Easter 2020, both Eastern and Western, is one of the most unique Easters since the first one in Palestine over 2000 years ago. In the specter of mass death due to the current global pandemic, Christians throughout most of the world celebrated behind closed doors either alone or watching live streamed services online. One particularly poignant pre Easter podcast from the Vatican remarked that all fear in general is essentially fear of death. From a materialistic point of view, death is at its base, uncontrollable and the entry into the unknown. The first Easter, the podcaster related, meant the followers of Christ were hiding behind closed doors, mainly out of fear of being executed. Now, we all hide behind closed doors because we are afraid of dying from a virus, or causing death in others by exposing them to the microbe.
Art is the creation of organs by which the gods speak to humanity.
Rudolf Steiner
Our Lady of the Good Death, France
Many of the world's Black Madonnas have some sort of association with death. Numerous Black Madonnas have the word "death" in their names, often associated with the word "good." As I have been living with the symbolism and questions of the Black Madonna now for nearly two decades, some revealing messages have been coming through these mysterious images. For me, I view the art form of the Black Madonna as a deep messenger for the lessons and gifts of the first Millennium of Christianity.
During the aftermath of the terror attacks of 2001, I was intensely interested in The Book of Revelation. (Forgive the commercial, but I go into this topic of The Revelation quite extensively in both The Virgin of Guadalupe, Mysterious Messenger of Destiny and Activities for the Apocalypse Workbook, so get your copies today.) I delved into quite a bit of literature and theology regarding this enigmatic book. At that time, I read The Apocalypse of St John lecture cycle by Rudolf Steiner. What I found the most interesting and actually comforting to be honest, was how these lectures articulated where humanity was at present in terms of our shared evolution. These lectures conveyed how we humans were basically right in the middle of cosmic evolution, and also that humanity was about a thousand plus years away from really comprehending Christianity. In other things I had learned before that time, the context was that we had really not comprehended the Christ event at the time it occurred, that the original evangelization of the Christian movement and message was one that did not spread through thinking, it spread through a felt sense, it spread through mainly the heart and feelings. Keep in mind there was no organized church or clergy, no real dogma or theology and no written scriptures other than a couple of letters circulating through communities.
I still struggle with this to be honest, being trained as a scientist immersed in materialism. Since second grade, I had been taught proving anything required reasoning and facts led to the existence of anything. Belief was different than knowledge. Knowing was based on material items and experiences. Since there were no pictures or news articles regarding Jesus and the Crucifixion, and certainly no skeleton bearing the marks of execution, it did not happen according to material science and history. When one delves into ancient scriptures, meaning actual copies of scrolls dating from the first few centuries after Christ and the materialistic scholarship that goes into Bible archeology, it seems that not one thing in the Gospels can be proven as legitimate.
It is quite interesting though, that even in the ever politically correct world of calendars and carbon dating, the "CE" or "common era" used round the world starts at 0 around the birth of the Christ Child in Palestine. Why is that really, that the dates all cultures adhere to in terms of years, if nothing could be proven or the event did not happen?
The other thing I learned during these last 20 years of delving into The Black Madonna as well as Anthroposophical Christology is that each era in the collective maturation of humanity, there is a mystery to be encountered for the opening of our consciousness.
The mystery during the last era, the one where Christ incarnated and the first thousand years of Christian art and the Black Madonnas occurred, the mystery was that of Birth and Death. It was also a time of a great era of materialism. It is hard to really fathom this era being more materialistic than the one we are in now, but it was, so much so that it was actually difficult for people to incarnate, and after their deaths it was difficult for the soul to let go and progress across the threshold. A great example of this comes from the Greek saying, better a poor man on earth than a rich one in the afterlife. Hades was seen as a gray horrid eternal existence. Jewish tradition at the time really did not even contemplate an afterlife, it simply was not relevant or even imagined.
In the midst of this, Christ came, Christ incarnated into a physical body. One of the difficulties humanity had with this entire narrative, which was also hashed out quite a bit during the first thousand years of Christianity, was how is it possible for a god to become a human? In crude terms, why would a god want to voluntarily take a ticket in third class, when the god already had a luxury sleeper car?
The other great difficulty humanity had with this entire scenario was how could a god die? How could a god sit idly by and let themselves be executed? The last one was how could a physical body come back to life? See this mystery aspect of the era? It really was and is a mystery, as life and death and birth is truly a mystery. We humans try our darnedest to harness the mystery, from birth control to in vitro fertilization, organ transplants, respirators and other technologies that are supposed to sustain life, to the control of death by killing of others through guns, wars, executions and such. Still, there is a mystery and a great challenge to birth and death. Even religious institutions try to control life and death, valiantly trying to control the after life by withholding sacraments, excommunication and such. Life and death are truly out of our hands for the most part, yet we keep trying to assert that control with sometimes frightening consequences.
In this milieu Christ came, he lived in a human body, endured death and rose again. Why?
Death we are told was a consequence of that Garden of Eden event. What is also true is death is the one experience only earthly creatures, specifically humans endure. Death is something the spiritual world did not understand. In order to help heal the rift between humans and the spiritual world, Christ experienced death. He then went on to educate the spiritual and angelic worlds on the experience, after which he rose from the dead and taught his followers for an additional 40 days for which we are told, the subject of those teachings could not be contained in all the books on earth. My intuition tells me that Christ probably was talking quite a bit regarding the mystery of birth and death, among other things. The simple take away from this entire drama, passion of Christ, is that there is only a physical death, but the essence of who we are as members of the cosmos, that lives on.
When I taught Sunday School, ever so long ago, I was struck that we Christians have these pat phrases we utter endlessly. "Jesus is my Savior" "Jesus Died for my Sins" and so on, which are all deeply true but I am not sure we actually understand them or could explain them in anything but circular methods. The experience of witnessing in the flesh the reanimated body of a person that was publicly brutally executed I am sure was quite dramatic for all who were present. The fact that it was not a zombie out to get them is also for me very meaningful.
It is of note that the original ancient Christian art did not have images of a crucified Christ. In fact, the earliest images of Christian art are actually of Mary and the infant Jesus. If Christ is pictured at all, he is represented as a young man, the image of a sun god. It is only after the first thousand years of Christianity that the crucified and even dead Christ is pictured frequently in art. After that, with increasing gruesomeness, images of the mangled body of Jesus start making more appearances throughout the religious art of the late middle ages and the Renaissance.
Why?
I do not have an adequate explanation for this phenomena, other than maybe the mystery had been understood, that physical death was not the end. Easter is the recognition of this phenomena on one level, but it is also the remembrance of the great deed done for us all, the entire cosmic community, of educating us all that physical death is but a phase. For me, it is also a great gesture to help the spiritual world understand the trials of being a human, of how terrifying death is for those dying as well as those who are left on earth. There is now a deep intimacy between the spiritual world and humanity commenced from that time forward, that the spirit world now understands death. So the mystery was encountered by the entire cosmos because of the Christ.
I learned something quite interesting many years ago, about the journey of those who pass on how they travel and what they do after leaving their physical existence. We humans have the freedom that few in the cosmos have, to travel about to different levels of existence and continue the educational process of the spiritual world. Humans also "talk amongst themselves" as they leave and come in to the earth plane. Great events, such as World War II, produced mass death of the young. This means that those who die, die with a level of consciousness that those who die when they are old and live through their lives do not always have. When we think of those who died during WWII, through the horrors of the battles as well as those who died in concentration camps and through nuclear bombs, these souls brought quite a bit of consciousness as to the consequences of evil and materialism with them as they crossed the threshold. The souls that were incarnating at that time, the early 40's, they grew up to be the "baby boom" generation. Even with all the problems of this generation, what one can say is they birthed a global peace and environmental movement, these were the ones who protested the Viet Nam war, who flocked to communes, who pushed civil rights, women's rights and so on.
As the majority of the world sat inside during Easter while many are crossing the threshold of death from the pandemic, I wonder what these dear martyrs are communicating to the souls incarnating at this time?
As of this writing, it seems the poor and disenfranchised are the first wave of victims. Those who do not have the luxury of working remotely from home, who perform in vitally necessary jobs which often do not pay enough to live on, who do not have access to adequate health care and endure many underlying conditions from poor nutrition and hygiene because of slumlords and neglectful governments. What is it that these souls will tell the ones coming in about their lessons learned?
The world is focused on this pandemic, the opportunity that most are embracing is to love and to pray, to surround the globe with prayers of healing and of solidarity. What are the souls that are leaving and coming experiencing as they travel through the spiritual world? What are they leaving, what are they bringing?
We will have to wait a bit to see the fruits of this unique time in human evolution. From the end of WWII to the 1960's, the youth of the latter age were teens and young adults when they took to the streets demanding an end to institutionalized slaughter of war. That really was the first time in human history that humanity said no to war on such a large scale, and many from that time credit their protests to ending the Vietnam War.
What will the world look like in 18 - 20 years, what will be the values brought by the generation being born as we all sit indoors glued to our TV's?
Easter is a time of the breaking of the mystery of death. We are not quite yet at the place where we can totally understand this mystery, but we are starting to understand the love that was involved in solving the mystery, the love unleashed, the love the current Easter is asking us to exhibit. Maybe that is why the Black Madonnas are so involved in representing death, these images that were created during the last thousand years of the era mystery of birth and death. So many Black Madonnas were burnt and destroyed during the French Revolution, which was quite violent towards clergy and anything involving religious tradition. And yet, images of these ancient treasures remained, many Black Madonnas were hidden until the turbulence quieted down, new Madonnas were drawn, carved, painted and molded. They "came back" so to speak, in spite of being destroyed.
We shall over come, because we are deeply loved.
May the peace and renewal of this sacred festival enrich you during this time of trial.
Christ is Risen, Christ Is Risen Indeed!
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