Save as PDFTHE CHYMICAL WEDDING OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ
by Valentin Andreae – Commentary by Paul W. Scharff, MD, Easter 1987
CONTENTS – Clicking on a DAY will take you to the commentary for that DAY – continuous scrolling through the complete document works as on other pages!
DAY I
We are dealing with the initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz, which occurred in 1459 over a period of a week. We have a seven-day rhythm involved here. We have a person who, seven years earlier, had had a bodily vision of the process and now, on a Saturday evening before Easter, begins this path through concentration, meditation.
We see Christian Rosenkreutz sitting in his study, concentrating, medi tating. The outer elements bespeak a kind of lightning-thunder process, reflecting the inner activity of the soul of this individual. He wakens in his meditation so that he turns and sees a sky-colored being.
In order to discuss how this comes about we should perhaps review some aspects of concentration and meditation. In the process of concen trating, the human being begins to develop a certain self-sustaining, elimination of the sense world. As this occurs, the astral organization, with the developing inner organs, also develops a type of skin so that not only is the astral withdrawn from the head but begins to form a kind of skin-sheath, pictured as covering the whole human being. This permits a gradual developing sense for whatever enters the human being, not only in the higher senses, which are waking, but also in the senses which are sleeping. The senses involved in sleeping we know have very much to do with the metabolic system. What is possible is the gradual wakening to what is involved in movement, what is involved with nourishing, what is involved with healing, what is involved with procreation, and finally, the astral organization that is in fact involved with the initiation process. This initiation process has to go over and through an astral rhythm which is involved with seven days. It has to develop so that the human ego can actually be awakened in the astral organization to come to a true spiritual ego consciousness.
As this astral organization is evolving it is possible for that organization to withdraw something of the etheric forces from the head, and particularly the human brain. This withdrawal makes it possible for the individual to experience the elements that are outside in thunder and lighting. This cosmic etheric activity is part of that which then worked as a formative light principle bringing about the configuration of the brain. Rudolf Steiner has indicated that there are almost forty rays of light that fanned the brain. We can also say that there is the world of the elements, the world of the spirit, the world of reason, and the world of imagination that works into the light elements so that we can have a brain. These ether light-formative elements are the ones that are taken hold of and are indicated by the individual being able to have a basis for reflecting his own soul life in the cosmic ether. This reflection, the sky-colored being with bird-like wings, a kind of eagle-like configuration, and gold star elements in the wing suggests an ego-astral activity and reflects one who has a think ing activity that is mobile, that carries in it the will-thinking activities of the formative light gold star force system of the cosmos. This sky-colored being is a reflection of a soul-astral process which is akin to thinking, and at the same time carries the goal of a kind of sacrificial will and devotional element. Therefore, the reflection of a sky-blue, angel-like being has elements of a bird, and at the same time, elements of a higher configuration. We might say that in fact there are many spiritual beings that are participating in forming this reflection in the cosmic ether. There are beings who are working into the soul of the individual who has been concentrating and has now come into meditation.
From the foregoing we can say that the first day is very much connected with the awakening on the meditative path, the first stages of meditative initiation involving cosmic supersensible forces involved in touch, sight and sound as well as thinking. Something of the sounding astral world plays into this so trumpets are heard. The sky-colored being gives a blast on the trumpet. As the meditative soul enters into the super earthly, into the etheric-astral cosmos there is a need to be supported, maintained and integrated. For this the meditant receives the seal, whereon he finds the cross, or we can say the forces of death which are taken along. In meditation death forces are being overcome by life, but they help sustain and maintain a certain degree of ego-consciousness in the whole ensuing activities. Death forces in the form of a cross point to the uniting with the Christ forces which come to assist the meditant in the initiation process.
Once in the astral-etheric world Christian Rosenkreutz is given a revelation in gold, in sacrificial form. He is invited to a wedding, but he has to find three temples. We might say he has to carry with him the processes of thinking, feeling and willing into this process. They have to occur within the cosmic circumstance, where the sun, moon, earth have to find their appropriate relationship with Aries, and then with Libra. The whole cosmos has to play into this process. It is the cosmos which has to be prepared so that the cosmos can receive the soul of the human being to be initiated. The initiation permits the human being who is being initiated to consciously work into the cosmos. This cosmic ascent is usually reserved for sleep and death. This initiation is an overcoming of sleep, a transformation of sleep, a transformation of death, it is an overcoming of death, it is a reworking of the history of the cosmos, a transforming of what was brought about when sleep and death entered into mankind’s evolution.
Our adventurer, our pilgrim, our striving initiate, then goes on to have further experiences so that his whole human organization begins to speak to him. He has a sense of his flesh, he has a sense of his hair, he sweats, and he begins to comprehend elements which lie under his feet. As he goes through these experiences, on the one side in relation to his organism, on the other side to the meditating consciousness, he goes into the sphere of sleep. He cannot yet enter into the processes of the organism where sleep, healing, nourishment, and so forth takes place. He can only sense this liberation, this being taken into conscious sleep in the form of a dream-a prophetic dream.
The dream indicates that he is in a dungeon. He has to come out of this. We can say he still is connected with elements of his head and his sense system. He still cannot easily step out of it. He has to struggle with his fellow man, the world, the senses, and with what he has taken into his whole life. After the first day of soul-spiritual striving he is not yet free of this. At the same time we can say he not only needs freedom from it, but in fact he needs very much to be able to take an essence from the physical life with him. He needs to take something of that which he has had as experiences in life, and bring about a deadening of this. He needs to create an extract from it, so that what is of the physical world can in fact be taken along in order that a certain degree of ego consciousness can be maintained on this spiritual path. In the dream he is injured. He has to grasp for a rope (a dead expression of light), and he is able to be pulled forth. There is a certain passivity with this. He is not able to walk or climb out of the dungeon. He needs a dead element of life (rope) in order to be withdrawn. Just as he needs to bring something from the sense life into the spiritual world, he needs to bring something of the dead element with him, so also his current extraction from the dungeon involves the rope. This is a substance that is made from light, and dies into the plant, which then is woven into rope. The sense life, the life of nature that dies off into the rope, both these elements are brought to him at this phase of initiation, he remaining fairly passive. He began as a meditant, in concentration, which was a degree of activity, but his meditative activity is not yet really active. This is an indication that he can’t quite yet right himself and walk, he finds himself in the dungeon, he doesn’t know how he gets there, he is extracted from the dungeon by the rope, he does not yet climb, he struggles passively in relation to others who are far more active. He finds himself passive, at the last moment he grabs the rope. He is then drawn into the sphere of the Old Man and the Matron – one can say into the world of something that is still very old. Youthfulness has not yet approached him. History furnishes forces of liberation – this form of history is just approaching him.
In this context we might think that this is an individual who is 80 years of age. After this initiation he lives for another 20 years, so that he surpasses a hundred years. He surpasses three times thirty three.
With this first day we wind up with an imaginative picture of Christian Rosenkreutz in his outer and inner soul life. He bleeds from his head, he becomes blood red over his body. He is then dressed in a white garb, a purification process is going on. The red blood forms itself into a red ribbon that winds from below upwards, crossing his chest, in expression of a kind of ego-active element. Finally, on his head we can image a white covering with somewhat of a cross and four roses. The four evolutions have given rise to this head, the blood processes of the head have become purified. The evolutions that have given rise to this organization, fourfold in nature, are raised to a higher level. The ego-astral process of the head is quite pure. The imagination focuses on the garb, which doesn’t reveal the limbs but the white purity and the red of the blood which streams up into the head. This becomes pure in the roses. There is a purity that is evolved out of all the evolution, fourfold in nature, raised into the life of the soul, the four red roses. With this imaginative picture, which now supplants the picture of the sky-blue being we have an indication that he is still related to his physical organization and is approaching the possibility of a continuing initiation process. The sky-blue being suggests a kind of etheric-astral revelation. The last imagination, which is an imaginative appearance of himself in waking, is the physical and ego element which can begin to approach the process that can be taken over the threshold through death, and into a new life. The dream of the liberation merges with the dress that follows. He comes out of sleep, takes on the dress, and then picks up the earthly sustaining elements of bread, salt and water to take with him on his path into the spiritual world. His being has been transformed from an etheric revelation to a more active process, where he is going to tread a path and pick up the sustenance necessary. He has emerged out of a dream in the dungeon to a wakeful life where he can begin an active pursuing of the path. The first day is still an anticipation, somewhat of a visionary projection, of what is to come.
DAY II
The opening scene of the second day is in a cell. Christian Rosenkreutz steps out of this cell into the forest. Out of his old heart he gives forth a poem. Song and heartfelt poetry permeate the atmosphere. He makes his way into the forest, where he finds three cedar trees. We might consider these three cedar trees on the one hand as Mercury trees, on the other as heart trees. The cedar is a tree whose heartwood is blood red when slightly polished and oiled. We can say the heart of man meets the heart in the living tree in the woods. There are three trees – his heart has to ring three times to the three human soul faculties, which are carried and sup ported by the heart (thinking, feeling, and willing). Near the cedar tree he finds a little letter which points to the four paths of initiation which can be followed. There is a rocky path, there is a roundabout path, there is a royal path, and a path for incorruptibles. Rudolf Steiner indicates the rocky path is that which is taken by individuals who get lost in the process. The roundabout path is one which goes through lives, and there fore individuals lose interest in the spiritual path. The incorruptible path is that which is for individuals who will confront the immense inflow of spirituality into the life of the initiate. This also is not compatible with a true path. The path remaining is a royal path. We can ask what kind of path this is. As far as we know, royalty always has to do with pomp, castles, thrones and the like. We might consider that this path of Christian Rosenkreutz will be placed into the archetype of royalty – of king and queen. This points to a very important aspect of the unraveling of this initiation. This is an initiation to transform royalty. This path has to replace the processes in the domain of royalty. Royalty is something that developed out of blood ties. Royalty formed the social circumstance, directing mankind by what was passed on in a line of heredity. We might consider that this path will lead to a guidance which replaces royalty. This path of initiation is one which has to do with the relationships of human beings. Initiation transforms outer temporal guidance and rulership into spiritual guidance. In the future (after the 15th century), it will be a matter not of royalty, not of birth, not of the blood, but a matter of initiation. The relation between peoples and individuals will be guided by more direct relation with the spiritual world –moral intuition. One form of human relationship can come out of common spiritual experience, commonality in the spirit. We might consider that brotherhood in spirit becomes the basis for a new social order. The royal path of Christian Rosenkreutz indicates that his initiation will lead to a replacement of old social forms.
This scene contrasts with the first day where we see an individual concentrating and meditating. This second day starts with movement. In our review of the first day we spoke to the fact that the person who meditates has to be able to learn how to concentrate. He has to develop the capacity to so concentrate that he can accomplish the creation of organs in his astral body. If we look at this a little more carefully, we might consider that a method of concentrating and building astral organs is to abstract, to form symbols and create symbols which are conscious illusions. These processes of abstraction, symbolization and illusion creation are all pointed to by Rudolf Steiner. He points out that it is necessary to create our astral organizations out of intense inner-effort, out of ego effort. In concentration there should be nothing in consciousness taken from the outer world, nothing that copies the outer world, nothing that is stimulated by the outer world. What is needed is for the ego to build something out of itself, and the best way is to go through the process of consciously abstracting oneself from the world, symbolizing this, and then creating an illusionary symbol in a conscious fashion. The concentrating soul needs to build an illusionary construct. One such construct which has been indicated by Rudolf Steiner is that of the rose-cross. The black cross is a symbolization of the life that is of lower nature, that dies away. The rose is an abstract symbolization of the life of the human being that is penetrated by the spirit, and which becomes absolutely pure. Purity in relation to rose, base elements in relation to cross, the outer nature in relation to lower impulses and higher impulses – all of these considerations are placed into the rose-cross concentration exercise. This exercise creates a kind of unreality, an illusion, so that the soul can create some thing out of its intense inner, self-engendered creative activity.
Once the soul is self-sustaining, the astral organization can begin to be withdrawn from the head organization, as if one is going to sleep consciously. The astral organization can then be withdrawn from the head to build a kind of membrane for the remainder of the organization. This permits a sensitivity for what flows into the organization, a sensitivity to what often is taken in unconsciously. What is taken in unconsciously is usually life, light, nourishment, healing, and the re-enlivening of the human organization. I would suggest that this building of the astral organs, this construction of the membrane, is all part of concentration, all part of a self-controlled soul-spiritual activity. It is a process whereby the individual can actually lift himself out of the head organization and develop the sensitive organs necessary to find what passes into the lower organization, the organization below the neck, in sleep.
The next step on a spiritual path is to begin meditation. Here the individual is able to withdraw something of the etheric out of the head. We indicated that when this is possible the soul projects his own light into the cosmic ether, mirroring in image the very inner soul activity that goes on in the meditant. In the case of the first day, with the withdrawal of etheric-formative head forces, Christian Rosenkreutz can mirror a sky-colored being with wings, with eagle-like qualities and with eyes of gold in the wings. The sky-blue points to the pure etheric, wings of a higher soul activity, and the eagle form to thinking-cognitive activity. This indicates ego activity. The golden eyes in the wings suggest activities of the Seraphim. The Seraphim are expressed in golden eyes, and in the golden stars of the wings of the sky-colored being. The golden stars are a reflection of what is occurring in the soul of Christian Rosenkreutz. The uniting of the pure astral with etheric forces permits the throwing of light into the outer ether, where the inmost soul qualities of the meditant can then be reflected.
Through the course of the first day we have an indication that not only can Christian Rosenkreutz project this image into the etheric world but outwardly he can be perceived with the white garment, (that is the pure astral), with the red (that has become purified in the entwining red lace ribbon qualities that cross the shoulders) and in the red roses of the head. We might imagine a bit of a cross in the head as well. This outer image is one which depicts Christian Rosenkreutz in his usual soul-spiritual, day wake-consciousness. On the other hand, the sky-colored being is what he is able, in meditation, to project into the etheric world out of his own inner astral-ego activities. The gold, I take it, points to an accomplishment of sacrificial willed thinking activity in meditation.
This second day points to an individual in movement. It is not just meditation which is important. It is now the course of life that becomes important. Christian Rosenkreutz is moving through life and moving into nature. He is going to follow a social process, a royal road into and through nature, in order to accomplish initiation.
As Christian Rosenkreutz progresses in his second day, we see that he comes to a point where he has to give up his bread. He has bread, water, and salt in hand. He meets a dove, to whom he gives the bread. As soon as the dove is given the bread, the spirit is fed. The raven, lower soul forces, comes to consume what is given out of the nourishing process through bread. Christian Rosenkreutz has to let this fall away. He is still subject to the temptations out of the daily bread, by virtue of the digestive nourishing process. He has to give this up as a first stage on his path. He thereby meets a first guardian (the dove and the raven). This occurs somewhat unconsciously. Before he knows it, he is chasing the animal like nature that is really a part of his nature. This launches him on the royal road. The first steps of initiation he cannot yet really take consciously. The spiritual world has to guide him. The astral world draws him. He cannot turn back. The wind of the astral pushes him forward. The astral which always points the individual towards the future has to become active here. The etheric would only hold him back.
On this path and in the ascent into the mountains to the castle with the three towers he encounters a sky-colored figure. This figure is male. On the first day the sky-colored figure was female. In this case it is male. My impression is that we are dealing here with the astral counterpart not of the upper sphere of the human organization (spinal column), but of the lower sphere. This now is projected in the cosmos. The human upper astral configuration is female; the lower is male. Christian Rosenkreutz can see the astral activities which are inherent in his soul and which sustain his ego and astral activities. This sky-colored being is a kind of guardian and guide. This being is a guardian at the second portal. Christian Rosenkreutz has to give up his water – that which is predominantly active in his rhythmic water circulatory life. He has to give up his vessel of water. He receives a golden token. That is, he is given the possibility of a further striving in the domain of will-filled sacrificial thought. He requires the moral qualities of hope and love. These become his under pinnings for his continued meditative, initiative striving; we can say also for his striving in life itself. The moral, the purified astral, has to become the foundation for further advancement. This is accomplished by becoming free of the earthly impulses which live in the rhythmic circulatory system.
In his continued ascent on the course up the mountain he comes to the third portal – the third cedar (mercury) heart force is to be transformed in the third tower, which is the castle itself. This is the true portal leading from outer nature to the nature of man. There is a porter here. There is a guardian here. Christian Rosenkreutz has to meet the being of the lion.
He has to meet the four streams that have built his own heart. He has to give up the nourishment, not by what is given through bread and digestion, not by what is given through water and circulation, but by what is given through salt. The salt that nourishes the brain has to be given up. The earthly nourishment for the brain has to be given away. The lion forces have to be transformed. He again is given a token. The token tells that he has to begin to study in a new way. This study is a step in the process of initiation. He, through study––through lion-zodiacal forces––can create a space in the spiritual world. Christian Rosenkreutz cannot build a “hut” in the spiritual world. By this means he can begin to make more conscious encounters, social encounters. He has to meet and transform lion forces. By overcoming and subduing the lion he is transforming his own heart forces to bring forth new rhythms and new heart knowledge.
The being now met is a virgin. It is a sky-colored virgin. We are dealing with an even higher development of Christian Rosenkreutz than before. He again receives a golden token, which points to sacrificial will in thinking. The token bears the inscription that he can be rescued through nature.
In this way he has passed through three essential stages and through three portals. The first portal is not fully evident and is experienced in relation to the dove and then the raven. The second is a portal where beauty is experienced. There is a need to create and meet a male sky-colored being. His striving activities are revealed to him again in images. Christian Rosenkreutz had to give up bread at the first portal, and water at the second. These two portals and renunciations permit him to approach the true entrance of the castle. Here he encounters the third and final portal. He meets the porter or the guardian who helps him to quiet and conquer the lion, the forces of the heart, so he can go further. The pure higher being that is reflected in the etheric world is virginal, sky-colored, and permits our pupil, our striver, our initiate–in this case, Christian Rosenkreutz–to advance further. He is finally permitted to enter the castle having renounced all methods of earthly nourishment and having transformed lion-heart forces into forces of knowledge and love.
Christian Rosenkreutz tells that as he enters the castle and is permitted to enter into the festive hall, he is able to sit on a “form”. To me, this means that he is able to come into relationship with, to stand and sit and rest within the world of forms, the world of archetypes. He is not yet active within the world of forms. He has to go through the process of having his hair cut so that his astral is freed from his head. This is necessary for the next step to occur so that he can become more sensitive but not to what is living outside and around him. His astrality has to become even more pure, even more active, and even more enlivened so that he is then able to meet what is to come to him out of the inner organs of his makeup, out of the inner being of his own nature. The activity to be engendered next is that of judgment.
In this way he is introduced to a hall where there is a festive occasion. One can see what happens to individuals as they take in nourishment from the earth and remain in relationship to it. The whole quality of the exaggeration of the usual soul impulses, the distortion of soul life, the impediments to social activity, the grandiosity, the bizarre, the aloof, etc., are all played out in this hall during the meal. We can say that all those that are in this hall are also a reflection of his own soul make-up. We can say that he is able to see in those around him something of the soul elements that he has experienced, has had to work through. He still carries these with him to some degree, but now has to be able to conquer, master and rise above them. I gather that this is slowly accomplished when the beautiful virgin enters the room. This is a virgin who again is sky-colored, has a white cape, and has gold elements involved. The sky-blue color indicates the soul-being of Christian Rosenkreutz, which has a very pure etheric nature. The white of the robe bespeaks the pure astral, and the gold of the garment, the ego-will-cognitive activity of Christian Rosenkreutz. This is a virgin Sophia-like being that is beginning to be born into his soul. This unfolding is a progressive evolution of heart forces in Christian Rosenkreutz. This is a reflection of something of a higher nature so that Christian Rosenkreutz is able to begin to judge what is morally valid, helpful, hopeful and bearing of love, so that he is able to make social and spiritual distinctions. It is against this virgin being that he is able to exercise his faculty of judgment. In the first day he had to develop something of the organs of the head so that he could come to a concentrative, meditative-enlightening experience. Now he is beginning to undergo an initiation process whereby he needs to exercise the faculty of judgment in spirit-in knowledge. This means he needs to be able to deal with the forces that have built his heart. He needs to be able to have ether forces which become enlightening and the basis for moral social judgment. We can say that as the heart is built out of four chambers, this new function of the heart has to become an etheric organ, a fifth chamber. It is like the fifth blade on a rose petal. It is this organ that has now to be cultivated, enlivened and transformed, so that the royal path can become the path of mankind, the path of all social undertakings, in the physical, soul or spiritual worlds.
At the end of this day, we see that he is tied by cords. He now is not liberated. He is tied to the world in which he had now emerged. He is not yet free to move as a liberated individual. He is still bound with his earth-bound experiences, concepts and judgments. He has a long way to go in order to be able to transform what was of earth and what now is valid in the soul-spiritual world. It is in the soul-spiritual world where enlightened judgment can knowingly deal with the human frailties in moral life.
Until now we have seen nothing of a king or queen. Christian Rosenkreutz has entered the castle and a great dining hall. We are following social processes, but we still have not yet seen the king or queen. All is being prepared for a human being to meet the queen-like element, but the queen has not yet appeared. The king and queen have to arise within the soul that is being initiated. What lies in the soul of man on the initiation path has to become kingly and queenly, but the older royalty forms, the older forms of initiation, governing and so forth have to fall by the wayside. New activities and forms have to come forth. We note in the course of the second day that Christian Rosenkreutz begins to develop some contact with others. He begins to speak about another human being as an associate and as a bit of a brother. We have nothing of a social context during the first day. The second day ends with a sense that connection with another being in the spiritual world can actually be established.
What we are then seeing is the means by which relationships can be developed, particularly in the soul-spiritual world. Judgment of human error and human goodness has to come forth. At the same time a transformation of what is true for the physical world and what is true for the soul-spiritual world has to ripen.
A word might be said of the stages that we are going through here. Christian Rosenkreutz has to be able to give up the bread, the water and the salt. I would suggest he has to give up the processes of digestion, circulation and breathing connected with the brain and the kidney. Christian Rosenkreutz has to give up the three stages of human organismic process to be able to live into what is purely of the world of the senses and belongs to nature. There the spirit is to be found, not in the self. Nourishment has to become pure nourishment of the senses. It has to be that an individual, to be initiated in this path, can give up the nourishing processes, the connection with what is embedded in digestion, circulation and breathing. The new relation with the world, the new relation with the spiritual world has to come totally through being nourished by sense. What, however, is necessary is that the human being is able to transform these major processes so that a pure nourishment through the senses is in fact possible. This process of the transformation of the substances so the sense world can actually nourish is called the “Grail Path”. The vessel in which the sense perception is received and can nourish requires sustenance and support by the transformation of what is generally earthly into a much higher form of earthly nourishment. This is connected with the Grail Mystery. Another way of saying this is to indicate that when the moral light of the world, what lives as light in nature, can nourish man, then even the normal processes of life and body have to be transformed. One can say that man as a vessel, as a human chalice form, has to begin to glow from within, filling the goblet with light. This is very much the picture we have in the Parsifal opera by Wagner, where we see that the chalice becomes filled with light. It would be best to say the Parsifal becomes as a chalice himself, becomes light-filled. He is able to receive moral light-the light of the dove. He is able thereby to nourish those who are his associates, those who are other knights of the Grail. They no longer consume from the usual chalice. They consume from the light which is given forth from the Grail Knight (Parsifal), who is nourished by the light which brings forth life in nature. This nourishment by the moral light of a pure-chaliced human being brings about brotherhood. In this sense we might consider that we are dealing with a similar process in the initiation process of Christian Rosenkreutz. He has to be able to give up all the usual forms of nourishment to be nourished by the moral light of the world. The very light of his own inner morality creates the renewed light that is necessary for the continued sustenance for continued life, and for life in the physical world as well as the spiritual world. This is an actual transformation of man as he becomes a chalice, a chalice-form in the spiritual world while in the outer world he emanates moral goodness and love.
DAY III
Day III begins with the sunrise. Though it is a Monday, we are dealing with the secrets of the Sun, the Sun in the Cosmos and the Sun within the human being. If we look back to the first day, we find Christian Rosenkreutz meditating in his hut. The time of day seems to be evening. It is the time of Passover, the Last Supper, we can say. Day II is a scene in nature. This individual is going to take a path of nature. He has to find the exact road to be followed on this path through nature. It can be fourfold. It can be a rough road on this path. Rudolf Steiner indicates that this road culminates in failure for the most part because we become lost in the inability to distinguish between the physical world and the spiritual world. The second road is a round about road which generally leads us to lose our interest in the spiritual path. The third route, the third road on the path through nature is a royal route. From the best I can see, this is the predominant route that is taken by Christian Rosenkreutz. The fourth road is the route for purely spiritual beings who can stand the onslaught in the immediacy of spirituality. Here the human soul or the soul-spirit being becomes exposed to the might of the spiritual world. In following a particular path, I take it that elements of the others are not totally excluded, but that there is a definite direction when a direction is set. This road is entered but not quite consciously. Christian Rosenkreutz enters on it without a wakeful consciousness.
On the royal route, he meets the nature element in the evergreen, in the cedar. This leads him from heart of wood, we can say, to the heart of man, to the heart of our world, the sun. On the second day he has to pass three guardians. The major guardian is a porter who helps him subdue a lion. Christian Rosenkreutz is led to the secret of the forces of the heart. On the first day he shows that he is able to master the forces of the brain. On the second day he has to be able to begin to give up the general means of nourishment, that is to be nourished by bread, water, and salt. He has to be able to give up being nourished and sustained by the three main processes in the human organism. On this royal path, he has to find a new form of nourishment, a new form of sustenance. Because this is a royal path, Christian Rosenkreutz has to find new social forms, new forms by which man can exist in relation to nature and spirit. On this third day, as already noted, he awakens to the sun. The sun is within the castle. The circumstance is not a hut, not out in nature, but in a castle, the castle of human nature. This is the sphere of kings and queens. What appears to Christian Rosenkreutz now is again not the King and Queen, but a female being – a Virgin. The Virgin is not now pure sky-color, but appears amidst candle light, in a warm light, in a red dress with a white scarf and a green wreath. The whole color element of the Virgin is much closer to the colors of moral life than it is to the pure ether color of the sky, which we can say is blue. This blue ether color, which we will see later in the Chymical Wedding, has to be transformed into peach blossom. In this situation, the Virgin, who is actually a reflection of the inner soul activity of Christian Rosenkreutz on a higher level, and is his guide, introduces him to the process of weighing. The weighing is by means of a golden scale. There are seven weights. Human participants at the meal have to be weighed. These seven weights have been related to the seven Liberal Arts by Rudolf Steiner. These arts are Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. The weighing has to occur so that the process of initiation on a royal path through nature can be judged in relation to freedom, to liberation. The arts have to be taken up, and the souls who are going the path have to be weighed in the light of the Liberal Arts. We find that those who are to be weighed are thieves, vagabonds, impostors, as well as true artists. Some royalty are present, as well, but not the King or Queen. The authority of King and Queen will not give judgment. Now faculties of judgment need to be acquired – particularly in relation to art as a daughter of nature.
This world in which the whole process is occurring is approaching the sphere of the sun. Golden scales are used. The Virgin has moral colors. All this points to a domain, a sphere where a human being can develop the faculty of judgment – judging his fellow human beings in relation to a striving towards a spiritual world. The Liberal Arts were instituted in the Middle Ages through impulses related to the Christian Church. The aim was to bring man into relationship with the spiritual world. My under standing is that the School of Chartres was important. We can see here that all those who are judged by the method of Liberal Arts are, in fact, not yet prepared for the spiritual world. Christian Rosenkreutz can outlast the weighing and is able to enter the spiritual world. His moral Virgin being has led him beyond the stages permitted by the Liberating Arts. The Liberating Arts, however, remain an essential in the process. My impression is that this is indicated by the fact that in the judging process, the moral judging process according to the standards of striving for liberty and freedom, Christian Rosenkreutz is able to choose a companion. One of the first that he is really concerned with is the individual who was first weighted, an emperor. It is crucial that he chooses from the domain of the royalty, particularly the royal who goes the path of the arts.
The path of liberation via the Liberating Arts has to unite with the royal or kingly art which is the art of social life. The emperor process, the royalty process needs to be redeemed. The artist, as well, needs to take a further step. Both have to be united on a path which surpasses the arts and leads into the highest form of art, which is not the higher form of nature, but the highest form of human striving which is the social art.
After Christian Rosenkreutz on this third day has followed the course of the sun and is able to go develop higher faculties of judgment, he is given a draught of forgetfulness. I take it to mean that he actually steps into the world of the virgin, the sphere of soul purity to transform the domain of art (higher nature) and social art. He needs new judgment faculties, new heart forces. However, he needs to be able to forget the process of this higher form of judgment in order to come to, and practice, on a purely human level the activities of social judgment. Judging from the side of the spiritual world is one form of judgment, but this needs to be forgotten. The judgment of the daily-earthly world requires practice and development for social action. It takes time to bring impulses from the spiritual world into the physical world. It took Rudolf Steiner thirty years to bring the revelation of threefold man into the social domain. To me this is, in fact, indicated in the Chymical Wedding when we find that suddenly the Virgin is not a high spiritual being, but is portrayed with others as a president or chairman of a circle. Today it is not the kings, the queens, the royalty, the blood line, the privileged, and the specially endowed that need to develop social judgment, but rather every man. Judging by virtue of group activity may involve a president or chairman. This is a more usual form of social circumstance that has its inception with the initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz. He is beginning to enact spiritual deeds for the sake of man’s social life.
What we witness is that the Virgin becomes a president, a chairman and others become senators. There is a transformation from the royalty with reality, pomp, chivalry and hierarchy to the processes that we are more familiar with in the form of presidents and senators and a more democratic process. It should also be noted that this judgment process is occurring in relationship to meals, to eating, to common union through food. Notable is that we have portrayed here the common meal and at the same time the transformation of the faculty of judgment. The moral stands there on the one hand and on the other scales of gold and vessels of silver. The companions of Christian Rosenkreutz are using instruments of silver to consume and golden scales to judge. If we take the meaning of silver and gold, we can say that the participants are coming to a higher form of activity, a kind of sacrificial selfless thinking, will activity, and a deeper, devotional, pious sense while in the process of mutual exchange during a common meal. My impression is that the food is actually being consumed at the table in what is being served one to another in the form of moral impression. The goblets, or cups of silver on the table and the participants dressed in golden fleece with a signature of the lion, indicate that the individuals are becoming morally pure. They are supported by the forces that stream out of the purest of the spiritual world, transforming the organ of the heart, so that the consumption can be of moral substance. It is then knowledge and truth that begin to become the substance consumed. This form of coming together, consuming and judging will be transformed on the earthly plane in the social life. Individuals can come to eat and work together to form judgments about one another, judgments about the social circumstance and judgments about what is true in order that the good can follow.
After Christians Rosenkreutz has been given the draught of forgetfulness and can return to a more normal state of consciousness, he returns to another table where we have golden cups, silver cups, and a brass lion. For the first time, something of a copper element, something of a kind of contemplative, will element begins to evolve out of the sacrificial devotion (gold and silver). A thinking judgment, a true process can begin to enter into the social circumstance. What then is portrayed to these assembled souls is that a unicorn appears and bows before a lion. A dove brings an olive branch to the lion. The lion is appeased. We have here an indication of another transformation. The lion is overcome and subdued by an olive branch. The dove brings sustenance to the lion out of the world of the olive, out of the world where the etheric is expressed so fully in the plant kingdom. The earth, plant ether element is taken up by the lion. The lion is appeased. The dove is not consumed by the lion. Rather the dove appears as a messenger, as a spirit messenger giving olive ether substance to our lion. Our lion becomes a basis for new faculties, for new abilities in life. All of this is occurring somewhere between noon and four o’clock.
Next we see that Christian Rosenkreutz will, in fact, be tested again in a circumstance where we have “the good” involved. Christian Rosenkreutz gets up and is tempted to take some food to a companion. His page, who is an expression of his own will, indicates that this is not proper, that this should not occur within the castle. The King reigns even if not present. When offerings are given to someone else, there should be the permission given from the King, from a higher source. We can already see that Christian Rosenkreutz’s faculties of judgment in this world are to be evolved. They are still not exact.
With the completion of the meal, Christian Rosenkreutz is taken through the castle by the page. We can say that his greed for knowledge, his quest for knowledge leads him into the domain of the library where he still falls prey to the usual forms of knowledge in books. He is then taken to the sepulcher where he seeks the secrets of death. Again, in both cases, he enters into spheres of the individual with impulses for ordinary knowledge, knowledge that still remains more with the usual liberal arts. He has not yet progressed to the sphere of pure moral virginity. He still carries elements of earthliness, even though they come out of a higher liberating artful striving. He still tends to offer others food to satisfy those who are hungry. He still seeks ordinary book knowledge. He still seeks for the knowledge of birth and death in an ordinary way. His faculties of judgement have not yet ripened. His further walk leads him to knowledge and the secrets of earth, cosmos, and the stars. Here again he shows himself not to be prepared to enter into the true spirituality of the cosmos. He still uses his ordinary intellect to contemplate the stars, the relationships of the heavens and the nature of the earth. His knowledge, his artistic capacities have yet to be penetrated with a spirituality, with a judgment process which comes out of a much higher moral sphere. He is not yet prepared to perceive what actually occurs in the cosmos, what is the course between death and rebirth, and what is the passage of the human soul-spirit in the pure spiritual world. He has to learn what to leave behind, or we can say he has to learn how to redeem the knowledge that can be gained in the form of education current at that time. The day ends with him entering the cell – one of the cells where one of the Liberal Arts weights is kept. He has developed some sense of companionship. He can speak of a brother. He can speak of a companion. It is through this striving process that the companion-brother process will be established. The companionship, friendship, and brotherliness that is ordinarily given through birth and blood will have to be transformed, is being transformed. This is the significant task of Christian Rosenkreutz as seen by the writer of the Chymical Wedding, Valentine Andreae. A new form of brotherhood is needed by mankind.
We can see on this third day that a transformation of the usual social forms which belong to kings and queens is undergoing change. We can also see that the method of coming to the spiritual world through the liberal arts also needs to be transformed. For this to occur, a new knowledge of the sun becomes important. The knowledge of the sun in a 24 hour period points to the knowledge of the ego. It points also to the course of youth, aging, old age, and death. It points to the rejuvenation, to the feeding and nourishment of the human soul. These deeper wisdoms that are connected with man are, in a way, of a much higher spirituality than our usual Liberal Arts. An even higher spirituality is the companion ship that is born of the spirit where brotherhood is formed out of the spirit and not out of the blood. Here we have the molding of a path, the treading of a path which redeems old social forms, which redeems knowledge, which seeks in the nature of man enlightenment for true spiritual nourishment, and for another form of brotherhood.
DAY IV
Christian Rosenkreutz wakes in his room in bed and immediately enters a hall full of music. He is within the castle. He has passed in meditation, through nature, through the portals, the guardians, and into the castle of initiation (the domain alive in the human organism below the head). He has gone through experiences in the third day to transform the heart into an organ of judgment. The heart had to ripen into an organ of knowledge, in order that the heart can go even further. Even higher stages are needed so that it can become an organ for activity, for new activity, and for initiation or birth. The old heart, with merriment and song, was transformed in the third day. It now has to be nourished and developed for social art. Christian Rosenkreutz begins the day by being exposed to music. After rising, he is led by the Virgin, who is dressed in gold (with flowers) into the chamber or into the Hall of the Kings. What is important is that he is led to a fountain. Again a lion appears. Christian Rosenkreutz has to be washed. He has to be cleansed. He has his meeting with the hermetic wisdom that streams into mankind with the Egyptian culture bringing forth impulses of healing and new art. Christian Rosenkreutz receives a script of Hermes as he is on his way to the Hall of the Kings. His guide, as already noted, is of a very pure virginal sacrificial being who carries the elements of the floral world almost like a Pentecostal expression. On his way he is given a golden token which points to the need to stand in the light of the sun and moon so that he can gain new faculties in the relationship of these two cosmic bodies. Here, I take it, is the indication that he has to come to the secret, not of the course of the day, which is the relationship of the sun to the earth, but he has to come to a relationship to the course of the year, which is the relationship between the sun, the earth, and the moon. This is why he has to enter or go through 365 steps. He has to mount 365 stairs in order to enter the Hall of the Kings. The secret of the year, which in man is reflected in the human physical organization, has now to be penetrated. How the spirit penetrates into the very physicality of the human organism, this has to be taken up in a knowing fashion. The mystical experience of the physical organization has to give way to empirical knowledge.
Christian Rosenkreutz has to enter the Hall of the Kings, which is full of music and wonderful artistic imaginations. The eye and the ear are being transformed for the sake of coming to a greater appreciation of perceiving in the spiritual world. What is brought from the physical world, not in the form of art and knowledge, but in the form of much more sensuous physical elements, has to be perceived, cognized and judged. The room is one full of art. However, the art that we are dealing with here is the art that is connected with the sun and the moon. The art of the moon is more physical, that of the sun more spiritual. The guide is not only the Virgin, but the impulses and secrets which were handed to man and mankind by Hermes. These are the secrets of the human astral or the cosmic astral as it pertains to the earth. This astrality is reflected in the etheric makeup of man.
We are introduced to three thrones and three royal couples. The first is described as an ancient king, grey bearded, with a lovely young wife. Polar to this is a black king of middle age with a matron elderly woman, dainty, delicate, and veiled. Between these poles stand a young couple, king and queen to be, young souls who are to be married. In this room also stands a table with an altar. There are basically six elements to this altar. Around the altar plays the music, the images, the singing of birds, and the activity of cupid. Something of the element of love, sensuality, and human thinking capacity all enters into this sphere. The first of the six elements of the altar is a book covered with black velvet with some golden letters. Something of the sacrificial wisdom is present in this book, but it is still an ordinary book of life. Next to it stands a candle giving forth a continuous warm light, the astral light element that is connected and raised above ordinary earthly knowing process. This is presented to the onlooker. Above this stands a celestial globe so that the space of the heavens can be taken in with an act of the imagination. Above it stands a clock depicting the time element that is involved in the globe of world history. Light, space, time, and wisdom are expressed in the altar with these four articles of the altar. Knowledge is raised to the etheric sphere, into the light ether sphere. This is transformed into the spatial cosmic domain. Space is played into by time. This all stands before the human eye in the Hall of the Kings as altar-religious process. The fifth article of the altar, the fountain, runs giving forth blood red fluid so that Christian Rosenkreutz can see how the fountains of life continually pour forth. Polar to this is a skull which points not to the life, but to the death element. The white serpent with sensuous, sinful and erroneous elements weaves through the eyes of death-the skull. Life, death and sin are portrayed. In this altar we have the betrayal of evolution, the knowledge-wisdom process, the problem of life, and the problem of death with sensuality. The altar piece portrays what is now to occur in the further experiences of Christian Rosenkreutz.
From this room the entourage is lead into the house of the sun. There a play is put on. It has seven acts. I would like to suggest that the play portrays what has to be said or portrayed in a humorous or comedy form; without this the ensuing beheadings can not be understood. Comedy and humor raise the soul undergoing trials into a higher state of consciousness through catharsis. We have the play of the Moor with the young girl who is raised by a foreign king. The Moor captures the girl. Next the young maiden is united with the king to be. She is made queen. Her dissatisfactions show themselves and as a result, she again unites with the Moor. There she becomes exposed to sensuousness, becoming a concubine. She is thrown into a prison, develops leprosy, and is finally liberated by the king. She marries to become a queen after passing through all of the sinful states. The play between young and old, the play between light and darkness, the play between good and evil, the taking on of illness, and the transformation of all to a higher marriage form is played before the eye in an artistic, humorous fashion. What I would like to suggest is that this scene depicts etheric art-music and images of the moon, which gives way to astral-art-comedy in the sun empiricism.
In this way the next steps in Christian Rosenkreutz’s development can be seen more objectively by him. In actually going through the process as an experiential event, Christian Rosenkreutz can not come to empirical knowledge. The contrast between moon as experience and sun as knowledge is brought to Christian Rosenkreutz in play. The occult impressions of moon have to become empirical sun knowledge. Christian Rosenkreutz first enters the more occult sphere of the Hall of the Kings and then progresses to the House of the Sun so that he can return to the Hall of the Kings to witness events which require knowledge-understanding. The occult events have to become a script. Imaginative knowledge slowly unfolds into inspirational knowledge.
If we contemplate these three royal couples we might compare them with three aspects of the moon. The three couples, I would like to suggest, portray the three major phases of the moon. The full moon is portrayed by the young couple, the young woman and the young man who are united in a full moon light. As the full moon begins to wane it begins to give rise to the rather old, sunken, crescent form with a youthful damsel appearing out of the full moon. The crescent that forms from the full moon, points to an old age form while in the crescent sits a young and beautiful maiden. This slowly passes over into a very dark, black-silver-dark being, we can say almost the figure of the black king. Something of a Moorish element with a veiled and not so beautiful, but youngish woman can be seen in the new moon. The course of the moon through its phases portrays something of the different forces that play into the human etheric organization. From Rudolf Steiner, we have the indication that in the ascending from new moon to full moon, something of the feminine element is at work. In the transition from the full moon to the new moon, we have something of the masculine element. In terms of what occurs within the astral as a pure cosmic element, we would have to speak to the imaginativeness that develops in the astral with the ascending moon to fullness and the more contemplative, the more thought filled aspect of the soul with the waning moon. What is indicated from spiritual science is that the waxing moon gives rise to the female and the waning to the male. We can also say that out of the impulses of the phases of the moon, comes gender in terms of earthliness. The waxing and the waning moon gives rise to female and male, in terms of earthly impulses. In terms of non-earthly impulses, the waxing moon gives rise to imaginativeness, the waning moon to contemplative thought activities of the soul. With our kings and queens, we have gender, but in the case of the beheadings, we have to look to the cosmic aspects of the moon which are spoken to in the Hall of the Kings and the House of the Sun.
The procession of kings, attendants and guests all return from the House of the Sun, the domain of science, to the Hall of the Kings, the world of art. With the return to the Hall of the Kings, the six royalty are beheaded. The six heads and the six bodies are placed in coffins, but the blood is caught in golden vessels. The head of the executioner is placed in a small box with the other six coffins. At night when Christian Rosenkreutz is in his cell and looks out over the etheric ocean, he sees seven boats with lights and flames from above approaching the boats.
The ocean is a living oceanic domain in the spiritual world. Boats are evidence of earthly forms in this world and the lights in the boats are the psychic or psychological region of this spiritual world. The flames of the beheaded, the soul-spirit being of the beheaded, enters into this spiritual world. In this world, the male and the female unite and become a unitary being of flame. I would consider the beheading as a means of segregating the physical and the spiritual. What is male and female disappears here and becomes the faculty of imagination and knowledge, art, and science. The earthly remains, the corpses and the blood enter the spiritual world in a much more roundabout way. The earthly remains, body and blood have to be taken up by the boats and transported into the spiritual world for transformation. The soul and spirit (flames), appear to have leaped over this continental (boats), oceanic (the sea) and the airy (light) region of the spirit.
In the course of this whole day, Christian Rosenkreutz proves himself to be most human, even with the progression of these deeper phases of his initiation. He proved in the previous days that he could give way to temptations connected to foods and sustenance, temptations connected with the secrets of birth and death, and the knowledge of the COSMOS. He gave way to earthly consciousness when posed with riddles of love, marriage, and child birth. His humanness is shown in a very delicate way when he blushes at the possibility of having a sensuous relationship with one of the virgins. The virgins surpass his remaining sensuous impulses and his remaining desires. He blushes at the self-revelation. What is so important is that he remains human in the whole process. He is not headed for the land of Nirvana. He is headed for the redemption of the world of the human being and the social processes which are needed to serve the higher spiritual world. Something of the secrets of the physical world in relationship to the human ego, to the human spirit, has to be taken into the spiritual world. The physical world with its experiences for the human spirit are important for the spiritual world. The experiences of nourishment, creativity, and moral development become a germ for fruition in the spiritual world. It is the task of Christian Rosenkreutz in his initiation to be able to redeem much that exists in the physical world for the sake of the spirit.
One way of looking at this day is to consider his vision out of his chamber window as the beginning of inspiration. The vision over the sea at night is an experience of enlightenment. We might consider this from an occult physiological view or such a possibility. We might consider the sea or ocean as the life that indwells our inner organs in sleep. This oceanic domain maintains the life of our inner organs in relation to our individual spirit. The organs or boats are supported and sustained by this ocean. A light, a soul-light, is carried by each ship, each organ. The flame of the individual spirit-higher spirit approaches the boats (the organs) every night. The dead corpses and the dead blood of earthly man is taken onto this sea, this ocean, to be carried and rejuvenated. In the night, working from the spiritual world, the higher working in the seven organs will rejuvenate the blood and the physical form of man. What Christian Rosenkreutz has to know is how the spirit indwells these organs and brings about rejuvenation, new life.
DAY V
Christian Rosenkreutz wakes on the fifth day after his vision of the night before. The night before, as he looked out of the window of the castle, he saw a sea with seven boats carrying lights. Flames approached the boats. I would like to consider that this ocean or sea is the etheric ocean. It is connected with the beings who were beheaded. Their soul spirit being enters the spiritual world as thought fire substance-fire activity – fire substance and being. The beheaded were royalty, Kings and Queens. They are more advanced souls who have risen quickly into the spiritual world. They quickly ascend through Kamaloca into the Devachanic, into the spiritual world. Christian Rosenkreutz has a vision a view of the living ether world in which the boats appear. The boats are like physical objects, they are the archetypes of physical objects. The oceanic world is the domain of the archetypes of the living. The archetypes of the psyche appear as lights in the boats. Spirit Archetypes approach and appear as flames. He has a vision of what comes out of the heavenly world. Christian Rosenkreutz is having a vision on looking out of the windows. He has not yet walked this path. He has first to see it. Now he will follow what has been revealed to him in vision. We often see this play between that which is revealed the evening before, the day before, or years before and his progress. He is thus prepared so that he can meet what has been revealed to him in a passive visionary experience. It is not vision that is significant. It is actually creative working, striving, self-sustaining, and an unfolding that is needed in this initiation.
The morning after this vision he awakens, gets up and is led by a page. He passively experienced the vision and now he has to begin to activate his will. This is expressed in the male figure of the page. The will leads him into subterranean domains just as he is to embark on a voyage to Jupiter, to higher planes of existence. He has to descend into the area where earth experience will remain as an element within the spiritual world. Something has to remain from the physical world, something from the physical experiential world. If this does not occur he will not return. If the initiation is merely to get out of the world then he would not have to have an active will process that takes him into the domain where he is now to tread taking fruits (errors as well). We already see that in the spiritual world the awakening of this will has been expressed in the third day where he has gone through the experiences of being led or becoming active in walking through the castle. There he shows himself not yet totally subject to higher impulses of will. We see that he still carries with him elements of sentimentality as he goes to offer a companion food. He then wanders into a library where his quest of knowledge is still similar to the earthly quest for knowledge. He enters the sepulcher where his desire is to gain more knowledge of life and death. He enters into cosmic contemplation in the globe, in the whole celestial revelation, while still carrying conceptions and ideas from the physical world. He still carries a vision of the world which is derived from the physical senses. Slowly through this third day he begins to contemplate riddles. His thinking is just beginning to become active. It is not able to grasp the secrets of love, marriage and birth. This is day three when he shows himself as a soul spirit still subject to earthly experiences. During the fourth day he has to go through experiences of the beheadings. Even more has to be eliminated from earthly experience. At the same time he still has to take some extracts from earthly life. During the fourth day, in the presence of the Virgin he even has to blush. He still has inner soul experiences connected with the sensual feeling towards another being. In this case he blushes in relationship to and in the face of a Virgin. His soul still retains something of the earth, something from the senses, the sins, and the fall of man. He is to take this with him, though it has to be purified. Something has to remain, and remain as a destiny element so that he returns again to take up his errors, so that he can continue to work for the earth and mankind.
Whatever the case, he is experiencing that something remains from his bodily sense life on the third day. On the fourth day his soul experiences become evident to him, blushing about sensual elements. On the fifth day he is going to see that there is another step in his soul and that is the purification of the experiences through beauty. It is this quest for beauty and the sensual elements which are still alive in his soul which permits him to be led by the page down through an iron door (Mars) to a library and a sepulcher. He meets death, he meets the death that is inherent in knowledge but then he comes to the fountain of Life and looks on the configuration of pure beauty-that is Venus. This was actually forbidden him (as all others) but he enters into the sphere of death to contemplate the pure sphere of the beautiful. Cupid plays his trick, sticks his finger so that this sin falls in the drop of blood into the earth sphere itself. He implants his error into the earth. He has to return to the earth to redeem the error that he undergoes as he looks on pure beauty with Cupid in the midst-with still something of a sensual element involved. This all occurs within the sphere of the Tree of Life. The kettle in which the Tree of Life is brought forth is overseen by angels. The substance of this life flows over into other kettles and is once more taken up by the archetypal animal-astral makeup of man, that is the eagle, lion, and ox. The fountain which depicts the Tree of Life, is similar to the celiac artery where blood flows into the life of the intestine. The living substance from the intestine is taken up by the Archetype of cosmic man (lion, bull, eagle, and man). This living substance when cast into the earthly form of man is pure beauty. This beauty has to be veiled to the ordinary consciousness of man. Though Christian Rosenkreutz is developing higher faculties his sense for beauty—(pure etheric-spiritual) is in process-is unfolding, he has to err. These experiences point to the cosmic in man. He is entering into the metabolic sphere of man where the metabolic sphere flows over into form and at the same time begins to serve the soul and spirit of the human being. When the metabolic is seen as it passes over into the mineral physical, the pure form of man, we can say that we are actually contemplating pure beauty. In the case of Christian Rosenkreutz, as he loves the earth, as he loves what belongs to the earth man, he actually takes something of this into this sphere. Something of the earth-human love carries as error into the sphere of Venus. Because of this Christian Rosenkreutz has to leave a drop of his own blood with the earth so that he will return to redeem that which was not propitious at that time. Only later will it become appropriate to raise the veil of Isis.
After this spiritually significant error Christian Rosenkreutz then ascends, enters into the boats that have been assembled, to cross over to Jupiter. The boats are “numbered” and “lettered”. They are assembled and reassembled on the way onto the higher spheres of human existence. The boats reflect the influences of the planetary world. The first boat is connected with Saturn (♄). There the moors head is placed. Behind, in the boat with earth (♁) is Christian Rosenkreutz, his Virgin and a globe. Other boats carry virgins, musicians and also the coffins of the individuals who were beheaded. The author of the Chymical Wedding reveals very little or the initiation does not reveal much about the globe. What is in this globe carried by the Virgin and Christian Rosenkreutz? I would like to suggest that it might contain the golden vessels in which the blood of the beheaded was gathered. This blood is now transported into a higher sphere. The bodies, the forms of the dead, and their blood are both being transported into the higher ether spheres, passing through Kamaloca through purification and now have to be carried over the etheric ocean towards Mt. Olympus. Here in the higher ether element the Gods are at work. Here we can say the wisdom of the gods and man is at work creating the archetype of man.
On this ocean of life, higher ether ocean of wisdom, the boats are cast in the form of a hexagram. This is transformed into a pentagram. We might consider this to be an expression of the planetary world that is determined by the stars, by the cosmic star element, by the astral of the stars, thus the hexagram. By Christian Rosenkreutz journeying into the pure ether worlds, the higher etheric spheres, he is bringing the human ego activity into this world. This sphere, which in the past was the sphere of advanced human beings (consider the star of David) now becomes accessible-through Christian Rosenkreutz for all men. Christian Rosenkreutz brings the true human ego impulses into this sphere transforming the hexagram into a pentagram. The cosmos becomes humanized through the deed, sacrifice, striving, and work of this initiate, Christian Rosenkreutz. We are dealing with cosmic dimensions. We are dealing with sacrificial deeds of a being so that the world can have new life. We can say, so that mankind can find new forms of wisdom and love. In order that this should occur the gods themselves, the stars, will have to change their activities in the cosmos. It is Christian Rosenkreutz who can begin to bring about this alteration.
These boats carrying coffins, the head of the executioner, a globe, Christian Rosenkreutz, his Virgin and musicians make their way over the cosmic spiritual-planetary ocean. They arrive at the tower of Olympus on an island. The island is walled. Within the walls is a garden. Within the garden there is another wall with a tower which has a seven-fold makeup. There are seven rounded domes at the top. The seventh is in the middle and is a little higher than the other six.
The following is one way that we might look at this Mt. Olympus. The activities of Jupiter which works in the higher ether spheres we might consider to be related to Devachan, the spiritual world, Rupa and Arupa Devachan. In Rupa Devachan we find the Archetypes for the mineral expressed in the island, with its walls. The archetype for life is expressed in the garden. The archetypes for the soul might be contemplated in the seven-fold tower with seven floors. The soul-psychic element rises like pillars in the cosmos, the etheric-astral pillars. Built into this is the seven-folding of the spiritual world. The seven stories carry the soul through the archetypal into the domain of the germs and ordering of the world. The soul-spirit in traversing the spiritual, thought world steps over into the star world itself (Godhead). From the star-crown of existence, germs of existence and order are brought into the world. From the crown of the star-world, the world beyond the zodiac, germs for existence and potentials for order can come into existence.
Christian Rosenkreutz and his companions enter into the sphere of Olympus (Jupiter) and into the towers. There we find a totally new form of association, a cooperation that is going on. Here men are at work together, as if in a laboratory, a laboratory of life. Here the bringing forth, the forming, the directing, the ensouling and the inspiriting of what is to be the human being himself takes place. Here the fellowship of man and mankind finds its highest expression.
It might be well to contemplate that in all of this we are speaking of a kind of angelic spirituality of man. The Virgin and the virgin process is always the higher soul element of Christian Rosenkreutz himself. The old man speaks something of the etheric, of the past etheric-physical that he brings with him. He journeys as a soul-spiritual being between the old man and the Virgin, between what is of life of the old and what will stream into the future in a pure way for the sake of the future. New forms of existence are connected with the activities of the Virgin, the Virgin revelation. The whole social community, the whole birth process that is connected with the earth and with the coming forth of man passes over into the virgin sphere as man becomes a creative thinker, a sacrificial thinker and a sacrificial creative thinker. This is needed to bring forth totally new forms, this is a virginous conceptive process. This sacrificial thinking creative process that lies deep within the spirit-being of man proceeds as the “work” itself. This anticipates what will come forth in the word as creation. This work lies in the deepest core of man as creative spirit, as a co-creative spirit in existence.
DAY VI
Day six opens with Christian Rosenkreutz, his entourage, the old man being and the virginous being together in the first story of our tower on the isle, Mt. Olympus. Within the etheric-spiritual, the pure etheric world in which the archetypes of the mineral, the living, and the soul are found; in this world, there is yet a higher world and this is to be worked into and on by Christian Rosenkreutz. He is not alone in this work. This is the true world of companionship, of fellowship and of brotherhood where a work for the world and mankind takes place. The work is the bringing forth of the highest expression of existence which is man. On this first floor there is a laboratory work to be done. Alchemic work begins. The laboratory is also the domain in which the sleep chambers are located. The laboratory processes of sleep are to become alive. This is a realm where the activity connected with nourishment, reproduction, healing, and embryonic development begins. This is the highest of spiritual worlds that gradually approaches the star world. It is here that the bodies of the departed have been brought in the coffins. These bodies are cleansed. We can say that something of the mineral physical world is brought here to be purified and taken from earth into this highest spiritual world. It is very crucial that something brought from this world is brought into this sphere in order that ego consciousness, that something of the star of each individual, of the inner beingness of each individual, can find an expression.
Those who are gathered on this floor are awakened and find themselves quickly in discussion and argument. The usual human intercourse of differentiating, of trying to find solutions, discussion and so forth find their origin in this sphere. It is out of this soul-spirit activity that gradual steps to ever higher forms to contemplative life, of inner soul spiritual life, will have to be unfolded. A fundament exists on this first floor. A basis for the spiritual life of man is grounded here. The method by which the soul-spirit here will progress, depends on the instruments of advancement. There are those who will advance by wings, who can fly over everything, who are drawn on without really touching what is of an earthly domain. There are those who will be pulled up and who do not really advance by treading a path. Those who take ladders always stay true to the earth, always take something of the earth element with them. With those who use ladders the love of the earth remains through every stage of development, through every step in development, at every level of development. This is what gives weight in the spiritual world. It is this sphere of Devachan or spiritual world where we will find weight, its meaning and significance. Weight comes from the deepest sphere of human existence in the spiritual world. The weight experience is associated with the ladder. Christian Rosenkreutz’s method of advancing will be that of the ladder. By the use of this ladder and the guidance of the Virgin, Christian Rosenkreutz ascends through the hole in the ceiling. Between the work of the limb and the guidance of his Virgin, Christian Rosenkreutz can advance to higher stages of pure-spirit activity.
In the second story Christian Rosenkreutz enters into a sphere where the usual argumentativeness of man, the differences, pass and the striving begins to re-unite. Religious life begins. Those who have arrived at this stage put on vestments. The work of prayer, of devotional life can begin. Daily life passes over into religious life, into an inner devoutness. The path of sacrifice gains the element of devotion. It is in this second story that we can follow the transformation of what was brought over in the coffins. The six bodies are in a larger coffin. Over these corpses(old forms) a yellow fluid runs. The fluid comes from a vessel which contains the green covered head of the Moor, it contains the Moors head wrapped in green. A fluid runs out of the vessel containing the head. The fluid passes through the leaf green element of nature and becomes yellow. The fluid dissolves the human corpses, the human forms. The green of the head (the dead image of life) and the black head (spirit revealed) of the Moor is transformed and metamorphosed in the vessel. From this a fluid passing through the life of nature becomes yellow, becomes filled with an activity of radiant dissolution. The bodies of the beheaded, the substantiality can pass away and also the forms. What is left is a red substantiality. This is a pure active morally active color substance which contains the possibility of new moral form. The moral red substance, on the way to purity, is placed into a golden globe.
While these color and digestive processes are taking place for those on this floor; at this stage begins the activity of moral philosophy. This is a thinking activity that dissolves, that transforms and brings about a kind of alchemic transformation of the substantiality of man. Higher forms of pure spiritual activity bring about mighty changes in the form and substance of man. Green is transformed into yellow, which is transformed into red. This alchemic process of color metabolism is connected with the human soul who begins the spiritual activity of artistic thinking. The resultant substance is placed within a golden globe. This globe is the reflection of the Sun evolution. The Saturn substance of the head of the Moor is transformed in Alchemic philosophic artistry. This substance is taken into the sphere of Sun. This is all an artistic process of transformation. What was in the beginning with Saturn is brought into a totally new condition. It becomes moral substance by virtue of the art of moral philosophical activity.
This now permits a further development which unfolds on the third story. The golden globe is hung in the middle of the room where the sunlight is reflected by mirrors on to the globe. The globe is warmed. This brings about changes within the globe itself. Saturn substance within the globe is transformed by the light that warms the globe. The substance that is the result of the artistic alchemic process of the lower stage is again changed. This is all accompanied by music and it is music that also brings about this transformation. The tone-ether element is at work in the warmth ether element of this high cosmic sphere. The light-ether plays into this process as well. It is still the philosophical activity that weaves into the ethers. The Virgin, the Old Man and Christian Rosenkreutz are active within the sphere of philosophy, within the love of wisdom. They lovingly weave into the creative etheric-wisdom process taking place. It is working with these creative forces; tone, light and warmth, that takes place at this stage of the spiritual striving of Christian Rosenkreutz. The Globe is then cooled. With a tool of diamond, with the activity of diamond-carbon it is possible for Christian Rosenkreutz to cut open the Globe. The activity of Sun-carbon permits Christian Rosenkreutz to liberate an egg from the Golden Globe. The pure white egg form of a new Saturn can appear. This is a pure white egg that comes forth out of the red-moral substance of the devoted creative thinking. We can say we are actually dealing with a kind of a creative womb process here. It is now not the creation of the embryo but it is the creation of the higher form of man. This is constructed out of the cosmic embryonic membrane activity which can create the physical egg or physical embryo. In this case our initiate is working with these forces to create the higher members of man. Moral substance of the past becomes the substance of this higher man. The whole creative world is participating. The “philosophers egg” comes forth.
The next ascent is into the fourth story. Here the egg is placed into sand. We can say the philosophers egg, the original egg of existence, which has been created by the contemplative, devoted, and artistic activities of man at this level is placed into sand and warmed. A bird comes forth. It is first a black bird. This animal is transformed to give rise to white feathers. Next the feathers become multi-colored. These changes are brought about by feeding the bird the blood of those who have been beheaded. The thinking of man becomes bird-like requiring the forces that create this bird activity to create different colors which can be found in feathers. This is a very high form of creative thinking, of creative activity. The philosopher in priestly garb enters into a new form of activity. Moral substances is transformed, becomes living and colorful. This is the true work of inner meditative contemplative activity. This work brings about a kind of cosmic activity which is reflected in the color of the birds feathers. Here the blood of the kings who were sacrificed is transformed into the morally pure colors to be found on the feathers of beings born of light and air. Here we see an alchemic color-process that results from the highest spiritual striving of man. This is a kind of creative thinking that transforms moral substance, astral substance, that weaves into physical existence. At this point moral substance and physical substance are one. This ends the work on the fourth floor.
Next is an ascent onto the fifth floor where the bird is placed into a bath. The bath fluid is like milk. With heat this milk substance again transforms the color of the bird. The bird born of the Saturn egg and transformed by the Sun activities by the moral substance of the blood now becomes a Moon animal. The bird now has the feathers dissolved. The milk slowly becomes an Earth crystal blue. By the blue of the crystal (the moral coloring of the heavenly spirit) the bird becomes blue. The bird as astral beings becomes the color of the highest world, the world of the Godhead. This is not a sky-colored bird, an etheric bird, but an astral bird which can enter the sphere of the Godhead, it is blue. The blue-colored bird, colored by the pure crystal blue of Earth evolution is prepared to be taken into the domain of the Godhead. We are no longer within the world of the devoted priest-philosopher. We are preparing entry into the sphere of pure morality. The highest in the moral life of man is to serve the Godhead. Christian Rosenkreutz and his companions are now traversing the crystal world, the pure moral blue world, into the light, into the world where the forms of all existence are ordered and new germs of world existence come into being.
With the previous stages of development completed, in the initiation process, the highest initiation process of Christian Rosenkreutz begins when he ascends to the sixth floor. There he confronts an altar. He, with the Old Man and the Virgin, plus three companions stand before a heavenly cult, before a cultic proceeding within the domain of the Godhead. Here the germs and orderings of worlds can be perceived. It is there that the bird is brought in connection with the six other articles of the altar. The articles are a timepiece, a globe, a candle, a book, a fountain, and a skull with a serpent. The timepiece bespeaks the activity of bringing forth time. The globe points to the bringing forth and the transformations in space. The candle speaks to the light element that is brought into existence bringing forth the wisdoms of worlds. These can be imprinted into the book of life. Here stands the book of life revealed in its highest form. Life and wisdom is entered in the book of those who have died. Here we are given an indication of where we must strive to find and look for the true book of life and wisdom. The fountain, the fifth article, points to ever renewing life. Through human existence this life passes through ever changing forms. Life enters death, the skull, but is always triumphant. The fount of life continues to flow. Into the domain of death, the domain of the skull-winds the serpent. Error and Sin weave through the domain of death. The blue bird, the dove being of man, sacrifices itself on the altar, at the altarpiece of creation. We can say God permits his own Son to sacrifice himself for the sake of the world. This revelation of the Godhead can appear before the soul of Christian Rosenkreutz. This is the very highest sphere that is beyond the crystal world. We can say that it is beyond the fixed stars. It is within the Godhead itself that Christian Rosenkreutz is permitted entry. He is able to perceive and participate in the Sacrifice of the Son-of-God for the sake of the world. Time, Space, Light and Wisdom are all important. The continuous transformations of life and death with the appearance of sins appear in heavenly cultic form. The redemption of this existence is revealed in the sacrifice of the blue bird. Here we are not dealing with Christian Rosenkreutz as a philosopher, as a religious striver, but as a striver who seeks the wisdom of God. He becomes a Theosopher. Here Christian Rosenkreutz becomes a Theosophist. He becomes a lover of the Wisdom of God, of the Sophia of God. This is placed before the soul of Christian Rosenkreutz at this stage of initiation. Christian Rosenkreutz ascends to the Godhead of the World and can see the sacrificial process of the coming forth of the Son.
Having accomplished these works Christian Rosenkreutz can ascend into the seventh story of the tower on Mt. Olympus. He will now become active participating in bringing forth man with the deed and sacrifice of the Son of God. The ashes of the Sacrificial Being is placed into two small forms. The forms are placed before the Old Man. Into these forms the bird ashes are placed after they have been transformed into a dough. The fine dough of the bird ash is placed into the molds, the forms (brought over from the beheaded royalty). The molds are placed into a furnace. With this warmth two human forms, male and female, man in his archetypal being out of the ordering of the highest spiritual world of the Godhead, are brought forth. The ordering and configuration of man, the pure expression of man as male-female, as soul-spirit being is created in the furnace of creation. Here the Old Man can see the Lord at work, with the Virgin. Christian Rosenkreutz participates as he goes through the initiation process. The ordering of the world that brings forth man as a Son of God is now experienced. This is worked at by our soul spirit being, Christian Rosenkreutz.
Flesh colored-transparent figures result and come forth from the furnace. The figures are four inches in length. Here beauty, the art of alchemy becomes the process of creative alchemy. Here is the enactment of that which is beauty untouched by any form of sensuality. The chemism of beauty permits the soul-spirit being (the higher ego) to be breathed into these forms. These forms grow in beauty. They are nourished by the blood of the sacrificial bird. We might say that the bird, the dove, sacrifices itself. Its blood can offer sustenance for the two transparent figures to grow in beauty. Their beauty determines their size. When they have attained human size, trumpets are placed to their mouths. These trumpets are surrounded by the branches of the plant. The figures are wrapped in garments of pure crystal. From the world of the stars, from the God head, the soul-spirit-being is breathed into the living-sensitive figures. (Transparent substance = life spirit, crystal garment = spirit self and figures = spirit man). The fire of the Spirit enters the figures giving birth to the higher ego. These two figures become living souls. They become the expression of the higher of man. King and queen are united but they are united in the soul being of Christian Rosenkreutz. The true impulses of God, the higher being, his own star-soul being, born out of God stands within his ego. Within his ego conscious being his higher ego is born out of God. How his higher being is born of God, how his lower being will ascend to be transformed by this higher being is what Christian Rosenkreutz can experience and know. It is with this King and Queen, his higher beingness born out of his virgin striving, out of age and wisdom of a whole life, we have the birth of the higher being within Christian Rosenkreutz. Christian Rosenkreutz has ascended to the heights in the initiation process. He has ascended to the sphere beyond the stars. He now has to return to the bottom of the tower. He has to return to the ordinary state of human consciousness. It is only as he descends that Cupid again appears. Once again the ordinary form of love begins to play in life. Christian Rosenkreutz passed through the love of wisdom, the love of God, to return to the love of the earth. He who loves the earth and works the earth, works for the earth and man.
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In order to approach this day, in fact even the whole Chymical Wedding, we might reflect on the guardianship, the double processes, that are connected with Christian Rosenkreutz. I’d like to suggest that the first guardian appearance is actually the Greater Guardian. The first day as Christian Rosenkreutz gazes into the etheric world he sees a sky-colored being with wings, eagle-configured, clothed in sky-blue, and filled with golden stars. I would like to suggest that this is a kind of visionary impression of his higher being, who is acting as a guide, acting as a guardian. This being appears to him on the second day, at the second portal, as a virgin being, and continues to follow him throughout his initiation. This virgin being as Greater Guardian being guides him through the tower and finally becomes transformed, or takes on another aspect, when the fire spirit element descends into the living bodies in the tower. This means that more and more he begins to carry his higher ego being, he begins to carry a higher Christic being, and a higher revelation of man as his usual makeup. His higher ego and his higher membership become a part of his permanent makeup.
If we now follow his Lesser Guardianship, we can begin with the second day. He meets guardian experiences in the dove and the raven. Next he traverses a portal after which his higher being presents itself. Then he progresses to the third portal where he meets a true Lesser Guardian, a porter, so that he can enter the castle. This means that he can enter the higher governing region of his soul life. This porter permits him to pass after he’s met and begins to transform the formative forces connected with the human heart. These forces are evidenced in the lion. The lion forces have to be overcome and mastered. They have to be taken in hand in order that appropriate soul-spiritual, and also physical, judgments can be made on earth. This Lesser Guardian permits him to enter the castle, go through his experiences, cross the etheric sea, and enter the tower on Mount Olympus. There he meets cosmic forms and the higher forms of the human members. The higher spiritual being of his ego can enter him as well. In the process, a kind of Lesser Guardian being evolves in him, in his physical body. He, as he enters the tower, is Christian Rosenkreutz. He’s an old man. He becomes a striver for freedom. He progresses through the tower, and something of the old man transforms itself into the being of an old Lord. Something of a Godhead being actually evolves in his manhood, in his lesser make-up, in the make-up that is of the nature of a Lesser Guardian.
All the way through the days of his initiation he again and again has to meet experiences connected with the Lesser Guardian. He meets experiences that are handed over to him through the porter so that he can develop his own Lesser Guardianship. On day three we are told how he gives food to somebody else. He searches in the world of knowledge, and in the world of life and death. He seeks the wisdom of man, earth, and cosmos. On day three as well he seeks with ordinary sense-determined soul for content and understanding of marriage, birth, and love. He fails at this. On day four he continues his trials. His will begins to unfold. Even in relationship to his higher being, or in relationship to a virgin feminine quality, he shows that he still has sensuous feelings: he blushes in the face of the virgin. On day five he gazes on Venus, again an indication that he is continually passing through the domain of sin. He is continually passing through a kind of soul purification process. He is always taking an extract of the earth with him, in order that the porter experience that is guarding him can be taken up by himself. Even on day six and day seven we find the presence of Cupid. We find Cupid appearing in the highest region of the tower. We find at the beginning of the seventh day that he has a desire element for the earth. Here the desire element accompanies him, even if it’s in a pure form. Without this pure earth desire, without the love for the earth, Christian Rosenkreutz would not return to incarnation. He does so, and in doing so he becomes his own guardian. He develops his own guardianship. He replaces the porter. In the case of Christian Rosenkreutz, I like to think that the porter guardian was furnished by the twelve initiating souls that surrounded him in the thirteenth century. Going backwards, we might say that these souls replaced the hierophant of the Egyptian period, where a king, physician, and priest was the hierophant. I see a reflection of these three qualities of the ancient hierophant in the three portal experiences of Christian Rosenkreutz. The porter at the third portal can be considered to be a mirror of the Egyptian king. The porter orders, directs, oversees, guides, and helps, and sees that a correct arrangement of events develops. At the second portal stands a higher spiritual being. I see something of the priest/philosopher here. The first guardian experience, with the raven and the dove, I see as the physician element that is mirrored from the ancient hierophant. The physician has to order the play between the illnesses connected with the dove, pure spirit and the raven, the body. All of these elements Christian Rosenkreutz has to take on so that he can have something of a ruling element, something of a priestly element, and something of a physician element that accompanies him as his own porter, as his own guardian.
This evolution of the guardian element through history, and particularly in the development of Christian Rosenkreutz, speaks to the possibility of a new form of initiation for the human being. The individual may build his own double, his own guardian. Man can find his relationship to his higher being, which is a Greater Guardian. This stands in relationship to the Christ and the Christ-mystery. This means we are here dealing with an initiation where the individual frees himself, frees himself so that he can come into relationship to the Christ, so that he becomes a Christ bearer. The purification of the soul is not one that is left aside but is taken along, with remnants from earth life, taken into the spiritual world, so that there is an effort to return, to redeem, to correct, and remedy what has developed because of an incarnation. The love of the earth becomes a very important aspect of this form of initiation. The initiation is not to get out of the earth, not just to ascend into the spiritual world, but to ascend to bring back something for the sake of the earth and contribute to the spiritual world as well.
To pursue initiation which seeks to work in service to the earth means that the simple earth stone element is transformed into a higher nature, into a golden stone. To be a servant, to be a carrier and an individuality who takes up this service means that an individual becomes a Knight of the Golden Stone. Knighthood also speaks to the fact that the individual takes something of the kingly element and brings it into the service of mankind. This knighthood element comes from the higher spiritual beings, from the higher realms of existence, to give direction, help, and order on the earthly plane. The ring placed on the finger of the Knight of the Golden Stone indicates a completion of the round of the ego in the sphere of the gold for the sake of the earth so that the wedding can be between the higher soul-spirit being of the individual who is initiated, who finds initiation through freedom, who finds initiation in relation to Christ, who then finds completion and continuity by serving the earth. The earth has to be transformed into a higher form, that is, it has to become a sun.
Now let’s see how we might understand the development of Christian Rosenkreutz in his higher spirituality in order that we can understand how he has arrived at the stage of becoming a Knight of the Golden Stone. In order to do this let’s look for a moment at the traversing of the spiritual world between death and rebirth.
We speak of the first three days after death as a time of the dispersion of the etheric body into the etheric ocean. A remnant remains. This etheric ocean spreads itself through the whole cosmos to the higher spiritual spheres, as the etheric approaches the orb of Saturn. Something of the remnant of the individual etheric body remains in this etheric ocean, depending on how this individual has worked on earth as a human being. After the three days of giving forth the etheric organization, the soul ascends to Kamaloca. This is coincident with the ether sphere of the Moon. The individual lives through a third of his life and continues to ascend through the spheres of Venus and Mercury, gradually approaching the sphere of the Sun. Soul light and soul force is developed, pure soul activity, pure soul force activity. I would like to indicate it is the thinking individual who enters into this world using pure soul force as a purified soul serving pure spiritual activity, of which we hear in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. In the case of Christian Rosenkreutz we have the indication that already his so-called Kamaloca period appears where he is with his companions in a dungeon in a dream state. Very quickly he is advancing. He is being pulled out of the dungeon and into the sunlight of Christian initiation. Very quickly, almost within two days, he’s passed through the Moon sphere. He then enters into the castle, where he goes through the experiences of forming his judgment organization. Heart forces are used, lion forces. The Libra heart-balance forces of judgment, out of a higher consciousness, have to be developed. The weighing is evidence of this. This occurs on the third day. We can say that after three days already Christian Rosenkreutz has accomplished the soul-spiritual development that takes an individual more than a third of his life after death. This is a very rapid progression of this soul into the Sun sphere, bringing the forces of the Sun into each stage of unfoldment. This is a Sun-initiation, a Christian initiation.
The further progress of Christian Rosenkreutz is to evolve from the third into the fourth day, when he goes from the Mercury into the pure Sun sphere. There he progresses from the hall of the kings into the house of the Sun. There is the necessity to transform earth experience into pure Sun experience. The comedy is being able to come into the Sun domain with a laying aside of that which is from the physical world. This culminates in the beheading. The comedy is the conquest of the human spirit and soul that masters what is dark and ballast from the experiences of the earth. Through this fourth day Christian Rosenkreutz is now prepared to enter into the purest of ether worlds, into the outer planetary spheres. This domain is connected with the deepest of human association, human fellowship. It is here that human beings begin to reconstitute the human organization and its makeup. The whole spiritual world, all those who are associated with one another, work together to accomplish this deed. This working together with one another in this sphere is a kind of a love process. Of this we can hardly be aware. our souls are connected because they have actually worked together out of the deepest fount of our being. This does not mean that one will be attracted out of the soul, which is sensual attraction, or out of the sphere of re-creation, which is sexual attraction. To be attracted out of this sphere, out of a pure love, means to draw together to repay what has been done for us. This is quite a new perspective on human association and human love. Sensuality and sexuality come from the lower spheres of planetary existence. Pure love comes out of the deeds that have been wrought for one another together with the higher spiritual world to build the human organization. Out of this activity man can find man. This association is usually mirrored in production of earthly deeds and work. It is on this fourth day in this castle, in the hall of kings and the house of the Sun, that Christian Rosenkreutz gains his view into the pure Spirit Land. He looks over the ocean of the pure ether world. Here man only meets what lives there in the purest of thinking. Pure thinking activity, pure soul activity, pure spiritual activity, is what permits man to make his way through this highest of ether spiritual worlds while on earth. It’s here in looking out over the ether ocean that Christian Rosenkreutz has the vision of what he is to encounter as he crosses this ocean. The vision is of the sea with ships, with lights and flames approaching the ships, which are to come to the castle, to take the remnants of earthly existence into the higher spiritual world for transformation and for the possibility of return for another work in life.
Day five is the actual entering into the spiritual world itself, into the sphere of Mars, gradually going from the sphere of Mars over the etheric ocean to the isle of Jupiter. On the isle of Jupiter the sphere of Saturn, the highest spiritual sphere, can be met. We can say this is traversing the spiritual worlds through death and rebirth. We can say that it is the initiation process that takes Christian Rosenkreutz through this domain so that he can return to do a work that might have taken him another life or two, another round or two, in order to bring something from the spiritual world to earth. In this progression through the higher spiritual world, Christian Rosenkreutz encounters the archetypes of the physical, the archetypes of life, the archetypes of the human psyche. My impression is that this is evidenced in traversing the etheric ocean to come to the isle of Jupiter. Here he meets the archetypes of the physical, or the mineral, in the island; across the wall is the garden, the archetypes of the living, and in the tower the archetypes of the soul. It’s there that the true most inmost being of man, the higher ego, can be born. Christian Rosenkreutz crosses the etheric sea not as a cosmic being, as a six-star being, but as a five star, as a pentagram being. This means he takes something of his own individualized etheric makeup, his own ego-etheric makeup, into the higher spiritual spheres that lie between Mars and Saturn. At the same time something is taken from the earth as an extract from life, as an extract from the body. The ships bring the coffins, the corpses, and the heads as well as the blood along so that something can be formed out of the past, so that the fruits and the depths of life can be brought into the spiritual world, to be reworked for something new, for a new organization, for a new human entity. This human entity is the higher ego and the higher form of the human sheaths –– Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man.
What we have so far described is the passing through the interplanetary spheres, through the door of the Moon, and going through soul transformations. Next there is an entry into the spiritual world via the door of the Sun. Here at every step Christian Rosenkreutz takes something from the earthly domain. He is guided by his virgin, by his higher being. He has a guardian in the various guardian experiences he’s had. He’s now to enter into the tower, which I would like to suggest is entered through the door of the Sun. On the island he can encounter the archetypes of the physical, the archetypes of life, and the archetypes of the psyche. The isle of Jupiter already is an expression of that domain in which these archetypes exist. They are spread into the ether spheres of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They’re also to be found reflected in the first three stories of the tower and have to be taken up for the birth of the higher ego.
To advance further, we might now look at the progression through the stories and stages of the tower. Then we can see how Christian Rosenkreutz is able to reassemble what is a physical organization, what is a soul and spiritual organization, so that he can return as an initiate. In the initiation procedure he meets the experiences that usually lie between death and rebirth in the course of the seven days. He comes back with his higher organization as well as his higher inner soul-spirit being.
If we look at the first floor of our tower on the isle of Jupiter, we may liken it to a laboratory. We may liken it to the conscious working with the physical archetypes. In this first floor we have the coffins with the bodies being brought into the room. Something of the remnants from the physical is here. This is going to have to be reworked to become an archetype for the future human organization, or for the transformation of the physical inherent in Christian Rosenkreutz. It is the domain of the laboratory. There is a kind of scientific element that enters here. Discourse, dispute, and argument is the basis of activity here. It’s also the province where there are the sleeping chambers. This floor reflects the actual activity that occurs in sleep in order that the true archetype of the individual is maintained. It’s a laboratory, it is a space of cleansing and purifying. Here processes occur so that man can awaken as an ordinary individual to pursue the unknown, to discourse, to become a searcher, and to become he who is in quest of knowledge. It’s here that man develops the faculty to determine what will be his method of further development. He may fly ahead with wings, be wafted off in a Luciferic domain. He may use the ropes so he’s pulled into a circumstance by Ahriman. Finally man may use a ladder so that he ascend into the spiritual under his own steam and his own forces, his own determined will. Here it is that man begins to have the experience of weight. Christian Rosenkreutz is given a ladder. The ladder he has to take is weighty. The experience of weight only comes out of this sphere in which the depths of the archetypes of the physical, the mineral, can be encountered. I would like to suggest that the purest of life ether, a transformation of life ether element, becomes the basis for the experience in concept of weight.
The second story is attained by the ladder. The Virgin is leading. The second stage is the point at which the searching, scientific, argumentative, and discoursing human being puts on his garb as a priest. There is a necessity to go into vestiture to pray, to take on a whole new mood, a whole sense that the quest is now to be reunited with the highest spiritual. Science begins a transformation into religious life. It’s in this second story that we begin a kind of religious, alchemic process. We have the head of the Moor in the middle of the fountain. It is spewing out a liquid which gradually dissolves the body. It’s almost as if we had the picture of the human organization out of the head-liver, making a liquid that dissolves form and substance. All that is brought to the philosopher/priest is dissolved. Substance from nature is destroyed to be recreated. This recreated substance can be brought on to the life of the organism which is developing for higher life. Here it is as if we have a chemistry, an alchemy going on, and a kind of artistic chemistry. We have the transformation of green into yellow, and yellow into red. We find bodies dissolving, becoming red, a kind of bilirubin red. It’s like the devoted philosopher, the devoted thinker, who is able now not only to think and think as a free, pure spiritual being, but he’s able to think in an artistic way. He is able to think color. This thinking of color is not the having of color in consciousness but in fact the ability to think color, a kind of pure ether-astral interpenetration. Out of this activity in the tower of the priest/philosopher/artist comes a substance that is then placed into a globe. It is like original Saturn substance. This is put into a globe that is all gold. We might say, Saturn substance is carried over to Sun evolution.
On the third story this Golden Globe with Saturn substance inside, red substance, is placed into a room with mirrors. Light impinges from all sides. This is almost a mirror-phenomenon of Sun evolution. Within this Golden Globe embedded in light there develops an egg. It is the philosopher’s egg. The philosopher, or the Sun-force activity of the pure light wisdom of the striving thinker, is able to create an egg, an oval sphere, which is an imitation of creation. It is out of this purest of astral activity that something can be created that permits a totally new birth. This is evidenced in the philosopher’s egg. In this third story the first evidence of real work has to appear. Before this story the striving soul is not yet really working. Now the individual has to evidence his own capacity to work. This is spoken to when those who are in the chamber have to cut the Golden Globe with a diamond. The philosopher’s stone, the diamond stone, now begins to work to open the Golden Globe, so that a beautiful white egg can be liberated. The philosopher’s egg is placed before mankind within the sphere of the Sun. It might be pointed out that man here has to begin to deal with space, with Sun evolution. Man enters into the sphere of space which is connected with light, with light ether. Here man begins to deal with measure. In the previous story, where we had the dissolution of the heads, this whole event swims in music. Everything is numbered. The second story is the sphere of number, it is the sphere of tone ether. We are ascending in this pure ether world in which the ego is embedded, bringing forth archetypes of physical, etheric, and astral but also transforming the ether elements into their higher form, which is evidenced in weight, number, and measure. These philosophical concepts are derived from the very very high spiritual domain.
We might say that at the fourth stage, fourth story, work alchemy unfolds out of art alchemy. The work alchemy of the thinker gives birth to the philosopher’s egg. It is here that real work begins. Prior to this an individual could be somewhat carried; henceforth the individual has to go further totally on his own. Work becomes meaningful in this light. A total new impulse for work and work ethic can be derived from this sphere and this activity. My understanding is the “Great Work” that is to be done that is spoken of by the philosophers, by the Rosicrucians, stems from this domain. Man becomes a worker. He’s not just a philosopher-scientist, a priestly thinker, a religious striver, but he becomes a worker, a worker for the world, a worker for the earth and the cosmos.
From this story the worker Christian Rosenkreutz advances. He is then to help with the transformation of the egg, with the help of heated sand, so that a bird can emerge. The bird is a pure astral creation. The bird is hatched as a result of cosmic, spiritual activity of man, a creative thinking process. This thinking now has to be able to transform the color of the bird. The bird is first black, then white, then colored. Thinking has to gain such depth that now thinking itself is not only artistic but an alchemic artistic activity. Thinking itself has to transform what is in the organism into different colors. I’d like to suggest it is the evidence of the colors of mankind that are determined by the type of cosmic spiritual activity that the individual carries on between death and rebirth. Here racial colors are transformed into individual thinking capacity. Racial color is dispensed with; races are overcome, and a kind of cosmic spiritual activity supplants the basis of race. This work of thinking this creative will thinking, takes on the character of what one might say is a pure thinking in will. It transforms metabolism so that the thinking can occur within the organism, can occur within a will that is predominantly thinking. It is thinking creative work.
Let us just look at this black, white, to colored bird. The transformation of colors occurs by the bird being fed the blood of those who were beheaded. The blood of man is purified, etherized, into this. The astral works to bring about different colors. Life, tone, and light ether are raised into an even higher sphere in the domain of the astral when this highest form of spiritual activity is carried on. The blood of the human heart rises into the head. The etherization of the bloodstreams is taken hold of and in this sphere is differentiated by absolutely pure Spirit-Self activity.
Next is floor five. The bird is placed into a liquor that becomes milk like. The bird feathers are dissolved. A crystal mineral substance is formed. This is applied to the bird so that the bird is blue in body and white in head. A pure kind of crystal, mineral constitution is brought about by this activity. I’d like to suggest the sphere of the crystal heavens, the zodiacal sphere, is attained. What Aristotle indicated could be attained by the deepest, the purest of thinking has been attained. Here thinking becomes a feeling-pure crystal element, and the further advances with the bird (the dove) ascends into the Godhead. Here a pure bird, pure crystal blue bird process has to be carried on in the soul. Pure crystal becomes the vessel to ascend into the world of God. We might say a pure crystal has to be formed by which the bird can ascend further. I would like to suggest the crystal becomes a vessel, a chalice. This is formed in the pure ether world out of a most pure astral substance. The purest of the blue has to form in the human astral organization. This becomes a chalice. It is by this means that the bird can be carried further.
Next is the sixth stage, the sixth floor, and here we encounter the holiest of sacraments. We have an altar that is composed of the six elements, and the seventh becomes the bird. The six elements come from the altar that Christian Rosenkreutz encountered on the fourth day in the room of the Kings. The first piece is a clock, the second is a globe, the third is a lighted candle, and the fourth is a book, a Book of Life. The fifth is a fountain that continually gives forth reddish blood substance, and the sixth is a skull with a serpent. The seventh item becomes the bird. This is the sphere of sacrifice. This is the sphere of the sacrificial bird. It is not the thinking bird, the feeling bird, but it is the sacrificial bird. It is not the higher spiritually active bird, the devotional bird, but the sacrificial bird. It is the bird who sacrifices itself in the light of the other six entities. The bird unites with the other six beings of the altar. I take it that this is a mirror-image of the six Elohim joined by the seventh. The seventh sacrifices itself. We might say it is a whole depiction of evolution. Time belongs to Saturn, the globe to Sun. Moon is evidenced in the light of the candle. Earth is to become the Book of Life. The fountain of life bespeaks ever new life out of the death impulse which is depicted in the skull; into this is woven the element of evil. It is to this evolution that the bird sacrifices itself in order that life can penetrate the death of the skull and redeem the evil that is unfolded out of the sphere of time, space, and light. These six articles speak to time, space, light, wisdom, life, and death. It is into this process of the world that we see a sacrifice. The sacrifice can lead us to the secret of what it means to be born of God, to be born a Son of God. This is one of the greatest revelations we can imagine as strivers after God or for God. It is to this domain that we see the bird sacrifice itself. The bird gives its blood and gives its ashes. It is after being present at this altar, being able to imagine a Son born of the Godhead, that Christian Rosenkreutz can go on to the seventh story.
In the seventh story we have a stove with an Old Man. For the first time we have mention of a Lord. Christian Rosenkreutz is advanced from scientist-philosopher to a kind of priestly artistic thinker, to a worker. He carries a being of an Old Man in him and now advances into the world of the Godhead. He continues a love, and now it is the love of God. He continues his quest of wisdom, which is the wisdom of God, he becomes a theosopher. The philosopher turns into a theosopher.
In this setting the substances, the ashes of the bird, the blood of the bird, and water become sacrificial-sacramental substances. The ashes are mixed in water. A dough is made, and two forms are presented. Form and substance unite. They are united in the domain of the Godhead, so that the being of man is in fact born out of God, is born in the image of God. This is a total reformulation of what we have in the Old Testament. Man is not a passive agent now. Christian Rosenkreutz is not a passive agent. He begins to be active in the process by which man is born in the image of God. One could say he also forms an image for God as a Son of God. With the heating of the substance in the forms, a size of four inches is attained. Male and female are present as soul-spiritual archetypal being in this high spiritual world of God. The sacrificial blood, the sacrificial substance of the Christ, which comes from the earth, having passed through the thinking activity of man, through the bird process, this is fed. The blood of Christ we might say is fed to these souls. The blood of the sacrificial being is fed to these souls. We have a kind of physical, but we can say we have a theosophic-thinking process going on, which is a new form of Communion. These beings grow, develop, reach adult size, and are dressed in a crystal garment. They are drawn within the sphere of the crystal world. At this stage of development a higher form appears. Spirit-Man is born. The highest bodily form is evident in the crystal garment. Finally the higher ego element has to be taken in as well. This comes out of the world of the stars. It enters into the two living forms through the trumpets. The mouthpiece of the trumpet is attached to the newborn forms and the trumpet reaches up to the top of the tower. The flame of the star world can enter into the soul-physical being of man. Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit evidenced in these two figures needs to receive the higher ego of Christian Rosenkreutz.
This star world which lies beyond the Zodiac we can say is the world of germ points, the world in which existence and order originate for the the configuration of man, his parts, and his makeup. This star world governs how individuals work together to form the human organization in the light of God, to create a new order. It is here that Christian Rosenkreutz works with his companions. He sees much more than they, but he still works with them. They are working together not only at the ordering of the human organization but the ordering of mankind. It is here that a new order is formed. It is out of this domain that Christian Rosenkreutz can become a member of an order. You can say it is out of this sphere that any man can become a member of an order, a member of a society of brothers, a member of associations that have the deepest destiny, uniting the highest and deepest of each with one another.
It is from these depths and heights, the heights of the theosopher, the heights of the creative individual who stands at the light of God, to work with God for the sake of mankind, that we now have to see Christian Rosenkreutz returning. He returns with twelve ships. He entered the spiritual world with the etheric-ego elements; he comes back with the astral ego impulses. He brings something out of the heights of the star world, the highest element in his being. His higher being is the Christ being, we might say. He has to bring this back out of the sphere beyond the crystal world, the crystal heaven, the Zodiac. He has now to make a quick journey back into life. He has been on a seven-day journey, and the seventh is a recounting of his return from the immense heights of the cosmos-from the point through which man passes between death and rebirth. It is also the same sphere where impulses for nourishment, for healing, and initiation originate. It is also the same domain out of which the human embryo is developed. It is these cosmic ether, astral, ego impulses that man then takes into his being when he is initiated. In initiation he uses the embryonic force for a new birth within the current physical life. How he builds this higher man depends on how many lives ahead he actually is able to draw into his being for the service of mankind. It is Christian Rosenkreutz that has gone this path, now to return to enter into an order. He has in the process replaced his guardian, his porter. He has to become his own guardian, he has to stand at the portal day and night. We can say he, as a devoted being to mankind, stands always at this portal on this path for every man at every night of sleep. He has a continuity of activity. He works through the day, through the night, always there for every man who wishes to cross the portal, who wishes to come into the spiritual world consciously to work for mankind.
It is through the etheric body that Christian Rosenkreutz is to serve mankind. By this means he will bring about the golding of the stone, the etherization of substance. Thus, he has to serve God’s will in purity, in humility, and always to defer to God the Lord at the time in returning to His domain at death. The deeds to be rendered are to serve the poor, the ill, and the ignorant. On this path he becomes a knight of the Golden Stone, who enters an Order for sake of the world. His task, and the task of others who follow, will be to educate, to work for those who are poor and in need as well as heal the ill.Such a threefold task is the task of a Knight devoted to mankind. The goal is to create brotherhood among man. The immediate Brotherhood is that of the Rose-Cross.