Steiner and the Secret Inner Circle of Twelve

Exploring Steiner’s Secret Inner Circle of 12
and the Etheric Link to Christian Rosenkreutz

By Giorgio Tarditi Spagnoli

There is a part of the esoteric history of the Anthroposophical Movement which has been forgotten: it is the crossroads from which many possible esoteric scenarios could have unfolded, and from where present esoteric paths departed. The following account is not to be taken as a judgement neither to the protagonists, nor to its implications. I have thus tried to balance all polarities out, with respect to historical facts. But one should also bear in full consciousness that this is one point of view and one interpretation of the events recounted, passed on mostly as oral tradition, and should not be taken as the only one.

Right at the founding of the Mystica Aeterna in 1906 Steiner worked to form an Inner Circle of 12 Adepts: they would have been selected among the cream of the European members. Among these European Adepts was the Italian esotericist Giovanni Colazza who was Marie von Sievers acquaintance, he joined the Misraim Service around 1909. In France there was the writer Eduard Schuré which Steiner met in Paris: he worked with him for the Mystery Dramas and even staged Schuré “Sons of Lucifer” drama at the First Goetheanum. There was also Max Heindel. Steiner was none other than his link with the mysterious Rosicrucian Master waiting for him in Europe while he was in working in New York.

At the time Steiner wanted to reinforce his local Rosicrucian presence in order to establish his Misraim Service in various European countries, so he must have asked his European representatives to write a book in their own language based on the contents of his cycle of conferences published under the name of “Rosicrucian Wisdom”, held in 1907. This cycle of lectures contains the essential cosmology taught in the Order back then. Steiner published it in German, Schuré published it in French (under the title “Divine Evolution”) and Heindel should have published it in Danish, but instead he ultimately wrote it in English in order to publish it in North America without having Steiner’s approval.

So in the meantime Max Heindel went back to North America with at least some of the rituals from the Mystica Aeterna, publishing what he had elaborated on from the unpublished notes of Steiner’s “Rosicrucian Wisdom” cycle during the 1907-1908 in the “Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception“ which was first dedicated to Steiner, so “not to seem like a plagiarist” in Heindel’s words. Some time later news reached Rudolf Steiner who referenced and criticized the fact in the Fifth Gospel cycle (1913). Steiner understood every single happening as a reflection of happenings in the spiritual world, for better or worse. Steiner felt that the new form of Rosicrucianism had to be first consolidated in Europe and then could be eventually brought to North America in the future since the American Epoch was to be the last one before the times of the Apocalypse (roughly in 6000-8000 A.D.). But Heindel anticipated this move by founding the Oceanside Rosicrucian Fellowship: in the beginning he was still hoping to maintain contact with Steiner in order to build a bridge between Europe and North America, but he refused.

This split between the Rosicrucianism of the Mystica Aeterna and the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, is at the origin of Heindel’s claim to be the “chosen representative of the Rosicrucian Elder Borther”: the tradition of the Rosicrucian Fellowship is not anthroposophical, since Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society only in 1912 as the external bearer of the Rosicrucianism of the Mystica Aeterna – but ironically indeed it is based on Steiner’s Rosicrucianism! Even if it misses the crucial problem of the duality of evil as Lucifer and Ahriman. In fact after Heindel’s move to the US Steiner disbanded the Misraim Service, a move which Heindel interpreted as indirectly electing him as the “only” Rosicrucian representative. In fact, in the beginning, the Rosicrucian Fellowship practiced an initiatic system of ten degrees taken directly from the Mystica Aeterna: Heindel describes it both in his books: Rosicrucian Cosmoconception and Freemasonry and Catholicism, this one taken almost verbatim from Steiner’s esoteric lessons for the Mystica Aeterna. After Heindel’s death in 1919, his wife, Augusta Foss Heindel took the leadership and gradually the initiatic system went into abeyance. It is surprising how the same process of drifting from the practice of esotericism to a more exoteric approach, happened twice in the same stream of Western Esotericism, first in the Rosicrucian Fellowship and then in the Anthroposophical Society.

Steiner then refounded the Anthroposophical Society in 1924 based on the New Mysteries, but still on the Rosicrucian core. Wegman was meant to hold the First Class. Marie Steiner to hold the Second Class and Rudolf Steiner the Third Class. The Second and Third Class should have been Ritual in character. Unfortunately after Steiner’s passing the Threshold in 1925 it didn’t go on due to the strife among the members of the Vorstand, which ended in the expulsion of Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede.

The Mystica Aeterna was an umbrella organisation aimed to gather all the Western Mysteries in the light of the Rosicrucian Renewal, and that is why other orders, such as the Stella Matutina (through Felkin and Meakin) have taken some of its fundamental teachings from it for its higher grades.

For the sake of clarity: Steiner has never been a “officially recognised” Freemason – in the sense it is intended by the United Grand Lodge of England (U.G.L.E.) or the American Lodges. Steiner and Marie von Sievers had been both admitted in 1905 in the the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) by Theodor Reuss albeit under the denomination of the Egyptian Rite of Memphis-Misraim. These Rites are deemed “irregular” for the “official” Masonry. The admission of Steiner and Marie Steiner was formal – without any initiation ceremony performed. In 1906 Reuss issued a Charter to open lodges of a mixed (male and female) O.T.O.-Memphis-Misraim Rite. In fact, in that time Reuss used the Memphis-Misraim charter he received from John Yarker to found the O.T.O. and so – in practice – Steiner received a O.T.O.-Memphis-Misraim Rite Charter. With it, Steiner also received the highest operative degrees of the Memphis-Misraim 33° 90° 96° equivalent to the X° of O.T.O.  But Steiner ignored all of this as he was interested only in the fact that he was in continuity with the ancient tradition of Esoteric Masonry. Steiner started the Misraim Service in 1906, and in 1908 severed all his connections with Reuss. Steiner used the Misraim Service or Mystica Aeterna as the Second and Third Class of the Esoteric Section of the German Theosophical Society. In 1914 it had 600 members.

But what was this Circle of the 12? One previous incarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz was a unnamed personality in medieval times. The boy was raised in the purest possible community, away from the Catholic church grasp and removed from the hardness of material life. It was required for him to be in a blank state and this is why it was necessary for him to be raised among the purest of heart. For Steiner this spiritual atmosphere was not good for itself but only functional to the initiation which the boy had to undergo. In fact  the boy was taken away in a monastery where he received tuition from 12 Wise Men. His astral body had to remain the purest possible.

These 12 had in themselves the occult wisdom of the mystical numbers 7 + 5: the 7 represented the ancient occult wisdom of the Seven Atlantean Oracles, one for each sacred planet, which after the Deluge was incarnated in the Indian Seven Holy Rishis, the pupils of the hierophants of the Seven Atlantean Oracles. The other 5 represented occult wisdom of the subsequent five cultural epochs of humanity: Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldaic, Graeco-Roman, and the last represented scientific knowledge of natural sciences from the fifth European epoch. As 7 they are connected to the forces of the stream of Time (7 stages of metamorphosis), but all together they are connected to the forces of the expanse of Space (12 members of the Adam Kadmon). The 12 taught the unnamed kid: he grew pure and full of wisdom, and when he was ripe, around 12 years he offered himself freely in sacrifice to wisdom, so the 12 Wise Men performed a peculiar ritual on him. They poured in the kid all the occult wisdom of humanity through words of power and the result of this was that the kid was initiated in a unique way: his etheric body became translucent and his physical body transparent. The kid woke up three and half days later and he was completely changed, he gave back all the occult wisdom in a new way, not as learned knowledge but directly as thoughts coming from the heart, heart thinking. The kid died shortly afterwards this mystical event. This was Christianity as the Synthesis of all Religion. Through his sacrifice thinking (Cross) and feeling (Rose) came together in the history of humanity, and the subsequent incarnation was then the personality known by the symbolic name of Christian Rosenkreutz. In this incarnation he had the Damascus experience of the Etheric Christ, which should then be increasingly experienced by spiritual inclined people around 1933 and marks the advent of Esoteric Christianity. It is to be noted that story with similar themes has been told by Goethe in his Rosicrucian tale “The Mysteries” – in which the main character is named Frater Markus, reminiscent of Marc who received the Egyptian initiation from the Egyptian Ormus together founding the Osiris-Christic Mysteries from which the Rosicrucian also took from.

The mystical initiation of the 12 was in turn an echo of the 12 Knights of the Round Table around the Holy Grail and Parsifal, the Grail Bearer. Then we see that Steiner wanted to compose the Circle of the 12 in order to link to the etheric body of Christian Rosenkreutz who in turn would have fostered the incarnation of the Christ-Ego in the First Goetheanum. This is why Steiner ended any relationship with Heindel: without him he was unable to form the the holy circle which could bring to a Rosicrucian Renaissance which has been delayed because of the breaking of the 30 Years War. In Steiner’s view this happened again: he believed the ritual of the Circle fo the 12 could bring Europe in a new era in which spiritual and scientific knowledge were one, preventing the national hatred between nations. This in turn connects to the enigmatic figure of Kaspar Hauser, the Child of Europe, which would have prevented romanticism to degenerate into decadentism, but the Jesuits thwarted his deed. The First World War broke out much like after the Bohemian Revolt in which the war between Catholics and Protestants which prevented the Rosicrucian utopia to come about through Rudolph II and Christina of Sweden. Since the spiritual call was not fulfilled by humans, its terrible counter-image, its shadow, materialised.

This was also an echo of the war between King Arthur and Mordred, which ended up in not letting the Grail be manifest as a collective “Vision Splendid” for the 12 Grail Knights, but only as an individual vision of three Grail Knights. The Round Table was broken because Arthur could not fulfill his role with Guinevere, the collective Christic utopia of Camelot could not be realised, then the Grail appeared only to chosen individuals: Bors who testify the existence of the Grail to the other Knights obtaining the Grail through Hope; Galahad obtained it through Faith being the predestined child of Guinevere and Arthur but which was substituted by Mordred born of incest and rape; and finally Parsifal who reached the Grail through Love and then brought it in continental Europe,  specifically in Germany through his son, the Swan Knight Lohengrin.

For Steiner, the Grail is the perfected human soul able to hold within herself the Christ, like the Sun Host hosted the Moon Chalice. And Christian Rosenkreutz through his previous incarnation had been able to make himself such vessel: in fact since the dawn of history he has been the warden of the Sun Mysteries. He has been the warden of the Solar Mysteries: he was Cain the grower of wheat, then Hiram Abiff the builder of the Solomon Temple, then Lazarus-John the Divine the disciple whom Jesus Christ loved. Then C.R.C. attained the state of Master of Wisdom:. as Lazarus he was initiated directly by Christ in the complete renewal of the Etheric Body, as the unnamed boy at the center of the Circle of the 12 he was purified in the Astral Body, and as Christian Rosenkreutz he received the Ego of Christ from the Holy Grail with the help of his initiator, Manes, previously known as Parsifal. Through this initiation he became a Christophorus or Christian Rosycross. This is what should have happened if the Circle of the 12 in the Misraim Service could fulfil its mission in the First Goetheanum.

The Misraim Service grade structure itself was also a path for man to recapitulate C.R.C. incarnations and initiations so to attune the members to the Rosicrucian Stream. So as Christ was the 13th at the center of the Circle of the 12 Apostles and the circle of the 12 Knights of the Round; C.R.C. was the 13th at the center of the new Circle of the 12, acting as the mediator of Christ. Steiner himself was to be enlightened by C.R.C., being the Thirteenth in the midst of the Circle of the 12, while the 12 held the IX° grade of “Epopt of the Illuminati”, Steiner had the X° grade of Rex Summus.

Another key factor in this story is the place. In fact the sublime Rite of the Circle of the 12 through the Etheric Link to Christian Rosenkreutz was to happen at a peculiar location: the First Goetheanum. In the small cupola there were 12 Thrones under the 12 Cosmic Columns: these represented the occult wisdom of the Circle of the 12. Judith von Halle speaks about the original project of having Seven Mystery Dramas performed: but only four were ready before the disbanding of the Misraim Service in 1914 due to the First World War and the breaking if the Circle of the 12. We again see the sevenfold stages of evolution in time and the twelvefold organisation of space. At the same time Steiner promoted his Social Three-folding to European statesman in order to realise a new form of Rosicrucian utopia: but this again failed while americanist plans went on thorough Anglo-American “fallen” Freemasonry lodges.

Since this was the second call, after the 30 Years War, Steiner considered the chance to be lost, and so the call spiritual world would recede and wait for a better time around 100-120 years i.e. around our time, the 2014-2024 window. This is why Steiner decided that the Mystica Aeterna project as an umbrella organisation for esoteric orders in Europe had been a failure and couldn’t be realised, he could again have the chance to found a Mystery School on a spiritual-scientific basis when Ita Wegman asked for it in 1923 while lecturing in Wales. This is the Michael School of which we only have the First Class out of the planned Three. Each Class should have correspond to one of the 3 triads of 3 degrees, for a total of 9 stages. The First Class nowadays contains only the Michael gesture as a ritual opening and closing but Wegman’s notebooks tells a different story, recounting of a ritual initiation given by Steiner himself to her as the bearer of the Rose-cross emblem.

This preventing the Mystery Dramas to be completed had an echo in the burning of the First Goetheanum in 1922: since the building didn’t solve its sacred function, it could not embody the Ego of Christ and passed on the etheric plane through fire. Rudolf Steiner himself on the verge of his passing the Threshold in 1925 gathered the closest pupils To establish the Second and Third Classes. This can be again linked to Ita Wegman’s role as head of the newly founded Michael School, an esoteric school dedicated to occult development with simpler rituals. While Marie Steiner should have carried on the Mystica Aeterna with the Second and Third Classes as originally intended.

What would have happened through the final performing of the Seven Mystery Drama and the embodiment of the Christ Ego in the First Goetheanum? The ritual of the Circle of the 12 through the link to the etheric body of Christian Rosenkreutz would have been the climax where the renewed occult wisdom, the Anthropos-Sophia, would manifest through the representative of humanity in the center. The people who experienced the First Goetheanum would have reached for the vision of the Etheric Christ in a new, free and conscious way. This would have been the culmination of the New Mysteries foretold on the stage of the Ancient Mysteries in which theatre itself was sacred. But this has not happened and instead of having the vision of the Etheric Christ around 1933, we had the breaking of the Second World War and the horror of concentration camps. The shadow of the unheeded spiritual call, materialised again.

Something deep and high happened in those times full of hope around the unique personality of Rudolf Steiner, the international role of the Misraim Service in Europe has been shrouded in silence and since forgotten. But in the light of this occult event in history, we can understand this: the First Goetheanum was a huge Western Mystery Temple! It was the restored Golden Temple of Hiram Abiff and Solomon in the Light of Christ. Hermann Linde was a painter, after attending Steiner’s conferences he joined the Anthroposophical Society: Steiner commissioned him the paintings for the First Goetheanum, and also a peculiar painting called the Golden Temple”, which shows the small cupola in the moment of the culmination of the Seventh Mystery Dramas with the Thrones Officers moving towards the imaginative experience of the Etheric Christ. From this we can infer clearly that he knew a great deal about the real purpose of the Goetheanum and the Mystery Dramas. In this painting you can see the zodiacal signs positioned over the Zodiacal Column Capitals, which in reality were not included in the organic design of the Goetheanum (designed by Steiner and Edith Maryon, a member of the Stella Matutina). Linde died six months after the arson of the Goetheanum: Steiner stated that Linde, while painting the cupola, tied his etheric body to the Etheric of the Goetheanum himself and so his life came to an end after the etheric body of the Goetheanum dissolved after its “death” on the physical plane.

The Second and Third Class with the Etheric Link to Christian Rosenkreutz are missing from the present Anthroposophical Society. Despite all the beautiful, genial and useful applications of Anthroposophy in the world for our future evolution there is danger that anthroposophy becomes completely exoteric. The is a need to return to the esoteric core of Anthroposophy, and this core is not only the First Class but also the Second and Third Class which were ritual in character. This esoteric core will bring about the necessary balance in the relationship between the center and the periphery of the Anthroposophical Movement as a whole, by resolving its inner struggles, between the contending forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. After the 1922 arson Steiner, heartbroken but not desperate, asked “… and now were would the the Seeker of the West go?” – Here we are.

By Giorgio Tarditi Spagnoli

Personal website: https://giorgiotarditispagnoli.wordpress.com

Further references on the Circle of the 12 and its relation to the Second and Third Class of the Esoteric Section:

1. Massimo Scaligero, From Yoga to the Rosecross, p. 132: “[in 1911] Steiner came in Italy, among other things, to meet Colazza [Scaligero’s teacher as well as one of the 12], having ascertained the degree of his personality [Colazza was Marie Steiner acquaintance, in order to realise a work of a ritual character and transcendental, with a small number of disciples esoterically qualified. The work should have functioned simultaneously in a cosmic, human and historical sense, and it would have unfolded thanks to the help of invisibile and visible Guides of humanity in a city of Central Europe. It would have been the realisation of a ritual, of which its entelechy, needed for the fatal moment of the history of humanity, required from the participants an absolute transcendence of the human element, and at the same time an act of courage to trespass the Threshold of the Spiritual World and establish a meeting there where it is possible, as a vehicle of vision, the peace profound. It was in the years 1913–1914. The insufficiency of one of the 12 caused the failure of the rite and from the failure of this rite an altogether different outcome was born as a result, the First World War with all its consequences, which since some causes had not been removed would have worked as premises for the Second World War.” the oral tradition passed down here in Italy from the pupils of Scaligero and Colazza identify the person who failed to comply to the 12 as Max Heindel, who had been Steiner’s pupil from 1907 to 1909. Heindel published the Rosicrucian Cosmoconcetion in 1909. But it is only in 1913 in the 5th Lecture of the Fifth Gospel that Steiner acknowledges what happened with Heindel. So we can assume that until before 1913 they were still in a sort of agreement.

2. Johannes Kiersch, A History of the School of Spiritual Science, From Polzer-Hoditz diary of 1924. p. 167: “Class III, 12. These would be the Esoteric Council. This Class III, called the Master Class, will be purely ritual in character, celebrating at the 3 altars [of the Misraim Service] at the same time. Having turned the relevant archangelic spirits in Class II, we will turn directly to the Spirit of the Earth, the Christ Spirit in Class III.” This is in reference to the continuation of the ritual work inaugurated by Steiner with the Misraim Service in 1905-1914 which in 1924 should have carried on in a new form, but with the same structure as before.

3. Johannes Kiersch, A History of the School of Spiritual Science, p. 194: Adolf Arenson in 1926, in a letter where he remember a past meeting of the higher degrees of the Misraim Service: “During a ceremonial in a higher degree, which only small number of people were permitted to attend [i.e. the Circle of the 12], Rudolf Steiner himself made it known that the collaboration of Marie Steiner must be seen to have full justification – not being symbolic as with the rest of us.”

4. Crispian Villeneuve, Rudolf Steiner in Britain, Volume 1, p. 324-327: Neville Meakin a member of Robert Felkin’s Stella Matutina had been sent by Felkin to Steiner in order to establish a collaboration between the Stella Matutina and the Misraim Service. In 1912 Meakin writes a long letter to Baron Waleen, another S.M. member and also anthroposophist, to explain how difficult it would be for a International Alliance of Esoteric Orders to be established in England, due to the influence of the Grand Lodge of England. Meakin gives a great deal of detail of the capital importance of the Misraim Service and its representatives in Europe.

5. Francis King, Ritual Magic in England, Chapter 11: here is a summary of the relationship between Steiner’s Misraim Service and the Stella Matutina. Only the chief of the Stella Matutina Robert Felkin was eventually admitted in the Circle of the 12 having been transmitted from the Steiner the Etheric Link to Christian Rosenkreutz, a ritual still performed to this day.

6. Pat Zalewski, Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries, p. 40: “Numerous trips were made to the continent by Felkin to try and contact the Third Order that Mathers spoke of but all were in vain. Just after 1911 Felkin met with R. Steiner, the Theosophist, and was admitted to a meeting of what he considered the Third Order in the flesh [i.e. the Third Class or Circle of the 12] . Since he considered Steiner as his superior he reported to England that he now had the Grades and support of the Third Order. Some of his colleagues were still skeptical. What had happened in fact was that Steiner was a member of an umbrella occult organization which many societies in it [the Misraim Service allowed members of other orders to participate in]. Steiner was the chairman at the time Felkin approached him, through Masonic contacts and Felkin was given a probationary seat on the council which gave certain privileges. Since the Stella Matutina was now a probationary member of this council Felkin claimed the title of 8=3 in rank. From Steiner he brought back the Process teachings of the aura and certain breathing exercises, as well as the Ritual of the Transmission of the Etheric Link. Also he had brought back the 7=4 and the 6=5 rituals.”

7. Felkin in his diary: “From what I was told abroad [by Steiner] I was under the impression… that a few, I was told twelve, were to be picked out of all the Temples to help C.R.C. when he again manifested in 1926-33 or 35. The whole of that was to have been told me face to face in 1914 when we went to Germany. We had tickets there which took us to a place S.S.E. of Austria, where we were to have been met and been taken to the Old Vault [the tomb of C.R.C.], and also to have met several Hidden Chiefs [of the Third Order or Class].” Taken from: Rudolf Steiner and the Golden Dawn, the article has many other instances and specific details about the Misraim Service and the Etheric Link. The vast majority of the details have been passed on by A.E. Waite another member of the Golden Dawn and later founder of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.

8. From A.E. Waite’s diary about Felkin’s experience with Steiner (again taken from the blog above): “August 13, 1912: 5th grade given to FR [Finem Respice, Felkin’s magical name and motto] in whispers, 6th grade account given privately. 2nd grade corr. with Fellow Craft and Portal. Teaching warrant verbal only. 6th grade enables Adept to communicate power, via unseen forces with whom he is linked [the Etheric Link to C.R.C.] . CRC reinc. from 1939 to 1950.”

9. In 1916 Felkin also wrote a very interesting address to the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) summarising all the Rosicrucian lore he came to know thanks to Steiner and his Misraim Service that by then was also part of the Stella Matutina teachings. You can read the whole here: The Rosicrucian Society in Europe, here Felkin speaks extensively about the 12 in connection to the initiation of the boy who later incarnated again as CRC, again a teaching that came directly from Steiner and that Steiner himself had spoken about in several lectures about C.R.C.

Now, you can read the full Rosicrucian Review of Steiner’s Anthroposphy here as the latest update to our blog.