SHE HAS MINGLED HER WINE
SHE HAS KILLED HER BEASTS
and Other Essays:
The ‘Starlight’ Series on the Masters of Wisdom
This collection of essays could have had as a subtitle Towards a New Sophiology. Apart from the last essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of John O’Meara’s book, The Way of Novalis and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. Other well-known individuals are also examined in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.
Downloadable at https://independent.academia.edu/JohnOMeara5
and on Google Books at
"like all worthwhile literary criticism [these essays are] the product of trained and attentive reading. They are also the product of a sincere Sophiological frame of mind...a real and searching encounter with the luminous abyss at the heart of things." {Kent Anhari, Journal of the Centre for Sophiological Studies, Volume V, 2021}
CONTENTS
1.
The Seven Chakras and the Seven I Am’s:
Valentin Tomberg, Rudolf Steiner, and Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg):
A Comparative View
2.
Bridging the Darkness that lies ahead:
Anticipations out of the past of Christian Rosenkreutz
3.
Sophia and the God in the Flood:
The Pistis Sophia and Carl Jung’s Alchemical Studies
4.
Vladimir Solovyov on Sophia and the World Soul
and the Further Relation to Evil
5.
The Riddle of the Sophia:
An Inquiry into Her Many-sided Manifestations
6.
Promise, Accomplishment, and the Encounter with the World:
Some Thoughts on Three Streams
7.
The Master Peter Deunov Among his Pupils
8.
On the Sophia in Her Relation to the Creation, and the Question of Personhood:
Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov
9.
Michelangelo, Rudolf Steiner, and Ita Wegman:
The Grail Link
10.
Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski
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Three issues of Starlight edited by John O’Meara
On the theme of the (Great/Divine) Mother
https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Starlight-2018-Advent-FINAL-97pp.pdf
On the theme of the Grail
https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Starlight-Easter-2019-issue-sm.pdf
On the theme of the Coming of Sophia
https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Starlight-Easter-2020-issue-99p.pdf
______________________
On NOVALIS, AND HIS SUCCESSOR
** See also John O’Meara’s interrelated series of articles on Novalis in the issues of Starlight noted above, respectively
“Novalis on the Enigma of Nature”
“Novalis on Illness and the Eucharistic Embrace”
“Novalis’s Vision of a New History, a New Humanity”
also, including the write-up on Robert Powell that follows,
“A Further Note on the Figure of Novalis’s ‘Brother’ in Christendom or Europe”
(view with link given below)
__________________________________________
On Robert Powell
from The Bereaved Writer (2017)
by John O’Meara
(see the “Bereaved” page above)
“He has claimed that there are, in fact, three great spiritual teachers in our time: Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, as well as the re-incarnated Novalis who Steiner predicted would appear, by way of bolstering the Anthroposophical Movement, towards the end of the twentieth century. Robert Powell professes to be channelling the influences of this Novalis-figure in mediating also the work of Rudolf Steiner and Valentin Tomberg (Powell having become the legal executor of Tomberg’s work). An instance of this threefold association of influence is to be found in the case of the Foundation Stone Meditation, Steiner’s principal bequest to the Anthroposophical Society. Valentin Tomberg gave some of his own most important lectures on the Foundation Stone Meditation, and Robert Powell has extended this line of influence by setting this Meditation to the Sacred Dance of Eurythmy.[1] Novalis’s influence today, according to Powell, is principally in the religious-artistic sphere. Another instance of the threefold line of influence is represented in the “Prayer Sequence” that is meant to be practised every day. This brings meditations given by Steiner and by Tomberg, along with the traditional prayers of the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary,” into an artistic sequence of sacred dance that incorporates direct addresses to the Holy Trinosophia [about which more below] alongside those to the traditional Trinity (as, e.g., in the “Glory Be”). [2] This Prayer Sequence, for anyone who has truly experienced it in the context of the many diverse activities of the Sophia Community generally, constitutes one of the most significant meditational practices of our time.” (75)
[1] Eurythmy : a spiritual dance practice based on Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science and created by him under the direct inspiration of Christian Rosenkreutz.
[2] All the stated material can be ordered on-line through the Sophia Foundation of North America website.
Also from the author:
Powell’s contributions to our understanding of the celebration of the Eucharist and Christian liturgy generally, with their profoundly informed interweaving of exoteric and esoteric elements, constitute what may be seen as the middle sphere of his life’s work; they bear the imprint, as suggested in the extract above, of the inspiration of the Novalis-Individuality in our time. In this middle sphere, the sphere of ‘The Sophia Grail Circle,’ belongs also Powell’s mediation of those forms of eurythmic practice that are designed to help 'Cultivate Inner Radiance’ and to build up the ‘Body of Immortality’—see the select Bibliography below. Still other dimensions of Powell’s prodigious work bear the imprint of Novalis’s inspiration: in an upper sphere, in the form of the ‘Star-Wisdom’ he has elaborated, with its link back to what Novalis intimates about an experience in this sphere in his Hymns to the Night, as cited by Powell in his comprehensive book on the Novalis-Individuality, Elijah Come Again, 185: “The star world now is flowing,/As living, golden wine,/Its joys on us bestowing, /Ourselves as stars will shine”; also in the lower sphere, in the form of ‘The Shambhala Path,’ most recently elaborated, which has appeared as a fulfilment of the direction Novalis was taking in the last part of his life: “the mystery that led Novalis into the depths of the Earth as a mining inspector in the region of Thuringia,” (Elijah Come Again, 192). On this Path, see https://sophiafoundation.org/resources/ and https://sophiafoundation.org/product/the-shambhala-path/
* Among many other publications by Robert Powell, the reader may wish to begin by consulting the following as foundational resources, wherein we continue to find the influence of Novalis’s ‘Brother,’ in our own time—as presented in the “Note on Novalis’s ‘Brother’ ” given above:
“He has made a new veil for the Holy Virgin …whose folds are the letters of her sweet Annunciation, the infinite play of the folds … a music of numbers… her singing … the ceremonial call to a new foundation gathering…” (Novalis, from Christendom, or Europe)
1) The Most Holy Trinosophia and the New Revelations of the Divine Feminine (2000) (containing Powell’s foundational presentation on the Sophia in her three aspects as the Heavenly Sophia, the Divine Mother, and the Holy Soul, and on the pivotal role in Her new ascension in our time of the three teachers, Steiner, Tomberg, and the re-incarnated Novalis. The further link between the Sophia and the Holy Virgin Mary is also elaborated in this book.) See also, representatively, Powell’s article on “Stages of the Incarnation of Sophia Leading to the Rose of the World,” at https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Starlight-Easter-2020-issue-99p.pdf
2) The Prayer Sequence in Sacred Dance: https://sophiafoundation.org/product/prayer-sequence-in-sacred-dance/ (cf. the extract “On Robert Powell” above. This ‘Prayer Sequence’ has since been much elaborated by Robert Powell, and as such can be found enacted by him in (the original Part One, now Part Two, of) ‘The Shambhala Path’ more recently developed, as indicated above).
3) Cultivating Inner Radiance and the Body of Immortality: An Awakening of the Soul through Modern Etheric Movement (2012) (an ‘encyclopedia’ of spiritual-scientific/religious-artistic practice for our time that carries forward the work on a ‘science of the whole’ on which Novalis himself embarked, as touched on in my ‘Note’ above and more fully elaborated in my book on Novalis (p.94ff). A good number of the practices included in Powell’s ‘encyclopedia’ have been expanded upon and further deepened in ‘The Shambhala Path’).
* To all this, should be added, at some more advanced point, a full viewing and experience of Powell’s presentation of ‘The Shambhala Path,’ as the latest and the climactic development of a Novalis-inspired activity in our time. (See the link above.)
N.B. It is at once the paradox and the strength of Novalis’s world-vision that his philosophically determined “science of the whole” (see my “Note” above) should, in the end, open up an experience of the mysteries for everyone. One way of recognizing the exoteric stream in Christian spiritual practice is precisely in the concept of accessibility for all (along the lines of Novalis’s notion of “the general Christian communion,” as expressed in Christendom, or Europe). Forms of practice are offered in which everyone of good will may immediately participate. In this way the door is opened for all to enter the mysteries. Then, more and more what we find within are the esoteric grounds of the practice—as mediated in this case by Robert Powell under the direct guidance of Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, and the Novalis-Individuality in her incarnation at this time. For as Powell puts it, (in The Most Holy Trinosophia and the New Revelations of the Divine Feminine, Great Barrington, Mass.: Anthroposophic Press, 2020 130): “In reality, there is only one Christianity, embracing all those who believe in and love Jesus Christ, extending from the simplest pious peasant to the spiritual masters encircling the Christ [i.e., the Bodhisttvas].” In all this the crucial point is the commitment, on every hand, to “an increasing consciousness of the Christian mysteries [my emphasis]” (Powell, 130).
[For a full Bibliography by Robert Powell, see https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Robert-Powell-Publication-List-2014.pdf ]
John O’Meara (2008)
This volume brings together some of the most significant mantras bequeathed to us by Rudolf Steiner, mantras that, when set together in the form presented here, invoke a comprehensive whole relating far-reaching developments in our Cosmos to our experience of Nature's yearly cycle as well as the daily cycle of Sleep and Waking.
With the appearance of this volume, those familiar with the Anthroposophical world-view will find fresh opportunity to re-think the great connections that Rudolf Steiner so faithfully opened to our imaginations.
In the meantime, a specific Meditation Course is proposed based on these mantras that offers to open up the spheres of the Cosmos, Nature, and the Daily cycle to a comprehensive and systematic practice.
The form this volume takes builds on the author's personal experience based on years of living with the mantras and how these came together for him.
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