Baptism

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Baptism (from Greek: βαπτίζειν baptízein "to immerse, to submerge") is a Christian sacrament by which the person being baptised, who is poured over or submerged in water, enters the Christian community. Baptism goes back to the water trial of the ancient mysteries. Through immersion, the mystery student was brought close to drowning, which loosened the etheric body and made possible a review of the life panorama of the previous life on earth, as it can normally only be experienced immediately after death.

„In later times, still at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and beyond, the act of baptism, for example, was usually performed in such a way that it was in fact still a performance on the human being himself. Those to be baptised were immersed [in water] and thus placed in the same position as a drowning person who, in a backward perspective, sees his life processes pass by his spiritual gaze. In earlier times this was part of baptism, that the past life was brought before the soul, that he learned to see spiritually in a certain way. Later on, the sacrament of baptism was moved back [in time], so of course it could not be performed in this way, it was only done as a sign.“ (Lit.:GA 343a, p. 294)

„Baptism originally signified one of the first stages through which man gradually ascended to the higher insights. It was present in the ancient mysteries as the so-called water trial. It belonged to the ceremonial acts which were linked to the fact that people were gradually led up to the highest wisdoms. These ancient mysteries were nothing other than places of worship and schools of wisdom. Baptism was the first test of initiation. It was not merely an external form, but linked to certain degrees of knowledge. The person to be baptised had to have developed certain virtues within himself; then he was baptised. Above all, the baptised of the old mystery religions were required to have acquired in life what is called firm self-confidence, the ability to always rely on oneself. This characteristic was connected with the fact that in the deeper mystery religions the kingdom of God was sought within the human being, and that only those were allowed to belong to the higher community who had found direction and goal in themselves, who were therefore allowed to trust themselves. For them, inner transformation was the keystone of a curriculum.

That was the case in the Mysteries. Then Christianity came along and presented what had been taught in the Mysteries as a truth for all mankind. This is a very significant mystical fact, that now not only those can be saved who are initiated into the Mysteries, but also those who only believe. Baptism thus became a so-called sacrament of the Church. This baptism is the continuation of an ancient ceremonial use, the water trial in the Mysteries. Here is a point where we must believe in spiritual knowledge or get nowhere. The actions that are performed at the time of incorporation into the community are such that something spiritual is connected with it, which is not merely an external formality, but something that is connected with the whole spiritual life of the community, so that something actually happens - from the spiritual point of view - to the person being baptised. For the materialist, this is quite a fantastic thing. But to him who knows something of the higher plans of existence, it is also a fact.“ (Lit.:GA 53, p. 89ff)

The significance of water, salt and ashes for the baptismal ritual

Blackboard drawing for GA 343a, lecture of 5 October 1921 (plate 11)

„Now one has to prepare three small vessels for the baptismal ceremony, which should actually have the following shape seen from the side (it is drawn on the board), so that one can arrange them like this on a small table. In these three vessels you have some water, salt and ashes. The imagination shows that one should actually use pure wood ash. The little table - I will talk about these things later - on which these vessels stand is best covered with a blue carpet or something similar. The three vessels then stand on a red coverlet and are arranged as I have drawn them here. And now you prepare the thing in such a way that you have water in this vessel here (see plate), salt in this vessel here, ash in this vessel here. That's how I've been able to bring it out so far. Now, in order to understand this, we must be clear about the real ideas that must be connected with it, when we get a relationship to salt, water and ashes through the imagination. In the imagination, water is associated with the idea of restoration, the restoration of something that has lost its actual essence in an ongoing process, through which water can thus reveal its mediatorial essence in the world process. This water is to be taken pure; distilled water is best used. The water dissolves the salt. In every salt process, that is, whenever salt precipitates anywhere - and we can certainly use the general name salt here for everything that precipitates in this way - that is, whenever salt precipitates, it means that the salt also gives off a spiritual-etheric content to the environment. So the salt that is dissolved in the liquid, in the water, is, as one knows through the imagination, holding wisdom. The dissolved salt is wisdom-keeping. As the salt coagulates, as the salt precipitates, the real wisdom evaporates, so to speak, into the environment and the salt becomes devoid of wisdom. You must think of all this as being more connected with the process than with the substance, for this is a process which in the most eminent sense takes place in your own human organism; and when you think, when you thus develop thoughts, you are only filled with thoughts through the fact that salt is deposited in you. The denser the development of thought, the more salt is deposited.

A tremendous light falls from this truth upon the whole physiology of the human body. It is quite possible that you do not participate subjectively with your consciousness in this development of wisdom that is taking place. If you develop salt, for example, in a dream, even in a dull dream, which is already perceived by the human consciousness as sleep, then this salt deposition certainly means fulfilment with wisdom, and wisdom at this level of cognition is to be called everything that is the spiritual correlate of the growth phenomena. So if you look at the plant cover of the earth and let the growth of the plants have an effect on you, then from the point of view of the earth being this means a continuous salt process or salinisation process in the plant and an outpouring of wisdom. Whereas the physical view perceives the process of growth, the spiritual view should see in this growth a process where, as it were, the spiritual becomes free, whereas it was formerly bound in the salt.

"You are the salt of the earth." Such things are already written in the religious documents, and I would ask you to draw your attention to the fact that any merely abstract explanation of "You are the salt of the earth" does not meet the meaning, which was originally meant in a very concrete way.

So it is a question of understanding this salting process and now knowing that at the moment when one has salt and dissolves it again, the water substance is permeated by regenerative forces. Contrast that which has now become ash in the pure sense; it has not emerged from a process of coagulation, not from a process of sedimentation, but it has emerged from the process of fire; it is the opposite process. That which gives the spiritual its material field of action on the part of the material also emerged from the fire process.

You can understand this best if you think that you have some water and you put salt into it on one side and ash on the other - what happens is now a process of the extraterrestrial world, whereas our chemical processes relate only to the earthly world. If I put a little salt on one side, a little ash on the other, I produce growth power, that is: active spirit. Through the ashes which I let flow in, I give in that which must always combine with the dissolving of the salt; that must always combine in order to give the spirit the possibility of being material.“ (Lit.:GA 343a, p. 370ff)

The lunar forces that remain in the earth even after the moon has been separated work through the earth's salt content. Through the salt, the earth is spiritualised in the winter time. Through the mercurial quality of the water, the spiritualised earth matter is transformed into living matter. The ash that is formed in the plants in summer through the sulphur process and falls into the earth ensures that this life does not unfold in a lunar but in an earthy way.

„These lunar forces become active preferably in the earth, because the earth contains salt within itself. So that immediately under the surface of the earth, just in what is fastening itself under the blanket of snow, which on one side already strives towards the mercurial, but towards the bottom passes over into the salty, so that in all this we have earth-matter, salt, interspersed with spirituality. The earth really becomes spiritual in itself in the winter time through its salt content, which is particularly consolidated there.

The water, that is actually the cosmic mercury, takes on the inner tendency to form itself into a spherical shape. This inner tendency to form itself as a sphere then emerges everywhere. And because this happens, the earth is enabled in this deep winter time not only to solidify in salt and to infuse this solidified salt with spirit, but it is enabled to animate this solidified material, to transfer it into the living. The earth as a whole comes to life under its surface in the deep winter time. In the spirit and salt principle, through the mercury principle, the tendency to become alive is everywhere active. During the winter, the earth is enormously empowered to develop life beneath its surface.

But this life would become a lunar life, for the lunar forces, as I have said, are active in it. But because the ashes have fallen from the seeds, because all that I have now described is impregnated with ashes, that which claims this whole formation for the earth is within the whole.

The plant has striven upwards into the process of sulphurisation; from this process of sulphurisation the ashes have fallen down. This is what leads the plant back to the earth, after it has gone up into the etheric-spiritual realm. So that at the time of deep winter on the surface of the earth we have the tendency to absorb spirit, to bring it to life, but to convert the lunar into the earthly. The moon is forced here by the earth-ash remains of what has fallen down to unfold the living not in a lunar but in an earth-like way.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 31f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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