Talk:Anthroposophy

Revert

I have reverted the whitewashing of this cult. The whitewashing violated the website policy WP:PSCI, and removed the information that Anthroposophy is a new religious movement. Both claims which the Utah IP sought to remove were abundantly sourced with mainstream WP:SCHOLARSHIP. The IP had further deleted inconvenient truths about Anthroposophy in Nazi Germany, namely that the Nazis were ambivalent in respect to Anthroposophy, and never really sought to send all Anthroposophists to concentration camps. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:32, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Hey, the citation around the disproval of Steiner’s clairvoyant faculties is not academically rigorous. You cannot state, and it is not grammatical to state, 'Ideas of Steiner that are disproven by modern science' and state clairvoyance as an idea disproven. One of the citations has nothing to do with the statement of him being disproven as a clairvoyant. It should be mentioned before hand, that for one, he finds himself to be clairvoyant. Stating the citation there implies there are multiple instances of disproval. This is false in terms of the citation. The second, is just a poem which does not indicate whether he made plentiful dubious statements of clairvoyant events, falsely, which would disprove his claim. It is just a poem. That is extrapolation and selective bias. Please change the wording of this section. ~2026-18289-10 (talk) 15:23, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Belated answer, but mainstream science does find that clairvoyance is something between a scam and a delusion. It even made it to a dictionary of hallucinations. Sometimes WP:SKYBLUE statements are allowed. In the end, I offered a source for such claims (Regal 2009). tgeorgescu (talk) 02:37, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Spiritualism

@Donn Fretz and McSly: Channeling is not Spiritualism, and clairvoyance isn't channeling. Steiner hated Spiritualism, perhaps because he got conflated with it. Otherwise, I have no dog in this dispute.

AFAIK, Steiner claimed that he observed the work of elementals, angels, and so on. Not that he talked with them. tgeorgescu (talk) 18:58, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

New religious movement

About reverting the IP by Blindlynx:

There are WP:CITED around 60 sources which agree with us (from moderately to totally), and 2 or 3 which say there is room for doubt (i.e. they are somewhere in-between denying it and affirming it). And I mean sources written by theologians, or experts in religion studies, or mainstream academics. And, to be fair, I did find one reliable source which denies it (written by Stehlik, Thomas).

A straightforward argument is: if Anthroposophy isn’t a religion/NRM, why do so many religion scholars study it? It seems that the unwritten assumption is that you have to agree at least partially that it is a NRM in order to study it inside the mainstream academia. I mean: you don’t learn astronomy in order to learn how to grow lettuce.

According to Liselotte Frisk, "Thus my conclusion is that it is quite uncontroversial to see Anthroposophy as a whole as a religious movement, in the conventional use of the term, although it is not an emic term used by Anthroposophists themselves." That is a WP:RS/AC type of source, so it alone would easily trump 10-20 sources which disagree that Anthroposophy is a NRM. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Anthroposohy is it really a sect and if it really is why don´t we write this article as what antroposphy is

hello guys perhaps i am gonna be a little confusing but i was reading anthroposphy stuff for while, and i came to the conclusion that is a sect where the sheep follow a system of a ideas, in fact the Anthroposophical society has its own bank, and the followers follow a lifestyle aligned with the constellations. Don't believe me? There's a bidynamic calendar based on the movement of the constellations that tells you which months are best for planting and doing certain types of activities. I don't know guys but what do you think?, i am trying to have a unbiased perspective. Elemperadorauténtico (talk) 23:26, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

There are WP:CITED five WP:RS which say it is a cult/sect. And many others say it is a religion or a new religious movement.

So, basically, Wikipedians render WP:SCHOLARSHIP, they don't render their own opinions or their own research. tgeorgescu (talk) 08:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Dear Sir, accepting or rejecting a worldview doesn't make you a sheep... There is no dogma of faith. Anthroposophy doesn't force anyone to believe in anything, just as Steiner didn't.

The biodynamic calendar is a contribution from Maria Thun, not Steiner. This calendar relates planetary influences ONLY to the agricultural production process, not as a way of life, or anything like that. (I'd like to understand where you get the conclusion that it's a lifestyle...)

Regarding the bank, to claim that because an association has a bank it's a sect...? At some point, a group of sympathizers and/or people actively involved in anthroposophical activities (if such a thing exists) may have founded a bank... This doesn't imply that it's a sect... It would be like concluding that if a group of tennis players founded a bank... "when I play tennis, I'm a financier..."

I'm participating here because, after reading your comments, you mentioned that you don't try to avoid prejudice... Anthroposophy is not a religious movement, nor a new religion; it's simply a worldview that broadens our perspectives on understanding the world by considering something that the natural sciences—due to their own methods—cannot: include the spiritual. ~2026-14590-66 (talk) 17:22, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Mainstream scholars say otherwise (namely Anthroposophy is a NRM). Wikipedia sides with mainstream scholars, end of the story. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:27, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Okay i understand your comment and thanks for responding, now whole comment is a opinion, i didn´t even start a serious discussion, i just dropped opinions. Now regardless what i think Anthroposophy is a threat trying to impose a worldview to the children, about not allowing the vaccination. So please it's no a sect but it's dangerous. Elemperadorauténtico (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The gist of editing at Wikipedia: we don't write our own opinions, we WP:CITE WP:RS. tgeorgescu (talk) 09:39, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Sorry Sir, i assure it will not happen again. Elemperadorauténtico (talk) 19:17, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Fact or opinion

@TA: Many authors see Anthroposophy as having been founded by a guru (meaning Steiner) is neither a fact about Steiner, nor opinion, but a fact about the opinions of many authors. Unless you're willing to claim that they did not state what they stated, it should stay in the article.

Counting authors + book editors + translators we have two dozen people. That's why Many is justified.

I have mentioned that Anthroposophists constantly denied such a claim, but I did not present their denial as the unvarnished truth. Why? WP:MANDY, emic and etic. So, I acknowledge that they have such a belief, but their belief does not trump 20 mainstream sources.

John Paull got first WP:CITED in this article by an IP, in 2016, at . Paull has now seven citations in the article, just one or two were inserted by my edits.

Paull got first cited at Rudolf Steiner by an IP, in 2011, at . Paul has now 14 citations in the article. One was inserted by me, and I have re-used the citation introduced by an IP, in 2025, at .

For the rest, citations to Paull are not my own work. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:21, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Further considerations: WP:PROUD and WP:THETRUTH. For us, the power to decide whether Steiner was a guru does not lie with anthroposophists, but with WP:SCHOLARSHIP. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:26, 18 February 2026 (UTC)