Humanity at the Threshold - The Seventh Angel of the Apocalypse
The following is an extract from Emil Bock, The Apocalypse of St John (1951), Floris Books, pp.81-84. It deals with the significance of the Seventh Angel for our present age, an age where mankind stands at the threshold between the spiritual and the physical realms.
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The herald of progress effects the change. Possibilities of Good appear in the midst of Evil, because a supporting power comes on the scene to help struggling humanity. The Apocalypse describes with extremely simple words the Being who effects this change. It may be an indication of enhanced power when now the heavenly herald comes forward with the title of "another mighty Angel", combining the simpler names of "the other Angel", and "the strong Angel", which he bore before. The prospect which he offers to the eyes of the Seer shows that a new and greater concentration of the will of God has taken shape in him. Once, in the heights of Heaven, this hierarchical Being voiced the question which the Lamb alone could answer. Later he intervened between Heaven and Earth, and rescued the men of God by sealing them. Now we clearly see him descending from Heaven to Earth. He stands with one foot on the ocean, and with the other on the mainland of the Earth. He is the messenger of God who is going before Christ to prepare His way. In the kingdoms of the heavenly hierarchies, this Being has a similar task to that which John the Baptist had on earth, before Christ's first coming. The heavenly herald prepares the way for Christ Who, in the supersensible world amid apocalyptic storms, comes ever closer to humanity. At the climax of the seventh Trumpet, the role of the Angel is raised to that of a warrior. Then he will no longer be called "the strong Angel", but will be given his full name as victor over the dragon.
"And I saw another mighty Angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the Sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open; and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the Earth." The two fire-footed pillars with which the Angel stands on the globe together form a gateway. This gate comprises the Earth in its entirety, its two pillars including the polarity of land and sea. To what country is this gate the entrance? What is the destination of him who sets foot across this threshold? We stand at the border between Spirit and Earth. All that went before was trial and preparation. Now the fulfilment possible in the future is indicated by a tremendous tryst with the Gods; the Angel herald offers himself as the gateway which leads into another world. Out of this world the Christ is to come to humanity. The Sun-countenance of the Angel lets us divine the rising and approaching of this Sun. This stage of evolution, to which all the suffering and loss of the Trumpet epoch has led, may be called "Humanity at the Threshold".
The experience of the Threshold and of the spiritual Being who is called the "Guardian of the Threshold", represents a decisive stage on the spiritual path which the individual man may tread.* This experience is communicated to his consciousness in many different ways. Mankind as a whole is also led to the threshold of the spiritual world through many stages of trial and discipline. A meeting of Humanity with the Guardian of the Threshold takes place. But the consciousness of individual men and women cannot attain, simply as a matter of course, the level on which this event can be observed and understood. Rather they will be lost in one perplexity after another when the spiritual world approaches. Only here and there a realization of the actual situation may flash through the soul.
It is precisely this tragic dilemma of the human consciousness which makes the apocalyptic character of the present age. Our souls are under the spell of materialistic habits of thought. For a long time the consciousness of humanity has been concentrated on the outside of the world. Now the spiritual world is reaching mankind; humanity is arriving at the Threshold; new realities overwhelm us for which no understanding is available. It must seem hopeless ever to grasp them with conscious thought. Yet everything depends upon whether humanity rises to that level of consciousness on which what is actually happening can be understood.
When the mighty Angel appears as the Guardian of the Threshold, humanity meets at the same time its own Genius. We see ourselves in the form of the Angel, as in a mirror. The cloud with which the Angel is clothed reflects the sphere of real Ideas into which Man rises as a thinking being. The rainbow with its sevenfold harmony of colours is a picture of the gamut of emotions of which Man is capable. The fiery feet, continued into flaming pillars, direct and inspire us to walk the Earth with energy and active purpose. The Sun-countenance reveals the nature of the Higher Ego, which will freely co-ordinate the trinity of Thinking, Feeling and Willing. We behold, in fact, a modification of the sublime vision of the Son of Man, which formed the beginning of all the apocalyptic disclosures.
In the above-mentioned book Rudolf Steiner describes how the human being, in approaching the threshold of the spiritual world, is faced with a growing independence of the three fundamental forces of the soul, Thinking, Feeling and Willing. When mankind as a whole approaches the Threshold a corresponding differentiation is effected. A regrouping of the human race is set in motion. Today its most conspicuous manifestation is the gradual disappearance of the earlier national units and the emergence of the great East-West polarity. The Angel of the Threshold with a countenance like the Sun represents symbolically the new ordering of humanity. The cloud with which he is clothed represents the element of spirit and thought which constitutes the world of Eastern Man. In the fiery feet of the Angel the predominant will-character of Western Man is signified. And the harmony of colours in the rainbow points to the task of harmonizing and balancing, set for the people of the Middle regions which lie between the two extremes.
At the present time, when the East becomes increasingly militant and may, before long, even outstrip the West in energy and practical efficiency, it will seem curious to say that "spirit and thought constitute the world of Eastern Man". But the attitude of the East towards the West has for a long time been a strange mixture. Because from ancient times the East has lived in spiritual realities as in a universally visible cloud, it was bound to look contemptuously on the harassed "busyness" of Western civilization, and its utilitarianism. The East has always known that the organizing and technical achievements of which Western peoples are so proud, have only been derived from materialistic forms of thought incapable of grasping real truth. Since, however, in its arrogant conception of the inferiority of other races, the West has extended its claim to political and cultural sovereignty over the East, the East could not but mobilize its own will to defend itself. Rivalry with the West began, and since the old Eastern spirituality had fallen into twilight and decadence, the East eventually absorbed its fill of Western mentality, which it yet felt as unspirituality. It was as if one man met another who wished to impress him with the retort: "Wait a moment; I will show you that whatever you can do, I will soon do better." But Western intellectualism, no matter whether it was concerned with technical, industrial or social questions, was bound to become something quite different in the East. There it was absorbed by the cloud of the old spirituality, which became charged with it, as if with electricity. Sinister thunder-clouds, from which at any moment lightning may flash and rolling thunder rumble, have been the result. The East is today engaged in demonstrating to the West the soullessness and inhumanity of intellectualism. While it may ultimately make a more radical use than the West itself of the thought-forms originally conceived in the West, it will furnish the West with ever clearer proofs that utilitarian cleverness is better adapted to falsifying the truth than to finding it.
Thus we are faced with a paradoxical situation. The West confronts the problems of the modern world without ideas, because intellectualism is not equal to these problems. The West falls back on so-called "practical" experience, especially in financial matters, although it is precisely this "practical" experience which has failed and has created the present chaos and tension. Against this, the East makes use of the Western intellectualism which it has absorbed to maintain, with religious impetuosity, ideas and goals which, because they no longer reckon with the true nature of Man, threaten to unleash cosmic conflagration. Even though another catastrophic war be avoided, we can never settle down peacefully between the extremes into which East and West are driving each other: on the one side, an attempt to "manage" without ideas except belief in money and power; and on the other, ideological fanaticism, aggravated by unchecked application of the cleverness learnt from the West. What has become of the impulse of the middle region? Will Christianity, which is supposed to know Christ as the "Golden Mean" of the world, allow itself to be led astray? Will it perhaps even throw in its lot with one of the two parties?
When the first Creation rose from the mists of the Flood, the miracle of the rainbow was set in the sky as the sign of the covenant between God and Man. The figure of the great Guardian of the Threshold also contains this sign. When amid woes and catastrophes the second Creation, within Earth and mankind, forces its way to the light, the rainbow must shine above it, too. It is the sign of Man's strength of heart, which is able to establish the golden mean between the element of Will in the fiery feet and the cloud-like spirituality of Thought in the head. Once more the rainbow is the sign of the Covenant. Through the strength of the middle region the polar opposites which would otherwise clash can find a way to co-operation and mutual give-and-take. The "rainbow" men who can bring the peace of the world are not confined to the geographical middle of the world. Wherever the Christian apocalyptic impulse is active, the sign of the Covenant appears. A warmth of heart not squandered in an egotistical religious life as an end in itself, but penetrating the whole of human nature towards both poles, can produce a harmonious triad: a Christfilled Feeling, between a Christ-filled Thinking illumined by wisdom, and a Christ-filled Willing, inspired by love.
* Cf. Rudolf Steiner, How to attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
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