The Mystery of the 7 Seals

[DjM]

This post serves to introduce the reader to the Christian Mysteries.  Revelation is, perhaps, the most misunderstood of all.  It has been the MATERIALIZATION of this great SPIRITUAL work that is, indeed, the culprit.  Revelation is about the Christian initiation.  Only now, beginning in this epoch will these great truths begin to be revealed...


The Apocalypse of John – The Seven seals

Step by step, after the great War, will issue and reveal itself all that is now being hidden in the soul.  Let us imagine the beginning of the great War; the soul that has heard the call which from age to age the Christ-principle has uttered, will live on into all that is indicated in the messages to the Churches.  Through 7 ages has been laid into it what these ages can give.  Let us imagine how the soul waits; how it waits on.  It is sealed 7 times.  Each cultural age has added its seal.  Within you is sealed what the Indians wrote in your soul; within you is also imprinted what the Persians, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans have written in your soul, and what our own cultural age inscribes in it.  The seals will be unloosed; that it, the things written there will be outwardly revealed after the great War of All against All.  And the principle, the power, which brings it about that the true fruits of our cultural ages shall be made manifest in the countenance, is to be found in Christ Jesus.  7 seals of a book must be opened.  What is this book?  Where is it?

What is a book according to the Bible?  The word "book" occurs in the Bible only seldom.  This must not be overlooked.  If you search the Old Testament, you will find the word in Genesis (V, 1): This is the book of the generations of Adam; In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.  Male and female created he them, and so on...  You may then open the Bible where you will, you will only find the word "book" again in the first Gospel (Mathew; I, 1): This is the book of the generation of Christ Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham.  Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and so on...  Generations are enumerated; something that flows through a long series is enumerated.  And again the expression "book" appears here in the Apocalypse of John.  It appears where it is said that the Lamb alone is worthy to open the book with the 7 seals.  The expression "book" always has the same significance; it is never used otherwise.  We only need to understand the records literally.  A book in our present sense is not intended.  An expression such as the "Doomsday Book" has far more closely retained the old meaning of the word.  The word book is used where something is entered consecutively, where one thing follows another, where a possession is registered so that it may be handed down from generation to generation.  So here we have such a record whereby a foundation is made for something that is to continue on into the future.  In the Old Testament, the word "book" signifies a document in which are recorded the generations transmitted through the blood.  It is there used in no other sense than that the generations are recorded.  It is used afterwards in the first Gospel in the same way for the recording of the lineage.  Hence what follows consecutively in time is written in a "book."

The book of life which is now being compiled in mankind, in which from age to age is being written in the ego of man what each age offers, this book which is written in the soul of man and which will be unsealed after the great War of All against All, is here meant in the Apocalypse.  In this book will be the entries made by the various cultural ages.  Just as through the generations the entries were made in the genealogical tables of the old books, so it is here, only that in this case what is written down is man's spiritual achievements.  And since he acquires through intellectually what is possible to acquire in our age, the gradual process of this development will be represented imaginatively by the symbol, which corresponds with this quality.  By having passed through the Indian age in a frame of mind in which he turned away from the physical world and directed his gaze towards the spiritual, man will, in the first age after the War of All against All, gain the victory over the things of sense.  He will be the victor by acquiring what was written in his soul in the first age.  Further what emerged in the 2nd age, the conquest of matter by the ancient Persians, will appear in the 2nd after the War of All against All: the sword that here signifies the instrument for the overcoming of the external world.  What man acquired in the Babylonian-Egyptian age, when he learned how to measure everything correctly, is seen in the 3rd age after the great War as that which is represented by the scales.  And the 4th age shows us something most important, namely what man acquired in the 4th age of our epoch through Christ Jesus and his appearance on earth: the spiritual life, the immortality of the ego.  For this 4th age it must be shown that everything unfit for immortality, everything doomed to die, falls away.

Thus everything that has been prepared throughout the ages of this epoch comes out consecutively in the next, and it appears because it is indicated by the symbol, which corresponds to intelligence.  If we read about the opening of the first four seals in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse of John, we shall see that what is revealed expresses stage after stage in a mighty symbolism what will in the future be revealed: And I saw, and behold a white horse...(this indicates that the spiritual intelligence comes forth).  And he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given to him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.  And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the beast say, "Come and see."  And there went out another horse that was red.  And to him that sat theron was given power to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another...(that that might be destroyed which is not worthy to take part in the ascent of mankind).  And to him was given a great sword.  And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, "Come and see."  And I beheld, and lo, a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.  And I heard a voice in the midst of the fourth beast say, "A measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley for a penny."  (Measure and penny to indicate what mankind had learned in the third age; the fruits are carried over and unsealed.)  And in the fourth age Christ came to conquer death, and the revelation of this achievement is seen: And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, "Come and see."  And I looked and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.  "Behold a pale horse"- this all falls away into the race of evil, but whatever heard the call and overcame death, partakes in spiritual life.  Those who have understood the "I AM" and his call are those who have overcome death.  They have spiritualized intelligence.  And now, the horse can no longer symbolize what they have become.  A new symbol must appear for those who have understood how to follow the call of him who has the 7 spirits of God and the 7 stars.  They now appear under the symbol of those who are clothed in white raiment, who have put on the robes of the immortal, eternal, spiritual life.

We are further told how all that appears which goes upward to good and downward to evil.  This is clearly expressed: And when he had opened the 5th seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"  And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until there came to them their fellow-servants and their brethren, who should be killed as they were, - that is will be killed as to the external form and live again in the spiritual.  How is this expressed?

Let us realize what in true anthroposophical life becomes of the external sense-world.  How do we described the 7 stars?  We go back to Saturn and show how the physical human body originated, how it was constructed out of warmth.  We then see how the Sun appeared; we draw a mental picture of this world.  The Sun is for us not merely a physical; it is the bringer of life, which in the future of mankind will appear as the highest form of spiritual life.  The Moon is to us the element, which retards the rapid march of life and slows man down to the necessary pace.  Thus we see the spiritual powers in the Sun and the Moon.  And the knowledge we acquire through Anthroposophy* also appears rightly symbolized in a future age; to our spiritual vision the Sun and Moon appear as the forces, which have constructed man.  Symbolically the external physical sun and the moon disappear, they become like a human being, but in an elementary form: And I beheld when he had opened the 6th seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.  (All this is the symbolical fulfillment of what we are seeking in spiritual life.)

Thus we see that what we are being prepared in this epoch is prophesized in significant pictures for the next epoch.  We now carry invisibly within us the transformation, which we undergo with the Sun and Moon, when the physical changes into the spiritual elements.  When the spiritual vision is directed toward the future, the physical disappears indeed and the symbol of the spiritualizing of mankind appears before us.

*Note: Anthroposophy means "the wisdom of the human being" and unites what is spiritual in the human being with what is spiritual in the universe; what occurs on the physical plane is a reflection of the spiritual plane