Arild Rosenkrantz “The Fourth Apocalyptic Seal”
Lucifer and Ahriman
In Anthroposophic Naturopathy disharmonies can be of two different types, depending on their “thin temperature”: hot or cold disharmonies. In fact, the three systems of the human organism, when in harmony, are not in their own temperature state (36°/97°F), but also as dynamism, neither too active nor too dormant. The three systems of the human organism oscillate dynamically in this “subtle temperature” according to their activity, until due to an etheric-astral disharmony, they do not stop at one of the extremes or hyperactivity or immobility.
Cold Disharmonies – Ahrimanic tendency: they occur in the case of an excess of thinking in the Neurosensory System. Such disharmonies lead to the stiffening of the body in one form: they translate for example into sclerosis, arthrosis and tumors. The “laziness” of a body part or a person is caused by cold forces, which have their seat in the etheric body. Cold disharmony originates from the forces of destruction of the body (catabolism), which are activated naturally in old age when the body fails. The pain caused by cold disharmonies increases the intensity of the consciousness in the affected part, so the consciousness must recover the relationship with that forgotten part.
Hot Disharmonies – Luciferic Tendency: they occur in the case of an excess of will in the System of Replacement and of the Membranes. Such disharmonies lead to the expansion of the body and the loss of form: they translate, for example, into inflammation, fever and swelling. The hyperactivity of a part of the body or the person is caused by hot forces, which have their seat in the astral body. Hot disharmony originates from the body’s building forces (anabolism), which are activated naturally in early childhood when the body has to develop. Fever tends to lower the threshold of consciousness to delirium and oblivion.
The child, with its rounded shapes, lives in the element of heat, in this age the “hot disharmony” is normal, since it is used to build up his physical body. For this reason, the child’s time flows faster than in the adult and therefore repeats the same action several times. Conversely, the elderly, with its rigid forms, lives in the element of cold, in this age the “cold disharmony” is normal, because it is used to escape gradually from the physical body. For this reason, the time of the elderly person flows more slowly than in the adult and therefore performs every action slowly over time.
Fundamental is the harmonic action operated by the rhythmic system, able to balance the tendency to cold disharmony with warm disharmony, reaching again the ideal temperature for the human being. In the ages of human life it corresponds to adult life, which brings to bloom the forces accumulated during childhood for later spiritualisation in the third age.
Return to the original harmony
At the beginning of Creation everything was in harmony, man with Nature and the Cosmos, that is, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm coincided. From the anthroposophical point of view, we can say, more precisely, that the heat mineral man of the Ancient Saturn was at one with the Earth-Saturn; the luminous vegetable man in the Ancient Sun was at one with the Earth-Sun; while the fluid animal man in the Ancient Moon was still at one with the Earth-Moon. It was only when in the Metamorphosis of the present Earth that all the planets of the solar system differentiated from the Earth that man became physical and therefore felt distinguished from his own planet. It is at this moment that the conception of the relationship between man and Nature arises, a relationship that the initiates knew to be of mirroring between microcosm and macrocosm.
As we have seen, in every single human life, all cosmic evolution is recapitulated according to the Law of Recapitulation: this is how every man comes into direct contact with the cosmic archetypes that through him would like to find living expression. Thus, disharmony is presented as the crisis through which man passes in order to acquire a higher consciousness of himself and the Cosmos. Therefore, to each imbalance corresponds an archetype, from which the remedy itself originally descended. Thus, with Anthroposophical Naturopathy we can go to prove the intimate correspondence between the cosmos and man, balance and imbalance. The remedies can be drawn both from Nature outside man, the Mineral and Vegetal Realms, and from the nature of man himself.
In different stages of cosmic evolution, man and the Kingdoms of Nature separated each on their own path of evolution. The Animal Kingdom in fact shares with man most of the evolutionary path having developed body, life and soul together; the Vegetal Kingdom a little less, having developed with man only body and life; and even less the Mineral Kingdom having developed with man only body. In fact, when man takes an animal or floral remedy, he brings back that cosmic principle of the soul which he lost along the way. A plant remedy corresponds to ancient cosmic life, a mineral remedy to the most remote cosmic existence. Such a common origin of man and the Kingdoms of Nature.
Reincarnation and Karma
Reincarnation and karma are the basis for understanding the process of spiritual evolution of the human being according to Anthroposophy. The word karma can be replaced by the equivalent term “destiny”. What is reincarnated is the individuality of man, that is, the Ego, which collects the summa of the experiences made in life through the astral, etheric and physical body and makes them eternal, that is, it extracts the universal principles that provide the basis for subsequent incarnation. In fact, the entire existence of the Earth is dedicated to the human being and to his understanding of the I Am which is simultaneously in man and the Earth, this being the I of Christ.
According to Anthroposophy, the process of repeated earthly lives arose after the Sun had abandoned the Earth in the Hyperborean Era. When they arrived in the Lemurian Age, the lunar forces acting in the Earth became too crystallizing, making the conditions of life almost impossible for man, who at that time was made up of a physical, etheric and astral body. Many souls had to leave Earth, still united with the Moon. Only a few of the founder souls of mankind proper Earthly remained, of whom we know the representative couple, Adam and Eve.
At that time man was made up of bodies of fire vapor and was therefore one with the elements. The Lemurians could magically manipulate the elements with their will and the bodies could change dimension at will, so that some descendants of these were remembered as the Giants who ruled the Earth. In particular the Cyclops, because the Lemurians possessed a single eye, the Third Eye or pineal eye, which came out from the center of the forehead and perceived clairvoyantly in the astral the presence of the Angels, the guides of humanity of the time. The bodies were hermaphrodite, at least until the Moon was separated from the mass of the Earth, after which the two sexes were divided. Once the two sexes were formed, Lemurian societies were organized according to matriarchy. The bodies that had been abandoned by human souls were occupied by the souls of the wave of life after man, that is to say, the Animals, who were then finally able to incarnate themselves, taking what man could not incorporate.
At this point came the temptation of Lucifer, or rather, when man let the Luciferic spirits invade the astral body, thus making it impossible for him to develop in a regular way within the guidance of the regular angelic Hierarchies. The first to be tempted were the Lemurians of the female sex, of which in Eve we have the main exponent: this was because females were more advanced than males, possessing more marked abilities of clairvoyance and memory. Consequently we can interpret the temptation as a “promotion” to a higher stage of females than males. The Luciferic spirits, on the one hand, preserved souls from desiccation on the Moon-Earth, and on the other, introduced the Luciferic element of freedom earlier than necessary into evolution, so that the functioning of the processes of the astral body was compromised by selfishness. In order to allow the ego to continue to develop through the astral body, the etheric and finally the physical, it was necessary for the ego to return repeatedly to Earth so as to resume the work of transmutation of the lower bodies from where it had been left. Essentially, then, it is the astral body that is the bearer of karma and illness. The end of the Lemurian Era came with the abuse of the forces of will by the Lemurians starting from the 4th Sub-race, which led them to violently bring up magma from the depths of the Earth, consuming Lemuria in the fire.
The luciferic corruption of the astral body opened the doors to the ahrimanic corruption of the etheric body, which occurred in the middle of the Atlantis Era, due to the abuse of the etheric forces by the black magicians of the 4th Epoch of Culture of the Turans. At that time man was made up of a liquid body, which resonated with the Tao, the Cosmic Word that resonated in the foggy atmosphere that then enveloped the Earth. The Tao resounded throughout Nature and man lived in communion with the laws inscribed in the Kingdoms of Nature themselves. The ancient Atlantians had control of the etheric life forces and could therefore manipulate Nature, especially plants at will. The etheric was used as energy for all their activities. In ancient Atlantis there were seven oracles corresponding to the planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, in which the Mysteries were celebrated in their original form and which we know only from historical antiquity. Each of these oracles celebrated the specific Mysteries of the associated Planet.
In the 4th Epoch of Atlantis Culture, some priests of the oracles selfishly abused their etheric forces: this is how black magic was born. Acting directly on the manipulation of the etheric, that is, of life, the black magicians of different Oracles shared the power of Nature in order to acquire external power over matter as it grew thicker and thicker. The situation came to crisis with the destruction of the Atlantis by the Universal Flood. Noah or Utnapishtim, it was among those Atlantians who escaped the cataclysm that wiped out the great Atlantis civilization following the guidance of the Hierarchies. The other was Manu, the guide of humanity. A current of migration went through Africa to Asia, settling in Tibet and from there forming the core of Eastern culture. Another current continued northward, settling on the islands of present-day Ireland and Great Britain, forming the core of Western culture. It was with the abuse of vital forces that the black magicians of Atlantis marked a debt with Ahriman, the lord of matter, thus inaugurating the materialistic current, which was added to the selfish one of Lucifer already present since the middle of the Lemuric Era.
According to anthroposophical cosmogony, this was the entrance of the two currents of imbalance, Lucifer’s egoism and Ahriman’s materialism, which the process of karma is called to bring to equilibrium. In fact, the process of karma in no way leads to punishment or reward, but rather to the compensation of an imbalance inserted in the course of spiritual evolution within the divine plan. Karma is a gift of Christ, who is the Lord of Karma, for it is Christ who brings Lucifer and Ahriman into equilibrium and creates imbalances in the divine plan. It is Christ who will lead the human being to be man, and therefore, ascending in the course of evolution to higher angelic stages, the so-called “10th Hierarchy”, that is, the Spirits of Liberty, who will be called to combine the Love given by Christ with the free will given by Lucifer.
Future karma is continually woven into the present life. It is during sleep that the lower etheric-physical pole remains in the bed, while the upper astral pole ascends into the spiritual worlds. Here the Ego inscribes the actions performed in the course of the day in the spiritual worlds: this happens because at the moment when the astral-ego pole leaves the etheric-physical, it recapitulates the panorama of life, from the present day, to the whole life of the present incarnation, up to the previous incarnations, finally coming to experience the primordial conditions in which the cosmos, man and Earth were one. This is so that the Ego may share the weave of personal karma with that of the family, with that of the nation, to the universal karma in cooperation with the Hierarchies. Thus, the sleeper is absorbed in the cosmic cosmic life, which generates the sense of veneration which man experiences whenever he observes the sleeper, and avoids disturbance of his sleep.
This process takes place definitively for the incarnation at the moment of death; here the Ego of the past experiences the previous life lived, from the moment of death to birth. This process corresponds to the detachment of the etheric body in the first 3 and a half days after death. The ego can thus contemplate all the events of life in images, and in the meantime that the past life inscribed in the memory of the etheric body “unfolds”, the etheric body expands from the Earth towards the Cosmos, so that it enters the sphere of action of the Third Hierarchy (Angels, Archangels and Archai) which welcomes the karma of the departed.
Once the etheric body is dissolved, it is the turn of the astral body, the soul, which passes through Purgatory or Kamaloka in the Astral World, starting from the Moon Sphere. The soul in Purgatory sees with the eyes of its neighbor, that is, it experiences the atonement of what it has done negatively to its neighbor, purifying itself. In other words, one lives in the shoes of others, of those who have woven karma with the deceased. Here spiritual beings such as the Masters of Wisdom and the beings of the Second Hierarchy (Elohim, Virtue, Dominations) come to help the soul in interpreting what was lived in Purgatory. This allows that in the following incarnation principles can be inserted such as to arrive at karmic equilibrium. It is interesting to note in this regard that, by living evil from the point of view of the other, it generates the conditions for the other to accomplish something towards us in the following incarnation: that is, the possibility of the shared karma being evened out is introduced into the karma of the neighbor. Where before the ego was concentrated in one point, in the Astral World, the ego begins to expand to become the periphery, in a process that will culminate in the higher spiritual worlds. The panorama of life in Purgatory retraces the entire last incarnation, from the moment of death until just before birth, for a period corresponding to about one third of life, that is, the time one has spent sleeping.
The Afterlife
The soul therefore ascends beyond the Celestial Spheres of the Moon where the Angels operate, of Mercury where the Archangels operate and of Venus where the Archai or Principalities operate until it reaches the sphere of the Sun which represents the true spiritual homeland of man, since in it resides the Elohim or Powers, who sacrificed part of their substance to form the Ego of man who therefore has solar nature. The earthly man is therefore in the “image” of the Earth but in the “likeness” of the solar Elohim. The Elohim can only operate in what is good in the soul of man in connection with his ego. The soul, having arrived at this point, has purified itself of all the evil that has been done, that is, an involutionary and selfish impulse, and thus accesses the sphere that corresponds to Paradise. In Paradise on the Sun it penetrates as much as there is good in the soul, but if the tendency to evil has been great, it will penetrate only a small part of the soul, most of it does not enter beyond Purgatory and is rejected back to incarnate again as soon as possible. Therefore, in the Sphere of the Sun only what is good penetrates, that is, an evolutionary and altruistic impulse.
The ego now ascends to the higher Celestial Spheres: in the Sphere of Mars where the Virtues operate, of Jupiter where the Dominations operate and of Saturn where the Thrones operate. These beings act towards the Ego like the Cosmic Judges who will allow the Ego to lay the foundations of the next incarnation, which will take place at the moment of reaching the limit of the Sphere of Saturn, the Cosmic Midnight, the point above which there is the Zodiac. The Ego chooses a suitable pair of parents in which to incarnate and thus begins to descend the Celestial Spheres from Saturn to the Moon. It is here that, before birth, the ego will communicate to the Third Hierarchy the judgment of the Cosmic Judges about the evil that had been atoned in Purgatory, before the Sphere of the Sun. The consequence of this judgment is that the angels of the Third Hierarchy insert into the body in formation on Earth the imperfections necessary for karmic equilibrium and thus for their overcoming.In general we can affirm that “life proceeds from the inside out”, that is, that what is manifested inwardly becomes, in the course of time, manifests itself outwardly. In this way, the consequences of what happens in one body also reverberate on the body immediately following in sequence: so that what lives in the astral body in the first incarnation is metamorphosed into the etheric body in the second incarnation and finally into the physical body in the third incarnation. The same goes for the powers of the soul: what lives in thinking in one incarnation will live in feeling in the next incarnation and in the next incarnation will live in will. The astral body generates the destiny of the etheric and this of the physical, just as atoning generates the destiny of feeling and this of will. At the fulfilment of the spiritual law previously enunciated, when he lived in a personality as good or bad in his astral body, therefore completely subjectively, in the course of the three successive incarnations he will find himself objectively exteriorized in the world. In this way, the physical world is, in effect, an expression of the incarnated ranks of the Ego in previous generations. Therefore, just as a talent is an expression of the work of the Ego in a past incarnation, so a defect is an expression of the lack of work of the Ego in a past incarnation. Imbalances operate in exactly the same way: an imbalance in the astral body, that is, in the psychic sphere, is transferred in the long run to the etheric body, resulting in an imbalance of vital functions which, finally, will manifest itself in the physical body with specific symptoms to which we give the name “disease”. In the light of the above, it is rather a form of consciousness “out of time and out of place”.
In the naturosophic interview one should always keep in mind karma and repeated earthly lives, however, the Naturosofo should never get lost in fantasies and speculations about the client’s past lives. Doing so risks compromising the inner balance of the client who will have much more difficulty in becoming truly conscious in the here and now. It is important to know the past to understand where we come from, but it is equally important to understand the future to know where we are going. However, past and future act simultaneously in the present: the essential is therefore understood in the current biography and the Naturosofo will have to stick to it. The Eternal Present is the only dimension in which Christ, with his forces of self-consciousness, works directly, while the past is under the aegis of Lucifer and the future under that of Ahriman. It is possible that the Naturosoph has intuitions about the Client’s previous lives or his previous lives, but if this happens in the fullest consciousness he will have to keep them for himself. It is only from his actions, fully infused with consciousness, that the understanding of repeated earthly lives will have to appear. The provision of supposed “revelations” about the incarnations of the other work in a deleterious sense on the morality of others: in fact, it is the Client himself who, by becoming conscious, will have to form an understanding of his previous lives as well as of the possibilities of future evolution. Steiner revealed the proceeding incarnations only of people who had already crossed the Death Threshold or confirmed the facts concerning the previous incarnations to people who had reached the same conclusions independently and in full consciousness. The Naturosophist in his action should always aim to strengthen the consciousness of the ego of the client and not to create “guru-disciple” relationships.
The Biographical Counseling Interview
The Biographical Counseling interview goes like this…
Let’s talk about your biography, from birth to the interview, the point at which we have reached in our spiritual-animal evolution;
We divide your biography into seven years and discover the rhythms and forces at work;
We draw a picture by images of the archetypes at stake, learning to recognize and interpret them;
We delineate how to write in full consciousness the continuation of the biography.
Disclaimer
In order to avoid misunderstandings remember that Naturopathy has nothing to do with Medicine, only the doctor can diagnose and treat organic diseases. Naturopathy is concerned with maintaining the well-being of the person, as well as disharmonies present in the absence of organic or psychic pathologies.