Save as PDFThe prayer was presented in a seven-fold way by Rudolf Steiner, and I will alter this presentation slightly for our contemplations here.
1) Our Father which art in Heaven
2) Hallowed by Thy Name
3) Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done on earth
As it is in Heaven
4) Give us this day our daily bread
5) Forgive us our trespasses
(As we forgive those who trespass against us)
6) Lead us not into temptation
7) But deliver us from the evil.
With such a sevenfold petition, we are asked to consider how the spiritual world is drawn into the sphere of man. The movement from the domain of the Father to that of evil is downward. The effort in meditative consideration is from above down. This is just the same movement that has to be made if there is activity or action in relation to ritual and cult. In ritual and cult, it is the spiritual that is asked, begged, and drawn into the proceedings of the cult. A true, cultic ritual is the endeavor to bring about an incarnation of the spiritual world into the outer proceedings of the cult. It is spiritual revelation in the physical world that is in process with a true cultic ritual. In the case of those who do not seek a path, such a working of the spiritual into man can take place unconsciously. By being given the content shared from an esoteric perspective here, this same content, this same prayer can be taken up more thoughtfully and more meditatively. The content can be used to ask the spiritual world to come to one, as it were. The archetype of man, the future of man, can be drawn to man.