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Valentin Tomberg (February 26, 1900 – February 24, 1973) was anEstonian-RussianCatholicmystic, polyglot scholar and esotericist.
Valentin Tomberg was born on February 26, 1900 (February 14 in the Old Russian Julian calendar) inSt. Petersburg, Russia. His parents wereLutheran, the mother was a Russian and the father ofBaltic German origin, he was an official in the Tsarist government. As an adolescent, Tomberg was drawn toTheosophy and the mystical practices ofEastern Orthodoxy. In 1917, he was initiated into HermeticMartinism byG. O. Mebes. He also discovered the works ofRudolf Steiner. In 1920, Tomberg fled with his family toTallinn, in newly independentEstonia. Tomberg worked as a nurse at a hospital, in a pharmacy, on a farm and in the Tallinn Central Post Office. He studied languages andcomparative religion at theUniversity of Tartu in Estonia.
In 1925, Tomberg joined Rudolf Steiner'sAnthroposophical 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 chairmanWillem 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 theChristian Community,Emil Bock (1895–1959) about creating a new ritual focusing on Sophia, but were rebuffed. He then joined theRussian Orthodox Church in the Netherlands but left shortly thereafter, as its leadership turned out to be sympathetic toNational Socialism.[citation needed]
Towards the end ofWorld War II, Tomberg received a Ph.D. in jurisprudence from theUniversity of Cologne, where he had moved in 1944. He studied under Ernst Arthur Franz von Hippel (1895–1984), professor of law in the University of Cologne, who became a personal friend and an anthroposophist. Tomberg's thesis was published asDegeneration and Regeneration in the Science of Law, followed by the thesisPeoples' Rights as Humanity's Rights in 1946. Around this time, he converted toRoman Catholicism.
Shortly after the war he helped founding a community college in theRuhr area. In 1948, however, he moved to England, where he became a translator for theBBC, monitoringSoviet broadcasts during theCold War at BBCCaversham Park. He retired early, in 1960, to the suburbanized village ofEmmer Green, not far fromReading, where he worked on the manuscripts for his main work, written inFrench and entitledMéditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot (Meditations on the Tarot in English).
Tomberg died on a holiday inMajorca. Two weeks later his wife and collaborator Maria died as well. A Dutch or German rough translation of the manuscript toMéditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot was circulated in the Netherlands against Tomberg's intentions a year before his death, but was only formally published in 1984.[citation needed]
Robert A. Powell and others have reportedly identified Tomberg as the 20th century incarnation of theboddhisattva who they say will in time incarnate as theMaitreya Buddha, a claim contested by T. H. Meyer and otherAnthroposophists.[1]
Tomberg's major written works were published posthumously. They include:
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