The New, and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth

Many years ago, in 1919 to be exact, Rudolf Steiner gave some lectures on the Cosmic New Year, in which he elaborated on three somewhat ancient mystery streams: The Mysteries of Light (from the East via Greek civilization); The Mysteries of Man (from the South via the Egyptian civilization) and the Mysteries of the Earth (from the North via the Scandinavian Peoples).  These three mysteries combined in a way in the social order of Central Europe.  [An significant discussion of this can be found on Bob and Nancy's Waldorf website (bobnancy.com), by going to their section on Anthroposophy, and then within that section to the translators corner and there to the essay: Kraft, the Passive Voice and the Three Mystery Streams.]

Since the time in which Rudolf Steiner gave those lectures something new happened - the Second Coming.  The older mystery streams had come into being via an older initiate consciousness and in hierarchical (top down) social form, but with the Second Coming and the deepening of the Age of the Consciousness Soul, the moral authority of the individual is beginning to discover its sure capacity for creating new social form.  Something is surging upward from the social commons, albeit stronger and sooner in America.  On a world-wide level, Civil Society has entered into world affairs and begun to successfully challenge the hidden aristocracy of concentrated wealth.

Might it be possible, perhaps even necessary, to speak of New Mysteries of Light and of Man and of the Earth?  This essay means to suggest this, without forcing the matter.  The reader, who wants to know, should weight this question in their own active soul.

I have thought, for example, that it would be wise to think of Rudolf Steiner's work as fostering in the Center the New Mysteries of Man.  Such that as these impulses radiate out into the world, the East will out of its own intuitions foster the New Mysteries of Light, and the true West (the Americas) would foster out of its own intuitions the New Mysteries of the Earth.

Steiner called Anthroposophy the wisdom of man.  He also created books such as The Study of Man and Man as Symphony of the Creative Word.  Most crucially, he begins the panels of the Foundation Stone Meditation: "Soul of Man!"

America, as expressed earlier in this book, has its own version of Anthroposophy, as remarked by Steiner in his lectures to the workman at the Goetheanum.  What could be meant by such a statement?  What could be meant by the New Mysteries of the Earth?

I have suggested in previous essays the need in America for the New Sun Mysteries to marry the very ancient Saturn Mysteries.  This is not marriage in the sense we think of as a social form created of two separate individual human beings, but marriage in the sense of mystical union.  Those who have read Ben-Aharon's The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century (the Imagination of the Second Coming), will be aware that this Event is described as the birth of a New Sun in the Earth.

In my essay on The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, I described the moral act leading to individual human knowledge of the Good as an ethereal Eucharist - a second Eucharist, which begins that process of creating the New Jerusalem, the future ethereal Jupiter incarnation of the Earth.

The Hopi Prophecies conceive (from their point of view) of this marriage of Sun and Saturn Mysteries as inaugurating what they call: The Day of Purification.

I have also suggested above (in Waking the Sleeping Giant...) that Anthroposophy was to take its mostly earthly social form in America.

As the reader should now be able to see, there is a common tread weaving in all of these themes
.

The American finds himself on the Earth faced with trials of a social nature (a call from the surround of his biography) requiring moral actions in the world.  As the Consciousness Soul Age moves through the present birth trial of the beginning of the 21st Century, an increasing chaos in the social will force moral choice upon almost everyone in Western Civilization.  As this transformation spreads throughout the world it will seek to dissolve the remaining social traditions throughout that same world still binding the I to the group soul.

This does not mean that there are no Consciousness Soul gestures in the wider world, only that more people are coming to this sooner in the Western Democracies.  At the same time in the wider world, especially where we see Civil Society and the like, we see the Consciousness Soul emerging.

Most social forms will expire, under the pressure of the still increasing chaos (it will end after a time).  Communities will either dissolve completely or collapse into some seed-like form, and this includes all those social forms in the Anthroposophical Society and Movement.  Social tradition will be of no avail.  Deep will then be the hunger for new social form - for wise social form - for new and more conscious understanding of the nature and structure of community in this Age (this hunger too can be found emerging everywhere).  The egotism of the I is to be made to face its choices to accept moral trials (or not) as an individual; and, to be offered the opportunity to join with others in new ways.  These possibilities and potentials are given to us by Christ as the Artist (Lord) of Karma through the manner in which individual biographies are woven into communities.

Recall once more what Christ said in Matthew 10:34-40: Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those in his own household.  He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more that me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.  He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. (emphasis added)

On the other side of this process, of the breaking down of traditional community all the way into the family, we will have the choice to form new bonds (new social forms) as free individuals.

Some anthroposophists will seek to root such new social forms in Steiner's ideas about threefolding.  While this gesture is not entirely unworthy, it assumes there is a power to be found there that factually cannot be found there.  Social life is immensely complicated, and we are far from even knowing what the best questions are, much less drawing near to discovering useful and practical answers.  [In fact, what Steiner did point to, in his Awakening to Community lectures, was the reverse cultus (more later)].

But a wise Providence does not ignore our need.  The Saturn Peoples of the Americas were not only stewards of the land on which they lived lightly, but they have also kept faithful care of deep and profound wisdom regarding social forms and needs.  The humanity that emerged from Western Civilization had sacrificed its ancient social wisdom in order to produce a new partial wisdom leading to the birth of individuality and ego consciousness.  The humanity that remained in the true West of the Americas, sacrificed that same potential for an early individuality and ego consciousness, in order to preserve their partial aspect of the deepest social wisdom.  Recall what was written earlier about the broken stone tablets in the Hopi Prophecy - two parts to the ancient wisdom - one going to the East from Atlantis, the other to the West.

In order not to confuse what is being said here, the suggested mystical union between the ancient Saturn Mysteries and the New Sun Mysteries takes place in the individual soul, not in an institutional sense.  It is entirely a consequence of individual free spiritual choices.  No one commands such work be done, nor can any group or individual insist it not be done.  Only the individual, out of their work in the social commons, can author and source this union in their individual way.

Just as those coming to the New Sun Mysteries have read Steiner and met with many of the Daughter Impulses, so the ancient Saturn social Mysteries can be read of and met. Throughout Civil Society, for example, the influence of aboriginal peoples is seen everywhere.  The union of the New Thinking with the ancient social wisdom, as it takes place in individual souls, produces something new.

 

The influence already of that ancient social wisdom on the American Articles of Confederation and the U. S. Constitution is well known.  And, when we look at the poetic inspiration of the song America the Beautiful we arrive at: "...and crown thy good with brotherhood...".  The moral freedom of the fully developed ego consciousness of the human being is now bringing about the ability to unite the I within the soul with the eternal - that is with the Good, while at the same time this reaching for goodness is meant to be the soul and spirit foundation for true brotherhood - for the new healthy social life.

It is no accident of history that America exists, or that the roots of the American Soul are in the Aboriginals here.  It is no accident of history that the individualism that is the ripe fruit of Western Civilization has emerged most prominently where the memory - where the spirit recollection - of the oldest social truths has left its mark.  It is no accident of history that the Hopi Prophecy exists to help point the way.  Nor, sadly,  is it any accident of history that the vain spiritual imperialism of an idealistic shadow captured European spiritual life seeks to impose its personal karma of wounds in opposition to this potential.

The needed Marriage of the New Sun Mysteries and the Ancient Saturn Mysteries is vehemently opposed by that Spiritual Power, which would define the world of human meaning through continuing the Ahrimanic Deception beyond its true place in the evolution of consciousness.  This Power would also seek to rule the coming social order out of a corrupted American military and economic might.  This battle, between the European soul idealism and the pragmatic natural spirituality of Americans, within the Anthroposophical Society in America, is as a result profoundly relevant to world events and decisions.  In a very real sense, this battle here to free the American Soul to find its true inner calling is at the very heart of future world events. (Recall: Waking the Sleeping Giant: the mission of Anthroposophy in America)

The world economy, under the forces we call globalization, has reached a certain stage of development.  At the same time, with the dawning of the first century of the Third Millennium the Lords of Finance* - the aristocracies of concentrated wealth - are having an increasingly difficult time ruling the world with the same degree of license as they had for most of the 20th Century.

The American People are central to the next steps to be taken in world historical events, which is why Ben-Aharon wrote: America's Global Responsibility: individuation, initiation and threefolding.

The Dark Powers went out of their way at the beginning of the 21st Century to bring about the crucifixion of the American Dream in the minds and hearts of the world's peoples.  It was important to these Powers to falsely represent America more and more as a deranged and degenerate society, and to accomplish thereby as much as possible the ruination of  this needed imagination of the Beacon of Hope in the minds of the poor and disenfranchised the world over.

These same Powers, by encouraging European spiritual imperialism, have also lamed the American Anthroposophical Society.  They want to hold at bay the new Life Forces of Christ from entering into the course of world events in the way it is possible for them to do if the awake Marriage of the New Sun Mysteries and the Ancient Saturn Mysteries can be brought about in individual souls.  They also desperately need to keep the future development of the world economy from being confronted in America by these same new goodness-filled Life forces of Christ - Life forces seeded directly in the yet unrealized potential of the New (living heart) Thinking and the New Mysteries (the reverse cultus).

This potential power of individual moral freedom is the gravest danger to an emerging new form of ahrimanic group soul via the demands for Corporate allegiance, which seeks to ensnare the moral nature of the I by seducing that I with extraordinary material rewards.  It is this that stands behind all the effort expended to repress this moral Life's emergence, through the very subtle inner misdirection of the Anthroposophical Movement in America.  This misdirection does not come from without, but from within, through our failures to recognize and practice: the New Thinking; the true Nature of the New Mysteries (the reverse cultus); and, the slow and necessary mastery of the reality of the double-complex (the Shadow) and its influence on our shared spiritual life.

While it is true that this Marriage of ancient Saturn Mysteries and the New Sun Mysteries is already instinctively happening in Civil Society, and in such groups as the Bioneeers, here we must be concerned with the very sleepy American Anthroposophical Society, whose task it was to bring in these new Life forces of Christ in a more awake way.

In the face then of these awesome and crucial challenges in the present conditions of the world, what will the anthroposophists in America, and world-wide, do?  They are supposed to know of the New Thinking, of the potential for the New Mysteries out of the Social Commons of Branch and Group work via the Reverse Cultus and of the returning understanding of the need for human beings to take up the personal battles with the Shadow in the Soul.  This is dangerous knowledge, for it is a truth at odds with present day social norms, especially secular humanism, scientific materialism and religious fundamentalism.  In a time when certain secular humanists attack Waldorf Pedagogy and try to equate Steiner's folk soul teachings with National Socialism, and when Science and Religion fight over the meaning of evolution, and when humanity hungers and needs new insight and revelation, one has to wonder where the needed Michaelic Courage, to present to the world this dangerous knowledge, is hiding out.

The Anthroposophical Society and Movement seem to be sitting on the sidelines, watching its collective navel, while the great issues of the day are decided by others.  This does not have to continue.  However, for it not to continue requires a series of choices, choices that begin with brutal self honesty about the real history of the Society and Movement in the 20th Century, about the nature of the Mystery of America and about how well we are moving forward in the tasks set before us by Rudolf Steiner with regards to the New Thinking, the New Mysteries and the shadow forces in the soul.

But we anthroposophists are individuals.  Even our social forms are in decay.  So who will act?  Who will choose?  Who will find deeds out of which to incarnate the Good that Lives in Anthroposophy?  Those choices, those deeds, birth for the future something that can come in no other way; and, these are social deeds that I can only think to call, in that they are meant to emerge from the social commons: The New, and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth.

America is uniquely placed to be able to step into the social life of humanity carrying the essential nature of the New Mysteries and the New Thinking in the Branch and Group work.  Profound premonitions of the reverse cultus exist here.  The ancient social wisdom here rooted itself in numerous circles of conversation among equals, in kivas and around campfires.  The Transcendentalists intuited this theme in their deep recognition of the meaning of friendship.  Circles of Care arose in Boston in the mid-1800's, birthing the first sense of the need for a different approach to the care of the developmentally disabled.  In 1933, under the inspiration of an encounter with the ethereal return of Christ, the impetus was given to the founding, out of a circle of friends, of the profound work with the shadow forces via Alcoholics Anonymous.  In the last half of the 20th Century we saw the birth of the group work called: non-violent communication, born in the American Soul and becoming world-wide in scope.

Yet, in the American Anthroposophical Movement, the American Soul is held captive, its major prison built by us in our own souls out of the hard and rigid stones of Steiner-said, coupled with an excessive admiration of things European.  American anthroposophists carry now a special capacity and potential, which can be lost if not exercised.  Dynamic living spiritual communities hover over our work, waiting.  Recall from above these remarks from Ben-Aharon's Imagination of the Second Coming:

"Now when they identified themselves with the situation of earthly humanity, the souls who remained true to [Archangel] Michael prefigured, in their planetary Earthly-Sun life, the great Sacrifice of Christ.  They walked again in His steps [emphasis added] as they did in former earthly lives, only now the order of following was reversed.  They went before Him, showing Him the way, acting out of free and self-conscious human decision, and He followed in their steps only after they fully united themselves with the divided karma of Earth and humanity.  Only then could He offer His sacrifice as the answer to the new, future question of human existence: the question concerning the mission and fate of evil."  Jessiah Ben-Aharon, The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century

The communities of spirit related to Michael and Christ wait on our choices.  They have committed themselves to trusting human beings.  We know the reality of earthly existence in a way they do not, and to us they look for leadership in this time.  They honor our freedom above all else, and this makes our choices ever more acute and poignant.  I too wonder: What will my fellow anthroposophists do?

Well, I do have three wishes, if you have read that essay previously, so let us end this with that, for these are really simple matters.

1) That we create a true history of our movement's activity in the 20th Century (spirit recollection); 2) that we take an deep interest in the Mystery of America as it comes toward us out of the future (spirit vision); and, 3) that we stop saying: Steiner said (a gesture only possible out of memory), and instead begin to share our own in the moment heart thoughts (spirit mindfulness).

These are not difficult acts, and I can promise you that where they are carried out, the Opposing Powers will back away, forced to make room for the Life forces of Christ as these flow into human beings via the Moral Grace that is the Second Ethereal Eucharist.   Small acts of courage are asked for in these wishes, acts which are much needed in the Branches and Groups - the social commons of the Society and Movement.  Small acts of rebellion are these as well, against the sleepy social traditions in which we dream and from which we need to awake.  Small acts, coming from ordinary people, in celebration of the mystery of ordinary consciousness.  Small acts of individual first steps toward the new heart thinking, birthing in the only way possible the New Sun Mysteries as the New, and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth.

More than anything, these small acts of moral courage are the most profound spiritual power that can enter our circles.  It is not inspiration from above we need as much as inspiration from out of the social commons of a shared struggles to birth the New Thinking and the New Mysteries in the Chalice of the Reverse Cultus.

Visualize now, for a moment, Raphael's Madonna and Child.  Here obviously portrayed is a truth not yet well known or understood.  The Christ is held in the bosom of the Mother.  The moral order of the social world, in which Christ works out of and through freely chosen human moral deeds, is held in the bosom of the Earth - the Mystery of the Divine Mother.  Christ in us is the Heart of the social world, but the Mother is the Root, Stem and Branch of the social world.  And where is this Root, Stem and Branch most remembered, most spirit-recollected in America?  In the ancient Saturn Mysteries, that's where - among those who knew Her directly - and spoke of Her as: the Earth as Mother (Mother Earth and Father Sky).

Down to the Root of the social world we must go, deep into the Mysteries of the Americas.  Down, down into the dark moist of Earth, through the spheres of lies and evil, to the other side where waits the Golden Realm of the Divine Feminine.  Like Christ on the Saturday of His crucifixion we must descend into Hell, and through Hell to Her.  This is the work of confronting the Shadow in the Soul, which as a social or community process has been best practiced to date in the group work centered on the Twelve Steps.

As He told us: "he who loses his life for my sake will find it".  Visualize next the Pieta.  Christ dead, yet held by the Mother.  We die into the Mother - we surrender, we give up, we put down our burdens, our woes, our karma of wounds, our despair.  The soul dies to its collections and attachments to the past, whether old thoughts or old feelings or old impulses of will.

We actually do this every night when we go to sleep.  Every night!

What are little children taught in many places to pray?  Isn't it some version of:  Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  But if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

We surrender to the Mother every night in prayer.  We sleep and cross the threshold.  We die the little death.  Then we are reborn each morning, new.  At which point, if we wish to awake to the Second Ethereal Eucharist, we begin each day seeking Moral Grace, seeking to practice Love - to take up Christ's kind and light Yoke of Love.

The changes we seek to inaugurate out of our freedom can be very small, very much our own to author, and very human.  Like the great oak that grows from the tiny acorn, remarkable spiritual changes can flow out of the simplest of deeds.

What is called for is simple and dangerous rebellion against illusions living in the worship of things European, and the homogenization of thought in the Branches and Groups in America.  One must have a hunger, a need that must have freedom from the mental chains of Steiner-said.  But best of all, a recognition that the heartfelt thoughts of the own I are exactly and precisely what needs to be uttered in our work for the New Mysteries to appear.  Into the Branches and Groups we pour ourselves - a  small, but very great, deed.

We are not being an anthroposophist when we quote Steiner.  Only our own thoughts, which are rooted in soul soil of the seeking for the Good, can have Life.  And that Life can be, in the social context, filled from within by personally authored and sourced goodness, beauty and truth.  And, because it can appear superficially at odds with its social surroundings (while in its reality it gives deepest healing to these same social surroundings), this Life has to be called in the 2nd Century of anthroposophical endeavors: American (dangerous) Anthroposophy.

Americans are the will People, the People of social courage.  Such courage, and its related Life, are very much need in anthroposophical circles in America.