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**Earth Radiating Spirit**

a celebration  

Friday and Saturday, 20 & 21st February, 2026

Keep these dates free as we have a special weekend planned. 

In Hastings we will be celebrating the arrival of a bronze sculpture, created in 2023 by the Dutch artist, Rik ten Cate.  This double pentagonal dodecahedron is a replica of the Foundation Stone, laid by Rudolf Steiner in 1913 for the first Goetheanum and closely connected with the Foundation Stone Meditation.  

Having already visited Chile, Brazil and Germany, this sculpture arrives soon in Australia, and then in Aotearoa New Zealand in early February, 2026.  

Embraced by the Earth
Radiating to the Spirit of the World
is the Foundation Stone.

You will receive more details later but you will be invited to be part of this International Experience, so circle these dates. 

Bernie and Diana (in consultation with Michelle Vette and the local Branch Committee)

Last week ended: (By spiritual measures such as this, the continuity of awareness of the Christ-impulse was maintained until the closing centuries of the Age of Darkness.  These centuries were marked by the industrial revolution and by the advent of the punched card system and steam technology.  By then the Powers of Opposition had attained such supremacy in outer life that, in the eighteenth century, the Gods were obliged to hand over the remainder of the material Earth evolution to Ahriman.  Jehovah had been defeated.  Darwin proclaimed that men descended from apes, and scientific thinking was dominated by atomism, by the reduction of all the different forces to mere waves, and by the heady perspectives of the sub-physical realm of electromagnetism.  As for the church: religious life had become more and more superficial, theologians began to regard Christ as no more than human — the "simple man of Nazareth" — and finally to doubt that he was a real historical person at all.  Humanity was losing all connection with the Christ-impulse.)   

continued from last week

Human thinking is an active — often destructive — force in the spiritual world.  Through the agnosticism, the atheism and the crass materialism of the last century of Kali Yuga, Christ was crucified again in the etheric world.  Such was the inauspicious situation when the great Archangel Michael assumed his regency {1879}— a regency, moreover, that was severely compromised by the fact that the preceding Archangel, Gabriel, refused to step down, and the Archangel Oriphiél, who was ordained to follow Michael, began to exercise a premature influence on earthly life. 

Then came the end of Kali {dark} Yuga and the dawn of the Age of Light.  What a strange, dramatic image this entry into the Age of Light offers to the gaze of the spirit! How wonderful and terrible the vistas that lay open before humanity! The world of Nature, the old evolution issuing from the Father God, is dying.  Beside it, on the one hand, we see the light-filled, spiritual creation of a new cosmos by Christ, and a path leading into a future in which the human being can develop his spiritual potential to the full.  On the other hand we see Lucifer and Ahriman doing their utmost to draw humanity back into the past, into their abnormal Old Moon world of the Eighth Sphere, a development whereby man will lose his humanity and be made into a perfect machine. 

We have already traced the events of the first four decades of the Age of Light: the catastrophe of the Great War, the initial defeat of the Michaél Movement on Earth and the loss of natural etheric clairvoyance.  Tragic though these events were — they were a terrible setback for humanity — they must not blind us to the fact that human beings are still free to choose whether they will actively seek to be part of the new cosmos that has been developing since the Mystery of Golgotha two thousand years ago, or whether they will follow another path.  The Mystery of Golgotha had been renewed.  Christ is risen again from a second crucifixion and He is come among us.  He is very close at hand, ready to help and guide and comfort all those who turn to Him.  Before we speak concretely of the path leading to Him, let us picture to ourselves the experience of Christ newly risen in the etheric realm, as it was intended for humanity in the nineteen-thirties, and inform ourselves of the consequences it would have had. 

The etheric vision of Christ

This was by far the greatest experience that the new clairvoyance was to bring — the most sublime experience possible for modern humanity: the perception of the risen Christ in the etheric world.  It was to be the same tremendous experience as Saint Paul had had on the road to Damascus.  It would have utterly transformed the lives of those human beings who were able to have that vision.  Christianity would no longer be a religion for them: they would no longer have to believe, for they would know.  And as more and more human beings rose to this vision of Christ and spoke of it, a mighty impulse would have gone out from them into the world, just as an impulse went out from the first Christians after the first Mystery of Golgotha.  An impulse of that kind would have enabled humanity to overcome materialism.  Yet these human beings who would have perceived Christ as an etheric figure would only have been able to grasp what they were seeing if they had been prepared for it through spiritual science:

"Just as there were human beings in whom the "I"-consciousness had reached its highest point at the time when Jesus Christ was there, so will there be human beings in our time who can not only see with their physical eyes, but who will experience in a natural fashion what is reaching down out of the spirit in such a way that soul-spiritual faculties will emerge in their souls and they will enter the etheric realm.  And if they are able to understand this new world they are seeing, that will be their good fortune.  There is a truth, a truth that is important for our souls: the truth that Christ Jesus said, "I am with you always even unto the end of Earth evolution".  He is here.  Since that time he has been here in the environment of the Earth.  And when man's spiritual eyes are opened they will see Him, just as Paul saw Him in the event outside Damascus.  This is something that will happen in about 1933; He will be perceived as an etheric Being, as a Being who, indeed, does not descend as far as physical existence, but who can be seen in His etheric body, since a certain number of human beings will then ascend to the etheric.  But these human beings will remain ignorant if they have not been prepared by spiritual science for what they will see.  In this sense we are living in a period of transition, because we are developing towards a new kind of seeing. 

The responsibility for preparing human beings for that great moment rests upon spiritual science — to prepare them for the moment when Christ will appear, not in the flesh, for he appeared in the flesh once only, but as He is now And He will come again in the form in which those whose eyes are opened will see Him, in the world that is perceptible only to clairvoyant vision.  Human beings will ascend to Him.  This is what the return of Christ will be: human beings will reach up to the sphere in which Christ is to be found.  But they would be left standing there, not understanding what they were seeing, if they had not been prepared for this great moment by spiritual science." 
[GA130. "The Etherisation of the Blood"]

Spiritual vision is possible only if the human being possesses the necessary organs of perception.  The ascension to etheric vision requires, of course, that the organs in question, the lotus flowers, be developed and capable of operating, at least to a certain extent.  The preparation that was needed, and that was to be conferred by spiritual science upon the younger generation {born in the Age of Light}, was a training that would enable their latent, natural, clairvoyant faculties to unfold when the important moment came.  It was also a teaching about what they would perceive when their spiritual eyes were opened.  Without that preparation they would not understand what they were seeing.  

(Emberson, Paul [2014], “From Gondishapur to Silicon Valley” pp 935 to 938)