Woman clothed with the sun

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Fifth apocalyptic seal: The unveiled Isis
William Blake: The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (c. May 1803)

The virgin or woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars is a motif depicted in the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse of John. This imaginative picture can be read in multiple, interrelated nuances. Roughly speaking, it stands for the Christ-power, the macrocosmic I, which is conceived in the virginal pure soul-power of the sun and descends to earth, which is also the abode of the adversaries, to incarnate in a human body. This image is also shown on the fifth apocalyptic seal, which was made by Clara Rettich according to Rudolf Steiner's design.

Meister Eckhart, in his "Sermon on the Virgin who was a Woman", speaks of a "little castle" in the soul, the veiled sanctuary of the virgin soul, in which the Christ is conceived:

„Now take heed and watch carefully! If man were always a virgin, no fruit would come from him. If he is to be fruitful, it is necessary that he be a woman. "Woman" is the noblest name that can be given to the soul, and is much nobler than "virgin". That man receives God in himself is good, and in this receptivity he is a virgin. But that God should become fruitful in him, that is better; for the fruitfulness of the gift alone is gratitude for the gift, and there the spirit is a woman in the re-birthing gratitude where it gives birth to Jesus again in God's fatherly heart [...]

That we may thus be a "little castle" in which Jesus may arise and be conceived and remain in us forever in the way I have said, God help us. Amen.“

– Meister Eckhart: Sermon on the Virgin who was a Woman[1]

The woman clothed with the sun is pursued by the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, which corresponds to the Luciferic dragon, the ancient serpent, who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The great red dragon is brought down to earth by Michael and his hosts.

„The Woman and the Dragon
1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

Satan Thrown Down to Earth
7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. 12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” 13 And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. 15 The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. 16 But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. 17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.“

The reunion of the sun with the earth is described here directly. The seed for this was laid by the earthly life of the Christ and his passage through the Mystery of Golgotha. The reunion of the sun with the earth will take place when, according to the Apocalypse of John, the seventh trumpet sounds.

„Earth and sun were one body. The earth evolved out of the sun and the moon split off. We have said that this had to happen because of the right measure of development. But now that man has passed through these stages of development, after he has spiritualised himself, he is ripe to unite himself again with the relations of force which are on the sun. He can keep up with the tempo of the sun. An important world process is now taking place: the earth is again uniting with the sun. While what we have been discussing is going on, the earth is uniting with the sun. We have said that the spirits of the sun descended to the earth at the event of Golgotha. We have said that this Christ Principle will take it as far as we have been able to describe. Now the earth is becoming ripe to unite with the sun. And that which was necessary to prevent the development from proceeding too rapidly, the moon, will be overcome, man will no longer need it. The moon will be overcome in its powers. Man can unite with the sun at this time. He will live within the spiritualised earth and at the same time be united with the power of the sun, and he will be the conqueror of the moon. This is represented, as it is seen, by this symbolic figure of the fifth seal: the woman who carries the sun within her and has the moon at her feet. We have arrived at the time when man is spiritualised, when man again unites with the forces of the sun, when earth and sun are one body and the lunar forces will be overcome. (See the fifth seal-picture)“ (Lit.:GA 104, p. 185f)

„When the seventh trumpet sounds, it will come upon humanity like a state of bliss. This brings us to the repetition of the moment of the separation of the sun from the earth: man will be ready with the earth to reunite with the sun. The earth will pass into what is called the astral state. The human beings who are then able to live in the astral will lift out the fine part of the earth and unite with the sun. The part of the earth that remains coarse will unite with the moon and form a kind of new moon. A kind of condition will again arise as in the hyperborean time, but on a higher stage of development. This is characterised by the woman clothed with the sun, who has the moon at her feet.“ (Lit.:GA 104a, p. 116f)

In his lectures on the Apocalypse of John, which Rudolf Steiner gave in 1924 for the priests of the Christian Community, he described this image and its manifold meanings in great detail. In doing so, he placed it in close relation to the act of consecration of man, which is connected with the true meaning of the whole evolution of the earth and of mankind, through which man is to develop his free I, filled with the power of Christ, through communion with the Christ. To be more precise, this development only begins in the Atlantean period. The three preceding main ages of the physical development of the earth - the polar age, the hyperborean age and the Lemurian age - were only the repetitions in the physical-etheric world of the three earlier planetary states which preceded the actual development of the earth.

The imaginative picture of the woman clothed with the sun, giving birth to the Christ child within herself, was first seen in the Atlantean period, when man still experienced the divine-spiritual directly in the solid-fluid element that surrounded him. The Greco-Latin period, in the first third of which the earthly life of the Christ falls, was in a certain way a repetition of the Atlantean period on a spiritual level. At that time, the same image was seen in the liquid-air form.

„In ancient Atlantis, the spiritual was seen physically. Now Atlantis was followed by the post-Atlantean period with its seven time periods. The repetition of the Atlantean, the repetition of what happened physically in Atlantis, took place spiritually in this fourth post-Atlantean period. Those mighty convulsions of which I have spoken: The years 333, 666, which are spiritual convulsions in the development of humanity, correspond to physical convulsions in the Atlantean period. And the seers of the Greco-Latin age certainly felt that when they saw something like the revelations in the liquid-air form, something appeared in their souls like a repetition of earlier earthly states which then took place in the physical. The consciousness for this was already there, even if it was in that damped-down state which consciousness was in general at that time. But in all that lived in such schools as, for example, in the School of Chartres, which I have now mentioned in the anthroposophical lectures, there certainly still lived such representations which show how the soul experience of this Greco-Latin period was a soul repetition of the denser physical experience and events in the Atlantean period.“ (Lit.:GA 346, p. 171f)

Today, in the consciousness-soul age, this imaginative picture can be seen spiritually with the full clarity of thought-life in the aerial-fiery element. This was already the aim of Rudolf Steiner's much quoted statement from his introductions to Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings (1884 - 1897): "Becoming aware of the idea in reality is the true communion of man" (Lit.:GA 1, p. 125f).

„And now we stand in the age of the consciousness soul. The immediate soul experience in the aeriform-fluid is extinguished. But, one might say, as if through a kind of catastrophe, with which the fifth, the post-Atlantean period has begun, the further development of the consciousness soul of humanity is first preparing itself. We are still a little stuck in the chaos of this development of the consciousness soul in relation to the outer civilisation. But it is precisely the dawn of the Michael Age that is to bring order into this chaos. This vision will consist in the fact that, just as memories arise in man, images will appear quite spiritually - no longer physically, as in the Atlantean time, or mentally in the Greco-Latin time, but quite spiritually - something like thoughtful mirages, especially after the appearance of the etheric Christ. A kind of inner mirage-images will appear in the thoughts of men, which will have a visionary character, but which will be fully conscious in the age of the consciousness soul. And just as in the desert, caused by the warmth of the air, one sees the mirage - it is, after all, caused by the warmth of the air - so human thought will be carried to the understanding of that which is airy-fiery, airy-warm.

We can say: In the Atlantean period man perceives the Divine in the solid-liquid, that is, more in outer physical matter; in the fourth post-Atlantean, in the Greco-Latin period, man perceives the spiritual in the marvellous formations of the liquid-air, and now - that is, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, when the consciousness soul will perceive it - we shall experience how more and more will emerge in consciousness that which is air-like-fiery, that which is air-like warmth. That which is airy and fiery, that which is airy warmth, will rise before man in tremendous spiritual images, that which the Greeks experienced psychically and that which the inhabitants of Atlantis experienced physically.

A period, therefore, is approaching in the evolution of mankind, in which, with the clarity of thought, visions of the earth's prehistoric times and of the origin of man and all that is connected with it will emerge. The Darwinian view, which gave man a lower origin entirely out of pure conclusions, precedes the development of inner vision, the development of wonderful imaginations which will emerge from the human inner warmth, connected with the breathing process, like concrete, coloured visionary thoughts full of content. Man will know what he was by looking first, as in a reflection, into the Greco-Latin period, and then behind it, what was there in Atlantis.

You see, my dear friends, this vision, which actually concerns us quite directly, because it will occur in the next epoch of humanity; this vision is the one where we, because it is so close to us, virtually see the apocalyptic in our hearts. For the vision which is imminent is that which he indicates in the picture: the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon under her feet, bearing a babe (Rev 12:1).

Through what is expressed in this image, many people will indeed become sighted in the course of this century. Much radiates from this image that will bring understanding to people. First of all, this picture shines back into the Greco-Latin age, where the understanding for the form of the picture, as it will appear in the near future, was prepared in a spiritual way. It has taken on the most diverse forms: Isis with the child Horus, the Christ-bearer with the Christ-child; these things have lived wonderfully deeply especially in the Greco-Latin Age in many metamorphoses which are still traditionally preserved.

In the near future people will look back to the way of seeing, as the people of the fourth post-Atlantean period saw this image in the clouds, that is, in the air-like liquid. And further on, we will look back to that which lived in the physical processes of Atlantis. It will be as if this image of the sun-clothed woman giving birth to a child with the dragon under her feet were pointing through a kind of spiritual telescope, a kind of eyepiece, to a time far in the past when the earthly-physical was connected with the supernatural-cosmic. At that time there was a much more intimate contact between the earth and the planetary world and the solar world.

For you see, we know that in the time when the old Saturnian period was repeated, there was much of the peculiarity of the Old Saturn in the development of the Earth, even if it was in a condensed state. When the second period in the evolution of the earth brought the repetition of the Old Solar Time, the sun separated from the earth, which had still been connected with it during the evolution of Saturn, and with it all the beings who belonged to the sun. In the third period of the earth's evolution, the Lemurian, the moon also separated from the earth, so that this trinity: earth, sun and moon, is the next earthly reality. You will find a description of how the planets came about in my book "The Occult Science". But we must also look at all the processes which I have described in connection with the return of the human souls during the Atlantean period. These are earthly processes, seen from the earthly perspective.

Let us now add another. You see, my dear friends, ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ has been regarded by those who, as initiates, grasped the mysteries of the world, as the Solar Being who, before the Mystery of Golgotha, was united with the Sun. The mystery priests of pre-Christian times looked up to the sun when they wanted to connect with the Christ. Christ has become the earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha. In earthly life, in earthly activity, we have to look for him: Christ, the Spirit of the Sun. Those who wanted to see him, who wanted to have communion with him before the Mystery of Golgotha, had to rise to the sun.

This Sun-Spirit, whom we quite rightly address as a male being in the manner in which he came to earth, is in this form - although similar events can also be described for earlier periods, as I have repeatedly done - brilliantly portrayed in the face of the Apocalyptic, in that profound vision, that vision which immediately, as materially, stands there in brilliant physical appearance in the middle of the Atlantean period. After that time, the mystery-wise, looking up to the Sun, saw the Christ developing and maturing in the sun to the point where he could pass through the Mystery of Golgotha. When they looked towards that point of development in the Atlantean time, they saw a birth taking place in the cosmos outside within the sun.

The priests who saw the birth of the Christ as a male being in the sun in the middle of the Atlantean time, saw a female being in the sun before that. This is the significant change that took place in the middle of the Atlantean period, that before the middle of the Atlantean period one saw within the spiritual aura of the sun the cosmic woman, "the woman clothed with the sun". This is really what at that time corresponded to the events in the supernatural, in heaven: "the woman clothed with the sun, who then gives birth to a child". The apocalyptic correctly describes it as the birth of a child, which is the same being that went through the Mystery of Golgotha and which had previously gone through other forms. A kind of birth, which was, however, a complicated kind of metamorphosis, went on at that time in the Atlantean period. You could see the sun giving birth to its masculine, its sonlike. Now, what does that mean for the Earth? In the middle of the Atlantean era, something like the being of the sun was naturally felt quite differently than today. Today we look at the sun as if it were a collection of craters and burning masses; it is a horrible sight that today's physicists describe. But in those days you saw something like what I have just described. One really saw the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon under her feet, giving birth to a baby. Those who saw and understood such a thing said to themselves: this is for heaven the birth of the Christ, this is for us the birth of our I - even if this I did not enter into the inner being of man until much later.“ (Lit.:GA 346, p. 172ff)

Blackboard drawing for GA 346, 12th lecture, 16 September 1924 (plate 9)

„Today, when we have become such tenderlings with regard to the experience of the soul, we cannot begin to appreciate how surging and stormy the experiences of the soul were in earlier times. For in view of the fact that the I was given to man out of the cosmos, man felt at that time on earth that everything which had been his former nature now became a different one. In former times he was essentially dependent on his astral body, on that which lay in the astral, and this worked in the soul-spirit in such a way that during this old time man had the idea: Here (see drawing on plate 9, left) he stands, up there is the sun, the I is not yet there, but the astral works down from the sun. The human being carries the astral body in him from the sun, the astral body that is not yet dominated by the I, that inwardly still carries refined but animal-like emotions. - Now he has become a completely different human being, the I-become, who before was only bubbling through with the astral body. All this came from the sun.

Now let us imagine before the eye - I will draw it quite schematically (plate 9, below left) - how the image, the sun-image of the oldest Atlantean time, was permeated with living light-shine, which moved effervescently in the lower half of the sun-being. Out of it something was born above, one felt something vaguely of the countenance here. Down there in the sun being, the human being felt the origin of what was seething in his own astral body as emotions, but also everything that gave the human being his soul and spiritual being in general. The next phase, as the sun was seen later, would have been this (see plate 9, bottom centre): Clearly emerging, the face becoming clearer, assuming the figure of a woman, still indistinctly that which is to bring man mastery through the I. The space, that which gave man his soul and spiritual being, becomes smaller and smaller. The space becomes smaller and smaller, that which winds animal-like down there; at last the time comes when the woman is there in the sun, giving birth to the child, and under the woman's feet there is now that which was there before (drawing), that is, where the I-bearing woman shows from the sun the image of dominating the dragon: the astral world of the earlier epoch, which is now under her feet.

The conflict between Michael and the dragon began in the sun, and it led to the fact that everything that was in the sun slowly moved towards the earth and became an earth ingredient, an earth content, thus dominating man in his unconscious, while the I moved more and more into his consciousness.

What was happening cosmically in the Atlantic Age had its mythological counterpart in the Greco-Latin Age. The earlier image of Isis with the infant Horus, which then became the image of the Virgin with the infant Jesus, will be experienced by humanity in retrospect as a vision in the next age, which is imminent. In this image man will see the sun-clothed woman with the dragon under her feet, who was thrown down to earth by Michael, so that he can no longer be found in heaven. This image, which will then be transformed, will appear in the age when the dragon will be rid of him and when that which I described to you yesterday will come to pass. It is indeed the case that humanity is in for a deepened vision of the prehistory of the earth, of the origin of humanity, and at the same time an etheric vision of the Christ Being, for in the Michael Age that will occur which the apocalyptic points to when he speaks of Michael having cast down the dragon beast to the earth where it works in human nature. But Michael will again take care of that in human nature which he has cast down as the dragon beast.

Let us imagine vividly, my dear friends, what this is like. We will look back again to the Atlantean times. The appocalyptic does it in advance, he has the vision of the sun-clothed woman giving birth to the baby Jesus, with the dragon under her feet. - This image becomes weaker and weaker as the Atlantic development advances. And at the end of the Atlantean development, the new continents rise out of the sea, the continents which contain the forces through which the people of the post-Atlantean time have come into their various aberrations. Out of the sea rises the beast with the seven heads (Revelation 13:1), and sevenfold land rises out of the sea, dragging man down through that which spiritually emanates from the earth out of his emotions.

In the form of this seven-headed beast rising from the sea, the Atlantean catastrophe also appears to the apocalyptic, and it will appear again in the future, when that to which the apocalyptic points will again occur in the Michael Age. The apocalyptic speaks of very real processes which concern us greatly in relation to the spiritual life of humanity. And precisely what is here in this picture is connected with the essence of the Christ.

We are living towards an age when it will indeed again be seen how the spirit lives in the earthly, when the spiritual processes of transubstantiation will also be able to appear before the human soul. Then precisely in transubstantiation will appear the earthly reflection of that which has taken place in celestial regions in such a way that what has happened since the middle of the Atlantean time is a small section of it, and all that is connected with the Being of the Christ. Then one will understand how such a metamorphosis as takes place in transubstantiation is possible, when one will see in that which is physical and chemical today only an episode and will also relate transubstantiation to something quite different and not only to that which is apparently material.

Thus we may already deepen our remembrance of the first consecration of man two years ago, this remembrance of that which truly descended from heaven, that which appeared from heaven in the Atlantean age, of that which appeared in the clouds in the Greco-Latin age, of the Christ who walked on earth and was comprehended by men in their visions, the Christ who in our age walks ethereally on earth, but is comprehended by men in imaginations, in visions. In transubstantiation the Christ is present and will be ever more present to men. In the processes which I have described today lie the ways in which the Christ gradually became indwelling in the events of earth evolution.“ (Lit.:GA 346, p. 176ff)

Literature

German
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.

References

  1. ↑ Translated from: Meister Eckhart: Predigt von der Jungfrau die ein Weib war; cf. also: Intravit Iesus in quoddam castellum on www.eckhart.de
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