AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 6:13 pm
I only listened to Segall's. It was heavy on philosophical correspondences with Whitehead, as usual. Phenomenological prompts were generally absent. I think some of the other presentations leaned pretty strongly into what JvH discussed above, criticizing Steiner for being a 'child of his times', which they imagine influenced his spiritual scientific claims about racial differentiations.
Now reading Segall's comments on the race theme. Despite the fact that he has often showed brilliant understanding of the only path philosophers can walk today (to accompany their discipline to a dignified death, so to say, in the arms of direct knowledge) he also demonstrates (not the first time) that he lacks a proper overarching grasp of Anthroposophy, in my opinion, and has not understood race. He writes:
Segall wrote:
...
What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
...
replying to the Robert Karp, the author of one of those race-centered presentations. I have now watched the extended version of his talk (at double speed and skipping a little because he develops really slowly) and I actually found it quite good. Not mindboggling, but good as the perspective of someone who does his best to speak pedagogically to those who call Steiner racist under the effect of ignorance and misunderstanding.
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 6:13 pm
I only listened to Segall's. It was heavy on philosophical correspondences with Whitehead, as usual. Phenomenological prompts were generally absent. I think some of the other presentations leaned pretty strongly into what JvH discussed above, criticizing Steiner for being a 'child of his times', which they imagine influenced his spiritual scientific claims about racial differentiations.
Now reading Segall's comments on the race theme. Despite the fact that he has often showed brilliant understanding of the only path philosophers can walk today (to accompany their discipline to a dignified death, so to say, in the arms of direct knowledge) he also demonstrates (not the first time) that he lacks a proper overarching grasp of Anthroposophy, in my opinion, and has not understood race. He writes:
Segall wrote:
...
What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
...
replying to the Robert Karp, the author of one of those race-centered presentations. I have now watched the extended version of his talk (at double speed and skipping a little because he develops really slowly) and I actually found it quite good. Not mindboggling, but good as the perspective of someone who does his best to speak pedagogically to those who call Steiner racist under the effect of ignorance and misunderstanding.
Pushing us to keep our focus on race and heredity is, in our time, one of the goals of the spirits of darkness. Karp is right when he states that whatever Steiner may have said about the differentiated tasks of different human streams and their evolution, he never meant to refer that to individuals. Individuals today are called to experience their incarnated individuality beyond their belonging to a certain stream of heredity.
Steiner wrote:These things simply are the truth, though it is a truth which people today find extremely unpalatable. For millennia, human beings have instilled the insistence on blood bonds into themselves, and out of sheer inertia they are letting the spirits of darkness take control of these habitual ideas. We therefore see insistence on tribal, national and racial relationships particularly in the nineteenth century, and this insistence is considered idealistic, when in reality it is an early sign of decline in humanity. Everything based on dominance of the blood principle meant progress for as long as it was under the authority of the spirits of light; under the authority of the spirits of darkness it is a sign of decline. The spirits of darkness made special efforts in the past to implant a rebellious feeling of independence in human beings at the time when hereditary traits were passed on in a positive sense by the progressive spirits. In the three ages of human evolution which now follow and will continue until the time of the great catastrophe, the spirits of darkness will make extreme efforts to preserve the old hereditary characteristics and inculcate human beings with the attitudes which result from such preservation; in this way they introduce the necessary signs of decline into human evolution.
I think that accusing Steiner of racism may be signaling (among other possible things) an implicit strong centeredness within the current particular incarnation, and stream of heredity. Whereas, one could say, in the large scheme of things, we are all part of all streams of heredity, if we only zoom out of our identification with the incarnated body in a particular time and place.
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
I think that accusing Steiner of racism may be signaling (among other possible things) an implicit strong centeredness within the current particular incarnation, and stream of heredity. Whereas, one could say, in the large scheme of things, we are all part of all streams of heredity, if we only zoom out of our identification with the incarnated body in a particular time and place.
I actually posted a comment on Karp's article, drawing on a comment Cleric made to FB on the infamous "white skin" lecture some time ago, which basically conveyed the same thing you express above. Karp seemed to resonate with it. Another Substack acquaintance saw the comment and messaged me with the following, which also makes sense to me and seems helpful to contemplate. In all cases, I think the accusers fail to realize the race topic, and Steiner's spiritual understanding of it, is much deeper and multifaceted than they can currently imagine.
"Greetings Ashvin, I came across your response to Robert's post on Steiner's views on race and I resonated with what you wrote. I have arrived at a somewhat similar understanding, which has helped depolarize what has been shared by accounting for higher-ordered perspectives. As I understand things, the human physical form is the expression or manifestation of a collection of spiritual intents, which include everything from temperaments and gifts to biological and cultural characteristics, such as our gender, race, and nationality. What we commonly understand as 'race' is simply the outer expression of a particular idea-formation of the "I," which can cohere loosely or strongly to certain ideas that must be overcome in order to phenomenologically encounter Christ. From this view, skin color can be understood as a visual testament to this underlying relationship; while at the same time being independent of one's capacity to cohere one's "I" in a new, different fashion. In other words, it's mainly indicative, not deterministic, which is why today the 'color line,' while still present, is also diminishing by becoming increasingly 'blurred'. When we listen to mixed-race people speak about the challenges of their dual identities, we can often hear them as if they are being wrestled between race-bound consciousness and something more free. I'm also thinking about how blood, too, from this level, is not merely a fluid made up of plasma and cells, but the physical expression of the "I" and its constellation of prior intents and experiences. So our bodies are how we think. I hesitate to say race is an "initial condition" though because I can imagine more advanced souls consciously choosing a physical form without encountering the same challenges."
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
I think a key element underlying such presentations is a failure to suspect any alternative possibility for engaging with Steiner's observations. Of course, that failure generally stems from a lack of sensitivity to the cognitive gradient. The way I see it, the 'racist' claims that are attributed to Steiner in such a presentation are not much different than attributing the claim that the physical heart is not a pump or that the motor neurons are not directly involved in actuating will impulses. These claims are obviously erroneous if they are completely flattened to the focal plane, and we imagine Steiner is doing the same thing. In other words, the presenter fails to distinguish experiences along the gradient that are being intermixed and expressed in certain unfortunate ways (mostly due to the relatively limited intellectual lattice available for such expressions at the time).
Therefore, I think the best hope for clarifying the issues with such presenters is to draw their attention to alternative possibilities of engaging with Steiner's 'errors' and tracing them along the cognitive gradient. They have to eventually realize that there is a much deeper, spiritual scientific way of understanding how such expressions took shape, rather than lazily attributing them all to myopic cultural biases and flawed scientific assumptions that were unconsciously imported into the spiritual observations. I may try to formulate a response to the article that takes this approach. We can at least hope that it piques their interest in exploring alternative possibilities of understanding what's going on in these controversial domains.
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
It's almost painful to read stuff like this. Framing the discussion in terms of "essentialism" evidences such a cursory, superficial understanding of Steiner as to render the account wholly unserious.
Yes, it is painful. Especially coming from a group that, as a matter of fact, is contributing to the diffusion of some aspects of Steiner's spiritual science. I agree, a lack of understanding of cognitive gradient is revealed - sadly - and an unscientific attachment to a constrained microcosm.
Even at the level of flat text analysis, there is an extraction of passages out of context. Meaning is lost.
For example, the passage from the 1912 booklet "The occult significance of blood" is telegraphically quoted in a way that impedes understanding (in color below). So it is concluded: "There’s this notion that races should be kept separate because some are further along in their evolution than others, and mixing could cause regression". This is blatantly untrue.
I have read through the booklet. From the larger passage, it appears that Steiner does not mean that races should be kept separate. On the contrary, exogamy - Steiner said - is the way in which all humanity is to evolve, and is evolving - the way in which the older clairvoyance dissolves, and the modern intellectual capacity is built. With exogamy, humanity evolves "to a higher stage of development". It's only when isolated groups (in which exogamy has not at all happened) are forced through colonization and brutal displacement to assimilate an already highly intellectualized and individualized people (already characterized by strong exogamy) that the cultural mix cannot succeed, because the gap is too large, and it doesn't work to "demand from blood more than it can endure". That's what Steiner said. It's very clear from the mere text, any conscientious reader can gather that. And yes, because of man's constitution, the blood is influenced by geography and environment, among other things (as illustrated in the first pages of the book). It's difficult to fathom how one can reject that, and accept the fourfold human constitution at the same time. How is the fourfold human being understood then? How are the cosmic and formative forces and their shaping of the etheric body understood then? - one may wonder. I may also add a comment on Substack, but not right now.
Steiner wrote:In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect. The important thing to bear in mind here is, that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly-related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed the initial steps along this line have already been taken.
But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which obtained in times of old.
At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and man began to live his own personal life. He began to regulate his moral tendencies according to what he experienced in his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.
The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: "That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee." This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: "Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself." For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.
When two groups of people come into contact, as is the case in colonisation, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or no an alien form of civilisation can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built for itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is the reason why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.
It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
I went ahead and posted the following comment. I have a feeling that it will be written off as irrelevant immediately, but let's see.
***
Ashton, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this controversial topic.
"That last point refers to what is called essentialism—where, for instance, because I have white skin, I am determined to have a certain kind of soul and certain kinds of capacities available to me. My physiognomy gives me such and such nature." (Ashton)
I think it is highly problematic to connect the above in any way to Steiner. In fact, he was constantly *pushing back* against the essentialists of his time, i.e., those who tried to trace all soul-spiritual qualities to the biophysical nature and the line of heredity (genetics). I imagine you are aware of the copious lectures where we see that pushback, and therefore, I don't need to reference many here. Steiner prefigured all the neo-Darwinian critiques that are finally emerging 100+ years later, from Noble, Levin, et al., and of course added much more spiritually informed depth to such critiques. He didn't only say they were wrong (or racist) but endeavored to show how such differentiated soul and spiritual qualities actually take shape through incarnational dynamics. I will quote just one example:
"What is usually adduced in the theory of heredity is really nonsense. For it is assumed that the laws that underlie man's growth up to the change of teeth simply continue into later life; whereas the truth is, that the influence of heredity has to be reckoned with only until the change of teeth, and no further; the individuality then comes in and builds the second body.
We must therefore distinguish, when speaking of a child, between the body of heredity and the individual body which is its successor. The individual body—and this body alone can truthfully be called the personal body of the human being—develops by degrees. Between the seventh and fourteenth years the very strongest activity of which the individuality is capable goes forward. Either, the individuality conquers during this period the forces of heredity, and then it can be observed in the child that, after the change of teeth, he begins to work his way out of the forces of heredity—the fact will be clearly perceptible, and we teachers must take note of it—or, the individuality is completely subject to the forces of heredity, to what is contained in the model, with the result that the hereditary likeness to the parents simply continues beyond the seventh year. But it all depends, you see, upon the individuality, not upon the forces of heredity. Suppose I am an artist and you give me something to copy and I change it very considerably. Just as little as I can say that you are responsible for my picture, just so little can it be said that a person has acquired through heredity the body he bears from the seventh year onward. This truth we must master thoroughly, and then be able to know for ourselves in any particular case how strongly the individuality is working." (Steiner, GA 317)
Likewise, in the full context of the lecture from which you only shared a snippet, Steiner was far from advocating a separation of the races, and rather illustrating how exogamy became *necessary for spiritual progress* in our time.
"The important thing to bear in mind here is, that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly-related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy...
At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and man began to live his own personal life. He began to regulate his moral tendencies according to what he experienced in his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience." (Steiner, GA 55)
"Dark-skinned people are no less capable of being genuine Christians, acting on behalf of love and freedom, than light-skinned people." (Ashton)
I hope it can be acknowledged, after contemplating these things more deeply, that caricaturing Steiner's spiritual observations in this way does not shed much light on the issues. Making claims such as the above was not even within the realm of possibilities for Steiner, because it implies a certain rigid and discursive way of thinking that he was trying to help others overcome.
I think it is also incumbent for those offering a critique of Steiner's spiritual observations on the phenomena of 'race' or skin color, as also with nation, gender, geography, and so on, to also offer *their* understanding of the spiritual significance of these phenomena in our time. Are they just random differentiations that have emerged, completely arbitrary qualities that we can safely ignore in our pursuit of deeper knowledge? If not, then how do you understand their significance within the evolutionary process? How do they play into that process?
In other words, we shouldn't simply postulate that Steiner was in error about such phenomena, but try to trace exactly *how* that error took shape and where the spiritual truth may reside. By this 'tracing', I don't mean simply asserting that Steiner was a 'product of his times' and imported various faulty scientific assumptions (which, again, can be shown *not* to be the case for biological essentialism), but a phenomenology of the inner process at work. The former is quicker and more convenient, but the latter takes a good deal of imaginative effort. This way of approaching the 'errors' has the added benefit of contributing something to the deepening of spiritual scientific knowledge, for ourselves and others.
I will provide an example so that what I am saying doesn't remain completely abstract. We know that Steiner claimed that comets dissolve when they exit the Solar spheres and coalesce again when they re-enter. If we take this claim as some flattened observation of sensible dynamics, akin to "dark-skinned people are less capable of acting on behalf of freedom and love," then it is obviously false. How can we trace this apparently obvious error made by Steiner?
All of this emerges from the experiences in the spiritual spectrum of existence when they are brought down into Imaginations. The links here are very deep. Even in ordinary physics, we know that as we send our gaze further in space, we are also moving back in time. In a similar way, when our consciousness grows into the depths of inner space, we reach the more archetypal nature of everything. We can no longer speak of a comet as a point-like rock formation. Instead, we live in the 'comet-cloud' (analogy with the fuzzy electron cloud) - the non-local spiritual flow that pertains to everything having to do with the comet's concrete existence. As we contract in consciousness toward our bodily spectrum, the comet-cloud gradually collapses into concreteness, together with our bodily sensations (or think of a blurry image gradually coming into focus).
These are all real inner experiences. The question is how they are reconciled with the plane of concrete focus, where comets seem to occupy a concrete spatial place, and the same for our bodily parts. This is where we can still feel with Steiner a certain *intermixing* between the physical spectrum and the Imaginative. The Intuitions and Imaginations had to be captured by the intellectual lattice of the time, which was practically the Newtonian picture of space, substances, and forces. In a way, he had to counteract the tendency of the intellect to spread with the intellectual fantasy into the spheres. It was simply not possible to counteract this in any other way except to mix the Imaginative into the physical. The Newtonian lattice simply didn't allow for anything else!
This leads to a very important effect. The intellect had to speak of the spiritual through spatial categories. In other words, if the intellect were to be truthful to the facts of higher experience, it had to picture that, were it to travel physically beyond the spheres, our being would need to pass into an etheric, then astral state, etc. And notice that this is not wrong in an absolute sense. In inner space, the spatial and the spiritual axes are indeed archetypally of the same origin. In other words, Steiner had to speak to the soul at that time: "If you are to move with your imagination away into space, and if you are not to remain in the materialistic dream (the extrapolated Earthly mental images), you must gradually morph into spiritual consciousness. Your Earthly mental images must dissolve and pass into the increasingly non-local astral, and then archetypal!"
I hope this gives a keener sense of the inner axis along which we can travel with our consciousness when engaging with Steiner's observations, either approvingly or critically. We can't go wrong if we take this approach, because even if we don't fully trace how something like the racial observations took shape, we will at least have a better sense of what Steiner was up to when making such observations. It is only when we don't suspect this alternative possibility that we are practically forced to impute to him erroneous beliefs, such as biological essentialism.
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Feb 24, 2026 1:35 pm
I went ahead and posted the following comment. I have a feeling that it will be written off as irrelevant immediately, but let's see.
Thanks - great treatment of the necessity to also provide one's own understanding of the spiritual phenomena, and their physical reflections. I actually also commented before you (and already quoted the entire passage from "The occult significance of blood"). My comment:
I am one of those who felt pain reading this analysis, especially because it comes from a researcher and a group which, as a matter of fact, are valuably contributing to the spreading of spiritual scientific ideas. There would be much to say. For now, I would like to focus on your contention, which draws on the two Steiner quotes in Example 2:
“There’s this notion that races should be kept separate because some are further along in their evolution than others, and mixing could cause regression".
Regretfully, one must note that, from the lines immediately preceding your quote from "The occult significance of blood", it appears that the notion that races should be kept separate to avoid regression is simply not there. On the contrary, exogamy - Steiner said - is the way in which all humanity evolves - the way in which the older clairvoyance dissolves, and the modern intellectual capacity is built. Through exogamy - through the “mingling of blood” - humanity evolves "to a higher stage of development", not to a lower one.
It's *only* when isolated groups (in which exogamy has not yet developed) are forced through brutal colonization and displacement to assimilate an already highly intellectualized and individualized people (already characterized by strong exogamy) that the cultural mix cannot succeed. Then the gap is too large, Steiner said, then it doesn't work to "demand from blood more than it can endure" (by the way, one cannot accept the fourfold human being and the etheric world, and at the same time reject that blood is affected by geography and environment. If I move, or if I am forced to move, to another earthly region, my blood, among other things, is affected).
In any case, in that passage, Steiner explicitly proposed that mingling of blood is how humanity evolves to a *higher evolutive stage*, as long as the mingling is not enforced by terrible brutality through colonization and displacement. When this happens, it’s a lose-lose situation for all. Here’s the unabridged passage (from page 41 at the link below) which includes your quote:
“ In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect.
The important thing to bear in mind here is, that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly-related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed the initial steps along this line have already been taken.
But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which obtained in times of old.
At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and man began to live his own personal life. He began to regulate his moral tendencies according to what he experienced in his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.
The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: "That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee." This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: "Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself." For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.
When two groups of people come into contact, as is the case in colonisation, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or no an alien form of civilisation can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built for itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is the reason why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.
It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.”
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Feb 24, 2026 1:35 pm
I went ahead and posted the following comment. I have a feeling that it will be written off as irrelevant immediately, but let's see.
Thanks - great treatment of the necessity to also provide one's own understanding of the spiritual phenomena, and their physical reflections. I actually also commented before you (and already quoted the entire passage from "The occult significance of blood"). My comment:
Nice - I didn't see that at first, but it's good you gave this exogamy aspect a deeper treatment. I suppose the main obstacle in this domain, as usual, is the ego and its firmly held convictions. Once someone gets to the point of writing an entire article expressing those convictions, it will feel like quite a painful experience to re-evaluate them, as if someone is trying to tear the roots of the hair out of the scalp. Hopefully, though, the interest in the deeper truth will eventually take the upper hand.
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
