Ascension to Pentecost   By Willi Sucher Undated and unrevised lecture   Yesterday we spoke of the cosmic events between Easter and Ascension, the peculiar relation of the Sun and Venus, and the inner significance connecting these heavenly movements with the ever deepening and expanding Christ Impulse. We have spoken of the “many mansions” to which Christ went, in His own Words, “to prepare a place for you.” Today we reach Mercury, that planetary sphere that lies nearest the Sun, and which is often obscured by it. From Ascension Day, we find this planet coming into the Moon sphere in the same manner as Venus. At first, we always find it cupped within the waxing Moon, immediately after Ascension. But it is essential that we examine the orbit of this planet more in perspective. As the Moon circles around the Earth, so does Mercury circle around the Sun, and it has the greater influence upon the Earth the closer it is to Earth, when it lies between the Earth and the Sun; whereas, when it is behind the Sun, it gathers up cosmic essences. Turing the forty days up to Ascension, it was in a position behind the Sun, and in the constellation of Bull. We have likened the planets to chalk, with which cosmic deeds are traced by the Spirits and Heavenly Beings of the constellations that lie behind them. Tonight we will first investigate the meaning of the Mercury sphere, as we did both the Moon and Venus. Our evolution on Mercury is connected with the will, and there we are endowed with a will as if by a flame entering our body, as it then was, though still unlike our present body. Another faculty connected with this sphere was that of being able to experience the spiritual worlds for the first time. With Mercury under the constellation of Bull, it comes under the influence of the creative Word. We know how the ancients saw these constellations as great spiritual Beings, and through Bull resounds the mighty primeval Word throughout those days to Ascension. From the spiritual worlds behind the Sun, it emphasized the teaching of Christ to the Apostles below on Earth. However, after the Ascension, Mercury had traveled around to the position that brings it very near to the Earth, where we find it fixed in the constellation of Twins. What is the significance of this particular constellation at that moment in cosmic history? With Bull we have still not evolved from the one, the unity. There may be two horns, but they belong to the same head. However, with Twins individuality is represented, the division of the one into two — the recovery of personality — and eventually into the many. Christ has brought to us our individual self-conscious ego, and the separation has begun. Thus Mercury rests in the constellation of Twins, and yet it approaches another planet until the two are very close together in Gemini/Twins. That other planet is Jupiter, and it is as though the two planets were in a heavenly conversation at such a momentous time as this great Whitsuntide Festival. The division of Twins is represented outwardly by the entering into human consciousness of the “cloven tongues” of fire, as experienced by the disciples at Pentecost. The result with them was “many tongues”. This separation was symbolized by the innumerable languages of many nations, yet all speaking the same creative word and all bound together in one meaning. What of Jupiter? It’s a majestic distant planet, which in our evolution was all compact of light, an enormous blazing Sun. How close does this planet come to the cosmic message of the time, which was then taken up and transformed by the Christ, as He also reappeared through the Pentecostal fire, which first entered humanity in Mercury. When we began this study, we remember when at the first Event of Golgotha how we saw the universe as represented by the Father. We imagine the starry world as the body of the Father, the planets as His organs and the Earth as His Head. However, we realize that a special formation of the body would be demanded to link up our imagination with the human form, as we understood it, and we traced the form as a great embryonic spiral of sorts, from the encircling universe to the Earth. After Golgotha, we studied the significance of the Christ, even to recognizing that the Son had entered into His Father’s inheritance, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” We realize that until then the cosmic spheres, with all the starry constellations, streamed toward the Earth as the head; from the time of Christ and Christ’s entry into the Earth sphere, a great transformation and reversal ensued, and there was a returning spiral from the Earth into the cosmos. The whole emphasis of the great solar system had changed in spiritual significance. With the entry of the great Sun Spirit, the Christ, into the Earth, the inner [portion] of the planet became an embryonic fount of light and warmth, which expands increasingly until one day it will expand into the cosmos. There is scientific confirmation of this expansion of the Earth. We see that the configuration of the Father will have been altered by the transformation of the Sun, and that the heart of the cosmos will center in our Earth and not the head, which will stream out into the starry worlds. When the blood of Christ streamed into the Earth from Golgotha, it altered the whole nature of the Earth, which is destined to become the first planet of love, according to Rudolf Steiner. Christ worked through ever increasing expansion and extension, and we can read the script of the havens between Golgotha and Whitsun, where His great purposes are revealed in the spheres beyond the Earth, which He redeemed from the Earth. At Whitsuntide, we receive the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, when the third member of the Trinity is poured out onto humanity and onto the Earth. The light has now come down from Heaven to Earth, and from then onward it must be reflected back into the cosmos by us.   © 2012 Astrosophy Research Center ‒ ISBN 1-888686-11-1 All rights reserved. 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