Darkness, Page Three

I am certainly not unmindful of the controversy that swirls over any suggestion that the "Father" or "Son" are as much female as male, or over the question of whether the female only came into being after the male. Nor is there agreement on the meaning of Prov 8,22, which speaks of "wisdom" normally (though not always) thought of as feminine: "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old." Even the Hebrew word "created" is not entirely clear in its translation (see 5 NIB 92). And if "created" is the right translation, some have pointed out that wisdom (the female principle) was brought into existence by the Creator God, presumably the male principle.

Sophia is the Greek word translated as "wisdom." It is of feminine gender, and thus has been used as a feminine name. The nature of the Sophia has been variously viewed within Christendom.¹¹

That Steiner spoke sparingly of the mysteries of the Sophia is noted by Prokofieff in the foreword of his book The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia (HSBA). He suggests this paucity was because "the unfolding of the mysteries of the Sophia belongs not to our fifth but to the following, sixth, cultural epoch." From what little Steiner gives, however, Prokofieff seems to infer the origin of the feminine Sophia in the fourth period of the Ancient Sun Condition of Consciousness (Part II, Chap. 1). To a certain extent this aspect is reflected in I-18.

Another anthroposophist, Robert Powell, leaning heavily upon the works of the highly controversial Valentin Tomberg, posits the existence of a feminine counterpart and coequal of the male Trinity called the Trinosophia. The latter consists of the spiritual beings Mother-Daughter-Holy Soul corresponding to the Trinity's Father-Son-Holy Spirit.¹² Prokofieff attacked this idea in appendix one of his HSBA and in The Case of Valentin Tomberg (CVT), p. 129, more vigorously assailed Powell for his position on it.

While I take with caution what comes from Tomberg, and on occasion have differed from his conclusions, at other times, particularly in areas where Steiner either did not speak or spoke too sparingly or inconclusively, as apparently on this point, one cannot reject following a particular path simply because it resembles the one taken by Tomberg—particularly if it follows from principles clearly laid down by Steiner. On the particular question we are now considering, namely, at what point the feminine principle first entered into creation or its causative divinity, the application of anthroposophical principles already reflected in this volume (regarding the image) seem to lead to a conclusion closer to that of Tomberg/Powell than that reflected by Prokofieff (i.e., the Kyriotetes, or Spirits of Wisdom, during Ancient Sun). And this being the case, the concept of the Trinosophia seems as valid as the doctrine of the Trinity. Christ's use of the term "Father" was thus at least partially metaphorical and not determinative on this point any more than the fact that the Christ was incarnated, at that point in history, in a male body. That his last act from that body was to pass on to Evangelist John the "Mother" principle is suggestive of the path that human ascension must take—a path that must lead humanity (and all creation) back to the same heights as those from which the male principle (the Cain principle) has led it.¹³

On this matter, I have as yet read nothing that expresses the matter more to my satisfaction than what I wrote as the "Appendix to 'Three Bodies'" in The Burning Bush, pp. 459-473. While it is complex, it is reflective, I believe, of what we are being told in those chapters of the Bible that have heretofore been called "prehistoric," when seen in anthroposophic light. From what is said there, it is clear that, retracing the image back to its source, if male and female were originally one, as the Bible indicates (when properly construed), then the Creator God, from whom the Word went out (Jn 1,1), had to have embodied both the male and female principles. If, according to the pattern on the mountain (cf. Heb 8,5; Ex 25,40), all things were made by the Word (Jn 1,3), then the Word itself, the Christ Spirit, had to have been androgynous and/or asexual. It was from the androgynous (and/or asexual) "man" in Gen 2, that the hard Adam (Gen 3,17) and Eve, the male and female, emerged from unity as metaphorically expressed in Gen 2,18-24. On these matters, see the Chapter End Note to the Creation essay and the excellent work of Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, discussed there.

I have dwelt at length on the male/female question because it seems to me that one cannot properly return to the conditions in Gen 1,1-3,¹⁴ where darkness first appears in the Bible, without walking that path.

Having, in any event, found darkness present before any matter came into existence, we must grant to it a part in the creative process itself. The pattern of creation, according to the Old Testament, is one of "fission," separation—the archetype for cell division. The first separation in the Bible is that of light from darkness (Gen 1,4). Considering that Gen 1,1-3 is itself in the Lemurian Epoch of Earth evolution, and that creation at that point had progressed downward so far as the etheric world, the world of the four ethers pregnant with their related four elements, we enter upon the schematic so often referred to as the chart from I-22. The upper portion of that chart, the etheric condition, was built up in Gen 1-2,4a, leading to the precipitation therefrom into the mineral-physical conditions of Earth evolution starting with Gen 2,4b.

Darkness must then always be seen as the portion that descends, as the polar opposite of its ascending counterpart, in the creative process of "fission." It is the male (Cain) element, the heavier, so to speak, while the lighter female (Abel) element rises. Every human being is both male and female, if only we could bear that ever in mind. As a male, my creative body, my etheric body, is female—it is my "mother," so to speak. My friends see me only as a man, though in my more spiritual aspect I should be seen as a woman. We must come to recognize our unity with both principles, for when we do we will no longer be able to exalt one sex over the other but will recognize that a part of the Creator God is present in both of these elements within us. The unity of husband and wife is deeply symbolical of this condition. And if one comprehends the parabolic journey of the Prodigal Son, and the necessity of entering upon the upward portion of that journey through the female element, it will no longer be possible for us to say that the wife must be subject to the husband, for it will be counter to the pattern that has been laid before us.

We will then begin to see that when the male (Cain) element predominates, the face of God is hidden (Gen 4,14), and we become more enmeshed in matter, that which we have already seen herein as blocking out the light. It is the veil of our mineral-physical bodies that keeps us from perceiving in the spiritual world. That is the veil of the temple that the Christ Spirit rent (Mt 27,51; Mk 15,38; Lk 23,45; cf. Heb 9,8-9), preparing the path as "first fruit" (1 Cor 15,20,23) for each of us.

We are in our mineral-physical condition because of darkness. Just as matter blocks light in the phenomenal, the mineral-physical world, so also does every thought or deed that conflicts with the Christ Spirit either create or feed evil spirits,¹⁵ the spirits of darkness, and block the spiritual light that must fill human souls if they are to follow the upward path. Every such thought or deed that is of darkness creates karmic debt for the soul that produces it, debt that must be eradicated during earthly life however many incarnations that may take, incarnations in mineral-physical bodies. And not only so, but every such thought or deed that is from darkness creates a karmic burden upon all creation, over and above what must be erased by the individual soul, unless and until that soul accepts the Christ, who lifts from the sinner that portion of guilt, taking it upon his own being (see the sequence of essays in The Burning Bush starting with "Forgiven Sins" and going through "Lord of Karma").

We then come to see that darkness has its own polarity, the causal darkness (i.e., sin, the Cain factor) that is itself not yet matter, and the consequent matter (the ground saturated with Abel's blood) that produces the earthly phenomena of darkness.