Sunday, November 04, 2007

Plagiarised 'Rosicrucian Theosophy'

This is the most comprehensive research I have found on the matter: Heindel-Steiner Connection.

It was written by a member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship (Charles Weber). It seems to have got him into a lot of hot water too!

Dr. Steiner talks about a group in California stealing his teachings. Here is the quote from the Rudolf Steiner's Fifth Gospel:
"A man from America, who spent weeks and months getting to know our teachings, transcribed and carried them off in a watered-down form to America, where he has given out a plagiarized 'Rosicrucian Theosophy.'
True, he says he learnt a good deal from us over here, but that he was summoned to the Masters and learnt more from them. He says nothing, however, about having learnt from us the deeper things which he had drawn from the then unpublished lecture-courses."
Count Carl Grashof (a Dane), a student of Dr. Steiner's, collected the typescripts of some his lectures before they had been published and took them to America. There he added some of his own touches and published the lot under the title of The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception, using the pen name of "Max Heindel". The first edition of this work was dedicated to Rudolf Steiner.



So the Cosmo Conception has some of the elements of Steiner's teaching but it is not purely Steiner. There is a different teaching on the nature of Christ for instance, and it doesn't talk about Ahriman.
 

Dedication in First Edition of the Cosmo
Max Heindel was vice president of the Los Angeles Theosophical Society (later to become the Pasadena TS) during 1904 and 1905.


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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:36 AM

    Steiner and Heindel had the same spiritual teacher, known to some as an "Elder Brother". In the first edition of Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception (RCC), he gave credit to Steiner as a source of the information in the book. The main source for The RCC was the direct communication from the Elder Brother to Heindel after Heindel returned to the U.S. from Europe and was living in New York.

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  2. Michael12:06 AM

    >>>he gave credit to Steiner as a source of the information in the book.<<<
    The Dedication was removed after the first edition- as quoted above.

    See http://www.mysticknowledge.org/02-The_Heindel-Steiner_Connection.pdf for more.

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  3. cheese curve 3:27 PM

    The above quote is not complete.

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  4. cheese curve 3:27 PM

    http://antropocalypsearchief.blogspot.nl/2018/04/zur-vorgeschichte-des-lectorium.html?m=1

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  5. Michael3:03 PM

    “In this respect I mention only that, recently, a large part of my theosophical work has been industriously printed in America without my permission, and in an unprecedented way. The danger does not lie in the fact that it is a plagiarism. That is of no consequence; people can plagiarize as much as they like for all I care. In the field of theosophy that is not of the least importance. What is important, is that my work is printed in a completely distorted manner and that the distortions are harmful. Therefore, if I do not have the things printed as they should be, great harm will eventually occur. It must, after all, be a matter of some concern that not all of our theosophists are capable of discernment and that there are theosophists in western Europe who think that the distorted, false publications are the real ones.”


    — R.S., Correspondence and Documents, pp 287-88.

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