Practical Magic

Toward a holistic anthropology

“Merlin Taketh the Child Arthur into His Keeping” by Aubrey Beardsley

A reminder: I am doing an online course, Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion which starts at the beginning of January. I still have some spots available, and it would be great to have you along for the ride.

Undoubtedly, one the most valuable insights I have gained from Rudolf Steiner is what is called “the pedagogical law,” a method for working with the growing individuality in a way that is healthy, allows for sound development, and gives grounding to spirit and psychic soul as well as the body. It can also be an invaluable tool in healing.

Steiner’s insights are based on much earlier understandings of the constitution of human beings that were common in antiquity through Middle Age, and early modernity and that have since persisted in currents of what has been called “the alternative modernity.” But Steiner was not simply a revivalist; he was actually attempting to bring the wisdom of the past into conversation with the present (for him, 19^th and early-20^th century Western Civilization) as well as the future (his own as well as ours).

Primary to his anthropology is an understanding of the human person, first of all, as constitutive of spirit, soul, and body, and that these facets of the human are best understood by thinking of ourselves as composed of different “bodies” or “sheathes”: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego. In a poetic metaphysics, these bodies correspond to the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and Man. In human anthropology, these bodies went by other names, for instance, Aristotle (and later Aquinas) describes the “vegetative soul” as the lowest part of the soul and which governs life and growth. The next level of soul is that which, unlike plants, animals possess (the Latin word for soul, anima, is etymologically related to the English word “animal”) and is characterized by movement and appetite—because no being moves unless prompted (usually unconsciously) by desire, whether for love or food or curiosity. The human shares in all of these, but is set apart from the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms by addition of Ego (of the Self), the highest power of the soul that is characterized by the ability to be rational, to remember, and to imagine.

To be able to influence any of these members of the human organization (or minerals, plants, and animals) is to practice magic. Aware of it or not, we all participate to it to one degree or another, though we might not have the vocabulary necessary to articulate it or a conceptual framework within which to understand it.

This schema is central to Steiner’s pedagogy (for those who don’t know, Steiner is the founder of Waldorf education).

The idea here is to do as much as possible to strengthen the various “bodies” of the human person in order to create a condition of health and balance. We all possess this intuition. For example, when a child is born one of the primary tasks of the parents—especially the mother—is to provide rhythm and regularity to the child’s life. This is an example of “working with the etheric”: the mother regulates her etheric body (which is already rhythmically-attuned, as we know, by menstrual cycles) in order to influence the physical body of the child. This is a rudimentary example of what Steiner calls the pedagogical law: the parent (or teacher) works on a given body of a child from the next highest body of the parent or teacher.

You can see how this would work out in raising a child. What happens to a child who is raised without regular bedtimes, mealtimes, without a relationship to the rhythms of day and night, sunrise and sunset, the wheel of the year, and so forth? Physical illness for one. Anxiety for another. And physical illness can lead to anxiety or other psychological disorders just as psychological disorders can lead to physical illness. With such an irregular relationship to rhythm, it is no wonder an estimated 20% of children ages 5-13 need melatonin in order to fall asleep. What else would one expect from a rhythmless and chaotic lifestyle? And I will pass over the dozens of other psychotropic drugs children are prescribed at alarming rates. This chaotic lifestyle, besides physical and psychological problems, often leads as well to a wide range of “learning difficulties.”

Once a child starts school, the etheric body is well developed (or should be), but still in need of strengthening. So teachers (and hopefully the parents) continue to use rhythm as a way to strengthen the child’s physical and etheric bodies, but they also use properties of the astral body to work on the child’s etheric. This comes about, for example, in using feeling to draw the child’s interest—empathy, love, sympathy, antipathy are all pedagogical tools arising from the adult’s astral body and onto the child’s etheric. (The centrality of storytelling to Waldorf pedagogy is one of many ways to work from the astral body of the teacher). And this is why rage is such a damaging thing to a child’s constitution: a teacher or parent given to rage essentially tears the child’s etheric body to shreds, leaving them tender, exposed, and vulnerable to all manner of physical and psychic ailments. As you can see, all of this points to the importance of the morality of the parent or teacher: the child needs to know that the parent or teacher is good. The carnage of parents and teachers not standing upright in goodness can be found in damaged children growing up to be damaged adults throughout our culture. In addition, the active program to poison the imaginations of children evident in such ghastly spectacles as “Drag Queen Story Hour” are textbook cases on how the disordered astral body of an adult can inflict untold damage upon the etheric bodies of children. And, just to be clear, you can tell how whacked out the typical woke teacher’s astral body is just by looking at her/him/them. It’s as if their distorted astral body leaked through their wonky etheric and into the physical. Red flag, people. Red flag.

When the astral bodies of children “land” (we could say) at adolescence, another set of opportunities for teachers and parents arises. The challenge here is to act out of the Ego (or Self) on the astral bodies of the adolescents. This comes about, primarily, through authority, discipline, consistency, and competency. It also comprises a spiritual component (it’s no surprise that so many faith and cultural traditions include coming-of-age rituals at this point in a young person’s life). Working from the Ego is a more challenging opportunity, as many adults in our culture have not done much to master the appetitive impulses of their own astral bodies. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the propaganda to which we have all been subject for at least two generations is primarily a magical act from the (false) ego of the power-structure onto the astral bodies of, well, everyone. Indeed, at this point, it’s almost impossible to find a real grownup. If one can lead the astral bodies of a culture in an arrested state of adolescence, one can make them do almost anything. The evidence is overwhelming.

The thing is with the pedagogical law is that it is magic writ large. Steiner knew this. He also knew that it is better to be conscious in its deployment than unconscious of what is really going on. As he said to teachers in a course he gave on curative education (a problem even in 1923), “these things do become black magic when they are not handled as they ought to be handled,” adding that “a high standard of morality is absolutely essential in dealing with these matters.” Still, this is magic, plain and simple. Teachers teaching woke politics to school children may not know anything about magic other than they like “being witchy” (a word that should be banished from the lexicon) but they are practicing magic nonetheless. As Steiner says,

“The Gods use magic, and the difference between white and black magic consists only in this: in white magic one intervenes in a moral, selfless way, and in black magic in an immoral, selfish way. There is no other difference.”

Ergo, woke teachers (and parents, alas), knowingly or not, are practitioners of an immoral and selfish black magic. Full stop.

The pedagogical law is also very useful in personal growth and healing. Say a person is suffering from depression or ill health or any of a number of maladies that afflict those of us suffering the Decline of the West. A first line of defense, I would suggest, is in regulating the bodies. I’d start with the etheric body and incorporating health rhythms into life. Just simple stuff you’d do with a child: regular bedtimes, mealtimes, attention to the days of the week (not forgetting the Sabbath of Rest), the lunar cycles, the months, the season, and all of the festivals included along the way. Then further strengthen the etheric body through an interest in the world—nature, art, music, theater, sport, other people—qualities of the astral body. Then strengthen the astral body through any of a variety of disciplines. These could be anything from hobbies like woodworking or knitting to Tai Chi or exercise programs and, importantly, spiritual disciplines. This is also helpful with overcoming or controlling addiction or addictive behaviors: many people who find their way out of addiction do so through spiritual disciplines. Regular and consistent prayer is a discipline.

If I am making this sound too easy, I don’t mean to. This is hard work; and it is ongoing. But my position is that most (if not all) of the maladies afflicting us are primarily due to the disordered state of modernity and the disordering of the bodies that results from it. We move and breathe and have our being in complete chaos—and that’s without even mentioning the constant psyops that bombard us on a daily basis (which further weaken our various bodies). That is to say that we are constantly in the midst of an operation of maleficent black magic. And the way to fight it is with white magic.

The transformation of the self is the key to a healthy and moral society, and this happens through incorporation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful into the soul. As Carl Jung wrote toward the end of World War II,

“If the whole is to change, the individual must change himself. Goodness is an individual gift and an individual acquisition. In the form of mass suggestion, it is mere intoxication, which has never yet been counted as a virtue. Goodness is acquired only by the individual as his own achievement. No masses can do it for him. But evil needs the masses for its genesis and continued existence.”

Return to the Real. This is practical magic.