Here is my latest video, continuing my explorations on Rudolf Steiner and Valentin Tomberg—and also the American Sophiologist Michael Martin, whose work was recently featured in an extraordinarily long but key, important piece recently published at this website here.
Indeed, this video is in part (but only in part!) a reading of that long piece. But I do not simply read the essay aloud, I also amplify with further commentary. There are, then, many added interjections and digressions here, particularly on Tomberg, which are not in the essay. (Moreover some parts of the original article were also passed over.)
Now, this massive video (four hours!) comes in two distinct parts.
Part One mainly concerns Sophiology and Michael Martin. Part Two mainly concerns Valentin Tomberg. But there is plenty of Tomberg in the first part and further reflections on Martin and Sophiology in the second.
There is also much on Anthroposophy (whether explicit or implicit) in both parts.
The second part raises among other things intense (at least for me) questions regarding Tomberg’s legacy.
Could it be threatened? (Albeit unintentionally or unconsciously?)
Personally, I believe so . . .
To further help people navigate these four hours, here is a Table of Contents:
00:00:04 Part One: (Mainly on) Sophiology and Michael Martin
00:05:25 Tomberg and Technocracy
00:10:40 Solovyov, Tomberg, Martin: A Sophiological Thread
00:17:09 ‘It Started with an Idea . . .’
00:25:14 Evil in the Church
00:28:29 My Profound Difference with Michael Martin 00:34:45 Sacramental Transformation
00:38:08 A Hundred Thousand Times a Day—At Least
00:43:01. How to Obscure the Wisdom and Glory of God
00:48:05 On Becoming a Product
00:50:40 Entering the Demonic
00:51:43 An Artificial World
00:54:13 Tomberg:‘Do Not Consult Herod and His People’
00:57:17 What is Sophiology?
01:00:35 Contemplative Engagement
01:02:57 Contemplating Belloc
01:05:23 Contemplating the World
01:09:08 Sergei Bulgakov and the Soul of the World
01:11:59 Catholicism Prostituted to Enlightenment Rationalism
01:15:13 The Impoverishment of Catholic ‘Culture’
01:18:15 Why Good People Turn New Age
01:23:51 Comfortably Numb?
01:26:08 Technocracy Rising
01:28:19 A Different Mode of Seeing
01:30:49 Science Estranged from Reality
01:36:33 ‘The Universe Was At Last Disenchanted’
01:40:04 The Despair of Freud
01:41:45 The Secularisation of the Mystery of Marriage
01:42:43 Tomberg and Secularisation
01:45:06 Anglican Sacraments?
01:48:30 Tomberg and Transubstantiation
01:51:03 The Consequences for England
01:53:02 Back to Sophiology
01:54:22 Tomberg on Autonomous Intelligence—Separated from God
01:56:37 Sophiology: A Regeneration of Life
01:59:59 Both/And
02:01:35 Part Two: (Mainly on) Valentin Tomberg
02:02:57 Hermetic Depths, Hermetic Danger
02:03:45 Obedience and Fidelity to Church and Tradition
02:08:49 Tomberg: No Surgery
02:15:47 ‘Transformed in the Blood of the Lamb’ 02:17:41 Conflating the Two Tombergs: A Serious Problem
02:20:08 A Vague, Elusive, Insubstantial Church?
02:21:00 A Centralised, Hierarchical Church
02:22:37 The Sacraments: ‘Destined to Serve the Whole of Mankind’
02:23:54 Tomberg on ‘the Protestants who have Separated Themselves from . . . the Church’
02:25:02 ‘The Catholic Church being Catholic or Universal Cannot Consider Itself a Particular Church . . .’
02:25:57 ‘Is It Truly Necessary to Deny Three Times Before the Cock Crows in Order to be Accepted?’
02:27:40 How to Become ‘Rigid’
02:30:28 ‘Really, I Should Have a Different Name Now’
02:41:05 When We Conflate the Two Tombergs
02:39.32 Mystery, Dreams, Prayers
02:02:57 Much is at Stake
02:42:40 Tomberg on the Counter-Reformation as the ‘True Reformation’
02:47:10 Enlightenment Monsters
02:52:07 Until the Fall Be Undone
02:57:57 Michael Martin, Catholic Revival and the Future
03:04:43 Anthroposophical Anathema
03:08:24 Dwelling on Belloc, Chesterton, Waugh, Tomberg, Martin . . . and Joseph Shaw
03:14:40 England’s Green and Pleasant Land 03:16:25 England Transformed (Pugin vs Steiner)
03:19:20 *Some* Sort of Christendom Renewed
03:21:31 Only This Can Avert Catastrophe
03:24:09 Tomberg and Solovyov: Men from Eastern Europe
03:28:45 Avoiding the way to Death: Tomberg’s Call to Hierarchy
03:33:10 The Immensity of Meditations on the Tarot
03:35:01 After Anthroposophy: Tomberg’s Project to Regenerate the West
03:45:20 God Bless Michael Martin
03:46:20 For the Sake of the World
03:49:14 On Avoiding Clickbait ‘Traditionalism’
Foreword for Monarchy by Roger Buck
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