Valentin Tomberg
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Photo: National Archives of Estonia (ERA.957.3.507)
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Valentin Tomberg (February 26, 1900 – February 24, 1973) was an Estonian-Russian Christian mystic, polyglot scholar and esotericist.
Early life
Valentin Tomberg was born on February 26, 1900 (February 14 in the Old Russian Julian calendar) in
Career
In 1925, Tomberg joined Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society. In the early 1930s he married divorcée Maria Belozwetow (née Demski) (died March 1973), a Polish Catholic; they had a son, Alexis (August 31, 1933 – 1975). During the 1930s, Tomberg, then in his 30s, published his original occult research in a number of articles and lectures, which made him a controversial figure in Anthroposophical circles. As a result of the controversies, in 1938 the Tombergs were invited to move to Amsterdam. In 1940, however, he was asked to withdraw from the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands as well, by its chairman Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven (1893–1961), due to his being too controversial.
He was active in Dutch anti-Nazi resistance by hiding allied pilots and parachutists. Tomberg and a Russian friend, the poet-philosopher Nikolai Nikolaevich Bielotsvietov (Nikolaj Belozwetow) (1892–1950), allegedly approached the leader of the
Towards the end of
Shortly after the war he helped founding a community college in the Ruhr area. In 1948, however, he moved to England, where he became a translator for the BBC, monitoring Soviet broadcasts during the Cold War at BBC Caversham Park. He retired early, in 1960, to the suburbanized village of Emmer Green, not far from Reading, where he worked on the manuscripts for his main work, written in French and entitled Méditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot (Meditations on the Tarot in English).
Death
Tomberg died on a holiday in
Robert A. Powell and others have reportedly identified Tomberg as the 20th century incarnation of the boddhisattva who they say will in time incarnate as the Maitreya Buddha, a claim contested by T. H. Meyer and other Anthroposophists.[1]
Published works
Tomberg's major written works were published posthumously. They include:
- Lazarus, komm heraus: vier Schriften (Come Forth, Lazarus), a study of Christian mysticism, written in ISBN 1-58420-040-5.
- ISBN 978-2700703696) does not always follow the French original manuscript.
- Christ and Sophia: anthroposophic meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and apocalypse, Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006. ISBN 0-88010-565-8.
- Degeneration und Regeneration der Rechtswissenschaft, Bonn: Bouvier, 1974 [German]. ISBN 3-416-01032-9.
- Le Mat itinérant. L'amour et ses symboles. Une méditation chrétienne sur le Tarot, introduced and edited by ISBN 978-2-9599829-5-8.
- Innere Gewissheit: über den Weg, die Wahrheit und das Leben, introduced and edited by Friederike Migneco and Volker Zotz. Luxembourg: Kairos Edition 2012, [German] ISBN 978-2-919771-00-4.
References
- ISBN 9781906999193.
- John Michael Greer, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult. p 488. ISBN 1-56718-336-0.
- Valentin Tomberg - Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Band 1.1: Valentin Tombergs Leben von 1900-1944, Eine Biographie von Liesel Heckmann [German]. ISBN 3-907160-77-0.
- Valentin Tomberg - Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Band 1.2: Valentin Tombergs Leben von 1944-1973, Eine Biographie von Liesel Heckmann & Michael Frensch [German]. ISBN 3-907160-82-7.
- Valentin Tomberg - Band II: Werk, Edited by the Ramsteiner Kreis, Trier [German].
- Private conversations with Prof. Jur. Dr. Martin Kriele, Tomberg's literary heir.
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