Behold the 12 Holy Nights CONCENTRATION.
A Complimentary Spiritual Exercise & Twelve Day journey into the Heart of the Matter…into the Arms of the Mother, Father, Friend, Beloved God.
This journey is meant to enliven & revivify the blood, to dissolve doubt & fear, to midwife the birth of the Higher-Being through the Womb of Remembrance, to bring clarity regarding the Tasks at Hand & to develop the INNER capacities to PERCEIVE what stands behind the material world.
Each concentration will provide a series of short readings that merge to reveal a Sacred Task given through THE WORD.
The readings will be a marriage of voices from those who are pioneering the Science of Spirit, or HEART-thinking.
“May you come to KNOW the true meaning of Christmas!”
The Over-arching TASK at hand:
“To penetrate to the reality of the world...is the task of this post Atlantean Epoch, and Rudolf Steiner tells us, we can only do this by developing the mood of ‘wonder’ through a reverent devotion to the world of reality, which eventually leads us to...loving ‘surrender’.
We must surrender our lower egos by changing our thinking...
When we develop a feeling of ‘loving surrender’ we are transforming our thinking into a faculty that allows the world itself to teach us something of its nature...
One who has practised surrender rises to an imagination of the flourishing will in all things...
To develop imagination one must learn to think differently, that is one must learn to forget the lower ego for a time, so as to find the higher self...
What helps us to achieve this? Anthroposophia, she opens our hearts and births our Higher egos...”
Through this cascade of readings, you are being asked to read between the stars.
You are pioneering a new way of thinking.
IT MAY NOT BE EASY TO WEAVE THE GOLDEN THREAD, BUT KEEP PUTTING ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER.
Allow the "mood of soul” that births within as you read one passage to merge with the “mood of soul” from the next.
In the end, practice uniting all soul moods that have arisen into ONE. You do not have to understand every word with your mind, but rather bring the questions (perhaps intense questions or confusion) into your heart and let them gently work upon you.
Ponder in your heart.
TAKE THIS WITH YOU INTO DREAMTIME…INTO NIGHT SCHOOL.
Ask your guardian angel to reveal to you what you need to KNOW in the light of your work here.
If all else fails, go outside at night, find two stars side by side & allow your gaze to rest between them. Notice what you see. Notice what you feel.
You will begin to FEEL what I mean when I say “weave the golden thread.”BRING THIS FEELING INTO YOUR READING.
January 5th, 2021 Addition
Keep in mind that the 13th Holy Night is from midnight on Jan. 5th to midnight Jan. 6th.Let us add the 13th Holy Night into the mix:
“Now, what of the 13th Night, 6 January, you may ask? This is Epiphany, and it commemorates the Baptism of Christ, as Christ entered the corporeal being of Jesus. But this happened 30 years later. Therefore, Epiphany has a special quality in that we commemorate what happened 30 years previously. At this Epiphany (1950), we may also go back to 30 years previously when another spiritual Being was born on the 13th Holy Night of Epiphany. This will become for us the real Festival of the Baptism of an ethereal Being that comes metaphorically to Its Spiritual Jordan and receives into His Being the Being of the Great Cosmic I Am. Looking back to 1920, and the whole year that followed, we will realize that Rudolf Steiner gave his most important lectures then, and at Michaelmas, the Goetheanum was opened under that heading as its aim: The 4 unity of Science, Art, and Religion. This belongs to that Being born at Christmas 1920 (Anthroposophia). At that time, Rudolf Steiner gave his lecture on the “Search for the New Isis” (the Divine Sophia). To me this lecture has been continuously illuminating in my studies, and has become almost as a gospel, in fact. What we have to contemplate with great gravity is that Being Who was born then approaches the end of the thirty years that prefaces the Ministry and approaches the Jordan for Baptism, by which we may experience and be endowed with the power of the I Am of the universe.”
-Willi Sucher
AND MAY THIS BECOME THE HOLY WATER OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:
“The 13th Day - EPIPHANY - THE FATHER LOGOS!
Dear friends! We have arrived at Epiphany! The moment when the Christ Ego meets the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. The moment when the heavens open and the Father unites with the world through the son.
'No one comes to the Father but through me.'
There is much that can be said, about this moment. As I write this it is three minutes to 12 midday when this event occurred at the turning point in time. I recall writing this in my Novel Fifth Gospel, it was a moment of pure joy!
My question at the time, was: How does one depict such a moment? Depicting Christ is in many ways not so difficult for Christ is here among us, He became a human being and walked the earth, but how does one depict the Father? So lofty, so distant from anything a human being can conceive?
What does Rudolf Steiner tell us about the Hierarchy of the Father?
This member of the Trinity is beyond the Zodiac, it's connection to the human being can only come about through the first hierarchy of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones who mediate what the Archai can bring of our progress. The Father therefore has a particular connection with the physical body of the human being and so the will in the limbs and karma.
Rudolf Steiner tells us the three logos have three ways of creating:
The Third Logos creates by combining of existing parts: Form
The Second Logos creates by producing new formations with new Life content out of existing foundations:Life
The First Logos creates out of nothing: Consciousness
Hence during world evolution there are varying conditions of Form, Life and Consciousness.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'The Third Logos produces by means of combining. When out of one substance something else having new life comes into being, this is brought forth by the Second Logos. Everywhere, however, where we have to do with a coming forth out of nothing, we have the First Logos. This is why the First Logos is also often called the One who is immanent in things, the Second Logos the One who in the quiescent substance in things creates life out of the living, the Third Logos the One who combines everything existing, who puts the world together out of things. These three Logoi always manifest in the world in and through one another.' Rudolf Steiner.
The First Logos is connected to consciousness and therefore to inner wisdom and the will. His creative activity is the gathering of thoughts out of nothing and then creating once more in accordance with these thoughts out of nothing.
'Creation out of nothing is however not meant in such a way as if nothing at all had been there. On the contrary, in the course of evolution experiences are made and in the course of becoming the new is created, so that what is there melts away and out of experience there is the creation of the new.' Rudolf Steiner
Every time we make an image of another human being inside us, this could be said to be a new creation, for it is an act that embraces all three logos, Combining, that is uniting one soul with the soul of another to create a new form this is a microcosmic reflection of the work of the Holy Spirit who aids us in this task of Imagination, if one adds life to this form, that is, if we see the spirit and soul and not merely the physical body, we are creaing a living picture, this is inspiration, and it is the work of the Son Logos which brings life to what is dead. And when we observe this living picture with full consciousness this is a reflection on earth of the work of the Father, for it is creating something, inside us, where nothing previously existed. This is intuition.
Rudolf steiner tells us this precisely with reference to the Father Logos:
'This creation may be compared with the following: Somebody sees another person and observes his appearance. If he were creatively gifted like the First Logos he would be able to say: Yes, I have seen N and I also have a concept of the reversed N. I can also form a complementary picture of him, i.e. white where there is black and vice versa. In this way, out of the experience of the object and its negative, he has created a completely new form. This he could imbue with life. It would be a completely new creation that was not previously there. Let us assume that somebody did this with a number of people and that these people were to perish: then, from his experiences, the observer would be able to create a new world.' Rudolf Steiner.
Do we now see how important our work with counter images is? We take this ability for granted. We pass the other by, we treat others shabbily for we do not make pictures of their true nature inside us! We see only the physical body a mirror image which has no true form or life!
My dear brothers and sisters! May we take this into our hearts in the most serious way, for this is the task the angels are striving to inspire us to achieve, the task necessary if we are not to plunge into endless wars and strife, because only in doing this do we truly know the other as a brother!
Now when we glance out at nature, we find there the Father forces in everything we see, for nature was the principle creation of the Father in Saturn, the great intuitive spirit. All that we perceive on earth therefore, all that we see in the world around us had it's beginnings there and so belong to the First Logos.
'If we now turn our attention to the physical plane we find in the first place that we perceive through the senses. Behind is the great intuitive Spirit. Everything physically present has been made by this Spirit. Thus behind everything that lives in form as such, that can be perceived by the senses, stands the Father Spirit, the first Logos.' Rudolf Steiner
In ancient times, human beings looked out at nature and they saw its soul, in our times we see only the physical body. But just as we can find the soul of the other inside us, we can also find the soul of nature inside us if we 'ensoul' our senses, or rather become conscious of the spirit living in nature through the power of thinking in will or consciousness. We cannot forget that this is how the First Logos creates through consciousness, creating out of nothing. When we do this we make what is objective, nature outside us, subjective, inside us. Then what enters us are the thoughts of the gods, for everything was created through thought by the First Logos and that is why we can think - for when we turn perceptions into thoughts, we can only do so because they come from the same source!
Rudolf Steiner tells,
'When our sense processes will become ensouled again, we shall have established a crossing point, and in this crossing point we shall take hold of the human will that streams up, out of the third stratum of consciousness, as I have described it to you recently. Then we shall, at the same time, have the subjective-objective element for which Goethe was longing so very much. We shall have the possibility of grasping, in a sensitive way, the peculiar nature of the sense process of man in its relation to the outer world. Man's conceptions are very coarse and clumsy, indeed, which maintain that the outer world merely acts upon us and we, in turn, merely react upon it. In reality, there takes place a soul process from the outside toward the inside, which is taken hold of by the deeply subconscious, inner soul process, so that the two processes overlap. From outside, cosmic thoughts work into us, from inside, humanity's will works outward. Humanity's will and cosmic thought cross in this crossing point, just as the objective and the subjective element once crossed in the breath. We must learn to feel how our will works through our eyes and how the activity of the senses delicately mingles with the passivity, bringing about the crossing of cosmic thoughts and humanity's will. We must develop this new Yoga will. Then something will be imparted to us that of like nature to that which was imparted to human beings in the breathing process three millennia ago. Our comprehension must become much more soul-like, much more spiritual.'
Now when we stand before nature we must do the same as we did when we stood before the human being. Take in the soul element.
'We must learn not merely to speak of the contrast between the material and the spiritual, but we must recognize the interplay of the material and the spiritual in a unity precisely in sense perception. If we no longer look at nature merely materially and, further, if we do not “think into it” a soul element, as Gustave Theodore Fechner did, then something will arise which will signify for us what the Yahve culture signified for mankind three millennia ago. If we learn, in nature, to receive the soul element together with sense perception, then we shall have the Christ relationship to outer nature. This Christ relationship to outer nature will be something like a kind of spiritual breathing process.' Rudolf Steiner.
When we make a counterimage of nature into our souls, when we make the objective subjective, we will find that our consciousness of what has entered us, once again creates something new, for what has become subjective actually enters the world process as something new through us. Just as a a painting of a landscape enters the world as something new, a subjective experience of an objective view of the world which becomes creative! But there is more to this for in this creative process we find Christ.
'I return once more to the image: You see a flame. You shut your eyes and have the after-image which ebbs away. Is that merely a subjective process? Yes, says the modern physiologist. But this is not true. In the cosmic ether this signifies an objective process, just as in the air the presence of carbonic acid which you exhale signifies an objective process. You are dealing here with the objective element; you have the possibility of knowing that something which takes place within you is at the same time a delicate cosmic process, if you become but conscious of it. If I look at a flame, close my eyes, let it ebb away — it will ebb away even though I keep my eyes open, only then I will not notice it — then I experience a process which does not merely take place within me, but which takes place in the world. But this is not only the case in regard to the flame, if I confront a human being and say: this man has said this or that, which may be true or untrue, this then constitutes a judgment, a moral or intellectual act of my inner nature. This ebbs away like a flame. It is an objective world process. If you think something good about your fellow-man: it ebbs away and is an objective process in the cosmic ether; if you think something evil: it ebbs away as an objective process. You are unable to conceal your perceptions and judgments about the world. You seemingly carry them on in your own being, but they are at the same time an objective world process. Just as people of the third period were conscious of the fact that the breathing process is a process that takes place simultaneously within man and in the objective world, so mankind must become aware in the future that the soul element of which I spoke is at the same time an objective world process.'
We find the Father through Christ.
'No one comes to the Father but through me.'
So on this night we now realise that this is what the angels are wishing for us to do - transform our consciousness - for this is the new Michael culture:
'This transformation of consciousness demands greater strength of soul than is ordinarily developed by the human being of today. To permeate oneself with this consciousness means to permit the Michael culture to enter.' Rudolf Steiner.
Now as we stand this day, gazing back at the last 12 nights, we realise that we have been striving to see things from 12 standpoints.
'The seeker must develop flexibility of outlook, and be able to see things from every side. This does not imply that an infinity of conditions has to be reckoned with, for their number is limited. Theoretically, an infinite number of points of view is possible, but actually, twelve are sufficient. These are symbolized in the star-language of the Mystery schools by the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.' Rudolf Steiner.
We realise that when Jesus and Christ united at the baptism, it was because over aeons the entire Zodiac and the Holy Trinity was involved so that John the Baptist could, standing in that water, recognise through the agency of his angel and the Holy Spirit what lived in Jesus. For John the Baptist created a counter image of Jesus's pure soul, in which Zarathustra had left all the impressions of wisdom, in his own soul and then he knew - this was the vessel for the Christ being who was seeking to enter the world. This soul John the Baptist had been waiting for, was his twin soul! His brother. And thus through love was the Christ able to connect the region of the Father with humanity - by entering into the body of a human being:
'Our body is given to us from nature's forces; we suck these Father forces into our being; we come to the Father through the Christ: “I and the Father are One. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Rudolf Steiner.
And:
'If you correctly understand the deepest Gospel, that of John, you find the same consciousness of religare, of the connection with a higher consciousness that appeared in human form. It is the teachings of the incarnate Logos, the incarnate divinity, the present divinity that lives in brotherliness with both forms of the divinity, with the active Spirit coming from the past, working in the present, and the Father creating in the present into the future. Thus, the Son originated from the Father, is connected with the Spirit at the same time, and that is why the Son is the great preannouncement that will lead to the Father.
The words no one comes to the Father except by me (John 14:5), by the divine essence of the present, point to this.' Rudolf Steiner.
On this day, may we ask ourselves have we loved enough? Will this love lead to a wakeful year, a year in which love and consciousness inform our lives, and in so far as e do, will we come to the 24th of December and unite it with this day to make it a 13th day and the 24th of December a 13 night?
Can we collapse time?
This only the individual can answer on the coming 24th of December.
With love and deep respect for you dear friends, and for my dear friend who watched over me these 12 Nights, Stephen Lesiuk. May his journey through the zodiac be wakeful and therefore filled with love.
Namaste!”
-Adriana Koulias | Holy Nights 2021
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Here begins the body of work created in 2020.
The 12 Zodiacal Signs by Rudolf Steiner are presented throughout this journey in Sidereal Astrology style & order, beginning with Sagittarius.
PLEASE SEE THE COMMENT SECTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DAY 1 POST FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THIS CONCENTRATION PURPOSEFULLY BEGINS WITH THE ZODIACAL SIGN OF SAGITTARIUS.
Ophiuchus Seal created by Betsy combining caduceus by Rudolf Steiner’s lost zodiac and the encircling round of Goethe’s color wheel.
Day 13
“I SURRENDER.”
How can I SURRENDER completely & Consciously to the Great Mystery?
“O Light Divine
O Sun of Christ,
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads,
That Good may become -
What from our hearts we found
And from our heads direct
With single purpose.”
Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:
God alone!
“Who knows the secrets of all men, living and dead? God alone!
Who rested in the eternal void, before the atoms blinked glittering eyes and started the dance of creation? God alone!
We came here from some mysterious realm, we know not whence; we shall soon depart for another sphere, we know not whither. Who can explain the reason for our compulsory journeys? God alone!
With cause-effect threads we weave our intricate life patterns. Individuality and free will mark the myriad designs. Who sees their hidden harmony with a divine schema? Who unifies the bewildering variety of man’s creative expression? God alone!
Who understands the origin and destination of the grand procession of living creatures that endlessly emerges from mystic chambers of space? Who can tell in what skyey mansions now dwell the countless visitors to this planet who, at the touch of Death’s magic wand, instantly vanished? God alone!
Our dear ones promise to love us forever; yet when they sink into the Great Sleep, their earth memories forsaken, what value their vows? Who, without telling us in word, loves us everlastingly? Who remembers us when all others forget us? Who will still be with us when we leave the friends of this world? God alone!
Man plays his part, then hides behind the scenes at death, returning here in a new costume of flesh to perform again on the stage of time. Who recalls the previous roles of all persons? Who is aware of their future assignments? Who leads them surely through the baffling windings in the curious labyrinth of their many incarnations? God alone!
Why He is playing this game, and why He keeps the knowledge to Himself, sharing it only meagerly with us, His children, is a mystery understood by God alone.
When we dispel the delusion of physical-body identity we solve the riddle of life that sphinx-like confronts us. Who will then give us the clue to the Final Conundrum of the Cosmos? God alone!”
What is the Essence of Day 13?
“Each night when we fall asleep, we sojourn through our past day, then we experience our times between death and rebirth and all our past lives in between until we come to the first life we ever had in a human body, then we begin to experience these again backwards until we come to the potential for our future which we shall begin to put into action in the morning. We return to our physical bodies in the morning with a memory of our past and a potential for our future - hence the phenomenon called dejavu.
We enter a physical body today with the ‘memory’ of yesterday because of the Archai and their connection to the Father.
When we wake up in the morning however we forget our nightly sojourn and what we have decided will meet our karma in the coming day and we connect yesterday to today unconsciously.
Yesterday rushes into our consciousness nullifying our sojourn in the night. This happens in order to give us freedom from necessity (as we experienced on our 12th Night). That is why we rarely notice it, except when we fall asleep in the day and wake up not knowing what time or day it is! This happens because we fell asleep not at night but in the day!
In truth we must make a ‘leap’ we must jump from yesterday until today each morning or we become senile, but if we work spiritually we can do this and yet not forget all that came in between - that is our task every holy night and every year!
Each year all of us travel through the Holy Nights until the 6th of January - some more consciously than others. From the 6th of January to the 24th we generally tend to ‘forget’ this journey even if we have been conscious during those nights. We live with the effects of those nights unconsciously.
But if we must make that leap from the 6th of January to the next 24th of December fully consciously, that is the task!
If we live through these Holy Nights with consciousness and make the leap from the 6th of January to the 24th of December consciously the relationship between the 6th of January and the 24th of December becomes our 13th day and our 13th Night, just as yesterday and today are continuous, but the leap is now conscious.
Christ in Jesus is the 13th among the 12.
Jesus on the 24th of December meets Christ on the 6th of January, and Christ then meets Jesus Again on the 24th of December in US!
One must imagine it like this...if we are full of love on this day, the 6th of January, if we are full of a love of truth, a love of creativity, a love of life, then when we perform a review of our year on the following 24th of December we can cast our mind back over the year to re-collect the 6th of January and all that has come in between is illuminated!
When we do this, in our consciousness, the 6th of January and the 24th of December become one continuity of consciousness such as we would have if we could remember our night in our day and our day in our night!...
Yesterday and today and everything in between become a single stream.
What we are asked to do on this day is to make this day a 13th day, and this following year, so conscious, that we connect each month with the corresponding Holy Nights, that on the 24th of December we can remember it- we can recollect the day with the night, we can bring the 13th day to the 13th night, so we develop a continuity of consciousness in a single stream.
If we do this then both the 6th of January, and the 24th of December are together the 13th day and 13th Holy Night - we bring both into a unity - a unity of Jesus and Christ in our souls. ”
What does Complete & Conscious Surrender LOOK and FEEL like?
SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:
“Dear friends,
I have something to share with you. Writing these Holy Nights, one might say, comes at a price. One cannot write these things without first having lived deeply through them. Otherwise they are just words. I’m not saying this to make you feel one way or the other about these offerings, simply to say that if we want comfort then this sort of work will not bring comfort. It will, instead force us to experience what we need to experience so that we can speak out of living knowledge.
So saying, of all the nights, the last was the most challenging. The feeling life is far more difficult to objectify than the thinking life. One likes to hold on to one’s feelings, to revel in them, whether negative or positive, to indulge. But there can be no indulgence on this path, and suffering, dear friends, is a part of the process. This is easily said, and very difficult to experience, but it must be experienced. I am sharing this, because some of you may have experienced it and it helps to know that this is normal, this is even desired...
Last night was a kind of ‘dark night of the soul’.
Our physical bodies are similar, but they are not all the same. We have different karmas and this means that we will undergo trials that are different along this path, however, what we all have in common is that we must experience trials.
The disciples experienced great trials, they saw wonders, they were close to Christ and yet their feelings often failed them, drew a veil over their eyes, and caused them to doubt, even when they were close, ate, slept and drank with Jesus in whom lived the highest most noble expression of love on earth - some were loveless, others blind, some simply could not understand. But in the end all of those who remained in his circle in the Cenacle, before he walked to Gethsemene, all of them understood, finally when he was resurrected.
On this night one has to come face to face with one’s karma, for this night takes us back to our previous lives.
This is not an easy thing. It is only easy for those who like to believe that they were some famous honourable human being, some great person, some holy person in a previous life, but this is not necessarily so.
In truth to face one’s karma is to face one’s physical body in the most truest sense. For our physical body contains the true essence of all we were, our thoughts, feelings and will in previous lives, all our mistakes, all our triumphs, our relationships our imbalances, these are all etched on our physical bodies.
We can only face up to these things with objectivity if we have first faced up to our feelings, owned up to what weaves in us, as a conglomeration of good and evil passions.
We have to face the Higher Guardian of the Threshold. He asks us a question: ‘When you wake up in the morning, you will have to choose: Life or Death.’
If we choose death, we go on as before, we might even reject the spiritual world which is a ‘death’, we might choose to simply go on as before, and leave the work for a next life. Or we might choose to continue to a new life, but if we do, we must choose to suffer to accomplish this for the sake of others.
This is painful, exceedingly painful if it is experienced in the most honest way. We might feel a great desire to deny, to rail against the spirit and to turn our backs...but this is the suffering the trial we must overcome. If we do we are allowed to enter into a circle of beings who work for the betterment of humanity.
I thought I would just say this so that you know, I am not writing these things from the heights of knowledge, but from the depths of experience. So that you know I had to make a conscious decision to experience what I have to, to write this Meditation, perhaps this is a comfort to those who are having difficulty during these nights, for we are all together in this.”
CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Complete & Conscious Surrender:
Lovingly Surrender the lower ego (i.e. judgement, opinion & one-sidedness) for but just a moment…a Divine Breath.
Behold THE WORD with the immaculate Heart.
Invite ANTHROPOSOPHIA to Baptize you in the New Water, the “Draught of Remembrance.”
“The Christmas festival can be the occasion for comparing the Mystery upon which it is based with Mysteries that were the outcome of different conditions in the evolution of humanity. The Christmas Mystery — when it is conceived as a Mystery — belongs paramountly to Winter. It arose from conceptions of the spiritual world that had primarily to do with the link established between man and the scene of his life on Earth at the beginning of Winter.
When we turn our attention to Mysteries that were celebrated in certain parts of Asia long before the founding of Christianity and in which many sublime cosmic thoughts were given expression, or when we compare the Christmas festival with Mysteries that were celebrated also in pre-Christian times, in Middle, Northern and Western Europe, we are struck by the fact that they were preeminently Summer Mysteries, connected with the union between man and all that takes place in earthly life during the time of Summer. To understand the essential meaning of these Mysteries we must think, first of all, of that part of the evolution of humanity which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha.
Looking back into very ancient times we find that the Mysteries were institutions of men still possessed of the faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. In certain states of consciousness between those of full sleep and waking, in states where dreams were expressions of reality, the men belonging to that ancient humanity were still able to gaze into the spiritual worlds whence the human being descends into his physical body on the Earth. Every human being in those times could speak and think about the spiritual worlds, just as a man today can speak about the ordinary knowledge he has learnt at school. I have, as you know, often said that what the men of those olden times beheld of the spiritual-super-sensible world presented itself to them in pictures — not the pictures of dreams but somewhat resembling them. Whereas we know quite well that the pictures in our dreams are woven from our reminiscences, that they rise up from the organism and, unlike our thoughts, do not mirror reality, through the very nature of the Imaginations of the old clairvoyance men knew that they were the expressions — not, it is true, of any external, material reality nor of any historical reality, but of a spiritual world lying hidden behind the physical world. Thus the spiritual world was revealed to men in pictures.
But it must not be imagined that those men of an earlier epoch had no thoughts. They had thoughts, but they did not acquire them as man acquires his thoughts today. If a man of the modern age is to have thoughts, he must exert himself inwardly; he must elaborate his thoughts by dint of inner effort. A similar kind of activity was, it is true, exercised by the men of old in connection with the pictures which mirrored for them a spiritual form of existence; but the thoughts came with the pictures. One may well be amazed at the power and brilliance of the thoughts of that old humanity; but the thoughts were not formulated by dint of effort; they were received as revelations.
Now just as we today have schools and colleges, so in those times there were Mysteries-institutions in which science art and religion were undivided. No distinction was made between belief and knowledge. Knowledge came in the form of pictures; but belief was based securely on knowledge. Nor was any distinction made between what men fashioned out of various materials into works of art, and what they acquired as wisdom. Today the distinction is made by saying: What man acquires in the form of wisdom must be true; but what he embodies in his materials as a painter, sculptor, or musician — that is fantasy!
Goethe was really the last survivor of those who did not hold this view. He regarded as truth both what he embodied in his materials as an artist and what he took to be science. The philistinism expression in the distinction between the artistic and the scientific did not, in fact, appear until comparatively late, indeed after Goethe’s time. Goethe was still able, when he saw the works of art in Italy, to utter the beautiful words: “I have the idea that in the creation of their works of art the Greeks proceeded by the same laws by which Nature herself creates and of which I am on the track.” In Weimar, before going to Italy, he and Herder had studied the philosophy of Spinoza together. Goethe had striven to deepen his realization that all the beings in man’s environment are permeated by the divine-spiritual He also tried to discover the manifestations of this divine-spiritual in details, for example in the leaf and flower of the plant. And the way in which he built up for himself a picture of the plant-form and animal-form in his botanical and zoological studies was identical as an activity of soul with the procedure he adopted in his artistic creations.
Today it is considered unscientific to speak of one and the same truth in art, in science and in religion. But as I have said, in those ancient centres of learning and culture, art, science and religion were one. It was actually the leaders in these Mysteries who began gradually to separate out particular thoughts from those that were revealed to men with their instinctive clairvoyance and to establish a wisdom composed of thoughts. On all sides we see a wisdom composed of thoughts emerging in the Mysteries from clairvoyant vision. Whereas the majority of men were content with pictorial vision, were satisfied to have the revelation of this spiritual vision presented to them in the form of myths, fairy-tales and legends by those who were capable of doing so, the leaders of the Mysteries were working at the development of a wisdom composed of thoughts. But they were fully aware that this wisdom was revealed, not acquired by man’s own powers.
We must try to transport ourselves into this quite different attitude of soul. I will put it in the following way. — When the man of today conceives a thought, he ascribes it to his own activity of thinking. He forms chains of thoughts in accordance with rules of logic — which are themselves the product of his own thinking. The man of olden times received the thoughts. He paid no heed at all to how the connections between thoughts should be formulated, for they came to him as revelations. But this meant that he did not live in his thoughts in the way we live in ours. We regard our thoughts as the possession of our soul; we know that we have worked to acquire them. They have, as it were, been born from our own life of soul, they have arisen out of ourselves, and we regard them as our property. The man of olden time could not regard his thoughts in this way. They were illuminations; they had come to him together with the pictures. And this gave rise to a very definite feeling and attitude towards the wisdom-filled thoughts. Man said to himself as he contemplated his thoughts: “A divine Being from a higher world has descended into me. I partake of the thoughts which in reality other Beings are thinking — Beings who are higher than man but who inspire me, who live in me, who give me these thoughts. I can therefore only regard the thoughts as having been vouchsafed to me by Grace from above.” It was because the man of old held this view that he felt the need at certain seasons to make an offering of these thoughts to the higher Beings, as it were through his feelings. And this was done in the Summer Mysteries.
In the Summer the Earth is more given up to its own environment, to the atmosphere surrounding it. It has not contracted because of the cold or enveloped itself in a raiment of snow; it is in perpetual intercourse with its atmospheric environment. Hence man too is given up to the wide cosmic expanse. In the Summer he feels himself united with the Upper Gods. And in those ancient times man waited for the Midsummer season — the time when the Sun is at the zenith of its power — in order at this season and in certain places he regarded as sacred, to establish contact with the Upper Gods. He availed himself of his natural connection in Summer with the whole etheric environment, in order out of his deepest feelings to make a sacrificial offering to the Gods who had revealed their thoughts to him.
The teachers in the Mysteries spoke to their pupils somewhat as follows. They said: “Every year at Midsummer, a solemn offering must be made to the Upper Gods in gratitude for the thoughts they vouchsafe to man. For if this is not done it is all too easy for the Luciferic powers to invade man’s thinking and he is then permeated by these powers. He can avoid this if every Summer he is mindful of how the Upper Gods have given him these thoughts and at the Midsummer season lets his thoughts flow back again, as it were, to the Gods.” In this way the men of olden times tried to safeguard themselves from Luciferic influences. The leaders of the Mysteries called together those who were in a sense their pupils and in their presence enacted that solemn rite at the culmination of which the thoughts that had been revealed by the Upper Gods were now offered up to them in upward-streaming feelings.
The external rite consisted in solemn words being spoken into rising smoke which was thus set into waves. This act was merely meant to signify that the offering made by man’s inmost soul to the Upper Gods was being inscribed into an outer medium — the rising smoke — through form-creating words. The words of the prayer inscribed into the rising smoke the feelings which the soul desired to send upwards to the Gods as an offering for the thoughts they had revealed.
This was the basic mood of soul underlying the celebration of the Midsummer Mysteries. These Midsummer festivals had meaning only as long as men received their thoughts by way of revelation.
But in the centuries immediately preceding the Mystery of Golgotha — beginning as early as the 8th and 9th centuries B.C. — these thoughts that were revealed from above grew dark, and more and more there awakened in man the faculty to acquire his thoughts through his own efforts. This induced in him an entirely different mood. Whereas formerly he had felt that his thoughts were coming to him as it were from the far spaces of the universe, descending into his inner life, he now began to feel the thoughts as something unfolding within himself, belonging to him like the blood in his veins. In olden times, thoughts had been regarded more as something belonging to man like the breath — the breath that is received from the surrounding atmosphere and continually given back again. Just as man regards the air as something which surrounds him, which he draws into himself but always gives out again, so did he feel his thoughts as something which he did not draw into himself but which was received by him through revelation and must ever and again be given back to the Gods at the time of Midsummer.
The festivals themselves were given a dramatic form in keeping with this attitude. The leaders of the Mysteries went to the ceremonies bearing the symbols of wisdom; and as they conducted the sacrificial rites they divested themselves of the symbols one by one. Then, when they went away from the ceremonies, having laid aside the symbols of wisdom, they appeared as men who must acquire their wisdom again in the course of the year. It was like a confession on the part of those sages of olden times. When they had made the solemn offering it was as though they declared to the masses of those who were their followers: “We have become nescient again.”
To share in this way in the course taken by the seasons of the year, entering as Midsummer approaches into the possession of wisdom, then passing into a state of nescience (Torheit) before becoming wise again — this was actually felt by men to be a means of escape from the Luciferic powers. They strove to participate in the life of the cosmos. As the cosmos lets Winter alternate with Summer, so did they let the time of wisdom alternate in themselves with the time of entry into the darkness of ignorance.
Now there were some whose wisdom was needed all the year round, and who for this reason could not act or adopt the same procedure as the others. For example, there were teachers in the Mysteries who practised the art of healing — for that too was part of the Mysteries. Naturally it would not do for a doctor to become ignorant in August and September — if I may use the present names of the months — so these men were allowed to retain their wisdom, but in return they made the sacrifice of being only servants in the Mysteries. Those who were the leaders became ignorant for a certain time every year.
Reminiscences of this have remained here and there, for example in the figure described by Goethe in his poem Die Geheimnisse as the ‘Thirteenth,’ the one who was the leader of the others but was himself in a state of dullness rather than wisdom.
All these things are evidence that the attitude towards the guiding wisdom of mankind was entirely different from what it afterwards became when men began to regard their thoughts as produced by themselves. Whereas formerly man felt that wisdom was like the air he breathes, later on he felt that his thoughts were produced within himself, like the blood. We can therefore say: In ancient times man felt his thoughts to be like the air of the breath and in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha he began to feel that they were like the blood within him.
But then man also said to himself: “What I experience as thought is now no longer heavenly, it is no longer something that has descended from above. It is something that arises in the human being himself, something that is earthly.” — This feeling that the thoughts of men are earthly in origin was still significantly present at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha among those who were the late successors of the leaders of the ancient Mysteries. Those who stood at that time at the height of cultural life said to themselves: Man can no longer have such thoughts as had the sages of old, who with their thoughts lived together with the Gods; he must now develop purely human thoughts. But these purely human thoughts are in danger of falling prey to the Ahrimanic powers. The thoughts that were revealed to man from above were in danger of succumbing to the Luciferic powers; the human thoughts, the self-produced thoughts, are in danger of succumbing to the Ahrimanic powers.
Those who were capable of thinking in this way in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha — by the 4th century, however, the insight was lost — such men experienced the Mystery of Golgotha as the true redemption of mankind. They said to themselves: The spiritual Power indwelling the Sun could hitherto be attained only by superhuman forces. This Power must now be attained by human faculties, for man’s thoughts are now within his own being. Hence he must inwardly raise these thoughts of his to the Divine. Now that he is an earthly thinker, he must permeate his thoughts inwardly with the Divine, and this he can do through uniting himself in thought and feeling with the Mystery of Golgotha.
This meant that the festival once celebrated in the Mysteries at Midsummer became a Winter festival. In Winter, when the earth envelops herself in her raiment of snow and is no longer in living interchange with the atmosphere around her, man too is fettered more strongly to the earth; he does not share in the life of the wide universe but enters into the life that is rooted beneath the soil of the earth. — But the meaning of this must be understood.
We can continually be made aware of how in the earth’s environment there is not only that which comes directly from the Sun but also that which partakes in the life of the earth beneath the surface of the soil. I have spoken of this before by referring to some very simple facts. — Those of you who have lived in the country will know how the peasants dig pits in the earth during Winter and put their potatoes in them. Down there in the earth the potatoes last splendidly through the Winter, which would not be the case if they were simply put in cellars. Why is this? — Think of an area of the earth’s surface. It absorbs the light and warmth of the Sun that have streamed to it during the Summer. The light and the warmth sink down, as it were, into the soil of the earth, so that in Winter the Summer is still there, under the soil. During Winter it is Summer underneath the surface of the earth. And it is this Summer under the surface of the earth in Winter time that enables the roots of the plants to thrive. The seeds become roots and growth begins. So when we see a plant growing this year it is actually being enabled to grow by the forces of last year’s Sun which had penetrated into the earth.
When therefore we are looking at the root of a plant, or even at parts of the leaves, we have before us what is the previous Summer in the plant. It is only in the blossom that we have this year’s Summer, for the blossom is conjured forth by the light and warmth of the present year’s Sun. In the sprouting and unfolding of the plant we still have the previous year and the present year comes to manifestation only in the blossom. Even the ovary at the centre of the blossom is a product of the Winter — in reality, that is, of the previous Summer. Only what surrounds the ovary belongs to the present year. Thus do the seasons interpenetrate. When the earth dons her Winter raiment of snow, beneath that raiment is the continuation of Summer. Man does not now unite himself with the wide expanse but turns his life of soul inwards, into the interior of the earth. He turns to the Lower Gods.
This was the conception held by men who were in possession of the heritage of the ancient wisdom at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. And it was this that made them realize: It is in what is united with the earth that we must seek the power of the Christ, the power of the new wisdom which permeates the future evolution of the earth. Having passed to the stage of self-produced thoughts, man felt the need to unite these thoughts inwardly with the Divine, to permeate them inwardly with the Divine, in other words, with the Christ Impulse. This he can do at the time when he is most closely bound to the earth — in deep Winter; he can do it when the earth shuts herself off from the cosmos. For then he too is shut off from the cosmos and comes nearest to the God who descended from those far spaces and united Himself with the earth.
It is a beautiful thought to connect the Christmas festival with the time when the earth is shut off from the cosmos, when in the loneliness of earth man seeks to establish for his self-produced thoughts communion with divine-spiritual-super-sensible reality, and when, understanding what this means, he endeavors to protect himself from the Ahrimanic powers, as in ancient times he protected himself from the Luciferic powers through the rites of the Midsummer Mysteries.
And as under the guidance of the teachers in the Mysteries the man of olden time became aware through the Midsummer festival that his thoughts were fading into a state of twilight, the man of today who rightly understands the Christmas Mystery should feel strengthened when at Christmas he steeps himself in truths such as have now once more been expressed. He should feel how through developing a true relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, the thoughts he acquires in the darkness of his inner life can be illumined. For it is indeed so when he realizes that once in the course of the earth’s evolution the Being who in pre-Christian ages could only be thought of as united with the Sun, passed into earthly evolution and together with mankind indwells the earth as a Spiritual Being. In contrast to the old Midsummer festivals where the aim was that a man should pass out of himself into the cosmos, the Christmas festival should be the occasion when man tries to deepen inwardly, to spiritualize, whatever knowledge he acquires about the great world.
The man of old did not feel that knowledge was his own possession but that it was a gift bestowed upon him, and every year he gave it back again. The man of today necessarily regards his world of thought, his intellectual knowledge, as his own possession. Therefore he must receive into his heart the Spirit Being who has united with the Earth; he must link his thoughts with this Being in order that instead of remaining with his thoughts in egotistic seclusion, he shall unite these thoughts of his with that Being of Sun and Earth who fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha.
In a certain respect the ancient Mysteries had what might be called an ‘aristocratic’ character. Indeed the principle of aristocracy really had its origin in those old Mysteries, for it was the priests who enacted the sacrifice on behalf of all the others.
The Christmas festival has a ‘democratic’ character. What modern men acquire as that which really makes them man, is their inner store of thoughts. And the Christmas Mystery is only truly celebrated when the one does not make the sacrificial offering for another, but when the one shares with the other a common experience: equality in face of the Sun Being who came down to the Earth. And in the early period of Christian evolution — until about the 4th century — it was this that was felt to be a particularly significant principle of Christianity. It was not until then that the old forms of the Egyptian Mysteries were resuscitated and made their way via Rome to Western Europe, overlaying the original Christianity and shrouding it in traditions which will have to be superseded if Christianity is to be rightly understood. For the character with which Christianity was invested by Rome was essentially that of the old Mysteries. In accordance with true Christianity, this finding of the spiritual-super-sensible reality in man must take place at a time not when he passes out of himself and is given up to the Cosmos, but when he is firmly within himself. And this is most of all the case when he is united with the Earth at the time when the Earth herself is shut off from the cosmic expanse — that is to say, in Midwinter.
I have thus tried to show how it came about that in the course of the ages the Midsummer festivals in the Mysteries changed into the Midwinter Christmas Mystery. But this must be understood in the right sense. By looking back over the evolution of humanity we can deepen our understanding of what is. presented to us in the Christmas Mystery. By contrasting it with olden times we can feel the importance of the fact that man has now to look within himself for the secrets he once sought to find outside his own being.
It is from this point of view that my Occult Science is written. If such a book had been written in ancient times (then, of course, it would not have been a book but something different!) the starting-point of the descriptions would have been the starry heavens. But in the book as it is, the starting-point is man: contemplation, first of the inner aspect of man’s being and proceeding from there to the universe. The inner core of man’s being is traced through the epochs of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and extended to the future epochs of the Earth’s evolution.
In seeking for knowledge of the world in ancient times, men started by contemplating the stars; then they endeavored to apply to the inner constitution of the human, being what they learned from the stars. For example, they contemplated the Sun which revealed a very great deal to the Imaginative cognition of those days. To the orthodox modern scientist the Sun is a ball of gas — which of course it cannot be for unbiased thought. When the man of ancient time contemplated the Sun externally, it was to him the bodily expression of soul-and-spirit, just as the human body is an expression of soul-and-spirit. Very much was learnt from the Sun. And when man had read in the Cosmos what the Sun had revealed to him, he could point to his own heart, and say: Now I understand the nature of the human heart, for the Sun has revealed it to me! — And similarly in the other heavenly bodies and constellations, man discovered the secrets of his organism.
It was not possible to proceed in this way in the book Occult Science. Although it is too soon yet for all the relevant details to have been worked out, the procedure is that we think, first, of the human being as a whole, with heart, lungs, and so on, and in understanding the organs individually we come to understand the universe. We study the human heart, for example, and what we read there tells us what the Sun is, tells us something about the nature of the Sun. Thus through the heart we learn to know the nature of the Sun; that is to say, we proceed from within outwards. In ancient times it was the other way about: first of all men learnt to know the nature of the Sun and then they understood the nature of the human heart. In the modern age we learn what the heart is, what the lung is ... and so, starting from man, we learn to know the universe.
The ancients could only give expression to their awareness of this relation of man to the universe by looking upwards to the Sun and the starry heavens at the time of Midsummer, when conditions were the most favorable for feeling their union with the Cosmos. But if we today would realize with inner intensity how we can come to know the universe, we must gaze into the depths of man’s inner being. And the right time for this is in Midwinter, at Christmas.
Try to grasp the full meaning of this Christmas thought, my dear friends, for there is a real need today to give life again to old habits such as these. We need, for example, to be sincere again in our experience of the course of the year. All that numbers of people know today about Christmas is that it is a time for giving presents, also — perhaps, a time when in a very external way, thought is turned to the Mystery of Golgotha!
It is superficialities such as these that are really to blame for the great calamity into which human civilization has drifted today. It is there that much of the real blame must be placed; it lies in the clinging to habits, and in the unwillingness to realize the necessity of renewal — the need, for example, to imbue the true Christmas thought, the true Christmas feeling, with new life.
This impulse of renewal is needed because we can only become Man again in the true sense by finding the spiritual part of our being. It is a ‘World-Christmas’ that we need, a birth of spiritual life. Then we shall once again celebrate Christmas as honest human beings; again there will be meaning in the fact that at the time when the Earth is shrouded in her raiment of snow, we try to feel that our world of thought is permeated with the Christ Impulse — the world of thought which today is like the blood within us, in contrast to the old world of thought which was like the breath.
We must learn to live more intensely with the course of the seasons than is the custom today. About 20 years ago the idea occurred that it would be advantageous to have a fixed Easter — a festival which is still regulated by the actual course of time. The idea was that Easter should be fixed permanently at the beginning of April, so that account books might not always be thrown into confusion owing to the dates of the festival varying each year. Even man’s experience of the flow of time was to be drawn into the materialistic trend of evolution. In view of other things that have happened as well, it would not be surprising if materialistic thought were ultimately to accept this arrangement. For example, men begin the year with the present New Year’s Day, the 1st of January, in spite of the fact that December (decem) is the tenth month, and January and February quite obviously belong to the previous year; so that in reality the new year can begin in March at the earliest — as indeed was actually the case in Roman times. But it once pleased a French King (whom even history acknowledges to have been an imbecile) to begin the year in the middle of the Winter, on the 1st of January, and humanity has followed suit.
Strong and resolute thoughts are needed to admit honestly to ourselves that the saving of human evolution depends upon man allying himself with wisdom. Many things indicate that he has by no means always done so but has very often allied himself with ignorance, with nescience. The Christmas thought must be taken sincerely and honestly, in connection with the Being who said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” But the way to the Truth and to the Life in the Spirit has to be deliberately sought, and for this it is necessary for modern humanity to plunge down into the dark depths of midnight in order to find the light that kindles itself in man.
The old tradition of the first Christmas Mass being read at midnight is not enough. Man must again realize in actual experience that what is best and most filled with light in his nature is born out of the darkness prevailing in him. The true light is born out of the darkness. And from this darkness light must be born — not further darkness.
Try to permeate the Christmas thought with the strength that will come to your souls when you feel with all intensity that the light of spiritual insight and spiritual vision must pierce the darkness of knowledge of another kind. Then in the Holy Night, Christ will be born in the heart of each one of you, and you will experience together with all mankind, a World-Christmas.”
Think with your HEART all the way through to the other side of the above wedded WORDS.
Weave the Golden Thread.
Take the fruits of your labor into dreamtime with you tonight.
Allow your Higher Being to begin to inform your inner most movement.May you come to hold the FAITH in the following:
The Being of Jupiter. The essence of the Original Primal Song & oldest planet of our solar system in the form of the number 12, as Jupiter is the size of 11 earths wide, the encircling round of itself forming the number 12. 1 year on Jupiter is equivalent to almost 12 years on earth. Due to Jupiter’s similar density to the Sun, this is the planetary essence that will help us during this Age of Consciousness Soul, whereby we are learning the Art of Brotherly Love & HOW to become Sun-like. The friend of Jupiter absorbs much cosmic debris because of its sheer size, taking upon itself what might otherwise destroy the earth before its proper spiritualization. May we enter into the Being of Jupiter, learning directly from this celestial being how to embody Faith, Hope & Love, thereby surrendering the thought to the heart, experiencing cosmic discipleship - the number 13 in the light of Christ, becoming one with the Sun within (apostles), & with tongues of fire, walking out the Universal Tasks at hand.
-Betsy Huljev
“The heart functions in a different way. There the CENTER ITSELF may even be outside in the surrounding sphere - ‘in the encircling round’ - whence it will pour back its knowledge to human beings. This mode of operation of the microcosmic sun, the heart, is a microcosmic counterpart of the macrocosmic Sun, the Christ. It is expressed in the words of the meditation:
For the Christ Will
In the encircling Round holds sway
In Rhythms of Worlds
Bestowing Grace on the soul
In these words the principle of cosmic sociality - if we may so express it - is contained. And the true human community is a reflection of this cosmic principle. Here too it is important that the community not group itself round an immobile center, but that the center should be mobile, placed in the encircling round, moving throughout it. The spiritual and moral depth of this location can be recognized in the spirit of the words spoken by Christ Jesus in the circle of the Twelve:
’Ye are my friend if ye do whatsoever I command you. Hencforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.’ (John xv:15)
These words contain the spiritual essence of the deep esoteric conviction that must determine the forming of community, for they reveal the AIM of the highest model of all communities based on the spirit, namely, that the group of disciples should become a circle of friends.
To work in this spirit becomes natural to a life of knowledge and cognition that has sunk deep into the heart; for it is one of the properties of the human heart to overcome the didactic, the pedagogic, and even the medical attitude to our fellows who work and strive alongside us, and in place of these attitudes substitute free intercourse and give-and-take based upon human confidence. This is the object of everyone’s DESIRE, whether conscious or unconscious. Though the desire cannot be fulfilled without further effort - and, generally a very prolonged quest - yet FAITH in such a possibility is tenacious and refuses to be dislodged. It is tenacious because behind the desire for a purely human structure of community life there exists an unconscious knowledge that the supersensible organization of the human heart bears within itself the power of interchanging the fruits of learning, education, and healing with different and more direct methods than those of instruction, precept, and prescription. For the organization of the human heart makes if possible FOR ONE HUMAN BEING TO LIVE IN ANOTHER.
And this does not come about merely by personal sympathy, but by real interest in the other’s PROBLEMS. For if the problems of knowledge have become concerns of the heart, interest in one another’s problems of knowledge will also become a concern of the heart; and that is the necessary condition for a human circle whose center lies in its circumference. It can then live in this encircling round - in such a way that, in rhythmic succession, every point thereof becomes, at a definite time, a decisive and determining center. In practice this means that at a definite point of time and in a definite situation each member of a human circle striving after spiritual knowledge has to be, for the moment, its center of gravity, bearing the weight of responsibility for the whole, though it may be only by a determining word or a single decisive act. No one in the present age can alone be permanently responsible for a circle of men and women pursuing the spiritual life of knowledge, but everyone who belongs to such a circle will at some point of time and in some definite situation be alone responsible - for at that moment the decision lies in his or her hands. ”
May you be held in the womb of 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒶 & filled with the Light of ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱 today & always.
Image by @waldorfchalkboarding
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P.S. It’s never too late to partake in this Experience as Christmas is EVERYDAY!