Russian Spirituality and Other Essays de Valentin Tomberg

Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist

Valentin Tomberg

Robert Powell

James Wetmore

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 apr 2010

These wisdom-filled articles are gems offered us by the Russian esotericist Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973). Written in the 1930s, at the time he was also writing important studies on the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Apocalypse, these early articles presage Tomberg's later, more mature works on Christian Hermeticism. This was the 'anthroposophical' phase of his life, which ended during World War II, when he followed Christ's call to join the Catholic Church in order to bring the Christian esotericism of the Church of John into the exoteric Church of Peter - a step that truly represented a sacrifice on the part of this remarkable man. For in following this call of Christ to the Catholic Church, Tomberg took the step of leaving his karmic community-that of the anthroposophical movement founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). This step was a fulfillment of the words of Christ, of the Risen One, to Peter concerning John: 'If it is my will that he should wait until I come again, what is that to thee?' (John 21:22). These words relate to the task of the Church of John to 'wait'-that is, to cultivate the esoteric teachings 'behind the scenes'-until the onset of Christ's Second Coming, which began during the 1930s, when they could begin to emerge by bringing the esoteric teachings into the Church.For students of Christian Hermeticism, these early articles by the founder of this new spiritual stream reveal in particular something of the esoteric teachings underlying the author's Russian spirituality. The penetrating insights they offer are seeds that subsequently blossomed in his later works. As well as being of interest to students of Christian Hermeticism, these essays are relevant to anyone interested in Russian spirituality and, moreover, to everyone interested in esoteric perspectives concerning the present situation of humanity. The author of this work was a spiritually enlightened teacher whose care and concern extended beyond the plight of the Russian people under Soviet communism to include the challenges facing every human being in our time. Understood as a manual for enlightenment, to be worked with meditatively over and over again, this work is one of the great treasures of humanity's spiritual literature-a priceless jewel for every spiritual seeker in our time.

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Notă biografică

In his teens and twenties, Russian-born Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973) was already exploring not only the Orthodox influences in his home city of St. Petersburg, but also such currents as those of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Kabbalism, and Hermeticism. In his thirties, he emerged as a leading anthroposophical researcher. As an emigré from revolutionary Russia, he went first to Estonia (where his mother was shot dead in the street by Red Army soldiers), then to Holland, where his work bore increasingly the imprint of the stream of Platonism. During the years 1940-1943, Tomberg worked with a small group unveiling ever deeper layers of the Our Father prayer (and introduced what he called the Our Mother prayer). When the Nazi occupation brought this work to an end, he turned increasingly to the subjects of jurisprudence and the Hermetic tradition. During this period, he joined the Catholic Church. There followed intense work on "Christian Hermeticism," on display in his masterpiece, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. Tomberg's works raised controversies: in particular, fundamental questions regarding the relationship between Anthroposophy and the Catholic Church. In his late writings (Thy Kingdom Come: The New Evolution of the Good; Lazarus: The Miracle of Resurrection in World History; and Proclamation on Sinai: Covenant and Commandments), he revisited this question, illuminating thematically and historically the pivotal significance of an ongoing development of Christian culture wherein all of eternal value in the past will in time be resurrected (retrospectively, as it were) into the Universal Church, or, as the first English-language biography of Tomberg calls it, the "Ecclesia universalis."