The Two Apocalyptic Beasts and the Mystery of the Wound

The Two Apocalyptic Beasts and the Mystery of the Wound

Überlingen, 3 November 2022

THE TIME IS AT HAND!

Ahrimanic and Michaelic Immortality and the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael

Now, if you imagine yourself listening to this lecture to the Priests

on 20 September, 1924, you must be deeply shocked to hear that the Beast

is going to rise up in nine short years, in 1933, after it was said

in Nuremberg 1908 that it will appear in the astral world after the end of

the physical evolution of the earth! Here real spiritual science

begins for those ‘who have eyes to see and ears to hear’ the

signs of the time. But we must become truly awake and alert,

to experience and decipher the apocalyptic mysteries of the

present age of Michael…

From Lecture 3: The Two Apocalyptic Beasts and the Mystery of the Wound

If you recall, we described the new challenge of evil from

different points of view, in the books, The Spiritual Event of

the Twentieth Century, and The Twilight and Resurrection of

Humanity, because this is the essence of the present Michaelic

apocalypse, and of the evolution of the earth until its end and

beyond.

In the recent lectures in Sweden, that some of you

could attend in Zoom, I read from Rudolf Steiner’s last

testamentary words spoken to the priests of the Christian

Community, about the expected rising of the two apocalyp-

tic Beasts in the course of the twentieth century:

The Beast will be let out. This means something for human evolu-

tion. Thus, very strong realities are pointed out, great, significant

points in the evolution of mankind and the earth. In the year 1933,

my dear friends, there is the possibility that the earth will perish

with everything that lives on it…

The rise of the Beast did take place, in all its destructive power, through humanity.

and the possibility of the moral destruction of humanity must still be faced in all

its seriousness.

Now the further important indication is that the Beast will

rise up before the etheric Christ will be perceived by humanity

in the right way:

One must speak in the sense of the Apocalypse of John: Before

humanity can grasp the etheric Christ in the right way, mankind

must first meet and cope with the Beast who will rise up in 1933.

That is spoken from the point of view of the Apocalypse.

Since I have been investigating this mystery for almost

50 years, I would like to present it to you. Can you make some

reasonable, logical and spiritual sense of this sentence that we

just read? Hardly! Let us try, nevertheless, to shed some light

on this mystery, because we are approaching its centennial in

2033, and we must demonstrate today how we are preparing

the ground of our hearts for this coming momentous centenary.

The first problem is that the Beast will rise up before the

etheric Christ will be perceived by human beings in the

right way, and the second is that humanity must first be fer-

tig (must consciously face and cope) with the Beast, before

it can perceive the Christ in the right way. Steiner says that

before the etheric Christ can be grasped by people in the

right way, mankind must first cope with the encounter of

the Beast that will rise up. We have to stop here and con-

template this sentence more slowly and thoroughly. Before

the Christ appears, before human beings can grasp, per-

ceive, and see the Christ in the right way, they have to first

finish with, deal with, or cope with the meeting with the

Beast. But fertig (to cope) here means: to be able to confront

consciously, to recognize, the Beast. He says that we must

cope with the encounter of the Beast that will arise. I have

to ask you, therefore, what does it really mean that human-

ity must deal with the Beast as the precondition to perceive

the Christ in the right way?

We face here two interrelated major problems: first, that

it should happen before the etheric Christ is grasped in the

right way. In other places Rudolf Steiner said more generally

that the etheric appearance of the Christ will begin in the

1930s and 40s:

The years 1933, 1935 and 1937 will be especially significant. Facul-

ties that now are quite unusual for human beings will then mani-

fest themselves as natural abilities. At this time great changes will

take place, and Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything

will be transformed for the souls who are sojourning on Earth

and also for those who are no longer within the physical body.

Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering entirely new

faculties. Everything is changing, but the most significant event

of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in the soul faculties

of man.

Now in September 1924 he says that it will start in 1933, and

that before it begins, the Beast must be confronted consciously.

Therefore, the meaning of the term ‘before’ cannot refer sim-

ply to the difference of physical time because the rise of the

Beast and the reappearance of the Christ take place almost

instantaneously. It must have a deeper, qualitative spiritual

meaning. The second question is even more confounding,

because what can it mean to have to cope with the Beast con-

sciously? How do you confront the Beast consciously at all?

And only after you have confronted the Beast consciously,

will you be able to meet the Christ in the right way. In the

lecture cycle in June 1908 in Nuremberg about the Book of

Revelation, these mighty events are said to take place at the

end of the evolution of the earth. But now Rudolf Steiner says

it is going to happen in nine years!

As we showed recently in Sweden, in this lecture cycle on

the Apocalypse in 1908, Rudolf Steiner presented the basic

knowledge required for an occult interpretation of the Book

of Revelation. Now, he was speaking in September 1924, and

he could assume that the priests, who asked him to speak

to them about it, are acquainted with the Nuremberg cycle.

You may imagine their surprise when he brought the whole

weight of these apocalyptic events to bear on the immediate

future and the end of the twentieth century.

Let us briefly say something about the nature and mis-

sion of the two Beasts, as described in 1908. The first Beast

will appear when the earth has completed its physical evo-

lution and enters the astral world, as each person does after

physical death. And what does the Beast reveal? It reveals

the unredeemed being of humanity, who rejected the Christ

impulse and remained bereft of any connection to the Christ

impulse. Think about it, that you would pass through all

your incarnations on the earth and have actively and consis-

tently rejected all the many opportunities to take in the Christ

impulse. Collectively, what humanity will have become

appears in the Imagination of the first Beast: our collective

unredeemed human nature at the end of the evolution of the

earth, after the earth has dropped its physical and etheric

bodies and has become purely spiritual, that is, first as an

astral being in the astral world. Then this gruesome Imag-

ination will appear, expressing all the unredeemed lower

forces of human nature, developed in the whole evolution

of the earth. You can also say that this being is an expres-

sion of the unredeemed lower self, the un-Christed Lesser

Guardian of humanity.

Rudolf Steiner points out that each person experiences this

after he lays aside his physical and etheric bodies after death

and begins the processes of purification in Kamaloka in the

astral world. Then we experience our yet unredeemed lower

self, with all the lower forces it contains. This is the first Beast

with the seven heads and ten horns, the precise occult inter-

pretation of which Rudolf Steiner offered in Nuremberg, but

we cannot go into it now in greater detail.

Only one element from the complex nature of the Beast

must be singled out, because it is important for our present

subject. This riddle is indicated when the Book of Reve-

lation says that one of the heads of the Beast appears to

be mortally wounded and miraculously healed. And this

healed wound gives the second Beast its greatest suggestive

power. This is said in the language of Chapter 13 of the

Book of Revelation.

I gave a first interpretation of this mystery in the second

chapter of my book, The Event in History, Science, Philosophy

and Art, ‘The event in history’. I briefly described one aspect

of the meaning of the wound and its miraculous healing, and

why it gives the second Beast such great power over human-

ity to realize its aims, working together with the first Beast.

So, this is the first Beast that rises from the sea, the astral

world, after the final spiritualization of the earth. Now, if you

imagine yourself listening to this new lecture on 20 Septem-

ber, 1924, you must be deeply shocked to hear that the Beast

is going to rise up in nine short years, in 1933, after it was said

in 1908 that it will appear in the astral world after the end of

the physical evolution of the earth! Here real spiritual science

begins for those ‘who have eyes to see and ears to hear’ the

signs of the time. But we must become truly awake and alert,

to experience and decipher the apocalyptic mysteries of the

present age of Michael…