Book of Revelation work 2_18

 Rudolf Steiner. The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest. 2/18. GA 346. The Apocalypse. Dornach, 6 September 1924

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA346/English/UNK1995/19240906v02.html

We will now take a closer look at the connection between the act of consecration of man and apocalyptic things, so that we will then be able to approach the Apocalypse and to see its significance for the present and future activities of priests.

Yesterday we had to point to three past epochs of the mysteries, in so far as these mysteries tried to give each priest experiences which put him into an apocalyptic mood. We pointed out that there was a very ancient mystery period during which the gods descended into the mystery centers in order to work with human beings, and a semi-ancient mystery period when the gods sent down their forces, so that the men who lived in this sphere of forces were able to work with the gods in the cosmos.

One could say that the path was completely reversed during the third epoch when the mysteries were partly renovated. At that time man shaped and developed forces so that they could lead him up to the gods. We saw that man looked for a way up to the world's divine, spiritual forces through the intonation of magical words in cultic ceremonies. These words either worked directly upon the auditor's whole soul mood, so that he became aware of the spiritual activities of the gods in the words, or else magical words were spoken into the smoke in the way which was indicated yesterday, and the smoke drew Imaginations out of the words.

This development of a certain religious feeling, which one can really only describe separately, always went parallel with a certain condition or a certain kind of transubstantiation which was the center of the holy act of consecration of man. Priests are now being called upon to experience this transubstantiation and everything else that is connected with their activities in a new way. They will not be able to do this very well without an understanding of what transubstantiations and apocalypses were really like in each of these four successive periods of human evolution.

One thing we have already seen is that the act of consecration of man and its transubstantiation process involves a working together of human beings and the gods in the spiritual world. Priests cannot really work properly unless they're aware that men and the gods can work together.

If we take another look at the oldest form of transubstantiations and acts of consecration of man we find that the gods found the way to men at certain times that are really differences between what one can calculate in the course of time and what the cosmos does. The gods descended during such blank or holy times when men must add something to the times they calculated because their calculations are incorrect. In these times men had to expose themselves to cosmic influences directly in order to carry our transubstantiations, and they saved what had occurred in the substances during such times in order to carry out transubstantiations with the preserved things that had been transformed by forces from the cosmos.

The right place for priests and lay brothers to be in for these transubstantiations at that time was a cave or a grotto. And in fact, wherever people were fully aware of the presence of the gods and of the significance of transubstantiations in the ancient mysteries, we see that they tried to carry out the sacred rites in subterranean rock temples or caves.

The fact that they tried to do this is connected with the experiences which priests had during the transubstantiations. A transubstantiation consists of a transformation of the given earthly materials. If one wants to understand the process completely one should add the communion or the ingestion of the transformed substances by the human being to it, so that actually the two last parts of the act of consecration of man, transubstantiation and communion, constitute a unity, whereas the gospel reading and the offering are a preparation for them. Taking transubstantiation and communion as a unified priestly or cultic act, let's look at a view which the initiates we call fathers had in the oldest mysteries.

The “fathers” refers to the father grade of initiation, and this name is still given to priests in many confessions today,—pater. Now when a priest carried out a transubstantiation in his earth or rock temple, he experienced the union of his physical organism with the whole earth. This is why they had the temple underground or in a rock. Today we can also feel united with the surrounding cosmos in our ordinary earthly consciousness as we live between birth and death, and this has been the case during the whole time that mankind has been evolving on earth.

The air which is in your body now was outside it a moment ago, and it will soon be outside again. The air which is outside your body and the air inside your body constitute a whole. The real state of affairs is that there is an aery ocean, and when man inhales, one part of this aery ocean becomes transformed in the human being. The air is absorbed, and it penetrates and fills man and thereby assumes a human form. Then this form immediately dissolves again in the ocean of air. An aeriform man is continually being created and destroyed, although one is usually unaware of it.

However, Indian yogis knew about it whenever they did their conscious breathing exercises. They didn't feel separate from the earth's ocean of air; they felt that they were united with it, and they felt this creation and destruction at each systole and diastole. One can easily experience this by doing these breathing exercises, although they are no longer appropriate for men today.

However, man is not just a man in connection with physical, earthly things. Although he is an earthly man where the so-called physical, body is mainly active, he is also a fluidic man. The whole human being is filled with circulating fluids which work upon each other. This fluidic man is mainly dependent upon the ethers. For the forces in the etheric body work more upon fluids and not so much upon solids.

We also bear an aery man and a warmth man in us. This aery man, which takes care of respiration, is controlled by the forces of the astral body. And the warmth man: you need only recall that if you measure some place on the surface of your body or inside it with a thermometer, you get different temperatures. This crude procedure already shows one that man is a differentiated warmth organism. The latter is mainly under the influence of the ego—organization or ego.

Thus, we find four elements in man. Earth is under the influence of the physical body, water is influenced by the etheric body, air is under the influence of the astral body, and warmth or fire is under the influence of the ego.

The transubstantiations and communions which the ancient fathers carried out made them feel that their physical body was connected with the earth, when they had gone into their rock temple or earth temple, in order to unite themselves with these earthly developments. What actually happened here? Alan's supposedly scientific view of himself today is really wrong; it is really complete nonsense. We must rethink all of our ideas about human beings. The ancient fathers received the right ideas about man through direct perception when they carried out transubstantiations during sacrificial rites which consecrate human beings.

They knew that we don't just breathe air in through our respiratory organs, but that we are continually taking in all kinds of substances from the cosmos through our sense organs. All kinds of substances are continuously being taken in through our hair and skin. Just as someone who is watching his breathing feels that air is entering his respiratory organs, so the ancient priest felt that substances passed over from the siliceous environment of the consecrated subterranean temple and penetrated his nerve-senses system just as aery man feels the air which is going through him, for when he breathes in a conscious way he can feel that these substances permeate his entire organism. The priests knew that none of the substances in the metabolic-limb man come from what we eat. Nothing of what one eats becomes part of the metabolic-limb man. One takes in substances from the cosmos. The whole modern nutritional theory is really wrong. The celebrating father felt that what is eaten and then transformed by the digestive system passes over from the metabolic man to the nerve-senses man and especially to the head. He knew that what you eat is transformed into the substances of your head and what is connected with it. But the substances which become the organs that take care of your metabolic functions are taken in from the cosmos by a finer breathing. Thus he felt that his metabolic-limb man consisted of cosmic substances which are taken in from all sides through the senses and nerves. And he felt that the food that one eats and transforms goes the opposite way and becomes the upper man.

When a father carried out a transubstantiation he had a current in him which flowed upwards and another one which flowed downwards. Then when he took communion he knew that he was connected with the cosmos, because he had become aware of his physical body by means of these streams. He had become united with the earth and he united what he had prepared at the altar with his body, with currents that belong to both the earth and his body, and with divine things on the earth which are a reflection of the universe.

He knew that he was united with the outside universe. He knew that the meal which he had taken in in this way was a meal which his cosmic man had completed. He felt that his divine man arose through what streamed into the current which went upwards and the one which went downwards, and that it could be a companion of the gods who had descended. He felt that the gods had transformed him into a divine human being in his physical body, that is, he felt that he had been transubstantiated. And at this moment he could say from the depths of his heart: Now I am not the one who walks around in the physical world; I am he in whom the descended god lives; I am he whose name includes all sounds and who was at the beginning, is in the middle and will be at the end. I am alpha and omega.

The extent to which he could really participate in the secrets of the cosmos, in the divine working and creating in the cosmos, and in the manifestation of forces, substances and beings there while divine, spiritual work was being done, depended on the way his inner life was shaped by this feeling. This is the way priests worked in the ancient mysteries.

If we go on to the semi-ancient mysteries we find that holy water and washing and sacrificial actions which are connected with water had become very important, and also that the temples had been moved aboveground. They were no longer put into subterranean caves out of the same longings as before, or if they were placed there it occurred through tradition and it was no longer understood in a living way, and it was precisely for this reason that the tradition lived on, even though it had lost its living content.

Such traditions also remained with regard to the dipping of people into the dew, as it were. What the priest did at baptisms was less dependent upon the actual watery element than upon the Inner force which he applied during the sacrificial action in order to unite the fluidic man in whom the forces of the etheric body were active with the universe.

When a transubstantiation was being carried out and one observed things which involved the fluidic element before or after it in the act of consecration, one felt that the etheric organization was working in a temporal way. While the transubstantiation was being carried out one felt that one's growth since childhood had occurred under the influence of the fluidic element in one, and that the etheric body was active in this streaming from the past through the present and into the future.

In ancient times priests felt that their physical body was connected with the earthly element, and during the less ancient mysteries the one who performed transubstantiations felt united with the watery element which exists in the whole universe. He felt the growth forces of all creatures sprouting, germinating, growing and unfolding in him into fully developed organisms and then contracting into seeds again. He felt this sprouting, shooting living and dying activity whenever he carried out a transubstantiation.

At every moment he could say to himself: Now I know how creatures come into being in the world and how they die. For both ascending and descending etheric forces were active in him. He could, as it were, feel eternity in the sacred transubstantiation.

The priest who was performing a communion in conjunction with a sacred act of transubstantiation knew that the substances which were transformed in the way we described yesterday were absorbed by his etheric, fluidic man. He felt that he was united with everything which preserves immortality in the universe and with everything which is created and born or is killed and destroyed. Birth and death wafted over the altar and from there into the faithful who were assembled. The priest became permeated with feelings of eternity. This permeation with feelings of eternity had replaced the previous feeling of being united with the whole cosmos through the earth.

Then when the third epoch of holy acts of consecration arose, man was to experience his union with the aery element and thereby with the cosmos. Oriental yogis could become aware of the streaming of divine, supersensible world forces in inhalation and exhalation in a different way and for their own personal development. They took hold of breathing in a direct way.

People intoned magical words into their breath in Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia Minor, but they didn't take hold of the undifferentiated breath directly. Thereby the breath or the air streaming in and out of them was taken hold of by magical, cultic words. The striving up of magical forces towards divine ones became manifest indirectly in what was spoken into the sacrificial smoke, or directly in what was experienced in the intonation of the magical, cultic words. Whenever someone prays, he is basically trying to ascend to divine, spiritual regions with his forces, and these people felt that when they intoned magical, cultic or prayerful words they were ascending to a region where they met the gods. When someone intones things, the godhead becomes manifest and speaks in the cultic words, so that it's not he who is speaking anymore. The godhead was now revealing itself in the aery element. Man felt that he was in something which controls the forces in the air from his own astral body.

The transition from the second, semi-ancient mystery epoch to the third, partly new mystery epoch was a large one. In ancient times fathers experienced things in their physical body. This involved an intensification of its activities. The sun priests of the second epoch experienced an enhancement of their etheric or fluidic body. When a priest intoned cultic words in the third epoch he experienced the streaming of divine spiritual forces in his astral body. The astral body of the average person was only a mediator of consciousness to a very slight extent. At the beginning of the third epoch a priest could still say: when I speak magical cultic words, a god is speaking in me. However later on this awareness diminished. The new consciousness which arose was unaware of the astral body's activities. Today, ordinary consciousness is completely oblivious to the latter. The verbal content of the ritual gradually became something which made qualified people aware of the gods' presence, whereas unqualified people were unaware of what was connected with the intoned words. The latter was increasingly the case for a large number of priests who were active in Catholicism.

Hence it gradually came about that the act of consecration of man or mass became something that the priest celebrated, although he himself was not present in it. However, one cannot celebrate with words or intone words which have aery beings incorporated in them in such a way that there is no spirituality there. Spiritual things immediately appear whenever something material is being shaped. And so if an act of consecration is celebrated with real cultic words by even the most unworthy priest, his soul, may be absent but something spiritual is present. So the fact is that if the liturgy is correct, the believers who are listening to it are participating in a spiritual event under all circumstances.

While things were developing like this at the end of the third epoch, some of the Protestant confessions which were working in a more rationalistic way thought that they could throw the mass out altogether. They were no longer aware of the significance of cultic rites or of a real collaboration between gods and men.

This inner circumstance then led to the time in which we are living. There was less and less understanding for the act of consecration of man which brings the divine, spiritual life right down to earth. People no longer understood the apocalyptic things which the rites were supposed to take one experience. This is basically the experience you had when you came one day and said: A Christian renewal must occur. You felt that the religious life of all the confessions and other things that exist in our civilization had become separated from real spiritual things in the real spiritual world. You were looking for the path to the real spiritual world again. This impulse can show us the way and can lead us into the depths of the mysteries, which are connected with apocalyptic things.

So we saw that in the first epoch transubstantiation was connected with experiences with the physical body, in the second epoch the connection was through experiences with the etheric body and in the third epoch through experiences with the astral body. The grasping of apocalyptic things and of the act of consecration by the ego of mankind depends upon you and your inner experience of the working and weaving of spirituality in the world. Therewith we only have a right view of what should be done by this movement for religious renewal if we look upon what is to be done as the carrying out of a task which has been given us by the supersensible world and as a task which places what one does at the service of supersensible powers. For if you don't take your task seriously enough, what you do will come to nothing in the present evolution of the world, and it will only have been a kind of disturbance. Or else you will see how deep and profound your task is and you will Immediately feel that this task is connected with the activity of the gods throughout earth evolution, and not just with human activities. In that case you can say: we are called upon to help with the shaping of the fourth mystery epoch in human earth evolution. This task will only be placed in the service of the powers in the spiritual world from whom the content of the ritual flowed two years ago when we were assembled here, if you have the courage, strength, seriousness and perseverance to find your way into your task in this way. Only then will what you took upon yourselves through the content of this ritual, which is a revelation from the spiritual world and which radiated down upon you as such, become real.

Then you will increasingly sense and feel: it's really the case that Christ came into earth life in a real cosmic and tellurian ritual. The Mystery of Golgotha is present as a real ritual. In our time man must first unite this ritual with his ego; for the first commemorations of the Lord's Supper were still immersed in the third mystery epoch, when the astral body took in and controlled the cultic activities which occurred in the aery element. But now it's a question of connecting one's innermost core with the Christ so that each human being can begin to understand apocalyptic things in a new way.

How did one look upon apocalyptic things in the first mystery epoch? One experienced them as the presence of the gods, which are the beginning, the middle and the end, alpha and omega.

How did one look upon the presence of divine forces in the second mystery epoch? One experienced them as something which resounds through the world as the music of the spheres, and which lives in the cosmic word that created everything and that creates in everything, and which streams from the heavens to the earth. One experienced what is at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of time simultaneously, as it were. One experienced the alpha and the omega in the cosmic, world word. Whenever the subject of the Greek alpha and omega, the first and the last, came up in this or that epoch, people always tried to find out what the first and last letters of various alphabets really contain.

And how did one understand apocalyptic things during the third mystery epoch? One understood apocalyptic things in such a way that people were developing cultic words which were still half conscious. Apocalyptic things were perceived during the third epoch when these half-conscious cultic words transubstantiated themselves as they were being intoned and when things were as follows. Most of you have probably heard some music on a day when your soul and senses could be entirely receptive to the impressions of the outer world, and then you fell asleep and woke up in the middle of your sleep. It was as if you lived in a surging back and forth, but in a transformed surging of the symphony you heard during the day. This is the way it was for priests in the third mystery epoch.

What happened to them is comparable to the trivial thing I just mentioned. They celebrated the act of consecration with cultic words, and they experienced that the godhead appeared in them. They had sent the cultic words up and the godhead had streamed into them. Then they left the sacred ritual in an appropriate mood. They not only experienced the presence of divine spirituality in human, cultic words during the act of consecration of man, but afterwards, they experienced a supersensible echo of what they had spoken in the liturgy of the mass. These transubstantiated, transformed words streamed towards them and revealed apocalyptic things.

The god revealed apocalyptic things as a counter present for an appropriately celebrated sacrificial rite. This is how one experienced apocalyptic things during the third mystery epoch.

The one who felt that he had been made into a priest, by Christ Jesus himself, namely, the author of the book which we want to study, the Apocalypse, was more or less the first to feel that an apocalyptic content merged with his ego,—and only very few people have experienced this since. For it was the astral body which received the echo that. I mentioned, where the god gave apocalyptic things as a counter present for words. However, the one who wrote John's Apocalypse felt that his fully conscious ego was united with the content which he had given the Apocalypse.

The priest who wrote the Apocalypse and who felt that he had been anointed by Christ Jesus himself, was inspired by the afterglow of ancient Ephesian rituals, and he felt as if he were continuing frequent celebrations of this ancient act of consecration up to an advanced age. One day he felt that the ego which had been completely filled with the significance of the sacred ritual was now also completely filled with an apocalyptic content.

Hence John expressed his Apocalypse in the same way that one says the single word “I” in one's ordinary consciousness. When a human being says “I” he is expressing his inner nature with a single sound. The only thing which can be meant by this is what the individual human being is. But this one thing has a large content. This large content is the content of apocalyptic things.

If everything which religious feeling can give a meditating soul and if all the enlightenment which is gained by energetic effort and by a striving towards an understanding of the supersensible can work in men's spirits,—if all of this is oriented in the way it can be oriented and if we let ourselves be stimulated by everything that can stimulate us through a contemplation of the three past mystery epochs which can become the inspirer of the fourth one, and if we let ourselves be stimulated by what was outlined in an introductory way yesterday and today, that is, by what lived in the first, second and third mystery epoch which was the living inspirer of the fourth, and if we let the power of the Spirit God—which is possible again today work in our souls—we will be able to experience that there is not just one Apocalypse but that there are numerically just as many apocalypses as there are human, God-fearing, priest's egos in the priest-renewal who speak to the Christ who is to be found again through this Christian renewal.

There is only one apocalypse from a qualitative point of view, but from a numerical viewpoint it can become the content of the soul of each individual priest. Conversely, every single soul that undergoes the act of consecration of man, so that it prepares the ego to become identified with the content of the apocalypse, can become a proper priestly soul. We are egos as human beings. We become priests in the modern sense of the word if the ego becomes aware that it is creating a copy of the Apocalypse at every moment in life, so that it isn't just something which is finished and printed in the bible, and it isn't just memorized by heart. Take the following analogy. Someone gives the content of a book. It is sent to the printers. This might seem like a pedantic, philistine analogy, but it's useful nevertheless. The book is printed and a large number of copies go through the world which are different, although they all have the same content. What you are referred to right at the beginning of the Apocalypse is a single thing and what Christ revealed to John is a single thing. For this is “The revelation of Jesus Christ” which was received by “his servant John.” There is only one content, but it is multiplied by those who recreate this content in themselves after they have been prepared through the wisdom of supersensible worlds.

This is an understanding of John's apocalyptic things. In the deeper sense of the word, this also amounts to an understanding of the words: Christ has ordained us to be priests. You have felt how the Apocalypticer says that Christ Jesus anointed him to be a priest; one becomes anointed as soon as one feels how the content of the Apocalypse arose in John and as soon as one feels that people want to become priests today by creating the Apocalypse in themselves so that they experience that their ego is in the Apocalypse. If the ego becomes apocalyptic, the ego is priestly. We will take this up again tomorrow.

Book of Revelation work 1_18

Rudolf Steiner. The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest. 1/18. GA 346. The Apocalypse. Dornach, 5 September 1924

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA346/English/UNK1995/19240905v02.html

We will begin by pointing to a great thing in our time, namely, to that great thing which must consist of an entirely new attitude of the human soul to what works its way through priests' activities. For as long as mankind has existed on earth, people have always been attracted to what is present in the activities of priests when an act of consecration of man was performed. However, if we want to understand how the act of consecration of man must appear to the priest who celebrates it and to the layman who participates in it, we must take a look at what the act of consecration of man was in the course of man's development on earth, what it is and what it must become.

Looked at from another angle what the act of consecration of man is when it is celebrated, is a permeation of this religious service with the real content of what John, who had been initiated by Christ, wanted to give to the later Christian world with his Apocalypse. The right spirit when one is celebrating an act of consecration of man and the right consciousness when one is permeated with the substance of the Apocalypse are two things which really belong together. Let's disregard the particular form and connotations which the Apocalypse has for Christians, and let's call all the occult truths which have been and are being given in order to assure a right continuation of the priestly impulse “apocalypse.” The apocalypse concept covers a great deal, and it is concentrated and summarized in John's Apocalypse, which is attuned to the Christ. People who have striven towards an apocalypse have always been aware that one can only arrive at the complete and profound significance of the reception of apocalyptic things through an immersion in an act of consecration of man.

We will be able to explain many things if we tell ourselves that mysteries once existed, which I want to call the ancient mysteries. We don't want to take up time in this introduction with the giving of dates, so we will only describe four successive stages. There were ancient mysteries, semi-ancient mysteries, half new mysteries, and we are now at the beginning of a new mystery impulse. Therewith we have four stages before us, four stages in the development of man's understanding of apocalypses and acts of consecration of man. If we look at the ancient mysteries which existed among men at the dawn of human evolution on earth and which had to bring holy, true and beautiful things to human beings, we can say that their importance derived from the fact that dignified priests in the mysteries worked with the gods on a being to being basis. Just as human beings relate to each other on a being to being basis today, so gods associated with men and men with gods in those ancient times in the mysteries.

However, just as there are laws of nature which are valid during certain periods of time, so there are eternal laws which don't interfere with man's freedom, even though they exist. Among these eternal laws are some which refer to associations between gods and human beings. These eternal laws had to be taken into consideration when the gods associated with men in the holy mysteries in the far distant past, when everything that is connected with human instruction was occurring between divine teachers and human beings, and when what took place in the cults occurred in such a way that supersensible and powerfully active gods walked among the celebrants of the religious ceremonies. People in these ancient mysteries did the things which had always given the act of consecration of man its meaning when transubstantiations were being carried out. But what was transubstantiation in the ancient mysteries? Transubstantiation in the ancient mysteries was something which gods regarded as the last thing through which they were still entering into relations with human beings. The eternal laws which I mentioned determined the way a path is made from gods to men and from men to the gods during certain constellations of the stars and planets which one became familiar with in genuine ancient astrology, when conditions for finding out things from the stars were favorable.

You will be able to perceive one thing everywhere: if you look at the way people calculated time in the old/days, you will see that there are chronologies where they assume the existence of 354 days and others where they have 365 days. They interpose leap days and intercalary months in order to correct the discrepancies between human calculations and the true course of cosmic events. What human beings can calculate never coincides with the true course of cosmic events. A small remainder is always left over, that is, human calculations always have a small remnant in them. Priests in the ancient mysteries, were particularly interested in these small remainders where human calculations of time don't agree with the cosmic course of events. One could say that this non-coincidence became particularly noticeable at certain times, for after they divided the year into weeks and lunar months, extra days and weeks remained between the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Anyone who wants to find his way into the course of human evolution has good reason to look at the times where men—when they interpolated weeks—expressed the non-coincidence of human calculations with the course of cosmic events, ind where priests looked upon such weeks as holy weeks. These holy weeks made it very clear that the ways gods and men think are different, but if one places the heart of the gods alongside the heart of man, one sees the difference between the two, and one can then find the way from the gods to men and from men to the gods.

The people who really understood this and who were conversant with ancient astrology were able to observe when gods visited their mysteries. There were always holy times at the end of each year or at the end of a lunar cycle of 18 years or of other periods of time which indicated the difference or boundary between human intelligence and divine intelligence, and during which the priests in the mysteries could tell that gods can find the way to them and that men can find their way to the gods.

At such times priests tried to capture the activities of the sun and the moon in the substances with which they celebrated the act of consecration of man, so that they could extend what they had received during sacred times to the other times in which they had to celebrate. They preserved what the gods had made out of earthly substances and forces during the sacred times. They kept the water and its mercurial element, etc., from those times in order to celebrate the act of consecration of man during the rest of the year in such a way that it had a transubstantiation which was done in the same way it had been done by the gods in the services which had taken place during so-called dead times which, however, were sacred times.

During these times when cosmic language was more important than human language, the men in the ancient mysteries wanted to connect themselves with the gods who descended into the mysteries and who consecrated each religious service anew. The gods gave the human beings who carried, out or participated in these acts of consecration of man an understanding of apocalyptic things. This is how great truths were taught in ancient times, when an immersion in an act of consecration of man meant that one was permeated with apocalyptic substance. The act of consecration of man is a path of knowledge, and apocalypse is the object of this holy knowledge.

Then we come to the semi-ancient mysteries, of which there is a slight reflection in the literature, unlike the ones which I called the ancient mysteries, for the latter can only be investigated by occult science. During this time the gods withdrew from men and sent their forces down into the mysteries, and no longer appeared there as beings. It was the time in which the act of consecration of man acquired that radiance or divine glow which should always radiate above acts which consecrate human beings.

The secret behind transubstantiations was now sought in a different way. The substances and forces which were supposed to flow into the celebration of a transubstantiation were no longer determined by an astrological investigation of cosmic processes. Instead, one tried to arrive at an understanding of the inner nature of what ancient alchemists called ferments. A ferment is a substance which has attained a certain maturity, that is, it has passed through all of the preparatory stages of its material existence and activity. To take a trivial example, just think of how one bakes bread, for this occurs according to the same principle. One saves the yeast in a small part of the dough and adds it to the new dough. Try to imagine how ancient materials which had undergone inner events or a transubstantiation in the course of time were preserved in sacred vessels, which were greatly esteemed in the ancient and semi-ancient mysteries, and how they were taken out of these vessels after they had been transformed by very ancient and sacred processes.

Ferments were taken out of sacred vessels and they were used to transform substances through ancient and still sacred alchemical processes. The priest was an initiate who saw how the preserved substances and forces shone in the sacred crystalline vessels, and so he knew how the transubstantiation occurred. One looked upon these substances and forces as a cognitional organ for the people who were celebrating rituals, which enabled them to receive apocalyptic things.

The following state of affairs existed at the time of these semi-ancient mysteries. A priest passed his entrance exams, as it were, the moment he could stand before the sacred place or structure, and the old, fermenting substances in the sacred crystalline vessels became transformed for him in such a way that he saw a small sun or a natural small monstrance in the crystalline vessel, as the substances spread sunshine around them. This was something holy, and it can only be reproduced externally today. The moment he saw this he became a priest in an inner sense.

Today everyone who goes into a Catholic church sees a monstrance, but it is only a symbol for what it once was. In ancient times the only one who saw it was a true priest who saw a radiant sun appear in the preserved substances. At that moment his soul gained knowledge of apocalyptic things.

Then came the mysteries which are reflected in the modern mass. The Catholic mass, the Armenian mass and other masses arose from the half new mysteries in a very complicated way, and even though they have become externalized, they still contain the complete initiation principle. What man can perceive when magical words awaken within him began to be present in these half new mysteries, instead of the god's presence in the ancient mysteries and the presence of forces which the gods sent in the semi-ancient mysteries. These words enable one to acquire very profound knowledge of the inner nature of sound, and intense feelings resound in them.

During the time of the half new mysteries human language and cultic language were two different things, and remnants of the latter are still present in individual religious confessions. Ln this cultic language everything depends upon rhythm, a deep understanding of sounds and an understanding of the way that sounds from the priest's mouth penetrate human hearts. The intonation of magical cultic words in sacred places enabled people to ascend to the forces of the gods for the first time.

1. The first human period—ancient mysteries—the gods descend.
2. Second human period—semi-ancient mysteries—the gods send their forces down.
3. Third human period—half new mysteries—man learns a magical language and begins to ascend to the forces of the divine world through the intonation of magical words.

This is why words were intoned during the third period of acts of consecration of man. The Kabiri element lived in all religious cults which arose during this third period. For the Kabiri services and sacrifices which were celebrated in Samothrace were brought into all of the half way new ceremonies in the act of consecration of man and into all the ceremonies which belong to This. Let's place the Kabiri altar at Samothrace before our souls. The Kabirs who stood upon it as external relics were sacrificial urns that contained no ferments, but substances which men find if they can penetrate the inner spiritual aspect of matter. The sacrificial urns contained such substances. The sacrificial substances in the urns were ignited, and smoke ascended. The magical language created an Imagination of the intoned words in the rising smoke. Thus the way up to divine forces was outwardly visible in the sacrificial smoke. The priests who were surrounded by this smoke knew that they were in the right atmosphere for carrying out a transubstantiation.

As Aristotle explained to Alexander, the substances were mixed in such a way that a sacred Imagination emerged from the sacrificial smoke, and this showed one the way to the, gods. If people found this way, the priest's transubstantiation was a right one and the act of consecration of man was executed correctly. Those who celebrated and participated in it knew that it was an organ of cognition. For when the ceremonially shaped, magical words and prayers flamed up in the sacrificial smoke and streamed up to the gods, an apocalyptic revelation came down from above as a gift of grace. This was the third stage in the development of apocalyptic things and of an act of consecration of man.

These stages have deteriorated somewhat. Only their external features are still real today. A new period for the act of consecration of man and for apocalyptic things began when we inaugurated the new priesthood and a Christian renewal here at the Goetheanum. Tomorrow we will go into what the act of consecration of man must bring about in you and what should stream through your hearts in order for you to carry it out in the right way during this fourth stage.

Verdade Mentira Devachan

 

Todo mundo que diz a verdade realmente promove a evolução da humanidade e todos que mentem a obstruem.

Portanto, existe essa lei oculta: vista com os olhos do espírito, uma mentira é um assassinato.

Não apenas mata uma forma astral, mas também é um suicídio.

Todos que mentem colocam obstáculos ao longo de seu próprio caminho.

Tais efeitos são observados em toda parte no mundo espiritual.

O clarividente vê que tudo o que um humano pensa, sente e vivencia tem o seu efeito no mundo astral.

A disposição do ser humano, seu temperamento, qualidades de longo prazo do caráter do ser humano, pensamentos que não sejam meramente transitórios – todas as correntes contínuas, não somente no mundo astral mas também no mundo do Devachan.

Um ser humano com uma disposição feliz é uma fonte, um centro, de certos processos no Devachan.  Um ser humano que é hipócrita tem o efeito de multiplicar as essências e substâncias associadas à hipocrisia no caráter humano.

Assim, a Ciência Espiritual de Rudolf Steiner (Antroposofia) nos mostra que não vivemos como seres isolados, mas que nossos pensamentos produzem continuamente formas que lançam sombras no mundo de Devachan e o permeiam com todos os tipos de substâncias e essências.

As quatro regiões do Devachan  "Continental", a "Oceânica", a "Atmosférica" e a região das  "Inspirações" originais são influenciadas o tempo todo pelos pensamentos, sentimentos e sensações dos seres humanos.

Rudolf Steiner. GA 99. Teosofia do Rosacruz. VI. A lei do Destino

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19070530p01.html

Pouco tempo após este ciclo de palestras, Rudolf Steiner passou a chamar seu trabalho de Ciência Espiritual ou Antroposofia e se separou em definitivo da Sociedade Teosófica da qual foi Presidente e na qual ele já falava sobre a sua abordagem de Ciência Espiritual.

 

<<<>>> 

 

Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity and everyone who lies, obstructs it.

Therefore there is this occult law: Seen with the eyes of Spirit, A LIE IS A MURDER.

Not only does it kill an astral form, but it is also self-murder.

Everyone who lies places obstacles along his own path.

Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world.

The clairvoyant sees that EVERYTHING A MAN THINKS, FEELS AND EXPERIENCES has its effect in the ASTRAL WORLD.

A man's disposition, temperament, enduring qualities of character, thoughts that are not merely transient—all this streams continually not only into the astral world but into the world of Devachan as well.

A man with a happy disposition is a source, a centre, of certain processes in Devachan; a man who is hypocritical has the effect of multiplying the essences and substances associated with hypocrisy in human character.

Thus Spiritual Science shows us that we do not live as isolated beings but that OUR THOUGHTS continually produce forms which cast shadows in the world of Devachan and permeate it with all kinds of substances and essences.

The four regions of Devachan-the “Continental,” the “Oceanic,” the “Atmospheric” and the region of original “Inspirations” are influenced all the time by the thoughts, feelings and sensations of human beings.

Rudolf Steiner. GA 99. Theosophy of the Rosicrucian. VI. The Law of Destiny

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19070530p01.html

 

Shortly after this cycle of lectures, Rudolf Steiner began to call his work spiritual science or anthroposophy and separated definitively from the Theosophical Society of which he was president and in which he already talked about his approach of Spiritual Science.

 

 

Theosophy of the Rosicrucian
GA 99

VI. The Law of Destiny

30 May 1907, Munich

We come today to what man experiences in the physical world, in so far as these experiences are determined by an earlier incarnation. At the outset it must be emphasised that life is not determined by previous incarnations alone but also, though in a small degree, by the present life. The law of how man's past, present and future are connected, is called in Spiritual-scientific literature, the Law of Karma. It is the true law of human destiny; an individual life is only a specific application of the great law of the Cosmos, for the law of Karma is a universal, cosmic law with a specific application in the life of a human being. Whenever we envisage a connection between preceding conditions and subsequent effects, we are thinking in line with this law. I want therefore to explain in detail the individual application of this cosmic law in the life of the human being.

Suppose we have two vessels of water in front of us and put into one of the vessels a red-hot iron ball. The water will hiss and become warm. If we take the ball out and put it into the other vessel, the water in this case neither hisses nor gets warm, because the ball is no longer red hot; it has been cooled by immersion in the first vessel of water. The effect of the behaviour of the iron ball in the first vessel determines its behaviour in the second. Thus are cause and effect always connected in physical life. Subsequent behaviour depends upon what has happened previously.

Another example is afforded by certain animals whose organ of sight has atrophied in consequence of having made their home in dark holes and caves. In such animals, the substances which formerly nourished the eyes were led to other parts of the body because as it was no longer necessary for the eye to see, these substances were not required. The eyes atrophied and remain atrophied in all subsequent generations. Through their earlier wanderings these animals determined the actual behaviour of their organs; the destiny of subsequent generations was determined by what had happened in the past; these animals prepared their destiny for the future. And it is the same in human life.

Man determines his future by his past and because his innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts him in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of happenings which can be understood if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is so often said in everyday life: Thoughts are duty-free!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where a man who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at a man, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbour against a fellow-creature, does not hurt him. Those however who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything that a man thinks and feels has its effects in the outer world and the seer can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to another man, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone the seer perceives a form of light shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing around his etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if one voices a thought that is true or a thought that is untrue. A thought is related to a thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thought-form of the teller comes up against the thought-form that has proceeded from the event; the two thought-forms collide, causing mutual destruction. These destructive “explosions” caused by lies work on the body like a tumour which destroys the organism. Thus do lies kill the astral forms which have arisen and must arise, and in this way they obstruct or paralyse a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity and everyone who lies, obstructs it. Therefore there is this occult law: Seen with the eyes of Spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it is also self-murder. Everyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a man thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the astral world. A man's disposition, temperament, enduring qualities of character, thoughts that are not merely transient—all this streams continually not only into the astral world but into the world of Devachan as well. A man with a happy disposition is a source, a centre, of certain processes in Devachan; a man who is hypocritical has the effect of multiplying the essences and substances associated with hypocrisy in human character. Thus Spiritual Science shows us that we do not live as isolated beings but that our thoughts continually produce forms which cast shadows in the world of Devachan and permeate it with all kinds of substances and essences. The four regions of Devachan-the “Continental,” the “Oceanic,” the “Atmospheric” and the region of original “Inspirations” are influenced all the time by the thoughts, feelings and sensations of human beings.

The higher regions of Devachan, in which the Akasha Chronicle appears, are influenced by deeds. What happens in the external world plays into the very highest region of Devachan—the “world of Reason.” We shall understand in this way how on his descent to a new incarnation the human being reconstitutes his astral body and attaches it to himself All his thoughts and feelings and experiences had become integral parts of the astral world, leaving many traces there. If his thoughts had contained much truth, these traces gather together to form a good astral body for him. What he had incorporated into the lower Devachanic world as his temperament and so on, gathers together the new etheric body, and from the highest regions of Devachan where the Akasha Chronicle is to be found, his past deeds play their part in establishing the station, the localisation of the physical body. Here are the forces which bring a human being to a definite locality. If a man has done evil to someone, this is an external fact which reaches into the highest regions of Devachan; when the time comes to enter a new physical body it works as forces which the man has left in his trail, and impels him—under the guidance of higher Beings—to the associations and to the place where he will now be able to experience the effects of his past deeds in the physical world.

Experiences in the external world which do not inwardly affect us very strongly work upon our astral body in the next incarnation, drawing into it corresponding feelings and a characteristic life of thought. If a man has spent his life profitably, if he has been very observant and has acquired wide knowledge, his astral body in the next incarnation will be born with special gifts in these directions. Experience and acquired knowledge thus express themselves, in the next incarnation, in the astral body. Inner experience, all that a man feels in the way of happiness, sorrow and so on—this works down to the etheric body in the next incarnation and imbues it with lasting propensities. The etheric body of a man who experiences much happiness will have a temperament disposed to joy. A man who tries to perform many good deeds, will, as a result of the feelings evoked, have a decided talent in the next life for good deeds; he will also possess a thoroughly developed conscience and will be a person of high moral principles.

That of which the etheric body is the bearer in the present life—the permanent character, talents etc.—appears in the next life in the physical body. For instance, a man who has developed bad inclinations and passions in one life will be born in the next with an unhealthy physical body. On the other hand, a man who enjoys good health, who has great powers of endurance, unfolded good qualities in the previous life. A person who is continually prone to illness, has worked bad impulses into himself. Thus we have it in our power to create for ourselves health or illness in so far as these inhere in the natural constitution of the physical body. All that is required is the elimination of bad tendencies for we then prepare a healthy, vigorous physical body for the next life.

It is possible to observe, in all details, how the tendencies that were present in one life, work, in the next, on the physical body. A person who is disposed to love everything around him, who is loving to all creatures, who pours out love, will have in the next incarnation a physical body that remains young and fresh until late in life. Love for all beings, the cultivation of sympathy, gives rise to a physical body that preserves its youthful vigour. A man who is full of antipathy against other human beings, who criticises and grumbles at everything, trying to keep aloof from it all, produces, as the result of these tendencies, a physical body that ages and becomes wrinkled prematurely. Thus are the tendencies and passions of one life carried over to the physical, bodily life of subsequent incarnations.

The very details can be observed and it can be found that a passion for acquisition, an urge that makes a person hoard possessions and becomes a rooted disposition in him, produces, in the next life, a tendency to infectious diseases in the physical body. Absolute confirmation is possible of cases where a pronounced tendency to infectious diseases leads back to an earlier, very strong sense of acquisition, the bearer of this quality being the etheric body. On the other hand disinterested striving, free from any desire for self-profit and wishing only to work for the well-being of all mankind—this tendency in the etheric body gives rise, in the next life, to a strong power of resistance to infectious diseases.

Thus knowledge of the connection between the physical and the astral world enables us to have a clear understanding of the world in its inner process of development; things are often connected in quite a different way from what people like to imagine. Many people deplore pain and suffering, but from a higher point of view this is quite unjustified, for if they are overcome and the person is ready for a new incarnation, suffering and pain are the sources of wisdom, prudence and comprehensiveness of vision. Even in writing emanating from the modern, materialistic standpoint, we find it stated that there is something like “crystallised pain” in the face of every thinker. What this materialistically minded author says here has long been known to the occultist, for the greatest wisdom of the world is acquired by the quiet endurance of pain and suffering; this creates wisdom in the next incarnation.

No one who shudders at the unpleasantness of pain, who is unwilling to bear pain can create in himself the foundations for wisdom; indeed when we look deeper, we cannot really bemoan illnesses, for regarded from a higher standpoint, from the standpoint of Eternity, they take on a very different aspect. Illnesses calmly borne often appear in the next life as great physical beauty; great physical beauty in a human being is acquired at the cost of illnesses in the preceding life. Such is the connection between impairment of the body through illness, particularly also through external circumstances, and beauty.

The following words of the French writer, Fabre d'Olivet can be applied to this very remarkable connection: “When we observe the life of the human being, it often seems to be like the formation of the pearl in the oyster-shell—the pearl can only come into being through disease.” And so it is actually in human life: Beauty is karmically connected with illnesses and is their result. When I said, however, that a man who unfolds reprehensible passions creates in himself the disposition to illness, it must be fully realised that in this case it is a matter of inherent tendency to illnesses. It is a different matter if a man falls ill through working in a poisonous atmosphere; this too may be a cause of illness but is not connected with the inherent constitution of the physical body.

Everything that is a fact on the physical plane, everything that constitutes a deed, expressing itself in such a way that it has a definite effect in the physical world, from a footstep and movement of the hand to the most complicated processes, for instance the building of a house, comes to the human being in a later incarnation from outside as an actual physical effect. As you see, we live our life from within-outwards. What lives as joy, pain, happiness, sorrow in the astral body appears again in the etheric body; the lasting impulses and passions that are rooted in the etheric body appear in the physical body as constitutional tendencies; deeds that require the agency of the physical body appear as outer destiny in the next incarnation. What the astral body does becomes the destiny of the etheric body; what the etheric body does becomes the destiny of the physical body; and what the physical body does comes back from outside in the next incarnation as a physical reality.

Here you have the actual point where external destiny intervenes in human life. This working of destiny may be postponed for a long time but must inevitably approach the human being sooner or later. If a man's life is followed through the different incarnations it can always be seen that his life in a subsequent incarnation is prepared by Beings who work at his physical embodiment in such a way that he is led to a particular place in order that his destiny may overtake him.

Here again is an example drawn from life. At a Vehmic Court in the Middle Ages a number of judges condemned a man to death and executed the sentence themselves. Earlier incarnations of the judges and of the dead man were investigated and it was found that they had all been contemporaries; the prisoner who had been put to death had been the Chief of a tribe who had ordered the death of those who were now the Vehmic judges. The deed of the former physical life had created the connection between the persons, and the forces had inscribed themselves in the Akasha Chronicle. When a man again comes down to incarnation, these forces cause him to be born at the same time and place as those to whom he is tied in this way, and they work out his destiny. The Akasha Chronicle is a veritable source of power in which everything that is due to be expiated between one human being and another, is inscribed. Some people can sense these processes, but very, very few are really conscious of them.

Suppose a man has a profession in which he is apparently happy and contented; for some reason or other he is forced to leave it and finding no other occupation in the same place is driven far away—into another country, where he has to strike out on an entirely new line of work. Here he finds a person with whom he has in some way to be associated. What has happened in such a case? He had once lived with the person whom he has now met and remained in his debt for some reason or other. This is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle and the forces have led him to this place in order that he may meet the man and discharge his debt.

Between birth and death the human being is perpetually within a network of these forces of soul which weave around him on all sides; they are the directing powers of his life. You bear within you all the time the workings of earlier lives; and all the time you are experiencing the outcome of former incarnations.

You will realise, therefore, that your lives are guided by Powers of which you yourselves are not aware. The etheric body is worked upon by forms which you yourselves previously called into existence on the astral plane; beings and forces in the higher regions of Devachan, inscribed by you yourselves in the Akasha Chronicle, work upon your destiny. These forces or beings are not unknown to the occultist; they have their own place in the ranks of similar beings. You must realise that in the astral body and in the etheric body, as well as in the physical body, you feel the workings of other beings; all that you do involuntarily, everything to which you are impelled, is due to the working of other beings; it is not born from nothingness. The various members of man's nature are all the time actually permeated and filled by other beings, and many of the exercises given by an initiated teacher are for the purpose of driving out these beings in order that a man may become more and more free.

The beings who permeate the astral body and make it unfree are known as “Demons.” Your astral body is always interpenetrated by demons and the beings you yourselves generate through your true or false thoughts are of such a nature that they gradually grow into demons. There are good demons, generated by good thoughts; but bad thoughts, above all those that are untruthful, generate demoniacal forms of the most terrible and frightful kind and these interlard the astral body—if I may so express it. The etheric body is also permeated by beings from which man must free himself; these beings are called “Spectres”, “ghosts.” And finally, permeating the physical body there are beings known as “Phantoms.” Besides these three classes there are yet other beings, the “Spirits,” who drive the Ego hither and thither—the Ego itself also being a Spirit. In actual fact the human being generates such creatures who then determine his inner and outer destiny when he descends to incarnation. These beings work in your life in such a way that you can feel the “demons” created by your astral body, the “ghosts” or “spectres” created by your etheric body and the “phantoms” created by your physical body. All these beings are related to you and approach you when the time comes for reincarnation.

You will remember that religious documents express these truths. When the Bible speaks of the driving-out of demons, this is not an abstraction but is to be taken literally. Christ Jesus healed those who were possessed of demons; He drove the demons out of the astral body. This is an actual process and, the passage is to be taken literally. The wise man Socrates also speaks of his “Daimon” which worked in his astral body. This was a good demon; such beings are not always evil.

There are, however, terrible and corrupt demonic beings. All demons that are born of lying work in such a way as to throw man back in his development; and because owing to the lies of eminent figures in world-history demons who grow into very powerful beings are all the time being created, we hear of the “Spirits of Hindrance”, “Spirits of obstruction.” In this sense Faust says to Mephistopheles: “Thou art the Father of all hindrances!”

The individual human being, membered as he is within mankind as a whole, has an effect upon the whole world according to whether he speaks the truth or lies; for beings created by truth or by lies produce quite different effects. Imagine a people which was composed entirely of liars, the astral plane would be populated solely by the corresponding demons and these demons would be able to express themselves in constitutional tendency to epidemics. Thus there is a certain species of bacilli who are the carriers of infectious diseases; these beings are the progeny of the lies told by human beings; they are nothing else than physically embodied demons generated by lies.

You see therefore that lies and untruths of earlier ages appear in world-karma as a definite host of beings. A passage in Faust indicates how much deep truth is contained in myths and sagas. You will find there a connection between vermin and lies in the role played by rats and mice in connection with Mephistopheles, the Spirit of Lies. Legends have often preserved wonderful indications of the connection between the spiritual world and the physical world.

In order to understand the Law of Karma we shall have to speak about many other things. The Movement of Spiritual Science itself is the outcome of an intimate knowledge of the Law of Karma.

You have just heard that forces which lie in the etheric body work upon the physical body in the next incarnation. Thus the attitude of mind, the tendency to think along particular lines, works upon the physical body. A spiritual or a materialistic attitude of mind is by no means without importance for the next incarnation. A man who has some knowledge of the higher worlds—he need only believe in their existence—has in his next life a well centred physical body and tranquil nervous system, a body which he has well in hand, including the very nerves. On the other hand, a man who believes in nothing except what is to be found in the world of the senses, communicates this kind of thinking to his physical body and in the next incarnation has a body prone to nervous diseases, a frail, fidgety body in which there is no steadfast centre of will. The materialist scatters himself in pure details; the Spirit binds together, for Spirit is Unity!

The tendency or disposition comes to light, in the case of the individual, through destiny in his next incarnation, but it continues through the generations, so that the sons and grand-children of materialistic fathers have to pay for this by badly constituted nervous systems and nervous disorders. An “epoch” of nerves is the outcome of the materialistic attitude of the last century. And as a counteraction, the Great Teachers of mankind have recognised the necessity of allowing the inflow of spiritual ways of thinking.

Materialism has also found its way into religion. There are people who “believe” in the spiritual worlds but have not the will to acquire real knowledge of them. Can it be said that such people are not materialists? It is materialism in religion which makes people want to have the mystery of the Six Day of Creation—as the Bible describes the evolution of the worlds—displayed before their very eyes; it is materialism which speaks of Christ Jesus as an “historical personality” and ignores the Mystery of Golgotha. Materialism in natural science is primarily a consequence of materialism in religion, and would not exist if the religious life were not saturated with materialism. Men who have been too lazy to deepen their religious life—it is they who have introduced materialism into science. And the derangement of the nerves caused by this materialism works itself out among racial stocks and among whole peoples, as well as in the individual.

If the stream of spirituality is not powerful enough to influence lazy and easy-going people as well, the karmic consequence of nervous derangement will gain greater and greater hold over humanity, and just as in the Middle Ages there were epidemics of leprosy, so, in future, materialistic thinking will give rise to grave nervous diseases; there will be epidemics of insanity besetting whole peoples.

Insight into this domain of the Law of Karma reveals that Spiritual Science should never be a matter of strife but a healing power in humanity. The more spiritual men become, the more will troubles connected with diseases of the nervous system and derangement in the life of soul, be expunged.

Hella Wiesberger, Anna May.

Encontrar Hella Wiesberger em 2004 em Dornach, Suíça,  foi uma alegria e um privilégio. Pudemos conversar assuntos em profundidade e compartilhamos nossas vivências pessoais sobre a pintura de Anna May, Triptychon ou Tryptychon ou ainda Triptych que habitou meu imaginário durante anos antes que eu encontrasse a pintura em Bad Boll, Alemanha. 

Sonia Bonilha Homrich von Koss

Sobre Hella Wiesberger

Hella Wiesberger, editora desde o início e de longa data da Coletânea de Obras de Rudolf Steiner (Gesamtausgabe, ou GA) e uma figura líder do Arquivo Steiner no Goetheanum, em Dornach, Suíça.  Ela faleceu em Hombrechtikon, Switzerland, em dezembro de 2014, aos noventa e cinco anos. Ela manteve sua capacidade mental integral até o fim e continuou um cronograma de trabalho intenso. Depois de 1948, quando Marie Steiner faleceu, ela dedicou todos os seus esforços à administração da propriedade  intelectual de Rudolf Steiner.

Hella Wiesberger, an early and longtime editor of The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner (Gesamtausgabe, or GA) and a leading figure of the Steiner archive in at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, She passed away in Hombrechtikon, Switzerland, in December 2014 at the age of ninety-five. She retained her full mental capacity and continued a full work schedule until the very end. After 1948, when Marie Steiner died, she devoted all her efforts to administrating the Rudolf Steiner estate.

Agradecimento olímpico Tad Coffin/Robert Malone

 Below in English Language

Um agradecido aceno de cabeça olímpico ao Divino. Tad Coffin.  Publicado por Robert Malone MD, MS. 29 de julho

Tad Coffin, vencedor individual  e pelo time, de duas medalhas de ouro,  nos Jogos Olímpicos de Montreal de 1976, pelo evento olímpico equestre "Equestrian Thress-Day Event”

https://www.malone.news/p/a-grateful-olympic-nod-to-the-divine

A inclusão de drag queen na paródia da Última Ceia na cerimônia de abertura olímpica ofendeu profundamente muitos cristãos e não-cristãos, inclusive eu.

Como cristão e como atleta olímpico (Olimpíadas de Montreal de 1976, equestre), estou

aturdido e perplexo com a decisão de alienar uma parte tão grande da população mundial enquanto reivindica a inclusão, apelando à natureza de vanguarda da cultura francesa.

Estou profundamente decepcionado com o profundo fracasso do Comitê Olímpico da França em fornecer orientações razoáveis ​​sobre a narrativa e os scripts desta cerimônia.

Portanto, participarei do coro daqueles que criticam o comitê por seu julgamento notavelmente ruim.

Pode até ser um experimento de pensamento útil considerar como o propósito desta cerimônia pode ser reimaginado. Desta maneira, pode ser mais fácil julgar o pensamento falho por trás dessa catástrofe teatral e contrastá-la com o que poderia ter sido ou deveria ter sido.

É certo e justo que a cerimônia de abertura deve celebrar os atletas e sua variedade de talentos para se maravilhar com a assembleia de tantos,  de todos os cantos do mundo, sua competição pacífica em eventos tão abrangentes e compartilhar suas histórias, esperanças e sonhos para a glória atlética.

Similarmente, a nação anfitriã dos Jogos Olímpicos tem uma oportunidade única e merecida de mostrar sua própria história, cultura e ricas tradições. É também assim que deve ser.

De onde vêm os presentes do atletismo, do trabalho duro e da perseverança? Eu tenho talento para cavalgar, mas certamente não me lembro de enviar um pedido pré-natal para tais habilidades. Enquanto algumas características sejam herdadas, todo mundo sabe que a paternidade dificilmente garante a grandeza atlética. Por exemplo, meus irmãos têm muitos outros talentos, mas não são cavaleiros de calibre olímpico.

Ser grato a Deus Todo -Poderoso por essas habilidades não é irracional. Certamente, há amplo precedente para ver evidências da mão de Deus ao longo da história humana. Não é necessário que todos concordem, mas ter a humildade em reconhecer que não é tudo o que a pessoa está fazendo é, no mínimo, mais atraente do que celebrar publicamente o narcisismo e fazer pouco caso de pessoas de fé.

Portanto, parece apropriado que uma reunião de muitos dos melhores atletas do mundo inclua pelo menos um aceno agradecido ao divino.

E sobre a terra na qual andamos de bicicleta, corremos, pulamos e treinamos? E sobre a água na qual nadamos, surfamos, velejamos e fazemos caiaque? A terra na qual confiamos para nossa própria saúde e bem-estar? É este mundo não possivelmente um ato de criação por um criador? Devemos apenas assumir que este mundo, esse universo apareceu do nada e que somos tão inteligentes, colocando-o para um bom uso? Realmente? Novamente, certamente não é irracional ser pelo menos grato por sua existência. Por milênios, muitos procuraram elogiar o criador por seu trabalho útil.

E o que fez o francês, francês? Minha educação como cavaleiro é uma herança do famoso Cadre Noir, o Corpo de Elite da Grande Cavalaria de Napoleão. Sua busca está em aperfeiçoar a parceria do homem com talvez o maior e mais nobre presente de Deus, o cavalo.

A história longa, única dos franceses certamente não foi construída sobre as maquinações das drag queens. A menos que minha leitura da história esteja totalmente errada, os fundamentos teológicos da França ancoraram sua cultura nacional. Disputar isto, rebaixar sua importância, enquanto eleva simultaneamente alguma paródia grotesca de um momento único de significado histórico e religioso, é estar enfeitiçado com nada mais próximo que o demoníaco.

Vamos retornar a uma celebração mais simples e autêntica do que está à nossa frente: a elevação de atletas notáveis ​​organizados por uma nação notável. Que nossas cerimônias futuras estendam o reconhecimento e a gratidão a ambos, horizontalmente ao nosso próximo e verticalmente ao Deus transcendente.

 

A Grateful Opympic Nod to the Divine by Tad Coffin/Robert Malone MD, MS. Jul 29

Tad Coffin, winner of two gold medals in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, for the individual and team Olympic.

 https://www.malone.news/p/a-grateful-olympic-nod-to-the-divine

The inclusion of a drag queen parody of the Last Supper in the Olympic Opening Ceremony has deeply offended many Christians and non-Christians alike, including myself.

As a Christian and as an Olympic athlete (1976 Montreal Olympics, equestrian), I am stunned and mystified by the decision to alienate such a large portion of the world's population while claiming inclusiveness and appealing to the avant-garde nature of French culture.

I am deeply disappointed by the French Olympic Committee's profound failure to provide reasonable guidance regarding the narrative and scripting of this Ceremony.

Therefore, I'll join the chorus of those who criticize the committee for its remarkably poor judgment. 

It may be a useful thought experiment to consider how the purpose of this Ceremony might be re-imagined. In this way, it may be easier to judge the flawed thinking behind this theatrical catastrophe and contrast it to what might have been or should have been.

It is right and just that the Opening Ceremony should celebrate the athletes and their array of talents to marvel at the assembly of so many from the far reaches of the globe, their peaceful competition in such wide-ranging events, and share in their stories, hopes and dreams for athletic glory.

Similarly, the host nation of the Olympic Games has a unique and well-earned opportunity to showcase its own rich history, culture, and traditions. That is also how it should be.

Where do the gifts of athleticism, hard work, and perseverance come from? I have a talent for riding but certainly don't remember submitting a prenatal request for such abilities. While some characteristics are inherited, everyone knows that parentage hardly guarantees athletic greatness. For instance, my siblings have many other gifts but are not Olympic-caliber riders.

Being grateful to God Almighty for these abilities is not unreasonable. Certainly, there is ample precedent for seeing evidence of God's hand throughout human history. It's not necessary that everyone agree, but having the humility to recognize that it's not all of one's own doing is, at the very least, more appealing than publicly celebrating narcissism and trolling people of faith. 

Therefore, it seems appropriate that a gathering of many of the world’s best athletes should at least include a grateful nod to the Divine. 

What about the land we ride on, bike, run, jump, and train on? What of the water that we swim in, surf on, sail, and kayak through? The earth that we rely on for our very health and well-being? Is this world not possibly an act of Creation by a Creator? Should we just assume that this world, this universe appeared out of nothing and that we're so clever, putting it to such good use? Really? Again, it's certainly not unreasonable to be at least grateful for its existence. For millennia, many have sought to praise the Creator for his handy work. 

And what has made the French French? My education as a rider is an inheritance from the famed Cadre Noir, the elite corps of Napoleon's grand cavalry. Its pursuit has been perfecting man's partnership with perhaps God's greatest and noblest gift, the horse.

The long, unique, and storied history of the French has most certainly not been built on the machinations of drag queens. Unless my reading of history is all wrong, France's theological underpinnings have anchored its national culture. To dispute this, to demean its importance while simultaneously elevating some grotesque parody of a unique moment of historical and religious significance, is to be enthralled with nothing short of the demonic.  

Let's return to a simpler, authentic celebration of what's in front of us: the elevation of remarkable athletes hosted by a remarkable nation. May our future ceremonies extend recognition and gratitude both horizontally to our fellow man and vertically to the transcendent God.