Wednesday, Mercury Day, is the turning point in Holy Week. Towards evening a scene unfolds in the quiet country town of Bethany, beyond the Mount of Olives, where not too long ago the scene of the Raising of Lazarus had taken place - the event which had drawn the attention of the authorities. Lazarus along with the disciples of Christ are gathered round his table; Lazarus who has earned the title John; the one described as resting on the heart of Jesus the next evening at the Last Supper – The one whom Jesus loved. Martha & Mary Magdalene, are the sisters of Lazarus-John, it is in their family home that they have gathered. In the life of each of these 3 there has been an event which brought a radical transformation. For Lazarus it was the awakening from the grave, the redemption of the physical body, & the coming in of new ego forces, thru the spirit of John the Baptist. For Mary Magdalene it had been the freeing & purifying of her astral body, with the casting out of the 7 demons. Martha is said to be the woman who was healed of the issue of blood. Thru the Christ, her etheric formative forces were restored. As they all sit at the table with the disciples, Mary anoints the feet of Christ with precious spikenard ointment wiping his feet with her hair. Spikenard is a sacred oil used for thousands of years as a spiritual tool to assist in self-reflection & clarity. It stood for centuries as an evocation of the perfume of the lost Garden of Eden - Sacred to the Planet Venus, & the honeybees, associated with the Crown Chakra. Nard oil has strong, warm, musky notes, similar to the aroma of healthy earth. This oil inspires deeds & harmonizes the relationship between heaven & earth. St John’s Gospel says that the whole house was filled with the perfume. Mary Magdalene had performed a similar act a year & a half previously. But what does her act of anointing signify now? It is a sacramental act – the fulfillment of the Last Anointing. But the solemn stillness is suddenly broken by the jealousy of the disciples & especially of a figure who forms a complete contrast to Mary Magdalene. When Judas sees the deed of Mary he loses self-control. He says that the precious money which has just been squandered could have been given to the poor. This gave him the final impetus to his act of betrayal. He had waited a long time for Jesus in the hopes that he would come forth publicly to lead an earthly political revolution. But this was not to be.
Interestingly enough both Judas & Mary Magdalene are typical Mercury people; they are active & temperamental. One of the virtues of their nature is that something is always happening round them. Mary Magdalene, however, trains her restlessness & transforms it into devotion, peace & the capacity for love. This intense devotion allows her to be The One who anoints the Anointed One, the first to meet & behold the Risen Christ – Becoming the ‘Apostle to the apostles’. Judas pretends to want something for the poor. But however good & commendable social activity may be, it is often only self-deception. The underlying motive is not a genuine social impulse, but his own inner restlessness - a yielding to an unacknowledged weakness. This leads to his betrayal & his own dark fate. Such a soul cannot show devotion; above all, it cannot love. A restless person is not capable of real love; for love is possible only where the soul has found peace. So, we see in these two diverse figures, two roads separate, like at a crossroads. One leads to Love of Christ; the other into tragedy & suicide. Marta, the other sister of Lazarus, is a transition, between those two. Martha is the constantly active one. Her service & devotion are genuine, but the unrest which was healed in her body has remained in her soul. These mercurial characters of Holy Wednesday show us the crossroads which we must face before we can hope to be admitted to the sphere of Maundy Thursday - the mystery of the sacrament. Judas is the man without ritual. He loses self-control when he comes into the sphere of true ceremonial worship. Mary Magdalene is the sacramental soul. Martha is the striving soul. Mercury, who for the Greco-Roman world was both the God of Healing & also the God of merchants & thieves, comes now into the orbit of the Christ Sun. The scene in the house of Lazarus & Mary & Martha shows how Mercury, the God of Healing, can himself be healed by the Sun imbued Christ impulse.
Mary Magdalene, as a great Initiate, was able to serve her role, knowing the right time to perform the last anointing. This relates to: The third stage in the Rosicrucian Initiation - Inspired Cognition - Reading the Occult Script. We go beyond Imaginative Cognition, letting the relationship of these pictures speak. This is the beginning of the ability to recognize & coordinate the various lines of force which stream creatively thru all worlds, learning to form them in cooperation with the discerned presences of being whose attributes come alive for us thru sound & color. We discover & cultivate an inner resonance with the essence of these beings, which expresses itself as spiritual tone - as the gesture of the ‘Music of the Spheres’. We work to determine how these inspirations are founded based on cosmic proportions, & we use those formulas to read the hidden signature that is modeled on these harmonies. This becomes what is called Reading the Occult Script.
The 3rd stage of the Christian Initiation correlates to: The Crowning with Thorns — At this stage we must learn to brave the world not only intellectually but morally, with a special emphasis on abstaining from anger - even when everything we hold dear is being attacked. To develop the capacity to remain detached when everything is tumbling down around us, to be able to say “Yes” when the rest of the world says “No” — that is what must be achieved before the next step can be taken. This gives rise to a new symptom, or indication, the power to detach the faculties of Thinking, feeling, and willing. We must learn to separate as well as to re-unite them at will. So long as some outer event carries us away, we are immature. If we are not masters of our own impulses, our actions may have a shattering influence in the world. The disciple must be able to remain impassive in the face of any event, no matter how catastrophic. That is the only way to reach freedom. The separation of Thinking, feeling, and willing produces a change in the brain that is symbolized by the Crown of Thorns. Steiner warns that if the disciple has not properly achieved the earlier stages, tries to go too fast, or receives wrong guidance, the change in the brain may lead to insanity - which is an involuntary separation of these faculties without the possibility of their reunification by of the inner will. The disciple must bring about the separation by an act of conscious volition.
In the course of the Christian initiation known as the Crowning with Thorns, we meet the phenomenon known as the Guardian of the Threshold — the appearance of the lower double. All impulses of will, desires and thoughts, appear to the Initiate in visible form, which is often dreadful, for it is the offspring of all our urges and unresolved karma. It is our personification in the astral world. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead it is referred to as the ‘evil pilot’. This form must be met before we can find the higher Self. The Guardian of the Threshold which has been a phenomenon of astral vision since ancient times is the origin of all the myths concerning the struggles of Heroes with monsters – of Perseus and Hercules with the Hydra, of St. George and Siegfried with the dragon… In working toward this stage of initiation we must be able to find strength within our own “I” under the influence of Christ, to purify our astral bodies here on earth. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” This Beatitude is the antidote to the 3rd layer of the inner earth known as the Vapor or Air Earth. Some of the outer characteristics described by Steiner’s clairvoyant vision speak of it as displaying a will-like expression capable of enormous expansion, like a cancer. “Life present at every point”. The substance is imbued with inner forces resembling passions and urges. This is a realm of inverted feeling; joy becomes sorrow; sorrow is joy. The original quality of any feeling or sensation is extinguished and converted into its opposite.
The 3rd Beatitude thru Steiner is: “Blessed and filled in their astral bodies with God are those who become meek thru the power of their own Ego, who can foster calmness and equanimity within themselves; all comfort and well-being on earth shall be their reward, they will inherit the kingdom of earth.” As we know, the astral body was incorporated into the human being during the Moon evolution, and the Luciferic beings who gained influence over humanity at that time established themselves specifically in the astral body in an attempt to keep the human being from reaching our highest earthly goal. These Luciferic beings, remained behind at the Moon stage of evolution, and hindered humanity from progressing in the right way; but since the descent of Christ to earth, when it became possible for our Ego to be imbued with His power, humanity has been empowered to fulfill the mission of the earth by finding the power within to bridle the astral body and drive out the Luciferic influences. Therefore, it can be said: “Those who can curb their astral body, who are so strong that they cannot be moved to anger without the consent of their Ego, who are even-tempered and inwardly strong enough to overcome the astral body, will fulfill the purpose of earthly evolution.” So, in the 3rd Beatitude we have the formula to overcome the cancerous urges of the 3rd layer of the inner earth. This is what Mary Magdalene was able to achieve.  Here is the video recording for Holy Wednesday from our 8-fold path to Easter 2021 – where we explored the connections between the rhythms of the FSM, the experiences of The Life of Christ during Holy Week, & the Rudolf Steiner’s Weekday Exercises.
27 March 2024 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Castor and Pollux shine together nearly overhead in the south after dark. Pollux is slightly the brighter of these "twins." Draw a line from Castor through Pollux, follow it farther out and you're at the dim head of Hydra, the Sea Serpent. Continue that line farther by a fist and a half and you hit 2nd-magnitude Alphard, Hydra's orange heart.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1625 - Deathday of King James patron of Shakespeare, Bohme, Bacon, Blade
1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain as a prisoner for the rest of her life.
1966- DeathDay of Karl Konig, Founder of Camphill
1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.
Solar Eclipse Convergence: |
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