Answering another question:
While I don’t doubt that there is a force running through human history intent on thwarting the feminine principle, I somehow dislike the idea that specific souls are consistently (through a series of incarnations) on one side of the issue. Firstly there is Steiner’s statement that the greatest number of instances that he had ever observed of one (soul is the wrong word, with soul we usually refer to the astral, it is the spirit that is eternal) individual incarnating in the same gender repeatedly was seven, and that was an exceptional case. Steiner was quite specific that everyone, yes everyone, in all cases, incarnated alternating between male and female, with only very exceptional instances of even two back to back incarnations of one gender. If anyone thinks that they are equal to Christian Rosenkreuz and therefore can go multiple incarnations in the same gender, I will certainly abstain from judging them from my limited insight.
The force working against the feminine principle I would consider similar to the forces working against other progressive human strivings: one or more Ahrimanic or Luciferic beings (or perhaps a combination of both). Their task is to mislead the incarnated human on this issue, and by all accounts they have been quite successful. As I see it, the eternal ego of any specific individual, once they have passed beyond death and Kamalocha is beyond the influence of such beings, and thus incapable of carrying these impulses in Devachan. So for the greater part of life between death and rebirth, an individual is beyond masculine and feminine, and beyond taking sides on the issue. Once they incarnate again, they are again subject to all manner of temptations and errors, and may even make the same mistake as they made before and find themselves again alligned against the feminine. However, I would argue that this is not because they carried the impulse with them as an integral part of their being from one life to the next, but because they fell into the same error as they had in their previous life. So I would caution against personalizing impulses and forces in history. Usually the forces are far greater than the individuals who find themselves representing them.
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