Abstract
In Herman Hesse’s mystical novel, The Glass Bead Game, the perfection of the universe is embodied in the equilibrium of perfect music, as it was pursued in the aesthetic monastery of Castalia. Yet that equilibrium, as Hesse’s narrator explained in this chapter’s epigraph, depended on the righteous comportment of its musical pundits, who toiled to master the monastery’s occult glass bead game. The narrator’s appraisal thus implied a paramount behavioral component—righteousness—to achieve musical perfection. Moreover, the human being could coherently articulate musical meaning only through the perception of the meaning of the cosmos—the attainment of spiritual wholeness. As the second quote of the epigraph illustrates, this equilibrium and its musical articulation became manifest in cultural gestures. Hesse’s narrator linked human spirituality to the attainment of “perfect” music, which became tangible and verifiable through cultural discourse—gestures that come down to morality. The role of cultural discourse as a model for human behavior became inevitably entangled in the social and political spheres. A similar intersection of the sacred and secular spheres among cosmopolitan religious movements in different geopolitical locations provides a critical means to deepen our understanding of these groups, the idiosyncrasies of and the dissonance between their pledged values and actions.
When the world is at peace, when all things are tranquil and all men obey their superiors in all their courses, then music can be perfected. When desires and passions do not turn into wrongful paths, music can be perfected. Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos (Hesse, Glass Bead Game, 29).
Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture (Ibid., 43).
Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth noting that the contrast between the insularity of Castalia’s monastery life and its spiritual asceticism and life in the real world plays a significant role in the novel, particularly manifest in the relationship between the novel’s main character, Josef Knecht, and his friend and nemesis, Plinio Designori.
- 2.
Adolf Von Spreti (1866–1945) belonged to a German-Italian Catholic aristocratic family and was the father of the German diplomat Karl von Spreti (1907–1970), who was murdered by the leftist guerilla group FAR in the Dominican Republic. Another son, Cajetan (1905–1989), joined the NSDAP in 1930, to the dismay of his family, and became Sturmführer in the Nazi paramilitary organization, SA (Sturmabteilung), in October 1931.
- 3.
Adolf Graf von Spreti, “Karma, die Gerechtigkeit der Weltordnung,” in Sphinx 12 (1891): 140.
- 4.
Richards, in his Romantic Conception of Life , also explores how Darwin struggled with this issue. Darwin’s solution, Richards argues, was “that natural selection operated not on the individual workers to provide their unusual traits but on the whole hive or community … Thus the altruistic behavior of a soldier bee in sacrificing its life for the nest could be explained as the result of community selection,” 542. The concern about the ethical or social ramifications, as Richards suggests in the case of Darwin, played a critical role as well in the formulation of cosmopolitan spiritual thought.
- 5.
Ibid., 141.
- 6.
Ibid., 143.
- 7.
Ibid., 143 (quotation marks in original for emphasis). It is important to note that particularly in the German context, the cosmopolitan spiritual notion of “earned fate” can be linked to German Romanticism. One insightful reference is the thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) and his notion of “organicism” from System des transcendentalen Idealismus (1800) as Robert Richards describes: “Even a cautious reading of Schelling’s explanation of sickness and death suggests that somehow the self wills these maladies […] Life and death, our own or that of others, almost seem, then, to be the arbitrary decisions of the will,” Romantic Conception of Life , 159.
- 8.
Franz Hartmann, Karma oder Wissen, Wirken und Werden (1920; Graz: Edition Geheimes Wissen, 2008), 10. This text originally appeared as “Karma,” in Lotusblüten 1, ed. Franz Hartmann (1896). I will cite from the published book version. Typical of the era, Hartmann uses male pronouns in the German original, which I have retained for consistency.
- 9.
Ibid., 21. Rather than choosing the more precise word, Fäulnis, which would be the more literal term for the “rottenness” of an organic object, Hartmann chose instead, Faulheit. This choice is an illuminating expression in this context because in the original German it expresses a dual meaning; it can mean both putrefaction or decay and commonly idleness or laziness.
- 10.
Rudolf Steiner, “Wie Karma wirkt,” in Luzifer-Gnosis. Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1903–08 (Dornach/Schweiz: Verlag der Rudolf-Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1960), 92.
- 11.
Von Spreti, “Karma, die Gerechtigkeit der Weltordnung,” 144.
- 12.
Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity’s sacred canopy and its self-perpetuating hierarchies receives its fullest explanation in his The Genealogy of Morals (1887).
- 13.
Steiner, “Wie Karma wirkt,” 105–6.
- 14.
Von Spreti, “Karma, die Gerechtigkeit der Weltordnung,” 144.
- 15.
Hartmann, Karma, 22 (emphasis in original).
- 16.
Ibid., 23.
- 17.
Hartmann, Magic, White and Black, 40.
- 18.
Ibid., 144.
- 19.
Ibid., 158.
- 20.
See the Bible, Matthew, Chapter 5, 3–7.
- 21.
Ibid., 164.
- 22.
Ibid., 173.
- 23.
Nietzsche elaborates the concept in his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , published in 1883.
- 24.
In fact, education was a hotly contested topic in Europe during the era. Educational issues went far beyond debates over Darwinian science. The conflict over practical versus humanistic education was front and center in the educational discussions of the era, especially in Germany. See Sterling Fishman, The Struggle for German Youth : The Search for Educational Reform in Imperial Germany (New York: Revisionist Press, 1976), and Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins The Decline of the German Mandarins. The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). For a concise explanation of the concept of “self-formation” in Romanticism, see Fritz K. Ringer, “Review of The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: ‘Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann,’ ” by W. H. Bruford, Central European History 11 (1978): 107–113. Again, German Romanticism and Schelling are important influences in the formulation of these cosmopolitan spiritual notions. A full elaboration of these linkages, however, extends far beyond the compass of my comparative analysis in Spiritual Empires. For further insight, I refer the reader to Richard’s Romantic Conception of Life , especially Chapter 3, “Schelling: The Poetry of Nature.”
- 25.
Rudolf Steiner, Der pädagogische Wert der Menschenerkenntnis und der Kulturwert der Pädagogik. Zehn Vorträge, gehalten in Arnheim vom 17. Bis 24. Juli 1924 (Dornach, Schweiz: Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung. 1965), 118.
- 26.
Here Rousseau’s novel of human cultivation, Emile , and Kant’s concept of “selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit” (self-imposed lack of maturity) come to mind. For an insightful and in-depth depiction, see Peter Gay’s older but still highly relevant multivolume work, The Age of Enlightenment .
- 27.
Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, “Einiges und geistiges Christentum” in Sphinx XIII.74 (April 1892): 98. Moritz von Egidy (1847–1898) was a Prussian army office, later in the army of Saxony. In his book, Ernste Gedanken (1890), Egidy bemoaned the dogmatism of the Protestant Church and espoused a pacifist view in his call for a religion of active love. See https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd11868809X.html#ndbcontent (accessed on Aug. 13, 2018).
- 28.
Ibid., 99.
- 29.
For the pathbreaking and still highly relevant text on the intersection of Protestant introspection and a work ethic, originally published in 1904/1905, see Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , trans. Stephen Kalberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). The secondary material on Weber’s analysis far exceeds the scope of my work, but Kalberg’s introduction to his translation provides an excellent starting point.
- 30.
Wilhelm Ostwald, Die Forderung des Tages (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1910), 512.
- 31.
Ibid., 524 (emphasis in original).
- 32.
Ibid., 521, 528 (emphasis in original).
- 33.
Ibid., 527 (emphasis in original).
- 34.
Ostwald, Grosse Männer: Studien zur Biologie des Genies (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1910), 328. Ostwald’s book historically depicts the lives of some of Europe’s most renowned scientists and attempts to identify what characteristics they held in common—an inventory of what makes “great men.”
- 35.
Forderung des Tages, 530 (emphasis in original).
- 36.
Ibid., 531. This assertion can also be linked to Darwinian thought via Richards’ reading in Romantic Conception of Life , in which he elaborates Darwin’s explanation of “community selection.” Richards explains: “if in a tribal group, a genius by chance appeared, that primitive Newton would benefit his whole community; community members would learn his tricks, thus giving them an advantage in competition with other tribes; and since his tribe would include his relatives, who would bear seeds of his intellectual talents, improved mind would rise among succeeding generations,” 552.
- 37.
Tomas Kaiser, Zwischen Philosophie and Spiritismus, 75. Despite Kaiser’s reference to du Prel’s concerns with the damage to society caused by poverty, pauperization, and the decay of morals, he does not focus on du Prel’s subtle tactic to undermine socialism’s potential benefits.
- 38.
Carl du Prel, “Der Tod” in Sphinx 2.III (1887): 310. Du Prel wrote a one-page forward titled “Occultismus und Sozialismus,” in Franz Unger’s Die Magie des Traumes als Unsterblichkeitsbeweis , 2nd ed. (Münster: Franz Mickl, 1898). Du Prel reinforces my point when he embraced socialism and supported the worker movement only as a spiritual undertaking. He posited “that the justified core of the social movement can only develop when Socialism rejects the materialistic falsity and the anarchic outgrowths.”
- 39.
For general background on economic development during the era, see Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte . 1866–1918. Bd. I Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist (München: C. H. Beck, 1990), especially 268–290; on class society, 414–27.
- 40.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were Marxist socialists who founded the radical anti-war Spartacus League in 1915 in Germany, which later became Germany’s KPD (communist party).
- 41.
Steiner, dreigliedrige soziale Organismus, 19 (emphasis in original).
- 42.
Staudenmaier, Between Occultism and Nazism, 45.
- 43.
On the political development of the Social Democrats in Germany, see Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte. 1866–1918. Bd. II. Machtstaat vor der Demokratie (München: C. H. Beck, 1992), 554–72. A detailed explication of Steiner’s model is available in Zander’s Anthroposophie in Deutschland (Chapter 14). Zander contends that Steiner did not focus extensively on the worker and that he addressed critical questions in this regard only in his addresses that followed the Kernpunkte (1306), yet this assessment underestimates Steiner’s sociopolitical aims, which are tangible and discernible in his speeches and writings.
- 44.
Steiner, dreigliedrige soziale Organismus, 64.
- 45.
Ibid., 91. Steiner employs the verb, gliedern, and the noun, Gliederung, which is a less culturally charged term than class (Klasse). Gliederung can be defined as classification, structure, arrangement, or grouping, none of which contain the political or social ramifications, nor the historical content, of the German words Klasse or Stand.
- 46.
Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland, 1316.
- 47.
Steiner, dreigliedrige soziale Organismus, 69.
- 48.
Hartmann, “Karma,” 41.
- 49.
Ibid., 41.
- 50.
Schuré, Grands Initiés, 462.
- 51.
Papus, Traité élementaire de science occulte: Mettant Chacun à même de Comprendre et d’Expliques les Théories et les Symboles Employés par les Anciens, par les Alchimistes, les Franc-Maçons, etc. (Paris: Georges Carré, 1888), 58.
- 52.
Julian Strube, “Socialist Religion and the Emergence of Occultism,” 361. In this text, Strube explores the influence of Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism, and neo-Catholicism on the emergence of French occultism.
- 53.
Ibid., 377.
- 54.
Strube’s work focuses on France, but raises pertinent questions about these same links in other countries. I am not aware, for instance, of any scholarly material on the intersection of socialism and occult religions in Germany, though, as my work illustrates, German spiritual innovators tended to be anti-socialist .
- 55.
The journalist, Lucien Victor-Meunier, in his review of d’Alveydre’s masterwork, Mission des Juifs (1884), showed that the work had been largely plagiarized from the works of the French author, poet, and philosopher, Fabre d’Olivet (1767–1825). Olivet’s work formed part of an intellectual lineage for cosmopolitan religious innovators, also including Eliphas Lévi, who were highly influential for many of France’s cosmopolitan religious thinkers. See John Monroe’s Laboratories of Faith for a more thorough depiction of this spiritual lineage in France.
- 56.
Several of d’Alveydre’s spiritual descendants, “Amis d’Alveydre,” published posthumously his Mission de l’Inde en Europe. In his biography of d’Alveydre, Barlet wrote: “Because Saint-Yves is a poet above all; or better said, he is, as one saw him, the Celtic bard coming back to the 19th century to reveal to it the mysterious and sublime depths of the sanctuaries of antiquity,” in Barlet, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (Paris: L’Édition, 1910), 38.
- 57.
Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Mission de l’Inde en Europe. Mission de l’Europe en Asie. (Paris: Librairie Dorbon Aine, 1910): 3. According to the introduction in d’Alveydre’s Mission des Juifs, the original Mission de l’Inde was first completed in 1886, but d’Alveydre did not publish the text. One copy purportedly survived in the hands of Alexandre Keller and then was finally published by Papus and his cohorts, “Les Amis de Saint-Yves,” in 1910.
- 58.
In Joscelyn Godwin’s introduction to the English translation of d’Alveydre’s Mission de l’Inde en Europe [The Kingdom of Agarttha: A Journey into the Hollow Earth (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2008)], n.P., he describes d’Alveydre’s Agarttha as “a hidden land somewhere in the East, beneath the surface of the earth, where a population of millions is ruled by a Sovereign Pontiff … Argattha has long enjoyed the benefits of a technology advanced far beyond our own, including one of ‘Synarchy.’”
- 59.
Laurant, L’Ésotérisme Chrétien en France, 134.
- 60.
Despite d’Alveydre’s and other French cosmopolitan leaders’ utilization of Indian tradition, the French view of Indian tradition as a religious model remained tepid. Monroe writes that many of the members of the Isis Lodge in France in contrast to Gaboriau, an early leader of the Theosophical Society in France, “were less willing to swallow their cultural pride, particularly if it meant assigning spiritual primacy to India, a nation whose alleged weakness had led it to be ‘oppressed in the most shameful manner.’” Monroe, Laboratories of Faith , 237, cites La Revue des hautes études (Sep. 1886-Feb. 1887), 1:52.
- 61.
D’Alveydre, Mission de l’Inde, 32.
- 62.
Ibid., 77–8. An epopt is “an initiate in the highest grade of the Eleusinian mysteries; one instructed in a secret system.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epopt (Accessed on May 23, 2018).
- 63.
Ibid., 161.
- 64.
Strube, “Socialist Religion,” 378. Strube cites Lévi’s two-volume work Dogme et ritual de la haute magie , in support of this point.
- 65.
D’Alveydre, Mission de l’Inde, 111.
- 66.
Charles Barlet, “L’Université Libre des Hautes Études,” in L’Initiation 4.13 (1891): 113.
- 67.
Laurant, L’Ésotérisme Chrétien en France, 135.
- 68.
Ibid., 136.
- 69.
Barlet, L’Évolution Sociale, 125 (capitalization style is Barlet’s original).
- 70.
Barlet, L’Évolution Sociale, 15 (emphasis in original).
- 71.
Strube’s previously cited “Socialist Religion” provides a superb account of these influences.
- 72.
Strube, “Occultist Identity,” 574.
- 73.
Barlet, L’Évolution Sociale, 157–58. Barlet states in footnote 1 on page 157 that “secondary corrections” are called karma by the Indians.
- 74.
Ibid., 124.
- 75.
Guymiot, “Evolution ,” in L’Initiation 39–40 (April 1898): 44. Notably, Guymiot was likely influenced by the Darwinian-based social thought of Herbert Spencer; Guymiot translated Spencer’s important philosophical text, First Principles (1862), into French.
- 76.
Maurice Largeris, “Karma et libre Arbitre,” in L’Initiation 32 (1896): 68. I have not located Largeris’ biographical information, but it is noteworthy that, according to convention records, he still attended annual theosophical assemblies and published in their “Transactions” as late as 1907, when Papus and other important spiritual leaders in France had long left the Theosophical Society.
- 77.
Ibid., 68.
- 78.
David Allen Harvey, Beyond Enlightenment, 7.
- 79.
Barlet, L’Évolution Sociale, 158.
- 80.
Ibid., 27.
- 81.
Ibid.
- 82.
Ibid., 184.
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Myers, P. (2021). Merit-Based Karma and Social Engineering in Germany and France. In: Spiritual Empires in Europe and India. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81003-0_6
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