Searching for Christian Rosencreuz
(based in part on the "idea" in the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher)

- regarding the fundamental flaw of Steiner said -


Rudolf Steiner spoke of a particular personality with the name Christian Rosencreuz.   Various spellings of this name are give, including Rosencreutz.  The most famous of the writings attributed to this personality (according to a Wikipedia article) is the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.   Since Steiner's death various anthroposophical writers have made mention of this personality in relationship to those spirits which might be "inspiring" the anthroposophical impulse.   A recent one of these was by Sergei O. Prokofieff, in an article published in Anthroposophy Worldwide (March, 2011), reproduced in its entirety below:

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General Anthroposophical Society Annual Theme 2011/12
Anthroposophy – Rosicrucianism in Our Time

The General Anthroposophical Society’s annual theme 2011/12 explores Christian Rosenkreutz, one of the greatest esoteric teachers of the Occident. Sergei Prokofieff looks at the importance of Christian Rosenkreutz for the potential appearance of the etheric Christ and at his relationship to Rudolf Steiner.

Following Rudolf Steiner’s first proclamation in 1910 of the re-appearance of the Christ in the etheric and the artistic production of his first Mystery Drama ‹The Portal of Initiation› (GA 14) which was subtitled ‹A Rosicrucian Mystery›, he continued this theme in the following years with the disclosure of the secret of Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder of Rosicrucianism and the great servant of the etheric Christ.

Christian Rosenkreutz and the Re-appearance in the Etheric

In the two lectures held by Rudolf Steiner at Michaelmas 1911, on the occasion of the festive opening of the Chris-
tian-Rosenkreutz branch in Neuchâtel, he presented the esoteric roots of this mystical stream which are to be found in the unique initiation of its founder in the year 1250, for the first time. To this day this illustration is of utmost importance for everyone who is looking for a closer relationship to Christian Rosenkreutz. In the same lectures Rudolf Steiner speaks of how Christian Rosenkreutz’ mighty etheric body, created through this initiation, continued to be strengthened through the inner work of all true Rosicrucians over the centuries.  He describes how, in our time, it plays a decisive role in the increasing ability of man to become aware of the etheric Christ.  Those human beings, who are imbued by this etheric body, can achieve this higher spiritual awareness. «"It is the work of the Rosicrucians that makes possible the etheric vision of Christ"».1

Rudolf Steiner verified one of the most important research results by modern Rosicrucians, who continue to co-operate with Christian Rosenkreutz, as the discovery of the flow of the etheric blood of Christ which, since the Mystery of Golgatha, flows in every human being from his heart to his head and which forms the basis for the perception of the etheric Christ today. This fact shows the current
emphasis of true Rosicrucianism on the reappearance in the etheric as the central spiritual event of our time.2

The Rosicrucian Endowment

Rudolf Steiner also speaks of Christian Rosenkreutz’ worldwide esoteric call which re-awakens his pupils at a moment of great biographical crisis to a new life and thus puts a seal on the relationship with him. This is the basis for becoming a direct, inner pupil of Christian Rosenkreutz. "This is how he chooses his community" – says Rudolf Steiner. In conjunction with this stood the attempt in 1911 to form an esoteric group with the provisory name: Society for Theosophical Art and Way of Life. If the establishment of this had been successful, the group, in its later development, would have been under the direct esoteric leadership of Christian Rosenkreutz himself.3 It was intended to reflect the esoteric principle of "Interpretation" as something essentially new. This allows complete human freedom and the development of the purest forces of altruism which within true esotericism rest upon a "complete elimination of all that is personal" For herein lies the prerequisite for a spiritual cooperation with Christian Rosenkreutz. Rudolf Steiner comments on this at the end of the first Neuchâtel lecture: "If you can become an instrument of Christian Rosenkreutz, then you can be assured that the smallest detail of your soul activity will be there for eternity".

The Link between the Spirit and Practical Deeds

In the same year Rudolf Steiner also carried his message about the etheric Christ to the public in his book The Spiriual Guidance of Mankind. Thus he links this event with the current task of a "new esotericism" which has its roots in the initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz and which today has the power to receive "new inspirations" from the spiritual world in the form of Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science.6 These can not only penetrate and spiritualise man’s forces of perception but also effect and transform the spheres of practical life. Rudolf Steiner states: "Rosicrucian wisdom must not stream only into the head, nor only into the heart, but also into the hand, into our manual capacities, into our daily actions".7 This is how the many fields of activity have arisen out of Anthroposophy, where all areas of practical life are to be nourished by the spirit.  This makes Anthroposophy into a modern representative of true Rosicrucianism which not only has a historical link but which also maintains and builds on the new spiritual sources from the spiritual world that only today have become avail-
able to mankind and which flow out of the sphere of our present time spirit, Michael, into humanity.  "Rosicrucianism does not mean carrying forth certain truths throughout all centuries but it means developing a sense for that which each specific era can bring to mankind out of the spiritual world."8

A New Relationship to the Spiritual Teacher

We can describe Anthroposophy as a modern, Michaelic form of Rosicrucianism which today opens up a new future perspective of this occult stream beyond old traditions. Therefore Rudolf Steiner was able to correctly state in his lecture: "What makes us Theosophists and what makes us Rosicrucians?": "We are the Rosicrucians of the 20th century!"9  The meaning of this word today can be seen, for example, in the completely new relationship between the spiritual teacher and his pupil, who now becomes a friend and guide to the developing human being. This also applies to our relationship to Christian Rosenkreutz.  "The less you take on authority, the more understanding you
will have for Christian Rosenkreutz"10.  Through Anthroposophy true Rosicrucianism gains a new force and creative potential which allow it to be effective and fruitful far beyond the 20th century.

Christian Rosenkreutz and Rudolf Steiner

Finally, and on the occasion of Rudolf Steiner’s 150th anniversary this year, his close spiritual cooperation with the great esoteric teacher of the occident has to be mentioned because it forms a significant part of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual biography.  This can not only be seen in the direct messages from Christian Rosenkreutz which Rudolf Steiner incorporated in his esoteric lessons 11, but predominantly in the founding of the Society for Theosophical Art and Way of Life which, as already mentioned, was to be under the direct leadership of Christian Rosenkreutz. Also the fact that he noted the first and second Mystery Dramas as written "through Rudolf Steiner" speaks of the direct cooperation between these two individualities.  One year after the ground-breaking lectures in Neuchâtel, Rudolf Steiner speaks
in the same branch about this great Master and his own relationship to him: "And he who is permitted to be close to Christian Rosenkreutz looks with admiration and reverence on how accurately Christian Rosenkreutz himself has fulfilled the huge Rosicrucian-Christian mission bestowed on him for our time".12 And to fulfil this important mission in the 20th century, Christian Rosenkreutz had his spiritual brother and combatant – Rudolf Steiner – by his side. | Sergei O. Prokofieff, Goetheanum

[For list of footnotes and references to related literature, see the original article via ASIA or the Goetheanum websites.]

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In the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher, the "idea" is that one might meet the next Bobby Fisher (a world champion Chess Master in hiding), if one looked hard enough.  In this brief presentation I am suggesting that, while Prokofieff believes one will find the influence of Christian Rosencreutz (CR) lingering in the 20th Century works of Rudolf Steiner (RS) (and therefor in what Prokofieff calls Anthroposophy), it might be possible for a more direct and more modern (21st Century) connection, by looking in other places.

To repeat and rephrase for emphasis:  Prokofieff mostly suggests we seek out indirect experience of CR, via modern anthroposophical activity (including a lot of quoting of RS).  This in spite of also quoting Steiner as follows:  "The less you take on authority, the more understanding you will have for Christian Rosenkreutz".  So we have (logically) in the above: a lot of taking on the authority of RS what we are to understand as the modern message of CR.  This is certainly a contradiction in terms, to say the least.

To violate that central premis of this article (for the moment), here is Steiner from the preface to Truth and Knowledge:

The outcome of what follows is that truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an activity which is free; this product would exist nowhere if we did not create it ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something which already exists, but rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses constitutes complete reality. Thus man's highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an organic part of the universal world-process. The world-process should not be considered a complete, enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not a passive onlooker in relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic events taking place without his participation; he is the active co-creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most perfect link in the organism of the universe. [emphasis added, ed.]

What might we find if we looked about for something different - something less rooted in the authority of Steiner and more personal from others?  Would we find there the evidence of the inspiration of Christian Rosencreutz?  Next follows a couple of possibilities:

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America: the Central Motif (by Patrick Dixon)*

*reprinted with permission, and at the same time with

a great deal of gratitude that this exists...

1.

It could be said that the American Dream has lived within and accompanies the generalized westward motion of those civilizations that are collectively known as the Post Atlantean Epoch, comprising seven cultural ages (from 7227 BC 7894 AD)

The impulses for the Post-Atlantean (Aryan) Root Race were taken east; and from a region in the Himalayas the sowing of the seeds of those cultures that would begin their long westwarding sun-following journey was brought about by the Seven Rishis; who were the bearers of the seven Higher senses, as I'lands that would descend upon an arising humanity in the future.

The five Islands sunk as the five senses became immersed in the physical plane and the human being began to rise above the sea of pre-individual clairvoyance; to see the Promised land of ego-based consciousness. This condensation of and separation between the watery and aerial mantles of the Earth (this fall of the sea out of the sky) paralleled the fall of the Etheric body of the human being, into closer proximity with the densifying physical body that was rising into differentiation as the less defined etheric body was sinking. This division between the water and air elements reverberated deeper and higher, both densifying the earth as a receptacle for the more gravity-bound water and dividing further the sub- and super- terrestrial fires. Levels that were clearly defined to higher beings then began to form into the Jacob's ladder that would be experiencable to beings bound to a sense world losing consciousness of its supersensible origins.

The great sequence of civilizations that unfolded as the Post Atlantean moved generally in a westward direction, focusing and converging towards the Incarnation in the Middle East. The voyaging of the Sun against the eastward turning motion of the Earth's material body was a reflected image of the Solar Logos as it moved across the Earth, both entering more and more deeply into matter, whilst also becoming more and more committed to strive against it and transform it. This reached a climax in the event of the Incarnation, in a body so constituted that it would be able to lead the newly formed Ego being of humanity out of the dark severance into which it had fallen.

The western experience (for people on all landmasses) became archetypally associated with the setting of the Sun. This picture has several meanings, one being the sinking of consciousness down into the dark unconscious region of the Will, deeper than the feeling realm of the heart, into a place from where there can arise either the light magical acts of an awakened being, or the nightmarish deeds of the self-darkened self. The dawn is a daily remembrance of the time when the Sun left the Earth, just as dusk is a presentiment of that future state when with all its transubstantiating powers it shall rejoin our planet; and that which has poured light into the eyes of physical sense shall dawn out of new eyes as a Spiritual and soul Sun, new eyes that shall become one I that shall bestow life and consciousness on all that it shines upon.

For this 'all seeing eye' to become an all being I' it must set into the darkest, most separate place, die to itself as the seed in the soil, give itself to the deepest purpose of all, then by a mysterious alchemy, the Will of all shall surrender to the one, and there shall arise a type of human being who will perceive the Universe as being an Individual while they and other human beings are experienced as being universes within themselves.

2.

The landmasses of Eurasia and Africa extend from the Arctic to well south of the Equator but the greatest area of land unfolds in an east west direction. The northern Hemisphere is the one dominated by dry land; the southern is more fluid, womblike and feminine, as the metabolic region of the body; and like the interior depths of the body, it lives below the perception of normal sense faculties or thought.

The dry land of the north was a basis for the development of objective consciousness (the dryness of thought rising as a continent above the seas of feeling). The Afro-Eurasian landmass spoke of the Eastern past and of the Western future; it neither completely remembered the one nor foresaw the other. The Americas are the arriving at the future and the returning of the past out of it.

The Americas stretch from pole to pole linked by an almost continual belt of mountains. In Central America it could be said the Eastern Pacific overreaches itself to almost touch the Western Atlantic as it flows into the Caribbean. In this place the meeting of the great eastern Water and the great western Sea and the touching of the Northern Continent and the Southern landmass describe an immense planetary cross of the earth and water elements. Here, also, there rise in the chain of mountains many that are firetopped instead of snowcapped, and blowing to and fro across these and up and down their length are winds from every quarter It is a heart formed by the rhythms that pulse into it, and like the heart in the human being it receives and passes on influences from the upper to the lower pole and back; and like the heart, it is located above the planetary, bodily centre of gravity of the Equator. It could be called a dynamic centre of levity.

The North polar ice cap, like a skull enclosing, frozen over the more fluid brain, or, in another way, like thought crystallized out of feeling, carries its cold conditions south by way of the high spine of mountains that reaches down through the Americas; and in this one can see how two conceptions of height and upwardness are united, the upper pole of the Earth with its drier nerve sense extremity, and the polar conditions that are found above a certain height on all mountains. Special influences are received by the Arctic from the constellations that are above it; the condition of the water beneath the ice cap is highly receptive to cosmic influences because it is far removed from the rapidly turning Equator and its burgeoning life; these waters like a finely tuned instrument pass tones of infra- and ultra- sonic frequency that are received by the myriad fish and marine mammals that disperse down into the warmer waters; also along the spinal cord of metals and minerals that are contained within the backbone of mountains that straddle the Earth through the Americas are passed magnetic forces and resonances not detectable by present instrumentation; these are those received by the Poles from the Cosmos, that advance and retreat, according as to whether the Pole is tilted away from or toward the Sun.

At the other, Southern Pole, it is not an enclosing of fluid, rather it is a rising out of it by solid land, just as the solid bones of the limbs descend out of the soft fluidity of the metabolic abdominal region. the cold of the upper pole is in a spiritual sense the cold of thought, withdrawn and aloof, the cold of the lower pole is the cold of the will that goes its own way that separates and asserts itself against life; it is a cold that denies and rejects the existence of others. The Antarctic is colder, stormier and more desolate than the Arctic; in human and spiritual terms it could be said that one is as an inner cold of the self, the other a far more dire and active cold that spreads beyond the self and makes all others as itself.)

The primary polarity of the poles to the Equator is again divided in itself into a secondary polarity as to the unique qualities of the North and South; in the great land bridge of the Americas and along its length cross and mingle the currents of these opposites. America was to be the place where human beings would be able to bring harmony and equilibrium between the pole of Thinking and that of Will and this made possible through the development of the Heart center of Feeling. The longitudinal alignment indicates that no longer journeying toward the Promised Land of reconciling these extremes into a new conscious balance, the American will have arrived. This is the real American dream, where each either attains mastery over and harmony between the opposing tendencies of human nature, or is torn to pieces by the conflict between them.

3.

Now we must enter upon a dark passage in American history, that has cast its spectral shadow over all levels of' manifestation, a tunnel that had no light at the end of it, which could have brought the Fifth Epoch to a dead end. It takes a special light to see in this darkness, but see in it we must, if we are to illuminate with new understanding many of the difficulties and trials that America has had to and still will have to face.

In Central America at the time when the Solar Logos was incarnated in the Middle East there arose as a counter Mystery of the heart, the practice of human sacrifice expressed in the ritual of cutting out the heart and sometimes the stomach, and there was also widespread ritualized decapitation; these practices vanished and reappeared from then on in Central America right up to the time of the landing of the Spaniards. However they were initially inspired and for a very specific purpose at the turning point of Time (c.1-33 AD). The being that instigated these dark mysteries knew full well that anti-spiritual and materializing forces flowed most powerfully from West to East; an attempt was made to sacrifice, remove the hearts, and shed the blood of as may human beings as had been involved in the lines of descent of the Hebrew people up to the Incarnation; and this quantity of murders had to be performed within a limited amount of time if they were to have the desired effect, for the initiator of this was diabolically attuned to the Divine Mystery that was unfolding itself in the Middle East, and through this was holding, as it were, a shadowy mirror up to those events that would bring forth a reversed image of all that was purposed in the deed of Christ. If this Adept of the dark path had been able to work unhindered and deflect all the light streaming from the acts of Christ into the reversing mirror, the humanity of the future would more and more have become a shadow, a benighted reflection, an inverted image of itself, where all good intentions would be twisted, polarised outwards and manifest as actions of evil effect.

However this being was hindered and caught in his own mirror and all the intended effects were reflected back upon their initiator, for another, a forerunner of those humans of the future who will balance all the sides of their nature and solve the equation of the Poles came with the Great Dream and with that fought the American Nightmare so that the Dream could be realised in the prophesied American Awakening.

Advancement on the sinistral path means the decision to avoid self sacrifice, and the evasion of this, inevitably leads to the sacrifice of others, for the giving out of what has been developed inwardly is a process essential for the evolution and movement forward of all systems. The primal aim of these rituals was to prepare, through deliberate desecration, a climate, location and milieu in which the Ahrimanic entity could work its purposes most powerfully; this Being destined to incarnate and by this we mean, to bring together in embodiment on the surface of the Earth, members of its being that had previously been separated and formerly worked out of different spheres; this incarnation would act as a lens that would bring into focus the unified beam of its Will and its Intellect. But there was one great obstacle to this, and that was the phenomenon of human Feeling which at the time of the Incarnation of the Solar Logos was to receive an irresistible strengthening. So the realm of Feeling had to be cut out, removed from the inner Sanctum from where it was ordained to bring about the transformation of the external world from the Soul outwards. The heart is destined to 'come out' of the body when it has evolved from its present physical objective noun state, in which it is subjected to all the pressures and oscillations that work upon it from the terrestrial and sub-natural planes, when it has again become etheric, no longer bound by a physical form, but then become a spiritual force, a verb, as it were, able to subject the world of dead objects to its own ensouling powers that will raise the Physical condition of Form and Mineral condition of life into higher states of conscious communion.

Had the light hierarchies only been involved in our evolution, the internal organ systems of animals and particularly of human beings would never in their finished work-state have been revealed to outer perception, but it was the activity of the Luciferic that caused an enclosing away from and separating out of life forms from their cosmic origins, and also a turning of the senses outward while sealing off the organism from consciousness and vision of what Divine cosmic Beings were bringing about within. Therefore it became increasingly difficult for humanity to live in the lap of the Gods, to bathe in the creative light by looking within; the consequence of this was that the hierarchies began their withdrawal, sacrificing a part of their being to become the foundation principle of the more deeply incarnated human body. The ensuing opacity brought forth that severance inherent in a physical and materialized condition of there being one dimension that was visible and one that was invisible; cutting in to, or bringing to the light of the human senses that interior physical world (which can only be safely done by Christ consciousness), removing it from its hidden matrix, meant endangering or bringing to an end the life of that beingness. Exposing the Life pole to the untransformed Consciousness Pole would bring about a divisive death impulse, the converse exposure would bring about madness arid chaos. Wherever there is confusion, order has been taken away; wherever there is death, life has been taken away, somewhere else, stolen into another realm that has no legitimate order or life of its own. One of the signatures of the Adversaries is that they interfere with the rhythmical time aspect of World development. And so, the heart was taken out prematurely in a material state not brought forth in due time as a redeemed power by individuals from within themselves, but cut out by an entity outside themselves. This was so that the sacrificers could grasp hold of the organ which had come to a completion as far as the Higher creative Beings were concerned. Because these latter had withdrawn, leaving the fruits of their Wisdom in its structure, the Lords of the Dark Face knew that now was the time to unseal it, to tear it out, before it was too late, before it changed from being an organ of Cosmic Divine Wisdom to being one of Human Divine Love.

The after-effects, echoes and reverberations from these blood rites have been many and varied and will continue to work so long as we do not bring any heightened awareness to bear upon them: first, the removal of a rhythmical integrator; then, a closing of the gap left, the creation of a Ring of power so that, in the present world, the atavistic clairvoyance of an earlier state of feminine oneness  (which the Mexican Mysteries wished to preserve in the Solar Plexus of the Amazon to the south) and the premature onesidedness of masculine intellectuality, as found in the modern United States, would have no mediating influence that would heal them both into a new relationship. Rather the head pole would impose its rigidifying logic of the inorganic upon the life pole; and that, in answer, would react with natural catastrophes and disasters, diseases of the Earth's metabolism.

The Middle East above the Equatorial midline, was the place for the initiating of the evolution of the Heart as being the heart of Evolution. Central America was the location where the Heart won for itself, after a fearful attack had been launched upon it, that magical capacity for reconciling the polarities that is the essence of being human. Although the battle for the heart has been won for the light, the preparation for the Incarnation of Ahriman goes on, and though the full intention behind the Ritual murders was not realised, many things were achieved through them, that can be felt in every aspect of contemporary life.

4.

The history of North America and its peoples reveals initially a tremendous activity of the Will in the pioneers, but a will asserting itself against Mother Nature, and then a correspondingly great activity of Thought, to devise the sciences that would enable the imposition of the technological over the biological and natural.

America is also the story of different Races and how they have all been subject to the American Nightmare, how they have all lived in the Dream and shall all participate in the Awakening. It is a building with many stories and they are all interconnected; it is the story of the Metals, how as Atlantis was sinking, the Etheric essence of the seven planetary Oracles was taken East, and the seven related metals sank further into a physical condition in the West. The way cosmic forces were transmitted through the planetary oracles of Atlantis reappears as the physical properties of electricity and magnetism, which are residues of cosmic powers from earlier times that have fallen under the influence of matter and gravity.

America is a Nation of Races at the present time. Before the arrival of the European, America was a Race with many nations. The situation of a Nation overarching different Races (some of which are again under different Folksouls) marks the beginning of the end of the present Races: each can play their part in attuning to the new moral and social imaginations that are proceeding out of the Second Manifestation of Christ. The Red Indian, the Saturn Race, in living closely within the cycles of Nature, helped to insulate North America, from many of the harmful residual influences, that worked northwards out of the darker Mexican Mysteries: when the white Man came and largely displaced the Indian and their relation to the land, these influences could begin to infect North America more strongly: some of the Folksouls of the Black Race, in a gesture of sacrifice, allowed their peoples to be enslaved, and as it were to be inserted between the newly forming Nation of North America and these Mexican forces: the Black Race absorbed these in being subject to slavery; and like a new string in the great instrument, did much to heal the damaged rhythmic system of the Continent.

The Indian Folksouls loosened a part of their being from the physical Plane, sacrificing their oneness with nature, and rose - transforming into a Time Spirit, that now and into the future, will bring to all the Earth, in full wakefulness, the harmony in which they lived as in a dream in a part of the Earth. Now in the Happy Hunting grounds, they seek as the Spirit of the Echo - Logos, awakened echoes in the Ego-sphere, awakened Egos in the Ecosphere.

5.

There are certain events and phenomena in the American story that are as it were templates that have already and will further appear in other parts of the world; there is now a kind of eastward flowback of social and consciousness forces of the American Experience. The activities of souls, who are open at this threshold of the West and East that is California, will occur as human acts of light and darkness in the future all over the Earth. The American state goes beyond its Western margin, and via the state of Hawaii closes its ring of power through its influence upon Japan. On a deeper level the war that involved Japan was brought about as part of the Adversary's plan to permeate and inoculate the Orient with those Institutional, Social and Economic structures that would later facilitate the incarnation of a World Government. On a profounder level, this plan is merely part of a much vaster one: the world Unity expressed in one Legal system, one Currency, one Language, one Military, provides those things that Ahriman shall attempt to enforce upon humanity prematurely from the outside, having first created the world situation that seems to justify those measures. This imposing of future forms prematurely (on a smaller scale the introduction of intellectual abstract thinking into the education of very young children) is actually initiated to prevent the integration of the Ego into the Human Being within those rhythms of development that alone make it possible for the person to come to self-possession and responsibility to others. One language and Religion would have within it a reemergence of Ancient Egypt; one Legal and Military would recapitulate the Centralized power of Rome; one Currency would replay the Hebrew and Mosaic Laws of property and the Babylonian application of Number and work which on a small scale was used in connection with slaves.

Before the Incarnation all humanity was in a sense becoming enslaved to the Physical plane, and the enslaving of others was the turning outwards of the idea of work. Both the receding of consciousness of the spiritual behind Nature and the darkening and hardening of substance turned work from being led by and inspired by semi-Divine Beings, to being something that was enforced by beings becoming demonic: from inspiration to perspiration. Yet this slave-driving and wringing of sweat from large groups of people had its place, because through this suffering and toil the astral body was purified and was prevented from either falling asleep on the physical plane or becoming completely diverted by it. This pain drew the I closer to the embodied state and prepared the house to receive its dweller. After the Incarnation, the idea of work was to become more structured, more differentiated and individually chosen. Under the influence of the Second Manifestation of the Logos we can expect the meaning of work to evolve again to an understanding of the individual's place in the Great Work. Outer work will become in the sphere of Agriculture, Architecture, Chemistry and Medicine and many other areas, both the conscious transformation of the self, and of the planet, into higher conditions of Form and Life. The work of one incarnation will also be remembered and picked up in the next; the sense of purpose and fulfilment will extend beyond the limits of one lifetime and expand beyond the bounds of one dimension; work will become being, inner and outer work will become one in a way, as never before; and so masculine and feminine, work and recreation will unite in joy and this Joy is the seed that will be contained within the Love that is the fruit of this Earth-incarnation of the Earth, this fruit to be formed on the Tree of Wisdom that grew out of the living soil of the Old Moon state of our Planet; the seed is the Joy of those human beings who will have mastered the forces of Life and Death, and out of this seed will arise the joyful creation of Jupiter.

The mission of the Earth-incarnation of the Earth is essentially to bring about a harmony between Thinking, Feeling and Willing; the basis of what would later manifest as human Will being laid down upon the Ancient Saturn incarnation of the Earth, that of Feeling upon the Old Sun embodiment and that of Thinking on the old Moon, these three stages also laying down successively the germs of the Physical, Etheric and Astral Bodies. This triangle and the other ones of Goodness, Beauty and Truth; Religion, Art and Science; and Bull, Eagle and Lion, represent principles that once balanced and attuned will turn what is now being composed, into a living symphony of Love that will be received into the Cosmos as a new Music of the spheres; out of the great Pralaya, into which the Earth's planetary body shall be carried by a Humanity changing its Earthly Form into a Universal Force, the Planets, their solid body being leavened, being spiritually potentised as it expands into the sphere of what was its orbit, (this being the result of human beings loving in full awareness across the threshold of Death), so the spiritual worlds shall become as full of conscious human individuality as the Earth existence is imbued with spiritual Community. There will come a point when the veil shall be lifted and we shall see clearly where we have come from and where we are going; physical sensations shall become soul experiences, all subjective states shall be seen objectively for what they are, and all that was previously the immovable dead world of outer objects shall be subjected to an inner life so powerful that it will raise them to a living inwardness in which there will seem to be No-Thing, nothing but Being, no things only Beings. This will be a Pralaya of the second order: this will be the womb out of which the Jupiter incarnation of the Earth will be born.

The preparation of this distant future state is active now and asks that we wake up more and more and participate in it.

In this preparation, the purpose of pain is partly to draw our consciousness to a certain area of our body or being because that part needs healing, which means transforming; for whenever we are healed, at whatever level, our condition is not simply returned to what it was but returns on a higher curve of the spiral; we re-cover, closing ourselves to the Healing activity of others (again able to take up the full responsibility for our own health); we re-cover processes that must remain hidden until our consciousness is strong enough to enter into them and take them over. The premature uncovering of certain soul and bodily faculties before they have truly become our property, that is before we have awakened to the seeds within us and how they should be nurtured, allows these seeds to be taken and grown for other purposes.

This prematurity is one of the hallmarks of America, having found the wealth of all the world, before having found one's own soul America jettisoned the old forms of Church and State and growing synchronously with the new forms of Technology, the steamboat, railways and telegraph, it proceeded westward at an ever increasing rate leaving first villages, then towns, and finally cities in its wake. This first great wave determining the pattern of the next, the establishing of trade routes, the arrival of the internal combustion engine, the laying of roads, the American Engine shifted into a faster gear: mineral resources from one part of the country were freighted to another involved in manufacturing some product; this was transported to a third place; the endless never sleeping circulation had begun. The question of how to do things overtook the question of why they should be done; it seemed unnecessary to ask why any more, that was of the Old world. The New world knew what it had to do and only asked of itself how it should be done. A tide of humanity was surging in from the East; half of Europe seemed on the move. As if in anticipation of this, the West had to be opened up. Forests had to be cleared. The Indians had to conform or be fought. The coming of motorized transport, mass production, aviation and the manifolding power of Electricity spun the web into completion; the nerves of the State now reached into all the muscles of the Nation; but what of the land? Did it have and was it having surgery performed on it? Were its vital organs being removed? Was its heart being cut out to make room for a transplant from another part of the World? Modern America was now embodied, as a new vehicle constructed, a new house built, but would something try to steal that vehicle and drive it off the High-way of evolution, into a cul-de-sac for humanity; some landlord take over the house, and demand a rent the tenants could not afford to pay? The voice of the Land, the Red Indian, was not heeded or even heard amidst the noise of the accelerating drive of the New America. If it had, it would have sounded a warning: to transplant the living heart forces from one part of the Earth to another may be possible and necessary, to bring about new life, but to remove the Heart of a land, then manufacture one of materials that have not evolved within a body and implant it as an artificial heart, will bring about either the rejection of that heart or the death of the body into which the organ is introduced or both.

A great image of the desecration of the land can be seen in much that has been done in the name of agriculture; the deforestation of much of the broad-leaved deciduous forests that stretched for hundreds of miles westwards from the Appalachians, similar to the cutting down of the larger part of Europe's deciduous temperate forests; this did much to the rhythmic system of North America.

The natural zones that traverse the landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere appear in belts or rings that modify effects and influences that proceed up and down between the poles and the Equator. This is seen very clearly in the Continent of America with its pronounced North-South axis. The Arctic Ice cap and Ocean yield to the Permafrosted Tundra; this surrenders to the coniferous Taiga which in turn capitulates to great Plains, Evergreen rainforest to the west, wooded hill country to the east; then into what was the vast wooded region of the Forest Indians; this area then bows down along all its varied front, gradually defeated by the vast tracts of scrubland and semidesert to the west and the warm temperate wood and grassland to the east, this region falls away through Mexico giving in to the superior power of the Tropics, and running up and down through all these changing zones, rise the mountains, varying in their foothills as they stride from north to south, but little changed in their heights on their peaks. From these serene and lofty heights a vision of Eternal America may perhaps be beheld, a deep gaze and a high seeing, that could stretch from the time of the American Sleep when it lay beneath the sea of seeing before it rose to become a Land of Being, through the American Dream, unperturbed, through the American Nightmare, to the American Awakening when all gold that is trapped, stolen out of the life into material darkness shall be dematerialised and rise up as an inner Sun force dawning out of the transformed hearts of human beings.

6.

Now we must descend again from such poetic elevations, to the present time and those broadleaved forests. Their partial removal has meant that cold air from the Arctic has been able to descend further south less warmed than it should be and warm air from the Caribbean has been able to go further North, less cooled than it could be; though the great plains are a band that stretch almost from the edge of the Boreal forests to the coastal plains in the South, the grasses of the Eastern plains are generally taller and more luxuriant. This factor like the Broadleaved forests of the East, moderates movements of air and temperature within the day and night and seasonal cycles. The interference with these is an afterworking of the Dark Magician of the Mexican Mysteries; where the unmodified effects of one Pole, the cold, are brought inappropriately and prematurely into relationship with the hot Pole. This has definitely enhanced the activity of what is known as Tornado Alley, (where approximately 700 tornadoes swirl annually, collectively equal to the power of one hurricane).

The tornado is an external image of the way in which forces work in the human being, when the modifying activity of the heart-lung system is unable to relate the inner with the outer and that which is below with that above, in the normal balanced way. The tornado is a kind of meteorological heart-attack, also stroke with the heat of the Metabolic system spiralling upwards on one side and the cold of the Nerve sense system spiralling down on the other; this, transferred within the human being, is similar to what precipitates a heart attack*. The conception of the heart as being merely physical, has the effect of taking it out of the soul rhythms; this makes the middle system more subject to external temperatures and pressures and the oscillations of the Earth's electromagnetic fields which start to affect it adversely. And this is intensified by removing the life cover of the outer environment, forests and such like, which through the Etheric connect the Earth with the Cosmos. The drive towards the denudation of the life realms of the Planet's surface, is part of the Adversary's plan to bring about a uniformity of environment causing a withdrawal of the Risen Ethers and a corresponding exposure and surfacing of the fallen etheric matrix, which compels all organism towards mechanism, denying the threefold lemniscatory movement which socialises the innate antisocial tendencies of both the Metabolic and Nerve sense Poles.

This polarity is expressed in two of the most recent developments in technology, that of Nuclear Fusion and that of Superconduction, the one needing tremendous heat, the other requiring intense cold. Superconduction through the use of newly discovered materials with certain impurities is getting warmer: Fusion, it was recently claimed, was getting colder (this has temporarily been denied - it may yet be achieved).

What is the significance of this? It can be described as a convergence towards the temperature of human blood, the two poles of a Being coming towards incarnation. The incarnation of Ahriman focuses and compresses into one body and one locality. The idea of Fusion and Superconduction are part of the American archetype in many ways. Through the activity of Christ we are all participants in the great Fusion programme, the fusing of the indestructible individualities of humanity into a new Spirit of Form, a Cosmic Pralayic chrysalis, out of which the imago of future states will arise. All these self-important programmes of scientific endeavour, to draw more energy out the material world for material purposes, are only caricatures, parodies compressed into the mode of substance and mechanism, of those nearly silent mighty processes of evolution through which the superstances of Higher Beings are drawn upon by the inner work and moral development of human beings for the transformation of the Earth. The Sun is silent and yet without it there would be no Music, no Sound, and no noise on this Planet.

*(the seed of the spiritual heart wishing to open, meets the resistance of the Adversary, that aims to hold it back, out of the stream of evolution, so that it remains bound in the physical condition of Form & Mineral Condition of Life. It is this meeting of the stirring seed, with the present conditions, that is behind much Heart Disease)

7.

The fourth Occultism can really be called that of the Musical (the Mechanical being more connected with Saturn, Hygienic with Jupiter and Eugenic with the Moon respectively of the West, the Central and the East). The Musical is of the Sun, and is of the whole world harmonising the other three. And it was this Occultism from the Sun Lodge (transformed from the Sun Oracle of Atlantis) which held the mysteries of the Etheric body and its transformation into the Life Spirit. It was this knowledge that lived in Vitzliputzli, Sun Hero initiate of the sixth degree. In growing up he would have learned to attune himself to the experience of the soul as music within the body, and how out of the being of humanity there would arise that which would raise the Americas into a mighty monochordal instrument, strung and fretted with mountains, forests, plains and rivers, in which and across which resounded the Elementals orchestrations of air, water and light; how the Sun plucked the different zones into motion as it moved daily from East to West and yearly North to South; in a fusion of the mystic and the ecstatic he learned to hear the Music of the Spheres echoing both in the depths of his inner self and in the elementals behind outer Nature.

This Echo Logos (who was able to be and echo the deed of Christ) would bring a tone to the Americas, that would be sought in the Vision Quest of the North American Indians; and arise again in a materialised form as the modern superhero, bringing harmony to a society out of tune.

The human being as a bridge and a conductor between the elementals and nature Devas and the creator Beings of the Hierarchies, this was Vitzliputzli. Christ was the bridge for the human soul back to the Spirit; the future mission of Vitzliputzli could never be realised without the deed of Christ coming to fulfilment, so the Light Magician of Mexico was drawn in to ensure the success of Christ's task.

The deed of Vitzliputzli in overcoming the Dark Magician, was one preeminently of timing, that is of Music. Christ said not my will but Thine, and sacrificed Himself into the discords of the whirling sympathies and antipathies of the Whirled and stepped into the rhythm of the Passion in Harmony with the Father Force. Vitzliputzli communicated this stupendous performance, to "the dance of the elementals."

The Dark Magician tried to tap into the discords of the Sixth interior Sphere of the Earth, which is connected with the Earth's volcanism. Volcanoes in the Tropics, particularly in Central America (because of the prevailing wind system patterns), have a property unlike volcanoes in higher latitudes, of spreading the plume of their effluvia over the entire Earth. The aim was to excite such an intensity of hatred, such an outpouring of human selfishness, that this would have reacted upon the sub-physical Fire Earth of the sixth interior level so that this would have answered with a massive volcanic eruption that could have cast a mantle, a pall of dust and debris, around the entire globe. This would have been the dwelling place of dark elementals, cutting out the Sun and the Cosmos, and making it impossible for human beings to become anything but expressions of what had existed in the interior of the Earth, but now enclosed it.( When the first Atomic Bomb was tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the same being was at work, constrained then and for the rest of Earth's evolution to work through human minds benighted by Materialism; both Nuclear winter and the words of the Revelation that speak of the Sun being darkened are all related to this.)

What happened in Mexico was one great attempt at this: the Aztecs feeding of the Sun with human blood was brought about by a fear of the Sun going out if it was not nourished. This fear was kindled by the Dark Magus - "the De-sol-ator"; in a counter mystery of the Etherisation of the Divine Blood given by the Solar Logos as eternal nourishment for humankind. The False Prophet, another name for the Magician, through causing this new Atmosphere to rise out of the interior of the Planet would also have gained for himself, a new sphere-encompassing sheath to his body.

Vitzliputzli, through the presence of Christ on Earth, was able to Orchestrate the elementals of earth, air, fire and water, and the Devas of the mountains, the forests, the rivers and the plains, and the Guardians of wood and metal to resound together and subdue the sixth interior Sphere.

The anti-Christian feelings that surrounded the Solar Logos during the Passion were to be the fuel which from the Sixth Sphere, would have enabled Ahriman to have been sucked out of and blasted through the Mineral Sphere, coming to power, in turning the world inside out. The many murders performed by the desolating One" had enabled him to project and incite such a blasphemy of hatred, half away across the world in the Middle East. This power and the knowledge of its use had been gained through a long established pact with Ahriman.

The supreme moment had arrived, between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, before the entrance of Christ into the planetary Etheric. It was then that the Earth's dark Shroud was intended to come forth from the interior: but as in all suspenseful drama, at the last minute of that eleventh hour, such a chorus resounded from the Poles along the mountains, setting in motion chords resonating through the great rings of forests, plains and metals, along the mountain spine, (as notes of changing pitch moved the Devas linking North and South, East and West, inspiring the sylphs of the rivers and streams, and of the rising and falling airs), that the mighty American Cross of the Elements reverberating through the Being of Vitzliputzli as Echo-Logos for an eternal moment set into vibrant sympathy the Rings of Mineral, Plant and Animal, elemental being and Deva around the entire Earth, the Rings that remembered the encircling of Cosmic Creator Beings, as they were whirling the World into being, the whirled into seeing, (because of the fall, the landmasses had separated the rings had broken, the peoples consciousness had fallen apart into locality). This moment was both a memory, of the time before the One Song had fallen into the many Languages, and also a prophecy, of a time when the Rings shall again be reforged, by a world-encircling human Imagination; when the broken rings shall be united and human feeling shall girdle the Earth, as it did then in Vitzliputzli; when human awareness shall encompass the sphere, and the Suffe-ring become a spiral.

The power of the creator beings flowed through him into their estranged offspring, the Elementals, and these answered with a music that in its composing brought about the decomposition of the Dark Magician's plan, so that what would have been the terrible noise, which could have finally deafened the world, and brought the Deaf-end of the planet, in which the Music of the Spheres might never have been heard again, instead became the glorious hymn of the Resurrection.

It was the love of Vitzliputzli for the elementals and Nature spirits (this love made possible through the Being of Christ) that brought to these Beings the idea of sacrifice and heroism, which enabled them to participate with a human being, as they would with all who would rise to a true Ecology in the future.

*

America struggles with its shadow and dark reflection: this landmass was rediscovered, settled and established synchronously with the descent from the higher worlds of the great dispensation of Music that is based upon the interval of the Third; this an image of the Devachanic descending to the Earth. The transformation through Bach into Beethoven offers a kind of Memory of the deed of Vitzliputzli; and a foretelling of the higher human being of the future, who will bring Harmony between the rhythms of world communities and the Melodies of Eternal Individuality.

*       *       *

- a meditative contemplation on the Prologue to the John Gospel, in the light of the

true Second Coming of Christ -


by Joel A. Wendt

In the Beginning was the Choice ...

There is no Creation without first the choice to create.

In the Beginning was the Choice, and the Choice was towards God ...

The Choice splits the Creation into Two - the Chooser and the Consequences, which Consequences can be nothing but kin to that which Choose.  A mirror arises, and the Consequences - the created choice - looks back at what was First, born wanting reunification.

Father and Mother and Spirit beget Daughter and Son and Soul.  Unity becomes Two, then Three, then Six; and, Six remaining a unity is itself Seven.  Nothing in the Creation, however divided, ceases to be but a Part of the Whole.

In the Beginning was the Choice, and the Choice was towards God.   And God was what the Choice was.  The Choice was with God, in the Beginning. (this slightly different version of the John Prologue is based on a non-doctrinal re-translation from the original Greek, by Andy Gaus - in The Unvarnished Gospels)

We usually read this as: In the Beginning was the Word ...

As we grow into the future we will come to understand, through understanding ourselves, how it is that the Word is seven-fold in its Full Nature, such that by focusing on the Choice aspect - the primal and first aspect - we gain traction with regard to understanding how we too are created and creative - that is: stand in identity with God. 

Without Choice there is no Evil.   Without Evil there is no Good.  Evil is the illusion of separation amidst the reality of unity.  Some teach there is no I and you, but only I.  All are I.  To see another as not I - as not thou - is to feel the illusion, not the reality.

We can then first see our individual spirit in the fact of our capacity to Choose.  This capacity for Freedom is the hallmark of our intimacy within the Creation, as it appears in the individual human being.

Here then the Prime Paradox: that which appears separate remains always and only a part of a whole.

The Beatles knew this (from I am the Walrus): I am he and you are he and you are me and we are altogether.

The appearance of things is nonetheless very important.  To feel separate and individual is only illusory in the most mundane sense - everything is part of the Whole.  In all true effective and existential senses: We are free to choose.  The rest of our aspects, as images and likenesses of the Divine Mystery - the other six of the total seven - belong to our future unfolding.  

Now - in this version of the Moment - this Age - Choice is all.  

The deep mystery of the Now, what some post-modern thinkers call the event, is that existence is always: In the Beginning.

Like the Creator, our awakening to our divinity comes in the form of realizing the meaning and significance of Choice.  This is the hardest lesson because of the consequences of Choice.  To step into the future via choice is to step into the unknown - always there are the unintended consequences.

Without the Darkness there is no Light.  The Choice for Creation means otherness - even God’s actions were meant to have unintended consequences - otherwise the Creation is not Real.

In the Beginning was the Choice, and the Choice was towards God.   And God was what the Choice was.  It (the Choice) was with God, in the Beginning.  All things happened through the Choice, and not one that has happened, happened without the Choice.  In the original Prologue this was: All things happened through “it”, and not one thing that has happened, happened without “it”.

To continue:

Within the Choice (again “it" in the original) was Life, and the Life was the Light of the world.

What else can a Creator create but Life?  It is only the modern mind, that has no sense of spirit, that fails to appreciate what Life - dynamic existence and consciousness - actually is.  


At the Cosmic Periphery of the Creation comes into being Life, and as this Life descends further into existence it becomes illuminating inner and outer Light.  Again, the modern mind hardly pays attention to our actual experience.  We breath.  We cannot do otherwise.  Likewise we see.  To see is to breath in the light.  The same to hear.  All senses are experiences of Life in its total dynamic reality.  To be is to be inside the Life and the Light of the Creation.   Do we not see a light leave the physical body as we observe the eyes of a human being at the moment of death?

And in the darkness the light is shining, and the darkness never got hold of it.

The materialist wants to talk about the initial nanoseconds of the Big Bang.  Here we see the same in the Creation.  Creation ... Consequences ... Life and Light ... Death and Darkness ... each propels the other, as the Sound of the Word resounds and rebounds endlessly, as the moment of Creation sings forth: Let there be Light!

So, as we notice ourselves as aspects of the creation, we then have this:

In the ever present Now was the Choice, and the Choice was towards God.   And God was what the Choice was.  The Choice was with God, in the Beginning.  All things happened through the Choice, and not one thing that has happened, happened without the Choice.  Within the Choice was Life, and the Life was the Light of the world.  And in the darkness the light is shining, and the darkness never got hold of it.

We were there from the Beginning.

And, out of our developing sense of separateness then came Evil - the unintended consequences of there seeming to be a not-I.   In our separateness we feel the otherness as not-I, as not of the Light, and thus only of the Darkness.   Yet the reality is that it is the not-seeing of the illusion of our separateness that is the darkness that does not comprehend the light.

With the true Second Coming we can no longer, as in the original Prologue, speak of John the Baptist as did John the author of that Gospel.  We cannot say as regards the Second Coming: There was a person sent from God, and he had the name John.  We now have to say:

There was  a man sent by his own free I, and he had the name Rudolf Steiner.  He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all would have faith and gnosis through him.  He wasn’t the light - the Way, the Truth and the Life - himself, he was to testify about the light.

Rudolf Steiner was/is the John the Baptist figure of the true Second Coming.  He was the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism, which materialism has to include the doctrines of modern Christian churches.  So Steiner teaches New Revelation (for our faith) about the Spirit, and as well how (just as the John Gospel does) to learn to know the spirit out of ones own forces of soul (for our eventual personal gnosis).  

The light was the true light that comes into the world and shines for every human being.  The Choice was in the world, and the world was created by the Choice, and the world didn’t know the Choice.

The spirit of the human being - the I-am - now contains within it what Steiner named: the Christ Impulse.  What we are here calling, in its first iteration: the Choice (the I-am - the Christ Impulse - will become much more over the coming eons).   All doctrines of whatever name they give to themselves, whether Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Judaic, whatever ... all doctrines that assert separation assert thereby Evil.

The name of a thing, even such a name as “the Christ Impulse”, is not the thing.   We only know this “thing" by what it does - its name is completely irrelevant.  So here we have been calling it: the Choice.  In the Now is the Choice - something true for all of us.  We can all say to ourselves: I am the Choice - I am the chooser.  Steiner’s other name for this, in relationship to his revelations on the hidden mysteries of the new thinking, was: the knowing doer.

The Choice came to its own kind, and its own kind wouldn’t accept the Choice.  But to those who did accept the Choice it gave the right to become the children of God if they had faith in this name, they who were born not of the blood, nor the flesh’s will, nor a man’s will, but of the same Choice as God.

Many will refuse the responsibility of the Choice.  They will rely on a Book or the words of another, but they will be too weak to face the trials of real unintended consequences that go with the Choice.  Placing faith everywhere but in themselves they can only make Evil - they can only continue the separation, for only a true I-am can recognize the I-am of the other.

And the Choice turned into Thought and came to live within us, and we learned to witness this glory, the kind of glory a Father gives to all his children, full of grace and truth.

We choose what we seek to know.  Out of this we choose what to do, and thereby can begin to become knowing doers of the Choice and of choosing.  In the new mystery of thinking springs forth then individual moral insight - the Choice that serves others before itself.   In the act of the Creation the Father gave potential birth to us, the most amazing unintended consequences possible.  But in the ongoing finality of the Creation’s constant In the Now endless beginning we ultimately give birth to ourselves. 

To witness to Thought is to witness to the Spirit.

So then this additional Prologue (the original is true of the Incarnation, and this is true of real Second Coming):

In the ever present Now was the Choice, and the Choice was towards God.   And God was what the Choice was.  The Choice was with God, in the Beginning.  All things happened through the Choice, and not one that has happened, happened without the Choice.  Within the Choice was Life, and the Life was the Light of the world.  And in the darkness the light is shining, and the darkness never got hold of it.

There was  a man sent by his own free I, and he had the name Rudolf Steiner.  He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all would have faith and gnosis through him.  He wasn’t the light himself, he was to testify about the light.

The light was the true light that comes into the world and shines for every human being.  The Choice was in the world, and the world was created by the Choice, and the world didn’t know the Choice.  The Choice came to its own kind, and its own kind wouldn’t accept the Choice.  But to those who did accept the Choice it gave them the right to become the children of God if they had faith in this name, they who were born not of the blood, nor the flesh’s will, nor a man’s will, but of the same Choice as God. 

And the Choice turned into Thought and came to live within us, and we learned to witness this glory, the kind of glory a Father gives to all his children, full of grace and truth.



*       *       *

The originating impulse for a new (Second Coming) Prologue was initiated on Epiphany, Jan.  6th, 2008, during a three hour conversation with the Divine Mystery.  Only now, two and a third years later, and after many excursions over and again into this territory via the Living Thinking, has it become possible to write the immediate above.

Joel A. Wendt, in the Season of Easter 2011