Anglo-German culture

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The Faust motif in the ceiling painting of the small dome of the first Goetheanum.

The Anglo-German culture or Germanic-Anglo-Saxon culture (1413 - 3573 AD) is the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch; we are currently living in this cultural epoch, which in a historical context is generally referred to as the modern era. It serves the formation of the consciousness soul and can therefore also be called consciousness soul age. It is under the sign of Pisces, thus it is the Age of Pisces.

„We have entered the Age of Pisces. It is essentially characterised by the fact that man receives the power to abstract concepts from the macrocosm. Today man receives this power from the macrocosm. But for the time the abstract concepts are that of which man does not yet know how to link it up again with reality. It must again be linked with reality.“ (Lit.:GA 180, p. 169)

„We now live for many centuries under the sign of Pisces. It is the sign which marks man's transition to intellectualism. But if you go back to the point where it was still justified to set out from Aries and it was possible to speak of the Zodiac in the old meaning, you will not obtain more than the callings represented by Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces; namely, hunter, breeder of animals, farmer, and trader. Everything connected with industrialism, etc., already pertains to the epoch of Pisces, and it is a repetition.

Consider the following: We now live in the age of Pisces. During this age developed everything which constitutes the present civilization of machines. But if we go back to the epoch of Aries, we still find the four honest callings, and although they had already become more complicated and modified, they placed man into nature. And by going back still farther, to the epoch of Taurus, to the third, second, first post-Atlantean ages, to the last Atlantean epoch and to the last but one Atlantean epoch, etc., we would finally come to Pisces. There we would find that man was a completely etheric being and that he had not yet come down to the physical world. In the age of Pisces we find that he was an etheric being and in the present time he is really repeating what he already passed through at that time, when he developed into a human being. Since the middle of the Fifteenth Century, he is repeating this stage, but in an abstract way. In the past, he grew concretely into his human development. Since the middle of the Fifteenth Century, he is growing into his abstractions, for a machine is also an abstraction. Since the return of the age of Pisces, man has really sailed into the forces which dissolve him. And when he will reach Aquarius this dissolution will have progressed in an essential way; he will then above all be unable to have the slightest connection with the universe unless he clings to the spiritual world. Just because of this repetition, man must penetrate into the spiritual world.“ (Lit.:GA 208, p. 76f)

„The impulses of the consciousness soul have an isolating and isolating effect if they are not practised in anthroposophical form. One can feel this as a tragedy of humanity. But it is precisely the strongest inner loneliness of the contemporary human being that awakens the great longing for community.“ (Lit.: Carl Unger: Aus der Sprache der Bewußtseinsseele (From the Language of the Consciousness Soul), p. 27)

But a true community - if it is not to fall back into already outmoded states of consciousness - can only be cultivated in community with spiritually conscious people - anthroposophists - according to the age. For the anthroposophically untrained person, the consciousness-soul quality often produces feelings of emptiness, searching, and loneliness (see above). These can only be counteracted if the respective person takes charge of his or her own spiritual education, and in doing so exchanges in detail with other, similarly oriented people about his or her progress and regression.

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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