Woman clothed with the sun

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

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.“

– Revelation 12:1–17

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).

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Christianity As Mystical Fact. CW 8. Translated by Andrew Welburn and James H. Hindes, Afterword by Michael Debus. Anthroposophic Press 1997. ISBN 0-88010-436-8 pdf
• Rudolf Steiner: The Apocalypse of St John: Lectures on the Book of Revelation. CW 104. Anthroposophic Press 1985. ISBN 978-0880101318; eBook: SteinerBooks 1993 ASIN B00AQKDZQA rsarchive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse. Foreword by Virginia Sease, Introduction by James H. Hindes, Translated by James H. Hindes. CW 104a. Anthroposophic Press 2021. ISBN 978-1621482581 rsarchive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Esoteric Lessons 1910 – 1912. CW 266/2. Edited by Christopher Bamford. Translated by James H. Hindes. Anthroposophic Press Inc. 2013. ISBN 978-0880106177
• Rudolf Steiner, Johanna Collis (Translator): The Book of Revelation: And the Work of the Priest. CW 346. Rudolf Steiner Press 1999. ISBN 978-1855840522; eBook ASIN B07N9LY1VB (2013) rsarchive.org

German

• Die Apokalypse des Johannes, übersetzt und kommentiert von Bernd Lampe, Vlg. der Kooperative Dürnau, 4. überarbeitete Auflage, Dürnau 2013, ISBN 978-3888610332
• Die Offenbarung des Johannes - Eine okkulte Zahlenlehre, übersetzt, mit Fußnoten und Kommentaren versehen von Hergen Noordendorp, Novalis Vlg., Schaffhausen 2004, ISBN 978-3907260265
• Christiane Haid (Hrsg.), Jaap Sijmons (Hrsg.): Apokalypse im Ich: Anthroposophische Perspektiven auf die Apokalypse des Johannes, Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2018, ISBN 978-3723516126
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums, GA 8 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-0080-3; Tb 619, ISBN 978-3-7274-6190-3 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Apokalypse des Johannes, GA 104 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-1040-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Aus der Bilderschrift der Apokalypse des Johannes, GA 104a (1991), ISBN 3-7274-1045-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, Band II: 1910 – 1912, GA 266/2 (1996), ISBN 3-7274-2662-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Vorträge und Kurse über christlich-religiöses Wirken, V: Apokalypse und Priesterwirken, GA 346 (2001), ISBN 3-7274-3460-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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.