Joel, I'd be interested in what you have to say on this subject even if you decided to call it something else...like...."Cool Anthroposophy" or "Mega-American Anthropsophy".....I would hope you wouldn't feel the need to spend too much time talking to those weak souls who can't understand why you want it to be called "American Anthroposophy'.....you know, the people, who think the truth would have anything to do with what title you choose. In fact, just to make your point, you should probably call it the "America is spiritually supieror anthroposophical group"...that way they would either be insane to object or too.....unenlightned to take interest in the first place....(everybody, I'm kidding here).....

Your political writiing is always a treat to read. I really want that little book you showed me at your house!!! Can I order that from your site?

jeff

yes, go to lulu.com, look up my name, or to my contents page and click on the link there

great. thanks. lulu.com is the place to download you into my computer. Unfortunately, I want to hold the books so I'll be shelling out a bit more. Thanks much, Joel.

jeff

Joel, I think you have hit the nail on the head, and thanks for being so passionate about this!

That picture of America as a dying compost heap of old cultures is really fascinating, I had never heard of that before but it rings true to me.

From our side of the world in Australia we have always had to have a double-sided approach to this issue - on the one hand adhering to the "British" values inherited from our colonial roots (and by the way a Commonwealth nation that still has the British Queen as its titular head of state, for goodness sake!), and on the other hand needing to adjust to reality with America as the great military and economic power of the time and one that is closer to us physically.

I find it interesting that a number of anthropops here are of European origin - not doubting their sincerity but I have observed that there is an aspect of having Anthroposophy, the Christian Community and so on which is culturally comforting for such people.  So just as we have the Greek club for people of Greek origin, the Italian club and so on we also have Anthroposophy in some cases acting as a surrogate European cultural experience for people from Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and so on. 

So perhaps what you call American Anthroposophy is something which could potentially overcome that culturally restrictive aspect of Anthroposophy?  Perhaps a truly global Anthroposophy which is truly based on faith in that human spirit you so movingly portray in the single image from Tiananmen Square.

As for American culture itself, I think that your picture of the compost heap is so true from an Australian perspective... because as we view this heap from a distance, out of it sprout a plethora of things, not all of which could be universally agreed upon as "gifts" to the world... Elvis, 12 step programs, New Age, charismatic/pentecostal christianity, the Bush presidents, e.e. cummings, Hemingway, McDonalds, KFC, etc. etc.  But there are some real gems in there as you rightly point out.

I am gratefull you directed me to the material mentioned in your respone. I am completely blown away by reading Patrick Dixon's,"America -The Central Motif" This short but very deep writing seems so familiar somehow to my own inner feelings having traveled north to south extensively in my youth, once upon a time trying to connect the Inca legends to those of the Hopi. I like that he writes,"It takes a special light to see in this darkness, but see it we must, if we are to illiminate with new understanding many of the difficultires and trials that America has had to and still will have to face."

Very illuminating!  I hope you and Tom are fruitfull with your courses.. Worthwhile endeavour.

Warmest Regards,

Cisco

Rudolf Steiner’s Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind consisting of eleven lectures given from 5th March to 22nd Nov 1920 (1st English edition 1987) is a brilliant collection of Rudolf’s lectures –

I apologies if I am repeated what is already known; if I may place my understanding of these lectures here.

If we follow the evolution of mankind and pick up from the later years of the continent of Lumeria, called the Hyperborean Age which was preceded by yet another age which is the very earliest time of physical earth evolution.  Lumeria existed in the present day Pacific Ocean with the Easter Islands the standing part of this once huge continent.  At this time in the earth’s history the continents were past the Pangaea era (one supercontinent) however, still fairly close together with Lumeria joined to present day California at the far east side.

The sinking of Lumeria happened over thousands of years with it eventually submerging all together (possibly the end of a precession cycle or a polar star shift). Migrations of the people led them into South America and into the continent Atlantis situated between America, Europe and Africa with the present day Azore Island been the only seen part of a great mountain in northern Atlantis.

The people who migrated to South America preceding the Mayans and the Aztecs left no recorded history of their culture but it is this culture which the later day Mayans and Aztecs built upon.  It is thought these earlier people migrated further North.  The people that migrated to Atlantis reached a high civilization before it also started to submerge and it is at this stage we read the historical account of the Great Flood.  The people of Atlantis migrated to the East and there they stayed and we read this era is known in Vedantic philosophy; known as the First Epoch – Ancient Indian.

From here the civilization migrated into Europe and Africa.  So, the migration of man started in the west, went to the east, and went back to the west.  It is here Rudolf Steiner shows himself to be the great Initiate he is in knowing the evolution to happen which we see right up to today.  He knew the migration of civilization from the eastern wisdom was needed to develop knowledge – individual knowledge through materialism and democracy.  The east, still very much under the old moon influence in collective consciousness, is on its path of evolution.  Interesting we see this in Southern Africa with democracy just starting.

The west is on its path of evolution in developing individual knowledge however loosing the collective consciousness, which has taken evolution right up to the 15th century and from here in earnest the individual ego has developed.  It did not take long for the individual intellect to develop – a mere 500 years when one thinks back to the time span of Lumeria!  Now, as Rudolf Steiner foresaw, the individual ego is to regain its collective consciousness together with individual intellect in the collective consciousness accumulating in the future Seventh Epoch which is related to the First Ancient Indian Epoch.

And here we have the Three Fold Social Order – East, Middle and West. 

(Rudolf Steiner brings in the phenomena of sleeping and waking here)

“The threefold nature of the human being

-         In the East; life before birth was experienced in the Spirit.

-         In the Middle (Europe); culture of material world and spirit, eminence given to thinking

-         In the West; material culture, yet also preparation for future imaginations; incipient awareness of principles that go beyond death.

In the east, human beings once saw their own heavenly and spiritual image in themselves.  In the middle, the culture not materialistic, human beings see themselves as inhabitants of the earth endowed with soul and spirit as well as a physical body.  In the west, today human beings see themselves as physical.  It is to be their mission, however, to develop faculties out of this physical human body that will be the spiritual content of human awareness in time to come. 

The human beings in the middle are held as a vice between the east and west.  The east originally had a very advanced culture but it has fallen into decadence.  In the west a great culture is to come, but at the present people are still entirely caught up in the material world.  In the middle a culture has evolved that, I think I can say (Steiner) holds the balance between the two.  The middle have therefore also been given the mission to take the insights that their particular faculties have given them into the nature of the human being between birth and death, and to extend them through perception.

By developing the same faculties that have rescued soul and spirit, accepting their existence as well as that of the physical body, and by letting clear thinking develop into Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, human beings rise again to the spiritual world in which they live between death and rebirth.  Here in the physical world we will only come to experience the total illumination those faculties can give, once they have been developed, if we consider the problem of freedom.  In my Philosophy of Freedom I have therefore concentrated entirely on that particular problem – freedom”.

In the O’Neil workbook a four-fold order is mentioned.  It is 87 years on since Rudolf spoke the above and if we look at the word fold we may think of unfolding – as in a flower opening towards the sunlight.  I am thinking is the Fourth Fold the Quintessence .. and is this the individual conscious collective conversation Carl speaks about in the Quintesssence?

(Lemuria & Atlantis references: The Lost Continent of the Pacific, WS Cerve, Rosicrucian Library, 1960)

Dear Caryn,

Thank you for this.  It has been clear to me that some people had to be here when the migrations west out of Atlantis took place, but I had not read this lecture or made this connection.  This also explains certain research in genetics, which links Asian genes and aboriginal genes of the Americas.  The Hopi remember Atlantis, and they speak of it in different ways.  The main imagery is that they climbed up through a reed out of mists and into the world of the sun.  The latter part fits Steiner on Atlantis (a land of mists with no sun yet, or as Dixon puts it, much of the water was still part of the atmosphere.  I suspect the reed part is just an oral tradition that lost a sense of what had been originally reed boats (the Hopi are near no large bodies of water, and live in a very arid region of the US).  At one time, I suspect, their oral history said that they traveled in reed boats and left a land of mists and came into the sun.

Genetic research also shows a relation between certain aboriginal peoples in the Americas and Europe, but not as strong and as frequent as the connections with Asia, and is thought to have come about because of a land bridge up by Alaska.  There is also a kind of stone knife or blade, that has a particular shaping signature, which is found both in the East of the US  and on the western coast of France. 

The Plains Indians have an oral tradition (not common, and not accepted by many moderns) which suggests that their most recent spiritual Way was brought to them by a pesonality called: Sweet Medicine, who came from the far south (Mexico) and a community where there where pyramids.

The Hopi also speak of having been instructed that during their migrations, there were to leave behind rock writings and ruins, since a time would come when they would forget they had all been one - a picture which explains the mound builders of the Eastern US.

The book 1491, a revisiting of what is now known about the aboriginal peoples of the Americas also suggests far older and much larger cultures existed here.  There is a description in the beginning of the book, of an area in Bolivia, which contains a huge earth mound grid, dividing a valley into large sections for apparent agricultural purposes, and possibly providing water ways for irrigation.  The area is so large that it makes no sense unless the number of people needing to be fed was huge.

Of course, the crucial matter for us is what does it mean for the modern aspects of these very old spiritual streams, and their traditional wisdom, to meet and interact with a modern spiritual stream and that wisdom.  This has been a puzzle for several of us in the US, doing research on this question, especially given that the Hopi expected the Elder Brother, the True White Brother, to come at a time when their way of life was on its last legs, carrying "the life plan for the future".  These people - the True White Brother - "are sun clan, they are the children of the sun".  "I am forever looking to the rising sun, for my true white brother to come."

The main lesson so far is that those doing this research have come to understand how rich is the sense of community of these peoples, how deeply they understood such matters.  These traditions go way back while I don't expect modern consciousness to adopt them, I firmly believe that as the I learns to grow into community and wants to think about community in a healthy way, these wisdoms will provide the best questions.  But that is a story for another day...

Again, Carlyn, thanks for bringing this...

joel

A pleasure Joel - I have a great respect for history and thanks for your knowledge of information here - it is connecting with the very Spirit of the Land.  I have a book on Silver Birch and his writings which I am very fond of.  I will gather anymore information I can pass your way.  In the meantime I have this on Mayan Astrology although not the original inhabitants of this era we are seeking but these writings might be a source of.

Mayan astrology (from Fred Gettings)

Virtually nothing is known about Mayan astrology, although, as Volguine points out, many of the pre-Columbian buildings were astrological in design – for example, the famous seven-terraced pyramid of Chichen-Itza, orientated to the cardinal points, with the step symbolism of 365, corresponds to the year.  What we do know of the Mayan system suggests an extraordinary grasp of cycles, and numerical symbolism.  Among the cycles was the 13-day periodicity, said to form a sign: 20 such signs gave a cycle of 260 days, called Tonalamati.  There is also a 20-day periodicity, designated in the calendar by symbols from the natural world – animals, reptiles, wind, rain etc.  Eighteen of these periods (to which were added five or six ‘vacant’ days, ‘days without a name called Xma-Kaba-Kin) formed Katune (a period of 20 x 360 days).  Volguine, apparently basing his information on Gentry, insists that the system of secondary directions (on a day for a year symbolism) was practiced in pre-Columbian America; however, the evidence is more than dubious.  There is recorded a Venusian year – the synodic period of Venus, the mean duration of her four phases – of 584 days (several names were given to this planet, including Noh-Eh (big star), Chac Eh (red star), Zaztal Eh (brilliant star), and so on.  The Mayan manuscript in Dresden records five such Venus revolutions.  Linked with the Venusian years is a cycle of eight solar years (five Venusians).  Another cycle is that of 13 Venusian years.  Another cycle, of 18 solar years, is linked with symbols significantly close to those used for similar cycles in China.  In the year-counts were several long periodicities, including 394 years, 600 years and 7,616 years.  Acosta gives the following translations for the names of the zodiac:

AR : Splendour of the Lamb

GE : United Stars

LE  : Return of the Lance of the Lion

LB  : Ladder

SG : ?

AQ : Epoch of the Waters

TA : Powerful, Brilliant, Inflamed Male

CN : Sleeping Snake

VG : Divine Mother

SC : ?

CP : Ardent Goat or Horned One

PI  : ?

My regards, Caryn

Caryn and Joel, thanks for the contributions here. A Pre-Inca culture flourished a thousand years before the Spanish conquest of 1532, so records say, they speak of migrations on the trade winds from Asia. Trade Winds run directly towards Lima Peru. Thor Heyerdahl did test these theories possibility. There is a connection in Hopi legends of a great wandering North and South and the mention of time spent in the Imperial Red city in the south some consider to be Cuzco. One of my favourtie history laughs is the Hiram Bingham discovery of Machu Pichu in 1912. The western world claims it was lost for centuries however the descendents of the Inca and the Quechua scoff at the claim "as if it we did not know of its existence, Just decided not to tell the Europeans so they could destroy it looking for Gold..."  A great deal of knowledge went underground and is not necessarily lost to mankind.

Still today there are gatherings of the nations, at least in the North. In Canmore Alberta and Banff there is a gathering of all the Indigineous Peoples Nations in North America. I have attended one and they are really quite an experience. One thing the Europeans dramatically affected was trade. Before the influx trade routes ran geographically and that was north and south specially in the mountainous regions of the Pacific West. There is a great deal to be said regarding the West Coast Native cultures whose art and legend is very much alive and visible. Another time however.

I am currently reading a very interesting book with a lot of astronomical-astrological references called,"The Secret of the Incas, Myth, Astronomy and the War against Time", by William Sullivan. Rather lengthy book but well worth a perusal. There is reference to versions of the Aztec Myths of Quetzalcoatl and  to the great flood. It was considered that at the time of Pizarro's brutal conquest of 1532, they were in the Fifth Great Age.

Thanks again.

Cisco

Thanks for the further history Cisco; it is such an interesting era. 

The book you mentioned sounds a good read.  There is also Graham Hancocks Fingerprints of the Gods which is full of good research into the pre-Mayan period; here he talks about Quetzalcoatl known as the White God walking on earth and the Shinning People and Merk who was closely connected to a women called The Lady.  I have another reference that Merk is likened to St. Mark.

Yes, a great deal of knowledge went underground - the Rosicrucian book I mentioned (which I am re-reading now) talks about how the Hopi (?) were a very silent people and were wanderers not wanting fixed abodes. I am making notes and will pass on - I am not sure if the publication is still available?  You talk about Discovering America - it is wonderful - almost re-discovering America.  In South Africa we talk about the African Renaissance and I am thinking what we are writing about here is an American Renaissance.  I was musing on the polarities of the continents - In Southern Africa, at the cusp of coming out of the collective moon stage into the individual ego stage - the people are still very much connected with the land and nature and spirits thereof; what is happening is their knowledge is now looking up towards the Sun.  What is happening in America is they (not meaning to talk in third person) have already looked up towards the Sun (and landing on the Moon - symbolising the overcoming of the moon stage) and now with the knowledge they have acquired are looking back towards the land.  It is just a reflection of mine but to me it is very poetic.

Great day to all.

C

Lemuria – the Lost Continent of the Pacific by WS Cerve, Rosicrucian Press California (first edition September 1931 – eight edition June 1960) Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC.

 Dedication

In appreciation of the first researches into the history of the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria made by that brilliant mind and soul, SIR FRANCIS BACON this book is dedicated to his memory and everlasting greatness of character.

And my dedication to Rudolf Steiner who showed us a great light.

 Publishers Preface

Some years ago a representative of the Rosicrucian brotherhood in china visited our offices in San Francisco and placed in our hands, as an official portfolio, some very rare manuscripts dealing with many of the age-old traditions preserved in the secret archives of Tibet and China.  Among these manuscripts was a very old and worn copy of the secret spiritual and ethical teachings of the Tibetans, which this representative was anxious to have brought to light in the Western world in modern form.  The truly mystical and private manuscripts of a Rosicrucian nature were deposited with us for use in connection with our usual activities as publishers.

Extracts from the manuscripts;

California; ruled by a Queen Califa.

Researched in 1862 Rev. Edward Everett Hale:  there was reprinted in Spain a story of chivalry in the time of the crusades which had come down from great antiquity of the pre-crusade days, a land in the western waters in the form of a great island ruled by the beautiful heroine known as Queen Califa.  The description in the story stated that this wonderful island was on ‘the right hand of the Indies, very near the terrestrial paradise’.

 The reference to it as being near the terrestrial paradise is of other ancient records which referred to the existing remnants of Lemuria as the Garden of Eden in the Valley of the Ohio River.

 The State of California actually represents the oldest inhabited, cultivated civilized land on the face of the earth.  Here the oldest livings things known to man still remain – the giant redwood trees many, many thousand years old, the distinctive and unvarying differences of soil, flora, minerals and relics of nature unlike anything found in the Midwest of the continent – that is the land lying between the eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain to the shore line along the Pacific Ocean, is distinctly different from the land that lies east of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

For these islands were at one time the fortified preserves of an ancient race where the city of Santa Barbara now rests.  Because, however, of the continued invasions by unknown tribes from South America, by unknown people from the North, and stranger still, and invasion by the people from far inland, they lived exclusively by themselves with a language, a complexion, a code of living, and an architecture distinctly their own, unlike anything else in the rest of the world.  These, known technically as a tribe with the name Chumash – the direct descendants of the Lemurians without intermarrying with other tribes.  In 1771 there were 8,960 of these people remaining and in 1900 three families remained while today (1931) but one adult is living.

 Mysterious California with magical stories and Mount Shasta in northern California was the last refuge of the survivors of the lost continent of Lemuria.

 We shall eventually find that the North American Indians are descendants of the ‘lost tribes of Israel’.  This belief has gradually developed in the minds of those who have made a careful study of the origin of the American Indians and of their languages, customs, habits, and early products.  A list of these words common to all of the tribes has shown that they were words which were identical with words used by the tribes known as the Israelites.   It has been found that nearly all of these identical words had a religious or mystical meaning and had nothing to do with objects or conditions of a purely local nature, and very often related to principles and laws of a Cosmic nature and pertaining to nothing else in their language or in their customs and habits.  It was also found that there were certain holidays or holy days or ceremonial days that were quite common to all of the tribes despite the great variance in their manner of living, their beliefs, and their tribal philosophy.  Again it was found that most of these ceremonial days had a cosmic, mystical and religious significance and were coincident with similar holy days prevalent among the “Israelites”.

 Not far from San Jose and just across a little mountain range called the Santa Cruz mountain is a small peninsula, which stands unique in romantic, religious history, for here is the mountain of Carmel, the Valley of Carmel, and the Carmel River.  The Carmelites as a religious order followed the selection of this site for the establishment of the first Rosicrucian Temple.  Further facts; although in almost opposite parts of the world Mount Carmel in the East are almost on the line of latitude.

 ~~~

Dear Friends,

I am going to add some dimensions to the discussion of American Anthroposophy, by relating some of what thinking can experience if it looks objectively at American Culture.   The material below will be expanded in a large essay in my upcoming book American Anthroposophy, but here I will give only some brief comments.

I want to point to three American personalities, whose "anthroposophical instincts" are quite remarkable.  One is a filmmaker and actor, another a television writer and the third a novelist.  First the filmmaker:

Clint Eastwood is under appreciated by anthroposophists in America, although among his peers he is recognized as a considerable genius.  He is probably the foremost artist working in American film. whose  depiction of the Consciousness Soul in action is so astute.

He began is career working in Westerns, which are for America are "the" Consciousness Soul Myth.  As he grows in his art, he learns to direct and act at the same time, yet keeping the whole of the community of artists, who cooperate in such productions, in clear focus.  At the heights of his powers he first directs and acts in The Unforgiven, probably the best Western ever made.  It wins a number of awards.

Then he takes up works from literature and makes them into film.  In Mystic River he explores the Consciousness Soul (something he sees in life, but needs not to name) as it struggles among a community, with each character confronted with questions of truth and morality, in a dance of understandable ambiguity, suffering and loss.  Again, it wins many awards.

Then he makes Million Dollar Baby, where he acts and directs, and focuses narrowly on the moral (Consciousness Soul) question of a single character, who finds his religion unable to help him, and must out of his own I author a moral decision that no one but he can perform.  Again more awards, for his peers see what most others do not.

Following this he turns his eye upon War, during a time in which America is at war, producing two remarkable films, each individual, the totality incredible:  Flags of our Fathers; and, Letters from Iwo Jima. Again more awards.  Here the Consciousness Soul is seen in a time of great stress, and out of a background of two entirely different cultures.  In one (Flags) it is more clear, for Americans are more individual.  In the other (Letters), the Consciousness Soul is less clear, for the Japanese still live strongly in the Group Soul, yet in the end what we as Westerns most admire in this film is the individual moving away from the Group Soul and into the Consciousness Soul.  The Group is overcome and individual morality triumphant.

Next he who I call; America's Shakespere: David E. Kelley.

Kelley is the writing genius behind L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Public and now Boston Legal.  At one time a practicing attorney, he shows throughout his work proof of Steiner's observation that English speaking people live instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their life of rights.  All the dramas (and comedies) feature the law, often ending up in court where the merits of quite complex moral-social issues are argued and resolved, not always perfectly by any means.

His knowledge (observational) of the Consciousness Soul is perfect, for he has a character in Picket Fences (around 1995) say: "There aren't any rules any more, we are all on our own."  This he had by this point already explored and he continues to teach his audience about the law, about its failings and inability to really encompass our present day consciousness (the Law is Roman to its roots and while he doesn't quite no why it fails so often, he does clearly see that it fails, and his characters are constantly required to struggle within the limits of the law to treat with actual moral questions.

Finally, in the last year of The Practice he invents his quintessential character, the lawyer Alan Shore (wonderfully portrayed by the actor James Spader).  Shore constantly overcomes the limits of the law, and the similarly inadequate ethical rules binding upon attorneys, by consciousnly violating them in order to help a client for his own (Shore's) moral reasons.  Shore practices The Philosophy of Freedom, clumsily for sure, but quite well instinctively. 

When The Practice ends (in accord with the rules of television regarding strength of audience), Shore does not dissappear but is reborn in Boston Legal.  There he is given his counterpole, the lawyer Denny Crane, conservative, a bigot, self centered and who wouldn't think  twice about cheating.  Here Kelley brings his humorous side even farther forward, something always in play in his work, and takes these two (Denny Crane is played as a ham, by the self depricating ham actor William Shatner) and has them fall in love.  This is not love in the sexual sense at all, but the love of men for men, which has complexities few women can imagine.

In the first season, Spader wins the Emmy for lead actor in a drama, and Shatner the Emmy for supporting actor.  Actors love Kelley, for his speeches are wonders to be able to perform (the summations in court cases are often extraordinary, not only intelligent but wise).  If one was to review all his works on television, the number of Emmy's won by actors easily numbers in the dozens.  The lead actress in Picket Fences, for example, won three years in a row (all the years the show was on) and a supporting actor in that same series won two years in a row.

Finally a writer, of science fiction and now something that might be called historical fantasy history, Neal Stephenson.

Owen Barfield has on more than one occassion made positive reference to the philosopher of History, R. G. Collingwood (see his The Idea of History).  Collingwood has said (and Barfield confirms with his usual not quite but pretty much agreement) that all history is the history of thought.  It isn't what Caesar did when he crossed the Rubicon, but what he thought before, during and after he did it - that is history.

Neal Stephenson first displayed his genius (and came to notice) in the amazingly creative and inventive works: The Big U (under another name), Zodiac, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and finally in the remarkable Cryptonomicon (all 918 pages).  In the latter book - Cryptonomicon, he first explored how it might be possible to relate the present time to historical events, by combining real historical figures with fictional characters (thus my calling this "historical fantasy history").  Those who read it, and reviewed it, had their minds blown. Want to know the relationship between cryptology and modern computers, finance, gold, corporate law, World War II and the present day?  Read that book.

What he did next was take those blown minds, restich them together and expand them beyond anything ever done - ever done - in literature.

Three novels as a series: The Baroque Cycle: 1) Quicksilver (926 pages); 2) The Confusion (815 pages) and 3) The System of the World (887 pages).  Want to know what Newton and Leibniz argued about concerning whether matter was empty or not of consciousness?  Want to know how the modern systems of banking, finance and money were born?  Want to listen in on the court dialogs of French or English aristorcrats trying to keep their wealth away from a King who likes to go to war all the time?  Want to go to India and travel by land across vast distances among strange cultures?  Want to know how and why urine was collected and distilled to produce phosphorus?  Did you know that people actually drank mercury for what they thought was its curative properties?  Want to know the intricate historical nuances of the struggles between protestantism and catholicism at the level not of abstract historical dates, times and places, but within the very thoughts, feelings and consciousness of many of the participants?  I could lay out here several hundred questions of like kind.

Most of these events take place between about 1660 and 1720, and from their choices and impulses our modern age was born.

Here is just one of many positive reveiws, from Newsweek, for Quicksilver: "A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time."  For The Confusion: "Stephenson manages to deftly illuminate the beginnings of modern economics, science, politics, currency, information technology, trade, religion and cyptography.  He also packs in more action than the combined works of Alexandre Dumas and Jerry Bruchheimer...It is a rare feat to produce an eight-hundred-page novel that provides readers such a feast, yet leaves them starved for more" Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo).  For The System of the World: "The System of the World spills over with historical, social, architectural, and scientific minutiae.  It is a Dickensian potboiler and a Baroque reader smashed into one hefty and masterfully paced tome, told with an eye-twinkling geek obsessiveness, by a maddenly talented writer...Stephenson deftly stretches plot threads begun 2000 pages ago, twists them into new directions, mixes them with new characters, and amazingly brings all to a smashing denouement." Virgninia-Pilot

American Culture - most people in anthroposophy don't have a clue, unable to break away from an unjustified fascination with the Old World culture of Europe.

warm regards,

joel

I have really enjoyed reading Stephen Clarke's literature - thanks for it.  I have come across something quite exciting although it is maybe not western mythology but northern mythology - I was reading through my Mythology book and came across a link;

The Gods of the North

Where are in circle ranged twelve golden chairs,
And in the midst one higher, Odin's throne. 
                                                                             Arnold

Frey governed the rain and the sunshine, and made all things of the earth to grow.  Men called upon him to obtain prosperity and times of peace and hapiness.  His sister, Freya, was the goddess of love and music and flowers, and she ruled over the fairies in Alfheim. Her wagon was drawn by two cats.  Half of those that fell in battle belonged to her, the other half to Odin.  She owned a costly necklace, called Brisingamen, and she was called 'she that shines over the sea.' To her Friday was dedicated.

The link is;

Alice Bailey together with Master Djwhal Khul have associated Aquarius with the light ray 'The light that shines on earth, across the sea' and is linked with Venus whose ray is transmitted into our solar system through Leo, Sagittarius and Aquarius.  Further Friday is linked to Venus.

Now's theres a thing! - just thought I'd share this piece of mythology  :)