Why did most transatlantic voyages from Europe take place from the 15th century onwards? From an esoteric perspective, nothing in history develops randomly or due to external reasons only.
There is a constant evolutionary current that brings about changes in history, and there is always a knowing presence on earth, human or otherwise, that acts as a guiding force behind complex chains of events, causes and effects woven across space and time.
Notes on these lectures:
A hidden hand
According to Steiner, there were hidden groups guiding the development of Christianity in Europe, who were well aware of the existence of the Americas before Columbus' voyages, for example, the Norse settlement in the 10th century.
Leif Eriksson and crew reach Baffin Island
These groups intentionally suppressed ocean journeys across the Atlantic before the 15th century, as an effort to close off Europe from influences that could come from the Americas. These influences were of a spiritual nature. Steiner mentions specifically the authority in Rome and Initiates from Ireland who were involved.
One of the truths with which you are most likely familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times a “fable convenue” [an agreed upon lie.] That America was discovered for the first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only rediscovered.It was merely that for a period the connections were cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however, to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.
The Fra Mauro map, a medieval world map, made around 1450 AD depicting Asia, Africa, and Europe.
"Until the twelfth century, people in Europe were well aware that there was an America in the West. The knowledge was covered up...First, the connection between the European and American nature was broken, then it was rediscovered. Whereas in past times boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes...this knowledge of America would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the connection with America was gradually obliterated.
Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern lands to America."
Columbus's fleets
[Thus] in the fifteenth century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences.Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity from American influences were...monks from Ireland who as Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent."
Irish monks helped preserve Christianity after the decline of the Roman Empire. They sailed the North Atlantic on divine missions and some legends state that St. Brendan (484 - 577 AD) and his monks reached America.
The Old World Cosmology
Before the societal acceptance of Copernicus' heliocentric theory, published in 1543 AD, widespread contact with the Indigenous Americans might have reinforced the prior cosmology the Europeans had (and later Anglo-Americans), which had also emphasized a close relationship with the stars, what Europeans referred to as "the heavenly spheres."
"Astronomical Halo" by Simon Marmion, 1460
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Planisphaerium ptolemaicum. The Ptolemaic geocentric model
Christine de Pizan (1365 -c.1431) travels to the Heavens, from "The Book of the Queen"
The Copernican Age
From the 15th to the 17th century, which also coincides with the Age of Discovery, Europe saw a sharp rise in materialism. The heliocentric model was more mathematically and empirically sound than the previous geocentric model, with all its convoluted patterns and "heavenly spheres."
You see, in 1492, I told you, Christopher Columbus set out first and discovered America. In 1543, Copernicus came on the scene and was the first to put forward the world view that the sun stands still and the earth moves around the sun like the other planets. So what every child learns at school today has only been around since that time."
Planisphaerium Copernicanum - Copernicus' heliocentric model
Although it brought on its own challenges, this was the intended proper development for the fifth Post-Atlantean cultural age. Contact with the Americas had to be delayed until the European cosmology shifted.
"In ancient times quite definite influences were brought from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in the belief that America did not exist.
There lived in all of America at the time a population that knew an extraordinary amount about the influence of the stars. They oriented themselves entirely to the influence of the stars.
The Seven Sisters of Pleiades, a legend found in Native American and other ancient cultures
And if the people who still lived in Europe in 1323 had come over there, their beliefs would have been much more similar to those of the Indians. Because these people in 1323 in Europe still knew about the influence of the stars. They could have understood each other much better."
From an esoteric-historical perspective, Copernicus' heliocentric theory naturally coincided with the "discovery" of America, two developments that would signify the start of the Modern Age.
Our modern day understanding of the Cosmos can be traced back to Copernicus' discoveries
Materialism and the New World
The rise of materialism in Europe was gradually brought about through different historical developments, and ultimately resulted in a fear and rejection of the spiritual, which reached it's peak between the 17th and 18th centuries.
By the the time of the transatlantic voyages, the Europeans and Indigenous Americans had a very different spirituality and cosmology. Thus, the belief in a "Great Spirit" was feared and misunderstood, although some Europeans were drawn to it.
"First, the connection between the European and American nature was broken, then it was rediscovered. But it was discovered in such a way that the Americans of the time, the American Indians, were massacred"
"The Europeans had an awful fear of what emerged as knowledge of the spirit from the North American Indians. The Europeans had indeed already ensured that this fear of the spirit would not be dispelled."
Columbus arrives in the New World in 1492
The Great Spirit permeates all of Life and Nature. In Lakota spirituality, the term for this divine sacredness is Wakan Tanka.
"They had retained, like a mighty memory, the knowledge of the great spirit that had come to them from the East, from our East, but by the opposite route across the Pacific Ocean.
It was sometimes a great experience for those Europeans who could understand it, to get to know the way these American Indians spoke of the great spirit...that permeates and interweaves the world."
The early rise of materialism in Europe
The Catholic Church took the tripartite spiritual understanding of man from body, soul, and spirit and reduced it to body and soul only. Then, even the soul was lost during the Age of Enlightenment, and only the body remained as a consideration.
Spirit is from God, the body is from the Earth, and the Soul connects both.
From"De Homine" (1662) by René Descartes, a prominent figure in the Scientific Revolution. Life is reduced to automata, or machinery.
I have often mentioned to you the memorable Council of Constantinople in the year 869, at which the Catholic Church abolished belief in the spirit, at which the Catholic Church decreed that in future one should not believe in body, soul and spirit, but that one should only believe in body and soul.And this abolition of the knowledge of the spirit has brought about all the chaos in science and knowledge that has befallen Europe. It was therefore no wonder that this European humanity, grown in fear of everything spiritual, was seized with even more terrible fear when it now came face to face with the American Indians and their knowledge of the great spirit.
The Fourth Council of Constantinople
