I am living into the approaching mood of Pentecost – The festival of the Word, a new Language of the Sophia-Logos, holding the ideal of Free Speech! Our day star Sun is speaking thru the stars of the Bull at this time, that region of the Zodiac connected to the human Larynx, giving us the capacity for self-expression.
The current World events must be given voice. Pentecost is the festival of NOW, highlighting the challenging relationships of self & community – Offering us an opportunity to transcend polarities.
Giving us a chance to ask: How do we work as individuals to transform our ingrained sympathies & antipathies? How do we purify our astral nature in order to make ourselves into a vessel worthy to receive the Holy Spirit, giving us the possibility of manifesting the ‘Spirit Self’, the True Self which will provide the capacity to create new social forms..?
Right now I am deep in what Rudolf Steiner defines as a time of profound sadness that comes with the 10 days between Ascension & Pentecost, an echo of the grief & loss expereinced by the disciples. He describes it as ‘a sorrow such as cannot be compared with any other sorrow on earth’ –A kind of death experience on a spiritual level. And just like in the old mystery traditions, after the time of catharsis & preparation, there is a mystical death; so here too there is a kind of loss & experience of death. The #10 is the number of completion.
Steiner points out: ‘All real knowledge, all knowledge that can truly be called great is born from pain, from inner travail…And out of this pain, out of this infinite sorrow, there sprang what we call the Mystery of Pentecost…Having lost sight of the Christ in external clairvoyant vision (the 40 days with the Resurrected Christ), the disciples found it again in their inmost being…found it through sorrow, through pain. (May 17, 1923, Christiana)
Here we have a great reversal. In ancient times the human being experienced the True Self, the Higher I AM, in the cosmos outside of them, in the Sun sphere, thru initiation, by leaving the body.
Even with Lazarus, the first Christian initiation performed on Earth, in public, by the Christ, Lazarus was “called forth” by Christ as the hierophant from without.
Pentecost inaugurates a new age, when human beings thru a personal path of self-guided catharsis comes to an awakening of the Higher I AM in “their inmost being” as a force of transformative power, which is the force of love.
The Greek word for grace is, “charis”, which means the free love from God. In ancient Greek, there are several words for love: eros – romantic love; philia – brotherly/family love; agape – divine love, or love of the human for the divine.
Charis is higher than agape, because it is the love of the Divine for the human being. This is the highest form of love.
Thinking of Pentecost as being 50 days after Easter, & in looking at the # 5, we see the 4 bodies of the human being: physical, etheric, astral & “I” – given a 5th dimension – a new spiritual aspect is added: The Spirit-Self, the Higher Ego.
The pentagram is the symbol of the true human being. The numbers 4 & 5 raised to the 10th power, indicate a process taking place at a higher spiritual level, which is how the events described in 40 days = Ascension – & 50 days = Pentecost, are meant to be understood, both as historical events of Christ’s union with the earth, but also as initiatory events taking place on a higher plane for humanity.
In the 12th of Steiner’s lectures on the ‘Gospel of John’, which he describes as the most spiritual perspective given by the writers of the gospels, he speaks of how John never uses the name Mary, but always says: “the mother of Jesus”. He equates this with the ‘Virgin Sophia’ – the purified astral body. It is this Virgin Sophia = the Mother of Jesus, who is “in their midst” at Pentecost.
The story goes on to say that they were all together in one place, using the word which is often translated as house, but in Greek it means “a shared, common place” – in this case: The Upper Room where they experienced the Last Supper. Into this community space, with the Virgin Sophia in their midst, came the Holy Spirit, the Universal Ego, the true I AM, which can then speak out of this purified astral body.
This Holy Spirit came with a rushing of wind & flames that individualized onto each of the disciples, & “stayed upon each of them”(this is the same term used at the Baptism of Jesus) They then began to speak a new language “as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.” This was a speaking, which transcended earthly languages, for everyone understood & were amazed.
In this same lecture from the Gospel of John cycle, Steiner addresses this question: ‘a person thus illuminated, who has received the Holy Spirit into himself, speaks in a different manner. How does he speak? …he is not expressing ‘his’ own opinion. His views do not come into consideration. His personal (earthly) ego has been eclipsed which means that…it has become impersonal and it is the Cosmic Universal Ego’.
He continues this Pentecostal theme in a lecture on Whitsunday, 1910: ‘This Holy Spirit enables us to become free human souls. As the Spirit of Freedom, it streamed out through the first disciples…in the first Pentecostal festival….We can become free only when we find ourselves again in spirit and out of the spirit become master over the spirit within ourselves. Our true spirit is the universal human spirit, which we recognize as the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit.. which we must bring to birth in ourselves and allow to become manifest…This will bring to life in our souls something which overleaps all boundaries separating the different parts of humanity’.
This brings us back to the great call of our current time of Pentecost – which is the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole, the community.
Today we face immense questions about the future of humanity, with division, polarization, lack of understanding & failed communication, creating the social problems of our time.
Only by a social & personal catharsis which can allow for the true spirit of freedom, the true I AM, to eclipse our small personal egotism & the lower impulses of our nature, can a new community & new language of universal sister/brotherhood be created.
Only out of the spiritual recognition of the universal Human Being, will the ideas & applications of a new approach to fraternity in economics; equality in human rights; & freedom in the cultural/spiritual life, be accomplished.
May we strive to serve this goal out of the spirit of The Sophia.
~hag
2 June 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Spot Bella Luna in the west after sunset. As twilight fades, you can make out Pollux above the Moon, then Castor to the right of Pollux.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day (RSarchives)
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s orginal Calendar of the Soul, Wikipedia Commons)
455 – Sack of Rome
1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city; the second siege began five days later.
1692 – Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts; she was found guilty and later hanged
1743 – Birthday of Alessandro Cagliostro, Italian occultist and explorer. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe relates in his Italian Journey, that during the trial of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace*, Cagliostro said that he had been born of noble birth but abandoned as an orphan upon the island of Malta. He claimed to have traveled as a child to Medina, Mecca, & Cairo, & was then admitted to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, where he studied alchemy, the Kabbalah, & magic. (*The Affair of the Diamond Necklace – an incident in 1781 at the court of Louis XVI of France involving his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. The reputation of the Queen, which was already tarnished by gossip, was ruined by the implication that she had participated in a crime to defraud the crown jewelers of the cost of a very expensive diamond necklace. The Affair was historically significant as one of the events that led to the French populace’s disillusionment with the monarchy, which, among other causes, eventually culminated in the French Revolution)
1793 – French Revolution: François Hanriot, leader of the Parisian National Guard, arrests 22 Girondists selected by Jean-Paul Marat, setting the stage for the Reign of Terror.
1835 – P. T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the United States
1882 – Deathday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general & politician. Spoken of as a high initiate in the Hibernian Mysteries in ‘Karmic Relationships’ Vol 1, lec. 11 by Rudolf Steiner (June 2nd is also Festa della Repubblica -The Italian National Republic Day)
1922 – Start of the West-East Congress in Vienna, opened by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz. At this conference Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on Threefolding (1917 – 1922)
a collection of my Anthroposophical videos for your free viewing
