Whore of Babylon: Difference between revisions
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{{GZ|The ancient pre-Christian oriental cultures, as you know, also produced great cities. We can look back on widespread oriental cultures that also produced great cities. But these great cities of the ancient cultures, they had a certain spirit beside them. All oriental cultures had the peculiarity that, with life in the great cities, they developed the view that if man does not penetrate beyond the physical to the superphysical, he actually lives in emptiness, in nothingness. And so the great cities of Babylon, Nineveh and so on were able to develop, because through these cities man did not come to regard that which these cities produced as the real thing, but that which is behind all this. It was only in Rome that urban culture was made a regulative of the conception of reality. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the land that surrounds them; they nourish themselves from the land that surrounds them. If our history were not so much a fable convenue as it is, but brought up anew the real shape of earlier times, it would show how the Greek city is rooted in the land. Rome was no longer rooted in the land, but the history of Rome actually consists in making an imaginary world into a real one, in making a world that is not real into a real one. In Rome the citizen was actually invented, the bourgeois, this terrible caricature next to the human being. For man is man; and that he is also a citizen is an imaginary thing. That he is a citizen is written somewhere in the church books or in the law books or the like. That he, apart from being a human being and having certain abilities as a human being, also has a registered property, a property registered in the land register, that is something imaginary apart from reality. But all this is Roman. Yes, Rome has achieved much more. Rome has understood how to transform everything that results from the detachment of the cities from the countryside, from the real countryside, into a reality. Rome knew, for example, how to introduce Roman legal concepts into the religious concepts of the ancients. He who, in accordance with truth, goes back to the old religious concepts does not find Roman legal concepts in these old religious concepts. Roman jurisprudence has actually entered into religious ethics. Basically, in religious ethics - through what Rome has made of it - it is as if such judges were sitting in the supersensible world as they sit on our Roman-style judges' chairs and judge human actions. Yes, we even experience it, because the Roman legal concepts still have an effect, that where karma is spoken of, most people who profess karma today imagine the effect of this karma as if some otherworldly justice were there, which, according to earthly concepts, assigns this or that reward, this or that punishment, to what one has done, entirely according to Roman legal concepts. All saints and all supernatural beings actually live in these ideas in such a way that Roman legal concepts have crept into this supernatural world.|191|79f}} | {{GZ|The ancient pre-Christian oriental cultures, as you know, also produced great cities. We can look back on widespread oriental cultures that also produced great cities. But these great cities of the ancient cultures, they had a certain spirit beside them. All oriental cultures had the peculiarity that, with life in the great cities, they developed the view that if man does not penetrate beyond the physical to the superphysical, he actually lives in emptiness, in nothingness. And so the great cities of Babylon, Nineveh and so on were able to develop, because through these cities man did not come to regard that which these cities produced as the real thing, but that which is behind all this. It was only in Rome that urban culture was made a regulative of the conception of reality. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the land that surrounds them; they nourish themselves from the land that surrounds them. If our history were not so much a fable convenue as it is, but brought up anew the real shape of earlier times, it would show how the Greek city is rooted in the land. Rome was no longer rooted in the land, but the history of Rome actually consists in making an imaginary world into a real one, in making a world that is not real into a real one. In Rome the citizen was actually invented, the bourgeois, this terrible caricature next to the human being. For man is man; and that he is also a citizen is an imaginary thing. That he is a citizen is written somewhere in the church books or in the law books or the like. That he, apart from being a human being and having certain abilities as a human being, also has a registered property, a property registered in the land register, that is something imaginary apart from reality. But all this is Roman. Yes, Rome has achieved much more. Rome has understood how to transform everything that results from the detachment of the cities from the countryside, from the real countryside, into a reality. Rome knew, for example, how to introduce Roman legal concepts into the religious concepts of the ancients. He who, in accordance with truth, goes back to the old religious concepts does not find Roman legal concepts in these old religious concepts. Roman jurisprudence has actually entered into religious ethics. Basically, in religious ethics - through what Rome has made of it - it is as if such judges were sitting in the supersensible world as they sit on our Roman-style judges' chairs and judge human actions. Yes, we even experience it, because the Roman legal concepts still have an effect, that where karma is spoken of, most people who profess karma today imagine the effect of this karma as if some otherworldly justice were there, which, according to earthly concepts, assigns this or that reward, this or that punishment, to what one has done, entirely according to Roman legal concepts. All saints and all supernatural beings actually live in these ideas in such a way that Roman legal concepts have crept into this supernatural world.|191|79f}} | ||
Already in early [[Christianity]], Babylon was especially a cipher for [[Rome]] and the [[Roman Empire]]. When the Romans finally adopted Christianity and the papacy took root in Rome, Babylon also increasingly became a symbol for the transgressions of the [[w:Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic Church]] and the excesses and abuses of power of numerous [[w:pope|pope]]s. [[Dante]] used this image in his [[Divine Comedy]] in the 19th canto of the [[Inferno]] and in the 32nd canto of the [[Purgatorio]] for his radical criticism of [[w:Pope Boniface VIII|Pope Boniface VIII]], notorious for his arrogance. | Already in early [[Christianity]], Babylon was especially a cipher for [[Rome]] and the [[Roman Empire]]. When the Romans finally adopted Christianity and the papacy took root in Rome, Babylon also increasingly became a symbol for the transgressions of the [[w:Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic Church]] and the excesses and abuses of power of numerous [[w:pope|pope]]s. [[Dante]] used this image in his [[Divine Comedy]] in the 19th canto of the [[Inferno]] and in the 32nd canto of the [[Purgatorio]] for his radical criticism of [[w:Pope Boniface VIII|Pope Boniface VIII]], notorious for his arrogance. Here, on the top of the Mount of Purification, in the middle of the Earthly Paradise, in the [[Garden of Eden]], the key scene of the Divine Comedy takes place, which represents, as it were, the Ahrimanic-Soratic exaggeration of the Fall - the unholy connection of heavenly and earthly power, the prostitution of spirit with matter. | ||
An eagle, the bird of Jupiter and symbol of the Roman emperors under whose rule the persecutions of Christians took place, swoops down on the tree with frenzied movement, bending blossoms and leaves and gnawing the bark. With all its might it tears at the chariot, which is tossed back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea. A fox, a symbol of false doctrine, stalks the carriage, eagerly peering around for the best food, but Beatrice chases it away. Again the eagle swoops down on the chariot, shedding many feathers from its plumage. | |||
Suddenly the earth seems to crack open and a dragon emerges, piercing and breaking the chariot with its spiked tail. The remains of the sacred vehicle are overgrown by weeds. Then the chariot turns into a monster with seven heads (Rev 17:1-18 LUT), three in front, each with two horns like bulls' horns, and four, stretching out from the edges, each with one horn. The seven heads here correspond to the seven main vices: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. On top of this sits a boisterous whore with her breasts bared, who is courting a giant. It is easy to recognise the Whore of Babylon in her. After they have kissed each other fiercely, he raises his whip, beats her and tears the chariot loose from the tree and disappears with it into the forest. | |||
== Literature == | == Literature == | ||
Revision as of 17:25, 21 April 2022
The Whore of Babylon, called Babylon the Great (Greek: Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη Babylōn hē megalē: Rev 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2; 18:10; 18:18; 18:21) in the Apocalypse of John, is mentioned several times in the New Testament. She sits on a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns. The kings of the earth committed prostitution with her. What is meant here is the prostitution of the spirit with matter, black magic. On her forehead is written a name, a secret, a mystery, which marks her as the mother of all the harlots and abominations of the earth. She is drunk with the blood of all saints and strivers in the Christian sense:
„1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” 6 And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.“
Black magic has its origin in the seduction by the two-horned beast, the sun and earth demon Sorat. Rudolf Steiner explains:
„The abuse of spiritual powers is connected with that seductive power of the beast with the two horns. And we call this abuse of spiritual power black magic in contrast to the correct use, which we call white magic. Thus, by dividing itself, the human race will prepare itself, on the one hand, to reach ever more spiritual states and thus to enter into the use of spiritual powers, into white magic, and on the other hand, that which abuses spiritual powers will prepare itself for the wildest power of the two-horned beast, black magic. In the end, humanity will split into beings who practise white magic and those who practise black magic. Thus in the secret of 666 or Sorat is hidden the secret of black magic. And the seducer of black magic, of that most terrible crime in the evolution of the earth, which no crime can equal, is represented by the apocalyptic through the two-horned beast. Thus, as it were, the division of humanity enters our horizon in the very distant future: the chosen ones of the Christ, who will finally be the white magicians, and the opponents, the wild sorcerers, the black magicians, who cannot get away from matter and whom the apocalypticist represents as those who fornicate with matter. Therefore, all this activity of black magic, everything that arises in the marriage between man and the hardening in matter, is brought to his attention before his visionary soul in the great Babylon, in the community that unites all those who practise black magic, in the terrible marriage or rather wild marriage between man and the forces of degenerated matter.
And so, in the distant future, we see two forces confronting each other: on the one hand, those who sail into the inhabitants of the great Babylon, and on the other, those who rise above matter, who unite as human beings with that which is presented as the principle of the Lamb. We see how, on the one side, the blackest separates itself in Babylon, led by all the forces opposed to the sun, by Sorat, the two-horned beast, and we see the humanity that has developed from the elect, who unite with the Christ, the Lamb, who appears to them: the marriage of the Lamb on the one side, that of Babylon, the sinking Babylon, on the other side. And we see the elect, who have held the marriage with the Lamb, sinking into the abyss of Babylon and ascending to the handling of the powers of white magic. And because they not only recognise the spiritual forces, but also know how to handle these spiritual forces magically, they can prepare what they have on Earth for the next planetary embodiment, for Jupiter. They draw, so to speak, the great outlines which Jupiter is to have. We see rising out of the power of the white magicians the preparatory figures which are to survive as the figures of the next earth embodiment, of Jupiter: we see the New Jerusalem rising out of the white magic.“ (Lit.:GA 104, p. 231ff)
It is no coincidence that the Whore of Babylon also refers to the city of Babylon and the atmosphere of the soul associated with it. Cities are particularly suitable places for individualisation, but also for egoism. In this sense, Babylon stands for all cities and for the overflowing external civilisation that is indifferent to nature and its spirituality. Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome and later also Cassiodorus (* around 485; † around 580) and Andrew of Caesarea (around 600) related the Whore of Babylon to the entire worldly power structure.
„The ancient pre-Christian oriental cultures, as you know, also produced great cities. We can look back on widespread oriental cultures that also produced great cities. But these great cities of the ancient cultures, they had a certain spirit beside them. All oriental cultures had the peculiarity that, with life in the great cities, they developed the view that if man does not penetrate beyond the physical to the superphysical, he actually lives in emptiness, in nothingness. And so the great cities of Babylon, Nineveh and so on were able to develop, because through these cities man did not come to regard that which these cities produced as the real thing, but that which is behind all this. It was only in Rome that urban culture was made a regulative of the conception of reality. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the land that surrounds them; they nourish themselves from the land that surrounds them. If our history were not so much a fable convenue as it is, but brought up anew the real shape of earlier times, it would show how the Greek city is rooted in the land. Rome was no longer rooted in the land, but the history of Rome actually consists in making an imaginary world into a real one, in making a world that is not real into a real one. In Rome the citizen was actually invented, the bourgeois, this terrible caricature next to the human being. For man is man; and that he is also a citizen is an imaginary thing. That he is a citizen is written somewhere in the church books or in the law books or the like. That he, apart from being a human being and having certain abilities as a human being, also has a registered property, a property registered in the land register, that is something imaginary apart from reality. But all this is Roman. Yes, Rome has achieved much more. Rome has understood how to transform everything that results from the detachment of the cities from the countryside, from the real countryside, into a reality. Rome knew, for example, how to introduce Roman legal concepts into the religious concepts of the ancients. He who, in accordance with truth, goes back to the old religious concepts does not find Roman legal concepts in these old religious concepts. Roman jurisprudence has actually entered into religious ethics. Basically, in religious ethics - through what Rome has made of it - it is as if such judges were sitting in the supersensible world as they sit on our Roman-style judges' chairs and judge human actions. Yes, we even experience it, because the Roman legal concepts still have an effect, that where karma is spoken of, most people who profess karma today imagine the effect of this karma as if some otherworldly justice were there, which, according to earthly concepts, assigns this or that reward, this or that punishment, to what one has done, entirely according to Roman legal concepts. All saints and all supernatural beings actually live in these ideas in such a way that Roman legal concepts have crept into this supernatural world.“ (Lit.:GA 191, p. 79f)
Already in early Christianity, Babylon was especially a cipher for Rome and the Roman Empire. When the Romans finally adopted Christianity and the papacy took root in Rome, Babylon also increasingly became a symbol for the transgressions of the Roman Catholic Church and the excesses and abuses of power of numerous popes. Dante used this image in his Divine Comedy in the 19th canto of the Inferno and in the 32nd canto of the Purgatorio for his radical criticism of Pope Boniface VIII, notorious for his arrogance. Here, on the top of the Mount of Purification, in the middle of the Earthly Paradise, in the Garden of Eden, the key scene of the Divine Comedy takes place, which represents, as it were, the Ahrimanic-Soratic exaggeration of the Fall - the unholy connection of heavenly and earthly power, the prostitution of spirit with matter.
An eagle, the bird of Jupiter and symbol of the Roman emperors under whose rule the persecutions of Christians took place, swoops down on the tree with frenzied movement, bending blossoms and leaves and gnawing the bark. With all its might it tears at the chariot, which is tossed back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea. A fox, a symbol of false doctrine, stalks the carriage, eagerly peering around for the best food, but Beatrice chases it away. Again the eagle swoops down on the chariot, shedding many feathers from its plumage.
Suddenly the earth seems to crack open and a dragon emerges, piercing and breaking the chariot with its spiked tail. The remains of the sacred vehicle are overgrown by weeds. Then the chariot turns into a monster with seven heads (Rev 17:1-18 LUT), three in front, each with two horns like bulls' horns, and four, stretching out from the edges, each with one horn. The seven heads here correspond to the seven main vices: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. On top of this sits a boisterous whore with her breasts bared, who is courting a giant. It is easy to recognise the Whore of Babylon in her. After they have kissed each other fiercely, he raises his whip, beats her and tears the chariot loose from the tree and disappears with it into the forest.
Literature
- Siegfried Gussmann: Die Apokalypse des Johannes, Urachhaus-Verlag 1996, ISBN 978-3825170943
- 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, Alexandra Riggins: Die sieben apokalyptischen Siegel, Triskel Verlag 2005, ISBN 978-3-905893-02-1
- Rudolf Steiner: Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums, GA 8 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-0080-3 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Selbsterkenntnis und Gotteserkenntnis I, GA 90a (2017), ISBN 978-3-7274-0900-4 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: Soziales Verständnis aus geisteswissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis, GA 191 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-1910-5 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: Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. Der Münchner Kongreß Pfingsten 1907 und seine Auswirkungen., GA 284 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-2840-6 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
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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. |
