The Christmas Conference and the Polaric Impulses of the Michaélic and Ahrimanic Schools

Richard Ramsbotham

1.

In a lecture shortly before the conference, Steiner described how since Aristotle the full science of the Mysteries had been kept from humanity. One part of Aristotle’s work (to do with philosophy and logic) bore fruit in European culture through the medieval scholastics, while the other part (to do with science and Mystery-knowledge) had traveled eastwards with Alexander. This reappeared in Europe in a deadened, distorted form in materialistic natural science, but its reality was lost. In 1923, after the destruction and tragedies of the previous ten years, nothing could meet the catastrophe civilization was facing except the renewal , in contemporary form, of the full reality of which the destructive forces in the world were a caricature. Thus Steiner announced:

For a while […] the other part of Aristotle’s teachings had to wait. Now the time has come, however, when these other things have waited long enough […] Alexander had, fundamentally, to bury these secrets of nature in Asia, for only their corpses were brought over to Europe. It is not our task to galvanize these corpses but to rediscover the original living truth. 1

This was the civilizational deed that was enacted at the Christmas Conference. Its world-historical importance is clearly seen when we recognize that the teachings and work of the Academy (and Hospital) of Gondishapur, of such wide-ranging influence, were also a distortion of the work of Aristotle and Alexander. Steiner’s lecture The Working of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body 2 (given in Zurich, where Ita Wegman was) was given immediately after his lectures on Gondishapur and reveals the forms of its negative influence today.

Modern materialistic medicine, says Steiner, is where this influence is most extreme.3 Thus a renewed “Mystery medicine” is essential to the new civilizational impulse that the Christmas Conference made possible. But this impulse has to do, ultimately, with the transformation of the whole of civilization in the way necessary if we, as humanity, are to reverse the steep downslide we are on and create a healthy social order.

2.

An utterly different radical transformation of our civilization is currently being raced through and promoted as a global panacea. Named The Great Reset or the Fourth Industrial Revolution , it “heralds a series of social, political, cultural, and economic upheavals that will unfold over the 21st century.”4 Its leaders (like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab) boast that “new technologies and approaches are merging the physical, digital, and biological worlds in ways that will fundamentally transform humankind.”5

The drastic, inhuman changes to society imposed during “Covid” are, for such people, the essential first phase of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is clearly presented, as policy, in Klaus Schwab’s inaugural book, Covid 19: The Great Reset.6

Here too, therefore, “medicine” plays a key role in a far greater civilizational change.

3.

We can be in no doubt that the spiritual source of the Christmas Conference is intimately connected to the

3 Lecture of April 24, 1924 (GA 316), in Understanding Healing (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013).

4 Encyclopaedia Britannica on The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab.

5 Klaus Schwab, “Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” January 11, 2016 (posted at www. Project-Syndicate.org).

6 World Economic Forum, 2020. “COVID-19 has accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Schwab).

Michaélic School in the spiritual world that Steiner described in 1924. He also described how, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, this Michaélic School: …caused such profound disquiet and alarm to the ahrimanic demons on earth that a remarkable thing happened. Between heavenly deeds and earthly deeds at this time [a] polaric contrast was established . […] While Michaél above was teaching his hosts, there was founded in the realm lying immediately below the surface of the earth, a kind of sub-earthly, ahrimanic school. […] It is a truly overwhelming picture.7

We can also be in no doubt, once we perceive its true character, that the impulse of Covid 19: The Great Reset has its source in this “polaric . . . sub-earthly, ahrimanic school .”

Many people today with no conscious connection to Rudolf Steiner’s work are actively awake to the utterly inhuman character of the “revolution” or “reset” that is underway.

7 Lecture of July 20, 1924 (GA 240), in: Karmic Relationships, Vol. VI (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2009), p. 170f.

Though many people committed to anthroposophy are similarly awake to this, many unfortunately are not and have, until now, failed to recognize what is at stake.

The civilizational impulse of the Christmas Conference will never be realized unless it sees through and addresses the anti-Michaélic counter-impulse that seeks to hold sway in the world.

Nor will the ahrimanically inspired assault on humanity— Covid 19: The Great Reset— be fully recognized and overcome without the spiritual help potentially made available for everyone through the Christmas Conference.

Realizing the impulse of the Christmas Conference and countering the onslaught initiated during the last three years are therefore, ultimately, interdependent.

Richard Ramsbotham is a writer and theater director, who lives in Stroud, UK. He co-runs Fourfold Living Arts, which brings together research into current themes and events with the performing arts.