Contemplations on the Being of Sophia

Contemplations on the Being of Sophia

 From Heavenly Sophia to Practico Sophia.

CONTENTS – Clicking on a Section # will take you directly to that Section – continuous scrolling through the complete document works as on other pages!
1 – Introduction and Personal History (Creating Context)
2 – Dedicating a Community
3 – The Sophianic in History
4 – Sophia and The Mystery of Golgotha
5 – The Next Step of the Sophianic Impulse
6 – Practico Sophia

1 – Introduction and Personal History (Creating Context)

This consideration of the Sophia is written now at the time approaching the darkest days of the year. This is the time of the year when fall passes into winter. When the outer light diminishes, so the hope here is that the inner light of the Sophia can penetrate this darkness. My first contemplation on the Sophia was undertaken this Spring. At that time, I wrote about “Easter In The Light Of The Sophias”. The Sophia contemplation grew out of a question about the two mothers. At the time, the cycle “From Jesus to Christ” was being taken up for the Easter study at the Fellowship Community. The present contemplation on the Sophia originated from a request to speak about the Sophia at the local Branch Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. The group which represents the branch work of the Society in the Threefold Community meets every Wednesday evening in the Auditorium of this community.

When the question about the Sophia surfaced this Spring I was unaware of the fact that the Sophia was the theme of the General Anthroposophical Society for this year of 1997. I had been concerned with the question of the Mothers and the Sophia for many years — in a way from the time of my teens when I began to read the lecture cycles on the Gospels together with some members of my family, my father and Margaret Deussen. When the request came that I say something about the Sophia at the Branch meeting, I spent every spare moment preparing so that I could unfold my thoughts further and bring a different perspective from that articulated at Easter time. My goal was, and is, to take the impulse of Sophia and see how this can be led into the practicalities of life. In preparation for this consideration, I went through the Cycle on “Ancient Myths” by Rudolf Steiner. Also, the lectures on “The Isis Sophia” were a part of the preparation.

The book by Sergei Prokofieff on the “Heavenly Sophia And The Being Of Anthroposophia” was worked through. I read this book and made extensive notes trying to find the similarities between my views and his and as well, the differences. I made note again and again that I thought it necessary to rise higher into the spiritual world than articulated by Sergei, and at the same time reach more deeply into the physical world to meet the Being of Sophia as She has come to evolve out of the cosmos and through the human being. The considerations by Sergei Prokofieff was entitled The Heavenly Sophia, and he made no pretense of trying to follow Her Being into other domains of existence except for the soul of man. The title of the book, of course, indicates that he did not direct his attention to the practical which is the goal of my considerations here. His views, however, often run parallel with mine, and his writing, in my view, offers considerable support for my perspective offered at Easter time. There is no question that his orientation is quite different from mine, but it is and has been very helpful to meet someone seeking in a similar direction. For his work I have much appreciation.

A bit of Personal history or Contexting follows. My quest for the sophianic began when I was in my mid-teens. At the age of fifteen or sixteen I had to travel from my home in Amherst to Cleveland, Ohio. This was necessary for several years and involved a bus trip of an hour and a quarter. I had to visit an orthodontist there because of progressive malocclusion of my front teeth. One of the first orthodontists was located in Cleveland, so I had to travel there. During these bus rides, trips, I could spend time reading or dreaming. This care of the teeth I could add to an already busy life in high school with some sports, a life on the farm, the time spent practicing the violin and a lively interest in the social life of a small farming town of 1800 souls three miles from my home.

Once in Cleveland I then had to walk for several blocks from the bus terminal to the dentist’s office. An arcade was located halfway. A bookstore, an antiquarian, was a part of the arcade, for me the essential part. After some visits to this bookstore, with shelves covered from floor to ceiling, I found a collected volume of Plato, one of the first books that I ever bought.

Something of the unusual struck me about this volume of collected works by this philosopher. The ideas were quite refined and ethereal. I was a bit prepared for this adventure into an ethereal philosophy by the two members of my family (Fritz Scharff and Margaret Deussen) who were interested in the thoughts that human beings can have about existence out of an Anthropo-sophy. At the same time my mother (Georgia Scharff) was busy practicing medicine, while we lived very involved on a small truck farm. The Scharff family moved to the farm for the sake of a handicapped young man (Carl Scharff). The farm was not cultivated for the sake of economic needs. An effort at a deeper view of the human being was being cultivated by the two souls just noted. This setting was necessitated by the illness of a human being. Carl Scharff was an epileptic with uncontrollable seizures whose life would be endangered in a city.

These few details are shared as a philosophical bent lived in this setting and an anthroposophical one, as well. This was the preparation for meeting the collected works of Plato, the philosopher Plato. With Plato’s writings, as noted, I was struck by the fine etherealness of the ideas written about in his dialogues. Another world seemed to radiate out of the dialogues, and I could easily feel myself transported not only into another world, but a world closely allied with an earthly space, that is Greece. The volumes on art history, located in the family library, had also very much caught my interest, even earlier in life. The art of Greece shown with particular light for the soul of a growing boy.

At the same time this farm and home setting laid the ground, the foundation for this current effort to consider a “Practico-sophia”. The philosophical and anthroposophical perspectives were and are essential for this present consideration. What is being written about is anchored in early life by the sharing with these two elders and the practical demands of a home with an ill brother and a small truck farm with gardens, animals and woods. (Five sandstone quarries and a pure hill of sand was a part of the setting bringing the geology of existence to the immediacy of life.) The philosophical of Plato stood in stark contrast with the many demands and the practicalities of life. Such was a life that was lived as Plato was discovered on the shelf of an antiquarian. Philosophy was not a part of the curriculum of a public school in the middle of a small town surrounded by farms and a sandstone quarrying industry. What did exist in the public school, however, was a superintendent of schools that loved to speak about the Greek, Greek times and the processes of mathematics. Later I was to learn about the Greek thinker and mathematician, Pythagoras.

A “Practico-sophia” must have a rich life circumstance in order to come to birth. The rich life must be inward and outward as well. For me the sophianic could be cultivated by virtue of my father’s interest in philosophical views on existence. My father was interested in the thinking capacity of the human being and the views on existence which could arise out of human thinking. He met this thinking approach to the sophianic through Johannes Walter Stein on the battlefield in Europe during the First World War. Through Johannes Walter Stein he was introduced to a lecture cycle by Rudolf Steiner entitled “Human And Cosmic Thought”. This cycle of four lectures he translated for me when I was still quite young and did this because of my interest in the various views of existence which human beings could evolve through the capacity to think. By this means the Platonic perspective could become one of the many possible views. But an interest in the sophianic process awoke in a home for a handicapped boy, on a small farm, in the midst of mid-American farmlands.

Thus, I came to a kind of love for wisdom in a setting which for most has or had nothing to do with such an approach to life. Family relations served this need, while the practical world was very much alive on all sides. Life itself asked for solutions, asked for solutions out of the demands, in a home where the mother was busy with a medical practice and the home needed tending by all, on a farm and in a community. The ethereal of the Platonic sophianic was challenged in the face of life, the many sides of life. A small industrial city not far away, where my mother practiced medicine and my father worked in the administration of a large steel mill, offered the more modern dimensions of existence in addition. Also not so far away was a small town with a college where the aura of medieval existence hung in the air to a certain degree. The college is well known to many -Oberlin College whose motto is “Learning and Labor” a motto taken from John Frederick Oberlin himself.

With this diverse background I then grew into more mature life. I chose a vocational life where “practice” is the method of serving. This vocation is the “practice of medicine”. However, the antiquarian with Plato has never faded, but has always asked that the sophianic be extended to practice in the flow of life. So, it all began in a secondhand book shop, as it were, when it comes to the quest for a “Practico-sophia”.

Where I grew up in a small farming community, on a farm with an ill brother, the interest of the farmers was not at all what I had at heart. Most of my friends were “practical” (they claimed) people from the land as well as sons and daughters. The farmers with whom I mingled had no patience for the philosophical “stuff” I found interesting. My friends also tended to consider my philosophical bent as farfetched. What I could note is that even if they thought my interest in ideas and philosophy was far out, they none the less tolerated me, as I worked along as best I could with them in whatever project demanded physical effort and strength. I could early on note that even if they were not interested in the world of ideas, they would listen when I involved myself in practical affairs and shared my ideas. I saw that I gained a certain respect from my peers and older friends because I not only involved myself in philosophical thoughts but also tried to master many practical tasks, very much trying to learn what the physical world was about — no easy task in any way if ideas are important at the same time. Everything at hand seemed to have a hidden “something” which I would call the light of the idea — but it had to be worked for and the purely physical penetrated.

Such an interest in the physical world (which included the mechanical), as well as an interest in the life of thoughts, and in addition being a very slow intellectual learner, set me a bit apart from my friends and associates. As a part of a small farm community, I could experience a mix of being made fun of and also gaining some respect from others because skills were worked at and slowly won. During my teens, despite the usual adolescent fun making and insensitivities, a social milieu was present, and a kind of natural tolerance was alive. This small town and rural setting of mid-America, with a steel town nearby and a college town as well, birthed a constant sense for intimate social process. Most neighbors knew each other quite well for a generation or two. Everyone had to learn a certain social tact in what was said and shared as idea and conviction, since all had to live together. The land and farming seemed to birth a kind of tolerance evolved out of life practice, particularly when a helping hand was needed.

As I lived on a farm, on a farm with a handicapped brother who had difficulties speaking and learning, with a teacher-eurythmist trained in special education, with an engineer father interested in ideas and with a physician mother who loved people and animals, there was ample opportunity to pursue a rather diverse program of learning outside the usual public education. Workshops at home and at neighbors, barnyards, gardens, fields, forests, plants, animals and many different types of human beings, also human beings who lived in nearby Oberlin with its college, all were a basis for an education of a diverse kind. Ideas and social interest were a part of the entire scene. Art was also very much a part of the picture at home where all adults were involved with music and the visual arts. At the same time my father had a very marked interest in those ideas which laid a foundation for science. Religious life, fortunately, was left open for my own striving, and for this I am very grateful now in my present older years. In my mid-teens as noted the interest in philosophy began to emerge — though in no way did I follow up a purely philosophical training.

Later at Oberlin College I had the opportunity to follow up some of my interest in philosophy only in a very cursory way. I did not have much time as pre-medical and scientific courses were quite demanding. All courses asked for considerable attention and time, so that I could enter medical school later. It was during this time that I began an effort to penetrate Rudolf Steiner’s “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. The way ideas were formulated in this book struck me, as there was not only idea articulation, but a way of thinking. There was a very definite look to the soul of the thinker. This led me to think of this book of “philosophy” as a book which did not lose the soul, while dealing with ideas. Even more, the book tried to take a scientific approach to activities of the thinker. A mix of philosophy and psychology was met, to my way of thinking. A scientific introspective method was, is, presented. I found little or no echo in my usual courses. The professors who taught were, by and large, involved with a thinking that was highly intellectual and not in the least in search of a definite relation to the practicalities of life or the workings of the soul. This was the case even if the college motto was as noted, Learning and Labor.

In philosophy courses in college, the ideas were dealt with without the activity of the thinker being considered. In psychology courses, the emphasis was on Watsonian and Skinnerian behaviorism. Thinking was reduced to reflex circuits and associative electrical processes. Human action followed from the activities of the complex electrical processes of the brain that sent electrical impulses to the muscles of the extremity to bring about movements. Where Plato could have found his ideas was a real puzzle to me with the usual thoughts that lived in the souls of those around me. The approach of Rudolf Steiner to the human soul and to the thinker was much more alive, though very difficult to grasp. I had to struggle to live through this dichotomy of academia and the thinking demanded by Rudolf Steiner. This was a solitary struggle, and it could not be shared with others as it was then not clearly formulated. My searches led to a particular kind of crisis which was that the printed word appeared to the outer eye without idea content. Time was needed to penetrate the black and white of the paper and print to come to the idea by dint of one’s own, my own effort. This was a kind of shocking awakening when it was the intellectual content that was asked for as a student. In a way, I could make the white page disappear, along with the print, but the darkness that resulted, did not contain idea content. A kind of basic relearning to read was needed just when I was to stuff the soul with all kinds of content. Fortunately, I was able to weather the trials and did manage to get into medical school where, again, there was little interest in ideas as a kind of pure culture.

With medical school, marriage and then a growing family, I had much demand from various sides so that academic philosophical pursuits were never possible and not desired. What did, however, come about was a real interest in some of Rudolf Steiner’s epistemological writings, and from them I tried to learn what I could. This interest I have continued and forms a part of the pursuit which has given rise to what will be attempted in this essay. With this background, with these questions about the thinking, a deeper view of the soul has been searched for. This deeper view I would call the sophia of the soul, and it is commensurate with the term used by Rudolf Steiner, that is “psychosophia”.

Dedicating A Community

With the founding of the Fellowship Community in Spring Valley, New York in 1966, the personal biography can be left behind. The work with and for this community, as well as a family and medical practice, began to demand a much less personal pursuit of inner life. A depersonalization of the sophianic came as a question with the dedication of the community. What should, could or might such a community be dedicated to? What might context a community which would have to take on the long-term care of older human beings? If one dedicates a community, there should be seriousness about intents and purposes which should not be restrictive, should permit evolution and a participation by many. A dedication should, could or might speak to a future, but one that is open and not determined. How could this be done? A finite dedication had to have a kind of toto-potential quality about it. It was such considerations that plagued me at the time of the dedication. I had been very much involved in the bringing about of the community as it stood ready for dedication in the middle of 1966. The result was that I felt a definite obligation to struggle with a dedication process and a modest story.

The concern for such a dedication had already begun in 1959 when the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation was incorporated. I was one of the original signers of the legal documents.

The direction I chose for the dedication was one which I felt could be underpinned by my own way in life, could draw on the spiritual science of Anthroposophy and permit an open potential for the unfolding of a community for the future. Something from the world of philosophy was needed from my perspective, but something which permitted the philosophical to flow over into the social. This I thought might meet the need for the future. After much wrestling I turned to the four-lecture cycle by Rudolf Steiner called “Anthroposophical Ethics” or today, “The Spiritual Foundation of
Morality”.

With this cycle, ideas, action directed ideas, moral ideas are dealt with. Ethical ideas are those which set the stage for ideas to flow into the actions of human beings. Such ideas I thought could be noted and addressed, where a human being could be responsible for actions and a future. Individuality, freedom, and creativity were needed as a foundation.

In the case of this lecture cycle, it is Saint Francis of Assisi who is the individual chosen by Rudolf Steiner to demonstrate the evolution of ethical ideas which are penetrated by the Christ. The emphasis with the life of St. Francis is deed, the imitation of Christ, Imitatio Christi. Francis acted, acted far more than taught or offered wisdom in word. His path was action, a love of action, of all existence, and of Christ. Actions were Christ penetrated. The deed revealed his idea as ideal. In the case of this lecture cycle, as I understand it, St. Francis is the historical figure used by Rudolf Steiner to demonstrate how the Christ worked directly in the will of St. Francis. The result was the healing capacity of this Saint and as well, the influence of this individual on mankind because of his deeds. He was not a wise man but acted wisely and healingly. (Such was needed by a community to serve long-term care and to heal the ill at that time and could serve as a stimulus for a community in present times.) St. Francis had a deep love of all existence. The kingdoms of nature were nourished, the ill were healed, and a spiritual path placed before the world. The path can be called a Christian-Buddha path, which now needs a further transformation through the wisdom of the human being, that is Anthroposophy.

For the reasons just given I created a dedication story out of the lecture cycle, trying to bring a mythical and legendary quality to the life of St. Francis. The story is appended to this contemplation. For me what was significant was that at the dedication there would be an effort to speak about “practical wisdom”, which could ultimately point to a “Practico-sophia”. The effort was to try to foretell of the effort by human beings to find wisdom in the practices needed to serve needy human beings. The intention with the dedication and the story was to place the effort in a historical context. The past was searched, to flow through the dedicated moment for the sake of the future.

If one turns to the life of St. Francis of Assisi, two elements might be pointed to in relation to the just noted cycle of lectures by Rudolf Steiner. Its orientation is such that one is taken into the world of ethics articulated by Plato. The Greek ethos given by Plato is used by Rudolf Steiner as an example of what is needed as a starting point for a moral foundation. This point of departure is also that of western culture. The ethos of Plato, the ethical ideas, pointed to wisdom, courage, temperance and justice as potential for action and social structure. Rudolf Steiner says that these ethical ideas were the outcome of earlier mysteries, those of Atlantean times. The same mysteries birthed the “class” structure in ancient Indian times. In ancient times this class structure was of birth origin, hereditary origin. The Greek ethical idea was not of hereditary origin but was graspable by those who could become thinkers. Out of the work with ideas, Plato suggested a social structure which was “class” in nature but not hereditary in origin. “Wisdom” gave the basis for social structure. If the striving for wisdom is then followed out further in Western cultural evolution, it can be found as a point of departure with wisdom eventually giving rise to a learning process. Social class out of wisdom later birthed the classes in educational institutions.

Rudolf Steiner again and again pointed out that the Greek culture was based on slavery, so that he in no way sought to bring this form of social structuring to our times. The wisdom-based culture did, however, offer a basis for the evolution of learning and individual unfolding, where freedom could eventuate, even if it did not exist in Greek times, and did not exist in Plato’s ideas of the social structure.

What Rudolf Steiner did with the ethical ideas of Plato, was not to bring them into our times as pure ideas, but rather he tried to show how they were actually lived out by mankind in the evolution of the western world and the unfolding of the human makeup, that is his sentient-, intellectual- and consciousness-soul makeup. This perspective is what I would then take up here with this second aspect of the lecture cycle – the first being the emphasis on the life of St. Francis. The perspective I will take then is to try to follow out the ethical ideas into the evolution of western culture – to find the ideas in the life and actions of human beings in the process of evolving western culture. This means, to try to follow out western culture in the light of the four major ethical ideas articulated by Plato.

To take up such a direction permits one to consider that the Atlantean Mysteries have played themselves out in the unfolding of the west. The ethical ideas of Plato are the steppingstones from mystery culture, from the Mysteries of Atlantis, through Greek culture to our modern times.

If this approach to western history is taken, the first culture of the West has a wisdom orientation. The wisdom orientation in the history of mankind had its origin in the East. This ethic moved west to be taken up in Greek times by Plato and then other philosophers. As the ethical moved west, crossed the Hellespont as it were, the ethos of wisdom was transformed into the ethic of courage. This took place as culture moved west. Wisdom can be found in the cultures of ancient India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt and Greece. As the Turning of Time drew near, courage, courageous acts with wars and conquests, rose to the fore, and this can be followed to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, into the first millennium or more with the unfolding of western culture. Rudolf Steiner has detailed this with many of his historical revelations. Bravery supplanted wisdom as a driving force in western evolution. Battle and bravery came to play a significant role and is portrayed out of the east in the Bhagavad-Gita. A less well documented war-like cultural impulse that lived along with western evolution is that of the Scythian development. Today this is just beginning to surface as a significant impulse in our eastern to western world historical evolution.

With the Middle Ages, the warrior birthed the knight. The brave knight became a part of the evolution as the Middle Ages drew near. European culture unfolded with war, and gradually the warrior, and then the suitor, the knight, was transformed as war turned to conquest for the sake of beauty. This means that the knight came to conquer for the sake of the beautiful queen not only for land, riches and wealth. Human beings began conquests for the obtaining not just kingdoms of the world, but sought beauty, waged war for beauty. Conquests for wisdom, then earthly space, passed into conquest for beauty. Slowly the conquest could pass inward and into the conquest of the soul itself. With the turning inward of the conquest of the soul, the time of “temperance” could begin to emerge in the west.

There followed in western cultural unfolding, the stage of the craftsman with the tempering of the human soul through graded trainings. Three stages of soul conquest, stages of mastery in life came into existence as the feudal system died into small city states and then more modern types of cities. The staged training, which led to outer mastery of a vocation and an inner mastery of the soul, was threefold in nature. The stages of apprentice, journeyman and master were born in western Europe and are known to us today. With these three stages, something of the older initiation practices can be seen if looked for, and this has been done by more than one anthroposophical searcher.

This view of western cultural unfolding from this lecture cycle leads from Greek times to the Middle Ages and then from the Middle Ages to more modern times. The “modern” began with the “Industrial Revolution”. In modern times the flowering of commerce emerges wherein world economic processes and justice, or human relatedness with rights must be considered. The great question with the ascendancy of economic processes on a world scope is what happens to the single individual? What is the right of the human being in the light of world economic process? Today, if one follows the economic deliberations, it can be noted that the purse strings become attached to human rights issues, as is the case just now with China. Here the ethos of justice enters the domain of economics in a very real way. Often the economic whip is used to determine human rights issues, and only slowly is this to be seen with a view of the whole world. Thus, in the time of human rights, “justice” as world view becomes quite essential and the search for those with a world view becomes increasingly important and a need, if justice is to be considered on a theater of world practice and history today. A world view becomes increasingly important today for human beings who go about their practical activities of daily life – seeking justice. A world view is needed today to come to a judgment about many of the activities of the human being. An example is such a practical matter as burning brush. Such a practice is now outlawed in many communities because of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rudolf Steiner gave one such world view, that of the threefolding of the entire world as a basis for judgment in our day.

It is just in our time of world economy that the ethic, the ethos of justice is becoming so very important. Those who work and those who live in underdeveloped countries come into question when this ethic is considered. What is the role of the simple laborer, the unskilled worker or the role of the nation without the economic power of developed industrial nations? These are pressing questions today regarding human justice. Such were and are considerations that were lived with when the Fellowship Community dedication lived in its inception.

Though the four ethical categories of Plato stop with justice, there is a fifth that did not surface with Plato. The fifth category that Plato did not take up, however, made Greek culture a reality. What made the Greek culture a reality, often pointed to by Rudolf Steiner and already noted, was slavery. The simple worker, the untouchable in the Indian caste system, the pariah, gave the wonderful Greek culture a solid footing in reality. Needed now is an ethos that brings the souls who in the past slaved at life into a socially respectable position in the domain of human relationships. Needed is to see that the ethical impulses of the Greek times are included into the life of our time in an appropriate way. However, also needed is to bring the untouchable, the worker, the one who might have to slave in work, the socially serving human being, into a domain of justice, that is human rights processes. Today many, many human beings are at work. There is intellectual work, social work, as well as physical laborious activities. (Admittedly there is a growing number of very wealthy who govern much of the economics of our day and who do essentially no work. They live for leisure and pleasure. I would suggest that they, unless they become socially responsible, will become a focus of severe social unrest as time goes on. They do not offer economic justice unless they come to serve in a new way. It can be asked if Getty, with his new museum in Los Angeles, is a possible example of serving justly out of wealth.)

What is needed today is an ethos for human beings who spend at least a third of their time in their life at work. They need an ethic, an ethos which can help that their services to the world is met in a just way. I would propose that a “Sophia of Practice”, a “Practico-sophia” must be sought.

In order to redeem modern human beings from the slavery of work, to redeem work, there is the need for an ethic to surface. One can say from the foregoing that the four ethical ideas of Plato have played themselves out in western unfolding. Now what is needed is to bring a new ethical idea or ideas to the fore. In this way our time, the time of consciousness-soul, can lay the seed for the future in human ethical striving, the striving for spirit-self. The ethos of the future could be seen as the bringing of the four previous philosophical perspectives, ideas, to the class of the worker. (The worker today must be seen with all professions and all vocational activities, when as they come to play themselves out in the economic process. Note can be made that teachers, physicians, and soon house mothers will be unionized for the sake of economic justice, but more, for their own self-respect).

In Greek times, the ethical categories depicted four classes, that is the wise man, the warrior, the craftsman, and the jurist. As noted, the fifth was present but not taken into consideration by Plato. It is the fifth which is being sought here in this essay, but I would say stood as a question at the time of the dedication of the Fellowship Community. Rudolf Steiner tells that seven classes, or human ranks, came out of the Atlantean Mysteries but we only hear of five in ancient India. Plato only drew on four of the seven potential initiation steps with his “virtues”.

As noted, the fifth class was that of the worker, who in Greek times was a slave. These five classes were of hereditary nature in ancient eastern societies, and only with the ethical perspective was the hereditary basis for class supplanted by personal acquisition (a surfacing of the thinking, free and equal human being). In the eastern societies, the fifth class of human beings was called the untouchables, the pariahs. This group, this class, remains to this day in the east and only slowly is being taken into the larger social evolution to be given rights and new social status. Slavery was eliminated in this country only in the last century, and freedom from slavery is still not alive in the hearts and souls of all. Today our modern culture has managed new forms of slavery such as the culture of selling of one’s services, selling one’s soul, on the economic market — selling ones soul for wages.

Plato with his ethics did not touch this fifth domain of ethical consideration and left the slave of the times just where he was. Only over time and with the evolution of western culture does individuality, freedom and equality surface in a very meaningful way as three significant human impulses in our times. The question for our time has become, however, not only the individual, the free and equal human being, but the redemption of work that all come to do for the sake of mankind as a world culture emerges. The service to the other human being, the work for the world, this needs a new dimension and new perspective to liberate and redeem the pariah quality of all work. This includes the liberation of work from work-a-holism. The latter can be considered a semi-social illness of those who have little self-control and find a certain freeing in activity. On the other hand, there are those that term any form of discipline and effort work-a-holism, and here we have a cover for laziness – also a social problem of our time.

More and more what is deemed the need of human beings would in the past be delegated to the pariah, to the untouchable, the slave. Such can no longer be the case. The care of human beings in particular needs much that in the past would be delegated to the untouchable. If the evolution of our care “industry” is looked at, the industrialization of care points to the pariah quality given to the care of the ill. The care of the land and the care of the younger person (day care industry) is all now a part of the pariah process as most men and women go to work. Though work is downgraded, more and more come to participate. Thus, the meaning of leisure and spiritual pursuits is being questioned. The great ethical question of our time becomes that of the worker, particularly the social worker.

Unfortunately, it is mainly the union movement which has taken up the questions related to the worker. The ethical thinker has stood at the side lines and the worker often has few ideas, be they ethical or otherwise. Ideas for the redemption of the worker and work, as a central issue in our time, are not formulated so that ethical ideas can emerge. Here an ethos must be sought in this sphere of increasing import as more and more human beings go about modern life. I would venture that it is for this reason that work is often depicted as slavery, and the great need is to get away from work.

That “head activity” is work, is easily overlooked by the “limb worker”. The ethos, the ethic of the mental or the non-mental worker is not sought. Those interested in philosophy, in ethical questions, often have little sense for the one busy with the limb. Wisdom is not followed into the details and practicalities of life. For this reason, a “Wisdom of practice”, a “Practicosophy” is needed. It is just this “practical wisdom” that Rudolf Steiner addressed in this lecture cycle as the outcome of following the four ethical ideas, perspectives, into our times. This I saw in trying to come to a dedication perspective thirty-one years ago. The ethereal Platonism of the past had to become earthly in our times, as Aristotle had tried to do through Alexander in Greek times. Alexander had to go out into the world to conquer through war. Today in caring for human beings, the land and social process, the human being needs a capacity to conquer in a new way that is will-filled, but not war based. Such a will has been called a courage, wisdom-filled will, which can shine in the gaze of Michael. This demands a new “wisdom”, a new “love” and a new “social orientation”. This was evident thirty-one years ago with the dedication of the Fellowship Community. A “care” community needs a basis in the soul, the spirit and hearts of human beings.

If a community which is to take up long-term care, care of people, land and social process is to be dedicated, then an ethical perspective was and is asked for — to my way of thinking. In dedicating a community with a rather specific direction, but with many potentials, at least a quarter of a century must be anticipated. Does one not have to look to history and the flow of history to dedicate a community for the sake of its future? What comes into existence must fit into history. If this is not the case, then it becomes an anachronism and a throw-back in time. With the foregoing considerations, the effort was made to anticipate the future and as well to look to a real link with the past.

For me it was rather evident that a work in our time has, as one aspect, to serve the redemption of work itself. Something of the past must be taken up and transformed into the new, that is the work with the little thing and the service to the human being. Needed is a wisdom for the serving of life in all its breadths and depths, its simplicities and complexities. This is not the wisdom of the past, the gift of the wise man, but a wisdom that can be gained in service to the practical, to the littlest, to the least important, which might become most important in a given circumstance. A glass of water for the one paralyzed in arms and hands, a button on a shirt for one who must appear in public, a light bulb needed for the lecturer, or a cane for the lame individual, all of these are small details, small items which can be of the greatest import in a given situation. Needed is a wisdom in which the large and the small can be seen in juxtaposition, and with significant meaning.

It is just this “practical wisdom” that Rudolf Steiner points to in the lectures on “Anthroposophical Ethics”. If wisdom is not brought to the smallest of details, if wisdom cannot emerge in the service to the smallest and the most insignificant, then pedantry will be the only means of accomplishing life’s tasks. With pedantry, Ahriman can show his power. If the tasks demanded by life, especially the small tasks are left undone, then Lucifer has a chance to insinuate herself into the soul. With the tasks left undone, an illusory wisdom replaces the needed deed. Often the social planner is of the latter type. An even more serious outcome can be that human souls become bored when the element of wisdom does not surface with deed. Here the situation is set for quarrels among those who are bored, and this contributes much to unsettle work circumstances. In the case of long-term care, care of the land or care of social circumstances, the pedant, the illusory dreamer, and the directing social planner cannot well serve social needs. In fact, it often is the pedant, the dreamer and the directing planner who creates the social problems. Even more problematic is when the human being comes to sell his soul for a wage. Wisdom does not surface when one sells one’s soul, and all too easily a barren soul results. In every situation, healthy social circumstances demand that the soul is nourished by wisdom, by “practical wisdom”.

Again, with a dedication at hand, not only did the past have to be considered, the present, but the future. What appeared to be so significant, and remains the same today, is the aspect pointed out by Rudolf Steiner, that is the need for human beings to experience, and be able to come to “practical wisdom”, in planning and in deed. For this reason, the germ for what is being written about today, thirty years after the dedication, was laid.

The Sophianic In History

From Rudolf Steiner we gain a sophianic view of history in the soul-spirit and intellectual evolution of the human being. It can be outlined quite easily. Three basic sophianic revelations can be noted – Theosophia in ancient times, Philosophia from the Greek times to the turn of the recent century, that is 1899. With the turn of the century there began the potential for a new and future sophianic revelation, that is, Anthroposophia.

A view of the world where spiritual beings exist to direct the events in the environment of the human being and in the soul-spirit of the human being can be found in the times of the Indian, Persian and Egyptian cultural epochs. With the Greek period of cultural evolution spiritual beings and the soul life of the human being become entwined. Before this intermingling of spiritual beings and the human soul, spiritual beings stood more distant. Slowly, the sophianic and the human became more intimate so that the sophianic today is seen as very much soul-spiritual dependent on man. This is a history of ten to twelve thousand years which constitutes the background of our modern western culture. Of course, there are those in our modern times who say that history only began with our immediate times, that is since the coming of the industrial revolution with modern economics. With this economic view, all history can be seen from the perspective of economics, from barter, trading to the current complex economics of modern times. The history that begins with the industrial revolution is a history that does not follow the cultural epochs being noted. It is a history of the more modern intellectual who can be quite a snob with such a time and self-centered perspective.

The cultural epochal history and the modern industrial revolution-oriented history are not alone in historical perspectives. The history of peoples and nations is becoming very much alive in our day. The so-called third-world folk and peoples brings quite new vistas of the historical process, quite different from the western cultural history that we will be considering in our contemplations on the emergence of Practico-sophia.

The cultural epochs can be seen as periods in which there is an unfolding of mankind so that the physical world can be taken up. This cultural history brings a focus to the western evolution with science and a thorough-going materialism. There are cultures that are not in this direct line and these cultures are those where there is still today a non-scientific impulse in human soul-spiritual evolution. Much of the so-called third world fits into this perspective. Only now, and gradually in our day, do we here in the west become deluged with the cultures of the Mongols, the far east with Taoism, with older Buddhism, with the religious cultures of the Meso-Americas, etc. The culture of black, yellow, brown and red peoples finally begins to surface alongside that of the white European with science and materialism.

With this current of the many cultural streams in mankind today, there is now an influx which challenges the typical western bent. How to fit these cultures into the evolution of the sophianically-oriented perspective on history is for many thoughtful human beings a dawning question.

A detailed and thorough perspective on the evolution of western culture could be most helpful. With the surfacing of the many cultures of the many peoples of the earth, what Rudolf Steiner has given as a sophianic perspective of western cultural unfolding could be seen in comparative light. Then the gradual birth of the Sophia could be more easily perceived, as it were, birthed in the souls of men. From all that I can gather, the sophianic is crucial for the future. My sense is that if the sophianic is not seen in perspective, in comparative perspective, then it can be taken in an exclusive way. Such a limited view most likely will only cause offense. The evolution of culture in the light of the Sophia belongs to a deepening insight into the non-mainstream impulses of the industrial west. In the last fifty years, cultural anthropology, sociology, and third world cultural studies have begun to surface the diversity of human culture, but the sophianic is lacking except in the case of anthroposophy. For this reason, such an effort as the present one has a justification. It would be my hope that with more attention to the sophianic in history that greater perspectives can be gained which might help human beings from many cultures to gain a greater understanding of their own standing in the world. If this does not occur, the battle of the cultures is certain to surface with a vengeance, as for example we hear about with the Indians of North America, the Jewish culture, the Arabic, the Black and the like. If a sophianic perspective appears as exclusive, then it will be attacked as beginning to happen more and more.

The cultural epochs in themselves are a designation of history out of the sophianic impulse in human evolution where soul-spiritual factors are taken into consideration. In fact, one might say that it is out of the light of the cultural epochs perceived by Rudolf Steiner that he has revealed the Sophia to us. For this reason, I would think that those not familiar with Anthroposophy could be puzzled about the handling of history.

If the sophianic is not introduced into history, history can be reduced to biological processes, to artifactual history (comparative anthropology), or economic struggles. As noted, the latter is the most modern approach. The Darwinian view of competition and the selection of the fittest is also a more recent and animalistic view of history, though the animalism may well be that of human beings and not necessarily that from the animal kingdom. This is what can be heard about Darwinian evolution by those who love animals.

Currently, with the world-wide research into the genomic make up of the human being, history is being reduced to biological-biochemical processes out of which there arises that which drives men. I would suggest that a sophianic impulse is, on the other hand, a way to approach the human soul-spirit, which gradually emerges as primary even with the present emphasis on material factors in human biology, that is the genetic makeup.

Thus, as this essay progresses, the other perspectives on history need to be kept in the background. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer created charts where he listed 1) political history, 2) migrations, wars, 3) religion, art and science and then 4) the sophianic process. These are the four categories he used for a comparative approach to history. The charts begin with 500 BC and carry through to the present time. With this comparative method, something of the sophianic as given by Rudolf Steiner, from his spiritual science, can be better appreciated. The charts have now been put into printed form and were for years only in handwritten form.

More About The Sophia
The ancient teachings about spiritual beings can be thought of as a sophianic view of the world. With these older teachings in sophianic history, there is a polytheistic perspective. This theistic, this God-centered view, appears as characteristic of the sophias of ancient times, as far back as the Indian Cultural epoch. The polytheistic orientation can be seen as a foundation for the monotheistic perspective which emerged with the Hebrew peoples and culture which came to constitute a religion as a sophianic perspective. The polytheistic orientation is often designated by the term pagan according to the Hebrew orientation that was born 3000 BC. This theistic view can then be followed through the times of the Hebrew evolution and only with the advent of the Greek philosophical impulse in about 8-700 BC do we find the birth of a new sophianic cultural impulse. Thus, for a period of 21-2200 years we can find a theistic impulse in mankind, with the transition from polytheism to monotheism and paganism. With this perspective we can see culture in a theistic light. The sophianic of that time is Theosophic. The Sophia carries the garb of a Godliness.

There now follows the birth of the philosophical impulse in culture, and with this, the evolution of philosophy in Greek times comes into consideration. There are those who do not consider that philosophy was born at that time, and rather trace philosophy into the most ancient times. From the research of Rudolf Steiner, philosophy was born 8-700 BC. If we take this view, then we can consider that the theosophic gave way to the philosophic as a revelation of the sophianic.

The transition from the Mystery Centered Culture to philosophic centered culture is accentuated with the founding of the School of Athens by Aristotle out of the major impulse of Plato. As the monotheistic view was born, the pagan perspective could be identified. In a similar vein, it might be considered that the heretic was born with the birth of the philosophical-cultural impulse during the philosophical Greek times. The pagan experienced the elemental beingness of existence as the single God came to be reckoned with. With the birth of philosophy, divergent philosophical views could be identified. A philosophy divergent from a major philosophical trend came to be identified as heretical. As the pagan turned to elemental spiritual beings of the physical world, the heretic turned to the spiritual beingness of existence as philosophy became more and more materialistic. A spiritual orientation in human thought life, became progressively heretical as philosophy took its materialistic bent in ^ western evolution.

With the philosophical view of existence born in Greece, that is a view where the thinker is seen as thinking out of himself, not inspired, or incorporated into, the independent thinker was born. The independent thinker could take up the physical world as culture progressed to our times. Similarly, an even more independent thinker was born who tried to take consideration of the spirituality of existence alongside the reality of our material existence. The latter can be thought of as the heretic, a divergent thinker from the mainstream of thinkers.

The independent thinker, who came to think differently, or had a different world view than the so-called conventional Christian thinker, came to be known as the heretic. This designation can be spoken of as born out of the institutionalization of Christianity. As the Hebrew came to designate the pagan with the birth of monotheism, the heretic came to be identified, as Christianity became institutionalized. The potential free thinker, born of the Greek philosophical impulse, became evident when a human being came to think independently of the view promulgated by the Church, which also evolved out of Greek times.

Thus, two sets of streams might be noted. The first set is with the theosophical period of human culture. Monotheism and paganism came to be identified. A second set of streams can then be identified as the theosophic orientation was metamorphosed into the philosophic. The second two streams might be identified by the philosophers of institution (the Church) and materialism (i.e. St. Augustine) and the heretical philosophers who continued to seek spiritual elements in physical reality (i.e. Manicheans).

Thus, it can be thought that the theosophical evolution which culminated in monotheism, helped birth a more conscious theism with many spiritual beings, that is paganism. The Greek and then Christian impulse in human history came to identify the thinker, who supported the institutionalization of religious life and the independent thinker who kept a spiritual perspective with the progressive evolution in human cultural life. Dogmatizing of religious life (institutional dogma) and the origin of natural science can be found in the period where philosophy gradually became the mantle of the Sophia.

It is the philosophical evolution that was researched with infinite pains by Rudolf Steiner. He used the thinking capacity of the human being, evidenced in a philosophical perspective, as a way to show the changing consciousness of the human being. This means the change in the human soul in relation to the physical and spiritual world was carefully researched by Rudolf Steiner. He used the writings of the thinkers who have contributed to the evolution of science and art in the west. Rudolf Steiner presented his research in the book entitled “Riddles of Philosophy”. The research is an intimate look into the human soul, the soul who thinks, who slowly evolves his intellectual capacities. With this research, the depths of the thinking human being comes to the surface. This search into the sophianic evolution, the philosophic, from 8-700 BC to our times, is painstaking and carefully documented by Rudolf Steiner.

This second sophianic period, the time of philosophy, evolves so that the love of Sophia is lost. With the coming of our present time mankind lost a love for Sophia. As modern materialistic science evolved, there came theorization with mathematical thought and research. (Theo-sophia became Theo-retica). A love for Sophia disappeared. Sophia as a Being was replaced by forces, energies, atoms, and substance elements (110 elements to be found in our periodic table). Sophia died out of human consciousness. A rebirth and a reawakening became necessary and is still necessary. With this we can consider that Anthroposophia was introduced to mankind.

As Rudolf Steiner researched philosophical systems, and then turned to the physical makeup of the human being (aided by the work of Goethe), he came across a new sophianic revelation. This revelation is a Sophia that becomes evident by dint of research on the physical makeup of the human organism. This organism is material of course, but it is living, ensouled and enspirited as well. The research with this organism therefore contains the potential for revealing an infinitude of secrets. One of the great secrets is the sophianic makeup of this organism.

Rudolf Steiner worked diligently to make this discovery, and the discovery is documented in his autobiography. To this day, and this may be my particular karmic circumstance, I have never heard or read of an anthroposophist who has made reference to the brief note that Rudolf Steiner made in regard to this significant, nay momentous, discovery. The quote is — “Anatomy and physiology struggled through step by step, to this sensible-supersensible form. In this struggling through my look fell, at first in a very imperfect way, upon the threefold organization of the human being, about which – after having pursued my studies concerning it for thirty years in silence – I first began to speak publicly in my book “Von Seelenratsel (Riddles of the Soul)”.

This discovery I would like to call a revelation of the Sophia in the Garment of the Human Organism via the human soul. (Another view might be that this was a physical-etheric revelation of the Being of Sophia in the garment of Adam Cadman coming to manifestation in the human soul, the thinking soul of Rudolf Steiner). As noted, Rudolf Steiner researched, wrote and lectured for thirty years about this emerging Sophia of the human being before writing publicly about it. He as well carefully researched the writings of searchers and thinkers in the western world in more modern times to find how mankind stepped from the “love of Sophia” to a “Sophia of the human being”. He wrote about this research in his book “The Riddle of Man”.

With this brief overview, it is possible to follow the history of the Sophias from the time of old spiritual theocratic times to a philosophic transition of some 2100 years beginning 8-700 BC to the present. The present permits a new Sophia manifestation in human history, one which points to the next several thousand years. This Sophia is the Sophia of the Human Being, Anthroposophia. I would like to propose that there may be a further Sophia revelation of Sophia. This revelation I would call “Socio-sophia”, who is revealed as a “Practico-sophia” in the course of daily life in our time.

The Cosmic Sophia
It has been interesting and helpful to work through the book by Sergei Prokofieff on the “Heavenly Sophia” just because I thought I might have a different perspective on the origin of the sophianic impulse in world events. He begins the Sophianic with the activity of the Kyriotetes during Sun evolution and develops the Sophianic unfolding from this cosmic historical time. My starting point is a little different and cannot be substantiated in quite the same way as his but touches into the view that he has developed. Therefore, I am grateful to Sergei for his work.

My point of departure, and my point of origin, is the very beginning of Saturn. In Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual investigations, he has come to outline a time in Saturn birth and evolution when there was pure “spiritual light”, then pure “spiritual soul life”, and then “pure spiritual warmth”. These three came into existence before the manifest soul warmth of mid-Saturn evolution. This sequence of activities in the early evolution of Saturn, can be found in the book “Occult Science”.

If one then turns to the five lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave in relation to the “Inner Aspects of Evolution”, one can find that all the above could take place because the Thrones, the Spirits of Will, had developed an etheric body as their lowest member. The other spiritual beings of the Hierarchy, other than the Thrones, had only developed to the point of having an astral body. With such an etheric, the Thrones could sacrifice their astral body as a basis for the evolution of physical substance. The physical substance of our present world was in an astral condition to begin with and had to be transformed gradually from astral physical substance to living substance, then soul-like sentient substance and finally inanimate and non-living substance. These states of substance follow the states of matter from warmth to air, to wateriness and then solidity – during Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolutions.

Thus, it is that physical astral substance from Saturn, after having a living quality impregnated into it on Sun was transformed to become mobile and sentient on Moon. Only on Earth did the physical become ego penetrated and assume the makeup of our present physical substance – dead physical substance after the “Fall” of the Angels and the “Fall” of substance – after both Falls.

If one turns back to Saturn and the ether substance of the Thrones, I would suggest one can consider this ether as “mother-ether” substance while the physical substance (in an astral condition), might be called “mater-nal substance”, or “physical material substance”. The astral of the Spirits of Will is sacrificed into this etheric substratum. The ether of the Thrones might be thought of as a kind of maternal life and substance for the birth of worlds. The etheric and the astral-substantial might be considered as a kind of womb with the birthing of the world. The physical-astral substance of the Thrones, as noted, is the “mother substance” of the world, and the “mother-ether” is the life womb of the world. In this way, one comes to the maternal of our world and a use of the concept of mother and maternal as a direction in birthing the world. The birth process, in a way, can be thought of as kind of “Divine” virginalis birth process, to be mirrored later with the Mystery of Golgotha. The soul returns to this time of existence to become virginius.

If we now survey the evolutionary stages of Saturn, we come to indications that the Spirits of Wisdom became active in the very early phases of the “unmanifest” Saturn. It is the Kyriotetes, possibly twelve Pleroma, I would designate as those born to become later known as the evolving Sophia. (Note can be made, that to consider the spiritual beings as evolving, is quite new in the thinking of western mankind as far as I know – as new as the idea that matter is of astral origin.) At this stage let me call the Kyriot activity, perhaps twelve Kyriotetes of mighty spiritual dimension, as the IE stage of evolution for this spiritual Being, Sophia. This involvement in the ether of this stage of evolution I would ponder as the stage when the body of Sophia is being formed – an ether body.

Thus, on Saturn: IE might be sounded in order to enter the beingness of Sophia in a more living way.

Turning to the next stage of evolution, the stage of Sun
evolution, we can ponder the stage where the Spirits of Wisdom can give of their own substance, that is etheric substance. Now the sounding of our world towards the birth of this Spiritual Being might become IEA, with the Ah indicating the birth of this Being where the physical of Saturn is brought along with the “h”. This is a further step in the evolution of the Sun when the physical which was given on Saturn as astral substance, becomes a part of the Sun evolution. It is then that I would suggest that for the first time the element of the consonant is added to the vowel as with the “h” for the sounding of IEAh.

Thus, on Sun: IEAh might be sounded to live into the Being of Sophia in a more active way.

During the Sun evolution something of a slightly lower ether state can be considered. The ether state on Saturn might be thought of as more “life-spirit” in nature, while that on Sun evolution might be more of soul makeup, perhaps “intellectual-soul” makeup.

With the Moon evolution the next step in Sophianic cosmic evolution can be taken. Now it is the 0 that is added to IEA. The “h” again can be thought of as the physical from Saturn evolution that is brought along and penetrated by the astral. Now one can begin with IEAO and add the “h” so that we have IEAOh.

Thus, on Moon: IEAOh might be sounded, to experience the Sophia inwardly.

The ether of the Moon evolution might be thought of as a transition from light- to warmth-ether so that with Earth evolution actual warmth-ether can “de-volve” from light to warmth. Rudolf Steiner has addressed this devolution, but it has not been noted by anthroposophical researchers best as I can see. This devolution process is crucial as there is another direction, an upward evolution, in ether unfolding where tone-ether and life-ether evolve to ever higher workings, towards the “Spirit-life” of Saturn.

The next step is the Earth evolution, where the three cosmic evolutions are recapitulated at outset. Now it is the physical that is first recapitulated to become the JIE, sounding of Sophia. This is the first recapitulatory period of the Earth. A “J” can be added to sound the consonant which needs to be added to the vowel of pure cosmic evolution of the Sophia before the unfolding of Earth.

Thus, on Earth (Polaria): JIEh might be sounded for the first recapitulatory phase.

With the second recapitulatory step of earth evolution, that is Hyperborea, we can meditate a next sounding. The Ah is added so that the JIEh can become JIEAh. JIEAh sounds in the light of the sun that streams to the earth which has existed in the moon-earth, and in this light is the future Being who comes to be known as Sophia later.

Thus, on Earth (Hyperborea): JIEAh might be sounded for the second recapitulatory phase.

The third recapitulatory step reflects Moon evolution. Here the astral is added to the physical and etheric. Now the “Oh” can again be added so that the sounding becomes JIEAOh.

Thus, on Earth (Lemuria): JIEAOh might ring forth into the space around us filling the soul with “soulness” in tension.

The sun was withdrawn from the earth by the activity of the Elohim who were the accompaniers of the IEA, that is the Pleuromic Elohim. The Elohim from Saturn evolution who stayed behind to remain with the Kyriotetes of that time, can be called Pleuromic-Elohim, while the lofty Elohim who accompanied the coming forth of the human being with the earth evolved to become the Jehovah-Elohim at the time of Lemurian unfolding. This development of Jehovah Rudolf Steiner details in his lectures on “Genesis”. The Pleuromic impulse I have suggested might be Twelve Kyriotetes. They can be thought of as accompanying evolution from the outset and in whose bosom lie the six Elohim who later join the Seventh and as well the later mighty Archangel Michael. The Seventh is the Elohim who is elevated during the time of Earth evolution up to Lemuria to become a Jehovah being (God as father). As best as I can derive from the lectures on Genesis, the deeds of this El-ohim bring about the condensation of the light-ether of Sun evolution to warmth-ether of earth. This warmth-ether is needed for the incarnation of the human ego into a physical body as the earth loses the moon. This condensation of the light-ether to warmth-ether I have often pointed to, but again note that it is seldom taken into consideration by others. This condensation is important for the Sophia to make a next step towards the human soul, that is the ego of the human being.

With the extraction of the moon by Jehovah-Elohim, which was preceded by the extraction of the sun by the Pleuromic-Elohim, the recapitulatory stages of the Earth have come to an end. With the extraction of the moon from the Earth, Earth evolution as such commences. This is designated as the time of Atlantis or the Ice Age, the time of the cooling of the Earth and the unfolding of the solid state of materiality. With this stage the JIEAOh becomes JIEAOVAh among the gods, and EVA becomes a human being among the mortals. She carries the impulse of wisdom in the inner-most of her being.

Before EVA a first man had stepped on to the earth, that is ADAM. This ADAM was able to incarnate the ego for the first time, the ego which was given to man by the Exusiai out of a process of death. A dying out of a spiritual being is the birth process of the human ego and brings death to our existence. This original death process does not appear to be like the complete darkness with death in our day. The ego of man is given by the Exusiai and is mirrored in death as it takes place here on earth by the human being. This first Adam left part of his being, part of his ego, his more etheric cosmic existence, in the spiritual world. This more etheric-cosmic side of ADAM came to be known as Adam Cadman in esoteric circles as best as I can find from my research up to this time. One might say that ADAM by the extraction of Adam Cadman became Adam. This extraction of Adam Cadman from Adam, I often think may be the instinctive spiritual basis for our spiritual striving all together.

The just depicted events lead from Polaria to Atlantis. With the birth of an EA impulse in a human being, Adam received an accompanying soul, Eva. The EVA of the cosmos became more human and became an Eva,(Eve) the wife of Adam, while Adam Cadman unfolded as a “sister-soul”.

Thus on Earth (Atlantis): JIEOVAH-EVA might be sounded in an effort to rise to this Being when Adam and Eve were born.

A summary of the cosmic stages of evolution of Sophia then might be
as follows:
IE ——Saturn evolution
IEAh ——–Sun evolution
IEAOh ——–Moon evolution
JIE ———-Earth (Polaria)
JIEAh ——–Earth (Hyperborea)
JIEAOh ——-Earth (Lemuria)
JIEAOVH ——Earth (Atlantis)
JIEHOVA ——Beginning of the age of darkness
EVA ——–Beginning of the age of darkness

The Gradual Incarnation Of The Sophia Into The Souls Of Human Beings.

The next step is to try to find how the Being of Sophia might have unfolded her soul and spirit. What has been portrayed might be considered her bodily and soul evolution. This evolution is based on the changes in the etheric during world evolution. Her cosmic bodily unfolding we have tried to contemplate, consider. We have noted her cosmic, heavenly bodily birth in early Saturn. We then have tried to follow her unfolding of cosmic “soulness” with the reincarnations of our earth. Now we can try to find how Sophia gained her spirit through the soul life and the spiritual life of the human being.

It can be noted that there is yet no S or P consonants that unite with IE, or EA, the Wisdom Being of our World. She has yet to gain Her spirit. The bodily condition of Sophia we can meditatively gather with the early phase of Saturn or as Saturn is born, as just noted. With the further cosmic evolution Her soul can be sought. It is only with the birth of the human being into a body, and the evolution of the human being from body to soul, and then from soul to spirit, that the spirit of Sophia comes into existence as spirit. Thus, there is no real Sophia being until the human being becomes a true earth dweller and can in his soul make space for the IE, IEAh, IEAOh and then JIE, JIEAh, JIEAOh and then JIEAOVh. With EVA we can consider that the human soul finally incarnates EA while an earth dweller.

The descent of the EA into the human soul to become a spirit, I take as indicated in the Legend that has to do with the birth of Marduk – the birth of Michael-Marduk. This is an Assyrian legend, where the birth of Michael-Marduk is addressed. I would place the legend in the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha. This legend is pointed to by Rudolf Steiner in the cycle called “True and False Paths of Initiation”.

Thus, we can look to the 3000 years before the Mystery of Golgotha as a time when human beings for the first time began to sense the Being Sophia in their own soul. I would like to think at this time, that the entering of the Sophia impulse into the human soul 3000 BC inaugurated the possibility for human spiritual striving out of the soul-spirit of the individual. Before that man was overshone or inspired by spiritual beings. Before the coming of the Sophia impulse into the soul of the human being, the human being was essentially passive and was led, led by the spiritual world or by the initiate leaders of the human race.

Three thousand years before the coming of Christ, was the onset of the age called the “Age of Darkness”. This was the time when the “age of darkness” settled into the souls of men. It is then that EA is born out of cosmic times as noted above, for the first time to become known to the human being within his darkness. TIAMAT the being of darkness came to occupy the human soul. EA birthed Marduk-Michael, the mighty Archangel, in order that darkness would not prevail. Michael had the task, has had the task, to bring the light of EA into the soul of the human being so that the soul could be enspirited with light, as darkness became a part of the soul.

This activity of Tiamat ( Asuric-Ahrimanic) during the third cultural epoch, 3000 BC., offered each human being the possibility to come to darkness, so that out of this darkness he could out of his own effort come to light, come to light out of self-activation and freedom. The Age of Darkness came as a need for the evolution of the human being. But, just as darkness was a need, so the possibility of a striving for light, the light of wisdom, this was also part of the greater plan. In a way we can think that the darkness was given to man later in his development so that he could out of his own inmost existence strive to the light through Sophia.

The EA impulse born of the most ancient time, then comes to the human being so that She can become a spirit, and the human soul out of darkness can out of his own “I”, I or JI, come to the light of EA or through EA. For this to occur the fire of the ether world had to be incarnated into the human ego. This fire can be found in the letter “S” and can be sounded and heard by the human heart – so we might meditate. The fiery S-S-S must be taken into the “I”, or JI. This fire in the soul, in the Oh becomes a step to the EA. SOHEA becomes a sounding, inspiring the soul, enspiriting the soul, while the “V” of the soul is not yet sounded. From above, as it were, there now sounds the “Pe” instead of the “Ve”. With the “Pe” brings the spirit impulse into the soul by the human ego on fire with the spirit as it were. Sophia comes to be sounded in the soul over the next several thousand years, from 3000 BC. to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. During the next two thousand years the basis is laid for the birth of a love for the Sophia. In and around 8-700 BC, Philosophy is born in the souls of human beings. Here the fire of the Spirits of Love unites with the light of the Spirits of Wisdom.

The Birth Of Sophia In The Human Soul – The Three Hebrew Millennia
The Mystery of Golgotha, which took place at the Turning Point in Time, came to bring a new dimension to this light that began to shine in the darkness. This was not the light of Wisdom, of the Kyriotetes, but the Light of Love, which can accompany the fire of Spiritual Love (enthusiasm). This new light can enlighten hearts and heads for deeds while warming both with love.

The love of Sophia, the philo-sophia, can be considered as a prerequisite to a further unfolding of the Sophia in the life of humanity. Again and again, it can be thought that the Michael activity is in the midst of this light of the soul, that is rising to the light of the spirit through Sophia. It is then from the spirit that the light, soul and spirit light, flows into deeds if possible. One might think that love is the basis of light becoming deed, life. The struggle for the enlightening of the soul by the spirit, for the sake of human action, can be said to have lasted for five thousand years during the Age of Darkness, Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga served as the ground on which this inner evolution of the human being could take place. During this time, Sophia had to work for the enlightening, the bringing of love to the human soul, and at the same time experience her own evolution. Only in 1899 did this age of darkness conclude and now we can begin to actually use this new light if we so strive.

IE, IEAh, IEAOh, and then JIE, JIEAh, JIEOh, etc. can be thought to have come into existence to be born into the human soul by the Archangel Michael. With this it became possible for something of the eternal feminine to enter the souls of human beings to help that the light of the spirit could develop for the sake of the future. I would like to think and then sound, that EA which was the Being heard three thousand years before the mystery of Golgotha, when the human being was given his spirit by Michael, the ruler of Cosmic Intelligence. He carried the light of EA into the souls of men when EA as soul wove in the cosmos, filling cosmic intelligence with wisdom. Here wisdom was first brought to the human being in the form of intelligence, as it were, by overshadowing the human soul. At this stage, the human soul is given intelligence.

The great initiate, Abraham, was given this intelligence at the hand of his initiator, Melchizedek. In the culture of Assyria, EA was manifest as Light, Spirit Light. With Abraham this light was brought into the soul, and there could be gradually metamorphosed with the birth of mathematical intelligence. It is for this reason, if I comprehend correctly, that Rudolf Steiner called this third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, the millennium of Abraham. At about the same time in the Assyrian culture the EA impulse came to be used by EA-bani and Gilgamesh for the sake of transforming culture, star culture, ancient mystery culture into earthly culture, wisdom penetrated. With the Greek culture, one might think that this EA impulse began to live in the soul in the form of mythological thought and picture and the heavenly gods of the Greek.

As darkness gradually settled into the souls of men, a second millennium unfolded. This second millennium has been called the millennium of Moses, so designated by Rudolf Steiner. The first millennium is the one which saw the EA born into a physical body, that is the body of Abraham, the brain of Abraham so that he could do mathematical processes in the soul and have them reflected in the body. It can be contemplated, that at the same time the life body of Abraham was so organized that it could become the basis for physical heredity, that is the life of an evolving people. The race of the Jew is thereby assured, and Abraham becomes the Father of a People. As EA enters the soul to structure the brain for mathematical processes, so Jehovah enters the life of the body so that a stream of heredity can be assured. Thus: EA as spirit in the human soul structures the brain of a human being, Abraham, to meet the world mathematically. This becomes the physical body of Sophia through the soul of the human being, Abraham.

(Another aspect of EA is one that is not so earth bound but is more heavenly bound, cosmically bound. This might be contemplated with the Being of Isis. With Isis we have the EA impulse where the trend is to ever higher realms of spirituality. Isis can appear as an ascending Being, supported by the life or ether world of Osiris, on the way to birth a son, Horus. With the birth of Horus, a reflection of earlier cosmic evolution can come before the soul. This is the IEA of the cosmic Sun evolution – so I would like to contemplate. In this way what has been said about the cosmic aspect of EA can, with the Egyptian cultural epoch, appear as a retrospect through Lemurian times to this Sun evolution of EA. With Horus, the I of EA or the IEA stage of EA evolution can be contemplated. This IEA comes slowly to earth as just noted with IEAO to become EVA-eve in the time of Atlantis).

The second thousand years, the Moses millennia, permits that Sophia gains an etheric body – an earthy human etheric body, not a cosmic etheric body. Her three ether bodies have been noted – 1)from early Saturn, 2)from the gift of the Kyriotetes, and 3)from the extraction of the sun from the earth. During the millennia of Moses, he was initiated into the etheric world so that the coming forth of the world and the human being, the embryogenesis of both, could be given to mankind. The penetration of the world and man by an etheric body, and the wisdom related to this, this is what is given to humanity by Moses. It is the penetration of all of evolution by the etheric, which was given to Moses with his initiation, that gave Sophia the basis for an etheric body. (Here the working of the embryonic membranes on the unfolding human embryo can be seen as the basis for the enlightenment of Moses as indicated by Rudolf Steiner.) This is where Moses acquired his wisdom and the way that EA gained a human ether body. It is this penetration of the whole of physical propagation, generation and development with wisdom, by the souls of the Hebrew people that can be considered to give a life body, an etheric body to EA. She then comes to penetrate the ether with her wisdom and thereby becomes a SEA. Thus, in sounding the EA of the first millennium, her sounding might become SEAh.

Thus, SEAh as spirit in the soul of human beings structures the etheric body for evolutionary possibilities through spirit it becomes the etheric body of Sophia.

This unfolding of an ether body within the Jewish race has a parallel with the unfolding of Greek culture. The Greek with the first millennium unfolds the Mycenaean culture, where the intelligence is a concern of the greatest import. The generations of the Gods can be translated into varying states of consciousness as has been indicated to us by Rudolf Steiner. The second period, the Moses millennium, finds the Greek busier with the unfolding of Mystery Temple Culture. The mythological period of the Greek is transformed into Mystery Temple culture and initiation practices directly. During this time the Jewish culture went through a consolidation because of the initiation of Moses by Jethro thus giving the potential for EA as just outlined.

Thus, we can note the mythological-Greek time and the Abrahamic first millennium as an unfolding of the EA as spirit into the soul of the human being to fashion a physical body. Next with the second millennium the Greek evolves his mystery centers with initiation practices and the Hebrew consolidates as a people around the initiation of Moses. In the first period EA gains her physical body, and during the second her etheric body. There are indications from Rudolf Steiner to substantiate this line of contemplation which has been put together in such an able fashion by Sergei Prokofieff. Here my own line of contemplation unites with what this author has given in his book on the “Heavenly Sophia” – though it has quite a different twist.

If we designate the first period as the time of EA, and the second as SEAh, then we can be prepared to move on to the third millennium, the time when EA gained her astral body. This time, this millennium, has been designated by Rudolf Steiner as the time of Solomon. It is the time of temple building for the Jew, and the time of the birth of philosophy for the Greek. It is the structuring of the soul, the temple building with its disciplines which guide the next step for the Jew. The Greek on the other hand, began a careful structuring of the soul at the hand of the spirit, and out of this work came the birth of philosophy. It may well be that the legendary Queen of Sheba, the Queen to King Solomon, is the sophianic counterpart of the sophia of the Greek, who founded the love for her — that is PHILOSOPHY.

The exoteric of the temple building we can gain from usual history, religious history for the most part. The “Temple Legend” has been given to present the esoteric of the same process. In Greece while temples were built, the esoteric was carried out in philosophical exchange and disputes. The philosophical process can be thought of as the structuring of an inner temple, as it were.

This temple building, inner or outer, may well be thought of as giving an astral body to Sophia, structuring an astral body out of the laws of the cosmos and then gradually laying the foundation for structuring the astral body to become soul supportive. If we follow the way that I have been trying to use sounds to depict this process, then we can think of the EA who needs a physical body, fashioned in the time of Abraham to become a SEA-h. In the next thousand years She receives an etheric body out of the work of Moses. She might be sounded as SEAO- without the “h” as she becomes more and more ethereal. With the third millennia EA might be sounded as SEOI with the absence of h. This can be an ascending formative activity within the astral of EA.

So, an outline might be:
SEA-h – time of Abraham – body of EA within the physical bodily transformations of the human being.
SEAO – time of Moses – the ether body of EA within the
transformations of the human etheric.
SEAOI – time of Solomon – the astral body of EA being formed so
that the ego can incarnate next.

If we follow the outline of a “theosophy” of the human being as given by spiritual science, then as just indicated, EA needs an ego given by the souls of men. We can look to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Turning of Time, to seek the ego birth of EA. Here we can look to the two Mary’s of the Jesuses to support the ego birth of EA within the soul of human beings. One birth and egoness for EA might be sought in the life of the young Mary of the Nathanic Jesus, the mother who died early and rose into the world of the divine of spiritual heights. This young Mary rose, as it were, to the greatest of heights, to virginity of soul, to holiness of soul and then to divinity of soulness. These stages of the Nathanic Mary, if I understand correctly, resulted in the rapid ascent of this ego of this Mary to the heights of spiritual existence of the cosmos. Here I would think that the ego birth of EA could be sounded as SIEVA with the evolution of the human ego on a path to the Divine.

The second ego impulse in the life of EA might be followed with the older Mary, the mother of the Solomonic Jesus. This second mother lived through the first twelve years of her Solomonic son, then took on motherhood for the next eighteen years for the Nathanic body. In this way she could live with the Ego of the Solomonic Jesus, the Zarathustra ego, so that the Solomonic ego in the body of the Nathan could give over the body of the Nathanic ego to the incarnating Christ. For three years she then becomes the mother, the EVA, of the Christ Jesus. Here we might sound E-V-A-I. During these three years she not only became virginius, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner, but she can be thought of as gradually coming to a state of holiness, so that slowly she could become the “Mother of John”. It is this mother element that we can then try to grasp in the next sounding of EA who begins a two-fold evolution – the one to the Divine and the other into the souls of human beings, into the innermost core of the human being. To her we can sound – S-O-P-H-I-A.

Though Sophia was incarnating in the Greek cultural stream, within the mystery stream, to become a beloved Being, that is “Philosophia”, she became an actual mother within the stream which was developed to permit the incarnation of the Christ. She can be thought of as a mother incarnate in the Nathanic mother. She by this means could acquire an ego and lay a foundation for helping the human being to find individuality through the Mystery of Golgotha. When she died at about twenty-five years of age, she, as already noted, ascended to the highest spiritual world but remained at the same time to overshadow the Solomonic mother. The Solomonic mother (overshone by the Nathanic mother in the spiritual world) became the mother of John at the Foot of the Cross. A new form of motherhood became possible and a new form of “sonship”. The mothering of the human soul, the further evolution of the soul became possible by the new relation between mother and son. The old purely hereditary ties could begin, for the first time, to step a bit into the background. The “mid-wifery” of Plato-Zagreus, and Plato the Younger, could become a mothering for the maturity of the soul, but in the case of the mother at the foot of the cross and the son at the foot of the cross, a Christic impulse was added to this relationship. This potential for human maturation out of the sophianic, and for a new relation with heredity, can be considered with the events at the foot of the Cross. The Christ, however, plays a role, the Christ spirit, not of the body, plays a role. Therefore, the scene is placed at the Foot of the Cross by the Gospel writers and later by artists.

Thus, our outline here can be extended for the evolution of the EA through the events of Golgotha. Slowly her evolution begins to parallel the development of the human being, the higher development.

The outline –
EA —– cosmic existence
SEA-h — time of Abraham
SEAO — time of Moses
SEAOI — time of Solomon
EVA —- turning of time – Mystery of Golgotha (mother impulse)
EVAI — time of Baptism
SOPHIA — time of Crucifixion

Sophia And The Mystery Of Golgotha

We might contemplate a two-fold development as the Christ impulse penetrates the unfolding EA, the EA evolution in relation to the physical world and the incarnate human being. One might start with the Marriage of Cana to follow up one of the two-fold developments.

With the Marriage, we can consider that the EA impulse brings the marriage process on to a higher level. A perspective could be that we look for a metamorphosis of the usual marriage process by the event depicted in the St. John Gospel. Here the Christ makes a step in relation to the Solomonic mother, a step whereby, the mothering process begins to be lifted to permit higher birth. This higher birth is a marriage process, but one where the soul and the spirit of a given individual unites for the sake of higher cognitive capacities. The marriage process between two individuals depicted in the Gospel might be seen as altered by the presence of the Christ (The body of the Christ was of the same line as that of Jesus’s mother, that is the same hereditary line.)

The Christ we can learn is not of a hereditary line. The usual son and mother relation does not hold for this reason, at this scene, at this marriage. Thus, with the presence of the Christ, Christ Jesus, with the Mother, the uniting between man and woman becomes something different as noted. For this reason, the uniting of the man and woman to become husband and wife, can be viewed as not only becoming husband and wife in the usual way, but as well to becoming united in the two aspects that each human being carries, that is the soul and spirit. This union of soul and spirit, can be seen as a uniting of the soul of each with their own spirit, the spirit of each of the marital pair -­ for higher soul-spirit life. Each can help; each can mirror what the other has so that a higher soul-spiritual life can be unfolded. The “son” of the soul, a higher “son” can be born. The soul can receive its son.

With this marriage the sexual, the purely reproductory aspect of marriage is altered and the uniting of souls for higher life furthered. A huge step is pointed to here, in that heredity is not any longer the basis for soul-spiritual unfolding. Son- or daughter-ship is now what the soul carries as spiritual content in a higher state of consciousness. It is in this state of consciousness that those at the festive occasion could meet in the consuming of water. Those gathered could meet in the “spirit”, and the “spirit”, Devachanic ether world alive in the water, “pure” and “fresh” water, could be experienced as spirit filled. Thus, the water tasted like wine. Wine has the propensity to reveal the “spirit”. At this marriage, the “spirit” of the water, the higher ether condition of matter, was experienced by the pair who are in the process of being married. The pair were in the presence of the Christ and the Mother.

I would say that the EA impulse, the impulse of the young mother overshadowing the Salamonic Mother in the presence of Christ Jesus, permits human beings to come together in a state of higher marriage, within the soul itself where the Christ can weave. A close union of two human beings can become the basis for higher development, and this close union can be called marriage. This is entirely an inner process and not one of civil or legalistic formulations. This marriage for higher life becomes that basis for a socially responsible relationship, whatever that might be in each situation. (Here we might look for the archetype as it is presented in the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz). This aspect of the EA unfolding is what I would call an “ego” unfolding of Her Being.

A second dimension of the Christic penetration of the EA impulse can be considered by following the Christ Mystery further. Slowly from the time of the Marriage, the Christ came to penetrate the human organism of Jesus more and more. This is the perspective that Rudolf Steiner gave out of his spiritual scientific investigations. From the time of the Marriage of Cana to the Crucifixion, these investigations reveal that the Christ penetrated the human organism further and further. The blood that flowed at the time of the Crucifixion, the human form that hung on the Cross at the same time, both speak to such a progression, penetration, by the Christ. Christ as he comes to penetrate the human organism more and more comes to death on the Cross. This is represented again and again by those who carry the imaginations related to the Christ in their hearts. (The heart is built out of the world Cross, and the human soul who goes the Christian path will also experience life somewhat as a crucifixion).

As the Christ penetration progresses, the soul of the Salamonic Mother, overshadowed by the Nathanic Mother soul, follows the development, the suffering and the passions of this Mighty and Lofty Spiritual Being. This Mother goes through a development because of this. Her own soul becomes able to birth a higher state in human consciousness by virtue of these experiences. So I would reason. Rudolf Steiner speaks to the deep feeling capacity of the Solomonic mother. We can only surmise that this was infinitely deepened, purified and made “holy” by the events of the Mystery of Golgotha. With such a contemplation, I would then suggest we consider that the Mother of Jesus was ready for another step at the Foot of the Cross. The step for her and for John is that she can become the “mother” for this Spirit, this was the Spirit of John, John the Evangelist, John the Raised Lazarus. John could, in the presence of this Mother, come to carry the Christ in his soul with an impulse to reach to the spirit. Needed was a deepening of his soul, and the “mother impulse” in his soul could birth this deepening. With this deepening, the Christ could be understood, as we find depicted in the Gospel of St. John. This deepening of the soul of John, we might consider, as John and the Mother stood at the Foot of the Cross. This is so well represented by Matthias Gruenewald in the Isenheim altar.

The scene at the Foot of the Cross can be thought of as having advanced from marriage, where birth and parentage follows, to a virgin birth. In a way, the soul of John becomes filled with the soul depth of the Mother. In this way his spirit, spirit comprehension, can reach to the depth of the events of the Christ Mystery. Wisdom can be born in his soul, the EA can enter his soul. His spirit and his soul can comprehend with his Sophianic illumination. Such a new soul life of John is dependent on the EA, who becomes Sophia out of the philosophical soul-spirit of John.

The soul of the Solomonic Mother is a widowed soul, who becomes virginous at the time of the Baptism, and who through the life of the Christ, can birth a “son” whose name is John. John, Lazarus John, can take this mother to be his mother in terms of birthing his soul for the sake of a spirit which can then comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. The EA impulse in the soul of the mother, the wisdom impulse, can live in the soul of John for his higher birth into the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. John can begin to comprehend the life of the Christ in terms of Wisdom, EA, who becomes Sophia at the Foot of the Cross.

Such a second dimension of the EA evolution can then help that the Marriage of Cana can be followed through the events of the life of Christ. What eventuates is a virgin birth of a son to a mother, that is a deeper virginous soul life. The Mother at the Foot of the Cross helps the soul birth of John, who can bring his spirit to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. (The Christ might have asked him if his spirit has understood.) With this the Marriage of Cana, with the EA and the subsequent evolution of the Mother at the hand of the Mystery of Golgotha, can become a Christic Sophia. Here we can think of the birth of a CHRISTO-SOPHIA. Here we can ponder that EA receives her ego, SOPHIA gains her ego, at the hand of the Mystery of Golgotha, at the Foot of the Cross in the presence of John, St. John. As Lazarus was Raised by the Christ, now he is enlightened as it were, in the presence of Sophia, now a Christo-sophia. Later John’s final initiation takes place on the Isle of Patmos, in the presence of the Christ. This final step in initiation takes place with John, after his journey to Ephesus with the Mother.

The love of Sophia, philosophy, and then the Sophia of Christ anticipates the Sophia of the human being, Anthropos-sophia, later on. This Sophia of the human being, Rudolf Steiner helps bring to mankind 1900 years later. With the Sophia of the human being, a free and purely human relationship comes into question. This love of the human being was born through the Marriage of Cana and could evolve further through the events at the Foot of the Cross. This I would try to ponder as a significant aspect of this present effort to seek a Practico-sophia.

Again, the Marriage at Cana gives the impulse for later human beings to form social relationships that have an obvious responsibility related to them – such as husband and wife. The Marriage in itself points more to the marriage of soul with spirit, which changes the usual social relationship of husband and wife to that of a spiritual quest together. For this to take place the Christ has to come to assume a different relationship with His Mother[1] , the Solomonic Mother who had become virginous at the time of the Baptism. At the time of the Marriage at Cana this new relation between Mother and Son serves to raise marriage from the biological-reproductory to that of spiritual union of one human being with another on the basis of soul-spirit striving. My sense is that The Marriage indicates that purely hereditary forces can step into the background and soul-spiritual forces into the foreground. Biological forces and processes can become forces for the evolution of higher capacities and faculties. Metabolic and reproductory forces may, through such a marriage, serve as a basis for initiation with its new capacities.

The transformation of biological, metabolic-reproductory, to soul-spiritual evolution, might be considered to be the transformation at the Marriage. The married couple can now pursue a life together that is more than the reproduction of kind. Each can supplement the other on a common spiritual path where higher faculties evolve out of the metabolic-reproductory. Such might be a line of consideration with the Marriage at Cana. Through this marriage I have suggested the sounding of EVAI can point to the evolution of the sophianic[2] impulse in the world which lives in intimate relationships.

A further development of the Marriage at Cana is completed at the Foot of the Cross. At the Foot of the Cross the Mother of Jesus, again the Solomonic mother over-shadowed by the Nathanic mother soul in the spiritual world, becomes a truly Sophianic mother, that is the Mother of John. She becomes, as it were, birther of the soul of John before both go to Ephesus, to meet the already evolving sophianic that was born out of the Mysteries of that land. With this activity at the Foot of the Cross, the Mother of Jesus becomes the Mother of John. I would like to think that the more complete sophianic element is brought by the Mother to John to round out the sophianic of the Greek culture. The Christian is added to the heretical-philosophical, to the birthing of the independent thinker. The independent thinker was originally born in relation to the Mysteries of Greece.

If my surmise is correct, then the impulse of esoteric Christianity is born here at the Foot of the Cross, as a completion of the sophianic which was initiated with the Marriage at Cana. In between are the Three Years of the Christ. In the Gospel of St. John, these three years are set forth, as it were, in Christian and potentially philosophical terms. For the whole of this process, we might sound E-V-A–S-O-P-H-I-A.

With such a contemplation, it is possible to see the sophianic penetrated by the three years of the Christ incarnate in the human organism and then the transition back to the spiritual world. The three years help the Heavenly Nathanic Mother and the more Earthly Solomonic Mother be permeated by the deeds of the Christ before earth incarnation, during incarnation, and subsequently. For the more cosmic-heavenly impulse we might look to the Nathanic Heavenly Sophia. For the more earthly to practical sophianic impulse, we could turn to the Solomonic Earthly Mother. These two “mother impulses” can be thought of as always in relation to one another, but the two poles of “motherhood” appear in history in two different directions. The more earthly and the more heavenly we have to then follow up at this point.

The Hebrew Millennia After The Mystery Of Golgotha
Rudolf Steiner has indicated as already noted, that the three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha are mirrored in the times following the Mystery. The Solomonic period is mirrored up to 1000 AD, the Moses period is mirrored up in the period following the first millennium, that is to 2000 AD. This means that the second period is just ending and the third period of mirroring is just beginning with the turn of the century and what is to come. An outline then is:

3000 BC – Abrahamic period – physical body of Sophia is born
2000 BC – Moses period —— ether body of Sophia is born
1000 BC – Solomonic period — astral body of Sophia is born

MYSTERY OF GOLGOTHA — EGO OF SOPHIA IS BORN (two-fold)
1000 AD – Solomonic period – soul of Sophia
2000 AD – Moses period —— soul of Sophia
3000 AD – Abraham ———– soul of Sophia

If this approach is used, the Christian impulse can be thought of as penetrating the Hebrew workings to become the Judeo-Christian that we often hear of. However, this Judeo-Christian here gains quite new dimensions which differ from what we know of them from our usual exposure to the cultural and religious teachings of our day.

With the previous contemplations so strongly oriented to the Sophia and to John with the Mother of Jesus, I would then follow the course of John to Ephesus, along with the Mother, and later with Saul who became Paul after the experiences at Damascus. If we look to the Gospel of St. John, it might be thought of as given out of the Soul of the Mother at the Foot of the Cross. The life of the Christ can be thought of as revealed in a sophianic manner to John as he stood with the Mother at the Foot of the Cross. This I have already indicated.

With the Mother, he, John, now journeys to Ephesus after the Crucifixion. In Ephesus, John and the Mother meet the impulse of the Greek Mysteries that had become the birthplace of philosophy, the love of Sophia. (They meet these Greek Mysteries in the aura of the land.) Through this stay in Ephesus, the philosophical, the Sophia so much loved by the Greek, could live in the soul of both the Mother and John. At a hundred years of age, exiled on Patmos, John then comes directly to Christ, or Christ cometh to John, and with this the Sophianic of John is illuminated with the Being of the Christ for the sake of human future. This is then John’s initiation. The Apocalypse is given by the Christ to John. The sophianic becomes Being. This takes place one hundred years after the onset of the Mystery of Golgotha, a single year in the life of Sophia. One year in the life of the Sophia is equivalent to one hundred in the life of the human being. While on the Isle of Patmos, there is a kind of celebration of a year in the life of the Sophia. The Apocalypse is given directly into the soul of John – as a kind of birthday present in the life of the Sophia. I would like to think, that one hundred years in relation to the Christ, John can give back “Beingness” to the Mother of Jesus, as a birthday gift with an added year to Her life of soul, if we calculate from the Turning Point in Time.

While these deeply soul moving events take place in the life of John and the Mother of Jesus, we can turn to the Apostle Peter on whose life the outer Church was built. The Church can be thought of as grounded in the life and work of Peter. He is the “Rock” on which the Church is built. However, as the outer Church takes form, takes legal-political institutional form, an inner content is given by Saul, the Pharis[3] aic Jew who became Paul. It is St.Paul who gave the sacraments of the Church and could do so by metamorphosing the cult of the Greek mysteries. His Damascus experience permitted him to take hold of the Greek mystery cult and metamorphose it later into the cultus of the Church, at least such have my research revealed so far. At the same time Paul could give a much more esoteric teaching to his pupil, Dionysus[4] the Areopagite (the one who could see in the air ether, thus aero[5] ). The esoteric content which came into existence at the Foot of the Cross can be seen in contrast with the more outward development of Christianity and belongs more to what was given to Dionysus by Paul by giving the names to Hierarchical Beings.

Such events in the evolution of Christianity can be thought of as laying a foundation or basis for the sentient-soul of Sophia. Building of the Church and the many other religious structures would appear to be a part of this process and permitted the Sophia to live in the soul of the human being in those times. These events took place during the first millennium. One might think that this first stage after the Mystery of Golgotha brought the Christic impulse to the Sophia. At the same time the building of religious edifices was taking place. The first stages of the building of the cathedral at Chartres might be used as an example. A marked pagan impulse was exten[6] ded in the west at that time and with the later School at Chartres, the philosophical-heretical moved there also.

My perspective would be to see that the Mother, in whose soul lived the Sophia, as well as in the soul of John, made contact with the pagan impulse of the Greek gods. Here we might think of Demeter entering this stream of Sophia, directly out of Her sanctuary at Ephesus. Something of Demeter, a sun-moon relation, cosmic dimensions of existence, enters the Mother impulse in the environs of this sanctuary. At the same time this Mother element enters the feminine in a further evolution with Artemis who then streams more and more to the earth. Elements of the sun and moon enter the Christian stream, where the soul and the human become so central.

A further and brief characterization of the first period, the Solomonic period after the Mystery of Golgotha, would be to look at the artistic unfolding in relation to religious life and not only cathedral building. The great work of Manes, Mani, appears to be linked with the unfolding of the first millennium. Art with music, painting, sculpturing, and the first unfolding of city life out of European feudal kingdoms might be taken into consideration as the human activity in which Sophia could evolve her soul-bodily and soul-spiritual makeup as sentient-soul. The artistic initiation experiences of Mani in Persia streamed westward permitting Sophia to make another step in her gradual unfolding in the cultural life of the human being. In a way, it appears that this artistic activity carried the Christian impulse westward. It is not so easy to keep in mind that the deeds of the Christ were laid in the east. The Christian evolution has taken place moving from east to west. Only now with the Rosicrucian impulse can the west begin to stream eastward. It appears that the Christian unfolding towards the west was carried by the artistic, and the wisdom component was infused therein as Sophia made another step in her evolution. Here we can think of the great initiate, Mani.

We can think of the outer Church, the Catholic Church, as added to this artistic impulse by dint of the work of the first Church fathers, one of which was St. Augustine. The latter fought the Manichean doctrine very aggressively. It would appear that the artistic impulse of Mani was taken up without the Church realizing what was taking place. Art, as a part of the temple building process was the seed ground of Christian evolution in the western world while it served the sophianic impulse as well. The outer Church took on increasingly religio-, politico-, institutional form. Through the apostle Peter an outer Christian building and institutional impulse was brought about. Augustine politicized the institution, as it were. With the apostle Paul, with St. Paul, the sacramental process was added, a kind of esoteric impulse within the outer Church. As noted, St. Paul also brought about a more esoteric impulse through his pupil, Dionysius the Areopagite, but this has not come down to humanity through the Church.

In the time of this temple building era, Parsifal[7] found his initiation. For our considerations it is possible to see his initiation as grounding an esoteric within the temple building and at the same time evolving a Christian esoteric. In him the more western Hibernian, Druidic, Arthurian stream is united with the more eastern Grail Stream. The St. Bride of the west, a kind of sophianic impulse in the west was united with the courageousness of the knight to transform the warrior impulse into the quest for the beautiful. In a way, the Queen of Sheba, a pointing to the Sophia in the time of Solomon, becomes the “Beautiful Queen” sought by the knight of the first millennium. The St. Bride impulse of the west can be added to this so that the beautiful and the queenly become the saint through the Christ impulse. The knight actually duels[8] for the sake of a “beautiful woman” and in doing so gains his soul, sentient- to intellectual-soul.

The “beautiful woman” should not be seen in sexual context, but rather as a stage on the way to higher spiritual life, with the soul uniting with the spirit. This entire evolution of the west, the bringing of “Saelde “, soulness with the Parsifal initiation, adds the dimension of sentient-soul to the evolving Sophia within the soul of the human being, paving the way for the intellectual soul with its critical faculties. Rudolf Steiner has explained that the function of the human organism changed with this step from sentient soul to intellectual soul. The initiation of Parsifal brought this bodily change about. The processes of the kidneys were transformed to make way for a new splenic function, which carries the activities of the intellectual-soul, the critical faculty of the intellectual-soul. With the second millennium after the mystery of Golgotha, the artistic and the beautiful began to flourish in the western world. Art for religious purposes blossomed, and in the blossoming, there is a kind of rebirth. The Renaissance comes about but only after there is a further unfolding of the School of Chartres. Here with this School, the Greek philosophical moves west, to bring an educational process so that the soul of the human being, many human beings, can be permitted a spiritual path. The birth of the “liberating arts”, cosmic beings of the planetary world, brings it about that new soul capacities can come into existence.

Human intelligence on the way to intellect, was born out of the Greek Mystery and Philosophical streams on a path to the west. The School of Chartres in the west helped this unfolding of the philosophical in relation to spiritual life and then Christianity in particular. The Scholastics appeared, and the scholar became the outcome, with intellect and the gradual failing of spiritual beingness. The artistic was brought to the Sophia of[10] the Greek as She moved westward within the souls of men and women. In this western world, she made another step, but in the process something of her Being was lost.

The sophianic impulse came via this School of Chartres, with its liberating arts, to the Catholic Church. It was St. Thomas of Aquinas who performed this deed for the sake of this institution. Aquinas brought thoughts and thought content to this institution. With this the more rational, the more intellectual was introduced into this institution of the west. The sophianic received a more intellectual turn through the scholastic and this was supported by the Church as it expanded its power – using gold to do so. (Gold was used to hire soldiers. With this the spiritual aspect of gold, wisdom, was lost). The artistic of the liberating arts became more intellectual through the nominalistic thinkers and those of the same makeup in the Church. Into this intellectual unfolding we would have to introduce the Arabism of that time, which directed the intellect to the physical and the earthly, laying a solid framework for materialism.

This flourishing of the artistic with the Renaissance, the rebirth of the Greek art on the level of the soul, the unfolding of the intellect at the hand of the Church through Aquinas, and the materialistic bent of Arabism, helped that the intellectual soul of Sophia could come to birth in the souls of men. As Mani-Parsifal can be seen as a most important focus during the first millennium, so now during this second millennium we can turn to Christian Rosenkreutz. This Initiate we can see as helping Sophia to make another step in the philosophical which moved from Greece west. Not only did Christian Rosenkreutz take up the Christic stream, but also the gradual unfolding of a new relation between man and nature. With his initiation a new “path through nature” could be trod by the human being. The philosophical became more nature oriented with initiation possibilities. A path through nature was cultivated as a spiritual path, and at the same time a more “natural philosophy” was gradually born. I would suggest that the natural philosophical helped that the earthlier Persephone could in this time become Natura, a Sophia of Nature.

With this unfolding, the Sophia could slowly move from being the Mother of a God (Jesus to Christ), to the Mother of man (John), to the Mother of Nature (Natura). This I would designate not as a Heavenly Sophia, but as an earthlier one where the Heavenly accompanies the earthly to come forth in a new way with the next thousand years.

Cosmic intelligence of older times might be considered to have birthed theosophical perspectives. Slowly the cosmic intelligence descended into man, the human being, to become human intelligence. In the time when the cosmic became human, a record of this descent can be followed with a philosophical perspective. My view is that Rudolf Steiner detailed this process with his “Riddles of Philosophy”. This time of unfolding the philosophical began 8-700 BC and continued with the unfolding of the sentient and intellectual-soul birth of Sophia. It is, however, in this second millennium, that she in a way lost her soul. Natura, Persephone-Natura, as a kind of natural philosophical being, lost her life with the taking in of “Arabistic” thinking in the western world. Natura as natural philosophy became natural science. With this, soulness was lost. Sophia died in a way.

I would not say that she, the Sophia Being, was crucified. She died in the souls of human beings to again appear as Anthropo-Sophia. She reappeared I would say, not resurrected, which would mean that she followed the path of the Christ. This I do not think happened as best as I can see. Thus, the bodily resurrection of Mary, as some have come to speak about, does not seem correct to me. It seems to me to be important not to mix the happenings of the Christ with those of the Mother. As best as I can see, the Sophia never incarnated in the same way as the Christ, merely touched in as it were, particularly with the young Mother. The Sophia, was at the same time coming alive in the older Mother, particularly through the Solomonic Jesus and then the Christ, while all the time the older Mother was overshadowed by the younger. If one follows the foundation of the Sophia as I have tried to formulate it, then one can consider that She has basically an etheric existence. She acquired Her etheric grounding from Saturn evolution, Sun evolution and then the Earth evolution. Her further evolution appears in the souls, in the astrality of the human makeup as the astral evolves to become soul and then spirit penetrated. With the physical being taken into the soul, with consciousness-soul, we can now meet Her in our quests. Therefore, it always seems to me, that it is not wise to consider a “resurrection” of this Being.

Those who have taken a scientific path in our day, know only too well, that philosophy was and is frowned on and has no place in science. To speak of a scientist as one who is philosophizing while searching, is today still the height of insult. All the soul has to be eliminated with modern natural science. Even if the observational activities and the mathematical-calculatory activities are very much a part of soul life, the modern scientist argues that the soul must be eliminated. In this way the human soul becomes void of content, as it were, and becomes a kind of a grave for Sophia, a soul grave, not a physical grave. Men now must find Her in a new way.

This quest for the Sophia in a new way is what typifies the outset of the third millennium after the Mystery of Golgotha. This millennium opens with the end of Kali Yuga, the Age of Darkness. It is in this millennium that all soul life is dead (God is dead) and new soul life is needed. For this to occur, man must come to deal with himself as a physical human being. This is just what has taken place. When the human being says “I” to himself, unless some spiritual exercises have been undertaken, the human being experiences his physicality only. He looks in the mirror and says “I” or “ME”. If the human being looks inward, away from the outer light, he comes to darkness, not to a light within. Practice is needed to find and see an inner light, while looking at oneself in a mirror[11] – unless the light wells from depths without effort or without control (The latter welling from the depths can be very unsettling and leads to aberrations which are difficult to separate from psychiatric illness. Rudolf Steiner warned about this).

With the end of the age of darkness, the Kali Yuga, a five thousand-year period, a potential for new inner light can now begin to appear. This is taking place since the turn of the century. What light means is unknown to many or most. Consciousness is what is being spoken of for the most part and I would venture replaces the sense of soulness and gives a broad basis for speaking of an inwardness that has been absent for centuries unless a spiritual path has been taken. Still, many remain in darkness, where in the usual life of the soul, intellect is ruler of the day. Those who sense or experience something in the soul, often are in opposition to the usual intellect and speak about the reductionistic, materialistic intellect and the absence of soulness. Yet those who begin to experience some light in the soul, “consciousness”, for the most part speak only of consciousness in our present time.

That consciousness is the consciousness of soul, (consciousness-soul in the human body), is not so easy to discover.[12] Much effort is needed to find the experiences and observe the working of the consciousness-soul, where the physical appears in relation to light and to consciousness. There are those who are making millions by speaking about consciousness, few speak of consciousness-soul and grow poor.

It is just this material world which when carefully investigated has given birth to a Sophia of the human being. It is the Sophia of the human being, of body, soul and spirit that was born with such conscious effort by Rudolf Steiner. It is he who presented the sophia of the human being, that is Anthropo-Sophia, to the world in our time, the time which is at the beginning of the “Age of Light”. Rudolf Steiner in his little book on “The Riddles of Man” addresses this birth or emergence of an “anthroposophy” in the souls of human thinkers before his mighty revelation. The physician and thinker, Troxler[13] , (editor: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler,1780-1866) is one such human being in the 18th century. He came to an experience of anthroposophy and spoke of this fact. He preceded Rudolf Steiner. This Sophia of Man is also pointed to in the “Riddles of Philosophy” where Rudolf Steiner deals more with the intellectual-soul evolution of Sophia. The book “The Riddles of Man” serves as a transition from the “philosophical” (with the Riddles of Philosophy) to the “anthroposophical”. With the latter the consciousness-soul of the human being, and at the same time that of Sophia, is presented to the world in lecture and written form.

What seems important to consider is that the “Age of Light” is almost a hundred years old. At the same time most human beings still experience themselves in their physicality. Some begin to speak of consciousness as just indicated, but not consciousness-soul. There are those who speak of soul consciousness, but this is still different from experiencing oneself as a consciousness vis-a-vis object consciousness. Consciousness-soul has inherent an objective existence that is both inward and outward at the same time. The concept soul consciousness, I would venture points more to an inwardness that eliminates the observation of the outer world at the same time. Consciousness-soul, if I have the right idea and experience means the soul and the object appear as ONE.

Rudolf Steiner gives a history of the birth of this new soul element, that is the consciousness-soul, in many of his writings and lectures about anthroposophy. Here human soul life and the spiritual life of Sophia meet on common ground. The physical makeup of the human being is essential to this birth of the consciousness-soul for man as well as Sophia. The rather dead intellectual-soul life with reductionistic activity and a vowed materialism can be seen as a necessity for the birth of the consciousness-soul as it has evolved out of the intellectual-soul.

What is it that Rudolf Steiner brings? One could say he brings the “spiritualization of the intellect”. Most human beings live with their intellect, even if they object to it. It is not so easy to become independent, free and creative without the intellect in our day. But to stay at the stage of intellect is more and more being recognized as limited and needing new dimensions. Some seek to do away with intellect but are none the less infected with the process, not always noting this. What is important with Rudolf Steiner is that he gives a path for the spiritualizing of the intellect or even the acquisition of the intellect so that it can be spiritualized. He does this to support freedom and creativity with each individual.

The previous stages of unfolding of the Beingness of Sophia we have noted to be that of the sentient-soul during the first thousand years after the Mystery of Golgotha. With the second thousand the intellectual-soul evolves for the human being, and into this weaves the Being of Sophia. So, at the time of the end of the twentieth century, She can begin to acquire a consciousness-soul. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, she acquired a physical body by dint of the human soul (Abraham), as well as an ether body (Moses) and an astral body (Solomon-Hiram). With the Mystery of Golgotha, Her ego was born through the DEEDS of Christ. Since the “Turning of Time”, She has gone on to more and more soul development. She has acquired sentient- and intellectual-soulness at the hand of great initiates (Mani and Christian Rosenkreutz) as well as human beings – gradually.

Now comes the time of the human being acquiring consciousness-soul, assisted by Rudolf Steiner. Sophia lives along and into this depth of soul. She and we make our way. She in a way can become the Being who gives a sense of the “Fullness” of the soul in the age of consciousness-soul, where the physical world should not drop away, but it can. The physical of the world should be “raised” as with art, or in the case with man, the physical should become penetrated by the Sophia. Raising is not resurrection to my way of thinking. Lazarus was “raised”, then enlightened as John and then was finally initiated. Lazarus did not resurrect as did the Christ. My perspective is that the Raising permits us now to come to consciousness-soul where the physical is thoroughly penetrated with wisdom – the outer world as well as the human physical-life makeup.

With Her cosmic evolutions we were able to sound the Being of Sophia. The same was also true up to the Mystery of Golgotha. However, as She unfolds her Soul members, her sounding comes to an end. With the evolution of philosophy her Beingness becomes so permeated by the intellect, that the word and the idea separate. She becomes a kind of idea being, and words become sounds removed from idea content all together. In addition, the idea content becomes lost in our time as well. In fact, philosophy becomes totally outmoded, and the idea of a “Philo-Sophia”, a “Love of Sophia”, would and is thought of as a kind of absurdity in the mind of the materialistic, intellectual thinker in our time.

From Sophia To Logy
As briefly noted above, something of Her Being is gradually lost as the material makeup of nature and the human being is penetrated, not by wisdom, but by the inner theorizing of the man of our day. Gradually the sophianic element, the seeking of Sophia was lost with the birth, with the unfolding of natural science out of natural philosophy. As Her Being is lost to the forces of the earth, a process of knowledge comes into existence which is through and through materialistic. The knowledges gained come to be designated with the term “logy”. For example, one might cite an example such as, philosophy became philology, the study of words, soundings and with a trend to separate sound from meaning. Word and meaning become separated. This separation between idea, meaning, and sounding, permits the “word” as such to become evident. The word in turn appears more and more significant as words, the sounds, the evolutions and potential meanings are investigated with philology.

In this line of thought, one might look to the two philosophical streams which unfolded in the time of Scholasticism in the Middle Ages. The two streams were that of realism and nominalism. The realists maintained the existence of a reality with idea, a spiritual existence garmented by the idea. The nominalists maintained that the idea was a word, present with the thinking or speaking of the human being – a naming. It may be that the nominalism of that time helped the birth of philology. The love of wisdom became the love of word. With this the Sophia was lost even by those who spoke of ideas becoming words and names. The beingness of idea died, and with this Sophia was . progressively lost.

Gradually the Being of Sophia, and the reality of the beingness of ideas brought about the view that ideas were confined to the mind of man. With this subjective formulation, epitomized by Kant, knowledge acquired definite limits. The result was the limits to knowledge and the need to have faith. With the logy of knowledges, man became confined to sense world alone, and anything beyond depended on faith or divine revelation by a few. For a good number, the Church of Rome became the arbiter of what is to be known of the spiritual world, and man had to be subservient to this Church in case of spiritual matters. Science was born more and more out of a Kantian view, and the Reformation came about as a revolt to the Church becoming the guide for deeper spiritual life. The reality of “wisdom” and the potential for acquisition became lost for western man.

Thus, the quest for knowledge was born during the time of the second millennium as sophia became logy. During this time the view became the standard that there are limits to knowing and with this man out of his own being could and can only know the physical world.

One might formulate the Sophianic evolution by saying that in the time of cosmic evolution, She was very much Luciferically tinged. Though she differed from Lucifer, she carried a Luciferic bent that could be united with the deeds of Christ. She, however, led not to a kind of divine light without identity and individuality, but she carried always the potential for enlightening the deeds of the Being who would bring true “Egoness” to humankind. This Being was and is the Christ. The cosmic dimension and the three millennia before Christ, though here viewed through the activities of three Hebrew initiates, were actually Christ-centric.

As noted, the Greeks and the Egyptians carried an impulse that was related to the Sophia and the Greeks birthed the Sophianic for mankind. None the less, it is the Hebrew, the Jewish stream, which laid the basis for the incarnation of the Sophia, so that she could become an EVAI and a SOPHIA. (It is for this reason that I have at times sounded the word J-E-H-0-V-A-I)

As noted, the Sophianic Being then could incarnate in the Jewish stream to become manifest with two divergent impulses, with two sides to Her Being. Thus, two human beings were needed. Each became a mother, that is the Nathanic Mother and then the Solomonic Mother. The mother aspect of Sophia, can be further typified naming the mother, or mothers Mary. A more inward sounding of this two-fold Being might be, “E-V-A, M-A-R-I-A, S-0-P-H-I-A”. Eva descends, Maria is of the earth and Sophia ascends, is more of the cosmos.

That Rudolf Steiner designated the three millennia, those of Abraham, Moses and Solomon, seems to me to be infinitely wise, so that we can contemplate the physical heredity needed to incarnate the mighty dimensioned Sophia we are dealing with.

Earlier I have noted that the earthlier Mother Mary was overshadowed and penetrated by the departed Nathanic Mother. This mother after being designated the Mother of John, made Her way to the Greek mystery center at Ephesus. The life of Mary at Ephesus is shrouded with mystery, but what is obvious is that Her way was north to the mystery land where the sophianic emerged out of mystery center culture. This has been said but is repeated for the sake of the current line of contemplation. Also I have been impressed by the fact that both St. John and St. Paul made their way there – the home of Demeter of the Mysteries.

The Greek mythological evolution can be thought of as a step from the mystery center, with initiation for the few, to the birth of myth for the sake of the many. As previously noted, the first three stages of the birth of the Greek gods, that is Uranus-Hera, Chronos-Athena, and Zeus all three point to the stages of higher consciousness, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner. That is:

Imagination—– Hera-Zeus
Inspiration—— Rhea-Chronos
Intuition——— Gaia-Uranus

If we consider the feminine and the masculine of these higher stages of consciousness, then we might place the sophianic in the position of the feminine and follow the sophianic into ever higher states of consciousness.

It is next possible to follow the feminine in the opposite direction, that is from an ascending consciousness to one that becomes progressively human and earthly. The stages of this evolution I have elsewhere in my contemplations of the ” Easter in the Light of the Sophias[14] ” therein noted to be indicated with the three Greek goddesses, Demeter, Artemis and Persephone. These three goddesses suggest a soul evolution that related to the higher stages of consciousness as nature and the earth are penetrated with wisdom.

This transition from the stages that are more cosmic, to the more earthly, more human can, with the unfolding of philosophy, be compared with the step from Plato to Aristotle. Plato spoke of the Idea, and Sophia from a cosmic perspective. Aristotle brought the idea to earth with his Categories. Aristotle brought “LOGIC” to mankind and by this means permitted the important step from sophia to logy. The former can be thought of as heaven and spiritually bound. The latter can be thought of as physical and earth bound. With both, the thinking capacity of the human being becomes personal, while the activity of mythological consciousness can be considered to be more inspired, given to the human being by the spiritual world. With Plato and Aristotle, the work of the thinker begins and the more passive intake of picture and idea tends to disappear.

With this philosophical evolution, the Being of Sophia which flowed with, into and through the Mystery of Golgotha could take another step. The Sophia of the Mystery of Golgotha could enter the stream of the western evolution of thought and knowledge. The spirituality of the Christ could be sought and the deeds understood, or efforts at understanding could be made. The consequence can be thought of as eventuating in the materialization of knowledge, the fall of the sophianic to logy, and the total loss of the Being of Sophia with the progress of the centuries into our time.

With the evolution of the Mythological to the logical, the philosophical became nature directed, so I have viewed this evolution from the heavenly to the natural. As noted, Nature wisdom became natural philosophy, and from the Christian perspective, Persephone became Natura. The further evolution of Sophia then was that she was totally lost and a natural science came to be born out of the logic with the progressive evolution in science in the western world. Then science became very much a process of “theorizations” (a marked fall from a theo-sophy but this theorization is not addressed by scientists).

Two other activities became a part of science, that is observation and calculation. Rudolf Steiner has noted that the observation of researchers can be seen as a metamorphosis of the life and activity of the “Shepherds” of the Christian tradition. On the other hand, Rudolf Steiner has also indicated that the calculation by mathematicians is a direct transformation of the work of the “Magi”, also known to the Christian tradition. This Christian metamorphosis of shepherd and magi activities of the past, then is a part of the western sophianic evolution which has become a part of modern-day science. However, it takes relatively little effort to see that the devotion of the shepherds and the wisdom of the magi have been lost.

It is Rudolf Steiner that has tried to help us to consider the metamorphosis of shepherd activity from activities in the field with animals and earth to scientific observation. He, as well, has pointed to the mathematical calculatory processes that are so much a part of science today, a far cry from the star wisdom of the Chaldeans. This rich past of the King-Magus has been lost and as well all that might have a relation with the Christian impulse. Nothing of the Divine, nothing of the Sophia, nothing of the shepherd or the magi remains for us. It is now the day of the pure materialization of all that meets us, including the activity of research, observation, and thinking in terms of calculations. (Thinking by calculation now has become replaced by the computer).

As already indicated, this evolution of wisdom to modern science has been carefully researched and reported on by Rudolf Steiner. He has given many lectures on history, philosophy and the evolution of science. He has typified this development and this fall of the sophianic by noting changes in man’s relation with the stars. At the outset of the dark age, Kali Yuga, star wisdom was called astrosophy. With the passage of time sophia became logy – thus astrology was born. A further evolution then has been that astrology became astronomy. Our current astronomy is one of depicting the universe around us as a physical reality alone, to be understood with observation and calculation as with a mechanical system. The human being in his makeup can now be comprehended by anatomy as a further example of the step into material knowledge concerning man.

During the time of this evolving darkness, the human being has become more isolated and more desolate in his life on this dying earth as it is now depicted by science. His knowledges have died in the process. Needed is now an impulse that brings new light to this darkness and can begin to reverse the knowledge process from -logy, and -onomy to a new -sophy.

For the sake of perspective let me list the many “logys” that exist in our day. They can be divided into the logys of the outer world, the environment, the logys of the human being and the logys of society.

The environment-	The human being–	The social-
Astrology (0nomy)	Anthropology	Cosmology
Meteorology	Pulmonology	Planetology
Oceanology(graphy)	Rheology	Commerc-ology(e)
Geology	Osteology	Agri-ology(culture)
Mineralogy	Chemology (istry)	Product-ology(ion)
Botanology(any)	Physiology	Consum-ology(er)
Zoology	Psychology	Sociology

Now for the sake of comparison let me list possible Sophias

The environment-	The human being–	The social-
Astrosophy	Anthroposophy	Cosmosophy
Meteorosophy	Pnemtosophy	Planetosophy
Oceanosophy	Philosophy	Commerce-osophy
Geosophy	Senosophy	Agri-osophy
Botanosophy	Physiosophy	Artosophy
Zo-osophy	Psychosophy	Sociosophy

Admittedly some of the sophys noted here are not referred to as such in our day and Rudolf Steiner has only given a few – eg., pneumatosophy, and psychosophy. The others are my effort to look a little differently on the various fields of knowledge in our time.

Rudolf Steiner And The Age Of Light
It might be noted from the enumeration of the logys that the Age of Darkness has been a process in the evolution of the human being and the world, so that human beings could come to another view of existence in a more conscious way. This becoming aware, awaking to the physical world where at the moment we find mostly darkness, is called by spiritual science the age of consciousness-soul. The physical strikes us in our day. The physical stands as object and we as subject when thought about a little. The makeup and meaning of the world around us as physical world lies as a kind of mystery. The same physicality can be noted for oneself, but a more careful observation leads one to ask, “Well, what about me – what am I? I am something, at least a consciousness in this manifold world, and I can question. But what is questioning? Is this power to question, not a form of thinking? If it is thinking, then let me look at this thinking.”

Such a line of consideration might be a point of departure for someone who is observant and slightly thoughtful. It is just something like such thoughts that led Rudolf Steiner to begin a path with a “love” for “Sophia”, that is “Philosophy”. Thus, his first writings are about ideas, philosophizing as it were, but in addition he addressed the capacity of the human being to think. He pointed to what thinking might be, what it can do, and what its potential is for meeting an objective existence. The investigation of thinking that Rudolf Steiner undertook, led him to find and deal with new vistas in the soul and led the seeker, the worker and the thinker to acquire these new vistas within the soul. He wrote to encourage new capacities by he who strove to deal with the ideas presented by Rudolf Steiner. Every thinker, every philosopher of note, challenges the seeking thinker to practice differing ways of thinking and not only to deal with ideas. This is particularly the case with Rudolf Steiner’s writings. The result of such an effort can be that ordinary thinking can be fortified, transformed and metamorphosed to meet the varying domains of existence.

On this path to deal with the physical world and the human capacity to think, Rudolf Steiner met the human being as the great question and “the” riddle. The human being as a physical entity he met head on and began a careful investigation of this physical human being [16] (this includes the anatomical and physiological). He came to meet the human being, not only in soul and spirit, but in body and life as an objective reality. The investigation into the physical makeup became a progressive interest for Rudolf Steiner, while in the meantime, he had come progressively to experience thinking as an objective reality.

Further, Rudolf Steiner investigated the lives of human beings, as a part of meeting many humans on a social level – in a very deep way. (As a young man he was felt by some to be quite removed from the social scene, while he sought in depths of the human soul. He from his side was a deep penetrator of the entire makeup of his friends, such that the reality of the “ego” as a spiritual being never disappeared. This can be read in his autobiography.) In his twenties he met the works of Goethe and then Goethe in the spiritual world. In the works of Goethe, Rudolf Steiner found a world view and a method of viewing the world which was somewhat similar to his own. In the works of Goethe, Rudolf Steiner found the gaze of Goethe directed upon the outer world. There in the outer world the gaze of Goethe met not only objects, but ideas as well. Ideas, as picture and image, this lived with the object gazed upon. Ideas were objective realities for Goethe, even if they had a markedly subjective-objective tint noted by Rudolf Steiner. With Rudolf Steiner the subjective was essentially objective. Subjective-objective is the term Rudolf Steiner used for the more inward activity of thinking in relation to objective presentations in the world.

If one turns to Rudolf Steiner, it might be said, that he observed objects where his outer gaze met the ideas which arose out of the objects with thinking. Rudolf Steiner observed this objective surfacing of ideas with thinking observational consciousness. It could be said that the objective ideas were or are breathed-in as a thinking activity while observing the objects of the physical world. The thinking might be seen as a most delicate form of breathing allied with sense activity. This thinking with observational activity might be called a ‘pnematosophic’ process. The inner and the outer that merged in Goethe, took place in Rudolf Steiner as well, but Rudolf Steiner was able to make note of and research the more personal, more individual, the more subjective quality of the idea that lived objectively. This idea could be intuited, breathed in one might say.

As Rudolf Steiner came to meet Goethe in the spiritual world, detailed in “Goethe’s World View”, his differences with Goethe became clear. It would appear that the noted differences by Rudolf Steiner were and are that Rudolf Steiner could keep much greater consciousness of his thinking than could Goethe. Goethe was afraid of this type of observation of the activity of thinking in cognitive activity directed to the outer world. This was and is a marked difference between Goethe and Rudolf Steiner. The similarity is that their soul lives were directed outward, so that the inward, at a deeper level appeared outward as objective fact. Thinking became an objective activity with Rudolf Steiner and the idea became objective as well.

This activity of the thinking soul, the work and seeking path of Rudolf Steiner can, as above, be called a “love” for “Sophia”, but it had to be worked at. He detailed his effort and his quest which is shared in his basic epistemological texts – “The Theory of Knowledge”, “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”, and “Truth and Science”. I would like to consider that he came to meet the Sophia out of a striving love, and in the process met through Goethe a “Botanosophy”. He, like Goethe, came to the Beingness of the Plant world, the Archetypal Plant, after he had come to the Beingness of Sophia. With this in hand, he could then seek the Beingness of man, that is an Anthroposophy.

To find the Sophia of the human being, I have noted again and again, that Rudolf Steiner had to struggle with the “logys” of the human being. He had to investigate what Sophia had fallen into with modern anthropology. The modern knowledges of the human being as a mechanical, metabolic, and elaborate electrical machine, he had to take in. This he did as he strove to meet the Sophia in the world of pure idea, in pure thinking consciousness. A kind of two-fold Sophia had to be searched for in a way, just as I have been trying to develop with this essay.

For a moment it might be well to think through what could have happened to the Sophia, as the Sophia became logy penetrated – drawn into logical process. With the logical process, the Being and sense of Being of Sophia, disappeared for more and more of mankind. After nearly three hundred years of the logical of Aristotle, less and less of spiritual beingness remained. This lay the foundation for a thinking which could take hold of the Christ as a spiritual being who had incarnated into a physical body. Next the Mystery of Golgotha brought about a new penetration of that which the Sophia had been brought to through logic. The Sophia, as the Mother of Jesus(es), followed the events in the life of the Christ, and by this means we might consider that logic, and logy process, became Christ penetrated. The descending process of the Sophia was reversed in a way. An ascent came about and the result can be noted that now logic, logy, could become LOGOS penetrated. The Christ could penetrate the Beingness of the Sophia, so that a new upward impulse could come about. Through the deeds of the Christ, that which was and is logic could be metamorphosed and still can be metamorphosed in an upward direction to become LOGOS. The logical that was bound towards the earth, was penetrated once more by the Christ Being, and through the deeds of the Christ logic had to change. There is nothing logical about the Mystery of Golgotha. It was an event which had or must be penetrated by our cognitive, thinking cognitive capacities. The sophianic logic, at the hand of Aristotle, became earth bound and ultimately led to the logys of our materialistic times. The Christ had to take hold of the logy impulse to bring new life to this process so that LOGOS activity could be considered by men. How was this done?

I would now like to introduce a view here that would need much more substantiation but is important to note. This view can be that the Christ came and brought the impulse of the Holy Spirit directly, as a working of the Holy Spirit. The Bodhisattvas who work in the direct light of the Christ and worked from out of this sphere of the Holy Spirit, now could do so, as the Christ came gradually to incarnate directly upon earth. The direct activity of the Christ, brought spiritual activity to logic, a will process which can be likened to the Deeds of the Christ. By this means, logic was taken upward to become LOGOS activity, pure spiritual activity. By this route logic can become divine activity, a spiritual activity. This Holy Spirit impulse can be thought of as bringing an upward impulse to logic, logic to logos, as logic was becoming more and more used to comprehend the physical of the world.

The many different activities of the Bodhisattvas, such as the Buddha, Zarathustra , and Scythianus, can be thought of as having worked, and continuing to work to bring a kind of Holy Spiritual activity to the process that we come to know first and foremost as logic today. This logical process must be altered, and in the polaric thinking introduced by Goethe and furthered by Rudolf Steiner, the activity of thinking can be altered to become sophianic directed. Therefore, I tend to think that Christ activity, working through the Bodhisattvas, helps this transformation to come about. By this means the Sophia can come to live in the thinking of human beings. This spiritual thinking has been termed “pure spiritual activity.”

It would lead too far to develop this contemplation further as it would require that the whole domain of the Bodhisattvas be carefully addressed. I have begun this with other contemplations, but I hope this is sufficient for the considerations here. Here we are looking at the transformation of logic to Logos activity, and this in turn needs another step to WORD. Logic must be led over to LOGOS and LOGOS to the WORD, as thinking passes over to speaking. Such would be a line of contemplation that might help our direction in search of Sophia. Rudolf Steiner records his encounter of the Idea as an event in the world of the Holy. He calls the meeting, the taking in, the transformation of the idea in the soul, as a SPIRITUAL COMMUNION. This communion event took place when he was twenty-six years of age. He then for the first time caught a glimpse of the “threefold” makeup of the human being. In a way we might say that he not only “communed” with Idea, but with the Idea of the Human Being as well. He tells of this encounter with the threefold human being as an inspiration from the spiritual world, as a gift for humanity in a way. I am inclined to place the SPIRITUAL COMMUNION and the revelation of the THREEFOLD HUMAN BEING together, two events in the domain of the Sophia. The path of the thinker Rudolf Steiner leads to Spiritual Communion on the one hand. On the other hand, the researcher Rudolf Steiner, who researched the physical makeup of the human being, made his way to the revelation of the “threefold human being” – to the SOPHIA OF MAN.

The physical of the human being and the sophianic, as idea, unite as it were and are two sides of the same coin. The physical is raised, and the communion with idea and with the human being takes place in the domain of the spirit. The communion with the idea can be said to lead to a new “Philo-sophia” while the inspiration in regard to man’s makeup can be thought of as a new “Anthropo-sophia”. The Sophia can be seen as incarnate in the soul of the thinker. I would see the “Philo-sophia” as a more feminine revelation of the Sophia and “Anthropo-sophia” as a more masculine revelation. The more feminine philosophia we might consider having incarnated into the two “Mothers”, while the more masculine of Anthroposophia can be thought of as incarnating briefly to become the Nathanic Jesus. From such ponderings, it can be seen that the Being of Sophia is mighty and appears in the world in a complex and progressive fashion. As all of existence becomes wisdom penetrated as it were, the Sophia appears in many garbs. Her two-fold makeup was encountered by Rudolf Steiner in 1886 or there abouts.

Thus, the Sophia can be seen as no simple Being who can come to live in the soul of we human beings. As She makes her step from philosophy to anthroposophy, the human being steps from intellectual-soul to consciousness-soul. What I have tried to relate of the cosmic EA is slowly coming to birth in the soul of the human being, with sentient-, then intellectual- and presently as consciousness-soul of the human being. This birth in the soul of the human being can be thought of as an unfolding of the spirit of Sophia. With the two Mothers of Jesus, as just noted, the Sophia could become a two-fold impulse within the souls of human beings. At the same time, with the birth of the Sophia of Man, the Sophia steps from more soul working into the bodily makeup of the human being. With the Raising of Lazarus, a decided new etheric element entered the human physical organization, so that it could be penetrated by the soul, to become sophianic. This new etheric lived in the body of John as he came to witness the events of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Next Step Of The Sophianic Impulse
We have somewhat taken up the gradual incarnation of the Sophia into the soul and now in the age of consciousness-soul into the physical-etheric makeup of the human being. But another step is possible and that is into the social body that has yet to come out of the revelation of the threefold human physical makeup. The social process now has yet to make another step. The step is from the logic of our societal working to a sophianic working. As the anthropological makeup of the human being has in this age of the consciousness-soul to make a step to the anthroposophical, so the sociological has a step to make the step to the socio-sophianic. This is a step from the wisdom of the human being to the evolution of societal process penetrated with wisdom. This bringing of wisdom, the Being of Sophia, to the social process then anticipates the next age of evolution, the age of the spirit-self. This stage does not evolve out of the human being as an isolated individual, but out of human beings at work with one another, living and communing with one another. Men, men and women, must come together to cooperatively work out of a sophianic impulse to create social forms, processes and new life.

The logic which fell out of a living wisdom, present in Cosmic Intelligence, became human intelligence in Greek times, the time when Michael was the time spirit of the Greek cultural period. Intelligence then made another step to be able to become intellect as physical processes came to invest the logical process with the working of the soul of the human being. Intellect can be thought of as a downward step, a metamorphic step downward, from intelligence by dint of the human soul becoming increasingly involved with the metabolism that characterizes the evolving physical human makeup[21] . Cleverness can be thought of as the soul quality of intellectual logic which is very much penetrated by the physical of the human organism. The redemption of logic as indicated before can be thought of as becoming Logos activity with the Mystery of Golgotha. On the other hand, the intellect, with intellectual logic, needs much work by human beings to transform[22] the usual logic to another activity of will so that it can become a “logos” thinking. We can think of this present need and effort to transform thinking as a redemption process.

This redemption can be contemplated as mankind in our day comes to a new form of reasoning. This is a reasoning given by Rudolf Steiner at the hand of Michael, a Michael reasoning. The intellect might be thought of as coming to maturity with Kant, who presents the epitome of the fallen sophianic process. At the same time the new logic, which might lead to a new reasoning leads to a logos activity. What is this logos activity? My impression is that it is a reasoning out of the future, not out of the past, but at the same time a swing from past to future. This is a creative and a moral reasoning, thinking, a very mobile thinking where the creative leads to ideas needed for moral action.

It might also be possible to say that this new reasoning thinking can lead to the experience of spiritual communing, a communing with spiritual beings in the form of idea. At the same time one might think that this mobile reasoning can be brought to the researching of what modern times has to say about the human being. This new reasoning, new logos activity then might be thought of in terms of a communing process and at the same time a reasoning that permits the Sophia of the human being to become evident.

The reasoning which leads to communion with the idea, can be undertaken by a single human being. The reasoning which leads man to the new wisdom of the human being cannot be done out of solitary activity as just noted. When this revelation appears as part and parcel of the human sophianic processes through observational thinking directed upon man, then the serving of the social good comes into question. Here a very mobile thinking is needed, but social processes must have some type of form. Societal process without form, is too chaotic to be able to be followed by the thinking human being. If I understand, this is why Rudolf Steiner introduced the “threefold social order”. It can be thought that the introduction of this form of social process helps incarnate the Sophia of society, “Socio-sophia”. As spiritual communion can be said to be a signature of the fifth-cultural epoch, the epoch of consciousness-soul, so the sixth epoch might be thought of as coming into existence with a signature of social processes of new kinds. Behind this reasoning on social process may well stand the sophia of the human being, anthroposophy.

The following is an outline to help follow what I am trying to unfold here and anticipate what is to come.

I.
Cosmic Sophia                           Theosophies —- ancient times
Cosmic to Human Sophia        Philosophies — 800 BC to 1899
Human Sophia                           Anthroposophy-1886 for next 3000 yrs
II.
A. Cosmic Sophia — Body & soul towards spirit- Saturn, Sun & Moon         
B. Human Sophia —— towards spirit
Physical body ——- time of Abraham
Etheric body ——– time of Moses
Astral body ——— time of Solomon
EGO —————– time turning, the Mystery Of Golgotha
Sentient-soul ——- time of Christian church building
(Solomon impulse metamorphosed)
Intellectual-soul —- time of philosophy and Christian art
(Moses impulse metamorphosed)
Consciousness-soul — time of science to spiritual science
(Abraham impulse metamorphosed)
Spirit-self ——— time of spiritually oriented social science
(Christ in the ether worlds)

III. Great initiates, historical period, and the feminine-masculine in relation to the Sophia and Christ impulse.

Great Initiate                   Historical.                  Higher Feminine
masculine impulse         periods                        activity-Beings
———————————————————————————
Abraham ———­—— time of Abraham —- Isis and Hera
Moses —————— time of Moses ——– Isis and Rhea
Solomon—————- time of Solomon —– Sheba and Gaia
Jesus ——————-­ Turning of Time —— Mothers
Mani ————­——- time of building ——- Persephone-Natura
Rosenkreutz ———– time of art ————- Philosophia of Nature
Steiner —————– time science ———– Anthroposophia
Mani ——————- time of society ——— Sociosophia

If we look in this way at the evolution of the Sophia, we can then also speak to the experiences of Rudolf Steiner in his earthly journeys which have led him to the point of incarnating Sophia into the physical-etheric makeup of the human being. Let us look.

Time periods                              Rudolf Steiner’s historical participation
———————————————————————————
Time of Abraham ————  Eabani phase
Time of Moses —————- Cratylus phase
Time of Solomon ————- Aristotle phase
Time of MoG —————— Present at the events
Time of Building ————– Presence in the spiritual world
Time of Art ——————– Aquinas incarnation
Time of Science ————— Rudolf Steiner
Time of Spiritual science —- Presence in the spiritual world
(editor: MoG – Mystery of Golgotha)
If one takes such an outline, it is then possible to see cultural evolution in relation to Rudolf Steiner and the Being of Sophia. One might consider that he journeyed on a path of repeated lives to serve the Being of Sophia. At the same time, one can think that this is following the activity of the Archangel Michael, so it is possible to find that the Christ Servant Michael, lives along with the Being of Sophia and Rudolf Steiner. He, Michael, stands there as well. Thus the search for the Sophia and her evolution helps to appreciate Michael, born of EA and as well the service of Rudolf Steiner to humanity, the spiritual world and Christ.

With this historical interpolation into the period of history where Anthroposophia is born out of the soul and spirit of Rudolf Steiner, we can gather a much better perspective of the service of Rudolf Steiner to this evolutionary phase of the Sophia. It is possible to think that the historical perspectives given by Rudolf Steiner come out of the evolution of the Sophia, and help to come to know her. The birth of Anthroposophy, following the birth of Philosophy, then suggests a further birth, that of Sociosophy, in the far distant future but has to begin at this time. Anthroposophy as a gift to the human being, then helps make the transition from philosophy to social processes in the future. My understanding from Ehrenfried Pfeiffer is that Mani will be the human soul-spirit, initiate, who will bring this next step in sophianic evolution – bringing humanity from anthroposophy to socio-sophy.

The forgoing perspective suggests to me, that the birth of Anthroposophia, in the physical-ether world, the ether world near the physical where the four elements lie, helps to further the birth of the individual human being, his freedom, and creative capacity, which includes moral creativity. This individuality, freedom and creativity has the potential to lead in the direction pointed to by St. John in his Apocalypse. Without a new view of the human being and new social impulses, the future can be a WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL. The sophia of the human being for this reason must lead from the individual to the social, but not lose individuality, freedom and creativity in the process. The possibility of the human being communing with the spiritual world, as an individual, free being is one side of the coin. Again, we can speak of this communing as SPIRITUAL COMMUNION. At the same time a step towards a social process must be taken, and here the revelation of the THREEFOLD HUMAN BEING can serve as a basis for a new social order and new social living organisms (not just dead institutions).

In this way one might sense that Anthroposophy can serve as a needed step from one sophianic impulse to another. The period we now live in needs to surface the moral for the sake of living together on this earth as bodily soul-spirit beings for the sake of the future. To me this suggests that we humans need an education to evolve individuality, one that is free, but one that has the eye cast to others where the social, the moral, gains true meaning. One might say that moral ideas need to be intuited, out of individual freedom, but the ideas need to be incarnated so that the ethical idea can become the ideal in fact. Let us therefore consider that work with the threefolding process can help us incarnate the ethical to make the ethical the ideal. This, I think, points to the need to look at the threefoldness of existence and then to find how one would “practice” to incarnate the idea. Perhaps another way to say this would be to say that one must find a method of practice, so that the revelation of the threefold human being in the spiritual world where idea lives as well, can be used and incarnated for practical purposes. The insight gives rise to the idea and the practice brings the idea to the stage of the ideal.

Where Is The Revelation Of The Threefold Human Being Found?When Rudolf Steiner tells us that he, after he developed a thinking method to deal with the “living”, that is his own Goetheanism, he then turned to the human organism. Out of his search with the human organism his eye fell upon the threefold makeup of man, but in the sensible-supersensible domain. How might one seek to find where this domain that is sensible-supersensible, pointed to by Rudolf Steiner, lies? Where did Rudolf Steiner’s consciousness find the threefold human organization?

To begin with one might posit that the seeing, the eye falling on the threefold human being, is a kind of clairvoyant process. What kind of clairvoyance is this? I would like to suggest that it is a spiritualized intellectual clairvoyance. In a way, it can be said to come close to what we ordinarily call fantasy, but in the case of Rudolf Steiner is stringently trained. My view of exact fantasy is taken from what Rudolf Steiner called the exact fantasy of mathematics. Math as such arises from within the thinking human being. The first arithmetic-mathematician we hear from Rudolf Steiner and the Old Testament was Abraham, as we have noted.

With this demand for a mathematical exactness to human fantasy, to human thinking, in relation to understanding the world, it appears justified that our time can be seen to a certain extent as a mirror of the time of Abraham. Rudolf Steiner, out of stringent methods of thinking seeks to find an exact method, as exact as that of mathematics. This thinking method deals with the intellect, but makes a step to a reasoning that is logical and can become LOGOS activity. Here the Christic impulse in human thought must enter thought-reasoning and transform the intellect to become capable of seeing while the human eye is directed on an object. (Other senses can be included as well). The directing of the senses into and onto the outer world, and at the same time seeing with thinking, this might be termed an intellectual “clear seeing”. This seeing can look out into the world and wrestle with what the senses reveal, and the usual idea of the thinker can become image laden. Thus, when someone like Rudolf Steiner develops a capacity that has lived in human existence since 3000 BC, that is the capacity to add, subtract, divide and multiply, which has become an accepted intellectual capacity, then it is also fair to think that this five-thousand-year-old capacity might be changed for new pursuits and be used differently. This of course is no small step for any of us. Changing the habits of thinking that have existed for 5000 years is no small matter. This thinking-imaging is what was necessary for Rudolf Steiner to gain a first view of the threefold human being.

Another way to consider this same subject, that is the subject of finding the threefold human makeup, would be to formulate the whole in terms of a spiritual science which then Rudolf Steiner went on to do after the turn of the century. A view of the threefold human being he gave in 1923 in the cycle entitled “Man as a Symphony of the Created Word”. In this cycle he gives the revelation of the threefold human being in terms of imaginations. In this cycle we are lifted to imaginations given out of the “World of Imaginations”. This world lies above the “World of the Spirit”, already a very lofty spiritual domain which fashions the human brain. From the World of Imagination to the World of the Spirit we can descend through the astral-ether domain of the sun to the “Astral plane” in the ether world. It is on this astral plane, entered via the higher spiritual world, that I would give as a way to think on where the intellect takes one when it becomes a vehicle for clairvoyance. (It might be said that ordinary fantasy goes in this direction but never reaches the height of the World of the Spirit which has to be attained to in order to arrive at the door of the World of Imaginations. This apparent similarity with the ordinary fantasy has been noted by Rudolf Steiner, [see “Stages of Higher Knowledge”]. Ordinary fantasy however falls totally short of what is being discussed, lacking the inner disciplines of intellectual training.)

It is from this astral plane, if I understand correctly, that Rudolf Steiner reveals how the human being during earth life liberates the elemental beings of the created world. These elemental beings are liberated to be taken along by the human being at death, into the spiritual world where first one meets the astral plane, then the lower Devachan and finally the upper Devachanic[26] plane of existence – the “World of the Spirit”.

With initiation science, there are four doors to be opened on a path, that at the same time helps the seeker to follow the dead into the spiritual world after death. The four doors are 1) the “Door of Death”, 2) the “Door of the Elementary World”, 3) the “Door of the Sun”, and 4) the “Door of the Spirit”. These four doors lead to the “World of Imagination” which, if I understand, in Buddhistic language is called Nirvana, or a first step into Nirvana. This is a plane of existence that is even more lofty than the World of the Spirit as just noted. The “Imaginations” given to us by Rudolf Steiner come out of this lofty domain, and if I understand, are given by Michael. We have access to this domain because of the imaginations that Michael, through Rudolf Steiner, has given to the world.

Out of the deeds, good and bad, the human being takes elemental beings along, they accompany him after death. In the spiritual world the astral plane of existence is met first. The soul-spirit then rises into ever higher worlds as he ascends after death towards the World of Imagination. The elemental beings accompany the human being, that is the gnomes, the undines, the sylphs and the salamanders. Each type of elemental being tends to serve at each step of the spiritual world – as best as I can see. In the process, the departed human being, with the accompanying elemental beings, and hierarchical beings and their offspring, all together, work to fashion a threefold human form for the next incarnation. A threefold human makeup is worked at, worked out. This is a threefold cosmic form brought about in the light of the World of Imagination – as best as I can tell. This form, this threefold form is brought about so that the nerve-sense system is fashioned in the outer regions of the etheric cosmos. The rhythmic system is pulsed into activity in the ether spheres near to the sun. Finally, the metabolic system is sculpted more in the domain of the inner planets particularly in the ether sphere of the moon.

In the domain of the lower ether world near the moon sphere, where the gnomes are more at home, the metabolic system is brought about. The rhythmic system is cast in the domain of the sun with undines and sylphs. The nerve-sense system is more a creation in the upper reaches of the loftiest spiritual world that approaches the world of the stars where the salamanders are busy with the departing human being. This latter step leads the elemental beings into the light of the World of Imaginations, the EA World, in which the true image of the threefold human being can be found. The elemental beings and the human being work together and their cooperative effort is the bringing of the image of the threefold human being down towards the earth with the reincarnating human being. (This view of the threefolding of the human being is not taken totally from the lecture cycle noted, but is a crucial beginning point for this approach.)

Such a spiritual scientific view complements the view that is more philosophical, where the intellectual logic of the earth dies into the life of reasoning out of the LOGOS. This in turn can be raised to ever higher modes of reasoning to come to the “World of Imagination.” On the way to this lofty spiritual world, the threefold human being may be met, and can be seen clairvoyantly on the way to higher revelations as the thinker transforms the usual intellect. Needed is that the objective world, where the elemental beings are incarcerated, is penetrated by way of the senses.

This thinking path then goes the way through the senses, and the four steps that follow on a spiritual path can be taken. This path is called an “occult path” by spiritual science, in contrast to the inward directed mystical path. The inner transformation of the thinking capacity to make thinking an objective activity is a transformation of the usual mystical tendencies in thinking which leads ordinary thinking to sink into feeling. Rudolf Steiner’s path can be said to be an occult transformation of the capacity to think. One might call the new path a mystical-occult path as a way of entering the spiritual world for the sake of redeeming, freeing the elemental beings of the Elementary World. In a way, the path leads the human being into the World Temple which can be thought of as cleansed through “good deeds”. The cleansing is the liberation of elemental beings of the “good”. In the process the “dirt” is transformed, and a redemption is put into motion – the dirt is not cast out for others to clean up as it were, it is transformed.

If one follows this line of contemplation, then one can see how the sophianic and the human anthropological find their way into another domain. The anthropological must become sophianic. The ordinary human physical makeup must be struggled with. Within this anthropological lies the potential for the sophianic. What can be thought is that the sophianic of the human being is met. Anthroposophy is then discovered as an actual existence in our vast earthly and cosmic existence and can be found through a real work with the human physical and physiological makeup. Into this living sophianic, an actual birth can be considered. This sophianic is of the soul and the body as well. This sophianic is found in each human being but is of earthly-cosmic dimension as well. Into this sophianic of the human being a spiritual birth can take place.

The sophianic of man might, can, become a living-soul being with an entelechy – with the soul-entelechy of ADAM CADMAN, the sister soul of ADAM. The body of ADAM CADMAN can be thought of as birthed by the human being who strives to liberate elemental beings for their further evolution. In this way we might think that ADAM CADMAN can be born in the souls of men, as Anthroposophia, a consciousness-soul member of Sophia. If I am not mistaken, ADAM CADMAN can be seen in part as the NATHANIC BEING who incarnated at the Turning of the Time. One might posit ADAM-CADMANIC SOPHIA, as ANTHROPOSOPHIA.

To think these thoughts is by no means easy, and it takes much concentrated effort to do so. The reason for sharing such difficult contemplations is to suggest that the threefoldness of the human being is far from an easy matter to grasp. To wrestle from philosophy to anthroposophy is a decided step which requires much work, and often this effort is not made. The ease with which many seek to live, in a highly complex and complicated world, has to be overcome. Rudolf Steiner indicates that with ease, with a simple anthropological view, Ahriman comes to work into human souls, with the result that all social change is met with opposition. On the other hand, the living purely in ideas, simple philosophical ideas, leads one to Lucifer and irresponsibility. The result of this irresponsibility is illness and premature death according to Rudolf Steiner’s indications out of spiritual research.

Practico-Sophia
If what has been shared is not too obtuse, then it is possible to consider, that philosophy is passing onto another stage of sophianic evolution with anthroposophy. Anthroposophy will in turn take another step as it unfolds in the future. The next step is not only the unraveling of the mystery of the human being but that of the social process, as well as the relation of one human being to another. The next step in sophianic unfolding is then not so much determined by the spiritual world, but by what human beings do with one another. In a way, the societal unfolding then steps away from the spiritual world as such, and into the souls of men. Only slowly has the spiritual world permitted we humans to take on responsibility, and a little reflection shows what difficulties we are having. Through philosophy and then through anthroposophy we strive to become individual, free and creative. With the social processes now begging for our responsibility, we have the opportunity to make use of our own potentials, so that individuality, freedom and creativity can make another step. The next step, the spirit-self step in human and sophianic unfolding helps that there can be a direction for what has been evolving over the millennia. To make idea into the ethical, to permit the individual freedom to come to the idea, the possibility for the individual to be surmounted in a meaningful way, points to the ethical-social of our time and the future. Out of the future, the moral, the ethical, the idea can become a basis for responsibility. Another way might be to say that we might be able to arrive at duties out of ourselves, and with insight take them on with love. Anyone at work in the social arena today knows that this is a lofty perspective, and one that can leave one breathless in the light of one’s limitations.

Such a direction of contemplation can be nothing but a flow of ideas in the soul, rummaging’s in the soul, unless a practice is sought which helps each to find the way ideas can come to fit into social circumstances. To lead idea to action requires not only the moral intuition, but moral imagination and then moral tact, as has been detailed in thought by Rudolf Steiner in his “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. The steps needed for the idea to evolve into the imagination and then to action, requires practice. The whole of moral life is, in fact, a kind of practice. One may have to practice finding moral intuitions or moral imaginations. This is much more a practice in the soul, of thinking-intuiting and then imaging. However, for action, for moral tact, practice in life, practical life is needed.

This practice in life, however, is not an end in itself. If doing, deeds, repeated action, was or is the end in itself, all would more than likely grow bored, lose interest and fall asleep. Something of a waking with the deed is needed. This waking, the waking in the practice of life, needs exercise as well. Meaninglessness in one’s deeds lead to an empty soul, and a feeling of worthlessness, as well as negation of one’s own being. If deeds, actions, have to do with what is called “work”, then work becomes meaningless, useless as far as the soul is concerned, a quest for a “self with meaning” comes to the surface. A wisdom-laden soul, arising out of responsibilities and work, appears as a significant demand in our time.

A first exercise which can serve to raise consciousness out of the sleep of will, to the domain of dream feeling, is the famous “Ruckshau ” given to us by Rudolf Steiner. A second exercise is to practice planning, not only for oneself, but for others and to be planned in by others. This second exercise is one that is used by a number at the Fellowship Community in “day planning”. It was some years after day-planning started in the Community that I found a bit of confirmation in the method of day planning which appeared as a need in the social situation of this community. The confirmation was found in what Rudolf Steiner had suggested and then given to teachers. To teachers, Rudolf Steiner suggested a review of those taught over the course of the just concluded day. Those who were taught should in falling asleep be carried into the next day, by the soul of the teacher entering the spiritual world in sleep. What becomes obvious if this type of retrospect and prospect is practiced, is that the spiritual world comes to meet one in one’s efforts. This is what Rudolf Steiner gave as a practice for the teachers, and has been tried at the Fellowship Community in day planning, though the effort is still in its early stages.

We humans do not act alone on this stage of existence. For this purpose Rudolf Steiner gave a verse to teachers in the Waldorf Schools, so that they could better meet the students and would have the support of the spiritual world in which both child and teacher journeyed during sleep. Something of this type of practice has been in flow for about twenty years at the Fellowship Community. Careful planning permits the recovery of one’s deeds, one’s activities out of the activity itself, and permits a new sense of the will to arise in relation to the “self”. This is a service-oriented will and not a self-will, where the will is used to serve one’s own ends to the exclusion of others. Here is a rather profound practice, which places the soul in the midst of others and permits a kind of knowledge, a slight wisdom to arise in the soul who has been active. The soul can become slightly wisdom related.

A third possible practice or exercise to recover intimations of wisdom from one’s activities of will and develop a more conscious relation with the will, is the study of the Evolutions. Anthroposophical materials are full of the past, the present and future evolution of cosmos, earth and the human being. The work, the wisdom of these evolutions helps that whatever one does can in fact, be contexed in time and seen in the light of the wisdom that comes to penetrate the world in time. This can come to mean that our human deeds might then be placed in time. Deeds, though flowing into the future are based in the past, and the wisdom, alive out of the past, can be supportive. With a continual practice in viewing the evolution of the cosmos, the kingdoms and man, the will becomes slightly more conscious, filled with meaning and depth. The goal, of course, is to serve others with one’s will and not to rule others with the will. Here the ethical becomes so important, and a sense for wisdom can come to live in the soul. To reach to a Spirit of Wisdom is no small reach.

On this third path of practice, the sleep of will can begin to dawn as a future in one’s life. In fact, it takes much effort to come to the awareness that the will is in fact asleep, and the will is not the outer manifestation of action. Helpful is the indication from Rudolf Steiner that the will is awake in the logical activities of the soul. Here will is touched directly and can become an experience in waking consciousness. Slowly differing domains of consciousness then can be born, not just talked about from some of Rudolf Steiner’s writings, and the will can come to be experienced as asleep. Great wonders lie in this experience of sleep. One can come to face the world in awe.

The wisdom of the past, and the deeds of the future can then be brought into consciousness, where sleep and wake can be identified. Time can enter the soul, so that the will can waken in a most delicate way as wisdom penetrated. Wisdom then not only can “live in the Light” but can begin to emerge from the will. The central meditation given by Rudolf Steiner, that “Wisdom lives in the Light” might be slightly extended. Perhaps it is also possible to think that “The Light of Wisdom can over time arise in the darkness of Will”. I would say that this can be arrived at with the first lines of the Gospel of St. John. The lines that I am referring to are – “Light shone into the Darkness But the Darkness comprehended it not.” After years of work with these lines I should like to add to the last line “And the Light brought by John can now begin to illuminate the Darkness of one’s will” (my quote). This light which might illuminate darkness, a light dawning with much practice, could be called “The Light of the Sophia of Practice.” I would venture that this is a “Light” that is supported by the careful planning of the day, the ruckshau over the day and a placing into large evolutionary periods the deeds of the moment.

This waking on the will can permit a new type of learning. This learning has been articulated by Rudolf Steiner as the learning from one’s “little finger”. That wisdom can live in this activity of the little finger, I gather is the hope of the future. Needed for this waking on the will, learning from one’s limb deeds, is the love of one’s deeds, one’s work. With work now relegated to pure necessity, with work now done so much to satisfy one’s own needs, with work to profit for oneself, and with work often done at the disadvantage of someone else, it is not easy to learn from the deeds of one’s little finger. As it is today in general, wisdom will escape the doer. Needed is planning, retrospection, introspection, contexting in time and space, and a striving to love one’s duties. This is easily said and extremely difficult to do.

This waking to the will, at first the will in thinking, and then later to the will in doing, can be seen as a very essential aspect of learning to know what Karma is. A sense for the past, the activity in the present, and an effort to learn and judge for the future, this seems to be very intimately involved with a concrete sense for Karma. So much that is spoken of as Karma can at first appear theoretical. With a waking from the will, as just noted, the will, the activity of will in thinking, in intellect, logic and reasoning, a distinct sense for time, and one’s activity in time can awaken. A sense for the will, the sleep of the will and then a very faint sense of the “light and wisdom” that is contained in the will can emerge. Something of the images of the great Seals of the Apocalypse can begin to dawn. Good and evil, and one’s place in the scheme of existence, when one wills, acts, can begin to dawn.

It can be a distinct experience, that with an activity of thinking, one is often very much concerned with the comprehension of what has taken place. It is the events that have happened, the experiences that one has had, that one seeks to enlighten with thoughts, and if pursued at a deeper level, with wisdom. For wisdom to become a focus, it is necessary to seek the “beingness” of the ideas which one uses to comprehend what has taken place. If past experiences are placed in time, and the evolutions of the cosmos, the earth and the human being is seen in the background, then existence, a sense of “being” appears in the conscious effort to understand. The shocks from life and the mighty past far beyond one’s personal station at the moment as given by spiritual science, can help to awaken a will that is not filled with total darkness. A search in the will, in deeds, in work of many kinds, can help to surface the wisdom that is trying to be approached here.

A use of one’s memory, a practice using one’s memory, to deal with past experiences to gain wisdom, has been detailed in the cycle called the “Mystery Centers”. There Rudolf Steiner points to the use of experiences, particularly painful ones, which can help that a past of millennia, nay eons, might dawn. The sense of one’s own self moving in time to a mighty past can awaken very slightly. At times one may seem to be transported into totally other times. One’s identity then begins to change. What has taken place as one has flowed through these ages helps one feel that one has played a role in this historic process. Such a perspective is needed to come to sense that in one’s present actions, something of a future lies hidden like the seed in a fruit. Something of a wisdom is sensed here. However, practice with memory is needed here.

Deeds in process, anticipated deeds, as well as those from the past, these all are needed for the human being to come to a sense of the will and then that in this will, wisdom can be uncovered. For this the past must turn into the future. In order that this can take place a practice of carrying the result of the past into the future must be practiced. This is encountered in the karma exercises given by Rudolf Steiner. These I will not elaborate on here, but merely point to as another form of practice.

Clumsiness  can point to a waking out of the will. The same might be said when one wakens to a sense that one is fulfilling one’s plan of action. With slight glimpses of light, one becomes clumsy. All of this comes with much effort, does not flow so easily and requires time, considerable time. All of what is being described here might be called “practice”.

The book, “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” can serve to detail this effort to waken to the will of thinking and find how the ideas one can acquire out of freedom might be incarnated into deeds. This book can be taken as a book of practice. This book is the result of a scientific effort on Rudolf Steiner’s part to wrestle with the question of thinking, will in thinking and potential “free” will. But more this book serves to free the thinking of the reader, so that a sense of freedom in thinking action can be found, while a much increased sense of individuality can waken. A careful detailing of how ideas are met in the world of idea and formed in the soul, the spiritually active soul, are presented. Such a book can serve as a workbook to discover provinces of the soul that generally go totally unattended to. It is often the ideas, the content of ideas, and the resultant thoughts that the human being focuses on. The book focuses on the process of acquiring ideas and as such, brings to us the results of introspective investigations based on the science of our day. What is presented in this book, however, cannot become very meaningful unless the ideas are worked with, practiced.

Some such effort is needed by the human soul to waken to one’s thinking and its activity, which must be noted to be[38] a will activity. The will activity, that is intellectual will, logical will and reasoning will can be investigated by the thinker. This investigation leads over to the activity of other thinkers, the activity and the ideas, the thoughts of other thinkers who have wrestled with the question of will. This wrestling with will in the world of thinkers can be met as a wrestling with the question of free will. Such an effort can be thought of as a practice, a will investigatory practice, which is troublesome to many. To wrestle with the activity of the thinkers engaged in the quest of freedom, demands that[39] we humans face our own laziness in thinking. Thinking must become active, enlivened and selfless. Such a thinking has to be practiced. It is because of this thinking orientation, that the book “The Philosophy of Freedom” or “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” can also be seen as a practice in the discovering of a sophia of soul in a certain way. That is, one can think that this book points to a “psychosophy”. My impression is that the book is not considered by many to be a philosophical text, because of this psychological, sophianic, orientation. The soul can begin to awaken, and the darkness of will begins its “lightening”.

Much that Rudolf Steiner has spoken and written about anthroposophy is so sculpted that the reader must wrestle with a new type of thinking. This is the thinking activity of Rudolf Steiner which often is trying to meet the thinking activity of his reader or listener. Thus, not only the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” but other anthroposophical writings can serve as “practice”. One’s thinking activity must become mobile and free to meet the manifold vistas that can be found in the writings of Rudolf Steiner and other striving anthroposophists [41] as well. All of this is what I would call “practice”.

Rudolf Steiner has detailed how one can practice a mobile activity in thinking, and kind of freeing mobile will in thought, by working with the many philosophical views that have come forth out of the period of Philosophia. His four lectures on “Human and Cosmic Thinking” details this multi-varied activity in thinking by many different human beings, not only anthroposophists. To take up the activity of thinking by other thinkers is a good practice in preparation to a meeting with one’s fellow human beings. This is a practical way to ground one’s meeting with others and meet in a more penetrating way – that is to live with the thinking practice of another human being.

In a single lecture entitled “Practical Training in Thought”, we find the possibility of practices for the training of thinking out of observational consciousness. Careful training in observation, careful practice, can lead to a thinking that is based on observation and can lead considerably beyond. The lecture helps to lead the searcher from a thinking practice out of observation to a thinking that approaches the gleaning of wisdom in the world around us.

Such practices in thinking are given to lead to wisdom and lay the foundation for meeting the will of action, where a new wisdom lies asleep for the active human being. Stuffing the soul with wisdom is not the direction of this approach to the will of thinking. Rather the object is to help that the human being can come to the first stages of free will to embark on a search for ideas which can serve for action, for action in the future, a future far or near. Ideas of “ethical” nature can be searched for out of a sense and potential reality of freedom. It is the idea that is ethical, which then can lead to action, to moral action, where new wisdoms are being born.

As already indicated, the idea must be imaged, envisioned in order to be acted out of, acted on. This step of imaging the action is a step to the actual doing. It is with what Rudolf Steiner calls “Moral Tact”, that the human being then must make truly practical experiences in life. The first result of these efforts at practical realization of the idea, can be said to bring forth actions which can be termed moral or immoral. The capacity to judge action becomes the center of concern, and with this the whole world of the “Good” or the “Evil” must be evolved. This step in judging one’s deeds, I have the impression is essential to gradually waking to the knowledge and then wisdom which can arise out of deeds. The question of good and evil is a central concern for the wisdom that lives in the will of action.

It is the mark of the apocalyptic thinkers, that good and evil is taken up. For me the “Apocalypse of St. John” is a very good example, but another can be that of the “Book of Enoch”. At the core of apocalypsis is the concern for good and evil (as well as the nature of substance). It is in the cycle, “The Apocalypse of St. John”, that Rudolf Steiner details the view of the future, as revealed to John by the Christ. St. John, with his Christic initiation, points to a wisdom not only of the past, but a wisdom of the future. He makes note of the “wisdom of the Beast” whose number is 666. It is “number” inspiration which helps identify that Being who is evil and can help we humans to distinguish between good and evil. This type of number identification is very precise and points to the mathematical formulation of the Apocalypse. It is in this lecture cycle where Rudolf Steiner points to the Being of Sophia as the Mother of Jesus. The mystery of the Sophia is spoken of in relation to the Holy Spirit and the Virgin. A Johannian thought path of the Sophianic Mother appears here with the Initiate John, the Philosopher John, the Christian John. In John’s soul, the Christ came to stand and help that John could look to the future, and there come to the wisdom of that future. It is on the knowledge and then wisdom of good and evil that I would then ground my thesis on the “Practico-sophia”.

Threefolding And Practico-Sophia
My hope is that my line of consideration has led to the next step in relation to the Practico-sophia. This next step can be to consider what helps that the age of Anthroposophia can come into its own (consciousness-soul) and pass on to the age of Socio-sophia (spirit-self). As already pointed to, the sophia of the human being would seem to have inherent in it the potential for evolving a social process. The human being is not an isolated being in the universe, or purely a soul-spirit among other soul-spirits. The human being has a physical existence. This existence needs recognition as a domain where social interaction takes place, not the domain into which one retires to commune with spiritual beings other than man. The practices that help unfold the soul-spirit to get free of the body, so that the soul can become spirit among spirits, must be attuned so that the same soul and spirit can meet others while in the body. This takes practice to be able to enter the spiritual world and then enter the physical organism, in which one then might meet one’s fellow human being as a spiritual being. A certain ordering of social life is needed for this to take place.

For human beings to meet in the physical world, my impression is that they must meet in three domains, three spheres, different spheres or else a sense for their own soul, and a nurturing of the soul for higher spiritual life cannot take place.

At birth the human soul comes over from the soul-spiritual ether world with the deeper sense for the threefold makeup of the human organism. As has been noted, the human being, along with the liberated elemental beings (those that have not been liberated as well), the offspring of the hierarchies, and the spiritual beings of the hierarchies, work together to fashion the threefold makeup that is carried by the incarnating astral being into the etheric domains before incarnation. This depth of organismic reality needs to be reckoned with once the human being is incarnate. It is during incarnation, when the soul is related to the organism, that the social process takes place. In the physical organism lies, in depth, that which was brought over from the time before birth. This rather profound threefold archetype is brought along and impressed into the living physical organism during embryogenesis. This threefold then surfaces in the social interaction of human beings and demands that each human being has three spheres in which to live with others.

The three domains of social experience challenge a given soul to struggle with each domain and seek an integration of the three. The outer social threeness acts to help the single, the unitary aspect of the soul, the spirit, to find itself, come to itself. Human individuality demands three differently functioning social domains. By this route, those in the social process can then meet as individuals, otherwise the threefold soul, the thinking, the feeling and the willing soul steps into the picture and each tends to go its own way. This, in turn, leads to conflict between human beings, who do not know in which domain they are when meeting each other.

The threefold makeup of the human organism can surface in the soul, can press into the soul from the organism itself. It works in a healthy way to support the soul in thinking, feeling and willing. It may rise into the soul with an instinctual force so that a seeking of social forms and realities can come about. The reason for Rudolf Steiner giving what he did about the social organism was, is, so that the instinctual related to the threefolding of the social body can reach consciousness. The driving force of the archetype of the threefold makeup, asks for deeper consideration of the needs of the human being in societal process. These needs of human beings surfaced with the French Revolution as – “LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY”. The three soul activities ask for the proper social forms, and as a result, the human being can come to sense his existence as an individuality in social relationships.

The first need for we human beings is that the human organization be understood as carrying this archetype. This I see as one of the most difficult areas of human striving in our day. It is all too easy to say that the human organism is built on the archetype of a threefold makeup because Rudolf Steiner has pointed this out, and another thing to come to insights commensurate with this perspective. It has been my experience that many speak of the threefolding of the organism, but actual dealing with the organism from this perspective has only begun. Needed is an organ knowledge that is not an organology but an “organosophy”. It is all too easy to take the usual knowledges from science as the basis for understanding the threefold makeup and the organs as well. Far more difficult is to find the sophianic of the organismic makeup. It is out of the sophianic that each can then come to a proper sense for judgments in the processes of human interaction. I have often shared that Ehrenfried Pfeiffer reported to me, again and again, that Rudolf Steiner found his limitations for a deeper spiritual life brought about by the lack of knowledge by his pupils for the living human organism. Rudolf Steiner repeated this to Pfeiffer with much concern.

The organology of anthroposophy begins with the anthropological view of the human being, the usual knowledges about the human being. This needs according to Rudolf Steiner to make its start by dealing with the senses. A further requisite is that the senses come to be seen in their twelvefoldness. The twelvefold senses constitute the step from an anthropological approach to the human being, to an anthroposophical approach. This twelvefolding has just begun and still is an uneasy province for many who become interested in the Sophia of man. Much is demanded of those interested in the sophianic to clarify this aspect of the human makeup.

Since I have tried to seek this sophianic of the human organism, and after so many years feel only at a beginning with others having made similar efforts, I would think that this direction needs to be cultivated and be taken up more widely. A more extensive interest in a sophianic perspective of the human organism could become a basis for each individual to find more adequate answers to meet the many problems coming to meet us at this time. In fact, it may be the deeper strata of the human organic makeup which brings about “SOCIAL QUESTIONS”. The social domain became a problem at the time, that is the time of the new age of light, just when the archetype of the threefold makeup[48] could begin to surface. The purely hereditary basis for human relationships has faded and faded even more since the beginning of this new age. We human beings have become far more responsible for social relationships by conscious cultivation. The old has faded particularly rapidly in the last few years. What could be counted on for social interaction, no longer can be – such as the good will of parent and child, wife and husband, mother and father, etc, etc. All has become quite complicated asking for new approaches, ways and answers. Existential questions concerning the single person now surface with elemental force. All is now part of our social fabric. The reason for the surfacing of the sophianic makeup of the human being thus becomes a more pressing need if, in fact, this makeup can serve for helping with these social problems which surround us on all sides in our day.

As the hereditary instinctual fades, so the instinctual of the deeper makeup of the human being is surfacing, and this has to be taken into consideration. Basically, the human being seeks out of this deeper strata, a way to handle the social problems of the day, and this I take it, Rudolf Steiner tried to make provision for in his work for the social domain of existence.

Progressively, my view has become that the sophianic of the human being, anthroposophy, has a task to surface a view and knowledges which support the social life of the future. For this a seed for a socio-sophia must be laid and I would venture was sown by Rudolf Steiner. By saying this I am suggesting that we may need to work towards this sophia of the future, as the present may well be crucial and perhaps determinative of this future. In the fifth epoch of human evolution, the seed of the future is laid, and it is to this end that I am devoting these lines and this effort.

The effort to deal with the threefold impulse asleep in human makeup, I have written about in my essay on “Threefolding” – written in 1995. The same territory need not be covered here, except to place this written effort in the light of a practice, a sophia of practical life in a social, community work. An effort has been made over a thirty-year period, to approach a Practico-sophia for the future. The efforts made and some results have been reported. This has been recorded in the just noted essay.

The idea that no social form can serve social needs is the thesis of the anarchist. There are those who debate at length about this view and approach. Few today uphold an anarchistic perspective on the form of social structuring. However, it would appear to me that a structureless form of social circumstance does need to exist, but only for one of the three spheres of social life. This sphere is the sphere, the domain of spiritual life. Here a kind of open field, a structureless domain would appear to be of the greatest help and support. A kind of open void is needed by the individual who can work in freedom, with creative capacities – who at the same time can be mindful of social needs.

If we look at the domain of human rights, a second domain within social life, we must seek, give and take, the coming to consensus, the establishing of rights for all. This second domain of social activity seems to me to be quite different from that of spiritual life so well spoken to by libertarians or anarchists. In the sphere of human rights, it would appear that outmoded legal processes, such as those which hearken back to Roman times, would have to be looked at. The Mongolian hierarchical impulse of Roman legal forms and processes might have to be dealt with in modern times in new ways. Within institutions, within institutions leaning towards anthroposophical perspectives, human rights must find a new domain for practice. If changes in human rights processes are not found, revolutions will be taking place likely, both within anthroposophically oriented institutions and other institutions as well. The anti-establishment movement of the 1960 is symptomatic of what can happen. Today in Third World countries where legal and democratic human impulses are not hearkened to, we see revolutions arising. With spiritual life, the practices needed are more individual. When human rights are looked at another form of practice is needed – that is practices in social judgments – a kind of democracy is asked for. Each must feel his relation to the social process and have a say, as it were. Individualization of the human condition demands this. Here continual practices that determine law, not laws that determine practices, are a need. These are consensus practices, burdensome and costly in time – but necessary.

With the third domain of social activity, practices of production, distribution and consumption, are needed. These practices form the underpinnings of modern economics. With all three practices, production, distribution and consumption, human beings seek friendly relations with one another. Fraternal sensitivity comes to reign here and asks for a third social province. That “dog-eat-dog” competitive practices reign today, is a symptom of a lack of soul and spiritual insight into this social arena. A new sense of associative concern is needed here, not that competition should not exist at all, but that the competition must be considerate, humanly based and look to the needs of many.

Today a reasonable life on earth means that a sense of the rightness of each must be striven for. At the same time, the unique of the created product, the spiritual creation or the social need asks for the spiritual to be brought into the economic, associative process. That human beings are subject to evil and do not look to the common good must be perceived in all three domains and particularly in the domain of economics.

Such might be a brief consideration of the three social domains demanded by the deeper makeup of the human being. The outer social can be seen as a support for the soul to realize itself as a thinking, feeling and willing being. It is the soul itself, which must furnish the individual element so that it can be sensed as a composite in the life of the soul-spirit of each. The individual must unite what is divided in the social domain and that which lives in the deepest recesses of the human organism. The body holds the threefold makeup of the soul together, but in the social process the soul becomes divided as the soul exists in this body. Thus, the meeting of human beings takes place in an in-between domain, so that souls meet in the social forms established for this meeting. An intentional threefolding of social processes, asks for a continual uniting of the three by the human individuality who can manage this uniting if the soul becomes used to the different domains of social interaction. The individual is asked by the divided social process to activate himself vis-a-vis[50] the outer differentiated circumstance. With this the individual needs to be able to sense the deeper strata of his own makeup. This deeper strata contains the archetype of human organismic makeup, and organo-sophianic makeup.

The deeper makeup of the human being needs objectification in outer institutional processes so the basis for soul life can be experienced. Institutional processes need threefolding. With this the unity of soul life can be brought about by the conscious effort of the individual. By this route, the individual can gradually become the master of his soul. Here social forms within institutions need emphasis and not just the outer formality of institutional administrative practices. Administered institutions, particularly hierarchically administrated institutions, might be viewed as half living which do not so much surface the emerging individual.[51]

Another germ for the differentiation of the social process, has been illuminated by Rudolf Steiner by pointing to the three kingdoms in nature. The three kingdoms help to surface a sense for the deeper strata of organismic existence. The outer kingdoms in nature can serve to bring about social institutions serving the different spheres of needed human experience. The institutions in turn, so Rudolf Steiner indicates, help that the human soul can be threefolded into thinking, feeling and willing. By and large the human soul is so complex that some take refuge in asserting its absolute simplicity – a kind of lie in the face of reality. For this reason, the gradual emergence of the three activities of the soul can serve as a basis on which the infinitely complex domain can be worked with. For this to take place the three kingdoms of nature are needed. The three kingdoms have their counterpart in the threefold makeup of the human organism – so that the threefold can support thinking, feeling and willing and at the same time help that the institutions come into existence which serve the threefold social order.

Such is a very simplistic and abbreviated view of man’s relation with the kingdoms. Without the kingdoms, the human being would be void of soul and without the needed institutions which serve the social good. In addition, without the institutions serving the three spheres of social life, and a threefolding of the institution themselves, man would not be challenged to bring forth and activate his deeper unity -­ his unifying spirit. Out of the spirit, the threefold soul is unified as the soul becomes free, creative and able to meet in the social domain.

As already repeatedly noted, the threefold makeup[52] of the human organism serves, at a very deep level of functioning, to support the soul, the threefold soul. One can say that the threefold human soul exists because of the physical makeup of the organism. However, once the human soul becomes even slightly independent of the body, then the physically unified soul tends to go in three different directions. The intellect wants to live in a kind of dream. The emotional life tends to become totally self-absorbed, and the life of actions becomes progressively impulsive. With social life, in social interaction, the soul does not live so deeply within the threefold organism as just indicated. Rather in human relations, the soul, the soul with the emerging individual, exists from the organism to meet others in the social forms established in the society at large. When the human meets another in a social relation, a relation of great complexity, then the physical body is in a way somewhat put aside and exited for the meeting of souls. This means that souls can meet in soul-spiritual experiences, in the domain of human rights and can as well live into the domain of the human association.

The domain of human association, the domain where brotherhood should take place is often held to be the one where “simple” relatedness comes by “nature”. In the workday world, in the economic domain of human association, simplicity is often sought. This quest, however, is usually purported as working together. Meeting in the work place, is one of the most complex meeting places for human beings. It is not seen as complex, however. It is the domain which is the freest in a way and needs the most practicing for harmonious working together to take place.

As one can think one’s way into the spiritual domain, and feel one’s way into the sphere of rights, so one has to “work” one’s way into the workplace. All three domains actually have to be “worked at”. However, the workplace is correctly labeled as such. Of course, all three areas of social life demand practice, but the workplace is one of the most demanding. This demand is often not seen or appreciated for its complexity.

Academics have set up methods of exchange in the domain of the spirit, as have formal religious institutions. Those who stray from these usual forms of exchange in the spiritual domain do not find it easy to find another form, as for example in exchange over deeper spiritual content when there is an effort at equality in spiritual life. The exchange and activities in human rights have a decided form overly well established in legal practice. This is evident in governmental institutions, in legal institutions and in political life. An effort to change this process is very difficult with the hundreds and hundreds of years of experience trying to find human rights. The “American” experiment in democracy, brought forth by the founders of the governance of the United States, is trying at the moment to serve the entire world as a model – even trying to force this way of governance on other countries.

When it comes to work, to the workplace, be it academia, the judge’s bench or in a factory, the element of fraternity, of human association takes a very intimate turn. In the workplace, human relatedness surfaces with an elemental force, so that every work setting asks for the “practice” at human relationship. Such a circumstance was seen by Rudolf Steiner and placed before the teachers of the Waldorf School Movement in the following verse which he called an axiom –

“Search for the really practical life, But in a way that does not blind you to the spirit that is working there. Search for the Spirit, But do not search in supersensible ecstasy, from Supersensible egotism, But search for it, For you want to use it selflessly in the material world, Apply now the ancient maxim: ‘Spirit is never without matter, matter is never without spirit’ so that you can say: We want to do all material deeds in the light of the spirit And we want to seek the light of the spirit, So that it gives warmth to us for our practical deeds. The spirit, led by us into matter The matter which we work up to its revelation By which it brings the spirit out of itself, The matter which receives from us spirit reveal. The spirit driven by us closer to matter – They form that germ of life Which can bring real progress to mankind And bring the progress longed for by the lust Deep in the silent core of present souls.”

This axiomatic verse is used at the outset of each co-worker meeting at the Fellowship Community. It is in this approach to work, this practice in work, that a new sophianic might be revealed to each. A wisdom from this source would seem as a need for the human being to find himself in the complexity of social relationships in the work place. Without such wisdom, the efforts in this domain of life will become boring, meaningless and only serve selfishness. By and large these last three soul dispositions, boredom, meaninglessness, and selfishness are the name of the day.

Hopefully, from this brief contemplation on the social structuring, it can be seen that social organization is needed for the human being to come to a wisdom from the actual practices in life. In fact, wisdom is needed to establish practices to begin with. This does not mean that the threefold social form can live without continual change, nor does it mean that the threefold will in itself bring forth wisdom from practices in life. However, this view does suggest that a precondition is needed, that is social conditions which reckon with the profound depth of the human makeup. This complex profundity applies very much to the physical makeup, the material of the body and its life. In this makeup and life may well lay a seed for a similar profundity supporting a potential for acquiring wisdom.

Conclusion
A concluding remark might be made just to assure that the suggestion here for the unfolding of practical wisdom, a sophia of practice, does not in any way negate or depreciate Theosophia, Philosophia, or Anthroposophia. Rather Socio-sophia with Practico-sophia seeks to add another step in the life and evolution of the Being of Sophia. Rudolf Steiner pointed to this sophianic evolution and laid a foundation for the future with his “Threefold Social Order”.

The heavenly dimension, aspect makeup of Sophia, that is of her Body and Soul, now can be supplemented and differentiated by human cultural evolution. Her Being evolves with the three millennia before Christ and the three following. A further possible step for bringing about the Spirit-self of Sophia is suggested with the human striving with Her for a Socio-sophia, birthed out of “Practice”. One might consider that the sophia of the human being today demands a practice and a sophianic penetration by the Spirit into all that the human being does. In this way a Practico-sophia might be spoken of. The future of the sixth epoch in cultural and human evolution can be envisioned in the process. Thus Practico-sophia helps that the human being can live with the future, not only the past in terms of wisdom. I gather that this is what apocalypsis is about, at least in part. In this way one might try to live along with a Johannian-Christian impulse in our time.

The thesis which has been unfolded here hopefully has a ring of personal involvement. This is said because of my forty-five years of activity in the field of therapeutics and forty years of actual practice in medicine. It has always been an interest to me that one’s work in the field of therapeutics as a physician is always that of a practitioner. Anyone who serves the healing art, uses the expression, “to practice”. The artist practices to perform. The therapeutician practices to heal. This is quite a difference and serves to point to the fact that it is in practice that one can serve.

For the field of medical science, it is a major puzzle how to bring the knowledge so extensive to practice medicine, to therapeutics, or healing. What has come to be known as “practice guidelines” in the field of Managed Care might be called the death blow to the birthing of a Practico-sophia. These guidelines are promulgated so that the economic support for therapeutic services is reasonable and doesn’t break the coffers of western industrial nations. What is addressed here cannot be realized within the economic frame work that is evolving today. It is just for this reason that a “Practico- and a Socio-sophia” is spoken to in a beginning way.

Paul W. Scharff, MD December 1997