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http://www.kheper.net/topics/Anthroposophy/Steiner.htm

> Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) is an important occult philosopher.  An
> Austrian, he was greatly influenced by Goethe's works, and worked for
> a time at the Goethe archives at Weimer. He later became involved in
> the Theosophical Society, and founded a new German branch.  But
> although obviously influenced by the Theosophical World-view (the
> concept of seven planes, cosmic cycles and sub-cycles, etc) Steiner's
> approach and teachings differed markedly from those of the rest of
> Theosophists.  Whereas the Theosophists, under the inspiration of
> Blavatsky's orientation, looked to the East - to India and Tibet, for
> inspiration - Steiner was preiminantly a European mystic.  He was
> interested in European occultism, European mysticism, European
> Christianity.  In 1907 he was initiated into the Rosicrucians.  By
> 1910 he was lecturing heavily on the Gospels, which gave him a
> popular following among the Germans he associated with.
> 
> Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater's Star of the East project (in
> which they claimed the new Messiah had incarnated in the person of
> Jiddu Krishnamurti, then a young boy) was as much as Steiner and the
> Germans could bear.  And the last thing the German aristrocracy
> wanted to be associated with was the British empire and all that
> Indian stuff.  They craved instead the Nordic mysteries.
> 
> Eventually, due to increasing tension with Annie Besant's brand of
> Theosophy, things came to a head, and he broke away in 1913 to found
> his own organisation, which he called Anthroposophy ("Wisdom of or
> about Man").
> 
> Steiner wrote only a few books, but during his period as a teacher he
> gave thousands of lectures on all aspects of occultism and
> esotericism, as well as education, music, agriculture, and economics.
> In this enormous corpus of work he laid out his metaphysical system,
> a unique but limited structure, based on elements of Theosophy,
> Rosicrucianism, Plato, Goethe, and Christianity.  Indian influence in
> his ideas was for all intents and purposes nil, unlike the
> Theosophists, and the Theosophical Sanskrit terminology which appears
> in his early lectures was soon replaced by Christian European terms,
> such as spirit, soul, etc.
> 
> Steiner claimed to have clairvoyant or occult vision; to be able to 
> directly perceive occult realities, spiritual beings, and the 
> Theosophists' Akashic Record.  It was on the basis of reading this 
> akashic record that Steiner developed his cosmology, theory of human 
> evolution, Christology, etc.  He claimed to be able to actually see 
> back in time to these ancient events imprinted on the cosmic aether.
> 
> Unfortunately, this akashic record cannot have been the most reliable
>  thing, for Steiner made a few curious blunders.  His account of the 
> formation and history of the Earth for example is not supported by 
> any astrophysical, geological, or paleontological evidence.   He took
>  the Gospels at face value, whereas any modern religious historian 
> could tell you they were not eye-witness statements but theological 
> accounts of how the early Church perceived Christ, only written some 
> decades after the latter's death, and compiled from different 
> sources.  And his claim (on the basis of this same akashic record) 
> that the anonymous fifth/sixth century Christian Neoplatonist who 
> used as a psuedonym the name of a disciple of Paul's was actually the
>  original (1st century) Dionysius mentioned in the book of Acts, is 
> disproved by the striking similarity between "Psuedo"-Dionysius' 
> writings and those of the Neoplatonist Proclus (fifth century). Whole
> sections of Dionysius are in fact plagiarised from Proclus.
> 
> Steiner's published lectures, despite being a mine of occult 
> information, are also tedious and repititious.  His actual writings, 
> especially his later and more important ones, are even more so, and 
> for the most part totally unreadible.
> 
> Steiner's current legacy lies in education and agriculture.  His 
> education philosophy made him a notable figure among progressive 
> educators just after the First World War, and his "Waldorf schools" 
> are still known and respected by many today (although quite 
> understandably everyone tends to look down on his associated 
> cosmology in a rather dismissive way).  In the 1940's and '50's in 
> Australia at least the Steiner people developed the Camp Hill 
> Communities (for example Warranala in Sydney), with curitative 
> education of other retarded children.  In many ways these were the 
> forerunners of the modern communes, with aspects of closed monastic 
> communities.
> 
> Steiner's extraordinary system of agriculture, called bio-dynamics, 
> rejects chemical fertilisers, and is based on the subtle formative 
> forces of plant growth.  With the help of his second wife, Marie von 
> Sivers, he developed a system of flowing movement, "eurythmy", which 
> seems, especially in Curative Erythmy to be at least superficially 
> camparable to Chinese disciplines such as Tai Chi, although totally 
> independent of them (for Steiner the Greek influence was always 
> primary).
> 
> Around the turn of the century, Steiner returned to the mystical 
> interests which had formed part of his education at Vienna.  Such 
> occult interests tended to be quite common among the idealistic and 
> reforming circles in which Steiner moved, and his conversion from 
> Goethe-specialist to occult teacher was complete by about 1906.  This
>  period was marked by the increasing ascendancy of Marie von Sivers 
> (1867-1948), a Baltic Russian actress and originally a keen 
> Theosophist.
> 
> In 1906 Steiner accepted a charter from the O.T.O. (this was still 
> several years before Crowley was to join and eventually take over the
>  organisation), which licensed him to work as head of a lodge called 
> the Mysteria Mystica Aeterna.  It is very unlikely that Steiner 
> adopted the sex-magical practices of that organization.  Rather, he 
> was looking for an "apostolic succession" to give authority to his 
> own ideas and his own form of Rosicrucianism.  But Steiner's 
> "Rosicrucianism", like his "theosophy", was a personal creation.  He 
> mingled Theosophical ideas of karma and reincarnation with 
> contemporary European occultism, Goethe, and his own brand of 
> Christianity.

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