The World of the Spirit and Its Impact on Physical Existence

GA 150 — 23 March 1913, The Hague

II. The Beginning of Spring, Easter Moon And Easter Sunday

It may remain undecided how many hearts in Western Europe today still feel so much connection between the spiritual and soul and the divine and natural that on this day, on this feast of hope for the future, in this year, the thought passes through the soul, how we are living in a year in which this festival of springtime hope may enter as early as possible into the time when the fresh shoots of the year sprout from the womb of our mother earth, when what we call spring enters into human life. In such years as this one is, three days that are otherwise far apart from each other are crowded together in a row. Easter Sunday, after all, is the Sunday that follows the full moon, which in turn follows the beginning of spring on March 21. Three days that can be relatively far apart follow each other this year: the beginning of spring the day before yesterday, the full moon of spring yesterday, Easter Sunday today. In such years, a very special writing is inscribed in the universe for those who are entering into the spiritual knowledge of the world, and especially on this day of such a year, it behoves the soul, which strives to learn to understand the spiritual secrets of the universe and the becoming of time, also to learn to understand what should be written into our human development on earth with this spring festival.

The person who knows the connection between the sun and the moon, as can be known by beholding the interaction of the sun and the moon with the Earth in the secret-scientific writing, also knows the deep secret that reigns between the Earth Spirit, Christ, and the Spirit whom we express with the words Jahve, Jehovah. And anyone who knows the connection between the sun and the moon hears with an understanding-awakening sound the legend of the Fall of Man and their seduction by Lucifer, of the words of God resounding in divine justice. Those who try to understand some of the things contained between the lines of my “Occult Science in Outline” can sense the connection between the sun-moon mystery and the mystery that is usually characterized as the temptation of Lucifer and the influence of Yahweh-Jehovah.

Today, however, we want to focus more on the fact that the sun and moon, as they follow each other in their effect on the earth, from this Good Friday to this Holy Saturday, appear to the occultist in their writing in the cosmos appear as a question mark, written in a deeply mysterious way into the spiritual universe, and the answer is given to us this year, as soon as possible, by the immediate sequence of Easter Sunday following the Saturday of the spring full moon: Easter Sunday, the day of remembrance and the day of hope, the day that symbolically expresses the mystery of Golgotha. Many secrets are hidden behind what surrounds us in the outer physical-sensual nature, and the unveiling of such secrets always brings us in a certain way close to the strict guardian of the threshold. The Easter Mystery is also one of these, which, in a certain sense, requires the maturing of the human soul in order to be understood, although in the instinctive feeling everyone can always perform the inner devotional sacrifice that our soul may fulfill when the day of earthly confidence, the day of redemption and resurrection, Easter Sunday, is joined to the beginning of spring. When spring begins, when the sun moves into such a position in relation to the earth that the plant germs can sprout from the womb of the earth mother through its power, then the human soul begins to rejoice inwardly as if in the brightness of paradise, because it knows that forces are at work through through the cosmos, which in a cyclic sequence with each new year conjure forth out of the bosom of the earth what is necessary for the outer life and also for the life of the soul, so that man in his development on earth can go his course from the beginning to the end of this development on earth. And when the impressions of winter, when the earth mother covers the ground with its icy blanket, when all this evokes the thought of all that will one day bring the earth to decay in the universe, what will one day will transform the earth into a state of world-wide solidification, which will make it incapable of being a further dwelling place for man, when winter evokes these thoughts, then every new spring evokes the other thought into the human soul: Yes, Earth, since the beginning of time you have been endowed with ever new youthful vigor, ever renewing life. You are given the task of calling forth the soul again to inward rejoicing, but also to inward devotion. And even when the cold blanket of ice has spread over the earthly realm, the hopeful images in the human soul combine with the intuitive feeling of how the earth will be able to sustain people through its spring and summer forces for a long time to come, so that they will find the opportunity to develop all the abilities, all the inner powers that lie within them. This is the soul's inner, reverent exultation at the spring equinox. It comes from the soul feeling full of hope that the earth can endure and that the earth can provide the opportunity for human forces to fully develop.

But the human soul may also wonder: Will all the forces of the sun be able to overcome all the forces of winter, or at least to counterbalance them? Will the winter forces not perhaps be able to exert such a strong influence on the earth that the earth must sooner go into a state of torpor before the human soul has fulfilled its full mission on earth? Will summer counterbalance winter? Will spring always have the strength it needs? This thought may not come easily to human souls that observe only the outer nature, but it must come more and more to those souls that can delve into the true spiritual content of the universe. These souls seek to decipher the great, powerful writing with which the secrets of the world are written into the cosmos. Then, in contrast to the writing just mentioned, the struggle of winter with summer, another writing of the soul becomes audible, the writing that is written into our universe when we follow the moon in its mysterious course, as it invisibly and visibly completes its cycle. Oh, this moonlight, like an enigmatic letter of the world's writing, it inscribes itself into the eternal word of creation of earth life. When the occultist seeks to fathom this moonlight, it reminds him first of the punishing voice of Yahweh in Paradise after the temptation of Lucifer, then it reminds him, of course, also of the wonderful, mysterious fact that the Buddha expired his spirit into the cosmic universe on a night of the silver moon. What does the moonlight tell us, which is there in the darkness of the night like a dream in a person's sleep? — The occultist learns that of the forces of the active sun, of the sun's forces that repeatedly and repeatedly renew the evolution of the earth, as much is taken away as the light of the sun is reflected by the full moon. The human soul may dream itself into the moonlit magic nights, the occultist knows that as much of the power of sunlight and solar heat is taken as the full moon reflects back to Earth from that sunlight.

Thus, the full moon is the constant symbol of what is taken from the sun. And when the Sun, with all its powers, once more penetrates into earthly life with each new spring, the occultist knows that, even if this is hardly perceptible to external observation, with each new spring the Sun has weaker powers than it had in the old, previous spring, and that just as much of its powers has been taken from it as full moonlight has shone over the earth. Thus the full moon that appears after the beginning of spring, however mysterious and soul-stirring it may appear to people, is at the same time a serious, stern admonisher of the earthly-cosmic fact that the sun's powers have diminished with each new spring, and that man could never achieve in his earthly mission what he would achieve if these powers were not taken from the sun. To sense this fact puts a huge question mark in the cosmos. Sensing this question mark, the old occultists behaved in their hearts.

So the old occultists said to themselves: We look up to the sun, whose secrets Zarathustra once proclaimed to men. We look up to the moon, whose secret has found its most significant expression in the religion of Yahweh. When we behold these two heavenly signs, we know that the interaction of Sun and Moon signifies the decline of the Earth. Then these ancient occultists looked at a point in the evolution of the Earth itself, at the point where the spirit of the Sun arose from the Earth itself in the fullness of time in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, when Christ died on the cross of Golgotha and the spirit of Christ united with the earth, a cosmic event occurred in earthly life that created a countervailing force against all that the moon takes away from the forces of the sun, while this sun works from the cosmos upon the earth. By the Christ-Spirit having taken up His abode in a human soul and from there spreading throughout all earthly existence in the course of future earthly evolution, compensation is made for what the lunar forces continually withdraw from the sun's penetrating solar forces. Thus the human soul understands its relationship to the cosmos when, morally and spiritually, it adds to the days dictated by the cosmos the third day, the day of death and resurrection of Golgotha. And when the progressive cosmic powers of the sun, which in their infinite kindness always want to give the earth new life, and the strict lunar spirit, which, because of the nature of Lucifer and his forces, must take away from the sun, insofar as it is only the natural sun, its powers, so can add to the two as a third day, morally and spiritually, as the answer to the great cosmic question, the human soul this Easter day. Wonderfully they stand side by side in such years as this one is.

Good Friday! This year in particular, it may remind us in cosmic-occult writing that the sun is constantly losing its strength with each new spring, and that the earth could die sooner than the human soul has developed all its powers. The full moon on Easter Saturday, a wonderful mystery! Above in the cosmos, the wonderful sign, the symbol of the stern Yahweh, who lets his thundering voice resound through Paradise, in which human sin radiates as the result of temptation; down on earth, the symbol of the newly resurrected power of the earth, Christ resting in the grave! It goes deep into the soul that can feel occultistically when the silver, solemn and strict full moon light spreads just above the Easter grave, the symbol of the penetration of the Christ impulse into the earthly body. Following this, the symbol of the resurrected sun, the sun that has risen again from the human soul, Easter Sunday! If we feel this trinity in our soul, we feel the cosmic sun, followed by the cosmic moon, followed by the moral-spiritual sun. If we feel in this trinity in our soul the symbol of how the spirit overcomes matter, how life overcomes death, if we feel something of what can fill us when we are occultists in the true sense of the word in our time, how the power which we call the Christ Impulse will dawn ever more clearly upon man, so that in the ever more and more revealing Christ Impulse, people will learn to feel what must be in them, so that they as human beings will find the way out of the dying earth to the higher stages of development of the immortal human soul, which lives on in eternities!