Edith Maryon's relationship with Rudolf Steiner and their mutual work in anthroposophy and on the sculpture of Christ. Building on Rex Raab's (1993) biography, Peter Selg's moving study features dozens of photos and facsimiles of letters, utilizing previously unpublished sources from Edith Maryon's and Ita Wegman's literary estates and the Rudolf Steiner Archive in Dornach. -- The most essential and intrinsic quality of her soul ... was not a particular branch of human endeavour, not even art; the most salient of her soul tendencies, her soul intentions, was the striving for spirituality...' - Rudolf Steiner

The Theosophical Society (est. 1875 in New York by H. P. Blavatsky, H. S. Olcott and others) is increasingly becoming recognized for its influential role in shaping the alternative new religious and cultural landscape of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, especially as an early promoter of interest in Indian and Tibetan religions and philosophies. Despite this increasing awareness, many of the central questions relating to the early Theosophical Society and the East remain largely unexplored. This book is the first scholarly anthology dedicated to this topic. It offers many new details about the study of Theosophy in the history of modern religions and Western esotericism. The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period understood the East and those of its people with whom they came into contact. The authors examine the relationship of the theosophical approach with orientalism and aspects of the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the early Theosophical Society's imagining of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.

During 1924, before his last address in September, Rudolf Steiner gave over eighty lectures on the subject of karma to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These profoundly esoteric lectures examine the underlying laws of reincarnation and karma, and explore in detail the incarnations of certain named historical figures. In Rudolf Steiner's words, the study of karma is '?a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence?' In this fundamental first volume - and essential basis for study of the later volumes - Rudolf Steiner gives an overview of the laws and conditions of karma, and goes on to consider the incarnations of Friedrich Nietzsche, Lord Bacon of Verulam, Lord Byron and many others.

'If we can bring nothing up out of ourselves except fear of the illnesses which surround us at the seat of an epidemic, and if we go to sleep at night filled with nothing but thoughts of this fear, then we create unconscious replicas, imaginations, which are drenched in fear. And this is an excellent method for nurturing bacteria...' - Rudolf Steiner Based on brief, pithy quotations from Rudolf Steiner's collected works, the 'spiritual perspectives' in this volume present core concepts on the subject of epidemics. These brief extracts do not claim to provide exhaustive treatment of the subject, but open up approaches to the complexity of Steiner's extraordinary world of ideas. Some readers will find these fragments sufficient stimulus in themselves, whilst others will use the source references as signposts towards deeper study and understanding.

'Rudolf Steiner presents the human soul dilemma, split into male and female attributes...but offers a path of development which will eventually lead to overcoming these - what Jung called 'individuation', a merging with the true self or true ego of the human being.' - from the Introduction We live in a sexualised society, surrounded by sexual imagery and content in almost every area of life. This presents us with many challenges, including an increasing blurring and confusion between love and sex; strife between men and women over their roles in society; and a consistent assault on the innocence of childhood. Despite the sensibilities of his time, Rudolf Steiner made a huge contribution to our understanding of the complex theme of sexuality. In this freshly-compiled anthology, Steiner describes the point in evolution at which human beings split from being androgynous and single-sexed to becoming male or female. He traces the changing roles of the sexes in society, from the matriarchal past to today's patriarchal dominance. The division of the sexes brings suffering, but also the possibility of achieving higher stages of love. In the distant future, humanity can evolve sexuality into a new form, with even the possibility of reproduction being metamorphosed. Refreshingly, Steiner is not judgmental and does not preach asceticism. He recognises the 'all-too-human' frailty people confront in their personal lives, even in the case of great individuals such as Goethe. Sex is a necessary stage of human evolution, and the split nature of the human being is a fact of our age. Its healing will be gradual but, like Amfortas in the Grail story - whose wounded groin was a metaphor for amorous misadventure - we can all be healed through love and compassion.

Rudolf Steiner's watercolour painting 'The Archetypal Human-Animal' presents us with the enigmatic image of a strange creature apparently swimming in water. It has a human profile, showing a clearly outlined nose and slightly-opened mouth, with a mysterious eye, almost concealed in its greenish hair. It has appendages similar to hands and feet, and dark-blue plant-like forms float about in the water beneath the creature's bright red and yellow body. Only the title provides us with a clue to its meaning: it is an 'archetypal human-animal' form. But even this is enigmatic. What is this strange, unusual creature - this archetypal human-animal? We are presented with a perplexing image and a puzzling description. In this original work, illustrated throughout with full-colour paintings and images - many by the author herself - Angela Lord takes us on a journey of discovery to realizing the meaning of Rudolf Steiner's painting. From Goethe's theory of metamorphosis in nature, we are introduced to Steiner's ideas of human evolution, from the primal beginnings of the archetypal human-animal on 'Ancient Moon'. Lord recounts myths and legends from many cultures that tell of human-animal forms, and reflects on the meaning of the fish in Christianity. She takes us through a series of 'colour sequences' for repainting Steiner's human-animal motif, and includes appendices that summarize evolutionary phases of the earth and humanity from a spiritual-scientific perspective. The Archetypal Human-Animal is both a valuable workbook for painters and a fascinating insight into hidden aspects of human evolution.