From the book The Nature of Substance: Spirit and Matter by Dr Hauschka.
Chemically speaking, sulphur is the most active of all substances It does not act in any one clear direction as do the halogens and oxygen, rather does it form combinations in a sociable way, creates new possibilities and supplies warmth, acting towards other substances as a kind of cook. Sulphur’s function in protein is of just such a nature Its liking for the colloidal state and thus for everything alive, its capacity for change, its brood-warmth make it a natural mixer of substances, particularly the organic. It is the carrier of upbuilding vital forces, looked at materially, though not in the same sense as oxygen which presses into living manifestation out of macrocosmic realms of spirit. Sulphur is rather a uniting force that prompts cosmic essences to work together in building up matter. It gives itself over wholly to organic life, promotes its physical functioning, and in this way keeps it clear of infringements from the side of consciousness. Sulphur thus plays a very important role in metabolic processes. Everyone knows how harmful emotions such as anger, fear and worry can be at mealtime. Digestive upsets are sure to result. Sulphur in the appropriate dosage is a common remedy for such afflictions, for it supports digestion by guiding nutritional elements, especially protein over into the life of the organism in the proper way. It is active wherever a too close connection of the emotions and consciousness with the vegetative physical indicates a need for a releasing agent; in cases, that is, where we need to have more life in our physical processes with no interference from the activities of the soul. The fact that sulphur has this effect is shown when an excess of it causes dizziness or a dimming of consciousness. This same effect makes sulphur useful in treating insomnia. For sleep is an extreme bodily condition in which the whole organism behaves as the metabolic system normally does. Soul and consciousness are driven out and separated completely from the purely vegetative-physical life-processes so that these are left free to do their up-building work undisturbed. This gives sulphur a dual nature such as the centaur has, except that it is the reverse of his. The centaur’s higher self saves him from becoming wholly hardened in animality and lifts him towards the light. He longs to cast off, to reject, his lower nature. The dual-natured sulphur, however, inclines to the purely vegetative, rejecting the higher qualities which lead towards the development of consciousness. When we walk through a blossoming meadow in June (in the Northern Hemisphere), the month when the sun is in the constellation Gemini, we can feel the sulphuric element rampant in all the sprouting and flowering of nature. The soul of nature slumbers like the Sleeping Beauty, in the midst of all this vegetative burgeoning. (In the Southern Hemisphere at this time the soul of nature is in deep slumber holding an opposite picture which the North will experience at the opposite solstice.) In their blossoms, plants come into touch with the soul-sphere which is the source of consciousness in animals, but with the aid of the sulphur activity within them they keep the soul-sphere from penetrating more deeply into their organisms. Otherwise, as we know, they. would become poisonous. When, in December (in the North), the sun passes through Sagittarius, almost every physical trace of plant life has disappeared; tiny, mineralized seeds are all that remain. But the being of the plant has withdrawn to live in the luminous heights of the realm of archetypes, where it reaches a culmination at the time of the Winter Solstice. Thus we see how the processes active in sulphur and magnesia lay hold of and penetrate the human being and nature, having originated respectively in the constellations of Gemini and Sagittarius. (Their interplay is also expressed in the opposite picture held in the balance of tension in the Southern Hemisphere’s experience.)
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The Gospel Study during this month began by looking at the difference between what is meant by church, congregation, community and brotherhood. All these terms are used by Paul and other epistle writers and in the Acts of the Apostles and without understanding the Koine Greek these have been mistranslated or misunderstood.
Rev. Michaël Merle introduced four words from New Testament (or koine Greek) that had been illuminated during the Gospel Study the previous Tuesday. The first word being Ekklesia which has changed meaning since it was used in the New Testament. It is now associates the institution of the church – the organisation, hierarchy and sometimes even the building which is the church. When it was used in the New Testament it meant an assembly of those called out; those who feel called out to join an assembly; or a congregation. The second word is koinonia which means a community. A community develops through a culture, common expression and relationships. A congregation or community may feel the need for a sacred space, which in koine Greek was a kiriakon. This became a kirikon which was taken into the Germanic languages as kirke and chirch (ch pronounced as k) and church. This is the space in which we gather – the temple, room or building. Lastly, the word Adelphus who are those sitting in the circle whom one thinks of as brothers and sisters. Thereafter the study looked at the Sunday Gospel Readings, firstly at the story of Nicodemus and then at the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. In the story of Nicodemus, the first thing worth mentioning is that Jesus says to him that one must be “born from the heights”. There is no mention of being ‘born again’. Jesus is saying to Nicodemus that the essential nature of the human being – our I-constitution – must enter into a renewed etheric body and a renewed astral body for the continuation of the human being. If these are not renewed the I-constitution will enter into the dying reality of earth. This renewal must come from the heights. We can understand that this is something that has occurred for humanity and it is now the task of humanity to work into the astral body and the etheric body with the I-constitution in order to create the continuation of our future. The story of the Samaritan woman is one that deals with worship. The Samaritans are descendants of Jacob but during their history five foreign tribes were placed in the towns that had been given to the Samaritans. They had thereby changed their worship of YHWH (Yahweh of the Elohim) and had also taken to worshipping the gods of the five other tribes. Therefore, when Jesus speaks to the woman he is speaking to her as a representative of the whole Samaritan tribe. When she recognises that Jesus is speaking about worship (Jesus does not simply say, call your husband, but rather call the one who is your Lord) she immediately responds by asking about worship. The Greek grammar of saying “the hour is coming and has indeed come: is now” is quite startling, and it means that this signifies a significant shift for humanity. The woman then goes back into the town and invites everyone to come and meet Jesus and to confirm her assessment. This earned her being ‘baptised’ by the Orthodox Church and recognised as an Apostle. The big shift for humanity is that worship shifts from a specific place out in the world to within every human being. The Old Testament Study continued the story of King Saul and King David. The relationship between Saul and David is worth investigating. The story may be read as allegorical, and the children of Saul could be seen as representing aspects of Saul. This would make more sense rather than that the same story is told twice with only slight changes.
Next, the Study focussed on David’s wives and children. His first wife was the daughter of Saul, but Saul takes her away from David and Saul marries her off to another man. When David becomes king he demands to have her returned. Therefore it is clear that marrying another man’s wife was not frowned upon. What was frowned upon in his marriage to Bathsheba is that David did everything in secret and with cunning. David reigns from Hebron for the first seven years. This was the home of Patriarchs. While he is in Hebron he marries six wives and each gives him a son. In total we know of 19 sons who were named and 2 who are not named as well as one named daughter and possibly many other daughters. His first son is Amnon. His third son is Absalom and his second son with Bathsheba is Solomon. Absalom means ‘father of peace’ and Solomon means ‘man of peace’. David then relocated and captured Jerusalem and set up his rule from Jerusalem, which had been the capital for Melchizedek, the ‘house of peace’. David’s eldest son, who presumes he will be the next king, wishes to follow a tradition that was followed in many royal families up till quite recently which was to keep the inheritance within the family. This was done through marrying a sister. Many of the Pharaohs did this (and marrying a niece or a double first cousin was a practice in several of the royal lines of Europe until a few centuries ago). Amnon therefore wishes to marry a half-sister. But this tradition was not one that the YHWH wished the Hebrews to follow. The Old Testament Study has introduced several women that were not Hebrews that were brought into the family through marriage. Bathsheba may also not have been a Hebrew woman (as she was a wife to a Hittite). Because Amnon persisted with a custom that was not appropriate, his half-brother Absalom arranges his death. Absalom was a charismatic leader and a favourite of his father. He represents someone with astral forces that are in excess. His father wished the rebellion Absalom starts to be quelled but instructs that Absalom not be harmed. Unfortunately, the order is not fulfilled when Absalom is found hanging by his hair from a tree and the soldiers are too eager to kill him as the leader of the rebels, causing David great grief. The last part of the study of King David will be to look at him as the writer of the Psalms. Comprehending the Spirit Within – The Whitsun theme – by Rev. Michaël Merle reported by John-Peter Gernaat During the ten days of Ascension a series of conversations took place on the archetypal Tree of Life using one representation of it which is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. We used this Tree of Life because this Tree was developed in the age of the Consciousness Soul. This Tree of Life is represented by ten nodes called sefirots which are considered as emanations of the Divine. This Tree was presented in a particular way and during the Ascension conversations ascended the Tree from Creation through the central pillar of Hope, to the square of our higher faculties, to the triangle of the spiritual bodies we are still to develop. However, the forms that have just been presented are inscribed into the etheric, permeating the formative life-body of the child during our Baptism sacrament using the three substances of water, salt and ash. These are substances of:
Using the substance of water, a triangle is placed on the forehead of the child; using salt, the square is placed on the chin (over the throat area) of the child; and using ash, a cross is placed over the heart of the child. These symbols are accompanied with the congregation present holding in consciousness the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The Whitsun talks looked at the descent into the human being followed by an ascent of experience. In the Act of the Apostles there is an extraordinary description of the Whitsun event. The contemplation for June (see the June newsletter or the Community website) deals with the Gospel Reading for Whitsun which is not from the Acts of the Apostles by rather from the 14th chapter of John. This reading describes the preparation for the internal event for the disciples rather than the external event. Reading from Act 2: 1-12 provides an extraordinary picture of the descent, the way that we inscribe the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in the Baptism on the forehead, on the chin and on the breast. We have an understanding that this event of Whitsun is the event that changes the relationship the human being has, on earth, with their I-organisation (also described in Anthroposophy as the Ego). It is at this event of Whitsun that the Ego is incorporated and becomes incarnated into the bodily constitution of the human being. Our experience of our earthly “I” before Whitsun was one of being accompanied by our earthly “I”. It was around us, in support of us, with us, but not in us. At Whitsun, in the story described in Act 2, we have a shift from ‘with’ to ‘in’; from ‘without’ to ‘within’; from an external reality to an internal reality. We, as human beings, have been carrying a sense of our earthly “I” in us for the last 2000 years. This is a relatively short period to have mastered this experience. As a consequence of the incarnation of the “I” something turns around. What had lived for early civilisations and was most clearly expressed by the peoples of the Indus Valley (now north western India) was an experience of an energetic rising through centres of energy. This picture will be explored more fully at St John’s this year. This is the energy rising through the emotional, energetic body of the human being: a rising energy through the chakras, as they are referred to. This rising energy had been fulfilled by one human being, of whom we know, who achieved the full development of all of the chakras all the way up. All seven principal chakras had been opened, enlivened and experienced, by a Hindu prince who renounced his royal life and became known as The Enlightened One, the Buddha. Once this capacity has been established by one human being all human beings have the capacity to do it. Now we have a turn around, because in the upward rising of the energy only half of each chakra is enlivened. In order to fully enliven the chakras something must be brought down into them from the spiritual word. As human beings, we have worked at lifting something ourselves, but this is not enough, now we must draw down something from the spiritual world into us. One could say that our effort now needs to be graced. This descent of the Spirit in us means that the flames of fire that could be seen above the head of the other by the Apostles were drawn into each one. We hear in the Whitsun epistle that these flames now “flame from the human heart”. These flames entered into the human being, and as the Spirit being incorporated into us. This can then give birth to Christ-in-us. This flame enlivens, in a graced way, the chakras now coming down into the human being. The first chakra to be enlivened is the ‘third-eye’ charka which means that we now have a graced capacity to think. The capacity for our thinking had been well prepared before the Whitsun event and is probably best seen in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. This capacity to think loves the wisdom of thought. There was a capacity in this thinking to be able to relate to ourselves and to the world and to understand something of our selves in a different way to the rest of the world. This foundation for thinking needed a certain grace. We were well able to work into our will, a capacity to do. Speech is one of the most extraordinary capacities of will. The speeches of great orators prior to Christ demonstrate the degree to which this capacity had already been developed. This too applies to the words of the Prophets of the Old Testament and to John the Baptist who spoke a ‘word of flame’ in preparation for the flame that was to come. They were words of the Spiritual world given to the human being to speak out. We did not yet, as human beings, all have that capacity. The grace of the incarnating spirit has now graced every human being with the capacity to begin to develop the ability to speak words of compassionate love. The first human being who could develop the capacity to speak in that way was Francis of Assisi, says Rudolf Steiner. We are now in the Consciousness Soul age, a time where we are conscious beyond the capacity of a rational mind and a capacity to reason, to feel ourselves conscious of ourselves and our responsibility – how we are able to respond. If we think of thinking, then of will and then of feeling we have a very strong sense of how the consciousness of the heart has to work with the will of our speech and the concepts of our mind. The chakras that have been enlivened in the path of descent are the chakra of the ‘third eye’ and of the larynx – the throat – our ability to step out and speak. We are now working on enlivening the chakra of the heart. It was enlivened before (on the ascending path of development), but we are now enlivening it, Rudolf Steiner describes, in opposite spin. This is creating a vortex. Something is actually moving in us, more than it had before. This is one way in which we can comprehend the Spirit within. It is the Spirit that allows these charkas to operate anew and will continue to descend until seven chakras are enlivened. We should also consider that we are lifting something in ourselves. It is a growing capacity that is developing today. When we think of growth our inclination is to think of an upward growth. In the twelve senses that Rudolf Steiner presents there is something extraordinary: there are many ways in which these twelve senses can be divided, but one way is to speak of the four foundational senses, the four intermediate senses and the four higher senses. It is the four higher senses that are relevant. They spiral from the heart back to the crown. They are presented in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Acts 2: once the Apostles are in the room, “suddenly a sound came from the Spiritual Hights, like the rushing of a mighty wind” (so, not the rushing of a mighty wind, but like the rushing of a mighty wind). They experienced a sound quality. The first of our higher senses is our capacity to hear. There must be a change in our capacity to hear. Previously we heard as a skill. But, how did we respond to what we heard? How did hearing move to listening? Listening is not a mechanical skill. To transform hearing to listening requires us to hear with the heart. We need to cultivate a heart-listening, to feel what it is that is being said. What is it that is being said in the words: the feeling and the attitude? We can feel offended by how something is being said, even when, on the surface, the words are innocuous. This is something that happens in the heart that is now graced in a new way. Then the next thing can happen. Through the sound that transformed to listening the Apostles were able to see something that manifested as tongues of fire. Then a new capacity opened in their speech, and they were able to speak (they were filled by the Holy Spirit and they all began to speak). But their speech had changed. It was no longer a speech addressed to one but had become a speech addressed to all. They were not speaking in one set human language, they were speaking in a language that was extraordinarily human, so that everyone who was listening could hear what the Apostles were saying in their own mother tongue. (The division of languages that had occurred as a result of the building of the Tower of Babel was now reunited and a single human language was spoken by the Apostles that transcended words and grammar.) That is the mystery: we go from sound – hearing – to speech. That is the next higher sense that must develop its independence in our journey of human development. After that we develop, on the ladder of senses, the sense of thought, or concept. Those listening to the Apostles could now comprehend what the Apostles were saying. That comprehension allowed the people to understand what was being said. These three senses: hearing, speaking and thought are the foundation for the highest sense of all, which is the result of all of this. This highest sense is the sense of the individual in the other, of the I-organisation of the other. This is the sense of the full and free human being (a conscious I-organisation-being recognising and acknowledging the I-organisation-being of another person). As we look at the independence of the senses we might imagine that hearing develops an independence to become listening much earlier for the human being, but it doesn’t. Other senses become independent much earlier in our development. The independence of the sense of hearing, speech and thought can only begin to emerge when we are in a different relationship to ourselves, which is in youth. When the independence of these senses first begins to emerge, they are still underdeveloped as one will experience with teenagers and into early adulthood. The hurtful side of speech develops before the heart has fully connected to speaking and graced speaking emerges. Then we come to the capacity to grasp a concept, to grasp an idea and to work with it in a conscious way. This is when we realise that “I am thinking this thought”. The thought is not necessarily ours, but in thinking it we have made it ours. It is a thought that lives in the world out there that we have made our own. This thought now has power out of us, in what we say and do. These develop in teenage years. We see in teenagers that they appear to lose even the capacity for the skill to hear, speak and think and they have to find these anew. It is almost as if the capacity to hear, speak and think is turned off until it can be turned back on in a new way. Rudolf Steiner suggests that the most beautiful way of speaking in this way came to us through Francis of Assisi. He developed such an extraordinary understanding of himself in the world, and the world in him that he could write a song that recognised the sun as a brother and the moon as a sister. He could recognise a true living relationship to the whole of the Cosmos. We then have a new capacity for thinking. It is wonderful to see it wake up in a teenager, then a whole new world opens up for the human being. It is then that learning should be based on debate, discussion and discovery. (That is what tertiary studies should be.) These three senses are foundational to the sense of the “I” of the other. Unless we are able to listen with our hearts, speak our will with love, and grasp a true understanding, consciously, of the world around us, we will not have the very things we need to recognise the extraordinary beauty of the “I“ of the other, even when their speech and expression is less than perfect. Comprehending the Spirit within means understanding the dynamic relationship of hearing, speaking and thinking with the extraordinary power that comes as we develop these chakras of the forehead, larynx and heart in a new way. The Whit Monday conversation went into a little more detail on the descent of the Spirit into the human being. Between Whitsun and the Age of the Consciousness Soul, the Spirit was taking hold of the forehead, ‘third eye’, chakra and the throat chakra. First the Spirit brought the Sentient Soul and the Mind Soul into consciousness before the development of the Consciousness Soul could unfold. The Spirit first encountered the Rational or Mind Soul. The originating source of the Cosmos must be brought to consciousness otherwise the Mind Soul will take us down the path of materialism. If the human being fails to make the Mind Soul conscious it will remain greatly logical but disconnected from the reality behind physical matter which created existence. When the ‘third eye’ chakra is working for the Good and True the future unfolding of material existence allows the Spirit in all to become conscious. The Sentient Soul had already been refined by the Mind Soul and had become a part of our will, part of our responsiveness. It therefore resides in the throat chakra. It was in the time that the human being came to mysticism that the response of this charka was more than a sentient response. Francis of Assisi sees a deep mystical relationship to the sun and the moon. He develops a conscious connection. His consciousness of what the sun truly is creates a relationship for future development. It is a new conversational relationship that we initiate through the descent of the Spirit in us. When the Spirit lands in the human heart chakra we are in the Consciousness Soul space of having a Mind Soul and a Sentient Soul that are now conscious. Rudolf Steiner provided exercises for the heart chakra while also providing exercises for mystical speech and mystical thinking connected to the throat chakra. Saint Paul transforms Greek thinking to mystical thinking, a conscious mysticism, in his writings found in the New Testament. This brings the new development of our third eye chakra into focus. We have an interesting picture of the three festivals of the Spirit: Whitsun, St John’s and Michaelmas. We have a renewed understanding of these three festivals of the Spirit. Whitsun is celebrated over three days and has a three-foldness to it. St John’s is celebrated over four Sundays and opens the beginnings of the incredible, renewed 8-fold path. Michaelmas is also celebrated over four Sundays representing the four cardinal points of the cross. St John’s is a festival that reaches a high point of expression in Francis of Assisi. Michaelmas, under the guidance of the Archangel Michael, is truly about the development of the heart chakra. We are all developing the Sentient Soul, Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul, but what happens when we do not turn it around with the incorporated I-constitution and engage with Creation through our intention? Consciousness is about a sense of being something, knowing why and where the future development of this beingness leads. It is not sentimentality but rather a true conscious development. We are in the process of working with the Good to become one with the Good. There is a natural process of unfolding, and it is a given. If we believe that this is how it works, then it is. It happens of its own accord, as an example a teenager develops automatically and can reflect on that development and recognise that it was automatic. However, if we remain exclusively in this belief then we are not developing seeds for the future. Then we grow and develop out of Father-forces, but will it build something for the future? We build muscle through resistance but by removing resistance we do not develop. When we make an effort out of our I-constitution, no one but we ourselves know that we are making that effort. It is this area of effort that is under attack today. The more inner work we do, the greater the possibility for the future, while the less inner work we do, the smaller the possibility becomes for a future. Whit Tuesday turned to the progressive development of evil. Before the current Earth Cycle of Time there have been three previous Cycles of Time. The Old Saturn Cycle of Time was one in which the focus of development was on the Archai. At this time this Hierarchy was known as the Asuras. This Hierarchy offered a gift of themselves to the mighty hierarchy of the Thrones. The gift of some was received by the Thrones while the gift of others was not. This may have been due to the needs of the Thrones rather than the quality of the gifts. However, some of the Asuras whose gifts were not accepted felt slighted and aligned themselves with an evil that had existed from before the Cycles of Time. Those who continued in their development became known as the Archai, the Spirits of Time. Those now aligned with the great source of evil retained the name of the Asuras. During the Old Sun Cycle of Time the focus of development was on the Archangels. One of this Hierarchy fell from grace and in the process gained followers. He is known in some cultures as Ahriman. During the Old Moon Cycle of Time the focus of development was the Angels. We are familiar with the fall from grace of one of the mightiest of the Angels, Lucifer, the Light Bearer. During the Earth Cycle of Time where the focus of development is the human being, Lucifer is the first of the beings not aligned to the developmental path of humanity who begins to bear an influence on human beings. Later in the development of humanity, Ahriman begins to bear an influence on human beings. Now we are experiencing an influence from the Azuras on our development. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer the words “Lead us not into temptation” refers to the influence that Lucifer and Ahriman have on us, while the words “But deliver us from the evil” refers to the influence on humanity of the Azuras, who are in alignment with the great pre-existing evil. We are able to escape the entrapment of our souls from the influence of Lucifer and of Ahriman. This entrapment results in our souls becoming fixed in a particular view. Christ is often seen as the balance between the influences that are brought to bear by Lucifer and Ahriman. The impact of the Azuras is, however, very different. This is because the Ancient Evil wishes for the total annihilation of humanity. The wish of the Azuras is thus to destroy the human soul. The direction of the influence of Lucifer – one could describe it as one pole – is idealism, it is the pole of illusion and perfection. The pole of the influence of Ahriman is realism – it is the pole of materialism, the mantra that it is only real when is can be seen, felt and measured on the earthly plane. Between these two poles Christ holds the balance, preventing idealism form becoming illusionary and preventing realism from descending into materialism. The Temptation in the Garden of Eden was an idealistic temptation. It was the temptation of Lucifer. We can see the temptations at play in the three elements of the soul. The temptation of Lucifer was to escape the experience of the Sentient Soul – see only the spirit of the tree, but not the physical manifestation of the tree. The temptation of Ahriman is to remove the spirit completely and to live entirely in the Mind Soul – everything is material! The Consciousness Soul Age sees Lucifer and Ahriman taking on new roles. There is now an interplay happening between these Beings that is in the service of the Ancient Evil. The aim of this interplay is to rob us of our consciousness so that we become automatons. How is this temptation being enacted? One clear example is in the way human beings interact and relate to video games. One may think that video games are an escape from reality, but in truth, they are an escape into a fantasy reality. It is an illusionary world that is entirely dependent on technology. It is something that acts as an external source of addiction for the human being. This addiction is an escape from reality into a material reality of technology and illusory substance. It is an addiction that is easily monetised. All three aspects of the human soul are under attack. There is a real need to bring consciousness to the Mind Soul and to the Sentient Soul using the Consciousness Soul. Each of the Sentient Soul and Mind Soul were developed to their greatest capacity, now the Consciousness Soul must develop them beyond this peak. Humanity must now work with our heart forces, we need to become ‘conscious of our humanity’. This is not about an escape. The world of Earth is our home where we are to work. However, humanity should not confuse the journey with the destination. The journey, through our earthly incarnations where we work in the world, is very important. The incorporation of the “I” – the Christ-in-me – is a new source to take hold of the source of the soul, where the soul resides. The Spirit rays out from human hearts as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha and the Mystery of Whitsun – all together the Turning Point of Time. The Spirit was poured into human hearts and as a consequence the Apostles went out to speak, think and finally feel, because of a new source point from which the Spirit rays out. Our human development is assisted by the beings that offer resistance. This is the mystery of the work of Lucifer and Ahriman and where they are finding redemption in the fulfilment of the aims of Christ. The Azuras are, however, very different. The Covid pandemic has exposed this thoroughly. What spirit can shut down the entire world completely in a matter of weeks? (Only a Time Spirit.) If we remain unconscious to this power, these spiritual beings will rob us of our consciousness. Planting seeds has power. The transubstantiated substances of bread and wine have a powerful effect. It may look like nothing, but the homeopathic effect is to heal the whole organism. Evil works on a principle of multiplication while Good works on an exponential principle through the homeopathic effect that a tiny amount has a very large effect. We need to be conscious of the forces that live in the human soul and can manifest in the world around us. The events in the world may cause fear to arise in us. This fear can be helpful in waking us up; it is how we wake up that is important. When we build Faith, Hope and Love we can defend ourselves. This refers back to the talks on the Tree of Life as represented by the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It is where we base our security that is the starting point from which to build. This is important when we see people around us lose their homes and their jobs and their world is washed away in floods. Our humanity Is our foundation and the three pillars on which we base our being:
To this Rev. Reingard Knausenberger added: We have been working with one picture for thirteen days. This has Anthroposophical significance. Hope is founded in our physical body and our physical body is the basis for hope. As long as we are breathing there is hope and further development is possible. We are hope. When we look again at the Hope Pillar of the Tree of Life from Creation to Foundation to the heart (Beauty): creation is a given, we must work to maintain the foundation, and we can express gratitude that we have a body. Some children come into the world carrying gratitude for the hope of incarnation. Incarnation is not a given but a privilege to have the possibility of a body in which to develop. Faith is founded in the soul and in our emotions. We work on ourselves to arrive at a capacity for faith. Love is founded in the rhythms of the Spirit. We are able to refer truth to a real picture. When we are able to make the Kabbalistic Tree of Life work for us from our world view, it is a real picture. Anthroposophy has the capacity to take what already exists from ancient wisdom and to raise it another step. The Astral Body is beautiful when held by the ego. Returning to the main conversation: Koine Greek permits words to be constructed from root words. Eulogia from which we derive eulogy, is to speak the consecration of the human being that confirms a human life. Thus, eulogy is the full confirmation of a human life. To consecrate is to “make holy with”, it is to make whole. The German for the Act of Consecration, ‘Die Mensheweihehandlung’ makes it clear that it is a process: to make it sacred by the way it is handled. The German for ‘let us’: ‘Lasst uns’ has in it the vowel sound “a” which is the sound to receive and also to act now. (To this Reingard reminded us that the human being is the sacrament of the gods.) The sefirots of the Tree of Life are manifestations of how to make holy. There are ten steps to the human being becoming the tenth hierarchy.
The theme of St John’s Tide is The Lamb of God: Consequences of the New Image of the Etheric Christ. The St John’s weekend comprised a looking back at the cosmic script of the stars and how the movement of the precession of the axis of the earth in relation to the sun through the ecliptic path of the zodiac affected the imagination and picture-thinking of the peoples of world in establishing their response to the relationship to the Divine. This talk traced From the Rising Serpent to the Restful Lamb. An article on this talk will appear in the August newsletter. The Sunday talk looked forward at The Lamb in the Book of Revelation. When John the Baptist saw Jesus after the Baptism he called him the “Lamb of God” – the only mention of this description for the Christ in the Gospels. When Jesus had the conversation with Simon Peter on the lake shore (John 21) Jesus instructed Peter to feed the new-born lambs (the diminutive for lamb). The word used throughout Revelation is the diminutive for lamb, the “little lamb”. This ties in with the theme of the Friday talk and will be explored in another of the St John’s Tide talks. This talk too will be reported in the August newsletter. On the Saturday, between the backward gaze and the forward gaze, we looked inward to the working of the etheric within.
This was achieved through a wonderful artistic activity. Each person was given a ball of clay that we fashioned into a sphere. Then each person was blindfolded and without sight we formed the image of a human being from the clay. For me it felt as though I was drawing the form down from the head to the feet from out of the clay. Afterwards we reflected on the how we could shape the form of a human without sight, what was our reference to creating this form. It is the ability to feel our own body from within. Thereafter, Michaël shared some details of the biography of Annie Sullivan and of her student, Helen Keller. Michaël shared details that I had not known before about Helen. The crux of the story is that Annie refused to give up on Helen before she had reached the human being within. This persistence enabled Helen to express extraordinary insights of the human condition without the ability to see or hear the world around her. With the biography living in our thoughts, we again reviewed our models. Reingard shared with us that the purpose of the earth for human development is not perfection, but process. As we look back on our founding as described in the book Growing Point by Alfred Heidenreich, we can pause to consider the issue of ritual:
In his last published reference to The Christian Community, Rudolf Steiner called us ‘candidates for an honest and spiritually real priesthood’. This was more forward- looking. For this, it did not matter what job we had had in the past, what studies we had pursued, what academic labels we had acquired. Candidates for a new Christian priesthood – this was the category into which we were to grow in the future. It was our assignment with history. The shift of emphasis from theology to priesthood was of the essence of the situation. Many a time had a ‘new theology’ arisen. and been taught in the history of Christianity. A new priesthood never. But we were destined to be just this; not lecturers or teachers of a new theology, but a new order of priests who were to celebrate the Christian sacraments reborn from their original source. And now we must attempt an outline of this new faith and order, and we shall not be able to avoid altogether getting into deeper waters. Ritual, according to Steiner, is a legitimate means of communicating with the unseen half of our world, of active relationship with the divine spiritual background of our existence, the kingdom of God. There may be many ways for the individual soul of making contact with the world of spirit through prayer and meditation. But communally there is nothing which in its reality is on the same level with ritual. It is a fact that the appearance of Christ sharply divides pre-Christian and Christian ritual. In pre-Christian times ritual, which was very varied in form but universal in fact, demonstrated the deeper truths of life in liturgical pictures for the masses of the faithful. In Greece the ‘sacred drama of Eleusis’ presented the tragic loss by Demeter of her daughter Persephone to Hades, or Pluto, the god of the underworld. The parable of Isis, the goddess widowed through the murder of her husband Osiris, and the rescue of Isis by her son Horus, was a universal focussing point of religious thought and feeling in Egypt. In the Near East the cult of Adonis put before the devotees a picture of death and resurrection. In each one of these and many other similar rites the vital truth was taught in picture form, that the world of the human being has fallen into the grip of the dark powers of evil and destruction, but that this fallen world can be rescued and one day rise again. Perhaps it is beyond our powers of imagination, and certainly beyond our normal experience, to form an adequate picture of the shattering impact which these pictorial ceremonies must have had on those who witnessed them. However, these ceremonies were only symbolic representations, outward and visible signs. They were the esoteric translations of the first—hand inspiration and secret knowledge possessed by the initiates. The esoteric events themselves, that is the direct intercourse with the spiritual world in full reality was strictly confined to the inner circle of the priests and initiates. They alone performed, in the inner sanctuary, the occult sacrifices through which the god appeared. In contrast, Christian – ‘post-Christ’ – ritual is not merely a pictorial demonstration of metaphysical truths, although this plays into it. It is demonstration and real act all at once. The Christian Sacrament is the actual communication with the spirit-world in reality but this act of communication is not reserved for a secret society of officiating priests. It is open to all practising Christians. Christianity is a mystery religion in the sense that it communicates with the unseen but not in the sense that this is the privilege of a secret brotherhood of initiates. In the fullness of time Christ stepped out of the unseen half of the world into the visible, and forged the essential link between the two. It is in his name that Christians continue to maintain this link in their sacraments. This is the significance of ‘the New Covenant’. Its origin lies in the dual being of Christ, his divine and human nature. At the Last Supper his historic human presence ‘instituted’ the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the wine; after his resurrection he ‘inspired’ the further use and development of this rite. In the Last Supper, before his death, Christ observed the ritual of his own people. ‘It becomes us to fulfil all righteousness’. The Passover, too, was more than an act of remembrance. The exodus from Egypt which it commemorated had been, for all its historic fact, a sacred drama with a deeper meaning: ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’. After his resurrection Christ adopted and sanctioned also other rites. Rudolf Steiner made the astonishing statement that during the forty days between Resurrection and Ascension Christ walked spiritually through the mystery temples of the ancient world. Thus the sacrament of the Eucharist has ultimately grown from two sources: the Last Supper and the mystery temples. The process of this growth defies detailed analytical research, unless it can be observed by a higher consciousness. by John-Peter Gernaat Carsten Rieger, born on Zürich Switzerland, grew up in Johannesburg and attended the Sunday Service for Children at The Christian Community in Johannesburg. He has an older sister and when it was time for her to start high school, his parents, both originally from Switzerland, made the decision to move to Cape Town as they wished their children to remain in Waldorf education. His father was in the computer world and started his own business developing a point-of-sale system for pharmacies, if memory serves, that he sold privately to independent pharmacies. They went to live in Hout Bay where they built or bought their own home. When I was a student at the University of Cape Town between 1979 and 1982 I cycled from Rondebosch to Hout Bay three or four times a year to visit the Riegers. I would cycle back at night many a time. Occasionally, when I visited on a weekend, I’d cycle back along the coastal road through the city centre. After completing matric Carsten had the opportunity to crew an ocean-going sailing boat from Cape Town to somewhere in Europe on the voyage to deliver the boat to its new (or first) owner. The last contact I had with Carsten was when he started training to be a gym instructor at one of Cape Town’s better-known gyms, in the days before the large franchise gyms, shortly after completing matric. He writes on Facebook how much weight he had to lose and much muscle mass he had to change, that he’d built in the gym, when starting his Ironman training. Carsten now lives in Florida in the USA. He is married and they have no children. The article below has been copied from Carsten’s Facebook page and as he asks that people should share his story, and having grown up in our church in Johannesburg, I felt it appropriate to share with the community.
To date I am self-coached ..!!
Today I'm proud to be a sponsored athlete because of my story. I too am a spokesperson and Global Brand Ambassador for IRONMAN Triathlon Racing. All while balancing a full-time professional career. I taught myself to swim by carefully studying YouTube swim techniques videos. Frame by freeze frame. Surely there are better ways to master this technique. Absolutely! There are way better, more efficient and quicker ways to learn all disciplines of this amazing sport. To be honest. For the longest time I was too shy, too embarrassed to ask for help. Apart from when I started in this sport, I simply could not afford a professional Coach, so I had to rely on teaching myself. Today I’m also IRONMAN Triathlon Coach Certified by (WTC) World Triathlon Corporation, IRONMAN. The learning never stops. My first biking experience was somewhat of a challenge ..!!.. At first, I could not cycle further than 10 feet without falling and crashing my bike. Yes. I still have several battle scars to prove it ..lol.. fun memories. Hard to believe it, but it’s all part of my exciting journey that has brought me to where I proudly stand today. Even though I've been a successful long-distance runner since the age of 11. To this day I'm still trying to master this discipline. On race day. After having completed a 2.4 mile swim and followed by a 112 mile bike ride. Then running off the bike has become and remains a serious obstacle, because I have a sixth lumber vertebrae (99.8% of all humans only have 5 vertebrae and most likely are not endurance athletes). Bone on bone without a cushion in-between which causes severe nerve compression making my 26.2 miles run somewhat interesting. Quite different to my run training sessions. Like most athletes I have had my share of stress fractures, torn hamstrings, torn tendons and many other repetitive strain issues as can be expected from doing such a vigorous body taxing sport. 21 IRONMAN races and counting and loving it as much today as when I first started. This sport is tough for any athlete that has ever tackled this sport regardless of where they rank in the world, which is partially one of the reason why we do it. We embrace the challenge, suffering and victory that goes with it. For as long as my body, mind and spirit continue to by my strength. I will compete. For it brings me hope, light, joy, peace and purpose in my beautiful life. Moral of my story: Believe you can move mountains and overcome adversaries? .. YES, you will .. !! If you find my journey of hope and passion to succeed in any way inspirational? Do share my story. In the hope that others who may have similar life experiences too may find happiness, hope and a purpose in living a full, healthy, fit and meaningful life. SMILE … because you believe you can! I hope to personally meet you at an IRONMAN race real soon ..!!.. SMILES ..!! ~ Carsten JuneList of articles
Most people know that the sea contains magnesium in the form of salts, particularly magnesium sulphate. Sea salt consists on average of sixteen per cent of magnesium salts. … There is enough common salt dissolved in the earth’s oceans to build all the continents and mountain ranges. The proportion of magnesium in the salt would suffice for the building of one entire continent. By contrast with such a huge mass of magnesium, the amount of magnesium-bearing rock found in the earth’s mountains, in the form of magnesite, dolomite, and the magnesium silicates like mica, hornblende and asbestos, is negligible. …
To form a conception of the nature of magnesium we shall have to concern ourselves with magnesia-bearing rock. Magnesite - magnesium carbonate - stands out, for it is used industrially in burnt form. During the firing process it changes into magnesium oxide. It is this oxide’s resistance to heat that makes it so valuable in manufacturing. High temperatures fuse an initially light, fluffy powder into rock almost impossible to melt. This capacity to resist heat, which holds up under temperatures as high as 2,000°C and more, makes magnesia valuable as a lining material in steel-smelting furnaces. So we may say that it preserves its static character even when attacked by fire, but with a behaviour different from that of lime. While lime becomes violent on firing, magnesia remains calm and gentle; it is not given to hissings, greedy devourings, and corrosive action. Quicklime is a corrosive base, which earns it the name corrosive lime. Magnesia is a mild base. Magnesia’s resistance to heat is coupled with another quality: it radiates light with an intensity hard to equal. When magnesium burns and turns into magnesia it makes a blinding white light that casts shadows even in full sunlight. So we see that the sun’s rays themselves, as they reach the earth, cannot match the intensity of light magnesium gives off. This property causes magnesium to be widely used in the making of all sorts of lighting equipment. This power to ray out, so characteristic of magnesia, also appears morphologically in the ray-formation of magnesium-bearing rock. Magnesium silicates, such as actinolite, serpentine, talc, asbestos, and the like, tend especially to a radiating or fibrous structure, reminiscent - as asbestos is - of textile fibre. Asbestos (was) actually used to make fireproof thread, cloth, rope and wall-boards. A further phenomenon is produced by magnesium’s affinity to light. Those who have visited the southern Tyrol and witnessed there the glorious spectacle of the ‘Alpine glow’, will remember its beauty for the rest of their lives. These mountains, the Dolomites, are built of so-called dolomitic limestone, an isomorphic mixture of calcium carbonate and magnesite. It is harder than ordinary limestone and does not as a rule have the radiating structure usually found in magnesia rock. But when the sun has sunk behind the horizon, the light these peaks have absorbed shines out at the onset of darkness with a gentle rose-red glow. This unparalleled affinity to light possessed by magnesium explains its presence in the substance chlorophyll and the role it plays in assimilation. Plants, as we know, are made of light, and in the sheaved rays of cellulose fibres we really have, so to speak, materialised sun rays. Here magnesium shows itself in the role of a light-propellant in assimilation. It is magnesium that thrusts light into the dense materiality of starch and cellulose. The same propulsive forces are at work in spring when seeds, which contain considerable amounts of magnesium, begin to germinate, often thrusting up heavy layers of earth or snow in the process. The same dynamic function serves the human organism wherever solid matter is excreted or separated off from fluids. We see this happening most obviously in the digestive process, at the point where waste matter is separated out of the chyme and takes on a firmer consistency. The drastic effect of ingesting Epsom salt (magnesium sulphate) indicates the close connection of magnesium with intestinal functioning. Deep inside the organism there are other eliminative processes which must be recognised as such. One of these is the depositing of bone-building matter in the skeleton, likewise a moulding of solids out of fluids. This process is most obvious in young children, whose organisms are still very plastic and as yet scarcely mineralised. Their bones are subject to a hardening process that reaches its culmination and completion in the emergence of the second teeth, the last and hardest product of the body. At this point the solid organism has been separated from the fluid. And forces that previously served organic functions are now set free, in the form of a capacity to think and remember, making the child ready to begin his schooling. It is the magnesium process which we see at work in all such developments. On the one hand it plays the role of a hardening agent, compressing life into solid earthly form. On the other it activates light-forces. Thus it combines startlingly contrasting functions. These contrasts are represented in zodiacal imagery as the centaur. His horse’s body symbolises ties with earthly animality, yet with the rest of his being he raises himself to a luminous human height. In mythology the picture of the centaur with his bow and arrow has always been the symbol of these contrasting forces. The ancients experienced them as proceeding from that part of the heavens known as the constellation of the hunter, Sagittarius. report by John-Peter Gernaat This workshop by Rev. Michaël Merle opens up three periods of our biography: the early childhood period before seven years of age, the childhood years of seven to fourteen and the years of youth, fourteen to twenty one. How can we delve into our toddler years when we have very little memory of those years? We may have been told by parents that we had a challenge to overcome? Or we may recall ourselves that there was a life challenge that we had to overcome. We can find a way of integrating this life challenge through fairy tales. Fairy tales have archetypal characters. A king is a king, a witch is a witch. There is no need to personify these characters. The secret in fairy tales lies in that all the characters that show up in a fairy tale are a part of the listener. There is no one in a fairy tale who is outside the listener. We all have the wicked witch in us, and it is okay for her to die. We all have a prince charming in us who rescues the day. Michaël introduced us to Jung’s archetypes. He placed the twelve archetypes into quadrants. Each quadrant speaks to an archetypal desire: a yearning for paradise, leaving a mark on the world, connecting with others, and giving structure to the world. We may feel drawn more strongly to one of these desires. Within each quadrant there is an archetype that speaks to what Jung understood to be our ego nature, our self-nature and our soul-nature. Identifying one archetype provides the central character of the fairy tale. Our challenge was to write a fairy tale in which the central character (identified from the archetype within the quadrant of our dominant yearning) overcomes a challenge, in typical fairy tale style. Every character that appears in the fairy tale is an aspect of ourselves. These characters may appear of their own accord during the writing, and it becomes a valuable exercise to identify each character within ourselves and how they have helped us overcome the challenge. Significant role players in our early childhood could also appear but only as a projection of our relationship to them. For some members on the workshop this exercise revealed aspects that they had as yet not been able to integrate into their lives. The fairy tale does not reveal any personal secrets except to the writer. Anyone else hearing the fairy tale may relate to it in a very different way, recognising other aspects of themselves rather than the hidden secrets of the writer. The period age of seven to fourteen presents a very different stage of life. Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture on how we would ideally experience the four temperaments, one in each seven-year cycle of development culminating in an adult who can draw on the temperament most suited to a situation but generally operating as a healthy choleric, being able to say “yes” and “no” to the things that present in life in a healthy way. However, our development is seldom ideal and we live with the consequences of drawing in a latent or premature temperament into childhood. Each temperament is associated with an element. We created a totem pole for ourselves onto which we identified our totem animal in each of the elements that resound with the temperaments: from earth, water, air to fire, being melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric. Selecting the totem animal we most identified within our childhood years, we wrote a fable. A fable is a story in which the characters are all animals. These animals are anthropomorphised, rather than behaving as animals would in nature. However, a central characteristic of the animal forms the basis of the tale, e.g., a hare that runs fast and stops, while a tortoise is slow but steady. The central character is the one with which we identify while the other characters appear in the fable to teach the central animal a lesson. The fable we wrote was about our central animal learning something of value from an animal of very opposite character. Then we wrote a fable in which our main character had to overcome a challenge entirely alone. Other animals that might appear were subsidiary to the main character overcoming the challenge and not there to assist. It was interesting coming to terms with something I saw as a challenge in childhood through writing about it in a way that brought resolution. The years of youth are guided by the planetary soul types. It is quite easy to recognise the planetary soul type of a young person. Set a task and see how they behave. In this workshop Michaël created an imaginary situation and we had to identify how our young self would have behaved. There were six behaviour options and therefore it was quite simple to make a choice. The choice seemed obvious, until we added the planet to each behaviour type. The first reaction might have been to reject that as our planetary soul type, but a little bit of thought very quickly clarified that this was indeed our “home planet”. Michaël shared the rhythm of the planets according to the cycle of the week, which when we look at the relationship of each planet to the sun from our earth perspective reveals a rhythm from inner to outer planet and back: This means that the correct order of the planets is:
This is the proof that the names of Venus and Mercury were switched around at some point after the naming of the days of the week. What are the soul capacities of each of the planetary soul types: The planetary soul types become illumined by the light of the sun when the Ego is “born” at adulthood. Although we will always retain our “home planet” the sun (“I”) enables us to move freely to any other planetary soul type for which a situation calls. Once we had each established our planetary soul type, we wrote a letter to our teenage self from the perspective of our adult self (the self now illumined by the sun) reassuring our younger self that life would be amazing. Thereafter the letters were ‘mailed’ to our teenage selves, and we were able to read them aloud privately as our teenage selves receiving the reassurance of our future adult selves. This process was quite revealing. We forget something that Michaël pointed out: teenagers are able to feel, but not able to think. Teenagers have a great desire to express what they are feeling. The mistake is to think that what a teenager expresses comes from thinking. I recall so much ‘thinking’ that I did as a teenager and the impressions of all that ‘thinking’ (silently expressing to myself) still live quite acutely with me. This exercise was able to shine the light of the sun (the “I”-constitution) very clearly onto that part of my life and put into a correct context. It lifted a great weight from my shoulders, not because I resolved anything through reflective therapy, but simply by being able, at last, to place it all in a context that, within my life’s biography, makes sense. These three workshops are difficult to characterise. Each workshop dealing with a different period of life and different style of writing, together forming a step-by-step process that takes the puzzle pieces of life and slots them into the correct places to produce a clear picture. This is unlike other biography workshops that rely on a reflection back across one’s life to find all the puzzle pieces and analyse them, hoping in the process of analysis that they will reveal their correct place in the picture. This series of Biography Through Story workshops is gentle and the results can be pondered for a long time, because they are revealing rather than disturbing or traumatic. Reviews from other participants:“To clearly understand, express and integrate who we are as individuals has never been more needed than now. The Biography Through Story series of workshops facilitated by Michaël Merle were for me truly wonderful. I deeply appreciated how the process and stories were clearly explained and unpacked for us each to use to personally explore our own biography. While the freedom of expression was encouraged, the privacy of each participant’s work was absolutely respected. This I believe was the key as to why each session worked so well. Thank you Michaël for this very refreshing and rewarding experience.” - Adam Botha The Biography Through Story workshop by Rev. Michaël Merle gives us as participants a wonderful opportunity to delve deeper into the archetypal characters of man and animal and the planets. By doing that we are empowered to look into our own biographies from early childhood to adulthood with imagination and empathy. Thus, we discover new ways of understanding ourselves and our lives. The positive aspect of the method Michaël uses gives us confidence and trust to plunge into our past with enthusiasm in order to write our own fairy tale and fable. In the discussion following the writing session we are free to share our feelings and experiences if we wish. I have participated in various biography workshops in my life but none as innovative, creative and relaxed as this one.
Wiebke Holtz |
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