Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Only the higher ego can achieve and maintain a balance betweenthe various human soul powers as well as between other polarities, suchas Lucifer and Ahriman, and East and West. As opposed to the Ahrimanicpowers of death ruling modern materialistic, intellectual civilization, humanity,especially in America, must discover the secret of life, of resurrection,that lies within the mysteries of Christ and the higher ego and which alsobeckons from the depths of the will. If the will is not consciously graspedby Americans in its spiritual richness, it will be used by the opposing Ahrimanicforces that work particularly strongly in America. That there are bothgood and evil spiritual powers within the unconscious depths of the willwas once strikingly related by Rudolf Steiner to the images in this legendspecifically in connection with America.We can picture the Ahrimanic forces as being active below thethreshold of consciousness like lava, like volcanic forces under a soilthat emits smoke if one sets fire to paper above it. This shows thatbeneath the soil there are terrifying forces that pour from every apertureunder such circumstances. So it is with the forces of the soul. 7So Amasis, the representative of the East, where human beings particularlylive within the soul forces of thinking, struggles to resist the attemptsof the subearthly spirits to bind him to the earth forces and attempts overhis altar to redeem these same spirits. Although he fails, his quest becomesan ideal that centuries later is resumed by Hugo. As Steiner’s FoundationStone Meditation says, “Let there be fired from the East / What in the Westis formed.”The band of ironworkers led by the Rosicrucian Hugo who came toHigh Tor in 1740 represents the other large region of the world, the “Middle”of Europe. As a Rosicrucian eighteenth-century impulse, they also representa more mature Christianity than Amasis could bring, one already withinthe period of development of the Consciousness-Soul. Their skill in miningand working iron can perhaps be related to the spiritual-cognizing forcesof the Archangel Michael, although this legend occurs more than a centurybefore the beginning of the Michael Age in 1879. Perhaps we should just takeit as a sign of the ironworkers representing a more intellectual, historicallyadvanced, scientific civilization, using the cue in the story of the contrastdrawn between the atavistic Native American civilization and the newerEuropean immigrants.The metal iron is connected with the qualities of the planet Mars,such as strength, courage, aggression, masculinity, independence, and ego-14