Creating a Bridge from the Fifth to the Sixth Epoch
Through our Connection to Michael and Vidar, Part I
Creating a Bridge from the Fifth to the Sixth Epoch:
Through our Connection to Michael and Vidar, Part I
By Bill Trusiewicz
Within the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian epoch, that of ancient Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch was prepared, and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean epoch must prepare the coming sixth epoch of culture. Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth epoch of culture.
Rudolf Steiner, GA 159, Preparing for the Sixth Epoch.
We as students of spiritual science understand that there is nothing more important than fulfilling the tasks of our age, which with the help of the time spirit, Michael, we are equipped to do. Anthroposophy, as a corpus of knowledge and practices, has been designed to help us remember our pre-birth experience of the Michael School in the spiritual world so that we can, during our current incarnation, together fulfill the tasks of our age. The greatest task, among many we could list, is to begin to develop a specific higher consciousness, and out of that consciousness a community that begins to mirror the community of the next epoch—the sixth epoch, sometimes referred to as the “Philadelphia Community.” Philadelphia is a word of Greek origin that combines two words: “philia,” and “delphia.” Philia is one of the Greek words for love, usually translated “brotherly love,” or “friendship,” which modernized would be “filial” (notice the etymological connection to philia) or “brotherly-sisterly love.” The Greek word “delphia,” often translated “city,” (traditionally: “city of brotherly love”) is a word taken from the Greek city “Delphi,” which was the site of the principle Greek oracle: the Oracle of Delphi. The related Greek word “delphys” actually means “womb,” which may perhaps indicate “the womb of the mysteries,” since that is what Delphi was to Greek initiates. In any case, if we consider all of this and recall Rudolf Steiner’s use of the word “brotherhood,” we may begin to understand what lies spiritually behind the words. “Spiritual science...aims to advance mankind’s highest ideals in the spirit of the principle of brotherhood.”
In the following study I would like to introduce my readers to a deeper understanding of and connection with the principal hierarchical spiritual beings guiding humanity from the current 5th Epoch into the coming 6th Epoch: the more familiar Archai Michael and the enigmatic Archangel Vidar, in a series of short essays.
Our current Fifth Post Atlantean Epoch is a cultural period that has been called the “Anglo-German” or “Central European” epoch, in recognition of the great achievements of an incredibly fruitful constellation of individuals from Central Europe—luminaries, actually—who set the tone initially for European culture from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th centuries. We need only remember Goethe and Novalis, for instance, who stand at the peak of the cultural mountain of sagely wisdom built up by them and many others we need not mention here. Due to the tragic occult imprisonment of the so-called “Child of Europe,” Kaspar Hauser, much of the cultural impulse prepared by these sagely individuals that could have been sheltered by political favor in Central Europe was prevented, or at least interrupted. Nevertheless, a very strong impulse to preserve the accomplishments of what became known as the movement of “Romanticism,” which followed from the Rosicrucian enlightenment at the beginning of our current epoch, was born through the work of Rudolf Steiner with his Anthroposophical movement. This is duly born out in Owen Barfield’s, Romanticism Comes of Age, published in 1944.
Our epoch, the Fifth Post Atlantean cultural epoch, is often referred to as the “Consciousness-Soul” or “Spiritual-Soul” period, in which our human individuality or “higher personality” needs to develop. The predominant characteristic of the human experience of emerging individualism is loneliness. In the process of finding one’s self (“consciousness or spiritual soul”) one must endure a perpetual, pervasive feeling of separation from others and from the world. The experience of separation from one another and from the world, the experience of “duality,” which permeates our un-initiated thinking, and which is an essential aspect of the current 5th epoch of culture, will be a primary theme of this series—Vidar being the exponent of the experience of non-duality achievable through living thinking.
Living fully in our time, one becomes acutely conscious of one’s difference or uniqueness. This is a painful but important process. We recognize that in the development of individualism, which is the starting point of self-knowledge, an anti-social force becomes active, a force that seeks to divide every social unit: from marriages, to families, to social clubs or clans, to larger communities, cities, states and nations—indeed the world itself. In all this painful division, in which, often, happiness is seen as only possible when one is alone—with one’s clan if one has a clan, on an island (figurative or actual), in the “wilderness” far away from people—what we must see is that each individual who goes through this process is destined to become a social force, a vital, integral part of a community, once he or she has transformed the lower personality by developing what Rudolf Steiner called “ethical individualism.”
In this process, if one attends adequately to it, a uniquely gifted and talented personality emerges—a personality like no other, with a particular wisdom and warmth that becomes an integral part of a community of other personalities. We often use “personality” to refer to the lower person, but Steiner often uses the term in the higher sense, which we will understand in connection to the Spirits of Personality, those hierarchical beings who work with us as we begin to connect to our “spirit self.” Michael is a Spirit of Personality, who bestows “the true Self of the human being.” The unique, durable, iron-like, higher personality that emerges under the hammer blows of fate, in the fire of spirit, and shapes the soul on the lonely anvil of unique earthly (karmic) circumstance is the building stone of the social, spiritual edifice of the next epoch. It is this process and result that assures the sixth epoch community will be incredibly diverse; it will consist of highly individualistic people who realize that their individualistic spiritual brothers and sisters are indispensable—they are each a precious repository of living wisdom that is essential for the life of the community. They realize that the community could not exist without countless other “ethical individuals.”
The task of Vidar is intimately connected to the process of developing ethical individualism, which is a product of “spirit self.” As the intimate companion of Christ, and new guardian of the youthful forces of the Nathan Soul, Vidar helps human beings to rejuvenate rigid, old soul-forces of thought, feeling and will to accomplish the imperatives of our time—to protect the stream of spiritual evolution from being completely dammed up by the counter-forces of Lucifer and Ahriman.
This higher personality must develop in our time in order to accomplish the task of Anthroposophy: “Our task in spiritual science is ... to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth epoch of culture,” says Steiner. The connection to the Spirits of Personality may be understood as the hierarchical vehicle for the first in-streaming of spirit self, of Manas, which consists of transformed and purified astral forces. In Rudolf Steiner’s lecture, Preparing for the Sixth Epoch, he unveils three foundational principles of the culture of the sixth epoch to understand what we are aiming for in our next stage of evolution—pointing to what will be our experience as members of the more developed portion of humanity at that time some 1500-2000 years from now.
An evolved person in the sixth epoch will feel another person’s inner life as if it were their own, for instance. Such a person will feel not only the outer pain and joy of others, he or she will feel the very soul of the other. It will be possible to know each other much more deeply than is now possible. Feeling the soul of the other will fill one’s consciousness with immense gratitude for the grandeur of each human being who comes willingly to suffer many incarnations on earth, who brings, through the alchemy of many trials, “precious gems and refined silver and gold” as their contribution to the building of the temple of humanity. Every individual in this community will be so conscious of his or her spiritual connection to the world that we (and it will be us) will each have our own spiritual science, our own “language of spirit,” not based on any outer authorities, teachers or teachings, but based on our own experience. We will put behind us faith in texts and teachers, while leading us forward will be first-hand knowledge of the spiritual world. And finally, what Steiner calls a “pneumatology” will become consensual reality for the developed portion of humanity: a new spiritual-natural-scientific perspective that integrates all that can be known of the material world with its spiritual counterpart, and will look upon the purely materialistic science of today as “antiquated superstition.”
It is precisely in our time (approaching the middle of the current 5th epoch) that a microcosm of the future culture of Philadelphia must develop with the help of the Archangel Vidar. This becomes clear in light of the fact that an opposing culture, an Ahrimanic/Luciferic culture, is confronting humanity on the world stage. A highly developed “scientific” materialism, aided by a vast web of technology and concentration of the world’s wealth, has arisen with unprecedented power. In the Nordic mystery wisdom found in the Edda, this dual power that seeks to devour humanity is pictured as Fenris, a giant wolf “whose lower jaw rests on the Earth and whose upper jaw reaches heaven.” At Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, when the light of Divine wisdom has nearly vanished for humanity, Fenris will devour the great benevolent god of the North lands, Vidar’s father Odin. Vidar will then avenge his father’s death, placing his foot on the wolf’s lower jaw and tearing the upper jaw from the lower. This corresponds to “unveiling the mystery of evil,” one of the primary goals of our current 5th cultural epoch, after which a new culture may develop, freed (relatively) from evil influence for a time. This gesture of Vidar, ripping the jaws apart, indicates an intimate knowledge of the destructive, divergent forces of Lucifer and Ahriman, the power which is wielded in their clandestine working-together in the world. When these adversarial forces have been exposed, it will be possible to overcome them—by taking a middle path between the two. In the Western world, “the wolf” is called “the beast” (a Biblical term). Of this beast Rudolf Steiner says: “Before the Christ can be properly understood by people humanity must have passed through the encounter with the Beast...Through the experience of evil it will be possible for the Christ to appear again.”
This scenario, in which the Fenris Wolf is seeking to enslave and thereby devour humanity, is the result of millennia of preparation in the development of what Rudolf Steiner has called, “the ancient priestly wisdom.” This “priestly wisdom,” which has morphed through many stages—largely through secret brotherhoods—has finally become a technocracy, merging purely materialistic science with modern technology. A technocratic/economic elite forms the lower jaw of the Fenris Wolf and a pseudo-spiritual Jesuitic/Fundamentalist sector comprises the upper jaw. These groups have perennially sought, using Rudolf Steiner’s words, “[to] erect […] a dam to hold back the whole stream,” of developing humanity. Behind current events the same occult brotherhoods are working, seeking their own agrandizement through the suppression of human freedom on a global level, their intentions thinly disguised with modest and feigned beneficence but poised and ready to fulfill the ultimate will of an incarnated Ahriman.
To sum up, we see in the world of spirit, behind the period of human development that leads from the 5th to the 6th cultural epochs, the Archangel Michael who has risen to the rank of Time Spirit (Archai) in our time, and the Archangel Vidar, “who has the inner configuration to ascend to the rank of an Archai.” Vidar has been raised from being the folk spirit of the Nordic countries, to being the inspirer, along with Michael, of the New Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Rosicrucianism, and its further development in what has been called Romanticism and Transcendentalism, out of which Anthroposophy draws much of its inspiration. While Michael has played a decisive role as Regent of the Cosmic Intelligence, Rudolf Steiner described Vidar’s role as the revealer of “the central nerve and vital essence of all Anthroposophy.” For the evolution of humanity from the past 4th epoch of intellectual soul development, to the current 5th epoch of individualism (consciousness soul) we owe a debt of gratitude to the achievements of Archangel Michael. For the evolution from individualism to the coming sixth epoch social culture, in which the development of the spirit self will become the key, we will see Archangel Vidar’s contribution to the guidance of humanity. Without the help of these two Archangelic guides the essential spiritual development needed would not be possible for humanity. Moving into the sixth epoch will require that we connect consciously with the higher spiritual hierarchies and to Christ in the etheric realm, to which Michael and Vidar are a bridge.