From the book The Nature of Substance: Spirit and Matter by Dr Hauschka

Projective geometry provides us with a mathematical illustration. One can think of the surface of a sphere as having two possible origins. The usual concept pictures it as an equal expansion from a central growth-point. Every point on the circumference thus has a static connection with the centre. This concept underlies all our building, the statics of a house, the stability of the physical universe.
 
The alternative method of arriving at the surface of a sphere is just the opposite. Form-creating planes approach the emergent shape from infinity, becoming tangents of the sphere thus enclosed. Such spheres are therefore infinity-created hollow spaces, not solid bodies. Every point on the surface is linked with infinity, rather than with a centre (figure below).
 
This shaping with the cosmic dynamics of infinity is the silica process, which manifests in a fixed form as the substance, silica. It is the force active wherever surfaces come into being: the surfaces of ocean waves and mountains, the epidermis of plants, the skins of man and animals, the membranes enclosing their internal organs.
 
Silica serves as an excellent example for pointing out the difference between substances as the dead mineral end—products of a process and that process itself — a distinction we shall have to learn to make. The silica process is by no means bound to the substance silica. Only where its activity has been intense, does — material silica come into being. Substances are the final stage of processes. Future references to ‘substance processes’ are to be understood as meaning the dynamic activity preceding the emergence of physical matter.
 
Birds are the creatures most closely related to the silica process. Material evidence of this is found in their feathers, ashes of which yield up to 77% silica. The silica process here is not limited to the feather—enclosed bird form; it is the force which relates birds to the entire sphere—shaped mantle of air that encloses the earth. Atmospheric strata arc themselves permeated by the silica process, for their surfaces were formed by its tangential planes. It is not just strength of muscle that enables the eagle to spread his wings and lord it over the heights in majestic flight: it is the profound relation of his being to the silica process active in the airy realm. Gliding is a first step in the same direction, a sport in which man has to develop a special qualitative sense for and sensitivity to the cosmic laws of atmospheric space. It is a sense that borders on perception of imponderable reality. An understanding of the silica process could contribute toward a future mastery of the air, which is structured throughout of plane-surfaces.
 
How different a picture limestone gives! Here we find no such affinity to water as silica possesses, but rather an inclination to aridity. There is no such thing as colloidal lime. Our path to an understanding of its nature cannot therefore trace a relationship to water, as with silica, but rather a connection with dryness.
 
Now the greatest intensification of which dryness is capable is combustion. Firing produces what we call burnt lime, but leaves silica completely unchanged. Lime in its natural state has a greediness, evident in its tendency to absorb liquids, gases and odours. Burnt lime carries this characteristic to an extreme. In the process called slaking, for example, it sucks up water with such ferocity as to cause hissings, clouds of steam and even explosions, so that it has to be very cautiously handled in the lime— pits. Slaked lime is made by pouring water on to quicklime. And though one might think this would satisfy its thirst, it goes on and greedily sucks up more carbonic acid from the air, until it becomes hardened stone again. That is why lime is an ingredient of the mortar (a mixture of sand and slaked lime) used in construction work.
 
Burning:       CaCO3 (lime) → CaO (burnt lime) + CO2
Slaking:       CaO (burnt lime) + H20 → Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime)
Building:      Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime) + CO2 → CaCO3 (limestone)

Lime is thus related by its character to the statics of building, the firmness of our physical frames, the equilibrium and stability of earthly phenomena.

The image above pictures the contrast between the dynamics of the cosmic sphere and the statics of the earthly globe. The latter is built up from a central point and obeys the laws of terrestrial space, while the former is shaped by the peripheral forces of infinity.
 
We seldom think of the extent to which as earthly beings we are bound up with the balance and stability derived from the lime-process. Gravity would drag us down into bottomless depths if the earth’s solidity and the statics of buildings were not there to counteract it and to hold things in balance. And we can thank the lime in our bones for the firm support they give to our bodies, for our balance and our upright posture.

Our skin, then, is that part of us built by the cosmic silica process while our skeleton is the expression of the stable earthly minerality given us by the lime-process.  With our ‘skin and bones’ we are stretched between the two polar cosmic forces, silica and lime. Silica shapes from the circumference, lime from the centre. The dynamic relationship is essentially that of circle and radius.

Sophia Turner had made the Church of Lazarus her spiritual home. It is also the place where the ashes of her late husband, Brian, are interred.  Every Sunday Sophia would attend the Sunday Service for Children and then, without entering into any conversation with anyone en route, she would take a jug of water to the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bush planted over the ashes of Brian and she would water the bush and spend some time in contemplation.

Sophia moved to Cambridge, England, on the eve of the Covid lockdown to be near her daughters and granddaughters.

When she discovered that she had cancer she took this on as part of the journey of this life, endeavouring to understand what this meant in her biography. She died well prepared and in full consciousness on Friday 8 July. It was obvious that her ashes should be interred with those of Brian in the Memorial Garden of the Church of Lazarus.

Sophia's daughter Dani with her husband and two daughters arrived in South Africa on Monday 8 August. The Act of Consecration for one who has died was held on Saturday 13 August and Sophia's ashes were interred next to those of her husband and a yellow clivia now makes the place next to the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bush. Many people who had known Sophia, including her Latin American dance teachers, then gathered to speak about Sophia, her life and the impact she had had on others.

The vase of sunflowers that adorned the tea table was sent by a friend from Windhoek who could not make it to Johannesburg for this special day. The vase itself, painted chalkboard-black, was decorated by Sophia's granddaughter.

This quote from the introduction to Theosophy set the mood for the introduction to the weekend which Michaël gave on Friday evening. It captures the work of the weekend and it describes what we spent most of our time thinking about - just how closely we really are connected and reflect aspects of the divine. 

We were reminded that the word ‘Theosophy’ means ‘Divine Wisdom’ or ‘Wisdom of God'. If we are made in the image of God then we must surely reflect this divine wisdom of God We are therefore an image of this divine wisdom, we are Theosophy ourselves! This was a wonderful thought for many of us to contemplate. 

Michaël shared how, through the ages of time, people felt the human being to be made of three different bodies. From the ‘wise ones’ who were the authors of the Vedas to the Ancient Greek philosophers, and St Paul, the human being was said to consist of bodies veiled in sheaths all reflecting aspects of the human being who was and who was still becoming. Physical body, Subtle body, Seed Body spoken about in the Vedas or Soma, Psyche, and Essential Divine explained by the Ancient Greeks or Body, Soul and Spirit to which St Paul refers in his letter to the Thessalonians are ancient ideas that Steiner brought to life for our times in his book Theosophy. We used his seven-fold picture of the human being and sometimes his nine-fold picture and sometimes his four-fold picture, but they were always related to the ancient three-fold pictures.  

The evening ended with a Close of Day Service.


Saturday began with the Act of Consecration of Man which was followed by 4 sessions of work throughout the day. In each of the sessions we began using the framework of Steiner’s seven-fold human being. Physical Body, Life Body, Astral Body, ‘I’-Organisation, Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Human. In order to understand what is meant by these various bodies of the human being Michael presented a complementary seven-fold picture in each session. These complimentary pictures revealed different aspects of each of the bodies and led us into a deeper understanding and appreciation of the pictures that Steiner creates. It was important to begin with a general explanation of each of the seven bodies of the human being. It was wonderful to be shown how, when transformed, each of the lower bodies gives rise to the higher bodies. Astral body gives rise to the Spirt Self, Life Body transformed gives rise to Life Spirit and the Physical Body transformed gives rise eventually to the Spirit Human Being. All of this is made possible by the working of the I-organisation - a gift of the Christ. It permeates each of these bodies and weaves its transformative forces. 

Our first session concluded with a picture of the seven metaphysical trees identified by Steiner. Two of these trees we know well: The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree Life. These two trees correspond to the I-organisation in human beings and the Spirt Self respectively.  Although no in-depth description of each of the trees was given the simplicity of their names helped inform our understating of each of the bodies of the human being. 

The second session of the day began with the revealing of the seven names of Solomon as can be found in the Old Testament in the book of Wisdom. Solomon is a representative of the Human being in all its fullness at that time in history. The names he was called by all mean something and create a picture of the whole human being. It is not surprising to know that each of the seven names corresponds to one of the seven bodies of the human being in Steiner’s picture. 

These names and concepts were further explored in a very powerful clay exercise in which the whole group participated. 

In our third session we were able, through discussion and careful questioning by Reingard, to reflect on the clay exercise and find connections between the action of the clay work and the different bodies of the human being. During this discussion Michaël also spoke of the seven descriptions of qualities or characteristics of God as can be found in the Book of Revelation. By exploring their original meanings from the Greek, Michael was able to form a phrase of description that further served to illuminate the essence of each of the bodies of the Human being. 

In our final session of the day Michaël introduced the idea of Petition. It was explained that to petition is to lay claim to something that belongs to you, to take ownership of what is yours. 

In the light of all that we had received during the day in the descriptions and pictures of the Human being in the light of Theosophy and the thought that we are Theosophy, participants were encouraged to create their own petition, claiming and owning what we had discovered belonged to us all along. 

It was a very special time when we got to hear each other’s beautiful prayers of petition. 

We day ended with a Close of Day Service.

Sunday morning saw the participants gather together for a guided meditation before the Act of Consecration of Man. In a talk by Michaël after the Act of Consecration of Man we were able to further explore the topic of Petition in the light of all that had been discovered the day before. For those who were not able to attend Saturday, the talk on Sunday was also able to be heard and appreciated in its own right. 

Some of the points that Michaël brought for consideration that stood out for me include the fact that if we consider ourselves a reflection of the divine wisdom and in fact believe we as human beings are divine wisdom our attitude to prayer could be very different. We might mature in how we reconnect with God each day. We may not necessarily want to ask him for the things we think we need as a child might beg their parents for something they want. Instead, we might pray out of the knowledge of who we really are and who God is in relation to this creation that we call “I”.  I may truly learn to petition and to lay claim to what I can do, what I know to be my responsibilities and then to have faith that should I need anything else as I actively go about my daily tasks it will be given to me out of love and grace and I will learn to recognise the daily miracles that happen to me. Instead of asking for so much I might be more mindful of all that I have already and continue to receive. Instead of constantly seeking I may start to recognise what I already have been given. I will realise that when I knock the door is always opened. 

Many thanks to Michaël and Reingard for all the thought and care that went into presenting this weekend. 

It is also worth mentioning all the delicious food that was served and the wonderful connections that were made between participants. Thank you for these unexpected blessings.

Understanding the Human Being allows us to walk the Christ path.

Our different bodies, Physical, Etheric, Astral and I-organization, each have their role in our development.  But we must become active in our striving to live in the presence of God and express the divine in us.

The Wisdom comes when we penetrate our inner space with our thinking finger - Trust the processes.

There are 7 esoteric (metaphorical) trees to describe the different human bodies and our future development. The Name Solomon describes what it is to be a human being. What we strive to become 

​Petition is a claim
We must Lay claim to that which belongs to us. My capacity to be human. The work we have done in the processes above.
Seek to take hold of our goal. To connect with ‘my I’ with God’s grace in me – Not what God can do without my participation
We are an expression of God. All the power of God is in us. We must mobilize this power of God
Then the grace can work in us
Ask: ask questions that grow a living relationship with the Divine within you -And it will be given to you
Seek: to advance on the path of self-development -And you will find
Knock: lay claim to your spiritual path with consistency and reliability – And the door will be open to you
For everyone who truly asks, Receives
Who earnestly seeks, Finds
And who humbly knocks, to them the door opens
Be active in your striving to live in the presence of God. Practice renewal in Petition

My Petition: Unfolding Theosophy
O Glistening wheat
You hold your head up high
Straight and Strong
Bursting with Goodness – You freely give your Golden Gift
Shining
Glorious
Present
Blessings so thoughtful and Sensitive
Apparent for all to see and Know
You Consecrate me

Reported by John-Peter Gernaat

This is an overview of what Rudolf Steiner understood by the term “Theosophy” and what we can understand by this term. Rudolf Steiner wrote a book titled “Theosophy”. It is not the aim of the module to cover the entire book. The aim is to form a picture that will enable everyone to begin reading this book and then be able to place the book in context through the process of the weekend.

The word Theosophy is a word in Koine Greek devised from “Theo”, meaning God, and “Sophia” meaning wisdom. Theosophy, therefore, means ‘the wisdom of God’. What does this mean? It has a specific reference: through history groups of Christians have use the word and meant something specific. Rudolf Steiner makes clear in his introduction that: “As human beings we call the highest thing that we can look up to ‘the Divine’ and we must imagine that our highest aim and calling have something to do with this divine element.” Thus, in a spiritual upward gaze we can refer to the highest thing that our gaze encounters as ‘the Divine’. This would be for us the ultimate picture of that which exists out of which everything else comes. It is ‘that which is, out of which everything else is able to be’.

There are other philosophies and other religions that have other names for ‘the Divine’. The intention is to use an expression that is above the divisions of language and religion when referring to “the highest thing we can look up to”. The name of the universal Divine entity in Sanskrit is Brahman. This is the name for the ultimate, Divine, universal principle.

Continuing the quote from Steiner: “… and we must imagine that our highest aim as human beings, and our calling, have something to do with this Divine element.” Thus, what we are aiming to achieve and what we are called to is in some way connected to this Divine entity. We are called to reconnect with Divine, to re-establish a relationship. This is a central component in the word religion – ‘religare’ (Latin meaning to bind together), to reconnect. When we are born onto the earthly world we forget where we have come from. “This may well be why wisdom that which transcends the sense perceptible world reveals to us both our essential nature and our destiny and this is called ‘theosophy’, or Divine wisdom.” Therefore, to understand the essence of being human is to understand theosophy. How can one say that the human being, flawed and incomplete, is the wisdom of God? We can say this because the Book of Genesis reveals to us that we are “made in the image and likeness of God”, therefore the human being is an image of the wisdom of God. Theosophy, therefore, is about the essence of the human being. What is the human being and how is the human being constituted? This is a Divine wisdom made manifest as a living being. It is a being that we refer to as human.

The theme of the seminary modules in 2022 is: “Deepening an understanding of Anthroposophy”. Koine Greek will provide the understanding that this word means: ‘the wisdom of the human being’. The constitution of the human being is not anthroposophy, it is the wisdom of God, theosophy. The way in which we, each, unfold this wisdom of God – the way in which we develop and come to understand who we are; the path of self-development that each person can follow – that is the wisdom of the human being; that is anthroposophy.

In considering the Koine Greek word ‘anthropos’, the word is not just the human being, but it is the countenance of the human being. Countenance is a word with several meanings and all of these meanings apply. The most basic is ‘a face’, meaning that ‘I can face you’, ‘I can see you’ and ‘I can come face to face’; ‘I recognise you because you have a face’. Having a face makes each human being quite distinct, even identical twins. The countenance is not just the face, but also how each person presents themselves. What shines through the face is quite individual. Countenance also means ‘something one can confirm’, ‘something we can allow’: e.g., “He would not countenance any violence.” It means that as human beings who have a countenance, a face through which we can express something of who we are; we also have the capacity to say “yes” and to say “no”, in a conscious way, disconnected from the sympathies and antipathies that reign in our feeling life. We are able to reflect on our choice. ‘Anthropos’ is even more than the countenance of the human being because the suffix ‘an’ suggests that in this word exists a directionality, which is ‘up’ – ‘ana’. Therefore the word ‘anthropos’ means the ‘countenance of the human being that looks up’. As Steiner said: “As human beings we call the highest thing that we can look up to …” This is an inner, soul activity of looking up.

Theosophy, then, is that which constitutes the human being. We can go back to ancient texts and scriptures and find descriptions of the human being. The oldest we can find come to us from the Vedas, written in Sanskrit centuries after then were spoken. They come from a well-preserved oral tradition of the words that were spoken by the Rishis, shared as great wisdom. The Rishis were known as ‘the wise ones’ who understood the full wisdom of creation and the cosmos. They understood, one could say, the wisdom of Brahman, the universal principle of the Divine. The Vedas form the basis for the understanding of the world that is the philosophy of Hinduism. The picture in the Vedas of the human constitution is quite complex. It is very helpful for us today to understand how the human being understood themselves many centuries ago. It allows us to see what concepts have been added to the picture and where it takes up today in our understanding of the constitution of the human being. The ancient Vedic picture describes three bodies:

1. The Gross Body – it is in fact the physical body with mass and physical dimensions. It is present until death and even at death we can still determine its dimensions. However, without life this Gross Body breaks down. We can speak of it separately from the energy that keeps the Gross Body alive.
2. The Subtle Body – it cannot be seen. It is the energetic body – a body of energy.
3. The Seed Body – this was a sense that the ancients had that they were not complete. They carried within them the seed for the future development of the human being. It was the future unfolding.

Thus, the ancients saw the human being as a physical body, a body of life and emotions – everything that is alive in the human being – and a potential for future growth and development. The Vedas were considered to be essential manuals of knowledge when they were written, they were not written as sacred writings. They were a totality of everything the human being needed to know to live life. They gave instruction on what to eat, how to farm, how to maintain health and restore health, how to manage society, how to organise daily life, how to live in a society – they were an encyclopaedic body of knowledge on how to be human and to live as a human being. The Vedas explained how the three bodies interact. They saw the three bodies as existing states.

1. The physical body was described as being in a state of wakefulness.
2. The subtle body was described as being in a dream state.
3. The seed body was described as being in a state of sleep.

​There were other layers also described.

1. The physical body had only one layer of activity:
   • a food sheath
2. The subtle body had three sheathes:
   • The vital sheath – energy
   • A mind sheath – that contains all the emotions that we express. It was not seen as the rational thinking mind. It was the emotive body and therefore closer to what we call the heart.
   • Intellectual sheath – the capacity to think. It recognised that thinking was a different element to feeling.
3. The seed body had only one sheath:
   • The bliss sheath – it protected the seed and would bring future happiness.

We may, still today, feel that this is a fair description of the human being. We can acknowledge that there is more to us than a physical body. We definitely have an energetic body. Quite a few of our emotions are not conscious. Something seems to stir up in us; it feels a bit like a dream, suddenly one feels happy or suddenly one feels a bit sad without being really conscious as to why these feelings have arisen. There is also a sense that there is more to us, and even that there is more to come in the future, not just in our lifetime; but when we consider the future evolution of the human being and especially the development of human society, the whole human experience is probably going to develop further. We may feel that we have developed this seed body a little beyond what the ancient civilisations experienced, especially the intellectual sheath may have developed, and we may feel that further development lies ahead. We can sense an evolution of the human constitution. This picture remained in various forms for many stages of cultural development.

We are able to traverse time to the ancient Greeks who had an additional picture that speaks to us of different aspects of being human. This is a consideration of the writings of Aristotle, but he was a pupil of Plato who in turn was a student of Socrates. Thus, we can read into Aristotle the input of those who came before. He speaks about the human being in a three-fold way. He uses specific terms for the three-foldness of the human being. This was an idea that we can also read in the New Testament where St Paul uses the same words to describe aspects of the human being.

These words still have expression in the English language.

1. Soma – in biology we speak of somatic cells – those cells that belong to the body. Soma means body. The description is a physical body.
2. Psyche – which we may translate as soul. This expressed the energetic and emotive part of the human being.
3. Pneuma – which can be translated as breath. It can also be translated as spirit. It was a Divine aspect of the human being that has an interplay with the soul and the body but is in itself separate.

Paul writing to the Thessalonians wrote: “Take care that no one repays evil with evil, rather always strive to do good to one another both within your own circle and also towards other people. Have joy within yourselves always. Do not neglect your practice of prayer. In all things cultivate the sacramental mood of thanksgiving. Then God’s will shall work in your will through the power of Christ. Let not the flame of the spirit be quenched. Do not let the power of prophecy wither away for lack of care and practice. Test everything. Hold fast to what is good. Keep clear of the evil in whatever form it appears. May God himself, the source of all peace, make holy your whole being. May your complete and undivided being, your spirit, your soul and your body remain pure and clean at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.” Paul is clear in placing soma, psyche and pneuma right next to each other: body, soul and spirit. He refers to three distinct aspects of the human being that are unmistakable. “May your complete and undivided being, body, soul and spirit remain pure and clean at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is a very clear picture of the concept of a three-folded human being.

This is theosophy. The human being is body soul and spirit. But the human being is more than just body, soul and spirit. Just as the Vedas opened up the three bodies into sheaths and how they operate. Aristotle relayed what Plato said that the human being has more than one capacity in the soul. This is still studied in philosophy as it forms the basis of Western philosophy.

One capacity of soul we share with animals; they emote and react to their environment – this is the sentient soul level. This was a soul of the senses according to the Greek philosophy.

Human beings have another level of soul that they called mind soul (an intellectual soul, a rational soul). The human being is able to abstractly imagine their environment. This, according to Aristotle, made us human, that ability to rationalise with any human being. We still fall under the misconception today that reason is the highest soul capacity of the human being; that it provides resolution to all differences. However, reason is individual and therefore there is more to be added to this picture.

Rudolf Steiner said that this picture is absolutely true. It is another version of the Vedic picture that is thought through somewhat differently. Steiner said that since the time of Aristotle we have developed a new level of soul that has emerged from the seed form that the Vedas imagined. This is the consciousness soul.

Thus the soul operates on three levels:
Sentient
Rational
Consciousness
Steiner is very specific about when the Consciousness Soul Age started. The Consciousness Soul became evident from the beginning of the 15th century. We have had this capacity of consciousness soul developing for 600 years. This is a relatively short period of time. This is a new picture that Steiner brings.

Steiner also brought a further concept of the human being. It adds to theosophy, the picture of the wisdom of God made manifest in the created image and likeness that is the human being. There is more to come. There are elements that have not yet manifested and are still lying seed-like in the human being, but that will develop. For this Steiner went back to the words of the Vedas. Steiner said there are bodies to come.

We know that the body has a physical component and a living component which prevents it being a corps. We can describe this living component as an energetic, forming force body that Steiner gave the name, the etheric body. This makes our body.

How do we express our soul: our sentient, rational, consciousness nature? We express it because we have the energetic forming force. We express it because we also have a capacity for emotions and expression. It comes through the energy and expresses itself. Steiner called this the astral body. He also described it as a sentient body – a body of sense and expressions. Together with the energetic force body the astral body expresses the soul.

Then we have a part that comes to us from the Divine which Steiner refers to as an ‘I-organisation’. It is an essential self. Steiner used the Latin word ‘Ego’, but this same word was used to mean completely different things by Sigmund Freud. Freud suggests the ego is the part of us which we must suppress while Steiner referred to the Ego as that which makes us human, because it arises from the Divine. It is our ability to say “I” of ourselves.

There is more to come, which is the spirit expressing itself further. Steiner used Sanskrit words:

• Manas – meaning thought, a capacity to have thought.
• Buddhi – means a discernment to hold a certain consciousness.
• Atman – means higher self.

We are theosophy, but theosophy not yet fully expressed. There is another side of us, our higher self – the higher ‘I’, the Atman – not yet expressed. In the Vedas there are two essential principles: Brahman, the universal principle of the Divine, and Atman, the high self of the human individual. Atman only exists because of Brahman. Atman is possible only because of Brahman. Atman expresses something of Brahman. ‘Man’ in these words is the same word that also provides us with Manas, which is thought, the ability to hold a certain expression, a certain consciousness.

Steiner renamed these:

• Manas – the Spirit Self of the human being that we have not yet realised.
• Buddhi – Life Spirit.
• Atman – Spirit Human Being – the ultimate aim when our higher self can live in the constitution that manifests itself on earth.

This is the whole picture of the human being:

• Physical
• Etheric
• Astral
• Ego
• Spirit Self
• Life Spirit
• Spirit Human Being

This is what the module of the Africa Seminary explored. During the work the participants looked at pictures of a four-fold, seven-fold, nine-fold, a new seven-fold picture of the human being working with the concepts discussed above.

When we return to the Vedic picture we can see that we have:

• A physical body,
• A vital sheath
• An emotive expressive body
• When we combine the intellectual sheath with what was developing in the seed body we have the ‘I’.

​There is a four-fold picture but expressed at a different time in human history. Then there were further body to come in the seed body. Therefore, we can experience that this is a picture of the human being that humanity has carried for centuries. In other cultures where we can study the traditional concepts and traditional wisdom the same picture becomes present in different forms. The same picture keeps emerging. Rudolf Steiner has developed the picture to show us more clearly where we are going. When we observe the picture of body, soul and spirit we can realise that it is Paul’s picture in the New Testament. Thus, the entire picture can be seem as being part of the picture that Paul presents in the New Testament. The same seven-fold picture emerges through the names used for Solomon in the Old Testament (see the article on Solomon). We discover it also through the description of the human being through qualities that manifest a seven-fold manifestation of quality in the Book of Revelation. They are always a description of the picture of the wisdom of the Divine made manifest in the created human being: theosophy.

Report by John-Peter Gernaat
​
This talk, and therefore the report, presume a knowledge of Theosophy. The report on Theosophy, which formed the first talk of this module of the Africa Seminary may be read at this link.

Theosophy, the Wisdom of God, has long excited people’s imagination, well before the coming of Christ. When Hebrew rabbis composed the Talmud, which is an accompaniment to the Torah, they philosophised on the Wisdom of God, that all of creation must have been brought about out of the Wisdom of God: “In His wisdom, God creates…”

We have referred to Theosophy as the human being, because what we can behold in the human being is the Wisdom of God as a result of having been created in the image and likeness of God. The Human being reflects the wisdom of God. Rudolf Steiner then goes on to explain that the path that the human being treads is not the wisdom of God, but rather the wisdom of the human being or Anthroposophy. This path is graced by Christ, it is the Christ-path, it is the path of connecting to the Christ Being, and not the Christ Being at the end of the path but the Christ Being in us on the path, meeting the fullness of the Christ Being as a goal.

Understanding what it is to be human will help us understand what petition is all about. It is a human being that is petitioning. If we understand our constitution, we can understand how we pray. Sometimes we continue to pray as if we have not yet grown up. This happens.
Reading Mark chapter 12 where a scribe comes to Jesus. To be a scribe was an important task. They were the record-keepers who wrote down the discussions of the Pharisees and Sadducees. We would not have scripture if the scribes had not inscribed it. Only human beings can write. Animals can communicate, but only humans write. In order to write the human being must create a symbology that has meaning to everyone. As human beings we write ourselves into the world and others can read who we are through all that we do and are in the world. This scribe was someone with capacity and knowledge, seeking more knowledge. He had observed how well Jesus had answered the questions of the crowd. He therefore felt that Jesus could confirm for him what lived in his heart. He asks: “Which is the most important of all the commandments?” This was a question that would have been a topic of regular discussion by those for whom he scribed. Jesus replied out of scripture: “Hear Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord (the Shema for the Hebrews).” This has the effect that everyone will listen. They did what Steiner describes: they lifted their gaze to the Divine. They were being human. He says: “You will love the Lord your God” and then he describes how one should love the Lord their God: “with your whole being.” He describes the human being to the point to which they human being has reached in their development: “with all your heart (the very essence of who one is – we make the heart our central point when we say to the one we love: “I love you with all my heart”. ‘Heart’ is therefore the centrality of the person. Thus we love the Lord our God with a sense of oneself – that self which has incarnated into the earthly body. Therefore the “I” of oneself, the earthly “I”.) and with all your soul (There is a difference between heart and soul. Heart represents the spirit while soul is another quality. It is how the spirit can find expression in the world and how the world can impress itself upon that spirit.) and with all the power of your life (With the life forces, often described as the Etheric Formative Forces of Life.) and you shall love the Lord your God with your strength of might (with the physical body).” It is a description of a four-fold human being: heart, soul, power of life, and strength of might. This description resonates with us.
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This gives us a new way of understanding prayer. We often think that prayer means asking for the things that we desire or that we perceive we may need. We did that as a child: we expressed our needs to our parents in the expectation that they would respond and give us that which we needed or wanted. Sometimes a parent would say no and not accede to the wish or demand. When we work only with the physical body and the power of our formative life force we rely on the parent being able to accede to our needs. But when we have developed the capacity to work with our full humanity we no longer need to ask, but we do, as adults, need to lay claim to that which belongs to us. When we are adults our parents will acknowledge our claim and may even gift more in addition through their love for us. We can take hold of our selves as adults. We no have to ask the Divine as if we are still children. Petition is not asking. Petition means to lay claim, to actively seek out something that belongs to one. (We go to court and make a petition, asking the court to confirm that something belongs to us. We are not asking anything of the court other than to confirm ownership. The court may offer grace in the form of compensatory damages if one had been deprived of something that was one’s own, thereby offering us more than we come to petition for, but this was not part of our petition originally.)

Because we have a human constitution as an adult that has an essential “I”-being our prayer, our petition is different to asking the Divine. When we pray we address the Divine and express what we are able to manage ourselves and that we will give to this with our devoted energy. We may then trust that we might be met with grace permitting us to do more that we could do alone, because of this grace. We might address the sorrow and heaviness of our heart, but in the understanding that we are bearing our burden and working with it. We do not turn to the Divine wishing the Divine to wave a wand that will alleviate our burden. We ask the Divine to see us and recognise what it is that we are doing and how we are doing it. We lay claim to that which we can do and recognise that which we cannot do, and we wait in our doing for the Divine to meet us and bring us that which we need. We do not ask for that which we need because the Divine knows better than we do what, in the circumstances of our life and our developmental unfolding, we need.

If we keep asking the Divine as if He could provide it magically then we are still a child in our relationship with the Divine. But if we lay claim to what we can do while holding in faith that element which lies beyond what we can do, then we are opening up ourselves to a real relationship with the Divine. This does not mean that miracles do not happen, but rather that we recognise when they do occur, because we realise that it is more than we could have managed ourselves on that day. Our true, final intention of petition is every day to speak to God in the relationship that we can, one of reliance, one of faith, one of assurance, but, very importantly, one of human activity and the engagement of our will.
We have a beautiful description of the letter of Paul to the Ephesians 3: 14-21:

God fulfils in us more than anything we could ask for or imagine.

There is going to be a higher power at work in us when we are active. This higher power will not spring into action until we get ourselves going. When we cooperate with this higher power, more will happen than we could ever have even asked for or imagined. Something extraordinary happens that is not because of ourselves, but it would not have taken place without us. We must be present. The higher power in us is the “I”-organisation, the Christ-in-us. We hear it eight times in the Act of Consecration of Man: “Christ in you.” Christ is in us. We walk the path because Christ is in us. Christ is not accompanying us. Christ makes it possible that we can do ever more than we could have ever asked for or imagined. That is what it is to be a petitioning human being: I lay claim to my capacity to be human and I know that that is made possible, graced, and expanded by Christ-in-me. This changes the way that we pray and the way in which we see that our prayers are answered.

In the seasonal Gospel Reading the theme was: “ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you”. We should stop focussing on the ‘ask’, seek’ ‘and ‘knock’ and rather turn our attention to ‘you will receive’, ‘you will find’, and ‘it will be opened’, start working with a that as a reality, because it is real.

If we keep knocking and don’t notice that the door has been opened, we remain outside knocking. If we keep asking and do not recognise that we are receiving, we keep asking like a child. If we keep seeking and don’t realise we have it already, we never stop journeying without ever enjoying the fruits of the journey.
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When we understand how we are constituted as a human being, how we are theosophy, it may change the way in which we petition. It does not mean that we don’t pray for others, but the only thing we can pray for is that they will come into the realisation that they need to come to and that they will find the grace in their lives that God will afford. There is no more we can ask for. Think of the Trinity epistle: “Our substance is his substance”. We are made of the very substance of God. It is the only thing that God can give us, the essence of His substance. With that we can experience more than we could ever do or imagine.

Reported by John-Peter Gernaat with additional illustrations
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Solomon was anointed King by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet: Priest, Prophet and King, borne by three separate people at that time. He was given the task of making visible in the world the place that would be the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant would be kept, until this could transfer from being a place in the temple to being a place in the human constitution.

King Solomon is known for many by two stories: the story that exemplifies his wisdom when he is asked to decide who is the mother of a baby and the story of the Queen of Sheba which exemplifies his great wealth and his standing as an international figure, a cosmopolitan leader of world repute.

In the story of the baby, two unfaithful women, who each had given birth, come to see Solomon because the one woman had accidentally smothered her baby. She then claimed to be the mother of the other woman’s baby and that the other woman’s baby was the dead baby. Solomon resolves the situation by offering to cut the living baby in two with a sword so they can each have half. The true mother capitulates to save the life of her child and agrees that the baby belongs to the other woman, while the woman with the dead baby is happy to have the other child also killed. Thus, Solomon knows who the real mother is. They are unfaithful to each other and unfaithful to their grief and loss. The sword is the sword of truth. This is a story of faith rather than a story of prostitution, as these women are referred to in many translations.

King Solomon married many foreign women besides the daughter of Pharaoh. We can go to Abraham visiting Egypt with his wife Sarah and introducing Sarah as his sister who married the Pharaoh. It was the daughter of the Pharaoh who became the stepmother of Moses. The concept of the Pharaoh’s daughter is significant. It means Solomon is aligning himself with all sorts of spiritual cults. Solomon married into the family whose ancestors spiritually enslaved the Israelites and would not free them to find their path with YHWH (Yahweh of the Elohim). Solomon married women from the very nations that YHWH had commanded the Israelites not to marry – YHWH wishing to isolate the Israelites from the influences of these nations. But Solomon reaches out in order to be cosmopolitan, being an international diplomat. He created relationships with all of the tribes by marrying women from the tribes. YHWH forbade the marriages for fear that the women would take the hearts of the husbands and lead them to worshipping their gods, thus leading them away from YHWH and his mission for humanity. Solomon does build temples for his wives to worship their gods. Solomon had 700 wives of royal birth. This represents a very powerful span of time. He had picked up all of the developed nations. He also had 300 concubines. Solomon had 1000 women: ten times ten times ten. In his old age his wives led him astray to worship their gods. This is why Solomon was not the greatest king, and David remains the greatest king. David never faltered in his duty to YHWH. We might think of Solomon as a great king who goes to great lengths to incorporate the tribes of the world, building economic and political relationships with all of these tribes. He was the “bearer of peace” by name and by action. He gave his wives the complete freedom to worship their own gods. YHWH appeared twice to Solomon to instruct him to set aside his wives and their gods. On the third occasion YHWH made it clear that the choice was Solomon’s: to increase the wealth of the nations, to make peace with all others, become the centre of the known world, but that he, YHWH would take away the kingship from Solomon and give it to his servant, but only after Solomon’s death. One tribe, the Kingdom of Judah, would be given to Solomon’s son in order to protect Jerusalem which YHWH has chosen.

Solomon is referred to by seven names in Proverbs: a full span of the human being. In Anthroposophy we would consider these to be the physical, the etheric, the astral, the Ego, the Spirit Self, the Life Spirit and the Spirit Human. Solomon represented all of these as the bearer of peace. But because he builds human relationships ahead of his relationship of YHWH, he must pay the price.

The book of Proverbs is known as the wisdom of Solomon but in chapter 30 it is describes as the words of Agur, son of Jakeh king of Massa. It is another name for Solomon that represents a quality of Solomon. Then we have the words of Lemuel king of Massa. Massa is another name for the nation of Israel. The seven names of Solomon are:

1. Agur is the gatherer; Solomon in his physical capacity as a gatherer.
2. Jakeh is son of the devoted one, the son of devout obedience or discipline which is an etheric force in Solomon.
3. Lemuel is the one consecrated to God.
4. Ithiel is the one filled with God which represents the I-organisation of the human being. (Today it is no longer the presence of El but the presence of Christ.)
5. Solomon is the bearer of peace.
6. Kohelet is the teacher (rabbi).
7. Yedidyah is the beloved of God.

These are the seven names or descriptions of Solomon which we can align with the seven-fold human being. This allows us to see Solomon as an extraordinarily great person, a wise person, a capable person who can do, organise, manage. His impression on the Queen of Sheba is beyond her wildest dreams; the descriptions she had heard of him do not do justice to what she discovered.

Solomon had the wealth and riches and the inflow of prosperity to build the temple which his father, King David, did not have and therefore YHWH forbade him building the temple.

Solomon who was more exoteric than his father David and had the capacity to build an exoteric building to house the secret, the Holy of Holies, the inner sense of the connection of the people of Israel and the great mighty spiritual being that represented God for them and was their chief angelic connection with the Divine. The building of the temple is placed in a historical context in the Scriptures. It was built in the 48th year after the Israelites had left the land of Egypt, in the 4th year of Solomons reign over Israel, in the month of Zim which is the second month. It was a temple to YHWH and was a temple of communication in which the Israelites could connect to YHWH. YHWH is an Elohim, a mighty formative force being. The building of a house in which one could communicate with this mighty being of form was quite an extradentary achievement. It was the third great creation of a sacred space.

The first was the building of Noah’s ark. This was a house that would house all of YHWH’s forms, the human, the animal; the living, moving, breathing forms until the waters subsided and all the plants, all that can be cultivated and create the space for the human being to live, had returned. This is a picture of building a sacred space, an ark, the word that in Hebrew means coffin. Noah and the animals are going through a death from one form of existence and are being born anew through the water of the flood like the waters of baptism into a new experience of life on earth. We speak of a post-diluvian world, Steiner speaks of post-Atlantean epochs and cultures. The whole world at one time was Atlantis and then it flooded and the floods subsided and a new world appeared.

Second was the Ark of the Covenant in which the Law could be placed: the holy contract with YHWH.

The contract must now live in a house in which people could gather. The house was described as three-folded. In the Hebrew of the first Book of Kings the words for the three parts of the temple of Solomon are not originally Hebrew words; they were borrowed from the Accadian language. This language was usually codified in Cuneiform and later in an Accadian script similar to the Arabic and Hebrew. It was the language of the Phoenicians. We have already looked at the parallel between the Lord of Israel and the Lord of the Phoenicians, the Lord Their God, YHWH of the Elohim –  Adonai –  and Adonis the lordly being of the Phoenicians.

The builder of Solomon’s temple is a Phoenician. Solomon builds a Phoenician building in its interior and exterior design. It shows the cosmopolitan nature of Solomon, and it would have been quite splendid. The building itself was much smaller than one may realise. The temple would have a looked like the chapel in a large palace complex of today, such as St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle:

The wall separating the Holy of Holies from the Long Room was a wooden wall. The interior of the entire temple was gilded with gold and there was a large quantity of bronze work from which was fashioned many aspects inside and outside of the temple. The Holy of Holies is in the west of the temple with the entrance on the east. There had been a spiritual movement from east to west. The Holy of Holies was placed in the direction of the setting sun. It is the place where the sun will set so that a new sun will rise. This new sun will be the Son of God. The Holy of Holies was already identifying itself as a place of ending, not of new beginning. The new beginning is Easter Sunday, the Day of Resurrection. There was a lot of imagery of rising again, or renewal, even of resurrection (strangely enough) in this temple. This included the great columns, Jachin and Boaz, designed by Hiram the temple builder, that signified day and night, birth and death. It was between these two pillars that one entered the great gate into the temple. The Holy of Holies was placed behind a wood wall rather than a wall of the stone used for the walls of the temple which were created in the quarry so that there would be no sound of chiselling of rock at the site of the building of the temple. The temple was built in a holy silence. Covering the entrance to the Holy of Holies was a curtain and only once a year would a priest enter the Holy of Holies to fulfil the ritual that was required to be performed. This is the place where Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, found himself when he meets the Angel of the Lord: Gabriel. He was struck dumb and exited the Holy of Holies unable to speak. The Hebrews realised that he has had an extraordinary encounter in the Holy of Holies. The curtain covering the entrance of the Holy of Holies was in four colours: white, purple, blue and red. Different qualities have been associated with these colours based on what they may have signified at the time for the Israelites. The suggestion is that white represented purity, purple represented sacrifice, blue represented meditation and red represented love. These were the essential qualities the priest would have required to enter the Holy of Holies: he would have had to be pure, willing to sacrificially offer himself, be in a meditative frame of being filled with the love and devotion for the Divine. The colours of the curtain informed the Hebrews of the qualities of soul, the quality of attitude required to enter the most sacred of spaces. However, one may also consider that the four colours of the curtain represented the four-fold human being: body – the vessel that can hold the pure spirit, formative life force – the place from which self-sacrifice is possible, soul expression – the space to connect with the Divine and others, and the essential quality of spirit – the ability to express love. As the temple was open to everyone who visited Jerusalem this was a picture that was available for the whole of humanity to see.
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The vestibule was half as long as it was wide. The long room was twice as deep as it was wide which held the altar for the burnt offering and the seven branched candelabrum and the table with consecrated bread on either side. Then the third room with the curtain of four colours, the Holy of Holies.

From Philo to Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther theologians have identified that the three-fold temple represented the three-fold human being. Entering the vestibule was to enter the body of the building, then entering more deeply one entered the soul realm in the Long Room and then the Holy of Holies was the spirit of the temple which represents the spirit of the human being. The form of the temples represented the form of the highest achievement of YHWH and the other Elohim in the creation of the world: the human form: body, soul and spirit.

The Temple Legend, very popular among the Rosicrucian, tells that when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon the temple is in the process of being built. When she entered the temple for the first time her reaction was recorded in many writings. The most astonishing of these appears in the Qur’an. As the Queen of Sheba stepped into the temple the floor was so highly polished and the moon shining through the windows causing a reflection on the floor giving the Queen the impression that the floor was flooded, and she lifted her skirts so as not to wet them as she walked across the floor. This temple was a moon temple connected to YHWH who operates from the sphere of the Moon which is a reflection of the Sun. It was not a light in itself. YHWH is not El, he was a reflection of El to the people of Israel with an exceedingly important task. YHWH is the leading Elohim of Earth Evolution.

In the Temple Legend the Queen of Sheba also meets Hiram. She was very connected with the old ways, while Solomon was very much a descendant of Abraham with clear, brain-based thinking. He was filled with understanding and wisdom and a cosmopolitan leader, connecting with all the nations, marrying princesses from each nation, making Jerusalem a place of destination and pilgrimage. The Queen of Sheba was more connected to atavistic wisdom. When she heard of Jerusalem she was driven to visit it, rather than making a conscious decision to visit it. For her it was a knowing that this what she must do rather than a thought through process. She was taken with the design and craftsmanship Hiram was introducing to the temple and Solomon became jealous of Hiram. He believed that the Queen of Sheba considered Hiram to be more informed and developed than he was and as a result Solomon decides that Hiram’s secret must die with him and, according to the Temple Legend, not the Book on Kings, Solomon ordered the death of Hiram. In this legend Solomon was seen as being descended from the stream of Abel and Harim was descended from the stream of Cain and especially Tubal-cain. The impulse of Abel was transferred and carried by the son Seth who was born to Adam and Eve after the slaying of Abel. The Temple Legend understands something of the origins of Cain and Abel. The origin of Cain is pre-Paradise, out of a conception that belonged to before the Fall. Abel was a conception after the Fall. Therefore, there were two streams, one in touch with the arts and creativity and through human, artistic activity creating a human paradise, and the other taming and managing the earth, taking hold and cultivating the land and keeping flocks. Cain grew crops in order that the life forces would grow from the earth and the gift he brought to YHWH were all derived from the sun-forces of growth. Abel brought a gift that derived from the moon forces: the first-born of his flock and herd. Cain killed Abel. In the Temple Legend the Abel stream took revenge on the Cain stream and nothing changes. There is no restoration from the first offerings to YHWH to the House of YHWH. There is a deep division in the human experience that involves death. There is no hope of renewal, resurrection and new life.

The renewal comes through Christ. And the curtain of the temple was rent from top to bottom. It was so high that it would not have been possible to tear from top to bottom without high ladders. The tearing from top to bottom meant that the Divine world tore the curtain, opening the veil, exposing the Holy of Holies. There is no longer a hidden place out in the world, the only hidden place now resides in the human being. As a result, there is no longer a temple in the world, the temple is now in us. Our body is the temple of the Divine, the Holy Spirit, according to St Paul.

Hiram is known as the son of the widow. The reference to the son of the widow means that Hiam was a Phoenician. Adonis was born after the death of his father. In the myth of Isis and Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus after Osiris was killed. The great gods therefore were the ‘sons of the widow’. It became an esoteric descriptor of one who had been through an initiation; an initiation, one might say, into the mindset of the gods. It gave them the ability to work like a priest. Therefore, the temple was built by a high initiate, someone who could work in the space of a priest. Solomon was king, anointed as king, but he was not priest. He was not initiated into the great wisdom of the esoteric mysteries, and he failed to build the absolute connection to YHWH, in the way David, his father had. Solomon remained entirely worldly and failed in the one aspect in which his father remained steadfast, despite his many other failings.  Hiram could build the temple because he was a great initiate. In the Gospels we have the only son of the widow being carried out of the city on a bier. Therefore, we know that this young man was not dead but in a temple sleep. It may be that he was experiencing a former initiation and needed to raised from the temple sleep, which Jesus did and presented him to his mother. The initiation allowed the person to spend three days in the spiritual world in a way that would allow the person to return with knowledge that would advance humanity. They would return as a new human being.

This report represents the end of the Old Testament Study that began in November 2020. There will be further studies of aspects of the Old Testament, and these will be announced in time. They will most likely not occur again on a Saturday as it appears that a more suitable day and time needs to be considered for everyone interested in participating.

Reference
*The Temple of Solomon in Iron Age Context
Yosef Garfinkel ** and Madeleine Mumcuoglu
Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 9190501 Jerusalem, Israel;
madeleine.mumcuoglu@gmail.com
** Correspondence: garfinkel@mail.huji.ac.il
Received: 24 February 2019; Accepted: 13 March 2019; Published: 15 March 2019

reported by John-Peter Gernaat
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This is a two-part series of talks delivered on 14 and 21 August 2022.

The first thing is to establish a historical context for the Tarot. There is evidence throughout human history of the use of objects in the playing of games. These include playing cards and the moving of objects on a board of some description. These games were generally played for amusement or distraction, sometimes involving wagers and the exchange of money, but there also existed what were considered to be sacred cards that had a purpose in some form of ritual. These sacred cards carried symbols that had a deeper meaning and may have been restricted for use to priests and initiates.

Playing cards akin to the cards we still use today, arrived in Europe in the early fifteenth century. The Tarot can be traced back to about the same time in Europe. Playing cards, as we know them, are divided into two types, the pip cards and court cards. The pip cards have a numbered sequence of symbols depicted on them while the court cards depict members of the royal court. Decks of playing cards are divided into four suits and there are thirteen cards in each suit of which three are court cards and ten are pip cards. This makes up fifty-two cards and there are typically two additional cards that are known as Jocker cards that may, in some instances, be used as wild cards (i.e., the Jocker may be used to signify any other card in the deck).

The symbols depicted to represent the suits and the pips differed from culture to culture.

• The French used hearts, tiles, clover and pikes.
• The English used hearts, bells, acorns and leaves.
• The Swiss Germans used roses, bells, acorns and shields.
• The Italians used cups, coins, clubs and swords.

The cards that we still use today were largely influenced by the symbols used by the French. The tiles becoming diamonds and the pikes becoming spades while retaining the point of a pike that explains the shape we see on the suit of spades. This array of different symbols influenced the symbols that became used for the Tarot.

Playing cards were extensively used in games by soldiers and were used by patrons in taverns. The Arabian army had battalions of foot soldiers that were non-Arabs who were working off some form of servitude who were known for playing card games. There are references in Turkey predating the fourteenth century of playing cards that may be as early as the eleventh century.

It appears that from the earliest use of cards they were also used as a way of gaining insight into peoples lives and events through different methods of randomly selecting cards from the deck. This was very distinct from people who seriously used the stars and constellations, their placement and alignment at birth, and on a particular day, to determine how these may speak into the destiny of a human being.

It is only in the nineteenth century that the Tarot came into its own. These cards pre-existed their incorporation into the Tarot as Italian playing cards. The name derives from the Italian tarocchini which is a diminutive of the tarocchi that was a deck of 68 or 72 playing cards. The French called these cards ‘tarot’ which is why the word still has a silent ‘t’ on the end. The Germans had a game that used the full 78 card deck called Großtarock. The tarot then used the standard deck of cards, the ten pip cards and four court cards, as the minor arcana (minor secret cards), a total of 56 cards and developed a separate set of 22 cards that are known as the major arcana. The cards of the major arcana do not belong to a suit and each card represents an archetypal image.

By the time the tarot came into use as a means of figuring out something for a person’s life, using the cards as a way to answer a question or revealing as aspect of life, i.e., ascribing to the cards a deep understanding of number and archetype, the suits in the minor arcana were presented as wands (not clubs), cups, swords and coins. Wands are interesting as the wood from which they are made were considered to imbue the wand with a particular character. Wands are a symbol for change. They represent the human being in their ‘I’-ness. The human being is the agent of change. The human being can change something out of themselves out of their uprightness.

The wand suit is associated with the element of fire and passion; therefore it is associated with action and the will. My wand can only perform magic for me. I am the wand that brings about change in my life.

The cup, that can contain liquid, is associated with water and the idea of one’s cup being full and therefore this suit is associated with the expression of the human being in their feeling life.

The sword represents truth as we have in the Book of Revelation which presents the image of the two-edged sword coming from the mouth of the Son of Man. The word has the power of a two-edged sword, it can cut both ways. This is possible through clear thinking. The suit of swords belongs to the element of air and is associated with thinking or the intellect.

The suit of coin represents the physical reality or the element of earth.

The four suits represent the three qualities of soul: willing, feeling and thinking, and what it means to have a physical body. Therefore, the cards are a way of understanding ourselves and what we may need to wake up to at any time.

Firstly, here is an understanding of number. This comes from work on the tarot and also from the work of Rudolf Steiner. He did not speak on the tarot but on The Esoteric Book of Ten Pages. Only one of the two lecture he delivered on this book remains in existence, but this first lecture provides a lot of clues of what the second lecture would have included. One can consider that each of the pages in The Esoteric Book of Ten Pages is a card.

The first number in the deck of cards is the ace which stands in the place of the number one. One is usually the number associated with birth but it also represents, more importantly, according to Rudolf Steiner, the idea of wholeness, of integrity. In other words, when we are born, we are born whole; all of us is there, not yet developed but all of it is present. We do not have to wait for something to be added to us, it is all there in the child at birth. It still needs to develop and unfold, but there is nothing that still needs to be added. This unfolding occurs within and is expressed outwardly.

The number two for many who use the tarot signifies a pair, twins. This should bring to mind the constellation of Gemini. Twins, a duet, a polarity in balance, yin and yang, male and female. These are the two sides that make up the whole. This takes us from wholeness to what the two elements are that make up the whole. Steiner speaks of the important idea of polarity in balance. There is one side but then there must always be another side otherwise we are out of balance. This brings two into association with balance and this concept reappears at two times two and two time two times two. At four and eight we return to the idea of balance. There is a connection between two, four and eight.

The number three often represents growth. For Steiner the number three is connected with the extraordinarily important idea of three-foldness. The human being is three-fold: body, soul and spirit. When we study the Old Testament, we are reminded that the temple of Solomon is made up of three spaces: the vestibule, the long room and the Holy of Holies. Many theologies have read into this the model of the human being: body, soul and spirit. We have become as St Paul states, the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity also reminds us that the idea of three-foldness is all around us. The three-foldness of the Divine is represented in the human being and in so much of what has been created. The concept of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit has taken on a very masculine identity and it is important to take it back to the very Ground of Existence, the parent-stock out of which generation and creativity and birth comes about and the relationship between the two that brings something new into being. Therefore, it is possible to imaging in the Divine Trinity that the Holy Spirit is that which lives between the Father and the Son: that which lives between the Ground of All Being and the Creative Force of All Being. Therefore, when we pray and place ourselves within that connection, much like Christ in Jesus prayed, and we open ourselves up to the Ground of All Being, we are living within that connection and living in the Spirit between the Father and the Son.

The number four is balance in solidity: the square. This is a very solid form. It is the base from which a cube can appear and is an exceedingly solid structure, well balanced and really holds itself.

The number five, Steiner says, is one beyond four. We experience ourselves today as a four-fold being: physical body, formative life force, soul-sentient body and a sense of one, the I-ness of myself. But, the number five is also a representation of the human being as was illustrated in the Vitruvian Man or a child’s stick drawing. The number five brings about the idea of a challenge, an additional element, something new. It represents a new element: quint-essence (quintessence); the fifth essence. Shakespeare speaks of the human being as the “quintessence of dust”. The number five is connected with challenge, dynamism, of coming into something: the human being, one might say, on the earth, not just the human being as a spiritual idea. It represents a grounded reality.

The number six, Steiner says, has something to do with ideals. In the tarot it is often considered the number for resolution. When something is resolved, an ideal has come about. Steiner says that whenever there is an ideal one can find it represented in a three-foldness with a resonance in another three-foldness that has been elevated to a higher understanding. Three forms the base of an idea with the resonance at an elevated level  forming six. An example is the philosophical cry of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity that find resonance in freedom in our thinking, equality in our feeling and fraternity in our actions. Ideals are combined in six and they resolve something, they bring it to its own stage of resolution.

Seven is also the number for time. This was the understanding of the ancient world. We experience this in our lives in that with every seven years we complete a span of time: Birth to seven years, seven to puberty, fourteen to twenty one, etc.

The number eight is balance in stability.

The number nine is the number of accomplishment: three squared. Three represented a three-foldness, six represents resolution and nine accomplishment. In Theosophy Steiner also describes the human being as a nine-fold being: having accomplished the full expression of being human. There are also nine Hierarchies of Angels. This is an accomplishment.

The number ten has always represented completeness. The entire law is in the Ten Commandments. The ten plagues that the Egyptians suffered meant that they were completely plagued. Ten means that it is done. The cards do not figure the number eleven and twelve. Twelve would be a wonderful number but ten represents completeness.

We can now begin to combine the numbers with the suits. A five of wands would represent a challenge for the will. Five of swords would represent a challenge to be thought about and spoken. A five of cups would represent a challenge in the emotions: how full can I make my cup?

The court cards are the page, the knight, the queen and the king. Some people work with the page and queen cards as representing feminine energy and the knight and king cards as masculine energy. The picture presented here is one picture and is presented in terms of the suits. The page represents a certain intellectualisation. The page must be wide awake. The knight must be passionate. The queen carries deep, well-grounded emotion – the heart forces that are strongly feminine. The king must be centred.

• The page of wands represents intellectualised will, in other words faith.
• The page of cups represents intellectualised emotion, in other words the capacity to study.
• The page of swords represents intellectualised rationalisation, in other words the ability to think clearly thereby to know the secret. I know the secret because I am well endowed with the knowledge of it.
• The page of coins represents intellectualised centre, in other words a capacity to focus.

The page represents the work in the realm of the cleric: study, clarity of thought, ability to keep a secret and focus.

• The knight of wands represents passionate will, in other words a capacity to depart.
• The knight of cups represents passionate emotion, in other words the capacity to propose something.
• The knight of swords represents passionate intellect, in other words the capacity to take charge, or take hold something.
• The knight of coins represents passionate centre, in other words a capacity to caution.

• The queen of wands represents emotional will, in other words a capacity for friendship, the ability to act as a friend.
• The queen of cups represents emotional strength, in other words the capacity to parent.
• The queen of swords represents emotional intellect, in other words the capacity for independence and to think for oneself.
• The queen of coins represents emotional centre, in other words a capacity for security.

These are the qualities needed in balance as a good teacher.

• The king of wands represents centred will, in other words honesty.
• The king of cups represents centred emotion, in other words an ability to be a partner, a soulmate.
• The king of swords represents centred intellect, in other words the ability to operate from a true ethic: values.
• The king of coins represents centred grounding, in other words a capacity; the ability to do anything.

​Herein one can see that every card speaks to some aspect of our lives. The cards open up for us the reality of what it is to be human; they are all a part of our journey of our life.
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The major arcana is about the journey.

The numbering in the traditional system is quite extraordinary, and it is possible to align each card with the year in the human development from birth to adulthood. After 21 our whole journey is in us, and we can go back to each moment of development and how that stage of unfolding continues to live in us.

The first card on the journey is the un-numbered card, the Fool. Much of literature, such as the story of Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, has the main character start off life as a fool. Parzival is even dressed in fool’s clothing. The fool goes forth where angels fear to tread. The human being undertakes the journey. We begin our lives foolishly; if we knew all that we would face in our lives we might chose to not incarnate. We have a trait of going forth with foolish abandon and as human beings we make a fool of ourselves a lot. When we look into the mirror it is the fool that looks back at us, essentially. The fool is the only card of the major arcana that has survived into the normal deck of playing cards, as the jocker.

The number I (Roman numeral) is the Magician and represents the power of the journey. If one observes a one-year-old it is magical what they can do, in comparison to what they were at birth: the magic of standing, the magic of speech (mama, dada).

The number II is the High Priestess. There is something quite glorious about a two-year-old when they are at their best. One can begin to see the beginnings of an inner journey. There is a little high priestess in all of us. The two-year-old has mastered the magic of walking. They are proportioned differently and now look more like a child and less like a baby. They no longer wish to be referred to as a baby; they have come into a new space.

The number III is the Empress which represents the conception of the journey. At three the child conceives of something and for the first time is able to say “I”. Three-year-olds assert their independence and will push a guardian aside to go to school: “I go!”.

The number IV is the Emperor which represents the authority of the journey. Four-year-olds begin kindergarten school because they can now stand in their own authority.

The number V is the Hierophant which represents the observer of the journey. A five-year-old has developed the capacity of observation. In schools the five-year-olds will watch the six year olds with amazement because they now are able to realise that this is their future. The four-year-old cannot yet conceive clearly of a future self.

The number VI is the Lovers. This card may represent romantic love, but it is more useful when it represents what a lover must be able to come to terms with; which is the choice. This card represents the choice of the journey. In love one has a choice; one can choose to go with the feeling of love or to reject the feeling to remain where one is. Thereafter there are choices when one progresses in the journey of love. For the six-year-old it is a year of choice, the lover, to be in love with oneself and with life. It is the choice to say yes and sometime to say no.

The number VII is the Chariot which represents the vehicle of the journey. What is going to be the vehicle that will take the person to where they wish to arrive? What is the motivation in life and how will this motivation result in action? Will the person act quickly or slowly and steadfastly?

The number VIII is the Justice which represents the responsibility of the journey. It is clearly possible to see a new sense of responsibility enter into children of the age of eight. In the Waldorf curriculum this is the year in which the children hear all the fables (Aesop’s fables, La Fontaine’s fables) but without the children being told the moral. This is unnecessary because they understand the meaning of the fables, they are able to respond to the fables and live the moral in their lives.

The number IX is the Hermit. Most nine-year-olds will withdraw whenever they find themselves in crisis. It is year of discovering things about oneself. It is a real threshold. Once the Hermit has secluded himself he also realises that the great guiding light is not out there but within.

The number X is the Wheel of Fortune which represents the luck of the journey. The ten-year-old is the heart of childhood. They are expansive and happy and open. They appear to enjoy life.

The number XI is Strength and represents the trial of the journey. The eleven-year-old is quite strong realising there is something to prepare for, something that comes at twelve.

The number XII is The Hanged Man. This is a man hanged upside down by one foot. He is having to pause and his life is turned, in that moment, upside down. That is the life of the twelve-year-old, their life is turned upside down; but they are able to cope with it. It requires the sacrifice of something of childhood to take on the new role. In the Waldorf curriculum everything changes for this age and the child is presented with a pair of compasses with which to draw a precise circle. They sacrifice their free-hand artistic capacity in order to draw the circle precisely. Precision enters their lives and with it new subjects such a physics and chemistry: the subjects that present the basis of a material knowledge. With it the twelve-year-old sacrifices their childhood imagination while taking on new insights through the power of imagination. The picture of the hanged man reminds us of an ancient Phoenician myth of a god who is hung upside down by one foot and drowned in order to be reborn. It is a card that has a connection to the ancient, pre-John the Baptist concept of baptism or initiation.

The number XIII is the card of Death which represents the end of a part of the journey. It may be the origin of a lot of the superstition that surrounds the number thirteen. It represents having to end something through a conscious choice. The thirteen-year-old has a lot of dying to do as it is about to be born with an astral body that is free as a teenager. This is quite a process that the thirteen-year-old goes through.

The number XIV is Temperance which represents the balance of the journey. Fourteen-year-olds struggle to find balance. Physically their rapid growth upsets their sense of balance.

The number XV is the Devil which represents the temptation of the journey. In the Waldorf school the fifteen-year-old is in a curriculum of ideals. It is a curriculum in which they may be tempted to stay, but idealism is not real. The ideal is important but it needs to brought into reality with that which must be faced by what is represented by the number XVI.

The number XVI is the Tower, it is the tower being struck by lightning and crumbling with people falling from it. It is, one can say, the destruction of the tower of Babel. Ideals may face difficulty, even destruction. It represents the grave reality of coming to terms with having landed on the earth. The Waldorf curriculum is strong on groundedness in practical terms for the sixteen-year-old. The ideals were buily at fifteen and now it is the age to ground the ideals which results in the towers of ideals crumbling. This is the great soul question of ‘how?’

The number XVII is the Star which represents the inspiration of the journey.

The number XVIII is the Moon. Eighteen is the year known as the moon-node year when the moon is in the same position within the heavens as on the day of birth. This represents the reflection of the journey.

The number XIX is the Sun which represents the light of the journey. For many people it is the first year out of school with greater independence and having to manage by oneself. In a Waldorf context this is the year of self-management as one tackles academic examinations for the first time.

The number XX is Judgement which represents the realisation of the journey.

The number XXI is the birth of the “I”-organisation and the integration of the journey. It is the card of the World.

The archetypes in the major arcana are extraordinary in the way they follow the development of the first twenty-one years of life. Thereafter they continue to resonate in adulthood is different ways at different times of life. One aspect may be more prominent than the others at one point in our life journey. Sacrifice in order to continue the journey may occur. At another point we may need to take hold of the authority we have to continue on the journey of life. Sometimes we may need to reflect on where we have come in our journey.

Life is a journey and the tarot have been used esoterically to look at the wisdom of this journey of life. Esotericists used the tarot especially to uncover the wisdom of the Kabbalah which was a developing esoteric stream at the same time as the tarot made an appearance. The tarot aligns with human development and with the sense of how we grow up; how we relate in our thinking, feeling and willing; how we can take up the essential elements of our humanity to lift ourselves above the animal.

If we consider that the major arcana, as presented above from the Classic Tarot found in the Rider-Waite pack, represent not only aspects of the journey, but that we can identify ourselves with the aspects described, then we can truly say that in a particular experience we are the Hanged Man, or The Tower, or The Star, or The Chariot – one can experience oneself as the vehicle in a certain situation. We can have the experience that our earthly “I” experiences itself in the aspects of the journey as described.

From about the middle of the nineteenth century the tarot began to be used for divination: trying to determine something of where an individual was in their specific journey. It is possible that this development in the use of the tarot had its origin in the understanding that at the same time as the tarot was being developed the esoteric stream of the Kabbalah was developing. One of the main themes in the Kabbalistic stream was an understanding that the Divine manifests in many different ways. An example is in the Kabbalah Tree of Life where the ten Sephirots or emanations speak to the attributes of the Divine which are also attributes with which we can connect and on which we can reflect in our lives. The idea of the Divine manifestation manifesting in us became an essential aspect of understanding the tarot.

Michaël suggests that when one works with the cards of the tarot that the cards reveal something to one about where one is at. This requires that one begins with an intention. One would then read the meaning of the cards based on the intention one holds seeking to find what one can connect with that opens up something for one’s life in respect of that intention. When we open ourselves and use a tool, which may be the Bible (if we open it to any page and believe that on that page we shall find an inspirational verse for our lives today) or the tarot, that we believe has value it can be useful in revealing something that may indeed be meant for us as a truth that speaks into our lives. Because the use of the tool is personal and not communal it has a lot more meaning, certainly a lot more meaning than a daily horoscope that is intended to apply equally to one twelfth of the world population. The use of the tool, the Bible or the tarot, relies on the personal connection the user makes to the message.

Michaël proposes that in working with the tarot there are four principal questions with the potential to reveal something to us. The cards of the tarot differ from playing cards in that the image on each card has a right way up. This means that when the cards are placed and then turned over they may be right way up or upside down. This also has meaning. A card that is upside down can mean the opposite to its usual meaning or it may mean that the very thing the card represents is blocked in our lives, or in need of special attention. This may that be indicative that we are required to do something that will ‘turn the card around’ in our lives, so to speak. The interpretation of the cards is not set by rules but rather it is sensed through the events of our lives. The cards provide a vehicle through which we can focus, be in on our day, or a particular life situation. It is an opportunity to become conscious of where we are on our journey. The tools one chooses to use cannot predict what is going to happen, they can open an awareness of the possibilities or potential that are open to one. It is then up to the person themselves to take action to realise the possibility or potential that has been revealed. Nothing happens without our activity in the matter.

One uses the tarot in the way described where the suit of Coins represents the physical reality, the Swords the thinking, the Cups the feeling and the Wands the will. Expressions of the earthly “I” came to light through the major arcana.

The questions that have value and the layout of cards that are common to these questions are as follows.

1. Who am I? At any point in our lives our earthly “I” experiences itself somewhat differently. We develop and our lives progress in ways that take us to very different expressions of ourselves. ‘Where am I’ and ‘who am I’ at this point in my life’s journey are useful questions. The common layout for this question is three cards placed one below the other so that the bottom cards says something of where one is in one’s body, the middle card says something of where on is in one’s soul and the top cards reveals something of where one is in one’s essential spirit self. The body can reveal something of our physical well-being. The soul card can tell us where we are in the way we relate to our environment and others. The spirit card can reveal something of one’s state of consciousness or awareness to where one is on this journey.
2. Where am I? Where am I on the journey? The cards of the major arcana reveal something of where one is in one’s life journey and how this repeats again in adulthood. This is usually a two-card layout placed adjacent to each other. The first card – in the West this would be the card on the left – represents the journey, the second card the progress. This may reveal what path one is on and how the progress on this path is developing. It may also answer the statement: “this is where I am”.
3. What are my strengths and weaknesses? Three cards, one above the other to represent strengths in the three area of one’s being and adjacent to these three cards to reveal the weaknesses in the three aspects on oneself: body, soul and essential being. This may offer an opportunity to rethink what is revealed in terms of how they are strengths or weaknesses in our lives. The cards do not define one but the cards rather open up something that has value to explore. The cards open up something within ourselves wherein we open a conversation with ourselves and therein also with the Divine.
4. What influences affect my life? This includes the influences of other and the influences I am connecting with. This is often a six-card layout, three adjacent to each other for the influences of others and three beneath for the influences I connect with.

The major arcana holds a fascination for us. Certainly for Michaël it was uncanny how some of the cards of the major arcana matched exactly with the development of the human being from birth to twenty one. This may be a perspective unique to Michaël and it stems from the description of Rudolf Steiner of the developing child. The card numbered XVIII being The Moon matches the moon node exactly and is followed by The Sun and finally The World at XXI when the individual arrives as an adult in the world.

How do these cards relate to things that manifest later in life? The major arcana can reveal something of where the inner self happens to be. Here is what the cards may reveal:

‘In the sharing of … experiences and the gradual working out of an image of man, the universe and God based on these sources of experience, the Community finds its unifying force. It is obvious that in this process the teaching of Rudolf Steiner, who penetrated in his own way into the unseen world where our real I has its being is of inestimable value. But neither Steiner’s nor anyone else’s teaching past or present plays the part of ‘doctrine’ in The Christian Community. Strictly speaking, there is no doctrine. In fact, priests and members alike are constitutionally assured of complete freedom not only of conscience, but also of thought and belief. Such authority as is necessary for the coordinated conduct of a religious movement is only concerned with the distribution of human forces, the ordering of public activities, and the administration of physical needs.
 
The Movement, it is true, has a creed which is normally spoken by the priest in the communion service. But as already pointed out it does not contain the phrase ‘I believe’. It is an instrument of meditation which the individual seeker may or may not wish to use for his personal contemplation. It offers the fundamental facts of Christianity in twelve simple sentences which may draw a free response from a seeking mind.
 
From these sources of experience we draw the faith by which we try to live. Faith with us follows, not precedes, knowledge. Faith with us is not a belief in things unknown and unknowable, or an acceptance on authority of a body of revealed teaching, but a state of active concern, almost a state of universal love engendered by the voyage of discovery into the fields of supersensible truth.
 
It is understandable that a religious movement with this unusual character and qualities presents a puzzle to other religious bodies. We cannot pretend that our advent was universally welcomed by organized Christianity. The traditional bodies did not quite know what to make of us. In Central Europe the Community has been called a ‘kirchenähnliches Gebilde’, a ‘church-like something’. This is not a bad description. In one way, for all practical purposes we are a church. We hold services, christen babies, confirm young people, celebrate marriages, and conduct funerals. We give religious instruction to children, provide Bible classes and group-studies on other religious subjects, and offer our services of pastoral care. From all this we might be regarded as a denomination. On the other hand we attach no claim to our services, not only in the narrow economic sense that we do not charge ‘fees’ for our ministrations, but also in the wider sense that we offer our services to members and non—members alike; in fact to anyone who sincerely desires them. On these grounds we might be regarded as an interdenominational movement.
 
The fact is, we do not easily fit into an existing category on any level. But I suppose this is the nature of a growing point. It breaks free of accepted patterns and follows its own laws of growth and form.