Universe Spiral N° 86

 

The editorial

Michael's etheric imprint

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Archangel Michael's fight against the Dragon is taken as a model of the inner fight that everyone must carry out against themselves. Combat which illustrates the responsibility of man vis-à-vis the Cosmos to grasp the active force of the spirit.

 

As Rudolf Steiner described it in his first Viennese lecture in 1923, “Michael, the cosmic being, stands behind man. In man lives an etheric imprint of Michael; it is she who leads in him, the real fight of the higher powers against the lower forces embodied by the Dragon. It is the guarantor of the future freedom that man will be able to conquer little by little. Because it is not Michaël himself who leads the fight, but the fervent commitment of the man, and the image of Michaël that this commitment arouses. In the cosmic Michael there continues to live the being to whom man can look up, the one who engaged in the original cosmic combat against the Dragon”.

The time when Michael precipitated the Dragon on our planet is prior to the appearance of man on Earth, which will be followed by the progressive internalization of Michael's fight with the Dragon. Towards the end of the XIXth siècle, this image will be sufficiently “condensed” in man so that he can become aware of it, internally, and apprehend the Vanquisher of the Dragon in the intimacy of his soul. .

In the past, the Invisible Dragon exercised its power in impulses, instincts and desires. For ordinary consciousness, it remained imperceptible, but very present in animal nature, and alive in everything that wants to make man fall. Michaël was then intervening himself in human nature, so that human beings would not fall too low...

But today the image of Michael has become so strong that it now depends on the will of man himself to rise to the radiant form of the archangel, appearing to him in a vision of the soul . Confronted with the descending force of the Dragon, the human being then sees in spirit, the radiant archangel, whose cosmic mission has always been to defeat the Dragon.

 

The principle of metamorphosis in its relationship with evolution is masterfully illustrated by the columns of the Goetheanum in Dornach (Switzerland), the monumental architectural work of the founder of Anthroposophy. The Grand stained glass window, radiating at dusk with its purple-red light, acts like a magnet on all beings in search of Truth. It is the awakening of the awareness of the Self and of the forces manifested by the Archangel of Love and Fire. It is the impetus allowing man to raise himself in consciousness to the level of the Divine.

We find in Michaelic thought, the spiritual Intelligence of man and of the world, in particular in its principle of evolution which does not exist only in the art of beauty, but in the salutary combat between the beautiful and the ugly. , between the Light and the darkness which reveal it, in a transmutation, by the ternary body-soul-spirit, of duality into Unity.

A new culture of Mysteries is underway. The Organization of the heart - that is to say of the rhythmic pole - must be penetrated with the Christ energy to create the balance between the cerebral and metabolic poles. For the earthly and cosmic conditions of the Michaelic impulse manifest through the interiority of the heart.

As Steiner wrote, “I focus my heart on this form of light and let the Light radiate through my heart. Then filled with light and heat, my heart will carry the Force of Michaël. Free in his initiative, and strong in this alliance, man is capable of defeating the Dragon in his lower being”.

In truth, it is not only on Earth that the work is called to manifest. However, man remains incapable of explaining earthly events to himself as long as he cannot see there the images taking place in the supersensible World, and which are their ultimate Cause.

 

Marc J. PANTALACCI

(All rights reserved © Univers-Spirale N°86 – WINTER 2016)