There is a spiritual battle underway in modern times, beneath the surface of people’s lives. It is going on in the soul, and it is a spiritual battle. Now part of this battle is winning back from Ahriman the soul “ownership”, the use of the two-petalled lotus flower between the eyes.

To regain this, we can reclaim the experience lost in Ahriman’s realm. But most will say, “Hey, I didn’t even know I was lost in any “realm”!” But really, it should not be such a great secret at all. It’s been packaged for us as the Matrix, the Internet, now AI, and in all the sci-fi populism of the last 100 years. In the development of radio, communications, and consumerism. We don’t have to be dismayed by this. A vast amount of creative time and energy has indeed been put into building an electromagnetic network of psychological influence.

So, we can say that the incessant images of modern life, which fill the sentient body for entertainment, consumption, influence, suggestion, and control, all surround a central protagonist, “You,” within a vast, numerically programmed system of intricate layers and veils. Getting out and finding spiritual freedom within such a context seems so overwhelming. For it is emotionally designed this way. And yet, hopelessness and the brute survival of the fittest are the very symptoms intended by the system. But so too is the rise in the face of adversity.

The spirit of the phoenix. This should be a routine, obligatory spiritual step in modern life. With anthroposophy, we can, precisely in these times of challenge to a spiritual orientation to life, rise from so-called “occult” entertainment and hypnosis to a new spiritual experience.

Meditation and transforming of character

In meditation, we hold the two eyes with the gaze fixed at a midpoint between them. This is the position of the two-petalled lotus flower, the chakra at the bridge of the nose, extended before us in space naturally about 10 cm out.

Money and Karmic Change, the Five Loaves and the 2 Fish

We are already in an age of Ahrimanic Clairvoyance. Back in the 1920s, Rudolf Steiner warned that the greatest threat not only to anthroposophy but to the future evolution of society and humanity was that the distinction would no longer be made between spiritual truth and what would come through subjective “visions”.

What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, men would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. Ultimately, however, they would all be satisfied with their own particular vision, for each of them would be able to see into the spiritual world. In this way all culture on the earth would fall prey to Ahriman. Men would succumb to Ahriman simply through not having acquired by their own efforts what Ahriman is ready and able to give them. No more evil advice could be given than to say: “Stay just as you are! Rudolf Steiner Lucifer and Ahriman, GA 191, 15 November 1919, Dornach.Lecture IV

Taking the image from the apocalypse of the Beast of the Seven Heads and Ten Horns who rises from the sea, we will look here at the dynamics of how the socio-spiritual relationship of modern man is tempted by the realities embedded in the very images of the astral world.

Depending on the inclination of the individual soul, Ahrimanic Clairvoyance can come to expression in one of three things. It can be intellectual-academic, it can be populist-sensational work, or it can be a mediumistic-channelled work, or, and this is the key, it can be a mixture, a compendium of the three (I will give prominent examples of the three as we progress).

The Ahrimanic Pricing of the Soul through the Socio-Spiritual Contract – Reclaiming spiritual territory from Ahriman for spiritual work in our own spiritual lives has to be done individually as much as socially. 

So uncomfortable as it may be to imaginatively behold it, the last hundred years from 1933 to now have seen a let’s call it, global Ahrimanic “coup”; a takeover of government and industry, the creation of new forms of intelligence services, new media and technology for societal control, but also perhaps most importantly of all, a spiritual conflict. This has arisen from those with awareness and initiation into the Ahrimanic mysteries. But for those uninitiated, those let’s say “outside the temple”, none of this is explained – far less understood, because it is a spiritual reality whose real managers and controllers are not even human beings as such. This we can say has occulted, hidden the possibility of a Michaelic impulse more broadly in society. Part of our work, therefore, has to be to recover what we could call lost ground. 

Lost spiritual ground for us means this: learning to really pose questions of our own lives, the lives of others, and the life of humanity in world history. We are at a time in history when these subjects will not be spoken of in school, and not consciously related to us in upbringing. So, we have to play catch-up, so to speak. We have to learn them in adult life through trial and error and study, while the world progresses in its more materialistic expression. “Ahriman” is, in layman’s terms, the devil. Michael, for us, in these processes of learning, is the details of learning the challenges he poses. Christ is the light that guides us through the darkness of things we have as yet not consciously understood. The I needs to find its relation to spiritual world history, down into the Will and karma, or it will simply be steered like one lost bee amongst the collective hive of humanity. When we say “reclaiming lost ground to Ahriman”, we are bringing our use of Money to consciousness. Because our will is facilitated, it is measured, taken on or denied, according to the money that drives our deeds or restricts our deeds. 

The Moral Implications of Human Discounts, and Our Economic System in Relation to the Blood of the Etheric Christ

I would like to first raise the concept before our spiritual eyes that might be a bit provocative, but is really something we should call to mind. We have all been, that means collectively and individually, across global society, through the twentieth century up to now, initiated into an instinctive way of thinking with Ahriman.

So this is the first question we have to ask ourselves in anthroposophy and outside of it:

Is the individual before me an Ahrimanic Being parasitically working through the outer husk of the personality I encounter?

We are often running multiple screens and windows on a computer or phone devices at any one time, and at the same time. This is a real experience. But it is also an analogy for how the compartmentalisation of the mind by Ahriman starts working subliminally. With practice, it is possible to see not only the moral state of the blood of another human being spiritually, but also the different forms of categorisation and experience they manage in their minds.

One may see another human being slip into cinema mode, supermarket mode, tax optimisation, and marketing mode in their minds, running in parallel the ideas and dynamics of the outer culture, and inner dispositions of character.

Call to mind the course of the twentieth century, and you will see a number of symptoms of this. There are obvious ones: cinema, geopolitics, binary codes and supermarkets, advertising and its socio-spiritual effects. These forms mirror and repeat and install their shapes in the etheric body, to activate the soul (its desire, its drive for this or that product or idea) or, on the other hand, put to sleep certain tendencies and qualities of the soul.

Post 1933: Along with the Etheric Christ a Fake Christ

Dear friends,

Our Economics articles are an organic thing. The content here is not pre-packaged like a book. We seek here to model something that is commonplace in business, which is that a “product”  is a new being of value in the marketplace – it is worked out as we go along.

“(Fear of the super sensible world) That is the first of the two evils. The second is the weakness, the inner paralysis that afflicts modern human wills, despite their seeming activity, which is often nothing more than pretense. I must add that both these ominous characteristics of modern civilization and culture are qualities that anthroposophical life must overcome.” Rudolf Steiner, Awakening to Community, GA 257, 13 February 1923, Stuttgart. Lecture IV

You’ll see here something we all kind of instinctively know, that engagement, commitment and inspiration are fluid things, and they respond to the moments of life as they unfold.

Like a river finding its way around and from rock to subsequent rock. Our model here is to encourage engagement, contribution and living inspiration.

I say all this because I want to show something rather essential to this initiative.

Each person’s contribution has a fructifying effect. Each person’s will and decisiveness in relation is vital.

I have sought to lay out here some more of the principles we are working with: Endowment; Collaboration with an outline of our Vision; and Goals.

Corporate sand vs. Living Forest

Digital platforms are the social infrastructure of modern life. They can either enforce rigid, exploitative transactions or act as catalysts for deep human engagement. Let’s be honest. Some posts inspire us. Some infuriate. The social media platforms are designed like that. We can’t wish it weren’t like this. To move beyond traditional economics, we must integrate digital networks into a cohesive, collaborative ecosystem.

“𝐀 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞. 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝. 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬. 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭.”

𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞: 𝐑𝐮𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐫 – 𝐆𝐀 337𝐛 – 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬, 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐈𝐈 – 15. 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐈 – 10 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 1920, 𝐃𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐡.

Every far reaching, global-shaping system has to begin as a single, microscosmic spark.

Consider the coastal redwood forests of the USA Pacific Northwest—the tallest, most massive living trees on Earth. Over 100 meters high. Yet, a redwood tree begins as a seed no larger than a single grain of tomato seed.

That tiny seed cannot grow into a giant on its own. The moment it drops into the soil, it strikes a quiet partnership with a microscopic fungal network called mycelium. So the story goes like this. A single spore and a single seed meet together in the dark soil. The fungus acts as a biological digital platform, weaving between the tree’s roots, delivering water and vital minerals from miles away. In return, the tiny seedling shares sugars generated from its first leaves. In business, people talk a lot about scale. Scaling, we have to understand.

If there is no daily work. No daily recognition. There is no water.

Over centuries, this invisible, subterranean meeting of water and seed endows the tree with the resilience to withstand fires, floods, and droughts, eventually creating a colossal forest ecosystem that alters the weather patterns of an entire continent. Sunlight is our thinking we bring to this initiative. We read, we like, we contribute because it makes us think, feel, and act differently. Words, thoughts, ideas, inspiration, imagination, intuition.

If there is no daily content. There is no Sun to reward any growth.

What is the point of any of these fine sounding words in the face of the great leviathans of corporate and banking power?

With spiritual trust we see – own engagement is as vital as sunlight and water to the tree.

We have to refuse the mockery, negativity, and disparaging critique. Just as a tree ignores the bugs crawling up and down it, and the woodpeckers boring into it, and stays completely unfazed. The global economic shift we need will not appear overnight as a fully formed system. It starts exactly like the redwood tree: a small, localised partnership between an engaged community and a simple digital tool, quietly weaving the roots of a future great tree.

Most people in modern corporate life operate on 50%. We trade our days for a reliable paycheck, and we pretend not to notice that the rigid corporate silo-life is slowly, systematically sapping our etheric life force. We survive by dissociating and vowing to fix it later in life. And so we fall into passive compliance. And all the while, the numbers and spiritual cost just keep not adding up. But we say, what is a viable alternative?

The first step of courage to cross the threshold of spiritual life in the economic sphere. When you endow an initiative with your money, time, and spirit, you become like that microscopic mycelial network beneath the forest floor. This is the holy communion, the new blood and bread. By refusing to keep your head in the sand, you stop renting out your life force to corporate giants. Life force is meant for creation, not consumption.

Hesitancy about these calls to money, will and active commitment. Yes of course it exists. These are usually taboos – especially Money. Reading that something is demanded of us is never wholly easy and comfortable. Just through this unfolding work, however, new things come up for the soul.

Right Path – Wrong Path – Decision of the I

On a piece of paper, we draw a threefold sign: one line vertical, two lines branching up right and left from it. We think through the paths of our life before us when thinking of changing our life course and making decisions. On one branch arm we write – “Forbid Me“, on the other – “Command Me“.

It is then that we can open up to commitment to fully commit to something new through anthroposophy. Because we see it is about getting spiritual help to bring order and integration to ourselves and our life’s path as a whole. For more on this practice, see Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons, GA 266/22 May 1908, Hamburg.

An Endowment

We have to think of spiritual initiatives into the earth like this as – spirit and land, Christ and Sophia wedded as one, to bless the blood, down into the earth. In anthroposophy, a building is never just a physical scaffold or shell; it is an active organ for the human soul and spiritual life. We see this back when the First Goetheanum was built. Spirit and Land are joined as One. September 20th 1913, was the original foundation stone laying of the First Goetheanum. Rudolf Steiner laid the 12-sided dodecahedron) into the hill in Dornach.

Dear friends,

… this article is an attempt to integrate esoteric insights into the spiritual world with relation to Blood, Money, and the Body of Christ. They are not about economics in the sense of trading, or making a quick buck on property, or carefully distributing assets to optimise the performance of a fund. There are more impulses for spiritual awakening once the conscience has already started to ask spiritual questions. As a whole, these newsletters are based primarily on a turnaround of our whole being and outlook on life. For Empathy for Humanity as a whole and educational for a broadly spiritually rejuvenated Economics.

We are not rushing this at all, or avoiding esoteric correlations in favour of abstract expositions, because, however noble the social missions we hear might be and sound, the world has sufficient examples of that. And all the various new deals, communisms, capitalisms, socialisms, and digitalisms are anyway old hats. No. What readers might sense in these newsletters is an appeal to the feeling life, as a start, and as a basis for us to think and commit more deeply to certain spiritual studies: relating economics slowly but surely back into the depths of esoteric understandings about the development of humanity.

We strive to do everything here in the spirit of Endowment. Giving all our life and interest into what we produce as content is what spiritual initiation at its core involves. That we learn to live our Money, as a living, breathing, feeling thing.

Let us remember. In today’s world, as recent events continue to teach us, the greatest taboo today is not witchcraft, the occult, or even child abuse anymore.

It really is still Money (Mammon).

After 1879, Rudolf Steiner refers to two diametrically opposed forces (Michael and “Mammon”). The Age of Michael (lasting about 350 years from 1879).

“Michael’s reign of light will in turn be replaced by a dark and terrible age that will begin around the year 2400. Already today, at the same time as Michael, a dark god has begun his reign: the god Mammon.

For occultism, Mammon is not only the god of money. He is rather the leader of all base, black forces. And his hosts attack not only human souls, but also the physical bodies of human beings, in order to devour and corrupt them. People today do not talk so much about germs because they know more about them, but because they have really taken on a very special form today. And in the future they will gain the upper hand in a terrifying way.

When that black age approaches, brotherly strife and brotherly war will rage in a gruesome manner, and poor human bodies will languish in a terrible way, afflicted by diseases and epidemics. The mark of sin will be imprinted on human bodies for all to see. Then another archangel will rule: Oriphiel. He must come to shake people up, to shake them up through cruel torments to their true destiny.

And so that this can happen in the right way, a small group of people must be prepared today so that in four to six hundred years, in the dark age, they can spread esoteric life and guide humanity.”

Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons, GA 266/I5 December 1907, Munich

The question boils down to the coercion and exploitation of others and whether our actions at all match what we profess to stand for. Or whether we absolve and disavow our wider spiritual responsibility for a mechanised automation of morality. In light of a diverse range of infringements on the sovereignty of the individual’s psychology, the question already here and which will increasingly become matched to all forms of technology, is how the thinking, feeling and willing will be recorded, registered and spiritually brought to account.

This whole subject of our wider physical-spiritual connection to a collective humanity is one that will bear fruit truly in the age of Oriphiel (after 2400). So an attentive reader will notice the emphasis at the beginning here in this article and in these newsletters is that we seek to reorient to spiritual time. We do this in terms of the macrocosm, with discussion of far-ranging esoteric matters. But then, in parallel, in terms of a microcosm, we are writing these things in a very personal appeal to an appreciation of our individual lives and karma.

As an avant-garde, we hold a banner.

The mysteries of the Blood of Christ and the Body of Christ speak to some. Because some are called in their Will to do the necessary preparatory work now for a future time.

Just because we haven’t till now seen certain links does not mean we are not continually making them every day in the decisions and motivations of our Will. Your thinking work; your emotional care, your spiritual research registers in your favour, as much as their lack registers debt.

Blood, Providence and Money.

We seek to encapsulate the social aspect of these mysteries)We are, as Paul was, seeking to be here as organs of a social initiative, where each contribution in writing, reading, and support endows this initiative to partake in a collective Body of Christ.

Economics Newsletter #2 on Corinthian’s Paul and the price paid for us by Christ.

In Whose Name and Image do we Act?

We have to audit our unconscious morality

I will point out some things here that we normally overlook. The old gods of Greece and Rome, Egypt, and Persia lie behind names for phenomena and soul inclinations we now speak about differently. They have not really gone away.

Baal for instance, as an idol we might worship to accumulate power, influence and wealth. Often we see closely related to Baal (2500 BCE to 400 CE), the goddess idol of Ishtar (4000 BCE to 500 AD), as the inclination of the soul to indulge in sensuality and hedonism, partying and luxury to delight in the senses and the body.

Baal and Ishtar continue to this day, like a demonic king and queen. Watch the depictions of this in Hollywood; they are the idols we are sold to.

Learning more of Economic Core Principles: Rudolf Steiner and Thorsten Veblen

Many people have the longing to creatively make their own way in life and flourish. We do not have to just watch this remotely on a Hollywood screen, and fantasise, and we do not have to fall into these images of ruthlessness and the now somewhat dated depictions of Michael Douglas as the smooth financial criminal. No, the clichés of the 1980s are thoroughly over.

So, we have to ask, how do we actually stand and live an economic impulse with others that actually works?

Dear friends,

In this issue, we explore associative economics and its relation to esoteric spiritual work. Today’s edition contains some links to the recent seminar on soul metamorphoses.

I am very grateful for the comments, collaboration, offers of contribution and feedback received through the week, and also sharing and support, as it really does accompany the spiritual work and development of this work. I have strived where possible to footnote strange anthroposophical terminology for those not used to it. Also “Satan, Michael, etc”.

Part of this work involves carrying others’ questions in our souls and working to weave them into the new text. But also encouraging the work, study, and writing of others. As we shall see, this too is the subject of this article. For no one is really a silent witness here. We all live our economics. We all have something to say here. Because these economic matters affect us all, if not now, then in the future.

Working with Corinthians Paul, the Etheric Christ and Economics

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (ESV): “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”

Why Paul? Because Paul is as a representative for us of the Return of Christ in the Etheric and a community to contain it.

In his letters to the Corinthians, he is espousing on what a community in Christ means. He is describing all the practicalities and ways of life in which people might work together to actually live and awaken in Christ. Not just as some irrelevant side part sect within an empire, but a powerful force to change people’s lives and karma. There is a secret in this term “bought with a price”, and some of that secret we will unfold here.