In this session, I will combine Wednesday and Thursday. We will focus on work and prayer. 

Work is in the lower right. That is the upward pointing triangle with the lightning bolts.  Prayer is in the Star of David on the trunk of the tree with the starry realm around it and the zodiac symbols going through it.  Those are the two parts we will do for the crucible.

Wednesday is Mercury’s day. Mercury is the great healer. It unites opposites. It separates opposites. It is the patron of healers and thieves. Things just move. They get better. Or they get worse. 

On Mercury day, the gospel reading is about the anointing of Christ. In this particular excerpt, Mary Magdalene anoints Christ. This brings up a theme from the ancient world that is still an issue today in parts of the middle east. And that is the role of women in society. This issue is kind of buried in the gospels. It goes back to the time of the gnostics in the 4th or 5th century, when the idea of Sophia as a kind of consort to Christ coming through the hierarchies as a kind of gnostic doctrine.

There is a book called “The Pistis Sofia” about the journey of Sofia through the hierarchies, coming from being the wisdom of God to being sort of a goat, descending  through the hierarchies until she gets to the 13th hierarchy and realizes she is separate from the divine and yearns to be back with the divine. But she recognizes that the yearning in her has no place in the original creation. 

This is the Pistis Sophia. Pistis means faith. Sophia means the wisdom of God. She was an avatar of God the father, the Creator. Anthroposophy is permeated with gnostic ideas. There is so much knowledge about the hierarchies that comes from gnostic lore. 

Steiner mentions the Pistis Sofia. Sophia was one with God and then she traveled through the 13 aeons or Hierarchies. And then when she gets to the 13th, she realizes she is divorced from the divine.   In order to move all the way through, she had to become an avatar or aspect of the total divinity. That is what avatar means. She had become an aspect of the wisdom of the Divine. She had become the sacrificial lamb for the creation. 

She had given over her wisdom to the hierarchies and then she got to the 13th and realized she had bought the package. She had a yearning to be one with the Divine but realized that yearning had no place in the creation because it was all meant to be a reflection of the greater glory of God. So she knows that she can’t carry that. So she creates an avatar and casts that. It falls below the original creation known as the Achamoth, which is the fallen wisdom of the creation becoming knowledge.

So she was in the darkness and no longer had sight of the divine. But according to the gnostic doctrine, the Christ Being, Who was held in abeyance in the Trinity, had actually followed her down through the creation and saw that she was bereft of the experience of the Divine. 

So in this story, the Christ being also travels through the hierarchies. What is happening is that she wishes to be with the Divine but the other hierarchies were kind of patriarchal against her. They said that when she visited them, she came from above but then passed on through and no longer honored their sacrifices. So they do not want her coming back through.  So there was this patriarchal issue with the feminine in the creation. It comes from gnostic lore.

This story anticipates the struggle between St. Peter and Mary Magdalene in the gospel.

[A member of the audience asks what is the relationship between gnosticism and Christ.]

This story is being told to the disciples after Golgotha. Christ comes back and stays with them and teaches them about the fall of Sophia.  

In the story, the Pistis is lamenting the fact that she has passed through the hierarchies and no longer honors their sacrifices. This has become complicated because she now has a yearning to transcend the creation. This is part of the new mysteries: a yearning to get back to God. 

Carl Jung said the addiction of an alcoholic is the yearning to be one with God. All of our addictions and desires are a yearning to be back in communication with the Divine.

And the Pistis Sophia represents that as an avatar.  This is the black madonna. She went down and is now suffering in the darkness with the creation. And she has a lament for each hierarchy. As Christ is telling the story to the disciples, He tells them about her lament and asks who can explain it.

One by one,  they answer that it is like the Psalms of David. And Christ says they have spoken well. During this, whenever there is a question, Christ turns to Mary Magdalene for confirmation. They finally get through, But there are 13 laments and 12 apostles. None of the apostles can explain it, but Mary Magdalene can. And she gives an explanation of the 13th. Christ thanks her, but then there is a 14th lament, and Christ asks who can explain this. None of the apostles can explain it. Mary Magdalene cannot explain it. Ultimately, it takes the mother of Jesus to explain it. She does that and then tells them a story of what happened to her before Jesus was born.

So this anointing by the mysterious woman is a big deal. It is not just an anecdotal story. It is a picture of a movement from the ancient world towards subjugation of the feminine principle.

And the sacrifice of the feminine principle is to serve as the vessel of God, the one that carries the divine.

That is why anthroposophia is a feminine being. This is one of the new mysteries. It highlights the deep difference between the old patriarchal mystery (Get in line or I’ll whack you on the head.) and the new feminine mystery (Let’s talk).

As soon as I have an opinion of you, I’m putting you down. And that’s anger and guilt and shame. And the new mysteries can heal that by allowing everyone to be as stupid as they can be. Because it will all work out. Just pray and don’t think that you know the answer. 

Reading from the gospel of St. Mark: The passover festival was only two days away. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming secretly to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. But not during the festival, they said, because the people may riot. 

While Jesus was in Bethany, reclining at table in the home of Simon the Leper, and fraternizing with lepers, criminals, prostitutes and others, a woman came with an alabaster jar containing an expensive perfume of pure nard, which is the herb spikenard, a member of the Valerian family. Valerian is a deep mercury oil: take too much and it is a stimulant. Take just enough of it, and it is one of the best sedatives. If you smell Spikenard, it has an ancient, beautiful fragrance, and it was used to anoint the dead.

The woman broke the jar and poured the perfume on His head. She was anointing Him for His death. 

Some of those present were saying indignantly to each other, why waste the perfume?

Some scholars say that this was the beginning of Judas turning, because he was the treasurer of the disciples. He held the purse strings. He criticized the woman saying the oil could have been sold for more than a year’s wages that could have been given to the poor. And they rebuked her harshly. 

But Jesus said to leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing for me. The poor you will always have with you. But you will not always have me. 

She did what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for burial.

They did not understand that He was going to die.

Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will be remembered of her.

This then leads to the grail mystery with Joseph of Aramathia and Mary Magdalene and the taking of the true blood from Golgotha in the grail cup. The grail mystery comes out of this.

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the 12, went to the chief priest to betray Jesus. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. Then he watched for an opportunity to hand Him over.

This is a deep mercury mystery. Mercury consists of the male and female together. In the language of alchemy, it is known as the great hermaphrodite.  

Very often in alchemy, you will see a picture of a male and female body together in one person under a common crown. The great hermaphrodite is also the future son of man with the male principle and female principle combined. It is a symbol of the spirit, the soul and the body come together in the great marriage of the male principle and the female principle within one person.

Coming from the matriarchal times and the fall of the ancient world, matriarchy held the power to patriarchal times it became dogmatic, back towards the marion church.

This continent was supposed to be the source of the lifting of the seven seals of the apocalypse. The lifting of the seven seals was to reveal that the future of the church was to be a Marion based church or the mother church, and no longer a Petrine church.

That was to be on this continent but it got twisted and scuttled. During the time when this was supposed to happen, there was the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The place where that vision happened was believed to be the home of Quetzalcoatl, a sacred site for the indigenous people of Mexico. It was believed His mother was also a virgin who gave birth to a being who would be sacrificed.  So when the indigenous people learned that the virgin had come, they embraced it. Their prophecy was that once that had unfolded, then a new church would be started here.

That is why the Holy See bankrolled the expedition to the West that led to the founding of the missions and presidios in California and Mexico. It wasn’t to get the gold but to bring the Marion church  into play. It was to be the church of the new blood of the innocent people.

At the time of Golgotha, there was a St. Thomas who traveled to Mexico and brought the news of Golgotha to the Indians and told them that this prophecy presaged a Christ figure who would come to them. That figure would have fair skin, red hair, would shine and be very powerful. 

As it happened, when Cortez landed he was wearing armor and had fair skin and red hair. So they believed that this was the coming of Quetzalcoatl. But it was not the coming of Christ.

So this continent was to be a kind of Vas Deo, a vessel for the new mysteries. And it still is, but we are still in the last stages of the roman empire, definitely not Marion. 

When Manfred Schmidt-Brabant came here [Rudolf Steiner College] years ago, he gave lectures about California and said that it is the feminine mysteries that will start here in California and move east. This land is the beginning of the new mystery stream because everything to the East has already happened, so to speak. 

California is a seed from Lemuria. It is what is left over from Lemuria. There is a small strip of Lemuria left over in Auburn under the railroad bridge. You can read about it in the book “Assembling California.” That strip of shale is left over from the continent of Cascadia, which used to underlie the Pacific Ocean. We could say that it is the last bit of Lemuria.

This area with the gold and all of that, is a Magdalene, feminine mystery of healing. The woman with the alabaster vase is trying to heal Him, while the men are worried about the bottom line.

It is such a picture. Is it the bottom line? Or is it that we are all in this together?

So, she is anointing Him with spikenard. The issue with anointing with spikenard in alchemy is that it is an oil, and oil is always a substance created by a plant as a kind of protection of the embryo. Oils and resins are there to protect and create a condition where the cooking of the salt has been lifted only to the finest parts that are highly volatile.

The oil in the process of mercury and the anointing that she does is the beginning of the separation of the mission of Jesus from the mission of Christ. It happened at the baptism, but Emil Bock said that it took a while for the divine being to learn to control and navigate the physical body that He was packed into. And then He realized that He was going to have to die in this body. So this was a kind of turning point towards the Passion.

Wednesday is Mercury day, so we get the splitting of the male and female principles: the anointing and the blessing and the protecting.

The reason why Judas wanted to betray was that he was part of a sect that was deeply political and wanted to overthrow Roman rule. He had been around Jesus Christ long enough to know that He had real power, the power to do anything He wanted. 

So his motive was to push Christ to the spot where he was going to have to use His power to save Himself by manipulating circumstances to overthrow Roman rule and push the Pharisees out of the way. And then Judas could be CFO for the new government. So he was pushing to have that happen.

This was a time of great forment in Jerusalem: political foment, religious forment. It was like the Arab spring. And Jesus Christ was the flashpoint.

So Judas set it into motion. He told the Pharisees where Jesus would be And He would be arrested for inciting a riot.

So that is Wednesday. He gets anointed.

Glyph Exercise – Alcohol and Oil

[Lecture from today continues in Thursday post. Dennis gave Wednesday and Thursday together.]