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At Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner gave a foundation stone verse (a meditation) not to be buried in the earth but rather to be inscribed on the hearts of human beings who wish to follow the insights given to us as human beings from the being of Anthroposophia. In connection to this Christmas Conference of 1923 Rudolf Steiner coins the expression: spiritual forces to refer to the esoteric nature of this Christmas Conference. In July of 1924, he spoke of “those spiritual forces which guide the anthroposophical movement in the spiritual world [which have] now come to meet … a higher benevolence … which flows through the anthroposophical movement.” This movement, too, guided and shaped our founding as a religious renewal movement, as The Christian Community – a true and modern Community of the Christ. The Foundation Stone Meditation will guide our work in the Holy Nights of 2023. We will consider it, the rhythms Steiner recommended to accompany the days of the week, and the unfolding of the future cycles of time (captured in this verse) as described in the New Testament book of the Revelation to John (The Apocalypse). The description above was the introduction to the eight talks and discussions held during the Holy Nights printed in the newsletter. The talks coincided, day for day, with the days of the week in 1923, one hundred years earlier, that Rudolf Steiner presented the Foundation Stone Meditation to the Christmas Conference. We worked, therefore, with a clear sense of significance of the day that we were studying. Rudolf Steiner first shared the Verse on Tuesday 25 December 1923. We began on Tuesday 26 December 2023. The reason was that Rudolf Steiner began on the Wednesday to share a rhythm that could be carried through the week so the Verse could begin to live in the rhythm rather than in an overarching message. The Verse was shared so that we, those who come after who carry a clear sense of Divine purpose for the unfolding of the human being, can place the verse in our hearts. It was not meant as a verse that would be written down and then folded up to be placed in a beautiful dodecahedron into the foundation of a building. A dodecahedron had been placed into the foundations of the first Goetheanum that had burned down a year prior. When the second Goetheanum was build that foundation stone remained within its foundations. The Foundation Stone Verse was given to be a living foundation in the hearts of human beings upon which to build towards the realisation of the Future Human Being that is presented in chapter one of the Book of Revelation. We are to embody the verse. The verse also serves, through the rhythm of the days, to help us re-member ourselves upon waking each morning to guide our days. Remembering Tuesday 25 December 1923 Michaël began with a reading from a lecture given on Christmas Eve that prepared the conference for receiving the verse. When Rudolf Steiner finally gave the verse, he did not give it in its entirety. Here it will be helpful to refer to the copy that is attached as a download as it has been annotated for ease of reference. These annotations indicate four verses and two stanzas to each verse. These annotations are there only to make it easier to refer to a particular order in which the Foundation Stone Verse was spoken out by Rudolf Stiener on the eight days during which it was presented. Thus, when Steiner first spoke the Foundation Stone Verse, he spoke verse 1 stanza 1, verse 2 stanza 1, verse 3 stanza 1, the whole of the verse 4 and then went back and spoke verse 1 both stanzas, verse 2 both stanzas and verse 3 both stanzas. (In the rest of this report a shorthand will be used: V1S1 to refer to verse 1 stanza 1, etc.) One can feel that Rudolf Steiner was building a sense of past, present and future: always being in the unusual space of being in three modes of time. We do not have a way of expressing linguistically in English that we, human beings, are in a space of past, present and future all the time. We carry a clarity of what we know and remember from our past and are always developing what is becoming in our present being. The idea that we are always past, present and future in one is not one that is always easy to grasp or to express in language. In Koine Greek it was more possible to express the three tenses in one, but when we translate scripture into modern languages we become stuck in a tense. A good example is John’s Prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”. In this sentence ‘beginning’ indicates past tense and so we are comfortable with the verb ‘was’, yet the word in Koine Greek suggests that we should translate the verb as ‘was, is and shall be’: “In the beginning was, is and shall be the Word, and the Word was, is and shall be with God”. We can read this also as “In the beginning was the Word; in the beginning is the Word; in the beginning shall be the Word”. This allows us to establish a relationship to each of the tenses and what they move in us. The extract from the lecture by Rudolf Steiner was read to give his description of memory: localised memory, rhythmic memory and temporal memory. (This forms part of GA 260 and is available on the Rudolf Steiner Archive https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA260/English/AP1990/ChrCnf_index.html). In this lecture Rudolf Steiner tells us that monuments were erected by ancient civilisations in a time when they did not have the kind of memory that we have today. The peoples of these early civilisations were taught that wherever they had a particular experience, to set up a memorial. These memorials allowed them to re-experience the event in their head, because the head can call up again everything that has connection with the earth. The principle of olden time was that: we give over to the earth that which we have experienced in our head. This points to an epoch of localised memory. This was a time when everything connected with memory was connected with setting up signs and memorials on the earth. The word memorial embodies the connection of memory at that location. The memory of human beings was outside of the head not within. Memory was carried in memorials and the presence of one of these memorials brought back to the head the original experience. Without the memorial the human being had no memory. The memory was connected with place. We still use this memory for our soul development. An example would be a picture of the Madonna that we hang up so that when we stand in front of it, we can recall memories that we are oblivious of during the rest of the day. We place the picture specifically for the soul work we wish to accomplish in regard to a particular stream of thinking. A second stage of memory development in the human being was achieved in rhythmic memory. This was a memory that was achieved through rhythm; the rhythm allowed the human being to develop a memory of something. The example given was that in order to remember a cow the human being did so through a rhythm such as the sound made by the cow. Thus, “moo-moo-moo” would have invoked the memory of a cow. We can see the development of this memory repeated in the development of children who use repetitive rhythm to remember ideas or concepts. Children will repetitively listen to the same story, and this brings them a sense of comfort because their memory is rhythmic. The ancient art of verse developed from this need to remember which was possible only through rhythms. It was only in the third stage of the evolution of memory development that the human being developed time-based memory or temporal memory. This is the memory that we still have today. We remember what is inserted into our lives in the course of time. This is a far more abstract form of memory than localised or rhythmic memory. The time of the transition from rhythmic memory to temporal memory was historically the time when colonies were planted from the East in Greece. The fear of adults is to lose the events that were placed into course of their lives. This is the condition of dementia. People in a state of dementia will still have a very clear memory of dance or music or verses or prayers which lives in the rhythmic memory. At 10am on Christmas day 25 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke the Foundation Stone Verse. This verse resonates strongly with the ancient concept of ‘know yourself’. The translation of the Verse that you can download from the link, and forms page 2 above, is one that Michaël has worked on for a long time and is currently, for him, the best expression of the original German. This translation may change over time as the understanding of its true essence develops further. Rudolf Steiner spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1. He then continued his lecture: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA260/English/AP1990/19231225a01.html. This lecture is related to the understanding of the three-fold human being and how this bears a relationship to the cosmos and developing an understanding of ‘know yourself’ and how the Verse can be laid as a foundation stone in our hearts. He brought the lecture to the event of Christmas, the day on which this lecture was being given, as memory of the turning point of time when the child was born into whom the spirit being of Christ would enter. He then spoke V4S1, V4S2. He then called upon those gathered to “once more gather before our souls all that follows from a true understanding of the words ‘know yourself in spirit, soul and body’. The Verse gathers all knowledge of the human being from the cosmos and places it in the human heart so that it may speak to us “everything that the universe has to say to this human existence and to this human life and to this human work”. He spoke V1S1, V1S2, V2S1, V2S2, V3S1, V3S2. Concluding: “My dear friends, hear it as it resounds in your own hearts! Then will you found here a true community of human beings for Anthroposophia; and then will you carry the spirit that rules in the shining light of thoughts around the dodecahedral Stone of Love out into the world wherever it should give of its light and of its warmth for the progress of human souls, for the progress of the universe.” In the evening Rudolf Steiner gave another lecture (that is not found in the GA260 on the internet). In this lecture he speaks of realms beyond the earth where in the first realm we may place the First Hierarchy of the Angels: the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones and into the second realm the Second Hierarchy of Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai and into the third realm the Third Hierarchy of Archai, Archangels and Angels. The fourth realm is then the realm of earth where the human being lives. We experience it merely as places of outer objects, but the ancients experienced it as penetrated with the elemental spirits of water, air and of earth. This was Asia. Asia meant the lowest spirit realm in which, as human beings, a person felt that they lived. The ancient human being could only experience the natural world, even to the level of molecules, as being spiritual entities that worked in the natural world. Oxygen was a spiritual stimulus to life in living organisms and nitrogen was a spirit that weaves through the cosmos and works on organic matter is such a way as to prepare it to receive a soul nature. Only initiates in these ancient times could see nature as we see it today, and we now in our process of initiation must carry in ourselves the spiritual-connection picture that we no longer see when we look out into nature. The morning was concluded by each one internalising the Verse of the Foundation Stone of World Love, of World Imagination, of World Thought. Remembering Wednesday 26 December 1923 This talk and the six following this talk are currently being edited and will appear here in the course of February 2024. Below is a summary of the talks as they pertain to the rhythms that Rudolf Steiner gave for the days of the week out of the Foundation Stone Meditation. The Foundation Stone Meditation – the study of the Holy Night of 2023 into 2024 by Rev. Michaël Merle Report by John-Peter Gernaat Rudolf Steiner first shared the Verse on Tuesday 25 December 1923. We began on Tuesday 26 December 2023. The reason was that Rudolf Steiner began on the Wednesday to share a rhythm that could be carried through the week so the Verse could begin to live in the rhythm rather than in an overarching message. The Verse was shared so that we, those who come after who carry a clear sense of Divine purpose for the unfolding of the human being, can place the verse in our hearts. It was not meant as a verse that would be written down and then folded up to be placed in a beautiful dodecahedron into the foundation of a building. Michaël introduced the Christmas Eve lecture in which Rudolf Steiner introduced different types of memory that the human being possesses and how these evolved. From this lecture it becomes clear why he presents with the Foundation Stone Verse seven rhythms that we may incorporate into that part of our memory where rhythmic remembering lives, so that we take the essence of the Verse across the threshold into life between death and a new birth. It is here, in this period of life, that we will recognise the reality of this Verse. When Rudolf Steiner spoke the Foundation Stone Verse he spoke it in various ways. In order to be able to share this without each time writing out what he said you are asked to refer to the Verse as it is presented here (see the loose inserted page). This translation of the Foundation Stone Verse is the translation that Michaël has been working on for a long time. No translation from the German is ever perfect and every translation is an interpretation. This is currently the best translation that Michaël can offer. The presentation of it has been annotated with line numbers and verse and stanza numbers. In describing what Steiner spoke you will find here verse 1, stanza 1, abbreviated as V1S1 for easy reference. On the Tuesday 25 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner first spoke the Foundation Stone Verse. He spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1. He then spoke V4S1 and V4S1. Then he spoke V1S1&S2, V2S1&S2, V3S1&S2. On Wednesday 26 December 1926 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1 and then he presented the first rhythm. The Wednesday rhythm is:
On Thursday 27 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1 and he then presented the Thursday rhythm. The Thursday rhythm is:
On Friday 28 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1 line 1-15, V2 line 1-15, V3 line 1-15, and he then presented the Friday rhythm. The Friday rhythm is:
There are seven rhythms connected with the Foundation Stone Mediation and seven signified that we are in a process of time. This is a relationship to past, to present and future. This means that we need to consider where we work most consciously in the span of our individual lifetime. The reality is that we can best grasp, because we are most conscious, in the period between death and a new birth. Therefore, the period that we are looking at in terms of these rhythms is this period between death and a new birth and becoming conscious now in this time before death of how we can work in preparation through practice for the time after death. In the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday rhythms we encountered the three principal beings who work together in the development of the way of being for the modern human being which is Anthroposophia. These beings are Christ, Sophia (the being of Wisdom) and Michael. We see them at work together with each stepping forward on Wednesday, on Thursday and on Friday with what each brings. With the Wednesday rhythm we encounter the mystery of the human ‘I’ and the Divine ‘I am’. Christ is not mentioned in the Wednesday rhythm but it is the Christ ‘I’ and the relationship of our earthly ‘I’ to the Christ ‘I’ that becomes the bearer of the rhythm on Wednesday. On Thursday we move from rhythm to inner rhythm, and we are with Sophia in the mystery of human inner being, the mystery of the soul. This is the soul rhythm. On Friday we are in the mystery of Cosmic rhythm with Michael and in the heart-rhythm. In the Wednesday rhythm we come into contact with the idea of the Future Human Being, with the Christ Being in Jesus. With the second (Thursday) rhythm (Moon sphere) we come strongly into contact with the Third Hierarchy. The third rhythm (Friday) takes us into the Sun sphere and the Second Hierarchy. In the fourth rhythm we are connecting with the First Hierarchy. On Saturday 29 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1 line 1 – 21 (excluding line 20); V2 line 1 – 21 (excluding line 20); V3 line 1 – 21 (excluding line 20) (Michaël spoke the entire V1, V2 and V3) and then he presented the Saturday Rhythm. The Saturday rhythm is:
The fourth in a cycle of seven is always the turning point. This is the rhythm of the Cosmic Midnight Hour. We are with the Angels, all the Choirs of Angels. We are in the space that Steiner says is about the recreation of the archetypal picture of the Cosmic Human Being. It is the original design, but whenever we reach the Cosmic Midnight Hour, we bring from everything that we have experienced and from everything that we have processed another element of the realisation, of manifestation, of that Cosmic Archetypal Human Being into reality. We bring the experience that enlivens the picture and makes it evermore a reality. Eventually the picture will be a full mirror of what we have become. These rhythms provide a picture of what it means to move through death, the inner planets, the outer planets, the Cosmic Midnight Hour, an insight into the nature of the spiritual cosmos with the fifth rhythm, and insight into the cosmos of soul with the sixth rhythm, and an insight into the nature of the physical cosmos with the seventh rhythm. These last three rhythms are also strongly connected to the three Hierarchies: the spirit, the soul, the body. On Sunday 30 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1 and began to present the Sunday rhythm before reading V4S1&S2 and continuing the presentation of the Sunday rhythm. The Sunday rhythm is:  On Monday 31 December 1923 Rudolf Steiner spoke V1S1, V2S1, V3S1, V4S1&S2. He presented the Monday rhythm. The Monday rhythm is:
The fourth rhythm, the rhythm of the Cosmic Midnight Hour brings us to the meaning of the Cosmos and of the fixed stars. It is revealed out of the forces of the Father God. The fifth rhythm takes us through Sun sphere on the descent to earth, and the meaning of the Sun and the planets (the mobile star) are revealed out of the forces of the Son God. The sixth rhythm is the meaning of the Earth and the whole of earth evolution revealed out of the forces of the Spirit God. We see the Earth when we approach it through the Moon sphere. When we have passed through the Sun sphere the human soul is earth-focused. On Tuesday 1 January 1923 Rudolf Steiner presented the Tuesday rhythm. The Tuesday rhythm is:
The seventh and final rhythm is the rhythm connected with the forces of the human being into which Christ incarnates. These are the forces of the beginning of the Fourth Hierarchy. We are the first beings that are created to become the Fourth Hierarchy. The picture of the seventh rhythm is the picture of the future that will be realised on Vulcan, the last embodiment of the earth cycles.
10 February 1913 (GA 265) from Rudolf Steiner: “I am compelled to train myself to be the revealer of the Divine archetypal image in me.” On Tuesday evening Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture in which he emphasises the development of a new human culture, a culture that does not come from looking at the world around us, but streams from the Spiritual World through us to establish Human Culture on the earth, rather than to impose earthly culture into the earth. We are already in a turning point of time in the withdrawal of the Mighty Spirits of Form who withdraw so that the Mighty Spirits of Personality can create the seed for the next great Cycle of Time (the Jupiter Cycle). It is now the time of the person who takes responsibility and carries it in their person. We cannot rely any longer on the outer form if it does not come from the inner space. We are in this renewal in the consciousness soul age. The first three Great Cycles – Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon – are the gifting of who we are. In this fourth Great Cycle, Earth, the turning point of time is experienced; something new must arise. The human ‘I’ has been planted as a seed into the human being but it is our responsibility to take hold of this seed in consciousness for the future to arise. This time in evolution is critical to the future of the human being. Heaven has poured itself into the human being and now the human being must take up the work or else nothing moves forward. The resistance we experience in life on earth is there for the initiative to arise in the human being. This is reflected in chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. What is difficult in life is worth it.
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