The Mystery of the Marys

Probably no part of the Nativity accounts has so offended the modern thinking person as that of the Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. However, anthroposophy shows us that it was literally a virgin birth and an immaculate conception, not because there was no physical union between the Josephs and the Marys but because of how the union came about and how the being of the primeval unspoiled soul of the Nathan Mary remained unspoiled throughout, her etheric body governing the nature of her physical body so as to either retain or restore her virginity. It was further “immaculate” in that she was not, because of her state of consciousness, subject to the same experience from union as in the case of other “fallen” human beings. The Solomon Mary is shown to have become a virgin when the Christ entered Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism, for then the soul of Nathan Mary indwelt that of the Solomon Mary, transforming her bodies. While Steiner apparently never said so, there is also a mysterious implication in Matthew’s passage saying that Joseph “knew her not until she had borne a son.” Such “knowing” bears a firm resemblance to the infection of the astral body in the Garden where it says, “they knew that they were naked.” In this sense, even the Solomon Mary may have remained virginal until after Jesus’ birth when she conceived other children. This Mary, however, did not carry the primeval soul of the Nathan Mary at that time, so it seems possible that Matthew was telescoping into his abbreviated metaphor the result of what happened at the baptism. In any event, anthroposophy now makes it possible to comprehend the perpetual virginity of Mary.

But there is another appealing possibility that would explain both the virginity of the Solomon Mary as well as Joseph’s perplexity with her condition as Matthew sets them out. My friend Robert Powell writes of this, as cited in my larger work. He takes into account the visions of the illiterate nun Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824). He shows their remarkable accuracy on items that are verifiable but far beyond the knowledge of all but the most scholarly students of the Jewish calendar. At the same time he recognizes the inferiority of her visions to Steiner’s intuition, including her failure to observe that two Jesus children were born. Because of this failure, she dismissed one of her visions indicating that the annunciation to the Solomon Mary took place in the temple, and not knowing of the two Marys she rejected this vision because of the annunciation to the Nathan Mary in Nazareth that took place later.

Emmerich’s visions had included the fact that Mary had from a very young age been a “temple virgin,” and still was at the time of her conception while still a “young woman.” According to Emmerich both the finding of a worthy prospective husband for, and then his betrothal to, this special temple virgin had been under the auspices of the temple’s high priesthood. The very name “Joseph” suggests the clairvoyance of initiation, as with the patriarchal Joseph who was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries. Here Powell infers from Emmerich’s account the unique temple relationship of both Joseph and Mary, the appearance of the angel, and Joseph’s later puzzlement, that in fact the betrothed couple had gone through the “temple sleep” (a death-like condition explained much more fully in The Burning Bush) under the guidance of its priesthood and conception had occurred during that time. There is something powerfully compelling about this in light of Matthew’s account, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son.” It is said that Joseph had been told by an angel in a “dream” of Jesus’ divine conception, but the dream could have been a part of the initiation process. Steiner shows us that dreams in that day belonged (or could still then belong) to the waking (fully conscious during “sleep”) state while today they belong in the unreliable realm of sleep. Sensations pertaining to the body, such as are involved in the act of impregnation, would presumably not, however, intrude upon consciousness during the death-like “temple sleep,” save perhaps in terms of spiritual ecstasy, as in The Song of Solomon.

Emil Bock (1895-1959) as a young clergyman studied under Steiner and later wrote an eight volume presentation of Steiner’s insights on the Bible. His The Childhood of Jesus covers the nativity accounts, as does the essay “The Nativity” in my larger work, The Burning Bush. The latter is intense, this shorter one more flowing, while Bock’s is flowery in elegant expression of fine details buried within the two accounts I’ve set forth. His work would not by itself be readily accepted within Christendom, I think. It assumes a readership already exposed to anthroposophical insight, on the one hand, or willing to accept what could otherwise be called dreamy speculation, on the other.

This present volume represents something of a middle ground, with my detailed work on the right and Bock’s more flowery one on the left. But his expressions do flesh out and bring to life the bony structure, once it has been built. He has the ability to put one back at the scene to observe how it all happened.