The items in each section are in historical order. Steiner's works are given their original dates. His titles are coded for brevity; please see the references for the actual editions used. For transmission by wire, italics in originals are rendered *thus*, and dashes by two hyphens "--".
* Quotations marked with an asterisk are from works which were required reading for teacher trainees at Rudolf Steiner College, 1993-1994.
"The Ancestors of the Atlanteans lived in a
region which has disappeared, the main part of which lay south of
contemporary Asia. In theosophical writings they are called the
Lemurians. After they had passed through various stages of
development the greatest part of them declined. These became stunted
men, whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the earth today
as so-called savage tribes. Only a small part of Lemurian humanity
was capable of further development. From this part the Atlanteans
were formed.
"Later, something similar again took place. The greatest part of the
Atlantean population declined, and from a small portion are descended
the so-called Aryans who comprise present-day civilized humanity.
According to the nomenclature of the science of the spirit, the
Lemurians, Atlanteans and Aryans are *root races* of mankind. If one
imagines that two such root races preceded the Lemurians and that two
will succeed the Aryans in the future, one obtains a total of
*seven*." (Steiner, 1904, CM p. 48)
* "Besides their character, families, nations and races have also their destiny. ... Besides the separate individuals, a very real family and national group soul and racial spirit is at work in the life of a family, a people, or a race. Indeed, in a certain sense the separate individuals are merely the executive organs of these family group souls, racial spirits, and so on....In the truest sense, everyone receives his alotted task from his family, national or racial group soul." (Steiner, 1904, KHW pp. 240-241)
* "[P]eoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race
or a nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members
express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked
their way from physical and perishable to the supersensible and
imperishable. The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever
higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation. Man
must finally appear in harmonious perfection." (Steiner, 1904, KHW p.
252)
"We are within the great Root Race of humanity, which has peopled the earth, since the land on which we now live rose up out of the inundations of the ocean. Ever since the Atlantean Race began slowly to disappear, the great Aryan Race has been the dominant one on earth. If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth Sub-Race of the great Aryan Root Race. The first Sub-Race lived in the distant past in Ancient India. And the present-day Indians are descendants of that first Sub-Race, whose spiritual life is still extant in the ancient Indian Vedas. The Vedas are indeed only echoes of the ancient culture of the Rishis. At that time there was of course no writing yet - there was only tradition. Then came the second, third and fourth Sub-Races. The fourth Sub-Race adopted Christianity. Then, halfway through the Middle Ages, we see that the fifth Sub-Race formed itself, to which we and the neighboring nations belong." (Steiner, Rudolf. The Temple Legend: Freemasonry and Related Occult Movements: Twenty Lectures given in Berlin between 23rd May 1904 and the 2nd January 1906. (1904-1906) Trans. John M. Wood, Edited E.M. Lloyd. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985, p. 220)
"[W]hat the etheric body comprises derives from the maternal element, as handed down from generation to generation, so that every man bears in his own etheric body the legacy of the maternal element, and in his physical body, that of the paternal element. Now, by reason of consanguinity, the inheritance, perpetuating itself from etheric body to etheric body, was very potent, and from it derived the old faculty of clairvoyance. The offspring of endogamy inherited with the related blood the old capacity for wisdom in the etheric body. But as blood became more and more mixed--as a result of increasing intermarriage among tribes--the possibility of handing down the ancient wisdom diminished; ...the mixing of different bloods obscured the ancient wisdom more and more... We are, of course, still involved in this process of deterioration taking place in the human blood because, in as far as it has its origin in an ancient epoch, it will follow its lingering course to the end of *Earth* evolution." (Steiner, 1909, GSJ p. 226)
"[A]s a consequence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, human blood became ever less fitted to provide the faculty of seeing the outer world in its true light: a steady increase in illusion was bound up with the blood's deterioration, with the dissolution of blood as it had been in the age of consanguinity, with the blood's dispersion and destruction by miscegenation. No longer could man consult the old wisdom he had once possessed as a legacy... Had it not been for the intervention of the Christ influence, he would ultimately have lost his whole heritage of ancient wisdom by being gradually reduced to complete dependence upon the outer sense world and its impressions." (Steiner, 1909, GSJ p. 244)
"It is indeed very uncommon--note that I am saying uncommon, though it does not always have to be so--that a soul belongs to the same community on earth through a number of consecutive incarnations. Souls pass from one earthly community to another...we have one example of souls actually assuming the same nationality a number of times. That is the case with the people of Central Europe. These Central European peoples include many souls that are incarnated among them today and have also been incarnated in the Germanic tribes in the past. This is a fact we are able to trace." (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 57)
"The Western European peoples have become very much crystallized in their national characteristics, but in the case of the German people this cannot happen because of the peculiar nature of the German folk spirit. The result is that German attitudes will always have to remain more universal than those of other peoples. These things relate to profound realities in the spiritual world." (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 176)
"The German spirit...is prepared for a truth that reveals itself to be true out of itself, not requiring external verification. The German spirit is prepared for this and evidence of this may be found everywhere. The thoughts of those who were truly working within the essence of the German spirit have always taken the form of considering truth to be an inner gift of the human soul." (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 104)
"What has to come about for the civilization
and culture of the future will only come about if the German folk
spirit finds souls that transplant the Christ impulse into their
astral body and ego the way it can indeed be implanted there in a
state of full conscious awareness. It has to come about through
harmony being established, by uniting with that which is consciously
achieved in Central Europe--more and more consciously.
"This will need not just one or two centuries, but a very long time.
The time needed...I would say counting from the year 1400. Adding two
thousand years to 1400 we get the approximate time when something
will emerge in the evolution of the earth that has had its seeds in
the German life of the spirit...That is the intention of the cosmic
intelligence...For the moment the East is very far indeed from
achieving this. The very best of them still fall far short. Short
sightedly, they still refuse to accept what Central European culture
in particular is able to give." (Steiner, 1915, DIN p. 62)
"Not only is it characteristic of Hindu thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in part cleanse Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way that the Christ impulse can enter." (Steiner, 1915, CRLA p. 11)
"[The purpose of the Opium War] is not to help certain people make millions and grow rich but to prevent certain souls who would have come from the spiritual world round about now, to strengthen the cultural forces of Europe, from incarnating yet, and instead to surreptitiously fill European bodies with Chinese souls...In a great many European people a disharmony between soul and body has been brought about in the way I have just described...Seen in this way, that Opium War meant the switching of a soul element from a part of the earth to which it belonged--and where it might have been of use, because it would have fitted--to another part of the earth where it could become a tool for forces whose designs are by no means necessarily beneficial for mankind." (Steiner, 1916, KU1 p. 270)
"[B]ecause our etheric bodies differ in their constitution, composition, and structure in the cosmos, there would have to be seven groups of human beings. This is the fact we gradually arrive at when we investigate the relationship between our etheric body and our physical body with the methods of spiritual science. Now this difference is connected with the racial diversities on the earth. Basically, because of this difference in etheric bodies, the several races can always be reduced to the number seven." (Steiner, 1916, UH p. 74)
"[V]arious types of human beings would have appeared one after the other. However, Lucifer and Ahriman...fought against this harmonious tendency of development in the evolution of humanity...Thus, forms that should have disappeared remained. Instead of racial diversities developing consecutively, older racial forms remained unchanged and newer ones began to evolve at the same time. Instead of the intended consecutive development of races, there was a coexistence of races. That is how it came about that physically different races inhabited the earth and are still there in our time although evolution should really have proceeded as I have described it." (Steiner, 1916, UH pp. 74-75)
"[T]he ancient Greeks dreamed of a uniform, perfect, beautiful type of human being that should have developed. This development did not occur because Lucifer and Ahriman preserved older racial forms that had developed, so that there was a coexistence of races rather than a succession." (Steiner, 1916, UH p. 76)
"The most characteristic sign of the time is the belief that when a group of individuals have set up some trashy proposition as a general program--such as the unity of all men regardless of race, nation or color, and so forth--something has been accomplished. Nothing has been accomplished except to throw sand into people's eyes. Something real is attained only when we note the differences and realize what world conditions are." (Steiner, 1920, SSFSF p. 122)
"[T]he representative people for the development of the consciousness soul, hence for what matters particularly in our age, is the Anglo-Saxon nation. The Anglo-Saxon people are those who through their whole organization are predisposed to develop the consciousness soul to a special degree. The prominent position occupied by the Anglo-Saxon nation in our time is indeed due to the fact that this nation is especially suited for the development of the consciousness soul." (Steiner, 1921, MTA p. 195)
* "Even the savage is affected by nature, but the laws of nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts fructified by intuition of the more highly developed man." (Steiner, 1922, T p. 31)
"You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. ... It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish." (Steiner, 1922, HI-1, p. 86)
* "No doubt about it, the soul becomes corrupted through using the French language...It is also possible at the present time that the French will even ruin their own blood, the very element which has kept their language going as a corpse. That is a terrible thing the French people are doing to other people, the frightful cultural brutality of transplanting black people to Europe. It affects France itself worst of all. This has an incredibly strong effect on the blood, the race. This will substantially add to French decadence. The French nation will be weakened as a race." (Steiner, 1923, CT-3 pp. 87-88)
* "The girl L.K. in class 1...is one of those
cases that are occurring more and more frequently where children are
born and human forms exist which actually, with regard to the highest
member the ego, are not human at all but are inhabited by beings who
do not belong to the human race...They are very different from human
beings where spiritual matters are concerned. For instance they can
never memorise sentences, only words. I do not like speaking about
these things, as there is considerable opposition about this. Just
imagine what people would say if they heard that we are talking about
human beings who are not human beings. Nevertheless these are facts.
Furthermore, there would not be such a decline of culture if there
were a strong enough feeling for the fact that some people, the ones
who are particularly ruthless, are not human beings at all but demons
in human form.
"But do not let us broadcast this. There is enough opposition
already. Things like this give people a terrible shock. People were
frightfully shocked when I had to say that a quite famous university
professor with a great reputation had had a very short period between
death and re-birth and was a re-incarnated negro scientist.
"But don"t let us publicise these things." (Steiner, 1923, CT-4 pp.
36-37)
"[T]he European sort of invention is impossible for either the Chinese or the Japanese." (Steiner, 1924, EEM p. 77)
"[W]e are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. The savages have developed into what they now are--with their superstitions, their magical practices and their unclean appearance--from states originally more perfect. The only superiority we have over them is that, while starting from the same conditions, we did not degenerate as they did. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. Mankind, though to begin with it looked more animal-like, was highly civilized. ... Just as the present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower." (Steiner, 1924, EEM p. 126)
There is evidence that Nazi ideologists drew from Steiner's teachings. According to Goodrick-Clarke:
"Here [*Ostara*, July, 1908] he [Gravell] outlined a thoroughly theosophical conception of race and a programme for the restoration of Aryan authority in the world. His quoted occult sources were texts by Annie Besant, Blavatsky's successor as leader of the international Theosophical Society at London, and Rudolf Steiner, the Secretary General of its German branch in Berlin." (Goodrick-Clarke, 1992, p. 101)
In the next three items, South African Anthroposophists (Picard, Downer) apply Steiner's teachings to their situation in South Africa. From a book distributed in the U.S. as resource material for Waldorf teachers preparing a unit on Africa:
"According to Rudolf Steiner, certain regions
of the earth are connected with the Historical development of the
human being. One of these regions or centres, as they are better
called, where cosmic influences played their part was situated in the
interior of Africa. All terrestrial forces emanating from the soil,
that influence man during his early childhood, were particularly
active in those centres... Man's environment has the strongest impact
on him during his early childhood, and this particular environment
imprints the characteristics of his childhood upon him for the rest
of this life... Thus the black negro race is determined by these
childhood characteristics. Another centre where cosmic influences
were particularly active was located in Asia but there the etheric
formative forces of the earth impressed permanently upon man the
characteristics of adolescence. There the brown and yellow races came
into being, the brown race specifically imprinted with the
characteristics of the child from the age of seven years to fourteen
years; the yellow race with those of the youth from fourteen to
twenty-one years. In a similar centre in Europe, the characteristics
of maturity were imprinted upon the race and in America those of the
older human being and even old age. Dr. Steiner calls this a
UNIVERSAL LAW.
"Coming back to the black race which had its centre in the interior
of Africa, the Spirits of Form--the Exousiai--and the Abnormal
Spirits of Form (who as you will remember are those Higher Beings who
forsook their promotion to a higher hierarchy to perform a special
duty), were centred in Mercury. Hence we may call the black race the
Mercury Race. Although the seeds for this race were already planted
in Lemuria, its concrete formation occurred in early Atlantis. From
there the race spread across Africa and "crystallized," as Dr.
Steiner put it, into the Ethiopian race as an expression of an
impulse from the Mercury Oracle or, if one prefers, the Mercury
Mysteries in Atlantis. In these Mysteries, the abnormal Spirits of
Form worked specifically in the glandular or lymphatic system.
Everything that characterised the Ethiopian race stems from the
fermentation of the Mercury forces in the glandular system of the
people. Dr. Steiner taught: "What transforms the undifferentiated
universal human form into black pigmentation and wooly or frizzy
hair, is the consequence of their activity."
"Whereas Mercury dominates, so to speak, the glandular system, Venus
dominates the nervous system, Mars the blood and Jupiter the senses.
Hence the specific characteristics of Venus--brown race, Mars--yellow
race, and Jupiter--white race...
"In lectures presented by the late Dr. Max Stibbe, who made an
extensive study of race relations in South Africa, it was mentioned
that the Mercury Mysteries in Atlantis soon degenerated, with the
result that the Negro race was deprived of those spiritual impulses
that introduced initiatives. Migrating from Atlantis, the blacks
entered Africa at the mouth of the Congo river. Some of them went to
North-West Africa, the rest journeying to the East and the South. The
life forces of the black race are so strong that they absorb all
light. The warmth of the cosmos is, so to speak, boiling inside them,
hence their particular metabolism, their strong desires, instincts
and emotions. Their skin is coarse (large-pored) and their limbs
extraordinarily strong, in comparison with which the development of
their thinking is much weaker. Their strong life forces see to it
that of their soul functions, WILLING is by far the most strongly
developed. Their metabolism is dominated by the liver, hence the
frequent liver diseases--and other glandular disturbances--among
blacks. They are rigidly imprisoned in the fire of their metabolism
and their physical as well as etheric body is hardened." (Picard,
1987, pp. 113-114)
"[Apartheid] failed badly...in spite of the fact that Apartheid is a law of nature and as such a divine law of the Bantu. It failed badly because the Apartheid philosophers like Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd approached the problem in a purely intellectual way. They did not, or possibly could not, realise how easily Apartheid leads to discrimination. The true meaning of Apartheid is NOT discrimination. Not at all, Mutwa [Zulu author Credo Mutwa] declares. The true meaning of the word is: 'to distinguish between two things without deciding which is best, while discrimination means to distinguish by deciding which is best.'...Apartheid in South Africa though practised in a more humane way than in many black African states must be condemned as a feasible constitutional possibility; not because its principle is wrong but because human nature is such that Apartheid automatically turns into discrimination--and discrimination soon leads to suppression." (Picard, 1987, pp. 126-127)
"'Aryan' is a name that comes out of occult
tradition and has often been used by Rudolf Steiner. The Aryan is the
spiritual European, the being who with an individualised ego, has a
developing consciousness soul directed towards balancing wisdom with
morality. This is taken to the point where the personality is drawn
from this balance, where wisdom and morality form as it were, a
chalice and there is not just wisdom for wisdom's sake! During this
century an extreme form of outward racial connotation has been given
to the term Aryan, particularly by Adolf Hitler who by materialising
the spiritual task and nature of the Aryan attempted to create an
evil counterpart to true spiritual evolution.
"The Aryan type works through the European race in general although
he may incarnate within another race as a sacrificial gesture to
assist in the destiny of that race. This can happen to assist the
individualizing of personalities in that race so that their unique
qualities are freed to contribute towards mankind's future. The
immediate cultural task lies with the Aryan." (Downer, 1987, p.
189)
Recent teacher training manuals show the
racial myth is being maintained and taught:
"In ancient times Persia was inhabited by two different peoples, the Aryans and the Turanians. The Turanians, yellow with small cunning eyes, worshipped the god Ahriman, the prince of darkness. The Aryans saw their god in the light of the sun, and named him Ahura Mazdao, the Great Light." (Wilkinson, 1992, pp. 16-17)
"When it was time for Zarathustra to leave the earth, he climbed the mountain...As he turned to look back at the earth, he had a vision of things to happen in the future. He saw the Aryan peoples marching on victoriously towards the west..." (Wilkinson, 1992, pp. 17-18)
"Noah had three sons, Shem (Sem), Ham and
Japhet. Three races are named after them. Shem or Sem means 'the
name' and implies an ego quality. The Jews are Semites. Ham means
'the dark one' and the Egyptians and Canaanites, with whom the
Israelites had to contend, trace their descent to him. Japhet means
'the beautiful.' The Greek and Nordic peoples are the Japhetites,
bearing new spiritual impulses." (Wilkinson, 1993, p. 23)