Michael S. Ridenour

Michael S. Ridenour learned to read at age five with a young-adult book on evolution. He had out-of-body experiences as he grew older and woke up as an adolescent with the certainty that he had a soul, which gave Ridenour a growing sense of reality that culminated with a Christ experience during his mid-teens, but he didn’t know what to do with it. After a few degrees in physics, math, French, and English literature left him intellectually richer but were no help. A two-year stint teaching English to Buddhist monks in Thailand was enormously satisfying, but still fell short. Then he discovered the spiritual perceptions of esoteric Christianity and spiritual science given by Rudolf Steiner, which grounded him in esoteric literature and enabled him to complete a book, Chartres: A Human Temple of Heaven and Earth (Hermetica, 2009). Years later, the same stream flowed into his second book, The Greatest Gift Ever Given (Temple Lodge, 2017). Ridenour continues his career as a writer and Waldorf teacher in Southern California.