'The most enigmatic figure to emerge from the 'occult revival' of the early 20th century was also the most successful: the Austrian 'spiritual scientist' Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Although many of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries were outwardly more eccentric – think of Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, or of the inimitable GI Gurdjieff, or the scandalous 'magician' Aleister Crowley – it's precisely Steiner's sobriety that is so striking, even making him seem out of place in the often flamboyant world of the esoteric.
'We generally associate ideas of the occult, higher consciousness and spiritual worlds with exotic, extraordinary characters with something of the trickster about them; Blavatsky, Gurdjieff and Crowley would certainly fall into this category. Steiner, though, was precisely the opposite. Standing at the lectern with his pince-nez in hand, he projected an image of irreproachable rectitude. Steiner was earnestness incarnate, his one gesture of bohemian extravagance the flowing bow ties he was fond of wearing, a remnant of his early student days. Where Blavatsky, Gurdjieff and Crowley each took pains to present a formidable self-image, there was something simple and peasant-like about Steiner. Combined with this wholesomeness was an encyclopædic erudition; if we were to use an 'archetype' to describe Steiner, it would have to be that of 'the professor' – or, more precisely, the Doctor, as he was known by those around him. Commenting on her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky once remarked that she "wrote, wrote, wrote," like the Wandering Jew "walks, walks, walks". Steiner, too, wrote a great deal, but his main mode of disseminating his ideas was lecturing, and in the years between 1900 and 1925 he lectured, lectured, lectured, delivering more than 6,000 talks across Europe.' (Fortean Times article).
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