Terry Boardman - The Enigma of Canon XI

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The Enigma of Canon XI The 'Abolition' of the Spirit The Year 869 & Its

Significance in the Destiny of Europe

This article first appeared in New Viewmagazine Second Quarter Spring 2008

At the Christmas Conference for the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society Dec.24th 1923 1st Jan. 1924 , RudolfSteiner restored to western culture something thathad been lost for nearly 1100 years, namely, the threefold image of Man once knownas the Trichotomy - the image of Man as consisting of body, soul and spirit. This hadbeen missing since the year 869, when it was deviously 'abolished' by fiat of a ChurchCouncil. In the years 1916-1924 Steiner laid ever greater emphasis on the historicalsignificance of the 8th Ecumenical Council of Constantinople 869 (1), which is usuallycompletely ignored in conventional histories, and which, he often said, had "abolishedthe human spirit". By that he meant the Council had denied the separate existence ineach individual of a spiritualsoul through which the individual could seek communionwith the spiritual world; instead, the individual was to depend on the Church and itshierarchy for guidance. The 11th Canon (ruling) of the Council closed off for westernersthe individual's path to the spiritual world, which remained open in Asia throughmeditation and other spiritual practices.

The Council of 869

What was the real significance of the year 869, and what was the context inwhich the Council took place? There is not the space here to go into the momentousevents happening in the spiritualworld at that time, which Rudolf Steiner describes inconsiderable detail in various places; we shall restrict ourselves to the earthlyplane.(2) On the surface, the 8th Ecumenical Council (869-870) (3) had one

overriding purpose the joint effort by the Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) andthe Roman Pope Adrian II (867-872; also known as Hadrian II), for very differentreasons, to discredit and seal the overthrow of the Orthodox Patriarch ofConstantinople, Photios, which is why it is sometimes known as the anti-PhotianCouncil. Basil 's reasons were short-term and political; having come to power in acoup he needed to unify the empire behind him; he also needed western aid indefeating the Saracens and wanted to out-manoeuvreRome in controlling Bulgaria but carefully. The stridently anti-Roman Photios was an obstacle to Basil 's aims. Forhis part,Adrian sought to establish papal precedence over the patriarchs of the Eastand also to impose Rome 's spiritual suzerainty over the Slavic peoples and thepeoples of the Balkans. Like Adrian 's predecessor Pope Nicholas I ('the Great', 858-

867), Patriarch Photios was keen to evangelise the Bulgars, Slavs andtheVarangian Rus (Russians) Patriarch Photios, and disagreed strongly with Rome onvarious theological issues such as the understanding of the Trinity. Heand Nicholas were the two greatest leaders their respective churches produced in the9th century, and their wills crossed mightily. In 867 Photios evenexcommunicatedNicholas , who had, however, died beforehand. For Rome, then, thestruggle against was above all a matter of establishing the spiritual authority of theLatin West over Constantinople and the Eastern Church and of having its authorityrecognised too among the peoples of eastern Europe.

The 8th Ecumenical Council met in ten sessions 5th Oct. 869 28thFeb. 870 in

Constantinople's greatest imperial church, that of Hagia Sophia (the Holy Spirit). Atthe first session there were, unusually, only 30 clerics present from both Empires ofEast and West; by the last session the number had risen to 103, still not great byprevious standards of such meetings. In order to attend, all were required to signbeforehand an extraordinary document, the libellus satisfactionis, an oath ofobedience recognising the primacy of the Pope in Rome , for this was a Council utterlydominated by the Latin Church, imposing its will on the East. The proceedings were


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overseen by a Roman Cardinal and directed by three papal legates who had broughtfrom Rome the documents agreed on at a synod there in the summer and which theyintended to have the eastern clergy at Constantinople simply approve. The documentsbrought from Rome consisted of a long Definition text and 27 Canons. All the canonsthe others deal for the most part with matters of church administration, except for theshort Canon 11 which relates to a matter of dogmatic theology. Sandwiched, like thedevil in the detail, between two other innocuous Canons, it anathematises thedoctrine of "the two souls", and even that phrase is mentioned only once. Thecomplete text reads:

Though the old and new Testamentteach that a man or woman has onerational and intellectual soul, and all thefathers and doctors of the church, whoare spokesmen of God, express thesame opinion, some have descended tosuch a depth of irreligion, throughpaying attention to the speculations ofevil people, that they shamelessly teachas a dogma that a human being hastwo souls, and keep trying to prove theirheresy by irrational means using awisdom that has been made foolishness.Therefore this holy and universal synodis hastening to uproot this wickedtheory now growing like someloathsome form of weed. Carrying in itshand the winnowing fork of truth, withthe intention of consigning all the chaffto inextinguishable fire, and makingclean the threshing floor of Christ, inringing tones it declares anathema theinventors and perpetrators of such

impiety and all those holding similar views; it also declares and promulgates thatnobody at all should hold or preserve in any way the written teaching of the authors ofthis impiety. If however anyone presumes to act in a way contrary to this holy andgreat synod, let him be anathema and an outcast from the faith and way of life ofChristians.(4)

This Canon was not at all discussed by the Council; it simply went through 'on the nod'.

Why was it inserted at all? It has often been implied that this was aimed at Photioswho was allegedly teaching this doctrine, but in fact, there is no real evidence that hedid. He denied pre-existence and reincarnation, but did in one place distinguish

between a higher spiritual soul and a lower animal soul(5) Apart from this, hiswritings show no other sign nor is he know in the Orthodox tradition for being aparticular firm representative of the two souls doctrine. However, he was very muchinterested in the question of the Holy Spirit, and between 860 and 869 he did stronglyadvocate the cult of the Virgin Mary, which in the East was always somehowconnected with the feminine Sophia being in the Old Testament sense of the femininedivine wisdom (ruach spirit, wind, breath)(6). Also, in 868 the two great Orthodoxmissionaries Cyril and Methodius, who had been sent out on their missions into theBalkans and beyond by Photios arrived in Rome, where they were treated well by PopeAdrian and Anastasius but where Cyril died (14 Feb. 869). Significantly, Photios is notmentioned in the Canon as having actually taught the two souls doctrine, though thesix other Canons that criticise him do not fail to take him specifically to task on othermatters.


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Canon 11seems tohave been"slipped in". Itseems not tobelong to thewhole whenread incontext. This

is but thebeginning ofthe mystery.For it is thesourceof Steiner 'scontentionthat preciselyhere, in thisCanon XI, the

Church "abolished the spirit", and moreover, in Christendom's great church of the HolySpirit. (left)

The teaching of the two souls can be traced back to thethreefoldpicture of the humanbeing shared by the Greeks the Trichotomy. Aristotle spokeof pneuma (spirit) psyche(soul), andsoma (body). This idea, the reflection of ancientwisdom and real insight is also reflected in the teachings of St. Paul ; in 1Thessalonians 5:23 for example, he speaks clearly ofpneumatikos anthropos (spiritman), psychikos anthropos (soul man), andsomatikos anthropos (bodily man). Bythe 4thcentury, however, this threefold picture of Man was beginning to crumble asmerely rational intellectualism developed and spiritual insight declined. Human beingswere beginning to feel that they had their own ideas, instead of experiencing divinebeings thinking in them or through them as with the Greeks and earlier cultures, but

greater intellectual development meant confusion and disputation as each insisted onhis own understanding. The threefold nature of the spiritual world, and especially theHoly Spirit in man and world was no longer understood, especially in the West.There were however, Gnostics in the East who maintained that Man had two souls, ahigher spiritual one that lived in the light of spiritual reason and a lower one thatresponded to the needs of the body. Ultimately, this doctrine of the two souls was thelast remnants of the knowledge that the individual human being has his own spirit(the higher 'soul'), a spirit that in its essential being is not the same as the soul. In aneffort to rid themselves of these troublesome Gnostic views, the Church Fathers had in382 at the Synod of Romepronounced the anathema on the views of Apollinaris ofLaodicea, who had declared that there was never human consciousness in Jesus .

"There are no two Sons," he declared, "such as God's Son of Nature, that is, of God, anda Son of Grace, the human being from Mary ." After the 4th century, and particularly inthe West, real understanding of what had happened at the Baptism in the Jordan(Epiphany) faded away, so that Roman clerics in the 9th century could misuse adecision made in Rome in the 4th century, ignore the context in which it was made (i.e.understanding of the Baptism), and twist Apollinaris' denial of the human nature ofJesus into a denial of the spiritual nature of Man. This amounts to the one sinwhichChrist said would never be forgiven, the sin against the Holy Spirit.(7)The way this was done in 869 was so devious that it was hardly perceived any longerby most clergy as the new dogma slipped in over the ensuing decades and centuriesunder the threshold of consciousness. At only one other Council did the dogma of thesingle soul and of a dichotomous human nature (body and soul only) raise its head;this was the Council of Vienne (1311-1312) that condemned the Order of the KnightsTemplar. The 11thCanon in 870 thus signified the anathematisation of the individual'sequivalent experience of the the Whitsun experience, the second baptism thoughthe fire of the Holy Spirit through union with one's own spirit being; westernindividuals were not to be allowed this experience. "The spirit was notspoken againstin 869-70; it was simply no longer mentioned."(8)


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Despite their claims that they were returning to the ways of the earlyChurch, Protestant Reformers too rejected the idea of the Trichotomy (body, soul, andspirit) because they held that it implied a division of the unity of the soul, and thatfurther, it implied that the Holy Spirit, which they believed was only of Father and Son,was also accessible to the human being. The famous Swiss Protestanttheologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) wrote:One can therefore not describe him [the human being] as spirit, because spirit in thebiblical sense denotesthat which God is and does for Man, and also because, in thebiblical sense Man is identical with the soul (of his body)....The spirit is immortal,

which is precisely why it cannot be identical either with Man or with a part of thehuman being. The spirit is the fundament, that which determines the boundary of theentire human being; in this sense it is of its own nature and is really no thirdelementwithin the human being, no further element of its nature that enters into thesoul and body."(9)The consequences of the 11th Canon continued on after the Reformation to affect thewhole development of modern European culture. The Protestants were unaware of thefact that they were upholding a 9th century papal dogma.And so there developed on the protestant side amaterialisticnatural scienceandan unspiritual philosophy. Later philosophers...do not suspect that they are in factgood Catholics insofar as they always study the body on the one hand and the soul onthe other and are of the opinion that such studies are based on real observation. Theyhave no idea that they are following the dogma of the 8th Ecumenical Council whenthey do not speak of spirit. ....Almost all psychological doctrines are built upon theerror of the twofold division of the human being.... One speaks of the fundamentalproblems of physical psychology or of psychophysical parallelism, but has in fact lostsight not only of the spirit, but also of the soul. The tendency of our times isincreasingly towardsabolition of the soul also. (10)It is not the case that Pope Nicholas or his Counsellor Anastasiuswere behind 'theabolition of the spirit'. Here we come to another, more sinister aspect ofthe matter. Pope Nicholas died in 867 and was followed by Pope Adrian II , a muchweaker man.Rome and Central Italy were turbulent places to be in those days. Thedescendents of the Lombard tribal leaders were developing into early mediaeval

aristocratic familes, some of them extremely unscrupulous, vicious and violent. Theyallied themselves with corrupt and decadent members of the Church hierarchy, threeof whom were the Papal legates who would be sent to Constantinople in 869. In theautumn of 868 these forces persuaded the Pope to put Anastasius on trial on trumpedup charges; he was stripped of all his offices and forced into exile. He fled to the courtof the Frankish Emperor Louis II , who made him the tutor of his daughter. Anastasiusattended the last session of the 8th Council in February 870 as the Emperor's emissary;he was there on a mission to arrange a marriage between Louis ' daughter and theson of the Byzantine Emperor (it fell through). It was only because of Anastasius'foresight in having a copy of the complete record of the Council made that we knowwhat happened there. Meanwhile, when Anastasius had been out of Rome , from

autumn 868 to autumn 869, Pope Adrianhad been under the influence of the corruptnobles and clergy. It was from among this circle, a circle in which, accordingto RudolfSteiner black arts were used, that someone it is still not known who produced the documents that included Canon XI. They appeared at the Roman synodin the summer of 869 and were then taken to Constantinople by the threelegates DeaconMarinus , and Bishops Donatus and Stephanus. Marinus would laterbecome Pope as a result of the murder of Pope John VIII in 882, after whichthe Vatican fell into utter decadence until the 960s. Canon XI then, which "abolished"the individual spirit, emerged in a devious way from an unknown source. This was atime in Church history when clever and unscrupulous men were beginning to useforged 'ancient' documents alleged to be from the early Church to prove their right tothis or that. The most infamous of these, the so-called Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, hadsurfaced by the early 850s, so that, if indeed Canon XI was inspired by the example ofthe Roman Synod of 382, there was already a precedent for such deception. Certainly,the false Decretals were soon appealed to in Rome 's battle against Photios.We can note in passing the mysterious fact that the numbers 8 + 6 + 9 add up to 23,which contains both the number of duality and trinity within it.(11) Also, the process ofestrangement that was so accelerated in 869-70 by the disagreement with Photios


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culminated in 1054 with the Great Schism of the two churches of East and West,which even now is not yet healed. Mysterious too in this context is the arithmeticalfact that 869 + 1054 = 1923, the year of the existential crisis and resurrection of theAnthroposophical Society, when at the Christmas Conference in December, RudolfSteiner restored to western culture the Trichotomy, the threefold image of Man, thussignifying that the time to begin to roll back the heavy iron curtain of 869 that hadclosed off the spirit had now arrived.

Helmuthvon Moltke

Before he laid the Foundation Stone of the refounded Anthroposophical Society onthat morning of 25th December 1923Rudolf Steiner declared to those present: "Let thefirst words to resound through this room today be those which sum up the essence ofwhat may stand before your souls as the most important findings of recent years." Bythose "most important findings" he surely meant the elaboration of the threefoldpicture of man that he had developed in works such as Riddles of the Soul(1917) thathe had been working on through the war years. And during that time he had beenconnected with a very special individual. Unlike New Age gurus of that time orthis, Steiner did not indulge in channelling communications from those who hadcrossed the threshold of death. He always emphasised consciousness and consistentlywarned against trance states or anything that reduced the human state ofwakefulness. However, there was one very special individual whose post-mortemthoughts he did, through his own spiritual capacities, communicate and those only tothe deceased person's wife. The individual in question happened to be the man whohad had supreme responsibility for the German army at the outbreak of the war inAugust 1914 Chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Helmuth von Moltke. He hadbeen responsible for the campaign of August-September 1914 that had failed to winthe much hoped-for quick and decisive victory for Germany.Rudolf Steiner saw in Helmuth von Moltke the reincarnation ofPope Nicholas I. (12) Inboth lives, in positions of terrible responsibility in the middle of a Europe in great crisis,this individuality was faced with keeping at bay both East and West and withpreserving a central cultural space that could be of service to humanity in the future.

Nicholas and his close adviser Anastasius Bibliothecarius faced a strong spiritualchallenge from Photios and the church of Orthodox Christianity in the East, and morephysical challenges from marauding, anti-Christian Vikings in the northwest andSaracens in the southwest (Spain, Sicily). He also had to combat the egotistical andanarchic tendencies of the nominally Christian Frankish leaders of the territories ofthe West and those self-seeking clergymen who supported them and were supportedby them. Within this still superficially Christian society of the Franks there was yetmuch that was pagan and it included an esotericism that was related to the ancientcults of the Druids and the nordic initiations of the individual will as well asbeing inwardly open both to Celtic influences from Ireland, all of which, infused by thesouthern culture of Provence, would in later centuries coalesce in the knightly cult of

chivalry. But in the 9th

century it was still far too wild and undisciplined. Nicholas andAnastasius were far-sighted men; they saw that they had to create a social andcultural space in Europe that would not be overwhelmed either by the will forces of thenorth-west or the mystical and ritualistic thinking of the south-east a space of form,intellectually disciplined, that could hold its own against these two, more compulsivepoles, a space in which eventually, individual and community could find theirbalance. Nicholas had very little at his disposal except the power of his formidablemind and will, and the advice of his counsellors, especially AnastasiusBibliothecarius .In addition to all these problems, in the vicinity of the Pope, threateningly, were darkand sinister forces in the corrupt clergy and the ambitious nobility ofnearby Campania ; these forces sometimes resorted to the black arts.(13)


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By contrast, Helmuth vonMoltkecommanded the most formidablearmy in Europe but was saddled with analmost impossible strategic task war ontwo fronts against the two giant armiesof Russia andFrance and the resources ofthe world's largest empire, the British; hewas also burdened with two rather uselessallies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey . In his

immediate environment von Moltke too hadto deal with the chaotic will impulses ofunscrupulous men, the Kaiser and thosearound him. Thomas Meyer 's book makesclear that a number of these men had alsobeen incarnated in 9th century Italy , some ofthem in that degenerate Mystery stream. Foran understanding of the complexities of vonMoltke 's situation and his destiny, Meyer 'sbook is a must-read. Suffice it to say herethat what began for Europe and the West inthe mid-9th century with Pope Nicholas I(and the decisions he took then forprofound and historically justified reasons)came almost full circle in the lifetimeof Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916) (right).

Rudolf Steiner gave a memorial address soon after the General's death on 18 June 1916and also spoke verses which, in their threefold structure, prefigure in a seed-like waythe Foundation Stone Meditation of 1923.(14) Steiner continued to mediatecommunications from the spiritual individuality of Helmuth von Moltke until hehimself succumbed in September 1924 to the illness that would kill him six monthslater; the last such communication was on 17 June 1924, only three months before hefell ill. The fact that as far as this author knows there was no other contemporary

individual with whom, after the person's death, Rudolf Steiner had such anextraordinary relationship, points to the outstanding significance with which Steinerregarded Moltke, recognising in him someone whose own destiny was profoundlybound up with that of central Europe, the region in which Steiner was unfolding hisown teaching. Helmuth von Moltke's destiny was related to Rudolf Steiner's own lifetask, which was to bring healing to western culture, and through it to the world as awhole, out of the cultural ground of Central Europe; for this to happen, Central Europeitself had to be defended and affirmed as a cultural space between the poles of Eastand West. Since the events of the 9th century, European culture had been riven forreasons of historical necessity by the consequences of a dualistic picture of Man thathad resulted in Europe being pervaded by the materialistic worldview that had

produced the catastrophe of the war through which Steiner and Moltke were bothliving. In addressing Moltke, Steiner knew he had before him the individuality who,as Pope Nicholas I had had the karmic task of separating off central and westernEurope from the more direct spiritual influences of the East. This was so that the Westwould in fact be able to develop, through the application of rationality and intellect aswell as its own culture's forces of feeling and will, the skills of natural science andtechnology that are needed by mankind.

Lotharingia and Europe

One of the aids to historical understanding that Rudolf Steinertaught was what couldbe called the 'principle of the axial year'. He described it this way:In the deeper structure of events as they proceed we may discover a repetition of whatproceeded them...If we consider the year 1879 [as axis], we can proceed to 1880, or wecan back to 1878. If we proceed to 1880, we shall observe in the deeper spiritualstructure of that year that what has happened in 1878 is still active within it; behindthe events of 1880 there stand as active forces the events of 1878...in starting from an


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incisive historical event, you will find the proceeding spiritual event repeated in thesubsequent one.(15)

If we then take as axis the year 1413,the beginning of our modern epochaccording to spiritual science (16), theevents of 1412 will somehow bereflected in those of 1414. That meansthat we can expect some correlation

between the events of the year 869and those of the year 1957, as thosetwo years are 544 years on either sideof 1413. What happened in 1957? Thesigning of the Treaty of Rome! Thatwas the beginning of the EuropeanEconomic Community , today'sincreasingly monolithic EuropeanUnion. The process that led to theTreaty was initiated 7 years earlierbyJeanMonnet (1888-1979)(left), thewily technocrat and consummatenetworker who was responsible foreconomic planning in two world warsand for post-war French economicreconstruction. During the war, in1943 Monnet had drawn up a plan tounite Europe politically through the'back door' - by economic means, thefirst step to be the combination of the

coal and steel resources of eastern Franceand western Germany. He specificallyreferred to this plan as the 'recreation of Lotharingia'.(17) This is remarkable because869 was the year the kingdom of Lotharingia (Lorraine) disappeared. Charlemagne's

empire was divided between his three grandsons by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 (seeillustration); the Middle Kingdom, at first unnamed was from 855 onwards known asLotharingia after its ruler, Charlemagne's great-grandson Lothar II and existed for afurther 13 years. It comprised a long swathe of lands thatincluded Holland and Belgium in the north,the Rhinevalley, Luxemburg , Alsace , Switzerland and the whole of northern Italy asfar as Rome . It thus included territory from all six countries of the EEC, founded in1957, plus Switzerland. This middle realm between what would later become Franceand Germany disappeared in 869 when two of Charlemagne's grandsons, Ludwig,king of Austrasia (later Germany), and his brother half-Charles the Bald, king ofNeustria (later France) joined forces to invade the kingdom of their brother Lothar II

after he died (8 Aug. 869), leaving an infant son whose legitimacy was in question. Bythe Treaty of Mersen (870) Charles andLudwig divided Lothar's lands northof Italy between them; northern Italy remained as a rump which soon broke up intosquabbling princedoms and duchies. Geopolitical Trichotomy was thus reduced to aDichotomy, one could say, and paralleled what happened theologically at the sametime in Constantinople.(18)In 869, Lotharingia died, and in 1957, it was, in a sense,reborn.


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1957 was also the last full yearof the pontificateofPope Pius XII (1939-58).Seven years earlier in 1950 thesame year as Monnet erectedthe European Coal and SteelCommunity that was modelledon his idea of a new Lotharingia- Pius XII had declared ex

cathedra (i.e. the declarationwas held to be infallible) thedogma of the Assumption of theVirgin Mary which stated thatMary, "having completed thecourse of her earthly life, wasassumed body and soulintoheavenly glory." [my emphasis]This was the first such dogmabased on papal infallibility sincethe dogma of papal infallibilityitself was first declared at theVatican I Council of 1870. Thetreaty of Rome came into forceon Ist Jan. 1958; the new Pope,John XXIII, elected later that year,soon announced his intention tohold Vatican II, the second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican; this far-reaching eventtook place 1962-65. Vatican I had been held 1869-1870, thus exactly 1000 years afterthe Constantinople Council of 869-70. In accordance with the above-mentioned axialyear principle, 1869 corresponds to 957, the second year of the pontificate of PopeJohn XII (955-964). The first half of the 10th century was perhaps the mostdegenerate period in the Vatican's long history.(19) It was also a time of major

significance in Central Europe in that Otto I, King of Germany (936-973), who wasmarried to Edith of Wessex, re-established the Holy Roman Empire (962) and broughtthe papal humiliation to an end. Of the motives of Emperor Otto in refounding theEmpire in 962, historian Geoffrey Barraclough wrote:

...it was not so much to Charlemagne that Otto looked back, as to Lothar I, whocombined the imperial title with rule over the Middle [Frankish] Kingdom [known asLotharingia 855-870]...the imperial title was...important to Otto as the highestexpression and legitimization of his right to rule not over Italy alone...but over all theterritories of the old Middle Kingdom [Lotharingia] which had come into Germanhands...(20)

Otto I began the process that would bind the states of Germany with the Italianpeninsula and for a thousand years, involve German-speaking Emperors in the affairsof Italy. The period that corresponds to his time and the Papacy of John XII around theaxis of 1413 is 1859-70, when Germans and Italians separated from each other andformed their own nation states. 1870, the year papal infallibility was declared atVatican I, 1000 years after the Council of 869-870, thus saw the birth of modernGermany and Italy under a historical star that was not exactly propitious. Then,Germany and Italy 'joined together' again on 1st Jan. 1958 when the Treaty of Romecame into force, the first year of the new Pope John XXIII, who created Vatican II. A keyin understanding all this is the 'Middle Kingdom' of Lotharingia (Lorraine), the land, orperhaps we could say, 'the concept of the middle'. This territorial concept, whichincludes such places as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Brussels, Aachen, Cologne,the Ruhr, Strasbourg, Basel, Zurich, Geneva, Marseilles, and in Italy, Milan, Venice andRome, became the foundational basis for the European Economic Community.Following a conference in Sicily(21), the EEC was founded by the Treaty of Romein1957, which corresponds to 869.


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In 1922-23, when Rudolf Steiner was speakingabout the need for a new, threefold socialorder in Europe based on the threefold pictureof Man, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894-1972), (left) an aristocrat withfamily roots deep in Lotharingia, began acontrary movement; his 1923manifestoPaneuropa advocated a United

States of Europe rooted in Catholic spiritualityand exclusive of both Britain and Russia. Thehonorary President of the Paneuropa Uniontoday is Otto von Habsburg, son of the lastHabsburg Emperor. Coudenhove-Kalergi'sefforts gave birth to the Council of Europe,which since its founding in 1949, hasconcerned itself with the cultural and politicaldirection of the emerging European superstate.Coudenhove's goal of uniting Europe throughtraditional concepts of culture failed in face ofthe dominant economic drives of the post-waryears, which were understood by thebusinessman and technocrat Jean Monnet. Itwas Monnet's economicpath to Europeanunion, via the reconstruction of Lotharingia,

which supplanted Coudenhove-Kalergi's Vatican-oriented initiatives in 1945-50. Butwhat was common to both these two very different individuals was their strongpersonal links to Washington and the American elite. Without backing from thatquarter, neither of them would have succeeded. As it is, aspects of the symbology ofCoudenhove-Kalergi's movement the EU flag and anthem, for example and theEuropean Parliament have been grafted in an almost marxist superstructural senseonto the economic infrastructural machine generated by Monnet and his allies.

In all the seemingly mundane historical developments considered in this article, onecan discern something much more profound and spiritual working within the destinyof the West. It is the struggle for the image of the human being. The Vatican, whichwas responsible for the original 'excommunication' of the spirit, in 869-70, patientlyand purposefully as ever, aims for a Europe that will be animated by but one soul that of the Church, guided by its intellectual hierarchy. From the West come thoseanti-spiritual economic and scientific forces which would root out both soul and spiritand subjugate all social and cultural life to the drives of economics and genetics aculture of body only. Neither of these forces belong to any truly human future, as theylead to the denial of human freedom; they are forces of dualism on the one hand andeven what can be called materialistic monism on the other forces which insist

respectively, that the human being is either only of body and soul, or even of body only.Both of them claim that modern human beings can only be informed, guided and ledby a priesthood, whether religious and overt, or scientific, financial and covert, and inthis insistence on the impossibility of the individual human spirit finding its own wayto freedom and truth, they both reflect the spectre of the 11th Canon of the Council ofConstantinople in 869. Meanwhile, the image of the human Trichotomy, the trinitarianimage of the human being as body, soul and spirit,described and articulated byRudolf Steinerin 1923, is struggling to re-emerge in a modern form, and slowly butsurely, is gaining ground.

NOTES(1) It is noteworthy that Steiner 's main philosophical work The Philosophy ofFreedom was published in 1894, the same year as Otto Willmann's History of Idealism.It was from Willmann's book, one of the few to discuss the Council of 869 in anydetail, that Steiner grasped the significance of the Council. See R.Wagner, 'Das achtekumensiche Konzil von 869' in H.H.Schffler ed., Der Kampf um dasMenschenbild(Verlag um Goetheanum, 1986)


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(2) RS goes into the spiritual dimension in the eight volumes containing his lectureson Karmic Relationships (1924) especially Vols 3 & 4(3)Also known as the Fourth Council of Constantinople(4) Schffler, pp.19-20.(5) Markus Osterrieder , Verschweigen des Geistes (Silencing the Spirit)www. celtoslavica.org/bibliothek/trichotomie.pdf(6) See n.5(7) Matt. 12: 30-32(8) See n.5

(9) See n.5(10) Schffler p.28(11) This number contains a challenge: is the 2 before the 3 in the sense of primacy,superiority as in , the inverted pentagram? Or do we see the 3 following the 2 intime, the 2 giving way to the 3, the age of Dichotomy yielding to the New Age ofTrinity?(12) Thomas Meyer's fascinating and illuminating book Light for the New Millennium Rudolf Steiner's Association with Helmuth and Eliza von Moltke: Letters, Documentsand After-Death Communications (1993, English transl. 1997, Rudolf Steiner Press)reveals much of the remarkable pattern of destiny in the life of von Moltke.(13) In these circles were the historical antecedents of some of the darker charactersin Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, such as Klingsor. See W.J. Stein , The NinthCentury and the Holy Grail, (Temple Lodge Press, 1988)(14) Meyer, pp. 164-171(15) R. Steiner, Lec.of 17 Feb 1918 The Archangel Michael His MissionandOurs (Anthroposophic Press, 1994).(16) 'our modern epoch' - also known in Anthroposophy as the 5th Post-Atlanteanepoch, the 5th period of 2160 years since the end of Atlantis, or the age of theConsciousness Soul, when the third human soul element is to be developed thatwhich enables us to recognise ourselves as spiritual individualswho must apply theirfree thinking to distinguish between Good and Evil, or the Age of the Fishes (Pisces),the 2160 year-long period when the Spring Equinox stands in the zodiacal sign ofPisces. N.b. there is a 1200 year interval between the cosmic astronomical

phenomenon and its earthly reflection in human history. Thus the astronomical age ofPisces: 215-2375 AD, but the cultural age of Pisces = 1413-3573 AD. The 1200 yearinterval is 'determined' by the movements of the cosmic pentagram formed aroundthe Zodiac by the conjunctions of Venus and the Sun. For a more detailed but clearexplanation of this, see R. Powell , Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1(Hermetika, 1987), ch.3.(17) See F. Duchne ,Jean Monnet The First Statesman of Interdependence(W.W.Norton, 1994), pp.126-127.(18) That border area between the east and west Franks has been a bone ofcontention in European history ever since, as the rulers of France continually sought togain the whole length of the Rhine as the 'natural' French border, which naturally ledthem to seek to dominate the Low Countries.

(19) It was known as the 'Pornocracy' or Rule of Harlots because power was held by aseries of strong but exceedingly degenerate female aristocrats connected with theHouse of Spoleto.(20) G. Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany(Basil Blackwell, 1966) p.53(21) Messina Conference, 1-3 June, 1955

Terry Boardman 2008

Terry Boardman - The Enigma of Canon XI

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