Above is the second of two recent videos that, unusually, we are posting almost simultaneously at this site. (The first one is here.)
Both videos are previews, containing clips from a much longer (four hour!) video that should appear soon, after many days work.
Hopefully, these two short videos, though, can highlight certain themes that could get lost in the much bigger presentation—themes concerning Valentin Tomberg’s legacy that seem serious and important to me, even grave and urgent.
That may seem hyperbolic, I know. What can I say? Well, as I recently tweeted regarding this video and Meditations on the Tarot:
I know I may seem mad in these 6+ minutes. But have you grokked the sheer immensity on offer here: Philosophy, Theology, Mysticism, History, Science, Depth-Psychology, Epistemology, Ecclesiology, Hermeticism, Politics? More upon more. Worlds within worlds.
Myself on Twitter or X
(Yes, long term readers may be surprised, I am actually tweeting regularly now, often several times daily. Here is my Twitter feed.)
At any rate, whether ‘mad’ or not, both videos present conclusions after grappling with Tomberg’s work for over twenty five years now and reading his Meditations perhaps fifteen times in both French and English.
Time is lacking today to elaborate much more and for the most part the videos must speak for themselves—though as promised in the first of today’s posts, I offer now—not without a certain hesitancy— a little further, unusual content.
This content comes from a private letter written a while back. Little can be said about this letter, as there is no wish to make it un-private.
This however can be said: the recipients were well-versed in Anthroposophy and I thought it helpful to write in reference to the language and concepts of Anthroposophy.
The letter also spoke to my concern that Tomberg’s Meditations were being unintentionally and unconsciously marginalised, in favour of Tomberg’s earlier Anthroposophical works, works which he later rejected.
Here, at any rate, are a few lines from this private letter. Those who read them carefully, putting them together with the content in the videos, may glean some things I am unable to fully enter into now:
Tomberg outlined his Christian Hermeticism for the appalling times we live in—which is why it is important it is properly understood.
Moreover [. . . ] his Christian Hermeticism is more than just outline. It is a programme or a project with real hope for the West, at least. That is, provided the programme is understood as Tomberg intended, with all its corrections of Steiner and profound reverence for the Church intact.
Because it is not impossible Tomberg’s [hopes] could FAIL, if the Meditations are insufficiently heeded.
Part of the problem here is conflating Christian Hermeticism with Anthroposophy, which happens easily if the discrepancies [between the two] go unheeded.
This concerns me gravely and increasingly, I need to act on these concerns. For at the heart of this letter is my conviction (attained, I add, after not weeks, but years of painful struggle), that Tomberg’s late work—faithful to the Church, but also drawing on Jung, the French Hermeticists, the Tarot and much else Steiner disdained—radically breaks with Anthroposophy on numerous fronts.
Of course, profound continuities exist between Steiner’s towering vision and Tomberg’s Meditations. But profound discontinuities likewise exist—particularly as Tomberg’s Christian Hermeticism respects ecclesiastical hierarchy, dogma and Papal authority. Steiner would abhor these things, decrying them as utterly inappropriate for the Fifth Epoch of the Consciousness Soul.
And perhaps a little more may be gleaned from the first post here . . .
Foreword for Monarchy by Roger Buck
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