dramatis personae (more or less in order of appearance): the Dragon (Ahriman); the Dark Angel (Lucifer); the Eaten Ones (the Asuras); the Sacrifice (Christ); the Mother (the Divine Mother); the Fires of Gehenna (Hell, or the Eight Spheres of the Interior of the Earth); the original Peoples (the Hopi and their Prophecy); Land of the Eagle (America); the Sacrifice's Knight (Archangel Michael); the Mother's maiden Daughter (the Divine Sophia); the Priest-King (Rudolf Steiner); the Old Powers (the old religions of the goddess, and their helpers in the Underworld); the Community in the Land of the Eagle (the Anthroposophical Society in America); the Old World (Europe); the Alchemist (Dennis Klocek); the Singer (rumored to be the Raphael-Novalis Being, name withheld for very obvious reasons); the Scholar Seer (Stephen Clarke); the Earnest Seeker (S.O. Prokofieff); and, the foolish Wizard (yours truly).


The World is made out of Love, although it is hard in this Age to experience this truth.  Even so, we must consider that whatever the deeds of the so-called opposing powers, their place in the Whole is part of this living and evolving organism of Love.

The Dragon's Castle took a long time to build.  He meant it to stand forever, a cold and rigid monument to heartlessness, for great was his power, and strong were his allies.   For example, in his long years in the Dragon's service, the Dark Angel had sung many siren songs in the ears of the humans, seducing them with self importance and visions of power.  While behind them both, in a dark inside the dark, the Eaten Ones gnawed at the spirit of the humans, tasting in anticipation the repast they thought to enjoy through eternity.  

It was not visible this Castle, for it inhabited the soul.  It was built of cold ideas, amoral thoughts, and unrestrained desire.   From the soul it leaked into the social-political world, where it took the form of rigid social order and illusory world views - a mystery of evil not comprehended.   But it was also there, in the outer world, merely a Stage setting as the Bard well understood.  So through the human soul the darkness leaked into the world, giving it form and texture, until there came that Age when this truth must be understood, and responsibility taken.

Even so these three Dark Powers were also frustrated - constrained, for even Greater Powers Lived, Loved and Thought the World.  They too worked through the soul, for the outer World was the womb of the 10th Hierarchy, and became thus the realm of the evolution of human beings.   Of those who constrained the Dark Powers, the Sacrifice was one most powerful, for by giving away instead of keeping, what He created in the soul that could be willed by the human being were powers of love akin to those of His Own.  This meant that neither the Dragon's stone ideas, nor the siren songs of the Dark Angel would always be able to find purchase within the human soul.  All the same, the Eaten Ones were not to be defeated even by the Him, only held in check by a power even greater than the Sacrifice.

While the Sacrifice lived in the Heart of the World, it was the Mother, living in the Root of the World - on the Other Side of the Fires of Gehenna, who was stronger still.  It was She, who had been there from the beginning as Co-Creator with the Father, the True Dark from which the Light Itself was born, and who held back the Eaten Ones, dominated the Dragon and soothed the hot desire of the Dark Angel, although that was the most that She could do.  Eventually, only the human ones would find the means to make permanent the true role of the Eaten Ones, to place the Dragon in its proper place in the Divine Order, and to finally forgive them all, including the Dark Angel.  Think ye not?   What purpose do you see then for the human ones, wherein the real seed of the Father resides in the i-AM - the verb that is Eternal?

Then it came, the Time we now enter - this Age of Purification, at the Dawn of which the Sacrifice had acted for the fifth time, in secret and unknown by the world of the humans.  Oh a few knew, and some had heard, but most did not know, for their minds were possessed by the Dragon's cold dead thoughts and the siren songs of the Dark Angel.   While deep in their souls, the Eaten Ones were also active, in addictions and other dark and unseen places of the human inside, where steadily they gnawed away at the edges of the human spirit - the i-AM.

The Age of Purification, a time foretold by some original Peoples of the Land of the Eagle, had come, and the War on Earth between the Evil and the Good began its final Rites.  A Civilization began to fall, and a New One sought its birth, all Shapes in the Fire of Purification.   At this same time, all through the lands of the Earth, ancient heros returned and Old Powers sought to awake from their long sleep.  Sides were being chosen, and cold embers once forgotten stirred in the ashes of history, seeking to find in human attention the rekindling of their atavistic light.  Either a time of great dark, or a new age of light, was said to wait on the horizon of Time.

In the Land of the Eagle, there had come to be a certain Community.  Authored by a humble Priest-King during his sojourn in the Old World - himself spiritually the son of the marriage of the Sacrifice's personal Knight, and the Mother's maiden Daughter - this Community had struggled against the Dragon, the Dark Angel and the Eaten Ones - struggled and fallen, wounded on the battlefield of Love.

Somehow, this Community had looked at the outer world for the Dragon's Castle. instead of at the inwardness.  Looking in the wrong place then, they mistook the nature of the task given to them by the Priest-King.  They sought to change outer culture, forgetting that first it was inner culture where the true danger lay.  If the leak of the dark, via the soul and onto the Stage, was to be contained, this could only happen through the mastery of the soul.

Naturally, the Community's wound was invisible, and mostly was felt as a kind of weariness, a reluctance to face past confusions with the needed brutal self reflection and honesty.  All the same, in the Land of the Eagle and elsewhere, a few of the ancient heros came to be part of this Community, some in the Centers (even in the Old World Center), with their excess of Gravitas,  and others far out on the surrounding Periphery of Life.  There were many, but here are just five as are necessary for our story: first, the Alchemist - well known in the Centers in the Land of the Eagle; second, the Singer - a rumor and in hiding, working on the yet unknown and invisible higher unity of Islam and Christianity; third, the Scholar Seer - who sought to rediscover the truths of the Old Powers, especially of the Underworld and the Mother; fourth, the Earnest Seeker - who in the naive vanity of youth, prompted by the Dark Angel's siren song, came to believe that he had arrived at knowledge, but instead only made an even stronger prison inside his own soul; and finally, the foolish Wizard - retired from the practice of his Arcane Arts, a chronically lazy aging soul, mostly interested in telling stories and having conversations.

A gathering of the Community had been called for, and the foolish Wizard, aided by Divine Providence, who had been one of his main teachers over the 33 years of his incarnation, made plans to attend.  Deep were these plans, for the foolish Wizard had accidentally mastered the Priest-King's  philosophies.  [an aside: Wizards are notorious for falling into the truth while wandering around dreaming with their heads in the clouds]  The Alchemist had mastered the Priest-King's evolution of natural science and his (the Priest-King's) reconstruction of esoteric teachings under the names: the Six Exercises and Knowledge of Higher Worlds.  The Scholar Seer, meanwhile, sought to know the Saturn Mysteries of the Land of the Eagle, and had found his way through the Fires of Gehenna and into the Golden Land of the Mother, at the Root of the  World.  Then there is the Earnest Seeker, who became infectiously popular in the Old World Community so strong was his self-belief in his own knowledge and so lightly on the earth his incarnation.  While the Singer, far deeper than any of these, communed with the Sacrifice, the Knight, the Mother and many many others directly, in seclusion and in silence, as was her task.

Each in their own way worked at transforming the Dragon's Castle, seeking to dissolve it within themselves, or in the case of the Earnest Seeker and his natural companions - out in the world.   By this means and out of Love they worked, each just a small part of the whole, hoping to learn something of how to support the rest of the human spirits in the task of learning to make the light inside, so as to be able to seek and find true spiritual freedom.  Even the Earnest Seeker had the best of intentions, which as we know can still lead to tragedy.

The Community, like the Alchemist, had mostly focused on the reconstructed esoteric teachings of the Priest-King, and had not yet found certain aspects of the inner freedom necessary for the coming Trials of the War of Love.  Without this full freedom, as the foolish Wizard well knew, the institutional leaders of the Community could not properly face their own shadow - their personal mini-versions of the Dragon, the Dark Angel, and the Eaten Ones - or truly understand the moral issues at the heart of what the Priest-King had called: the Consciousness Soul and the Mystery of Evil.  Again, valiant were the efforts and intentions, but only something akin to the Path of Cognition, the Path actually walked by the Priest-King, could lead to true inner freedom.

For the Castle was well constructed, the Dragon having had eons to calculated its rigid order.  The Dark Angel knew how to misdirect, and the Eaten Ones, hidden in the depths of the soul, chewed on weakness and frailty out of sight of the human spirit - the verb that Lived.  As long as the i-AM looked mostly outward, instead of inward, the true Castle could not be seen, its guardians confronted, or the Crack in its Foundation discovered and then passed through.

So the meeting was called, and to it would come both the institutional leaders of the the Old World aspect of the Community and those from the Land of the Eagle.   But sadly, in the center of the meeting lived a great confusion.  While rumors of a need for occult and spiritual discrimination blew on the local winds, the Community still floundered in the absence of a true understanding of the Priest-King's philosophies.  The Community sought spiritual freedom, but could not find it in the absence of knowledge of the these realities - what the foolish Wizard called, using the First Thought of the Priest-King: the Path of Cognition.

So the meeting called out to the foolish Wizard in his retreat in the Far West, and thus beckoned  he came.  But what could he do, having worked on the Periphery of Life, and not in the Centers of Gravitas.  There would be many obstacles, not the least of which is that the Community felt that it knew things.  Great was its hubris as a Community of knowledgeable ones, for many had eaten the Priest-King's teachings to the far too often exclusion of their own thinking.

They had taken the dead thoughts of the Priest-King and asleep as to the consequences made them part of the mortar of the Dragon's Castle as it existed in their own souls.  The meeting of the Community was to be about wakefulness, but how could those still asleep to true introspective life, true seeing-within, speak out of experience to truly becoming awake and spiritually free?

Addicted to lectures, both in books and at conferences, the Community did not see how this dependence killed the very thing they sought.  Just here the Eaten Ones manifested in the Community, for wherever human beings refused to stand on their own, and be responsible -creatively responsible for their own thought content, there the Eaten Ones feasted.

Now the Sacrifice had anticipated the coming power of the Eaten Ones, and at the very beginning of His fifth sacrifice He had appeared to a drunk in the Land of the Eagle and taught the 12 Steps, or what the foolish Wizard understood as one of the two modern great powers of Love - the mastery of the soul by the elevation of the spirit.  There in the first steps, with an authentic  surrender to a higher power, a door could be opened whereby the Mother could rise, for the needed time, to stand in the human soul and in between the humbled naked human spirit and the Eaten Ones, until the i-AM itself could carry this task.  All that was required was that the natural egotism of the spirit acknowledge that it could not do everything on its own, and that help was needed and could be invited in.

The other great power of Love was the word, in speech and in thought.  In the first great power, surrender was its initial task as was told in the story by John with the description of the Sacrifice's washing the feet.  Thus we begin the work of self mastery, by admitting we need the help of higher powers, especially the Mother.  In the second great power we have the work of giving away - of using the creative power of the word in speech and in thought - as an act of service.  But before we can create, we must understand.  Before we can understand, we must learn to see.  In order to see, we must strive to look.  Where we do not look inside, there hides the Dark Ones.

Looking outward all we see is the mote and never the beam.  Only looking inward, and facing down the own dark, do we begin to see and understand.  As the Priest-King said in Knowledge of Higher Worlds: for every step forward in spiritual development, we must take three steps in moral development.  And, what is the Priest-King's text on moral development?   The Philosophy of Freedom, where is taught: moral imagination, moral intuition and moral technique.

The human spirit dies a little when it succumbs to the siren song of the Dark Angel that says: leave aside self mastery, and be proud to speak and lecture and write and teach when you have yet not achieved that goal for which the Priest-King had set the mark, for only when you are surrounded by worshiping adoration, are you then on the path to divinity (forgetting that the Sacrifice Himself became human on His way to Death, giving away His Divinity).  It is the Dark Angel that tells us to forego difficult paths, and who helped the Earnest Seeker to  believe he can write true books on esotericism at age 26, before even the tasks of life are truly seen and felt, much less engaged and mastered.  

Even so, let us marvel at what might happen were the Earnest Seeker to awake from his inner sleep and take his gifts toward their true potential.  What an example could be given, if the most elevated was to come down among the least and admit confusion.  What a wondrous light would shine, if the leading lecturer and writer, the one so full of words they pour out in gushing streams, were to enter the silence, and just be.  Why?  Because the Earnest Seeker is also an ancient hero, whose task so far has been to be the Archetype of the first ones to seek to understand the teachings of the Priest-King.  Such work could only be carried so far in the beginning - we are yet to arrive at the goals which we are meant ultimately to reach.  Before that time, much confusion will be the norm, and like many of his companions in the Community, the Earnest Seeker was not fully free.

For not only does the human spirit inflate itself in answer to the siren song of the Dark Angel, but it also imprisons itself, when it repeats from memory the thoughts of others, rather than author its own.  Here the Dragon lurks, for he loves the dead thoughts of memory, and makes his Castle of such stones.  When members of the Community worship such dead thoughts, they add the room of their soul to the Dragon's Castle.

So stung by the three evil powers, the Community lies wounded on the battlefield, and, sadly but truly, neither the Alchemist or the Singer, the Scholar Seer or the Earnest Seeker, or even the foolish Wizard, with his power to let loose the light of the word against this enclosing dark, can help the Community.  Only the Community can heal itself.

This leads, in our story, to three questions.  One is why should the Community undertake such an arduous task?  The second is how does the Community do this?  And the third is what is the use of an aging, cranky and foolish Wizard in such dire times?

No one but each individual can answer the first question in its personal sense.  The Path of Cognition (the Priest-King's philosophies) show how to place before any action a freely chosen moral ideal or reason.   This process of choosing an ideal reason to act (outwardly or inwardly), brings ultimately in its train a number of consequences, not the least of which is true heart thinking.  Exercising this power then, the human spirit stands in the World on a self chosen moral reason for its actions, thus standing on the firmest ground possible, for by this act it anchors itself in the Good - that is in the Eternal.

Now the Community is a collection of individuals, who among other shared characteristics, have become the Steward of some (only some) of the New Revelations of the Sacrifice.  These Revelations belong to the World, not to the Community, and when personalities in the Community, base their individual actions on the Good, then in their Community actions - especially those rooted in what the Priest-King called the Reverse Cultus - knowledge of how to appropriately bring to the World these New Revelations will be called forth.

As long as the Community is ruled from above by its addiction to lectures and institutional leaders, this task cannot be done, for this tired social process lacks the living Wisdom that can only appear in the Community when it meets in circle-wise conversation, and is led from the social commons, and not by a hierarchy of mostly un-free sleepers and confused knowers.

In understanding this we are led from the question of why to the question of how.  Why is known and created by an individual moral intuition of the Good, and how is known by a community intuition of the True as is only discoverable by the whole during circle-wise conversation.

Now, as to the meaning of the foolish Wizard.  Well, he has walked the Path of Cognition - the Path to Inner or Spiritual Freedom - and wrestled with his own mini versions of the Eaten Ones, befriended his version of the Dark Angel, and punched the lights out of his version of the Dragon. So he knows a little bit about how we win spiritual freedom, especially the part about how to find the best questions.  You see, that is the real secret of Wizardry - not how or what to know, but how and what to ask (ask and you will be answered, seek and you will find, and knock and it shall be opened unto you).

So armed with this understanding, the Wizard came to the meeting of the Community, to share in the trials and joys of those others who came, although he could not, for reasons of being interested more in spiritual freedom, attend lectures, or give them, with a good heart.  Oh, he would go, and if asked he would give, but not with a good heart.   For he saw the truth of the New Mysteries and the need for circle-wise conversation in the Land of the Eagle.  The First Nations had lived that way, as had the circle of friends which history calls the Transcendentalists.

Here then is the Crack in the Foundation of the Dragon's Castle, where the human i-AM goes inward and seeks spiritual freedom, out of which the two main acts of Love appropriate for this Age can come: learning to master the soul through the elevation of the spirit; and, discovering the power of the creative word both inwardly in the soul and outwardly in speech and conversation.

So with sadness he would go to lectures, and with sadness he would give lectures, if asked or when he otherwise saw great need.  But his heart would be elsewhere, wanting to listen to all the voices.  You see, he remembered.  He remembered when the Sacrifice had walked the Earth, and how in that Circle each one in his or her turn would speak with the Voice of Goodness and Truth.  No single one could capture the Eternal, no single one be its author, not even the Priest-King.  Only from the Whole, from the commons of the Community, could the Eternal Truly Speak.