MysTech Newsletter, February 2022
Veil Painting: Fourth Hierarchy in the Realm of the Minerals by Lois Schroff
Newsletter on the Mysteries of Technology
Dear Friends,
You may have heard and read over the past year-and-a-half about a social transformation now taking place which is being unveiled and sold to the public under the slogan, “Build Back Better” – ostensibly a response to the economic problems caused by Capitalism and most conveniently the global disruption event called Covid. This soundbite represents an evolving project known as the “Great Reset” in 2020 or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in 2016 or, less known, Project Mainstream in 2014, all of which have come out of the World Economic Forum, founded by Klaus Schwab. This global transformation project, by whatever name, is being implemented by the world’s central bankers, Wall Street, and others who ostensibly are only trying to help the world overcome “barriers to transforming efficiency.” How best to do this? For non-human materials, Wall Street has introduced a new way to monetize things previously belonging to humanity as a whole, but now which may be traded as an “ecosystem service”. Where you once saw a forest, Wall Street now sees a “carbon sequestration service” with a quantifiable value.
Trading such valuables will require a world-wide digital currency which will conveniently help integrate the human resources into the system. It will only be accessible through digital devices, and use of this system will require a digital ID (think in terms of QR or bar codes). Naturally, for the protection of users, the system will be completely subject to centralized surveillance. In other words, all of the material world, and all of humanity, will come under the control of a small group of people who, right now, are deciding how value will be allocated, quantified and traded at such a fast clip that most will not have a clue as to what’s really going on, let alone how to stop it.
What does such a transformation mean for you and me?
As leading financial industry professionals have been warning for some time, your capacity and mine to freely earn and use money as we wish is being shifted.
I think most would agree that at the core of this financial transformation, we are witnessing a fundamental reorientations to our relationship to money. Those of you who heard Sebastian Bilbao speak at the 2021 MysTech Conference on “Money, Blockchain, and Monetary Control Technology” will have some insights, at least to the technological aspect, of what is, right now, the critical problem to be solved to fully implement this new financial “Great Reset.”
In the past century, outside the socialist world where command and control economies dominated human life—leading to their bankruptcy—the economies of many other countries have been operating under various versions of Free Market Capitalism (generally a mixture of freedom and controls). The idea behind this is that the greatest number of people would bring their most creative ideas to market, in order to profit from them. Other people could and would invest in the idea to potentially gain a profit. And instead of the government, the market (i.e. the population) would choose the winners, thus benefitting society.
Perhaps inspired by the example of Communist China, in which the central government adapted socialism to capitalism, corporations and governments in capitalist countries started to create “public-private partnerships” in which they picked winning ideas for certain economic projects, and regulated others out of existence. This type of capitalism—“crony capitalism”—was already a huge problem in the US in early twentieth century with the creation of trusts controlled by the “robber barons,” but it has only gotten worse through the unfettered development of the military-industrial complex about which President Dwight Eisenhower warned us. Today, the largest corporations, banks and investment firms are using their amassed wealth and power to manipulate government agencies and control the legislative process as never before. They mean to do away with market competition altogether through their control of the flow of money, right down to the level of individuals’ very own spending habits.
What will this change bring about?
There is an emerging consensus among people who study the economy academically; financial advisors, independent journalists and others that feel the free flow of money will be stifled in such way that it will end all independent economic research and development, together with creative market ideas and businesses ventures. This new form of capitalism, which Klaus Schwab and others in the World Economic Forum call “Stakeholder Capitalism”—if allowed to take over the world economy—will crush people’s moral centers (our Heart centers) and drive those of us who think it is the “right way” for humanity into an egotistical and materialistic outlook on all things.
What does that kind of economy mean for the development of a Moral Technology in our times?
Gopi Vijaya lays out some thoughts in his article “On the Foundations for Moral Technology” and it is clear to me that a change must come about now with respect to money. I would agree that a “Great Reset” must happen but it must happen on our own terms. I would argue that it must take in consideration a Threefolding way that is based on realistic ideals and on a high degree of respect for the fundamental freedom of every human being. For research and development to continue freely and independently, I believe we need to create our own reorientation toward what it means to give and receive, including what it means to have money and the responsibility it brings with it.
We need to foster and nurture this new orientation towards the meaning of money and how it can nurture and grow the moral centers of our being. We need to move money itself in directions that promote a true spiritual foundation of humanity, out of which a more moral technology can be born.
We are on the precipice of a new era in human affairs, worldwide. This new era is either going to be ruled by the new digital currencies designed by the World Shapers to enslave us, or one that we carve out for ourselves and for our fellow human beings with money serving its rightful purpose.
While it may seem that we have no choice, that we may be powerless against the new digital currencies that is yet to be unveiled, the choice is truly ours—and we are not alone in this struggle to retain our freedom and humanity.
I therefore respectfully recommend to you the articles below:
- “The Formation of a New Etheric Heart Organ” by Cheryl Martine;
- “The Eighth Sphere in Anthroposophy” by Andrew Linnell;
In closing I would like to make a plea to everyone, to please, more than ever, freely and generously support the organizations and their work that are most dear to you. Please give as much and as often as possible. The seeds of your generosity will blossom into gifts for the benefit of all humanity no matter what possible financial devastation that approaches us now has run its course. Let us also give thanks together for the gifts we have received in life and share our gifts with others, in that spirit.
Thank you for your attention, and for all you do for the sake of humanity.
Frank Dauenhauer
Managing Director, CFAE
Center for Anthroposophical Endeavors
MysTech Study Courses
Review of the Course on Destiny of the Human Body
Consider Joining A Course Group This Year in 2022
MysTech classes are a good way to bring new thoughts and impulses into your spiritual work. Cheryl Martine (the author of the following review on the article The Formation of a New Etheric Heart Organ), was inspired by the reading and discussion when she was a participant in the Fall 2021 class: Destiny of the Human Body, led by Andrew Linnell. The study guidebook, which you can find HERE, includes relevant passages, chapters and whole lectures from 47 of Rudolf Steiner’s works (see list below). Over the course of thirteen on-line meetings, the small group of participants shared thoughts about the future of the physical human body as indicated by Rudolf Steiner. The study material shows Steiner was quite clear that the evolution of the spiritual human being would affect the physical, and vice versa. The picture he painted of the future – involving some “necessities” and some possibilities – could feel daunting and occasionally grim. Certainly, he tells us that humanity will face serious challenges. Cheryl met the immediate challenge with a desire to search for countervailing pictures and indications, which led her to Ruth Haertl’s article about The Formation of a New Etheric Heart found on Rudolf Steiner Archive.
Cheryl is part of an in-person study group that has been meeting for years. The members agreed to read the Haertl article with her and she was able to share with them some of the thoughts she had gathered in her work with the MysTech course work online. In this way, the community grows and Steiner’s insights are spread. Find out more about study courses at mystech.org.
Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Letter, Michael’s Mission in the Cosmic Age of Human Freedom
Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom
At the Gates of Spiritual Science
Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses
Culture and the New Yoga Will. The Michael Culture of the Future
Easter: The Mystery of the Future
Evolution of Human Freedom and Personal Consciousness
Evolution, Involution, and Creation Out of Nothingness
Fall of the Spirits of Darkness
Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman
Lucifer and Ahriman, Lecture 3: Man’s Responsibility for the Earth
Man and the World of the Stars
Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy
Preparing for the Sixth Post-Atlantean Cultural Age
Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and In the Kingdoms of Nature
Spiritual Science and Medicine
The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman
The Cycle of the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth
The Easter Festival in Relation to the Mysteries
The Ego (a lecture 4 Dec 1909)
The European Mysteries and Their Initiates, The History of Christian Rosenkreutz
The Gospel of Luke, Lecture
The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution
The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man
The Mission of the Archangel Michael
The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century
The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity
The Whitsun Mystery and its Connection with the Ascension
Whitsun, the Festival of the Free Individuality
Review of Ruth Haertl’s Michaelmas 2000 article:
The Formation of a New Etheric Heart Organ
Cheryl Martine
Painting: Birth of a Child by Helen Chamberlain, helenchamberlainart.com
“…the spiritual impulses of the past are exhausted…gradually dying away, and it cannot sow any seeds for human development in the future. If nothing but the old impulses were to operate, the only future would be one in which technology would not only dominate the whole of our external life but would overpower and paralyze us, driving out from the human soul anything of a religious, scientific, philosophical and artistic, and even of an ethical nature in the higher sense. Without fresh spiritual impulses, humans will turn into something like living automatons…we must feel that we are the ones led by karma to some knowledge of the fact that humanity needs new spiritual impulses.” -Rudolf Steiner (Address to the Russian participants in the lecture course: The Spiritual Beings in the heavenly bodies and in the kingdoms of nature. Helsinki, April 11, 1912)
“This makes it necessary for man to cultivate experience of spiritual insight in which he is elevated as far above nature as he sinks below it when he occupies himself with the sub-natural realm of technology. To do this enables him to create sufficient strength to keep from being submerged.” -Rudolf Steiner, The Michael Mystery, from nature to sub-nature, April 12, 1925
From whence the fresh spiritual impulses? How do we develop spiritual insights that can elevate us above sub-nature as far as we occupy ourselves with sub-nature?
Ruth Haertl essay on the evolution of The Formation of a New Etheric Heart Organ portrays the “stupendous” possibilities for the etheric heart, the third etheric heart that is now in formation. The evolving of the heart begins with the original inception of the first etheric heart in the 1st seven years, its reconfiguration into a second etheric heart during the years of puberty, to the emergence of the third etheric heart through the cosmic activity of the Logos and the intentional activity of the human being. In the first provisional, inherited etheric heart, the human being draws into itself a “kind of image from the cosmos” which fades as we approach our seventh year when a second etheric heart is born. The new heart is condensed from the entire world sphere as a reflection of the stars, sun and moon. Weaving in and out of this second heart are forces of the astral body wherein are inscribed all deeds, all moral imaginations, human intentions and ideas – all that man has experienced in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. The Ego sympathetically connects with our astral body. Thus, there is a “complete adjustment of individual Karma with universal cosmic laws.” Man is born out of the deepest cosmic wisdom, the Logos.
Thus far, we have a description of how the past, the given, is created and inscribed into our physical/etheric body. Now a further miracle of creation follows in which humanity becomes co-creator, with the Logos, of the third etheric heart. “The quality of becoming depends on the purposeful striving and strongest unfolding of the forces of will in each human being…the perfection of this new creation depends on a strictly self-directed goal orientation, as well as the most strongly activated unfolding of will forces.” A “physiology of freedom”.
In freedom we are called upon to “work on the structural configuration of our own etheric heart; the new heart which began a process of separation from the physical heart in 1721…. which according to Steiner, in the year 2100 this process is destined to slowly reach a conclusion.” As a counterweight to what has been given from the past, human beings are called upon to connect the separated etheric heart to the spiritual world through a transformed thinking and feeling life. The third etheric heart may become an inner cognitive eye, a sensing-heart-eye organ for future karma.
Haertl continues to develop an understanding of the qualities of the etheric heart. We are tasked to strengthen our activity of thinking and, in doing so, we help the ego overcome that which hinders its rightful unfolding. In doing so, we may develop an eye for self-cognition, an Ego-sense for the other, eye of cognition for spiritual beings and an ability to perceive the karma of others. And much more. We may also experience heart problems traced to lack of spiritual activity.
“We harbor in our ether heart a creatively active inner sun that radiates warmth and light into the surrounding, into the far reaches of the cosmos.” Through the development of the third etheric heart we find new spiritual impulses for a new creation. Herein, the human being rises far above sub-nature, indeed, into participating in the creation of a new Sun-Earth.
Cheryl Martine has taught Social Foundations of Education and Anthropology at N.C. State University, Meredith College, University of Maine and supervises student teachers with Sacramento State University. She has been a long-time student of Anthroposophy and has participated in several courses and conferences with MysTech.
Call to Action
Conference Speakers & Workshop Leaders
for the upcoming MysTech Conference 2022
This years theme: Consciousness, AI, and Virtual Reality
Share your research with the MysTech Community, be a speaker or workshop leader at the MysTech Conference 2022, please contact Andrew Linnell, [email protected] or Frank Dauenhauer, [email protected]
The Eighth Sphere in Anthroposophy
Andrew Linnell
Image: Detail of “Representative of Man”, carved by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon.
What is Rudolf Steiner’s Picture of the Future?
Well, it is not a picture of utopia! I’d love to give you a rosier forecast, but, as you will hear, Steiner implored us to be honest about such things.
Several anthroposophical authors and bloggers have written about the year 1998 and how it was the third beat of the 666-year cadence of the beast mentioned in Revelations. Steiner worked with the Hebrew letters whose numeric value, like Roman numerals, adds up to 666. These letters give the beast a name; that is, Sorat. Previous beats have been in the years 666 and 1332. The next will be 2664 AD. Some have speculated that the Incarnation of Ahriman must have happened in 1998 and he may still be growing up. If so, he’d be 23 now. We must realize, however, that Sorat is not equivalent to Ahriman. They are different beings with different goals.
In my view, Ahriman’s incarnation will come later when there will be a greater build-up of Artificial Intelligence, when the Internet of Things is fully in place, when prosthetic limbs can operate via impulses from the mind, and when embedded devices in the brain are commonplace. That will be in, perhaps 300 years from now. Then, when his incarnation does happen, its effects will be vastly more penetrating.
Steiner often spoke of the end of our Post-Atlantean Epoch coming as the result of a War of All Against All (WAAA). This will not be a war of all nations against all nations, but every individual against every other individual. Ego development will need to proceed greatly before such a war can break out. Steiner mentions that the surface of the earth, at that time, will become covered by spidery beings who will arise to an artificial life through an endowment given by us humans. These spiders will have a kind of artificial life that could be placed between the mineral and the plant kingdom. They will be full of intelligence – an Ahrimanic intelligence. As much of humanity ascends to a new life where our etheric body will be our lowest bodily member, those ascending will cast off their physical body. Their Ahrimanic double will thus take over this body. Steiner called this, The Second Fall. Not only will the Ahrimanic double fall but so will all humans who were unable to ascend. They will no longer be able to maintain the physical form given to us by the Elohim (Exusiai in Greek).
If you are imagining that those people who will fight this WAAA will look anything like we do today, let me ask you to wipe away that image. Life in this future time will be as different as life was in the Lemurian Epoch from what life is today. I will try to give you a new image.
Our future will evolve from out of our current threefold inner nature. Our current pictures and concepts are forming our future. We arrived, necessarily, in the 15th Century at a time when materialism rose to dominate scientific thought and science came to dominate our cultural life. Steiner called this thinking – the kind that is based only on our sensory perceptions and materialistic concepts – dead thinking. He describes how, before birth, our thinking was alive. But our physical body becomes, at birth, the coffin for this living thinking. Steiner sought ways to awaken us to develop living thinking. On this subject he wrote in a letter to members, “People who in their previous earth-lives were familiar with thought in its inspired form — who were servants, that is, of Michael — felt themselves drawn to this voluntary communion with Michael when they returned to earth-life at the close of the nineteenth century. They looked upon him, who had been their old Thought-Inspirer, as their guide henceforth in the higher form of thinking.
“Those who have eyes for such things could not but be aware of the revolution that took place in respect to men’s Thought life during the last third of the nineteenth century. Before this, Man could only feel the Thoughts arising and taking shape out of his own being. Ever since then, he can rise above his own individual being, he can guide his mind into the realm of the Spirit; and there Michael meets him — Michael who, from of old, is the past master in all Thought-weaving. He frees the thoughts from the region of the head; he opens a free way for them to the heart; he sets free the springs of spiritual fervor from the hearts of men, so that Man may live in full soul’s devotion to all that he may learn in the light of Thought.
“The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have Thoughts. The springs of spiritual fervor no longer flow from the darkness only of mystical feeling, but from clear soul-brightness — Thought-informed and Thought-sustained. To understand this, is to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which seek today to grasp the Spirit must spring from hearts that throb for Michael, the fiery Thought-King of the Universe.”[1]
The Eighth Sphere
Steiner described how, as a result of dead thinking, more and more of our human substance will be carried off and deposited into a cosmic waste basket he called the Eighth Sphere – where the other seven spheres are the seven planetary conditions that we humans will experience from Old Saturn to Vulcan. This Eighth Sphere began with Earth evolution as the leftover dross from Old Moon. When the current Epoch completes, the Eighth sphere will also contain beings unfit for the ascent into the Sixth Epoch because they are unable to dissolve their material part.[2]
The Next 4000 Years
Over the next 4000 years, our evolution will progress through two more zodiac signs. Using Steiner’s timetable, we were in Aries at the time when Christ was upon the earth. Since 1413, we have been directed by forces from Pisces. Around the year 3573 AD, we will enter Aquarius and 2160 years later, Capricorn. What did Steiner say about these next 4000 years?
One might first ask how did he see such a future? If we look at the image above and picture here the middle line splitting the dual face of Janus, we can understand that a spiritual impulse in the past helps to determine what must happen in the future where it must complete. Note, this is not the same thing as a recapitulation. Rather, this is a completion of what was begun; that is, the fulfillment of an earlier spiritual initiative. Here in figure 1, we have the general descent of man into matter and now we are just past the beginning of the ascent.
Completions of Spiritual Initiatives
More details are illustrated in figure 2 below. During Lemurian times, the Fall of Mankind occurred. Here, in the middle, was the Atlantean Epoch. This was when earth evolution reached its midpoint. Then, we progress to our current Epoch. Two more will follow before human evolution on earth comes to an end.
Each of the previous Epochs ended with a God initiated disaster, but our future disaster, Steiner warned, will be human initiated. Steiner called it, as we have heard, the War of All against All. We should ask, how can that come about? Can it be avoided? Where is human freedom? As with karma, Steiner claims that this future is cosmic necessity in the ‘what’ and human freedom lies in the ‘how’.
The Loosening of the Etheric Body
Over the next 4000 years, there will be a loosening of the etheric body from the physical body. We are returning to the etheric-physical relationship that existed near the end of Lemuria. As the etheric body loosens, what will happen to our physical body? Steiner mentions that this body is already withering, and this will accelerate. This actually began at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha but only very gradually at first. Over these past 2000 years, a clairvoyant can see the degradation. Over the next 2000 years, this trend will hasten. The physical body will wither more as it becomes more rigidified, harder, and more mechanical.
In the Sixth Epoch, new conditions for existence will come about. Humanity will no longer have physical existence but will ‘slide’ up to take on a more conscious awareness of our astral existence. In the Seventh Epoch, we’ll ascend further, or it might be better to say, Devachan will descend into our consciousness.
“If man does not resolve to absorb what is to descend from the spiritual world, he will pass completely over to the shadowy side of his intellect” [and into the Eighth Sphere][3]
What new conditions for life are coming in these next 30 years that will affect the physical body or be a response to the withering of our body? How will these changes evolve in the next 4000 years?
Prostheses
In recent decades, it has become common for mechanical joints to replace aching and aging joints, for kidney dialysis, hearing aids, pacemakers, and various prostheses. What will we see in the near future?
What began as a device to help the handicapped, now becomes proven technology. Later, with further improvements, we come to a time when such prostheses will give an individual superhuman strength. If that’s the case in 30 to 100 years, will people then seek to replace their natural limbs with artificial ones? Much of our current aging population are told to consider joint replacement. Likely a time is coming when natural limbs will be replaced by prosthetic limbs as a matter of course. For what now begins altruistically, to help those who lost a limb or have become paralyzed, will become a proven technology. As our bodies continue to wither, the temptation to replace our limbs with prosthetic limbs will be far stronger than the temptation today to do a knee replacement for an arthritic knee. We will come to do this as a service for our children, likely before they are 18. It will be deemed better for their human strength, for gender equality, for securing jobs, or for superiority in their sports – or as prevention from some new feared disease. For example, today many women with BRCA gene mutations fear breast cancer to the extent that they will have their breasts removed in order to prevent the later onset of breast cancer.
Falling into the Eighth Sphere
Like everything in the Consciousness Soul Age, a double-edged sword exists here. The danger for Anthroposophists is that the Catholic concept of Hell is replaced by the concept of the Eighth Sphere. Many a Christian has offered their 10% tithe out of fear of ending up in Hell. Will some Anthroposophists seek “to tithe” their way out of a destiny upon the Eighth Sphere?
It is our “shadowy” thoughts that are totally connected to physical “reality” that “fall” into the Eighth Sphere. Although “matter” will eventually be dissolved, nothing from our thinking is lost. In this way, one can see the Eighth Sphere as a blessing – like a cosmic garbage collection service for our dead thoughts.
When might people “fall” into the Eighth Sphere? Is it imminent? From my studies, it appears that our thoughts which retain a connection to us are already descending into it. But the fall of humans into it comes at a time in the far future, when ample opportunities for “being saved” have occurred during the 6th and even the 7th Great Epochs. But for some who freely choose this destiny, the door opens during the Sixth Post-Atlantean Cultural Age (3573-5733 AD). This will be the period of Philadelphia when human beings will found communities truly based on brotherly love. Its members will be those who know what it means to say, “No longer I, but Christ in me.”
Endnotes:
[1] R. Steiner, Letters to the Members, “At the Dawn of the Michael Age”, GA 26
[2] R. Steiner, The Apocalypse, lecture 8, GA104, pg. 146 and The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, lecture 5, 18Oct1915, GA 254 (https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA254/English/RSP1973/19151018p01.html)
[3] R. Steiner, Evolution of Human Freedom and Personal Consciousness, Dusseldorf, 19Jan1905
Andrew Linnell is co-founder of MysTech. He retired from a 42-year career in the computer industry in 2013. He had been CTO of OmegaBand in Austin, TX; and also worked at EMC, Compaq, DEC, Wang Labs, and IBM. He is president of the Boston branch of the Anthroposophical Society and a member of the School for Spiritual Science. He is the father of three and the author of two children’s books plus an art history book “The Hidden Heretic of the Renaissance: Leonardo”. He leads several study groups and for MysTech he has published three study group guidebooks. He is a frequent lecturer on the role of technology in human evolution as well as the Christian Mysteries. He manages several websites and Facebook pages devoted to MysTech and to the Christian Mysteries.
Artist Circle
Old Woman
A Wonder Tale
by Mary Ruud
Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash
There was an old woman
Tossed up in a basket
Seventeen times as high as the Moon.
Where she was going, I could not but ask it,
For in her hands she carried a broom.
“Old woman, old woman, old woman, quate I,
“O wither, O wither, O wither so high?”
“To sweep the cobwebs from the sky,
But I’ll be with thee by-and-by.
-Old Nursery Rhyme
An Old Woman was pondering as she was sweeping out the cobwebs of her life. She asked herself, “Have I kept my promise?”
She went to the Sun, who had warmed her old bones. “Oh, dear Sun, you who has awakened me with so many bright sunrises and comforted me with so many soothing sunsets, tell me please, have I kept my promise?”
The Sun, who warmed all the earth, good and evil equally, always steadfast, said, “Old Woman, though I have sustained you these many years, I’m sorry that cannot tell you if you have kept your promise.”
She thanked dear Sun and travelled to the Moon. “Dear Moon, who glows in the darkness with your ever-changing face, can you tell me, please, if I have kept my promise?”
“Old Woman, I have guided the rising and fall of the tides and I have guided the cycles of women, but I’m sorry that I cannot tell you if you have kept your promise.”
The Old Woman thanked the Moon. She rested and wondered. She looked up at the sparkling stars, and traveled over the great sky circle, the constellations that carry the months of the year, and arrived at Stars abode. “Oh, dear beautiful and glistening Stars, who bring such wisdom to the earth, can you please tell me if I have kept my promise?” The Star chorus answered, “We shine the eternity of the worlds, all the stories of all histories are written in our pictures, but, no, we are sorry, we cannot tell you if you have kept your promise.”
The Old Woman thanked the Stars and began to drift lower towards the Earth. The sky grew to a rich blue and soft clouds frolicked in the gentle breezes. The Old Woman paused to ask, “Dear Clouds, who gather the tears of the Earth, hold them in your damp glory, light and dark, then pour the nourishing rain over all the plants and trees, tell me, please, have I kept my promise?” “Though we sustain the growing life on earth, rain and shadow, filling the rivers and streams, we are sorry, we cannot tell you if you have kept your promise.”
As the rain-filled clouds passed, the Old Woman saw the Rainbow, hugging the Earth. She hastened to ask before it would slip back into the sky, “Dear Rainbow, you who wrote your promise across the sky so long ago, can you tell me, please, if I have kept my promise?” The Rainbow answered, “I have offered solace to the World ever since the great flood, and as long as Earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. I know and understand promises. You must return to the Child, for only then can you know.”
The Old Woman thanked the Rainbow. She turned, the Western sunset behind her back, and faced the East. She saw the journey was long. She gathered her aging strength and followed the path back to her beginning. She passed many friends traveling West, she saw many sorrows and joys, dark nights and restoring mornings. She heard prayers and songs, wise words and foolish mistakes. She saw failures and achievements, hard work and rest. She saw families, coming and leaving, crying and celebrating, children playing and learning. At last she came to the beginning. She saw how Child came to Earth through a cold winter night, darkest time of the year and darkest time of the night. Around the Child was destruction, the Bomb, people striving to recover. The Child was a silent one, carrying the darkness of her journey but in her heart the hopefulness of light. She came to bear this light into her own story, her own offering, that story she came to Earth to tell. The Old Woman recognized the Child and quietly whispered into her small ear, “Dear Child, have I kept my promise?”
The Child’s curious grey eyes met the soft grey of the Old Woman. “Yes. I know you will face many trials and those times people call tragedies, but you will also find so much love and comfort. You will carry my heart in your heart and I will always be there if you pause to remember me. Yes, you have kept our heart true in joy and in sorrow. Yes, you have danced the Truth of your life.”
The Old Woman returned home. She had years yet to live and tasks to complete before her long journey beyond the sky.
Mary Ruud has taught Eurythmy for nearly forty years. Mary is a Therapeutic Eurytmist, committed to a wide picture of health and well being. She is interested in sharing content through storytelling. You can reach Mary at [email protected]
Podcast
NEW TO MYSTECH
Under the STARS
with Ed Conroy
Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash
Exploring constellations of liberating, empowering ideas
Under the Stars Podcast will be dedicated to the defense of all that is sacred and against the blitzkrieg of immoral technologies besieging all life on earth. It will do so under the inspiration of practical wisdom traditions from antiquity to the present and beyond.
“Stars” is an acronym that stands for the principal interests of this podcast “Spirituality, Technology, Art, Regeneration and Science.” These are the topic that will be covered, opening the possibilities up for a wide range of interesting conversations which we will most surely have.
Please join us for our first podcast as I sit down with Harrie Salman and talk with him about his new book The Great Reset and its Health Dictatorship.
Join me, Ed Conroy at: www.edconroy.fm
New Books
Available Soon at Rudolf Steiner Bookstore
NEW Observations
The Rudolf Steiner Lens in the 21st Century
New Observations is an independent, non-profit contemporary arts and culture journal that is written edited and published by the arts community in an expanded process, as a work of collaborative art.
CFAE is proud to be a funding partner in publishing this issue of New Observations dedicated to the arts and writings of various contributors finding their inspiration through the works of Rudolf Steiner.
Art and Article Contributors: Atmani, Owen Barfield, Michiko Bresnihan, Liane Collot d’Herbois, Mia Feroleto, Elana Freeland, Michael Givens, Janette Jacobson, Sheila Phelps Johns, Andrea Lyman, Karen McPherson, Michael McPherson, David Newbatt, David O’Hagan, Arild Rosenkrantz, Barbara M.V. Scott, Farah Marie Velten, Larry Young, Guest Editor: Elana Freeland
New Webinars
Facing the Future without Fear
with Andrew Linnell
The direction of modern society appears to be sending everyone sliding into the abyss. Rudolf Steiner talked about a period of pandemonium that we must endure. Are we in the autumn of humanity’s earthly evolution? Have we already succumbed to Ahriman? Where is Michael when we need him?
We cannot understand society’s issues with materialism. These webinars intend to give Rudolf Steiner’s picture of the future to enable us to face this future without fear, to be able to act with wisdom in this Technological Age.
Listen to all 5 Webinars:
- Evolution Leads to Ahriman’s Incarnation
- Transhumanism and the Double
- Sheep and Goats
- Spiritual Science’s View of Our Future
- Counterbalances: Refined Breathing: and The New Yoga
Visit us at: https://mystech.org/events-all/facing-the-future-without-fear/
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