An excerpt from the last lecture in the series THE YOUNGER GENERATION, (also called Becoming the Companions of Michael) GA 217, Lecture XIII, 15 October 1922 (Thanks to Steve Hale for suggesting I look at this lecture)

Here are the previous installments around this Theme: The Circle Jubilee – The Origins of the Circle & The Eternal Circle 

“…The human being can have, if he will, Spiritual Science; that is to say, Michael actually penetrates from spiritual realms into our earthly realm. He does not force himself upon us. Today everything must spring out of man’s freedom. The dragon pushes himself forward, demanding the highest authority. The authority of science is the most powerful that has ever been exercised in the world. Compare the authority of the Pope; it is almost as powerful. Just think — however stupid a man may be yet he can say: “But science has established that.” People are struck dumb by science, even if one has a truth to utter. There is no more overwhelming power of authority in the whole of man’s evolution than that of modern science. Everywhere the dragon rears up to meet one.

The young are running away from the old because they want to escape from the region of the dragon. That also is an aspect of the Youth Movement. The young wanted to flee from the dragon because they saw no possibility of conquering the dragon. They wanted to go where the dragon was not.

But here there is a mystery and it consists in the fact that the dragon can exercise his power everywhere, even where he is not spatially present. And when he does not succeed in killing man directly through ideas and intellectualism, he succeeds by so rarefying the air everywhere in the world that one can no longer breathe.

And this will certainly be the case — young people who ran from the dragon so as not to be injured, and who came into such rarefied air that they could not breathe the future, felt intensely the nightmare of the past because the air had become unwholesome where it was formerly possible to escape the immediate influence of the dragon. The nightmare that comes from within is, as regards human experience, not very different from the pressure that comes from without, from the dragon.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, the older generation felt direct exposure to the dragon. The young people then experienced the nightmare of the air corrupted by the dragon — air that could not be breathed. Here, the only help is to find Michael who conquers the dragon.

But it is this above all that we must set going if we want to become true leaders of the young. For Michael needs, as it were, a chariot by means of which to enter our civilization. And this chariot reveals itself to the true educator as coming forth from the young, growing human being, yes, even from the child. Here the power of the pre-earthly life is still working. Here we find, if we nurture it, what becomes the chariot by means of which Michael will enter our civilization. By educating in the right way we are preparing Michael’s chariot for his entrance into our civilization.

We must no longer nurture the dragon by cultivating a science with thoughts unconcerned with penetrating into the human soul, into man, so as to develop him. We must build the chariot, the vehicle for Michael.

The spiritual is like the blood. And the blood needs vessels in which to flow. What we recognize as spiritual needs vessels. These vessels are growing human beings. Into these vessels we must pour the spiritual in order that it may hold together. Otherwise we shall have the spirit so alive that it immediately flows away. We must so preserve our knowledge that it can flow into the developing human being.

Then we shall make the chariot for Michael, then we shall be able to become Michael’s companions.

It was not for the sake of mere symbolism that Goethe sought everywhere for things that suggest a breathing — outbreathing, inbreathing; outbreathing, inbreathing — Goethe saw the whole of life as a picture of receiving and giving. Everyone receives, everyone gives. Every giver becomes a receiver. But for the receiving and the giving to find a true rhythm it is necessary that we enter the Michael Age.

So I want to conclude with this picture for you to see how the preceding lectures were actually meant. Their aim was that you should not merely carry away in your heads what I have said here, and ponder over it. What I should prefer is for you to have something in your hearts and then to transform what you carry in your hearts into activity.

Thus we shall find association in the Spirit, even though we work apart in different spheres of life. The chief thing will be that in our hearts we have found each other; then the spiritual, all that belongs to Michael, will also flow into our hearts. ~Rudolf Steiner

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~A feeling of simply finding
The driving force present in my soul depths…
When I look within,
I find a strong yearning
A powerful force living as a seed
Gestating future worlds
As we press on into the Autumn…
~hag

21 October 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Some thoughts on a Venus Sun conjunction in Virgo and its relation to Pluto this weekend by Astrosopher Jonathan Hilton.  

“On October 21st, Venus will conjunct the Sun in one of these pentagram points. A significant
added element is that this conjunction will be in a square (90 degree) relationship to Pluto, which continues as it has for the past few years in the lower animal body region of the Archer…

Now this Venus conjunction point engages with Pluto in a “martian” relationship. It engages also with the history of Pluto in world karma over the past few years. It is my conviction that the activity of Pluto in relation to Saturn and Jupiter throughout 2020 culminating in their conjunction during the Holy Nights of 2020 is integral to the emergent problems, including Covid 19.

As I live with following the stars, I find that relations of the other planets with the outer planets is telling a story now, a story of revolution, of destruction and transformation, a Pluto story. With these outer planets we truly are tested to raise our spiritual perspective out of newfound inner development to meet their challenges.

If they are not taken up consciously, they are in service of the forces of opposition to our evolution.

Pluto carries the highest and lowest, true revolutionary change and breakthrough to the new, or harsh destruction, even down into the physical body and the ego. It is that sphere which wants to become Spirit Man, the transformation even of the physical…but also is the sphere of activity of the Asuras.

I would include as partners with the Asuras, the activity of Mammon. Mammon is often used in relation to the forces of money in the world, and one can see more and more the role of world economic forces and the subjugation of human value to the value of money. But Rudolf Steiner expands its meaning: The restraining forces are called Mammon, and only in a secondary sense has money been given this name; Mammon is the god of the restraint of progress. (GA 91) He goes on to elaborate on Mammon in GA104a in Pictures of the Apocalypse: Looking over the development of our earth, it has been shown to us that the earth is again spiritualizing itself, that men can take part in this development and that they will again be able to return to the sun…

All those beings who are too much stuck in their materialization cannot take part in this spiritual earth. But the gross material elements of humanity and the bad substances in the lower realms enter with the human beings into a kind of lower astral world, which one could call the sub physical astral world. This lower astral world is also the one that opposes our development today. It is ruled by the spirit Mammon, that is, the spirit of obstacles. It is a power of the lower astral world.

In other places Steiner even describes Mammon as the “god of bacilli”. Mammon, the spirit of obstacles and darkness, has innumerable helpers, much embodied in the bacteria and bacilli. The fear of bacilli and their combating by physicians is something quite real. (Esoteric Lessons notes, Oct. 18, 1907)

In the collapse and breaking apart of so much in our world today, as well as in the efforts being used to control humanity by powerful forces in this time of fear and chaos, I see the ongoing effects of Pluto’s encounters with Saturn and Jupiter all in the “lower body” or one could even say the “lower astral” region of the Archer.

So, now we have this Venus/Sun pentagram point in a square (a challenging martian relationship) to Pluto.

A few days after this star event, on October 25th, there will be a partial solar eclipse which means that the Sun is in the region of the Lunar node and its light blocked.

There is much to ponder during these days of this conjunction.

So, the question is, how can we meet this conjunction consciously out of a new relationship to the stars? Here, one must try to hold in a living imagination the threads of these relationships and the cosmic themes expressed. We have Sun/Venus in Virgo at the star of the “bread” for humanity, leading to the question of what is our “bread”, our life, in relation to the economic realm and the economic issues facing us today.

This then comes into square relation to Pluto in the lower astral region of the Archer and the activity of Mammon in the economic life and the dark forces behind the scenes in this activity. All of this is remembered in the context of the recent historical activity of Pluto with Saturn and Jupiter and the Great Conjunction question to humanity. That question out of this activity was the question of the Archer: What is the human being?

The Great Conjunction was calling for a new annunciation, a new birth into the world, for humans to give birth to a new definition of what it means to be a human being to counter the overwhelming materialism defining who we are and the animalization of our humanity out of a lower astrality. This is the overarching theme for the coming years.

Now with this pentagram point in Virgo in square to Pluto in the Archer body, we can see the clear battle between those forces working towards the pointing down pentagram and those for the pointing up pentagram.” ~Jonathan Hilton