An Open Letter to Joan Almon

Subject: letter (1) to joan almon
From: TEAM-PHYZZ@mail.utexas.edu (Tom Mellett)
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 09:14:39 -0800

Joan Almon,
Editor of the Newsletter,
Anthroposophical Society in America
1923 Geddes Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Dear Joan:

First I'd like to congratulate you for becoming editor of the ASinA Newsletter and I especially want to thank you for the Summer '98 issue which just arrived last week. It is very heartening to see that you do not intend to shy away from any of the crucial issues facing the Society today, especially with regard to the Society's "dirty laundry." As you know from your brief exposure to <Steiner98@intuition.org>, one may consider my Newsgroup here as the Esoteric Qwik Washeteria or Anthroposophical Laundomat where the Society's very stinky, moldy dirty laundry can be bleached, washed, rinsed, dried and pressed.

(NOTE: These latter 5 activities form the basis of the Buddhist exercise of "Right Laundering," which cleanses the upper chakras from their disdain of the lower ones. And one may also consider myself to be the "Cathar-strength" concentrated alchemical bleach guaranteed to get out the most stubborn stains and make everything smell fresh and clean--- like a bouquet of bio-dynamic red roses at a Camphill Festival for large-headed phlegmatics.)

I don't know which to praise you most for first:

1. your opening article on page 3 with its focus on the Consciousness Soul karma of the United States;
2. the excellent article by Florian Sydow on such American karma and the Internet (pp. 4-9); or
3. the pro & con debate over Tomberg (pp. 29-36) with contributions by Stephen Usher (con) and James Morgante (pro).

I suppose, I'll just blindly pick (3) so I can start somewhere.

I myself was deeply enmeshed in the esoteric Christian Hermetic Tombergian cult from 1980 to about 1989. When I lived in Spring Valley in 1980, I got to know Bud & Nina Remensperger, who were then churning out Tomberg's articles and lectures in English from a press in their garage --- which they called "Candeur Manuscripts." Having been born and raised devout Irish Catholic in NYC, and then coming to anthroposophy at age 28, I was very intrigued by a man who was an anthroposophist first and then became a Catholic at age 42.

But it has really only been in the last 6 months that I have personally come to terms with the insidious retrograde cult nature of the movement that has sprung up around Tomberg and his esoteric Christian legacy. Your citation of that Prokofieff quote on page 29 exposes most tersely the nature of this evil cult and why it is so damaging to the growth of anthroposophy today.

Allow me to reproduce it here since this letter to you, Joan, is going to appear on the Steiner98 List and there are even some Society members who have not yet received the issue.

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"Some of the anthroposophists close to Tomberg felt he was living with delusions even while he was active in the Society, and his indications about his own previous incarnations and those of others do raise serious concerns. In any case he [Tomberg] came --- rightly or wrongly --- to a certain conclusion that seems to me to explain many of his actions. [Sergei ] Prokofieff quotes Tomberg as having said to his friend Lubensky in the early 1940's:

'The impulse of the Consciousness Soul has failed; a direct path must be found from the Intellectual Soul to the WE-Soul (Spirit Self) [Manas]'"

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(Your quote from page 119 of Prokofieff's book: "The Case of Valentin Tomberg: Anthroposophy or Jesuitism?)
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Thank you so very much, Joan, because exists to celebrate the spiritual and physical reality of the Consciousness Soul Age as it properly unfolds so beautifully and instinctively from us Americans who were born since the middle of this 20th Century. (See Lecture 6 of 6 in "Challenge of the Times.")

(NOTE: But woe betide any of these Americans who dare to bypass the Consciousness Soul Age andwhose karma it is to trip and fall down headlong into the treacherous snake pit, sewer and cesspool of Steiner98, a definite esoteric mudhole that exists to detain and restrain such irresponsible people from their drunken Ahrimanic rush to Philadelphia.)

And as if that statement wasn't enough for me to celebrate, I then read the article by Florian Sydow and these sentences jumped out at me from page 7.

(Again, Joan, please forgive me for quoting your own Newsletter back at you, but this letter is also for my audience here on S98 --- many of whom are not Society members at all)

He [Florian Sydow] is discussing the 3rd round of the 666 year cycle in 1998 and how Ahriman stands in the service of this Sorath Sun-demon, the 2-horned Beast of the Book of Revelation: (my emphases in ALL CAPS)

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"Ahriman stands in the service of this Anti-Christ being. The latest strategy that we can see unfolding from this powerful alliance is to forcefully introduce a PRE-MATURE 'SPIRIT SELF' [MANAS] AGE without allowing for the maturing of the human ego and individual human freedom."

"... According to Steiner's reckoning, this 'Spirit-Self' Age is not meant to BEGIN [I repeat: BEGIN!] until the MIDDLE of the FOURTH MILLENNIUM A.D. [i.e. 4400 A.D. = End of Kali Yuga in 1900 + 2500 years to the appearance of Maitreya Buddha!]

". . . in light of the warp speed acceleration that Ahriman is bringing about, and the FALSE VERSION OF 'SPIRIT SELF' THAT IS BEING IMPOSED PREMATURELY, it will become all the more important to cultivate the pre-figuration of this future stage presently embodied in anthroposophy."

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I could probably formulate a very accurate mission statement for my Steiner98 List out of the above thoughts. I would also like to develop in future letters to you a number of inter-connected ideas that will fall like dominos once they are given the initial push by the realization that the timing is way too premature for bringing in this 6th epoch Philadelphia/Brotherhood epoch.

For now, I'd like to send this off to you and the Steiner98 List since it provides a great focal point of departure for the many threads that appear on this List, but never get fully developed.

Thanks again for your editing job on the Newsletter and I wonder if you have plans to put the newsletter online as an electronic journal?

Sincerely,

Father Tom,
Son of Dionysios, and
Holy Spirit in the Vine,
the Immoderator of <Steiner98@Intuition.org>

P.S. You might also be interested to know that the Bacchae have finally emerged on Steiner98.