Secretive Memory

flowers of summer
flowers of summer

Henceforth be all my aim

to wrap secretive memory around

the New conceived within me,

waking and making strong

powers that to me belong

so that I grow up to become Myself.

Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the Soul, August 11 – 17

Mass of the Immaculate Conception

‘The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways. I existed before he formed any creature. I existed from all eternity, before the earth was created. The abysses were not yet and already I was conceived. The fountains had not yet come out of the earth; the heavy mass of the mountains had not yet been formed; I was begotten before the hills.

He had created neither the earth, nor the rivers, nor strengthened the world on its poles. When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when he confined the abysses within their bounds and prescribed an inviolable law; when he confirmed the air above the earth; when he balanced the waters of the fountains; when he shut up the sea within its limits and imposed a law on the waters, so that they should not pass their bounds; when he laid the foundations of the earth, / was with him and I regulated all things.

Mass of the Immaculate Conception

Tomberg: Apocalypse, Israel and Atlantis

In the sense of the Apocalypse, we can best understand the choosing and the significance of the chosen people, or the undying Israel, by studying the history of humankind with the purpose of discovering the origin of the chosen people. We must go back to a time when civilisation flourished in Atlantis, the continent of West Europe, which was later submerged.

That civilisation was especially distinguished from that of today by the fact that it was based on very different human faculties. Modern civilisation is founded on the human faculty of thinking and the experiences that reach us through the mind, whereas the Atlantean civilisation was based on faculties that would be viewed today as ‘magical’.

The faculties of Atlanteans relied on a far more intimate relationship between humankind and the natural environment than exists in modern times. For Atlanteans, an external natural event was as direct inner experience; similarly, the inner experience of Atlanteans exerted an influence on the outer events of nature.

The will had the power of not only moving a person’s limbs, but it could also effect the forces of nature. The will had the power of not only moving a person’s limbs, but it could also affect the forces of nature. Likewise, the spoken word had a power that today, when speakers lecture or declaim – we can no longer conceive of. It could heal or kill, build or destroy, through the natural force that accompanied it.

Christ and Sophia (The Chosen People, The Nature of the Old Testament) Valentin Tomberg