recognize this as not the legend of Masonry but
of the Jewish Cabala which has been already quoted in this context.[724]
Whether this also forms part of Steiner's teaching it is impossible to
say, since his real doctrines are known only to his inner circle; even
some of his admirers amongst the Steiner Matutina, whilst consulting him
as an oracle, are not admitted to the secrets of his grades of
initiation and have been unable to succeed in obtaining from him a
charter. Meanwhile they themselves do not disclose to the neophytes whom
they seek to win over that they are members of any secret association.
This is quite in accordance with the methods of Weishaupt's "Insinuating
Brothers."

The result of what Steiner calls "occult science" is thus described in a
striking passage of one of his own works:

"This is the change which the occult student observes coming over
himself--that there is no longer a connection between a thought and a
feeling or a feeling and a volition, except when he creates the
connection himself. No impulse drives him from thought to action if he
does not voluntarily harbour it. He can now stand completely without
feeling before an object which, before his training, would have filled
him with glowing love or violent hatred; he can likewise remain
actionless before a thought which heretofore would have spurred him to
action as if by itself," etc.

I can imagine no clearer expose of the dangers of occultism than this.
Weishaupt had said: "I cannot use men as I find them; I must form them."
Dr. Steiner shows how this transformation can be accomplished. Under the
influence of so-called occult training, which is in reality simply
powerful suggestion, all a man's native impulses and inhibitive springs
of action may be broken; the pupil of the occultist will no longer react
to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, of right or wrong, which,
unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his
conscious deeds but his sub-conscious processes pass under the control
of another. If this is indeed the method employed by Dr. Steiner and his
adepts there would certainly seem to be some justification for the
verdict of M. Robert Kuentz that "Steiner has devised occult exercises
which render the mind incapable (rendent l'esprit aneanti), that he
attacks the individual by deranging his faculties (il detraque les
facultes)."[725]

What is the real motive power behind such societies as the Stella
Matu