TODAY is the New Moon in Aries. On April 7^th 1348 the University of Prague was founded by Charles the 4^th, the last true initiate on the Imperial Throne. This is also the death day of Poet Edouard Schure’ 1929, & Henry Ford, 1947.

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~the plug has been lifted from the unguent jar

the 7 seals have been broken

the hour has been written,

& is now

unrolled in the false spring

where thunder speaks after the lightning strikes…

Are you listening ?

~hag

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The 5th Stage: (Part 6 of the 12 part series) Encountering the Inner Layers of the Earth as a Rosicrucian/Christian Initiation, in relation to the Beatitudes and the 9-fold human being.

In gradual illumination The 5^th stage of initiation is revealed as The Mystic Death. We have seen with the earlier stages, that even in the grip of the greatest of all suffering, the disciple recognizes that the world of the senses is illusion. The veil of the temple is ‘rent in twain.’ Now we are able to consciously cross the abyss.

We can imagine that we are leaving a turbulent city behind us, entering a peaceful, dense forest. Yes, at 1^st it is dark, but the noise gradually stops & the silence becomes complete. We finally begin to be aware of what lies beyond the silence, to pass what Steiner calls “the zero point”. And sound arises again for the inner ear from the other side of existence. We become aware of the dead, of descending into the world of shades, but then the darkness breaks, & a new light- the astral light shines out. This is the experience of the soul of those able to consciously cross the threshold – to shine forth from out of the Intellectual Soul & orient life there. They are then “in contact with the inverse quality of everything, just as in arithmetic, beneath the zero point, we enter into the growing series of negative numbers.”  

We need to lose all, in order to gain all. This applies to our own existence. In the moment of losing all, we appear to die to ourselves & it is in the world around us that we begin to live again. We pour our life out into our surroundings & it flows back to us again, ever enriched.

When the initiate absorbs the power of Christ into the Intellectual Soul they develop “virtues which go from like to like” –which shine out into the world. We really see the other – What lives in the soul passes “from Ego to Ego”. “Subject & predicate are equal,” as in the 5^th Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”. 

Steiner fills it out with “Blessed or God-filled are they who develop love; for as they radiate forth love, it will return to them again.”  

What goes forth returns again, what dies will be reborn. The Mystic Death is the antidote to the 5^th layer of the inner earth, called the Fruit Earth. This realm of expansive growth has a soul-like quality, struggling to gain shape & form. Its substance consists of burgeoning, teeming, out of control energies, like a virus. In this layer we find life in its most original state, which was found “on the earth’s surface when nothing lifeless had yet developed.” Steiner tells us that it must be contained for if it got out into the atmosphere it would be act like a virus.

Here we learn that, without the transformation of the Mystic Death there would be no mercy.

When the initiate has passed this stage, the time has come for the next.

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel Archer Ginsberg