Two Reasons why I wrote The Sixth Key and Fifth Gospel - A Novel.

There were two reasons why I wrote The Sixth key and Fifth Gospel - A Novel and I would like to share them with you.

In actual fact, Fifth Gospel - A Novel was written first though it came out last. I had a desire to bring it out this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Fifth Gospel Lectures by R. Steiner but I found incredible resistance to publishing it through 'regular' publishers. Random House didn't want it and my agent sent it around to other publishers who didn't want it either. I realised that I had to write The Sixth Key first, as I was committed to write a book for Random. On researching it, I understood the wisdom of the spiritual world - according to Emil Bock the Apocalypse had to come before the Eternal Gospel because it was a foundation for it, because the eternal Gospel given by an angel at a time of great tribulation was found in the Apocalypse. Yes these were the original names of the two books - Apocalypse and Eternal Gospel.

The Sixth Key may seem like an adventure story, but I followed Rudolf Steiner's indications regarding the impulses that led to the First World War very closely. I had a sense that this too was going to see it's 100 year reflection. In the Sixth key I wove as much information as possible on the work of the secret brotherhoods, keeping the book light and entertaining but informative, so that, when it came to it, a feeling for the work of the brotherhoods would come when we were all faced with their work again in the world. (Having taken very much to heart what Rudolf Steiner said when he made the comment that if Schiller had finished his play Dimitri then Kaspar Hauser would not have been killed because a precedent would have lived in the heart of too many people and they would have recognised the work of the brotherhoods.)

The Sixth Key was a warning to the world based entirely on The Karma of Untruthfulness.

Only after The Sixth Key came out could I then bring out Fifth Gospel - A Novel, late last year, and as you know I published it myself.

It is not enough to banish evil through recognising it, but we also have to heal. The Fifth Gospel Lectures were given to the world by Rudolf Steiner a little prematurely because according to Peter Selg Rudolf Steiner would have liked to have given them at the Goetheanum, where the right atmosphere would allow them to enter into the hearts of the listeners. The impulse however to give them was too strong as the war was on its way. Rudolf Steiner gave those lectures to small groups hoping for their understanding. According to Peter Selg, for the first time in all his lecturing life, he read from notes, because he had intended to write a book, he wanted it to be like a story. It was not received with the right soul mood and so he stopped giving the lectures and finally stopped talking about the Fifth Gospel altogether.

The Fifth Gospel cost him the Goetheanum and his life. It was the last straw, the brotherhoods could not tolerate the mention of karma and the unveiling of their work as well as the truth about Christ Jesus to come out!

Why am I telling you this? What are my two reasons for writing The Sixth key and the Fifth Gospel? Am I just blowing my own trumpet?

No.

We are living in Apocalyptic times - Fifth Gospel was given to the world 100 years ago! We can measure where we are in the Book of Revelations by this very fact! The two gifts The Karma of Untruthfulness and the Fifth Gospel lectures, given to us by Rudolf Steiner are incredibly significant right now and I wanted to underline them as they can help us to not only understand what is going on around us but also, to find a way to heal the world.

For it is not enough to banish the devils from the physical body through wakefulness, if we want to bring about healing, we have to then work on the soul, which, free of the devils can now begin to balance itself. What is the balance that brings healing?

This is Christ.

So that is what I, in my own imperfect way have consciously tried to achieve for those who are not Anthroposophists with those two books. To bring them the work of Rudolf Steiner through the artistic element that they might develop concepts other than those they see on TV every day.

Those of us who have Rudolf Steiner's lectures can and should read them at this time, just to reacquaint ourselves with his indications for we need both consciousness of evil and a living experience of Christ if we are to really navigate the fetid sea of lies and propaganda we are experiencing. Those who cannot come to his lectures will hopefully find their way to them through the work we do on their behalf in the world.

The Hibernian Initiate

'Aye!' said, the Hibernian initiate to the postulant, 'This is what you must undergo:'

When you enter into your inner coldness
You will see a vision of Old Moon
And you will understand:
In the mineral substance of your bones
There is Wisdom.

When you free this numbness to the outer warmth
You will see a vision of old Sun
And you will understand:
In the-streaming light that now enters your organs
There is Goodness.

When you experience this sense warmth
You will see Old Saturn
And you will understand:
In warmth perception
There is evidence of Life.

When you learn to out-stream this warmth
You will see a vision of new Jupiter
And you will understand:
Human warmth on Jupiter will issue forth
As a love for the spirit.

Then when you can overcome your lower ego
You will see future Venus
And your will understand:
Only by loving the higher spirit can my warmth begin to shine
As a source of spirit light.

When this spirit light enters your heart again
You will see a future Vulcan.
And you will understand:
The spirit light of thought in you resounds as Word,
To become world comprehending.

Aye! You will work to know Christ, my son,
Before Christ comes,
To unite the Cosmic Word
With the human soul.
And when he comes, you will need no outer evidence,
For you will know: the human word in you
Does recognise the Christ, the Word of Worlds!

THE BLIND-FOLDED DRIVER

What is the cause of the epidemic of fear and anxiety we see in the world today? We live as if a calamity were just around the corner, that every step we take might be our last. Why is this so? Has the world become more dangerous than ever before? Is time speeding up out of our control? Not essentially. It is because we are moving closer to the spirit, we are speeding up, more than ever before but we are blind to it.

Imagine a blind-folded man riding a motorbike on auto pilot.

He can't balance himself well nor can he control his forward movement because he can't see where he is going. This causes a particular illusion to arise in him the faster the bike goes - he doesn't so much believe that he is moving forward but that the air is rushing toward him at ever greater speeds and that it is threatening to engulf him. This causes a dreadful fear and anxiety for what will happen, for what he will lose, for the calamities and accidents and wars, famines and injustices that are coming towards him that he can't control.

But the blind folded man is the point of resistance for that air. He can't see what is behind or what is ahead but he feels he is present because of this resistance he gives to this air. This resistance is important for living in the world. That is how the man knows he is alive, present on that bike despite the fact that he can't see himself. But he can use this resistance to balance himself and to find his hands, which are the will that can take away the blind fold so he can see where he is going.

In ordinary perceptions and the thinking that arises from them there is no free will. We are taken for a ride out of our control and we feel we are headed for doom because our thinking, we suspect, is really a kind of death. But if we find the will to free ourselves of the blindfold of ordinary thinking and perception we see where we are going, we see what is behind, ahead and all around and because of this orientation we realise that our forward movement is the reason the air feels like it is rushing towards us. We realise that the air is really the spirit, that the driver, our souls, is seeking! We see that the bike is the physical instrument of this quest. We are moving forward seeking the spirit blindly!

We must become the drivers of our own destiny if we are to dispel fear and anxiety and we can only do this by freeing our will. When we can see what is behind us, the causes of our feelings, impulses and thoughts that live in our will and we unite this freely with the spirit that is ahead of us, then we are truly in control and free - we can enjoy the ride!

So you see...higher consciousness does not arise without free will. We need to find the hands of the heart to release the head from its blindness or we will grow more and more anxious and full of fear. Those who can see the truth do not fear.

THE GAME (my version of Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game)

'Magister Ludi what is the goal of the Glass Bead Game?' said the postulant.

'To create a new science and art.'

'What are the rules?'

'There is to be no competition with others, all desire for reaching the goal will prevent you from doing so, and the end becomes the beginning.'

'What are the steps?

'The first step:

Remember that science only tells you about everything you see with your senses, these are sensations, feelings. It tells you only about what has 'become'. But this, you see, is only half of 'being'.

You must learn to will your thoughts out of you to meet what is 'becoming' without feelings. That is how you find the spirit. Then you shall know the counterpoint of everything thing - this is a new science.

The Second step:

Observe how the counterpoint makes an impression in you. Allow yourself to be moulded by the spirit in the world. This is the very essence of finding the Art in the game and the game is nothing without it. As long as you try to impress your self onto the spirit of things, you are wounding the spirit - or rather removing it from the things themselves so that they lose their objective truth!

Allow what has entered you to exist and die away without making any image of it. It is only from the silence that the new art is born.

The Third step:

Allow the warmth to fire your limbs to creative deeds - when you have reached this stage in the game you have brought science and art together.

'What is the glass bead?'

'You are the glass bead.'

'What do you mean?'

'A glass bead is completely individual and beautiful alone, but it can only contribute to the beauty of the game when it joins with other beads. The secret is this: it joins the other beads not out of desire, not out of competitiveness, but to create new games. Even so, it never loses its individual beauty and shape. What it becomes is what it was always intended to be. That is how the end becomes the beginning.'

THE BEGGAR THE SHOPKEEPER AND HIS ANGEL

The beggar boy went to the Arab shop every day to steal food.

He was an expert. He waited patiently until the owner was busy serving and he would slip a loaf of bread or a hunk of cheese into his coat, to quieten the hunger in his belly.

He was a pitiful sight, he knew it. Sometime ago he had glimpsed his reflection in a glass and it had startled and disgusted him. An unwashed, skinny Jew with the look of a wild animal, an orphan of wars. Discarded refuse. Unwanted. Unseen. Untouchable. Unloved. Before his parents had died he had been well educated, well fed and had a home. He had believed in angels. Now he didn't believe in anything but hunger.

He stood thinking on it this day, behind the tree as was his custom, as he waited for someone to come to distract the old man. 

The boy fidgeted. His belly growled. He was annoyed at the greedy old Arab who sat each day outside his shop to read the paper as if he had nothing but time. Arabs hated Jews and so he didn't feel bad taking this man's wares. Even so every night he would feel a pang of conscience and taking a branch from the tree opposite the shop he would sweep the footpath outside it as penance. Every morning the old Arab would open his doors and look around him with a smile on his face as if he had seen heaven.

This day there was no opportunity to steal anything for when the old man was busy there were too many people outside and he was afraid that someone might see him and call the police and when it was quiet the old man sat again with his newspaper, looking over its rim as if he expected something to happen.

The boy left to look elsewhere, dejected, hungry.

In the night it was windy and he couldn't sleep from hunger. When the wind died down he went to the shop again and took a branch from the old tree and began to sweep the leaves from the steps when he saw a loaf of bread there, sitting on a napkin. Too hungry to care why it was there, he took it, but before he could tear it in half he saw that something was written on the napkin.

“I waited all day for you. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?'

The boy was filled with panic. He thought he could see the old man's shadow in the window of his shop waiting to snatch him and to take him to the police and so he ran away.

Later that day he returned. He wanted to confess and to ask the old Arab for his forgiveness but his shop was closed. It was closed the next day and the day after that. On the third day the boy asked the lady who lived next door what had happened to the old man.

'Why do you care? He died on that windy night from cold sitting by the window waiting for that angel of his.'

'Angel?' The boy was amazed.

'Yes he said that an angel from Jehova came to him every day to take bread from him and every night he returned to sweep his steps. Imagine that! An angel of Jehova eating bread and sweeping the steps of an Arab shopkeeper!'

Choking back tears the boy walked away, thinking that there must be an angel in every one for that old man had been his angel! He had always known of his stealing and had done nothing! And, the boy thought, if there was an angel in him too, then he had better make something of his life, that way the old man's death would not be in vain!

Years later he was a man valued in his community as honest hardworking and kind. He always left a loaf out on the steps of his house. When they asked him why he said -

'You never know what angels are about..'

The Blind Novice

The young novice, full of unhappy sentiments, asked his master, 'Why do you say I am unfree! Just because I criticise brother Amius for taking more food than he needs! He was ashamed of it himself for I saw him scurry away with it to eat alone!'

The two, the older master and his novice were on their daily walk. Every afternoon they set off to collect medicinal herbs from the woods neighbouring the monastery for the herbaria. This day was chilly and the blueness of the sky signalled the onset of Autumn. The master walked with purpose, his old limbs accustomed to these walks kept a rigorous pace while the novice was cold and found it hard to keep up with his master.

'Every criticism is a judgement of the intellect in your soul and your soul is subject to error, to lies,' he said, pausing to stroke a flower that pleased him.

'But master, I saw it with my own eyes! He took more food than he needed.' The boy hugged himself to keep warm. 'Nearly twice as much, at a guess!'

The master straightened and looked at his charge. 'And your eyes are your measure, this what you are telling me, you believe only what you see? Well, your eyes only see half the truth and half a truth is merely a lie.'

The body frowned indignantly. 'Why is it a lie?'

'Look at the world around you my son! Do you believe that this which you see only with your eyes is all there is?'

'Is there more?'

'This is only one half of it, the dead part.'

'What do you mean? These herbs we have been picking are living and because they are living they heal!'

'Yes, but that is only half a truth. They are only alive because the wisdom of God, the spirit of Christ, the will of Christ, penetrates them and weaves about them. That is why they heal, not because they are alive, but because of what lives in them. Christ lives in us too...in the warmth of our blood and this gives us the possibility for rising above the errors in our thinking.'

'I must confess I do not see His spirit.'

'Perhaps not, but are you so arrogant as to think that just because you can't see something it doesn't exist? Consciousness is not reality. For instance, have you ever visited the Notre Dame in Paris?' his master asked, as he bent to inspect a fern.

'No, but I have heard tell it is beautiful.'

'The Notre Dame does not require your consciousness for its existence and thank God the spirit does not rely on you likewise! The subtle error of the intellect is that it judges only what it sees and binds the soul to all that is dead and this is what makes the soul unfree.'

'So, you say we should never speak the truth?' the boy said defiantly.

The old monk straightened again and sighed. 'Oh you are a silly, silly boy! We speak only when we see the 'real' objective truth, we withhold our imperfect judgement because the truth comes from a living understanding that is higher than the intellect since it is born not out of death but out of the living spirit. Only when we can move freely and objectively out of ourselves to SEE a thing can we know it is true and in so doing we overcome ourselves and we are freed from the power that binds all earthly beings...death.”

'What does this have to do with brother Amius, after all?'

'You say he took more than he needed?'

'Yes, far more, and I would say further that the abbot is foolish for allowing it!'

'And yet you do not take account of what you do not see. This herb I have just picked, it is a poison and yet you and I know that it also heals. The truth is often the opposite of what the ordinary intellect can know. The truth is that Brother Amius was not taking more than he needed at all. He was, in fact, taking less.'

The boy remonstrated, 'I am not blind I saw it myself!'

'But you are blind, blind because you do not see the spirit of Christ in this herb and blind because you do not know that the food Amius took this morning was not for him, it was for our ailing brother Gabriel, for whom we seek these herbs. Amius has asked that his portion be added to Gabriel's portion until he is well.'

The boy felt a sudden emotion rise to his throat. 'Oh Lord! I was wrong!'

'Yes yes!' The old man said enthusiastically. 'You were!'

'How can you be so glad of my error!'

'Because at this moment you are truly free!'

'What do you mean!' the boy let go of his basket and fell to his knees, his head in his hands. 'I am damned! I am damned!' he lamented.

'No my boy, you are not damned! There there,' The master soothed. 'It is only through error that we can learn to know who we are, and it is only by learning who we are that we can be free of ourselves to become who we are meant to be!'

He helped the boy up and together they collected the basket and herbs that had scattered about, and thus they continued their walk in silence.

But now the boy was no longer cold...a warmth had entered into his heart and a new enthusiasm fired up his limbs.

He wondered if this could be the spirit of Christ.

The True Nature of the Word

'What is the true nature of the word?'

This was the question the old man put to the velvet skies clotted with stars one cool autumn evening when again he could not fall asleep.

He remembered the words of Rudolf Steiner.

'The stars once spoke to human beings..
It is world destiny that they are silent now
To become aware of this silence can be pain for earth humanity
But in the deepening silence
There grows and ripens what human beings speak to the stars
To become aware of this speaking
Can become strength for Spirit Man.'

In silence he allowed his eyes to linger, not upon the stars themselves, but upon what lived between them. Here his open eyes gazed at the glowing weaving movement between the stars, the flames of warmth that glowed from this star to that and from that star to this. This warm flame he felt even in his own old heart.

'There speaks the spirit!' he said to himself. 'It speaks forth from star to star and I feel it, it speaks to me but not in words and so I do not understand it! I feel this speech in my heart, ringing its tones and notes that are silent, moving my blood and I allow it to live there resounding! This speech is love and I feel it comes from the Seraphim, the gods of love, who bestow upon my blood the quickening power of love, the fire of the spirit that enables me to say 'I'! When I step out into the world full of love for all there is and I unite my 'I' selflessly with the world, this is true feeling. It is a listening of the words of the Gods! '

He looked again and observed how this glow, like the glow of a flame, must have a source, a light, and he searched for it and he found this light in each individual star. Each star had a light that created the glow of love he could see moving and weaving from star to star. He could see how the light impulse came from the centre of each star and moved outwards in loving conversation and he smiled.

'Ah! There think the souls of the stars!' He marvelled, 'The stars think and then they speak to each other their intelligences! I can read the wisdom of the stars as one can read words! Each star gives and takes the loving thoughts of the other into itself in complete harmony creating spiritual letters that must combine harmoniously to make words!

The old man reasoned, 'Thinking in the spiritual worlds is pure harmony, and this harmony is formed from the forces of the Cherubim. In my own soul there lives a pale shadow of this thinking in language which has helped me to know I am different from the world outside me, but for this reason it is not in harmony with the truth, because I only think about what I see of the physical world. The truth only comes from cultivating the light that can add the spirit counterpart to the physical world. This is 'reality'. True thinking is a light that shines from inside out just like the light of the stars and it finds harmony when it connects with the thoughts of the Gods which have built the world! Only then, when I add seeing the words to listening to the sounds can I understand what the stars are trying to say to me.'

'But how can I speak to you when I live in a physical body? What is the answer that I must give to you, dear stars?' He looked at the great galaxies full of fixed and wandering stars, and he knew that they were sustained in the heavens by some unseen power.

'You, dear stars, do not only have a spirit and a soul, but you must also have a body! The body is what gives you the strength to exist in the heavens and yet it is the most hidden of all! Unlike the human being whose body is more visible than the soul and spirit, the body of the stars is elusive. And yet!' he thought. 'My body may be visible to others but its workings are elusive to me! I am not conscious of the workings of my body. What works in the body of the stars and in my body is life. What is life in spiritual terms if not consciousness! I see now! There lives your sustaining power in the dark, hidden aspect of each star! The aspect that is not seen but only remembered in what I see! It is what lives behind the seen world, on the other side of the veil live the spiritual beings that sustain the loving thoughts and speech I can observe and understand. The consciousness that lives behind the stars is aeons old, full of wisdom and this wisdom lives in me because of the thrones who have brought life into the will in my

limbs! In my limbs I embody the wisdom, the memory of the stars and that is why my physical body is the most perfect part of me! I can say I, because of this perfection!'

The old man was warmed through and through and enlivened and quickened by these contemplations despite the night growing colder and colder about him.

'I understand you, dear stars!' He said to jewels above. 'You are always speaking to me...but I did not see or hear or understand you! Now I have become conscious of what you need from me! You need me to do loving deeds out of conscious freedom. Conscious love freely given is something new, it is a new kind speech!

'I realise now that it is through me that you can know the true nature of speech! Since Christ left the spiritual world to make it possible for me to say 'I', this has been your question to humanity!' The old man marvelled. 'For what do you stars see when you look down from the heavens?' He laughed with joy and gratitude. 'You see stars! You feel the warmth of our speech as a glow of spirit, you see the light of our spiritual thoughts and you are sustained by observing our conscious loving deeds, the movements we make as we mark a path across your night sky because something lives within us - a higher consciousness that you wish to know again!'

'My question to you was therefore really my answer. 'The true nature of the word lives in me! It is I - the Christ which lives in me that I body forth into the world! The strength of the Spirit in Man!'

Full of love he took himself to bed.

That night he slept well.

THE SOPHIA OF THREE LIVES - A Fictional Exploration of karma.

The man is an Egyptian priest. He is a priest because he is one of the few still capable of communing with the upper Gods collectively called - Osiris. When he stands before the stars and observes the patterns of light they make, he looks into his soul to find understanding, into that part of him that still remembers the language of God, this he knows is the Isis in his soul, which the Greeks call Theososophia - the wisdom of God.

Though he cannot see Isis, like the priests of older times, he has always been able to hear her interpretations, and because he is unclouded by personal feelings he has been made the chief of all priests. Isis helps him and his priests to know many things of great importance for the guidance of his people and while ever he can read the words in the stars and understand them through Isis selflessly, he is able to lead the priestly circle to direct the people in a way that is wise and just and fruitful.


One day something creeps into his nightly ritual, when with the other twelve he looks up to what the stars would say. A longing rises in him for something other than the words of the gods, he desires to speak out his own words, what lives in his own thoughts and instead of intoning the 'We' he intones the forbidden word - 'I'! Immediately there rings out a stern and awful warning which shakes him and the other priests to their very foundations. He has mingled his own self into the prayers and this has polluted the ritual. He has to leave the circle and never return and he is shunned from the temple forever. He is too egoistic to be a priest.


In his next life the Egyptian priest returns again with a certain attitude of soul which longs for nature. He wants to be a farmer but his life has led him into that army which follows the God of the Sun, the young Alexander, into Egypt.

He is an honourable man and a good soldier, and his common sense leads Alexander himself to take note of him on more than one occasion, and so he is given many responsibilities. He is outwardly honoured but inwardly sad for he does not like this foreign land they call Egypt and he does not trust the decadence of its priests.


To all he seems an ordinary man but he has a special gift. At certain moments, unbidden by him, he is able to dream into nature and to observe there the workings of the lower gods collectively called Dionysus. In those moments he sees Demeter and although she never speaks he discerns her intentions in relation to those gods, in that part of his soul that is one with nature, that part that Aristotle is said to have called, Philosophy.


At a certain point upon the army's march in the south lands they begin to traverse a narrow beach close by a hard cliff wall. Here he sees the Goddess and she points to the tide and he understands that the army will not reach higher ground before it turns again. He hesitates, for surely this is only a dream! It is plain to see that higher ground is near and they will have time to reach it. He will not bother the generals with a dream and entice their ridicule!


But the cart carrying provisions loses a wheel in the sand and by the time it is repaired the tide has turned. Many men and horses perish and the soldier realises with bitterness and sorrow his mistake and decides that he has failed the Goddess and her consort Alexander - the God of the Sun - the image of Apollo on earth! He tells himself he is too cowardly for Revelation and so he closes his eyes to his dreams and the world of nature loses its colour. When he returns home he does not buy a farm but turns his eyes to books and becomes very learned about the natural world though no one could guess it, for on the surface he seems just a simple man.

In his next life he returns again, this time as a teacher. One day this teacher, now a woman, learns about biodynamic farming and she takes herself to a conference being given locally about it. She finds that she is drawn to the speaker because he is a great philosopher, a clear thinker like Aristotle, who speaks about the spirit in nature and the language of the stars without a trace of dreaminess or priestly dogma. She feels he is enchanting memories from the depths of her soul of things she has always known in a different way. These fill her heart with warmth and enthusiasm, but most of all a desire to learn more about this Anthroposophy he teaches, and so she embarks on a deep study. 

She finds that the more she studies, the more she senses in her soul an impression, in that place where she is used to sensing what is right and what is wrong during quiet moments of reflection. This part of her is that part that helps her to understand herself and now she realises that something lives there and that it is a being called Anthroposophia - the wisdom in the human being. She realises that she has always felt the guidance of this being in her heart. And she knows that although Anthroposophia lives in all human beings only those who are truly conscious of her can call themselves Anthroposophists, just as those who were once conscious of her could call themselves priests and philosophers. She also realises that because this being is a part of her, its life is dependent upon her own consciousness. This fills the teacher with a great urgency. She must teach young children in such a way that they will become conscious of this being. So she goes to the great lecturer and he gives her the task of teaching in the first Waldorf School.

Here she meets those priests from whose circle she was once banished, these are her peers; she meets those soldiers who died on that beach in Phoenicia because she was afraid of being ridiculed, these are her pupils. More and more when she walks in nature she begins to see the spirit behind everything in the world, and when she gazes out at the stars she begins to understand the pattern-language of the gods. She can say 'I' and she is not in a dream! She knows she can do this because many lives have prepared her to find within her the Wisdom, the Isis/Sophia of Christ.

THE BOY

The boy is walking on a beach. He looks ahead as he walks on the sand and does not see the foot prints made by his feet because his focus is on the view ahead and what might be around the corner, his destination. At one point he turns around but as he sees no footprints, because the sea has wiped them away, he is sad. He had a faint but dim impression that he had come from somewhere but now he can see that he only exists while ever he is moving forward and looking ahead and so he vows never to look behind again. To look behind is to face the nothingness of his being.

When he reaches his destination for the night, therefore, he can't remember how he got there, but he doesn't care. What is important is what will happen around the next corner during his walk the next day. This preoccupies him and fills him also with a certain fear.

Later, however, a voice in his heart tells him.

"If you are making footprints when you walk, surely you must have left footprints behind you? This means you are always in a different place from where you have been.' 

He tells this voice he has no evidence and as he won't look backwards he vows to find evidence for what is behind him by observing what is ahead.

On his next walk he begins to gather shells and sand and other things, trying to explore their properties for any clue. He studies the sea that comes and goes and the sky that hangs over him in its vast and endless blueness. The sand, sky and surf are always there, ahead and in front, surely this will help him to understand where he has come from? He calls this gathering up of evidence of what he can see, Science. But this helps him to know only about what he isn't, and nothing about what he truly is and where he has come from. 

So he decides he must understand how his legs move the way they do, the muscles, sinews, veins and arteries. He investigates his heart and lungs and finally his head because his eyes are what help him to see where he is going, and though they never see what is around a corner which inspires fear, he thinks they must surely be capable of explaining where he has been. And yet he doesn't use his eyes to look behind him again, because he will be too sad when he finds nothing. 

One day he realises that there is a bird always following him, and this gives him comfort though this bird flies too high for him to see it clearly. Even so, that voice in his heart tells him to walk tall and to keep watching the bird because it might lead him to where he should be going.

In the evening as he sits by his fire, however, he is still no closer to understanding how he got here again he assuages his concerns by trying to think of what his journey might be like tomorrow. Yet again when he thinks about what could be around the corner it frightens him, because he is frightened of what he can't see. He is only comforted by the thought that if he keeps doing the same things he has been doing always, and if he follows the right path, that is, always looking ahead, he will eventually find not only a better place but also someone who can tell him about where he has been - he calls faith in what he can't yet see, religion.

One day he hears a voice in his heart say, 'get up and look for the bird'. 

Because the sea is rough he decides not to walk so close to the shore and when he sees the great bird flying overhead he is so taken with joy in following its flight that without realising he turns around and notices something quite extraordinary! He notices his footprints and they lead around the corner! They are soon washed away by the pounding surf but he follows them and finds where he has slept the night before! At first he wonders if it isn't an illusion, and realises that by mistake he has left something of himself there. This is what helps him to recognise his sleeping place. So he begins to walk backwards to every place he has slept, and he sees signs of where he has been and with each walk he grows more and more certain that he will find his origins.

One day he comes to a hut.

In this hut he finds his mother and father. They have been waiting for him to find his way home.

The boy says to them - why did you not come and find me? I have been lost! Why did you leave me alone to walk so far from you? Science and Religion didn't help me to find you. It was the bird! I turned around, saw the bird and retraced my steps!

The mother says, 'Yes! You had to leave us, so you could find us again in this new way, a way that is not science or religion but something born out of the two! You were never alone, I was the voice in your heart and your father was the bird that followed you on your walk. Now you can go forward with joy for what is behind you and with confidence for what is in front of you, because you can see and hear that we are always with you.

The Eleventh Holy Night

BULL/TAURUS

In exploring this Zodiac of the Bull we now move from the sphere of the hierarchies to the the region of the Holy Cosmic Spirit from which forces emanate towards the planets.

The Holy Spirit is also called the Lunar Logos because of its kinship to the Moon. This kinship was the result of an important task during Christ's descent towards the earth. The birth of the Sun Logos into the Body of the Sun was made possible by the Holy Spirit principle working into the sphere of the Moon through the communion of the entire circle of the 6 Elohim and Jehova as we have seen in previous posts. The Holy Spirit is connected, therefore, to the Moon Sphere by virtue of this union and the entire third hierarchy of angels, in particular their representatives the Angels.  It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit has a special connection to the Astral body of man or the soul, which was created on old Moon and its connection with the consciousness of the entire soul - the Consciousness Soul - or the 'Conscience Soul'.

We see this relationship between the Moon and the Sun through the Holy Spirit in the various cults of the Bull in Egypt and Sumeria. In Egypt the Egyptian Goddess Isis was the Goddess of the Moon, and her image arose out of the union of the Moon with the Sun, that is, of Sophia with Isis and through them, the union of the region of Virgo with the region of the Bull. This connection was depicted in various ways depending on what forces were prevalent at the time, for instance:

In the Third Cultural Epoch whenever the influence from the sphere of the Virgin was the more prevalent there arose the image of the Moon Goddess Isis, representing the Sun spirit, the Divine Sophia, the World-Soul, carrying her Sun-child Horus. Whenever the image of the Bull or the entire macrocosm prevailed in Egypt, Isis was seen with Cow Horns on her head - as an image of her representation of the World Spirit. Furthermore when, within these cow horns was  depicted the Solar disc, it signified the upward striving of the Spirit of the Bull from the Sphere of the Moon to the Sphere of the Sun or the region of Ram. This depicted an ascent from Holy Spirit to Christ, which signified a move from the Third Cultural Epoch, Egypt to the Fourth, Greco-Roman Epoch, when Christ would be born on earth.

The Luciferic principle had cut itself off from the Holy Spirit on old moon. It chose not to strive upwards to the Sun Sphere but to remain egoistically within the boundaries of the Moon Sphere. The  Luciferic Holy Spirit did not seek to find Christ and, it is for this reason, that in the Greco Roman era the Bull was associated with the Luciferic principle.

The Holy Spirit that emanates from the region of the Bull down into the Moon Sphere was seen at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist through the agency of his angel in the form of a Dove. He saw this image of the dove because, interestingly, Rudolf Steiner tells us, the cow seen inspiratively, takes on the image of a dove, since astrally the cow is like a bird. 

It is the Holy Spirit, which once again enables the birth of Christ into the Nathan Sun-Soul, the being of Jesus of Nazareth at the baptism in the Jordan. Christ is born, not only through the highest earthly representative of the region of the angels or Waterman - John the Baptist - but also because of another mystery.

The Luke Mary is that being who was once seen as Isis by the Egyptian Initiates. And her own descent into the human soul ran parallel to the descent of the Nathan soul to earth carrying the Christ being through his sacrifices. Isis/Mary descended from the region of the Sophia and enabled human beings to develop the Sentient and intellectual souls in preparation for Christ's incarnation. After her own short incarnation, the heavenly Isis/Mary was united once more with the Divine Sophia at her death. It was her unification with Mary of the Matthew Gospel which connected the Matthew Mary with the Sophia making the birth of Christ into the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, possible. This communion of heavenly and earthly representatives from the Sphere of the Bull and the Virgin - was the archetypal image of the spirit which must enter the soul to enable the birth of Christ there.

Similarly, it is also the Holy Spirit from the region of the Bull that, in uniting with the sphere of Twins or Seraphim, (represented by the sacrifice enacted by both Christ and the Zarathustra individuality at the baptism), that created the possibility for the birth of the highest principle of Sacrificial love, Christ, on earth. Christ, the Sun Being was then able to walk the earth and to speak of a love that is not inspired by 'blood' kinship, but a love that is free and inspired instead by 'spirit' kinship. He could do this through the agency of this region which rules the Larynx and speech (Bull) and the Spirit of Community (Twins).  It is for this reason that speech connects us with others in a loving marriage of souls. Rudolf Steiner even goes so far as to say that the Larynx will one day not only speak forth words, but will be a creative organ, a higher version of the organs of reproduction which are, at present, possessed by human beings. The larynx will offer itself up, chastely, to the Holy Lance of  Love - the Holy Spirit - in order to bring to 'birth' the spirit of Christ, not only in the soul, but within the soul of a 'community' and in the Soul of the earth, as a moral creative force. In this way The Bull also connects the realm of Twins with the realm of Goat, the realm of Archangels, in particular Michael who, as the highest Archangel of the Sun and the Countenance of Jehova, had a special relationship both to the Sun Logos and the Holy spirit  - the Word and Thought - that is, the Cosmic Intelligence of Christ.

Luke was the apostle connected to the Sphere of the Bull. Luke was a 'Bull Initiate' and therefore a doctor because the Holy Spirit is connected with all forms healing. It is connected with healing because it is the Holy Spirit which brings about a connection between the human being and Christ - the great healer. Luke therefore, sees the Mystery of Golgotha from the perspective of the healing Nathan Soul, or Jesus son of the Isis Mary. When we see the image of Mary holding her child in her arms in Bethlehem as Luke depicts it, it is the fulfilment of the prophecy seen by the Egyptian Priests, who saw the image of Isis holding the Horus child. 

It is the human being who also heals Lucifer by connecting Lucifer with the Holy Spirit again in the human soul.

So on this Holy Night when we gaze up at the region of the Bull (Thought), may we see the connection between it and the Holy Spirit, the Lunar Logos working particularly through the Moon Sphere realm of the angels to enable the birth of Christ (The Word) firstly into the body of the Sun and secondly into the body of the Sun-Soul Jesus of Nazareth. May we see the Gospel writer Luke writing of the Nathan Soul and the Isis Mary. May we see how the Luke Mary united with the Solomon Mary so that she became, the Mother of God, a 'Vicarious' incarnation of the Sophia on earth, and how the Holy Spirit united again with the Mother of God twice more: at the Wedding at Cana and at the Pentecost in order to bring about a free 'common love' among men who are not blood kin.

May the Spirit of this Holy Night working in our souls unite us with the Spirit of Christ in the sun of our hearts so that we may unite in loving communion and speak forth the word of God!