Mani

His Life and Work, Transforming Evil

Mani, the founder of the spiritual movement which has come to be known as Manichaeism, established an influential teaching that spread swiftly across Asia, Africa and parts of Europe but was later brutally suppressed. Little was known about this "Gnostic religion" until archaeological findings in the twentieth century revealed important aspects of Mani's biography and philosophical thought.

Many years before these physical discoveries, Rudolf Steiner provided key esoteric insights, based on his personal spiritual-scientific research, into Mani's life and work. Richard Seddon assembles pieces of the academic and esoteric puzzle, offering a lively and colourful picture of Mani and Manichaeism. He gives a succinct outline of Mani's life, the fundamental aspects of his teachings, and a description of Manichaeism's future spiritual role. Seddon creates an image of a mighty Christian initiate leading a movement with the critical task of transforming, and ultimately redeeming, evil.

RICHARD SEDDON studied moral sciences (philosophy, ethics, logic and psychology) with Bertrand Russell and John Wisdom - an advocate and colleague of Ludwig Wittgenstein - at Cambridge. He spent his working life as a personnel manager. A student of anthroposophy for many decades, he is the author of several books including The Future of Humanity, Philosophy as an Approach to the Spirit, Europa and The Mystery of Arthur at Tintagel. March 2011; 96pp; 21.5 x 13.5 cm; paperback.