'A Far-Reaching Operation of Hoodoo Magic'

Raising the thought of Rudolf Steiner in a Catholic webblog is a task fraught with peril. One risks censure from many quarters.

For the fact is, that Steiner, who died in 1925, was intensely critical of much of the Catholicism of his era. Moreover he raised many ideas, which are, it has to be said, inimical to Catholic teaching. These are so inimical in fact, that the image many Catholics will have of Steiner is that he is ‘New Age’.

Having spent many years actively advocating the holistic or New Age movement, it is clear to me, that this, at least, is not the case. Steiner would have been gravely concerned with many elements of the New Age scene.

For instance, he was opposed to the frequent disdain for clear thinking in the holistic subculture. He had achieved a doctorate and done post-doctoral work in the most rigorous of 19th century European philosophy. He believed in the value of Western tradition, and concluded that certain of the pre-Christian Eastern roots of today’s New Age movement were actually inappropriate, even destructive for the modern world – a world he saw had been utterly transformed by ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’.

For Rudolf Steiner then, the event on Calvary transformed not only humanity, but also God, who had entered into humanity and gone through death. But for the modern Catholic theologian Schillebeeckx, the Crucifixion is ‘a sadistic, bloody myth’ and ‘we are saved, despite the Cross.’ Whatever his errors may have been, is not the cosmos-transfiguring vision of Dr Rudolf Steiner infinitely closer to the Catholic Mystery, than that of Dr Edward Schillebeeckx?

I raise these questions for many reasons, which cannot all be unpacked in a single webblog ‘snapshot’ – but which will be unfolded as I proceed. Among these reasons, is the fact that Steiner also differed from much of New Age culture, in that, like the Church, he took the nature of evil very seriously indeed. He warned that it would be the work of evil to try to BURY consciousness of the deed of Christ, under a welter of lies and doubts.

Doubts … yes, I believe, along with the consistent message of the Catholic Meditations on the Tarot, that a highly efficacious work of seeding doubt belongs to evil, in fact to ‘a far reaching operation of hoodoo magic, whose victim is human intelligence’ (pg 519).

Now this work of seeding doubt proceeds through all channels. It is obviously rife in the sphere of secular materialism. Paradoxically, it also works through Protestant literalist Christianity – a Christianity, which as I touched on earlier (in my entry ‘Just the Facts, Ma’am’) has bifurcated on the issue of literalism – into a fundamentalism upholding literalism versus a liberal Christianity rejecting literalism (and Mystery in the process).

But the Mystery of Christ has nothing to do with literalism. Now ironically, it appears to me that the New Age culture, which rejects both philosophical materialism and ‘Christian’ literalism – also often falls prey to the work of doubt, inasmuch as its thinking – so it seems to me – frequently PSYCHOLOGISES Christ and the Christian tradition, reducing Mystery not to literalism, not to secular empiricism – but to psychological processes.

I shall have much more to say. But however much I regret Rudolf Steiner’s condemnation of the Church, I believe that Christians in these times need to acknowledge any voice that stands for Christian Mystery and warns of the evil that would bury it.