Mechanistic occultism

From AnthroWiki
Model of the Strader-Apparat, made by Hans Kühn according to the original model that had been made for the performance of the mystery drama "The Guardian of the Threshold", Munich 1913, according to Rudolf Steiner's specifications.
One half of a late version of Keely's spherical ether-power machine in a corner of his workshop in Phialdelphia (1896).

Mechanistic occultism or material occultism is what Rudolf Steiner called an ability that will awaken very soon, especially in Western humanity, to set machines in motion through spiritual or psychic forces alone. But this will only be possible if people have undergone a corresponding moral development. This can lead to a moral technology of the future, as Rudolf Steiner already saw realised to some extent in the machines of John Ernst Worrell Keely (1837-1898). In addition, a eugenic occultism will emerge in the East and a hygienic occultism in the European centre. But there will also be efforts to abuse these occult forces in a group-egoist sense.

„Today we have come down to the physical plane with all our institutions. If a moral culture does not go along with the culture on the physical plane, the physical achievements will have a destructive effect. Through the development of morality, man will be able to generate quite different forces from those which now exist on the physical plane. Keely set his motor in motion by vibrations which he excited in his own organism. Such vibrations depend on the moral nature of man. This is a first ray of dawn for what will emerge as the technology of the future. In the future we will have machines that will only start moving when the forces come from people who are moral. Immoral people will not be able to set such machines in motion. Purely mechanical mechanism must be transformed into moral mechanism.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 40f)

This moral technology is based on a further development of mechanics, in which great mechanical force effects are generated solely by the focussing and harmonious harmony of vibrations, which receive their initial impetus from the periodic life processes in our rhythmic system, i.e. namely from our heartbeat and breathing rhythm, and are transmitted to the machine by fine, highly sensitive vibrational elements. The machine thereby adapts itself completely to the human being, his mental experience and his moral qualities, leaving his full spiritual freedom untouched. The use of the destructive forces of sub-nature (electricity, magnetism, nuclear forces), through which man very easily falls under the bondage of the ahrimanic double and which are physiologically connected in particular with our nervous-sensory system, is thereby dispensed with. Steiner saw an early precursor of this development in John Worrell Keely, who had developed the famous Keely motor, which Steiner used as a model for the Strader apparatus in his mystery dramas.

„Perhaps you know that Keely constructed an engine that only worked when he was there himself. He didn't fool people with it, because he had in himself that driving force which comes out of the soul and can set mechanical things in motion. A driving force that can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; the most important force that must be implanted in culture if it is not to overturn itself. The mechanical and the moral will interpenetrate, because then the mechanical is nothing without the moral. We are standing on the brink of this today. In the future, machines will be driven not only with water and steam, but with spiritual power, with spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the sign of the Tau and has already been poetically indicated by the image of the Holy Grail. Just as man is no longer dependent only on using what nature freely gives him, but just as he shapes and reshapes nature, just as he has become the master builder of the non-living, so he will become the master builder of the living.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 286)

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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