The Occult Significance of Blood by Rudolf Steiner.
Title: The Occult Significance of Blood.
Author: Rudolf Steiner.
Genre: Non-fiction, occult, philosophy, religion, lecture.
Country: Germany.
Language: German.
Publication Date: October 25, 1906.
Summary: Steiner begins this book by quoting Faust: "Blood is a very special fluid.", and then goes on to explore the significance of blood in occult rituals.
My rating: 7/10.
My review:
♥ Professor Minor remarks that “the devil is a foe to the blood.”; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then - and quite rightly - draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend - and, indeed, in legends generally - blood always plays the same part.
♥ Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because the devil is hostile to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.
♥ The so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red-tape; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with something very much more profound, and that as a matter of fact the legends and fairy-tales of the various peoples are expressive of wonderful powers and wonderful events.
♥ This has a fixed principle. It does not say: “Here I stand as a seeker, just as I am. All that there is in the world must conform to my present point of view. What I am unable to perceive has no existence!” This sort of argument is about as sensible as if a blind man were to say that colours are simply matters of fancy. The man who knows nothing about a matter is not in the position to judge of it, but rather he into whose range of experience such matters may have entered.
♥ It is indicated in what Jean Paul says of himself in his autobiography. He relates that he could quite well remember the day when he stood as a child in the courtyard of his parents’ house, and the thought suddenly flashed across his mind that he was an ego, a being, capable of inwardly saying “I” to itself; and he tells us that this made a profound impression upon him.
♥ We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these materials into living forms; how, further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world.
♥ It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.