by Piero Cammerinesi
1. A Centennial of paramount importance
Michaelmas 2024 is a very special celebration.
Both because exactly one hundred years ago, on September 28, 1924 Rudolf Steiner spoke his last words in public –he left the physical plane just six months later- and because what is happening in the world today at an ever-increasing pace dramatically confirms his worst fears.
A few days earlier, in fact, on September 25, it was a Sunday, notice had been circulated in Dornach that he would not be giving the usual St. Michael’s Lecture because he was in great pain. Yet, surprisingly, Herr Doktor got out of bed and showed up to address the members, even though his strength was so low that he had to interrupt the lecture, which, for this reason, is called Letzte Ansprache, last address.
He evidently felt it was extremely important to leave a – so to speak – spiritual testament to his disciples and to all mankind.
In his last address he spoke on the theme of Elias-Lazarus-John again -a theme that he had much explored over the years-but this time he intended above all to entrust everyone, through it, with a very specific task in order to prevent the decline of civilization.
Who is for each of us, Lazarus-John? Rudolf Steiner urges us to ask.
He is in everyone -says Bianca Maria Scabelloni- he is the man who has this autonomous power to awaken in the transitory the transcendent, minute by minute, in everything. In everything. This, brought up in the ethical plane, becomes the possibility of resurrection that we give to the human being when he falls, he errs (Bianca Maria Scabelloni lecture December 5, 1989).
Interestingly, Rudolf Steiner began his public activity in 1901 with an article in the magazine Luzifer Gnosis whose title was The Miracle of Lazarus and ended it in 1924, always turning his attention to the Lazarus-John theme and the mysteries connected with it.
1924 was a very difficult year for Steiner, as he dramatically realized the failure of Anthroposophy as an external organization.
If the last efforts of early ’24 had failed, he well knew that he would have only nine months left to save a heavily compromised situation.
Harald Giersch writes in this regard :
According to the priest Rudolf Meyer the following statement was made by Rudolf Steiner long before his illness: “The Christmas Conference is not being taken up. There is still time. But if it is not taken up by the autumn, the Ahrimanic powers will launch their attack.” The Stuttgart state attorney Dr. Bruno Kruger has testified that as early as June 1924 Rudolf Steiner said to him personally with firm insistence: “This impulse has failed. Come back to Dornach in October. Then everything will be arranged differently – including the situation in Stuttgart.” A member who wishes to remain anonymous received from Rudolf Steiner, in response to a question about the Christmas Conference and its effects within the Society, the answer: the spiritual world allows nine months to see whether an echo comes from the members. If no echo comes, the impulses of the Christmas Conference have come to an end. When the nine months had passed, this member asked Rudolf Steiner about it again. He replied: “No echo has come. The Society has not taken up the Christmas Conference” (http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Giersch.html)
Those nine months ended exactly at the end of September ’24.
The previous year, 1923, begun with a physical death –the destruction of the Goetheanum- and ended with a spiritual birth –the Grundsteinspruch, the Foundation Stone Meditation- aimed at transferring the spiritual seed of Anthropos Sophia into the hearts of men.
We know,” writes Adriana Koulias, ”what happened in the years after Steiner‘s death and how the adversarial forces worked to prevent 4X12 people being recognized. The world has not been permeated by Michael forces for that reason, and what we see today, the tragedy of present events and all the events of the last 100 years have been the result.
Now we face a similar event, and I beg you to take what I say into your souls freely and without compulsion. We must be awake and aware of what is happening in the Anthroposophical society. We must not be indifferent to the attacks that are seeking to once again prevent Michael Thinking from developing as a creative force in human souls.
We see the evidence of it in the fear and anxiety that we see in the world today. The lack of courage and moral conviction.
In our time we must take seriously the words Rudolf Steiner gave in his lasts address. And ponder with all seriousness where we stand in relation to Michael right now. For a great deal hangs in the balance. Even more than even a hundred years ago we need the Michael power to survive what is coming (from a Facebook post).
2. The return of Anthroposophists to Earth and the culmination of Anthropos Sophia
Now, it should be pointed out that some of the points in Steiner ‘s communications in this last talk -about which there has been much discussion since then- are related to two other important and sensitive issues that have been often misunderstood.
The first is the return to Earth – in the very short term – of people close to him after the middle of the 20th century; the second concerns the so-called “culmination” of Anthroposophy.
Steiner states, in fact, before the members of the Anthroposophical Society:
For it stands written above us in spiritual letters: “Be conscious that you will have to return before the end and at the end of the 20th century, which you yourself have prepared. Be conscious how it will then be able to take shape, even as you prepared it.”(Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, July 28, 1924, GA 237).
And, in order to better define what humanity would face, he adds words that seem dramatically prophetic today:
After a great deal will have come before, which will be contrary to the spiritualization of modern civilization-after the second 666 stood in the sign of that great upheaval in Europe which was begun by the crusades and which had its outer fact in the appearance and destruction of the Templar knights, everything from the sun genius which is trying to create true Christianity works on, as does everything from Sorat which is trying to work against it. And we have the age of the third 666: 1998. We are coming to the end of this century, when Sorat will again lift his head from the waters of evolution very strongly, where he will be the adversary of that vision of the Christ which prepared human beings will already have in the first half of the 20th century through the appearance of the etheric Christ. It will then take almost two thirds of a century until Sorat raises his head in a mighty way. (Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, September 12, 1924, GA 346).
Since 1998 -coincidentally the year of the birth of Google, the global search engine that gives shape to the image of the monstrous intelligent spider that encompasses the whole Earth -the action of the most powerful forces beckon, however, as a balancing act, the return to Earth of the most spiritually powerful personalities:
When the first 666 went by Sorat was still hidden in the evolutionary course of events; one didn’t see him in an external form; he lived in the deeds of Arabism, although initiates could see him. When the second 666 came he already showed himself in the thinking and feeling of the tortured Templars. He will show himself before the end of this century already, and he will appear in a great many people as a being by whom they will be possessed. One will see people coming up to one and one will not be able to believe that they are really human beings. They will develop in a very strange way even outwardly. They will be intensive, strong natures outwardly with fierce features and a destructive rage in their emotions; they will have a face in which one will see a kind of a beast’s face outwardly. Sorat-men will also be recognizable outwardly; they will be those who not only ridicule spiritual things,-they will fight it in the most terrible way and they will want to thrust it down into a cesspool. One will see that what is concentrated in a small region in present-day Russian communism will be inserted into the whole earth evolution of humanity (Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, September 12, 1924, GA 346).
I don’t think it’s necessary to emphasize how these words of Herr Doktor, spoken a century ago, have tragically come true if we observe unscrupulously the personalities who dominate the world geopolitics today.
3. What happened to Michael’s Prophecy?
Michael’s Prophecy, -writes Steffen Hartmann- consists in the fact that Aristotelians and Platonists, who in the past operated separately as social forces through history, even in separate epochs of history, are destined to work simultaneously and together on Earth for the first time at the end of the 20th Century, and in accordance with the intentions of the true spirit of the age, Michael (Steffen Hartmann, The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012–2033: Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy).
Now we must ask ourselves, if we do not want Steiner ‘s directions and revelations to be just empty phrases: did Rudolf Steiner’s closest disciples reincarnate at the end of the last century and are they therefore among us now?
If not, why? And if so, how to recognize them?
My experience -so Judith von Halle – has led me to conclude that the forecasts of Rudolf Steiner are going to hit the mark, at least for the first part of this prophecy, namely that these men have come back into our circles at this time. For the second part – that they will then bring to full realization what has not yet been reached – this is not properly sure, or better, I think that perhaps only now these people have the chance to undertake this venture.
And more:
I fear, then -says Judith von Halle- that precisely because these men were in Rudolf Steiner‘s inner circle, they are now somehow forced to struggle with their present incarnation. According to the experience I’ve made in recent years, it doesn’t just have to do with differences depending on belonging to different currents, but also with being ‘human, all too human,’ something that now the processing of this karma is also dealing with.(Judith von Halle, Berlin, public lecture October 2012)
According to Steffen Hartmann:
Much has been said and written about Rudolf Steiner‘s Michael Prophecy. That is, about the fact that Rudolf Steiner‘s disciples, colleagues and friends would incarnate again after a very condensed period of life after death at the end of the 20th century. For me, even as a teenager, the question arose: are these things discussed and thought about only among anthroposophists, or do we take the karmic consequences of life seriously? And if so, how does it work? How can we fruitfully pick up the context and karmic connections where they were in the early 20th century? This question is especially urgent given the backdrop of the tragic events that took place in the anthroposophical society itself after Rudolf Steiner‘s death, and in the apocalyptic course of the 20th century in general, including two world wars, the Holocaust, the nuclear destruction of cities in Japan, the Cold War and the like (Steffen Hartmann, The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012–2033: Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy).
What, then, happened of Michael’s prophecy?
Steffen Hartmann goes on:
I decided to no longer remain silent about Rudolf Steiner ‘s Michael Prophecy and its reality today. As a person who since his youth, has carried on within himself karmic memories of Steiner‘s time and who has struggled with these experiences for many years, keeping silent, examining them repeatedly, I would simply like to say that these original Anthroposophical people did not remain in the spiritual world. Rather, the pioneers of anthroposophy reincarnated in waves, spread over several generations, beginning in 1950. Perhaps not all -who could judge it- but indeed a great many (Steffen Hartmann, The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012–2033: Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy).
4. Who are the four groups of twelve men that Steiner mentions in the last talk?
The four groups of twelve men, -says Bianca Maria Scabelloni- are four generations of men who are to come and accompany the destiny of the Earth. That is why Herr Doctor tells us about them. He got out of bed, not to give us an esoteric message, but to let us know what our history on Earth will be like on a spiritual level. When it is said that in the Moon Raphael meets the guides, this will be the first generation of incarnate men around 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020. They will be the guides to Christ -the first generation- and by generation we mean, today, a span of twenty years. Then, a second descent of helpers will follow, who will be the healers in the Christ, because, in this century, the premises for particular diseases have accumulated and not all of them will have the healing in the physical.
(…) Four times twelve is said, not forty-eight all together. Four times twelve means that at different times there will be faithful servants of Christ in the human. Faithful servants of the Christ (Bianca Maria Scabelloni lecture December 5, 1989).
I would like to add that to me personally the reference to the four times twelve men brings to mind the Jugendkreis -the Esoteric Youth Circle which, in its first appearance, consisted of twelve people- in which Steiner placed great expectations especially in the most difficult year of his relationship with the Anthroposophical Society.
As I have had the opportunity to elaborate in a series of three articles (I, II and III), in the last years of his life, Steiner suffered deeply from the strong contrasts that existed within the Anthroposophical Society. For this reason he relied heavily -from 1922 and even more so in late 1923- on the Jugendkreis, stating that circles like that represent the future path to Spiritual Communities.
Such a Kreis (circle) was very different from other institutions and groups related to Anthroposophy; it was an independent meditation community that did not exist as an institution, had no organization or statutes. The Kreis had no leaders, representatives or rules of behavior. Meetings were informal and were held locally at the members’ discretion. They could meet under one roof or be thousands of miles apart but what united them was their engagement in a shared meditative activity at certain set times of the day.
Moreover, Steiner explicitly stated that the directions given at the Kreis were of value not only to young people but also to generations to come.
Could his words in his last speech then perhaps refer to groups like that?
If, in the near future, in four times twelve human beings, the Michael Thought becomes fully alive-four times twelve human beings, t...? (Rudolf Steiner, Dornach September 28, 1924, GA. 238).
Since then the Jugendkreis have continued to exist, one generation after another, and this gives us hope in the tightness of the dam that protects us from the enormous increase of lies and violence in the world, which, particularly in this year 2024, we have seen grow exponentially day by day.
5. A possible interpretation
If that were the case, one could also venture a possible explanation for the sequel to Steiner ‘s speech:
…four times twelve human beings, that is, who are recognized not by themselves but by the Leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach (Rudolf Steiner, Dornach September 28, 1924, GA 238).
I mean to say that, well knowing Herr Doktor the low regard of the members of the Goetheanum in Dornach for the esoteric youth circle, he may have wanted to wish with the words
…who are recognized not by themselves (…) by the Leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach…
an official recognition of these groups, wishing, that is, for a real collaboration between the two entities, analogous to the one – called indispensable – between Platonists and Aristotelians, also because he himself wanted to see the Jugendkreis integrated into the Free University of Spiritual Science.
These are only hypotheses, of course, but perhaps they might contain some part of truth.
In any case, I would like to conclude these reflections with a quote from Steiner that appears to me to make sense of what he wanted to communicate to humanity with his last discourse dedicated to Archangel Michael on September 28, one hundred years ago:
Today humanity is faced with a great choice: either to see all civilization plummet into the abyss, or to raise it up again by means of spirituality, to lead it forward in the sense inherent in the Michael impulse that precedes the Christ impulse (R. Steiner, Esoteric Considerations on Karmic Connections, GA 240).
