30 March - Today on this Holy Saturday is the Death-Day of Rudolf Steiner - 99 years ago. Listen on the ‘I Think Speech’ podcast or read about it here.
In the New Mysteries we follow the path of Christian/Rosicrucian Initiation thru Holy Week. With every step, from the recognition of the old atavistic Sun on Palm Sunday, thru to the meeting of the Saturn-Spirit & The Harrowing of Hell, we sow healing seeds, sprouted in the blood of Christ, that spark the rising of the New Sun of Easter, within ourselves and in the Universe.
Each of these steps through the planetary spheres leads to a conquest of a corresponding layer in the interior of the earth. The Beatitudes are the spiritual weapon we must wield to fortify the development of self-determination in the human “I” led by Christ, giving us the strength to make the darkness transparent. Just a The Being of Love showed us, we too must descend to ascend.
Every year we have a chance to recapitulate the original Easter event. We rest on the Sabbath, Saturn-day – In Christo morimur - This is the Mystic-Death the fulfillment of the ‘Temple Sleep’ of the initiate; remembering that In the Garden of Gethsemane - which can be seen as the midpoint of the Earth, the epicenter of the cosmos - there, between the rocky hill of Golgotha, part of the lunar Mount Moriah, & it’s polar opposite the Solar Mount Zion, there, was a ‘New Tomb’ where the body of Christ rested; New & yet it was the Oldest Tomb, for it was formerly a primal fissure, a gorge splitting Jerusalem in two, called by some ‘Adam’s Grave’ –known as the Gate to the Underworld.
The earthquakes of Good Friday & Holy Saturday tore open the original fissure! The veil of the Temple “was rent in twain”. Vistas were opened into the interior of the earth. “He was lowered into the grave of the earth”, &so it was, that The Christ went into the Earth’s Interior, His blood becoming the medicine for our continued evolution.
The darkness of Saturn is lit up from within by the Resurrected Sun. The Easter Garden begins to bloom, so that our soul can behold, like the Magdalana before us, The Risen One as the gardener of the New Jerusalem.
In ‘The Birth of a New Agriculture: Koberwitz 1924’ , we learn that the Earth underwent a change thru the Deed of Redemption on Golgotha - a transformation of the unruly Mars powers of rusty iron, into the silvery light of Mercury. This transforming of iron thru the sacred mystery of the Christ-blood is a determining factor in the transformation of earthly substance, which will later be carried over into the transubstantiation of the Earth.
The spirit radiates from the heights & yet is also carried to us by the eternal divine world of the depths. ‘May there ascend from the Depths the prayer that is heard in the Heights’.
We can send our prayer to the Christ-Heart in the Earth’s depths, to help overcome & redeem the adversarial powers that hold sway in the nine layers of the earth’s interior. The agricultural course was a stepping stone to this ultimate aim.
Spiritual science tells us that when the blood flowed into the Earth from the cross on Golgotha, a new Sun-globe was born in the interior of the earth. This golden Earth-center is the legendary land of Shambhalla, hidden away, yet waiting to be re-discovered by the seeking, Christ-guided human soul.
The Tomb becomes the Altar, a sacred place to commune with the gods – with the souls of the departed as our intermediaries. The tomb becomes the Round table, & the Parsifal question leads us to find Christ in the etheric.
Also working with us from the time of the Vernal Equinox is the Archangel Raphael, who holds the staff of Mercury, offering us the healing power of the Caduceus through the grace of the living Christ, who stands as the middle pillar within us all.
Before the mystery of Golgotha, the task of evolution was that the cosmos would become human; after this turning point, the human becomes Cosmos -The New Sun -The imperishable Resurrection-Body uniting with the Cosmic-Sophia.
So, today on Rudolf Steiner’s Death-Day, we have the opportunity to stand as Michaelic warriors holding the light, sending our shining heart-thinking into the heights & the depths. Remembering all the while what was written on the urn that holds the ashes of Rudolf Steiner: “To create centres of peace & love in which the Christ can resurrect.”
Encountering the Inner Layers of the Earth as a Christian/Rosicrucian Initiation, in relation to the Beatitudes and the 9-fold human being
Stage #6 = The Entombment, also called The Descent or Hallowing of Hell —
The disciple freed from the body becomes one with the Earth. Being one with the Earth they find themselves again within the life of the cosmos. Being united with the all, they bring the all with them. Here the 6th layer of the interior earth is called into play, the Fire Earth. Steiner spoke about this even as Mount Vesuvius was erupting during his lecture ‘The Interior of the Earth and Volcanic Eruptions’ in Berlin 1906. He said this 6th layer is “able to feel pleasure and pain, so to speak, and is more or less like a human being who is ‘sky high’ one moment and ‘down in the dumps’ the next.” He warned us that human passions have a tremendous effect upon the Fire Earth. The more human passions increase, the more restless it becomes. It is “composed of pure will, of elemental life forces in constant movement permeated with drives and passions” – a veritable reservoir of unresolved will forces. Steiner commented that “if you exert pressure on this substance it offers opposition and fights back.”
When the Fire Earth becomes disturbed by human passions, it exerts even greater pressure on the Fruit Earth; channels branch out from the Fire Earth to all the layers above it forcing tremendous amounts of Fire to move up to the Mineral Earth and pour thru great cavities causing earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. This is intimately connected with the human will; it is the source of the eruptions that ended Lemuria. Steiner says “When human will is evil and chaotic it acts magnetically on this layer and disrupts it. When the human will is free from egotism, it is able to appease this fire.”
The 6th Beatitude is the antidote to this layer and refers to the Consciousness Soul. Here at last the Ego is free and pure; it becomes conscious of itself. The initiate can perceive that drop of the divine entombed within the heart, shining in the blood. This transformation causes changes in the constitution of our blood which works upon the physical body. Christ said “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Or as Steiner puts it: “Blessed are they, who are pure in blood and heart, the expression of the Ego, who allow nothing to enter there but the pure Ego-nature; for they will recognize God therein!”
Christ’s descent into hell on Holy Saturday takes The Being of Love to the ‘primal ground of the creator’, to The Father God in the microcosm. Here the blood flowed - a luminous seed planted in the depths - so that the Earth can become a future Sun.
The initiate who becomes a receptacle for the Christ-force, able to experience the Christ within, by pouring out their Higher “I” into the Consciousness Soul, will be able to find their way to the Father God in the depths. The tomb becomes an altar.
The 6th stage of Rosicrucian Initiation is: Living into the Macrocosm
When we are able to rise in our thinking, we are treading the Rosicrucian path. The Christian school is based more on the development of inner feelings; in the Rosicrucian school all that is spread out in physical reality as the Divine Nature of the Earth is allowed to work on us, & reverberate in us as feeling. These are two ways which are open to all.
When we work with Michaelic Heart-Thinking to take up the Cosmic Intelligence, we are on the Rosicrucian path. When we seek the spirit behind science, then science becomes Wisdom - becomes the letter of the spirit.
What has been said is not meant to be a comprehensive account of the Rosicrucian training, it is only meant to serve as an indication of what can be found in it. It is a path for our present age, it makes us capable of working into the future. These are only the elementary stages, to give some idea of the way. We can realize how thru the Rosicrucian method we may penetrate into the higher mysteries.
~hag
Interesting to think that there are 33 days between Rudolf Steiner’s birthday on 25 February & his Death-Day on 30 March.
But of course, that 33 can shift astrologically, like during a Leap Year – where we collect 1⁄4 of the day every four years.
And then we ponder the connection with Christ, who was incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for 33 years + plus 3 months + 3 days - & that aligns with Steiner’s Death-Day this year in 2024
Thank you for pouring your time and energy into sharing these insights with us. I always enjoy getting them. As my thinking has changed over the last decade from the thoughts fostered through a fundamental Christian upbringing, to a deeper understanding of things, I've found myself fascinated with Christ's descent into Hell on Holy Saturday. I wonder what (if anything) Steiner thought about the account of such in the Gospel of Nicodemus. Aside from that, are there any other accounts written?