Notes for the Steiner House Talk

I have worked as a speech formationist for 30 years and found myself asking a
number of questions which led me to investigate a number of trends and the people
involved with them in the history of England. Part of the focus lies with the work of
John Dee.

My interest lay in the nature of language and reflecting on what I had been taught.

When we look back at the period 1550 to 1650 we are confronted with some
unresolved questions. We may feel the need to build a bridge; to work out in our own
minds what happened and how these happening have affected us.

In the latter half of the 20th Century the work of Francis Yates began to make a strong
impression on the way many people looked at the past. She documented in detail the
movement known as Rosicrucianism both in England and on the Continent. Without
judging the stranger aspects of the movement in any way she showed that it had to be
taken seriously. This movement incorporated elements which were unfamiliar to
many people at the time as these elements were no longer taken seriously by
historians unless they were interested in obscure movements which clearly had
affected some people in the past but had no lasting effect on the ongoing mainstream
of cultural development. What was intriguing about this movement were the
promises of reformation made; the emotional impact it had on contemporaries; the
strange documentation which generated the excitement and the later complete absence
of any real foundation to emerge. It could surprise anyone taking an interest in
Anthroposphy for the first time to discover that Rudolf Steiner took the whole
movement seriously and made many contributions towards resolving some of the
unanswered questions left from history. Personally I feel that while Steiner’s
contributions are invaluable and fascinating they still leave many unanswered
questions.

A second question which confronts one is that of the activity of Francis Bacon. Most
commentators describe him as the Founder of Modern Science – one who clarified
and propagandised this new approach lending it a more practical utilitarian slant. Yet
during his life and after he seems not to have had much influence worth mentioning.
Here too is a gap requiring work to close it up or understand it.

In both cases the gap mentioned is due to the presence of an esoteric or hidden
influence in the background which made its mark on the events. The challenge is to
try to understand the historical period involved allowing for this influence and to see
if one can make more sense of the historical period.

The period between 1550 and 1650 seems to be quite a decisive one. The change
from a science based on a spiritual standpoint was decisively replaced by one based
on a material. Many interesting characters appear in England at this time: John Dee
and Robert Fludd for instance. He adopted the tradition of Renaissance Humanism
from the continent as it had developed from the 15th and 16th centuries by Marcilio
Ficino, Pico Della Mirandola and others in the Florentine Academy, the Roman
academy and other groups in the towns and cities of Italy. He bore much
responsibility for bringing a mature version of the Renaissance to England and
applying it to the development of English conditions. We often refer to this movement
as Renaissance Humanism and connect it with Plato but also now with the Hermetic
tradition and the Cabala. More and more in the light of what is happening in our own
century we are seeing this stream of thought as deeper and broader than earlier
generations. The combination is deeply spiritual – the cabala especially referred to by
Rudolf Steiner in his Temple Legends lectures as developing a balance in the pupil.
The work of Pico especially brought this element into the Renaissance and was then
further developed by Johannes Reuchlin as the Renaissance travelled north into
Germany. Interestingly Francis Yates makes us aware that our picture of the
Renaissance was the outcome of a very successful propaganda campaign waged in the
17th century. She points out that we should apply the concept of Counter Renaissance
and well as Counter Reformation to the developments around the outbreak of the
Thirty Years war. The development of this stream of thought and learning came
under attack by a combination of forces which it is worth trying to understand. The
Northern Renaissance combined a group of impulses which, while incorporating a
wish to reform the world also was fast developing a scientific approach which was
open to spiritual development. The excitement engendered around this science was
the feeling that it could accomplish more for humanity than the older scholastic
approach. The reform which it could bring about would make the human being more
effective on the earth than before.
We can place this development into an Anthroposophical context. The newly
Consciousness soul developed first in the Sentient Soul culture of Italy. We can see
this as a recapitulation of older developments adopting the Hermetic writings as a
means of incorporating the results of the Sentient soul development of Egypt into
Europe. To do this it had to reject the great mediaeval achievements of Scholasticism.
There was therefore a strong presence of Mystery wisdom entering into the culture of
the south and this was a very exciting development. Plato’s mystery wisdom
background allowed his influence to go even deeper as did the work of Pythagoras.
This was strong leavening. Michael Maier “ the deepest of the Rosicrucian” as
Francis Yates called him compiled a scheme of twelve mystery schools among twelve
nations of the past as a means of understanding the history of the world as a world
consciousness developed at the time. Of course Hermes Tresmegisthus was the
greatest initiate. The new academies in Italy, France and England modelled
themselves on the mystery schools of the past.

Into this culture the Rosicrucian documents were placed.