Christmas Imagination
The Christmas Imagination given by Rudolf Steiner describes how the image of Mary with the Jesus child is formed out of the cosmos out of the co-experience of the course of the year.
In midsummer, the Salt, Mercury and Sulphur processes of the Earth are more intermingled, in deep winter they separate from each other. At the time of St. John, the sulphur process in man is particularly strong. Man becomes inwardly luminous, especially the nervous organisation, and man is seized by the ahrimanic powers, which are closely related to the sulphurising substances. In autumn, the imagination of Michael shines forth, who, with the power that flows from his heart, melts the meteoric swarms into his iron sword, and with these iron powers that pierce the blood, defeats the ahrimanic sulphur dragon.
In winter, the alchemical process of separatio then takes place on a grand scale in nature outside, culminating at the time of the longest night, giving it its specifically Christmas character. At the time of winter, the Earth has breathed in its spiritual most strongly, it connects most with the Earth's depths. The salts of the Earth are permeable to this spiritual, but at first we have to do mainly with those lunar forces which remained in the Earth as a remnant after the moon was dissolved in the Lemurian period. In the saltiness of the Earth, these remnants of the lunar forces have a life-giving effect. They are the actual reproductive forces, which were still virginal and could rule unclouded until the time of the Fall and the associated separation of the sexes, but have since been corrupted by the Luciferic forces. That is why at Christmas we also commemorate the expulsion from paradise. The old, still virginal astral lunar forces were most aptly presented in the image of Isis. The new virginity to be regained meets us in the Christian image of the Virgin Sophia.
Above the saltiness of the Earth spreads the sphere of water, which also includes the winter snow cover, which tends to be spherical, so that the Earth appears like a large "drop of mercury" in space.
„Where there is salt, the spiritual has, so to speak, free space. The spiritual can enter where there is salt. So that through the fact that the Earth consolidates itself in the deep winter time with regard to its salt formation, firstly the elementary beings, which connect themselves with the Earth, have a, let us say pleasant stay within the Earth, but that other spiritual things of the cosmos are also drawn in and can, so to speak, dwell in what is there as a salt crust directly under the surface of the Earth. And in this salt crust, which is directly under the surface of the Earth, the lunar forces become particularly active, the remainder of the lunar forces of which I have often spoken to you in these reflections, which remained after the Moon left the Earth.
These lunar forces are primarily active in the Earth because the Earth contains salt within itself. So that immediately under the surface of the Earth, just below the snow cover, which on the one side strives towards mercury, but towards the bottom passes over into saltiness, we have Earth matter in all of it, salt interspersed with spirituality. The Earth really becomes spiritual in itself in the winter time through its salt content, which is particularly consolidated there.
The water, that is actually the cosmic mercury, takes on the inner tendency to form itself into a spherical shape. This inner tendency to form itself as a sphere then emerges everywhere. And because this happens, the Earth in this deep winter time is enabled not only to solidify in salt and to infuse this solidified salt with spirit, but it is enabled to animate this solidified material, to bring it into life. The Earth as a whole comes to life under its surface in the deep winter time. In the spirit and salt principle, through the mercury principle, the tendency to become alive is everywhere active. During the winter there is a tremendous power of the Earth to unfold life beneath its surface.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 31ff)
In order for life on Earth to develop in a truly Earth-like and not merely moonlike way, something else is necessary. In the seed formation of plants, a combustion process with ash formation is effective. It is this ash that makes living things Earth-like and does not allow them to develop Moon-like.
„But this life would become a lunar life, for the lunar forces, as I have said, are active in it. But because the ashes have fallen from the seeds, because all that I have now described is impregnated with ashes, that which claims this whole formation for the Earth is within the whole.
The plant has striven upwards into the process of sulphurisation; from this process of sulphurisation the ash has fallen down. This is what leads the plant back to the Earth, after it has gone up into the etheric-spiritual realm, I would like to say. So that at the time of deep winter on the surface of the Earth we have the tendency to absorb the spirit, to bring it to life, but to convert the lunar into the earthly. The Moon is forced here by the Earth-ash remains of what has fallen down to unfold the living not in a lunar but in an Earth-like way.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 32)
Life, however, must not remain merely earthly, but must open itself to the cosmic forces. This happens through the effects of the Sun. The air-sphere is filled with the effects of the Sun and the stars. In plant growth, the solar effects overcome the sphere-forming tendency of the Earth and thus prevent it from closing in on itself completely.
„Air is not just oxygen and nitrogen, but air is always radiated by the Sun. That is the reality: air is always that which carries the effects of the sun during the day. So the solar effect is carried by the air. Yes, this solar effect, carried by the air, what does that mean?
It means that what is up there wants to be snatched from the Earth all the time. If what I have just described as salt formation, Mercurial formation and ash formation were to flourish on their own, then there would only be earthly things. But because up there that which wants to leave the Earth is received by the sun-air effect, that which wants to be an Earth effect is transformed into cosmic formation. The Earth is deprived of its power to act solely in the living-spiritual sphere. The Sun asserts its effect in all that shoots upwards. And so, spiritually speaking, one notices that here, a certain distance above the earth (see Plate I), there is actually a special tendency. On the Earth itself everything wants to become spherical (dark red); up here the tendency is constantly at work for the sphere to expand into a plane (reddish). This tendency is of course overcome again, the Earth is made spherical again, but actually that which is up there, that which is spherical, always wants to become flat. What is up there would actually like to take the earth apart, tear it apart, so that everything would be a flat surface standing in the cosmos.
If this could be achieved, the effects of the earth would disappear completely and we would have more of a kind of air up there in which the stars would work. This is expressed very strongly in the human being. What do we, as human beings, get from what is up there as sun-bearing air? We breathe it in, and by breathing it into us, the effect of the sun extends downwards in a certain way, but preferably upwards. With our head we are continually withdrawn from the effects of the Earth. This is what makes it possible for our head to participate in the whole cosmos. Our head actually always wants to go out into this formation of planes. If our head were only occupied by the formation of the Earth, especially in winter, then all our experiences of thinking would be different. Then we would have the feeling that all thoughts want to become round. They do not become round, but have a certain lightness, smoothness, a certain fluidity. That comes from this peculiar appearance of the Sun's effect.
There you have the second tendency, where the solar intervenes in the earthly. It is weakest at the time of deep winter. If we were to go further out, something else would occur. Then we would no longer have to do with the effect of the sun, but with the effect of the stars alone, which in turn has a great influence on our head. As the Sun gives us back to the cosmos, so to speak, the stars then have their profound influence on our head and thereby on our whole human formation.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 32ff)
Similarly, the expectant mother acts as the Moon like the Earth in deep winter, while the growing embryo is subject to the effects of the Sun.
„While the woman, moreover, is generally a human being, the lunar forces, in so far as they are the salt-forming forces in the earth, become strongest in her at the time when she is approaching the development of a new human being. And one can express this in spiritual scientific terms in this way: The woman becomes Moon, just as the Earth as a whole, when it approaches Christmas time, becomes most Moon immediately beneath its surface.
But it is not only that the Earth becomes most moonlike when deep winter prevails, but this mooning of the Earth happens again, happens again in the way in which the woman prepares herself to receive the new man. And it is only through the woman's preparation, through the becoming of the Moon, for the birth of the new man, that the effect of the Sun becomes different, just as in the deep winter time the effect of the Sun is different from that in the height of summer. And what is formed in the woman as a new human being is entirely under the influence of the sun's action.
Because the woman herself so strongly absorbs the effects of the Moon, absorbs the effects of the salt, she is able to absorb the effects of the Sun in her own separate way. In ordinary life the effects of the Sun are absorbed by the human organism through the heart and are distributed throughout the whole organism. At the moment when the woman prepares to bring forth a new human being, the solar effects are concentrated on the formation of this new human being. So that we can say schematically: The woman therefore becomes a Moon so that she can absorb the effects of the Sun. And the new human being that comes into being as an embryo is entirely a solar effect in this sense. He is that which can come into being through the concentration of the effects of the Sun.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 35f)
The unborn child is a solar being and only becomes an earth being after birth, when it has taken its first earthly nourishment in its mother's milk. Rudolf Steiner described this in more detail:
„In order to put the Christmas spirit before our souls, let us put ourselves in the nature of the human being. Christmas expresses the birth of the child Jesus, who is destined to receive the Christ into himself. Let us look at this. If we look at the figure of Mary, we are first of all compelled to portray Mary's head in such a way that it reflects something heavenly in its whole expression, in its whole look. We then have to indicate that this Mary is preparing to receive the Sun into herself, the Child, the Sun, as it shines through the circle of air. And we have, going further down in the figure of Mary, the lunar-earthly.
Think of it, if I were to depict it figuratively, like this: The lunar-earthly, it is that which smoulders beneath the surface of the Earth. If one were to go out into the vastness of the universe, one would see that which appears above, where man radiates out into the universe, like, I would say, a glorified earth-star radiation which the earth sends out into the vast space of the world. The head of Mary must also be radiant, that is, in human expression, so that in the physiognomy, in the whole gesture, we have the expression of the radiant star (see Plate II).
If we then go down to the breast, we must have that which is connected with the respiratory process: the sunlike, the child, forming out of the clouds which have the solar radiation flowing through them in the atmosphere.
And further down we have that which is determined by the lunar-salt-forming, which is expressed externally by bringing the limbs into the dynamism of the earthly and letting them rise out of the salt-forming-moonlike of the Earth. We have the Earth in so far as it is inwardly, if I may say so, moonlike.
We should actually represent it in such a way that we apply a kind of rainbow colour. If one were to look from the universe to the Earth, it would appear in such a way that one could see through the star radiation to the Earth itself, as if the Earth were shimmering inwards in rainbow colours beneath its surface. On top of this then, taken up first of all by the earth's dynamics, by the limbs, by the Earth, by gravity and so on, stands that which can actually only be expressed by the human garment, which is folded in such a way that it follows the Earth's forces. So we would have the garments down there in the sense of the Earth's forces. We would go further up and would have to draw what is now forming in the whole of the earthy-moonlike. One could also draw the moon if one wanted to be symbolic, but this lunar quality is already expressed in the earthly structure.
We then come further up, take in that which comes out of the lunar, see how the clouds are permeated by many human heads that reach down; one of the human heads is condensed into the sun sitting on the arm of Mary, the infant Jesus. And we must complete the whole upwards with the face of Mary expressing the starry radiation in her physiognomy.
If we understand the deep winter time as it represents to us the connection of the cosmos with the human being, with the human being who absorbs what is in the earth in the way of birth forces, then there is no other possibility, again up to the shaping out of the clouds, than to represent the woman endowed with the forces of the earth, downwards with the lunar forces, towards the centre with the solar forces, upwards towards the head with the stellar forces. This image of Mary with the infant Jesus arises for us out of the cosmos itself.
And just as, when we understand the cosmos in autumn and put all the formative forces we have in it into a picture, we necessarily arrive at the artistic interpretation of Michael's quarrel with the dragon, as I depicted it yesterday, so all that we can feel at Christmas time flows into us, of the Virgin Mary with the Child, which in older times, especially in the first centuries of Christianity, artists often had in mind, and whose last echoes in the development of humanity are still preserved in Raphael's Sistine Madonna. This Raphaelian Sistine Madonna is still born out of the great naïve knowledge of nature and spirit of an ancient time. For she is the image of that imagination which the human being must actually have who, with inner vision, immerses himself in the mysteries of the Christmas weaving in such a way that this Christmas weaving becomes a picture for him.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 37ff)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: Das Miterleben des Jahreslaufes in vier kosmischen Imaginationen, GA 229 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-2290-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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