Southern Cross Review

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New Ebook: Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age, by Rudolf Steiner.

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."

Max Planck, The Nature of Matter, speech at Florence, Italy, 1944

This issue of SCR starts off in the "Editor’s Page" with a bilingual conversation on immortality and my personal recollection of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where President Obama recently spoke. And our “letters” page has gradually taken on a life of its own.

In “Current Events” women victimized by male violence is not new, but its increase since the young men psychologically abused by war in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and are taking their frustrations out on the wives and girlfriends justifies Ann Jones’s article being described as “current”.

Despite my great admiration for Barack Obama, I take time out from admiration to wonder about the wisdom or foolishness of his belligerent policy in Afghanistan. In a related direction, Tom Englehardt worries about the bad dreams resulting from the death of innocent civilians caused by American bombing in the two countries. James Carroll writes about what’s going on in the less than clandestine war between Obama and the Catholic Church.

“Features” – I was relieved to learn that Jorge Luis Borges hated the dubbing of movies as much as I do, and he was able to describe the reasons for his rejection of the process so eloquently that dubbing should have ended forthwith – but it didn’t. Maybe with this English translation an anti-dubbing movement (non-violent of course) with arise. Gaither Stewart gets personal in respect to the world in general, going much farther that dubbing. Leo Tolstoy long ago mused about organized religion, his idea about what is “real” religion, and non-violence.

Under “Science” Steve Talbott continues his in-depth articles about the scientific confusion in respect to the investigations of the human Genome. Closer to home, Caelainn Barr (Irish, residing in Argentina) impertinently but accurately calls Argentina “The Soya Republic”; the article is also translated into Spanish but the benefit of Argentineans, and others, who will pick it up from Google.

The “Fiction” section has one item, a short work by Heinrich von Kleist that appeared here a couple of years ago and which I noticed, thanks to a reader who commented on it now, that it has been accessed more than 54,000 times since then. Wow! Certainly deserves a repeat performance. A bilingual story by yours truly, also previously well received, is repeated in the “Children’s Corner/Rincón Infantil.”

In “Anthroposophy” Keith Francis’s lectures on the history of evolution continue, along with three contributions by Rudolf Steiner: an article about social laws, the continuation of his Genesis lectures and Anthroposophical Guidelines.

Two very different “Book Reviews”: My rave about the characters and plot of the fictional “The Millennium Trilogy” and Stanley Fish’s more reserved but positive thoughts about Terry Eagleton’s book on Reason, Faith and Revolution.

In "Poetry" we offer another poem by Jorge Luis Borges in Spanish and English.

Don’t miss any of it.

Table of Contents