The Appearance of the Etheric Christ

A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this will depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young — already preparation is being made for this — that some individual here or there has certain experiences. 

If he has sharpened his vision through having assimilated Anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise that what he saw was a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. 

Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to men.

However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people — even in considerable numbers — are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there, will confer with them, will make His voice heard in such gatherings. These times are approaching, and the positive, constructive element now described will take real effect in the evolution of mankind."

-Rudolf Steiner

The Etherisation of the Blood


Rudolf Steiner explained that the Etheric Christ has the only etheric body that can appear as a physical body. Moreover, He can appear simultaneously to 10, 100, 1000 people all around the globe. “[Christ has] the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, even a hundred, a thousand places at the same time.”

Great Ideals

Napier Waller

If a man strives for sublimely great ideals, it is because they are the content of his own being, and their realization will bring him a joy compared to which the pleasure that a limited outlook gets from the gratification of commonplace desires is a mere triviality. Idealists revel, spiritually, in the translation of their ideals into reality.

Anyone who would eradicate the pleasure brought by the fulfillment of human desires will first have to make man a slave who acts not because he wants to but only because he must. For the achievement of what one wanted to do gives pleasure. 

What we call good is not what a man must do but what he will want to do if he develops the true nature of man to the full. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must first drive out of man all that man himself wants to do, and then, from outside, prescribe the content he is to give to his will.

Man values the fulfillment of a desire because the desire springs from his own being. What is achieved has its value because it has been wanted. If we deny any value to what man himself wants, then aims that do have value will have to be found in something that man does not want.

- Rudolf Steiner – GA 4

Magnetic Healing

There are people who are, by nature, magnetic healers — certainly there are. But the important thing is this, that the faculty is, as a rule, of limited duration. The natural magnetic healers have this magnetism, as it is called. When they begin to apply it, it may work very well; after a time it begins to wane, and later on it often happens that magnetic healers, after this faculty has died down in them, go on acting as if they still had it, and then charlatanism begins.

This is the precarious element when magnetic healing becomes a profession. This kind of healing really cannot be made into a profession. That is what must be said about it. The process of magnetic healing — when a person has the faculty for it — is only unconditionally effective when it is carried out with genuine compassion for the patient, a compassion that goes right down into one's organism. If you practice magnetic healing with a real love for the patient, then it cannot be done as a profession. If real love exists it will always be able to lead to something good, if no trouble arises from another side. But it can only be done on occasions, when karma leads us to a person whom we are able, out of love, to help; then the outer sign may be a laying on of the hand, or a stroking and then what is happening is that the astral body is passing on its forces to the etheric body which then works upon the ether body of the other person.

Something must still be said from another aspect about what goes on here. The healing always proceeds from the astral body, either from the patient's own astral body or from the astral body of the magnetizer. The reverse is the case in therapy where medicaments are used. When you give medicaments you introduce into the physical body substances which then work partly upon the inner forces and partly upon the rhythm of the physical body in such a way that the etheric body of the patient is influenced. The healing always proceeds from the etheric body. If you influence the etheric body from the astral body — which is a psychical healing — this lies in the realm of magnetic healing and is somewhat problematic, having a humanitarian, social element in it, something to do with the relations of one human being to another.

Rational therapy must proceed from intervention by means of medicaments which proceed from the physical body and pass into to the etheric body. Always, however, the healing proceeds from the etheric body. It is a complete illusion that the physical body, when it has become ill, can itself bring about any healing. The physical body has, precisely, the basis of illness within it, and the cause of healing must always come from the etheric body.

-Rudolf Steiner  

“Suffered under Pontius Pilate”

Antonio Ciseri

The saga of the Trojan War is a representation of the spread of Hellenism; it is the mythical presentation of an esoteric truth: the efflorescence of the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race, and the replacement of the priestly rulership, now in its last stage, by the purely worldly rulership.

That is very subtly indicated at the beginning of the Trojan saga. You probably know that matter is always represented by water. I need only call attention to the familiar Nicene Creed, which says “suffered under Pontius Pilate”.

As the esotericist knows, this is an incorrect rendering. What it really says is “suffered in pontoi pilatoi”, which means merely “in compressed water” and signifies “descended in order to suffer in matter.” This sentence in the Creed which is said all over Christendom has come about through the word “pontoi” having become “Pontius.” 

When Thales states that everything has originated from water, he is referring to the comprehensive physical matter of which alone we can treat when we would speak of physical things. He is using the term ‘water’ for physical matter. Physical matter is to be the all-important thing for those who now take over guidance. The predominance of physical matter then led to there being worldly kings. 

Previously there had only been kings who stood in relationship with the Divine. Peleus is the king who is to rule on the physical plane, deriving his strength from the physical plane. This is represented by his marriage with the goddess Thetis — the marriage of the leader of mankind with the matter of the physical plane, with the goddess of water, the goddess of the sea.

And from this union sprang Achilles. He is the first initiate of this kind. Hence he is invulnerable except in the heel. All those who were initiated in the fourth sub-race were vulnerable in some spot. It is only in the fifth sub-race that there will be initiates so advanced as not to be vulnerable anywhere. Achilles is plunged into the Styx. That means to be dead to the earthly and withdrawn to a higher plane of vision.

-Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 28, 1904:

Greek and Germanic Mythology in the Light of Esotericism, Lecture 4

Gratifications in Life

Jules Chéret

Someone who takes great pleasure in nightly visits to the girlie shows or enjoys downing his eight glasses of beer, may encounter people who take joy in something of a higher level and remark how they punish themselves. What he does not realise is that their true punishment would be to sit with him in the music hall. Whoever enjoys the girlie shows and such belongs there, and it would be absurd to deprive him of the enjoyment. It is healthy only to take away his taste for it.

One should work to ennoble one’s pleasures, one’s gratifications in life. It is not so that anthroposophists come together because they suffer when talking about higher worlds, but rather because it is their heart’s deepest enjoyment. It would be the most terrible deprivation for them to sit down and play poker. They are completely full of the joy of life in every fiber of their beings.

- Rudolf Steiner, Munich, 5th December 1907