I share with you today how, yesterday, after joining a reading group at my Anthroposophical Library, I refreshed my understanding of the universe as a two-fold construction. In a nutshell, being or not, alive or dead, God exists in the polarity of this and that, me and you, yin and yang: that tension between one and another; a stretch of time for "what it can be" coming into being .
And may I add at this point, I come to this understanding with atheist and academic theoretical learning by no means excluded from my thought process. They may vie playfully with my artistic vision that seems to keep me curiously suspended between the world of a child and an ancient pyramid builder rolled into one and a futuristic, alien hell-world of our current making.
Woman and man,
manifest life, unmanifest spirit.
Earth and Sun,
bread and wine,
growth and ripening,
moon and comet.
There is shaping and giving form: like in the baking of a loaf of bread (or a round host) ; and there is pouring and watching the liquid (wine) take on the shape of its container (or the blood in our veins). There is the fixing in something that immobilised can do little more than die: decay, or deteriorate (crumble or mould); and there is a return, a release, a setting back in flow to the formless potential to quicken and permeate, extending life; potentising potential into a doing that can be done.
(by so-called Ether or life-formative forces)
brought me to look into the miraculous appearances and equally baffling disappearances of comets. To dispell the romance of them, straight off, of course, they exist about us with the threat of bringing destruction and calamity. But from an esoteric persepective, when sent by the right Ruling Forces of Goodness, they are coming on a mission to purify our world. What a lovely winter thought. Blankets of snow and curtains of fire.
However, we may not always trust that what is headed in our direction is a cathartic embassador of the Highest. Where there is good there will be evil. Primitive man was right to fear the approach of a comet as much as he later learned to recognise it as a portent of great tidings (see the Bayeaux Tapestry or the Star of Bethlehem‡ in the many depictions of the Nativity scene in early medieval times).
The comet may be seen as a potentised bit of sun, radiating as an enormous shining, perhaps sent therapeutically for a moxibustion treatment. We all know what a comet technically is, but look again and find a tiny pearl of ice for a nucleus with it's tail set alight! It is a little sun berry being coming to diseminate the fruiting powers that make us rejoyce in growth. As a little sun body it comes to rain healing light upon our inert mass of solid earth, there where we have lost the capacity to permeate it with the processes of cosmic evolutionary formative forces.
It comes to teach you to love our planet all the better.
It will be in vain for most of us to wait for the famous Halley's comet (next expected in 2062) but COMET 289P/BLANPAIN may well be favourably placed on 10th January 2020 for observation from the Northern hemisphere. (More information here; WARNING: website may cause temporary viewing issues or leave after-image with some readers for it's bright green background.
Watch the charming stop-motion animation (unlike the American narrated cartoon, which does not capture the flavour of Mominvalley, if you ask me), or get the book by the fabulous Finn, Tove Jansson: “Comet in Moominland”.
Anyway, what I liked best about my fortnightly study group is how I get to monitor how well some rather complex material is received by a cross section of interested but perhaps not very readily (or willingly) anthroposophically versed women my age (maybe 10 years my senior). The intention is to take about nine months to research a work that researches the cosmogeny of Steiner (under his guidance) as entrusted to a qualified mathematician and astronomer, Elisabeth Vreede. For me such an individuality makes for an interestig mediator between two types of science (physical and spiritual).
It is a very small (5) mixed group, including the librarian herself, the in-house Christian astrosophist, a New Age art therapist, a Jewish astrologist, a library and Society member, and me... how shall we define me? The Spiritual Researcher, I suppose.
Fortunately, I was unable to speak this first time (owing to laryngitis), so they tolerated my presence. I wonder how many sessions I will last, though, before they get fed up of me offering some suggestions, posing new questions and plucking out complementary sources from the books surrounding us. The librarian warned me they as a group will be deciding if I am a suitable addition to their group or a bother (I am reading the book in English and will make contributions in the same language). I think that goes both ways: how long will I be able to tolerate their picking and mixing from the content rather than a thorough delving of it. Nobody has to take anything away with them of these minings, but to preclose certain shafts as leading to unnecessary side tracks, I would deem, to be unfavourable in any study project.
The point of this reading group (indeed, not quite yet entirely understood by two of the ladies with non-anthroposophical backgrounds) is best explained by what happens when we fail to to look at the abundance of astronomical fact coming at us without any spiritual science to help interpret what we see. Let me quote Georg Blattmann (“Comets, Their Appearance and Significance”):
We cannot really live in the universe portrayed by modern astronomy, a universe empty, desolate, cold, vast and uninviting.
That is why it is all the more important to attain a vision of the world which is not built upon this warped [sheerly physical-chemical] explanation but which is founded on real [esoteric] insights brought to us by the spearhead of research.
Needless to say, Vreede's life-work won't be for all. It takes a playful intelligence and a vivid imagination to see behind the veil of maya to join her in her inquiries.
The what?...
Maya....Illusion...
What veil?
The veil of Isis-Sophia-Maria...
Yup, warned you it's not for everyone....
What should be for everyone - just because it is really good - is the following reading:
Please enrich yourselves by listening to these formidably condensed readings of great expanse by the poet himself.
footnote
‡ Interesting to check out the Bach Flower Remedy of the same name....
