Second Post-Glacial Cultural Period—The Persian Magi and the Fertile Crescent
Discussion
The Second Post-Glacial Cultural Period—The Persian Magi and the Fertile Crescent
Jennifer Gidley:
The peoples of this second period had a different task. . . . In their longings and inclinations they did not turn merely toward the supersensible, for they were eminently fitted for the physical sense world. They grew fond of the earth. (Steiner, 1910/1939, p.203-204)Steiner’s second post-glacial cultural period flourished from c. 5,000-3,000 BCE (Steiner,1971a, p. 53). Archaeologically, this was the height of the Neolithic farming period. The geographical and cultural focus of this period was the region known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq, from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. This region is widely recognized as being the home of the earliest known civilization and is still known today as the “fertile crescent.” It is notable that domestication of animals and farming of cereals had also begun by this time in Africa, with the Nubian culture of the Sudan having already developed some of the features of the later dynastic Egyptian culture, such as ceramics and elaborate burial tombs, culturally mediating between Egypt and the southern and western regions of Africa (Gatto, 2004).Steiner called this second cultural period ancient Persian —because it developed in the region later known as Persia. The type of consciousness emerging in Steiner’s Persian period, resembles Gebser’s mythic consciousness, yet contains magical elements, supporting my notion of this being a transition phase. Gebser explicitly refers to the Mesopotamian region as being significant in the transition between the magic and mythical cultures, though with more emphasis on developments post-third-millennium: “This paralleling and overlapping of the still-magical and just-mythical attitude is particularly evident in the many illustrations of artifacts from the two early Sumerian cultures from the third millennium onward” (Gebser, 1949/1985, p. 109). Wilber clearly places this period clearly within his myth-membership stage. His characterization of what he calls “mythical cognition [is a]. . .mixture of magic and logic. . .which informs and structures language itself” (Wilber, 1996c, p. 98). In this period that he calls “low myth-membership” he particularly focuses on the socio-cultural developments. From a broader geographical perspective, by the time Sumeria was a powerful and prosperous city-state—around 3,000 BCE—other regions of the world were also beginning to develop in a similar way, at least the Nile Valley of Northeast Africa, the Indus Valley of South Asia, the Huang He (formally called Yellow River Valley) of China, and coastal Peru in South America. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the apparently parallel cultural developments in these regions, however further comparative research in the future may be fruitful.
Key Features of the Second Post-Glacial Cultural Period
Several key features were identified by Steiner to characterize the ancient Persian culture and consciousness as a further continuation of the Indo-European lineage of cultural and psycho-spiritual development. Both Gebser and Wilber identify these features of development as well, though neither identified a specific cultural period during this time.
• Sense of Polarity;
• Orientation to the Earth through agriculture;
• Formation of Proto-cities;
• Magic-Mythic Transition to Organized Religions.
Sense of Polarity
Steiner proposed that these ancient Persian/Sumerians developed the beginnings of the awareness of two dimensions—polarity and symmetry—whereas the earlier cultures lived within a sense of unity. Gebser (1949/1985) concurred that the mythical structure is “the expression of two-dimensional polarity. . . . the mythical man may be said to establish an awareness of earth’s counterpole, the sun and sky” (p. 66). Steiner also characterized this new awareness as a recognition of the twin natures of earth and cosmos—expressed as archetypes of Dark and Light—which became central to later Zoroastrian religious symbolism (Steiner, 1971a, p. 53).
Orientation to the Earth through Agriculture
Steiner linked this developing sense of polarity of the ancient Persians to the new orientation to the earth, compared with the ancient Indians. He noted though that they retained the sense that “external reality was an image of the Divine, which must not be turned away from but shaped anew. The Persian wished to transform nature by work” (Steiner, 1986a, p. 100). These indigenous Sumerians must have labored hard. They had to drain the marshes for planting crops
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Until recently, this claim of Steiner’s may have appeared highly speculative or even fictitious. However, a recent book revisits claims of ancient Greek and Roman historians, Xanthus, Pliny, Eudoxus and Plutarch, in the light of recent archaeological evidence. It substantially supports Steiner’s claim, that an earlier Zarathustra pre-dated the historical figure by several thousand years (Settegast, 2005). At the very least, these unconventional views of Steiner and Settegast pose new questions about the history and development of this highly significant region. As an indication of the lingering magic consciousness, Steiner referred to the leading people of this culture as the Magi —who he claimed had retained some of the magical powers of the earlier times (Steiner, 1910/1939, p. 204). Settegast also makes reference to the Magi, regarding them as an Order said to have been founded by Zarathustra (Settegast, 2005).The dualism of Light versus Dark became a central teaching in Zoroastrianism, which arguably influenced the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that also developed in this general geographical region. Gebser also suggests that Zarathustra’s dualism underlies Parmenides’ (b. 540 BCE) notion of Being opposed to Non-Being, which intriguingly straddles the next transition from mythical to mental consciousness.
Summary and Relevance for Today
The convergences between our three narratives support my proposal that the developments of culture and consciousness in this second cultural period mark a significant phase in the transition between Gebser’s magic and mythical structures of consciousness. I would also like to briefly draw attention to Friedrich Nietzsche’s use of the Zarathustra archetype in one of his most famous books, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Del Caro & Pippin, 1887/2006). Although it is beyond the space available to discuss this work, Nietzsche’s aim does express an interesting mirror-reversal of the Persian theme of previously spiritually oriented humans becoming oriented to the earth. He begs the question. “In what way . . . can a human being now tied to the “earth” still aspire to be ultimately “over-man, ”Ubermensch?” (Del Caro & Pippin, 1887/2006, p. xviii).As a postscript to this Persian/Sumerian narrative it is disturbing to consider that at the time of writing this paper, this region of the world—modern Iraq—is still a war zone. Tragically, as a result of the two Gulf wars, much of the ancient archaeological—and thus cultural—history of this cradle of civilization has been—and is still being—destroyed by looting and bombing (Berg& Woodville, 2004). Ironically, the Zarathustrian polarity of light and darkness and its association with good and evil can be observed in a regressive dualistic form, in the subtext of this situation."