First of all, I am pretty excited that the Angelico Press edition of Novalis’s Christendom or Europe?, for which I wrote an introduction, will drop momently. I just reviewed the proof of my intro, made a few adjustments—and got stoked. Novalis’s essay is such a watershed moment in the history of Alt-Christianity (or Christian Romanticism) and I am honored to be associated with him in this way—I felt the same way when I wrote an introduction to Thomas Traherne’s Centuries a few years ago. If you’re new around here, you might be interested in this piece I wrote when I looked into Novalis’s birth chart and found some spooky—and I mean spooky—resonances with my own. Incidentally, Novalis left this world on 25 March 1802—the Feast of the Annunciation—so the spiritual import of the book coming out now is not lost on me.
Speaking of Alt-Christianity
I was a little taken aback with how my last newsletter here, “Alt-Christianity Is the New Celtic Christianity” blew up; it received twice as many hits as my most popular Substacks and many, many more comments. It seems there is a lot of enthusiasm for an Alt-Christianity, a Church of the Wild, in the ethers—which is not surprising, seeing how absolutely complicit the leadership of all Christian denominations have been with the Powers of Evil over the past four years—of which I was reminded all too tragically (if not surprisingly) when Pope Francis doubled-down on his anti-anti-vaxxer propaganda this week. With bishops like these, who needs Satan? As I told a dear friend, a fellow Catholic, a few days ago, the Catholic hierarchy is as infiltrated by a kind of “Deep State” as are most (probably all) governments of Western “Democracies”—and I can no longer countenance such a system. Hence the need to return to the Wild of God.
Speaking of Astrology
That same friend had earlier in the week sent me a link to Robert Powell’s website and recommended I listen to a couple of Robert’s podcasts. For those of you who may not know, Robert is an astrosopher (kind of an anthroposophical astrologer), a eurythmist, and the author of a number of important books. He might be most recognized as the English translator of the classic Catholic mystical text, Meditations on the Tarot, which I first read not long after it was published in 1985—and at one point I even had a few mimeographed (you youngsters may need to look at that one up!) chapters from the book in its manuscript stage. Though we’ve never met in person, Robert and I have a relationship that goes back nearly thirty years when, through mutual friends, I somehow got his phone number (he was living in Germany at the time) and called to ask about how the manuscript of Meditations fell into his hands. We’ve spoken a few times, maybe once every decade, and Mike and I interviewed him on The Regeneration Podcast not all that long ago. I like him immensely.
Robert is an outstanding astrologer and esoteric thinker, as well as a deeply Christian soul, and he is always worth a listen. In podcast 178-B (toward the bottom of the page), Robert talks a bit about the solar eclipse that will be visible in parts of the United States on 8 April 2024. (You can listen from 8:20 to the end, but the entire thing is only 18 minutes long). This was the third time in as many days that friends have asked me about or brought the impending eclipse to my attention and asked what I thought. In general, I don’t make too big of a deal about eclipses, unless they happen to occur on important places in one’s birth chart (like aspecting a planet, ascendant, midheaven, etc.). But Robert has an interpretation that I cannot help but take seriously. And he is a much more capable astrologer than I am; he even did his doctoral dissertation on the history of astrology. (Full disclosure: Robert follows sidereal astrology, whereas I follow tropical. When my friend asked why I don’t follow sidereal, I said: “Because this is what and how I learned and I’m a double-Taurus and I’m stubborn. Now get off my lawn.”) Robert believes that there is a possibility the solar eclipse of April 8th—which forms a cross across the continental United States with the path of the full solar eclipse of 2017—indicates a blessing of Christ, as it is his sign, and that Christ and his glory could appear to everyone. As he adds, “We shall see.”
One thing Robert does not mention (though he might somewhere else) is the penumbral lunar eclipse that will occur March 24-25—that’s this Sunday-Monday—also visible across most of the continental US. I think this is pretty important (and note the connection to the death day of Novalis). First of all, it happens on the Feast of the Annunciation, which, for most of Christian history was the day on which the calendar year moved ahead. Why? BECAUSE IT’S A BIG FAT DEAL, THAT’S WHY. First of all, Gabriel’s announcement—and Mary-Sophia’s assent—initiated the Renewal of All Things. Secondly, through at least the Middle Ages, March 25th was regarded as the historical date of the Crucifixion. Third, March 25th was also believed to be the last day of Creation, the day upon which God rested. As Eleanor Parker so eloquently puts it in her book Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year, March 25th is “the birthday of time.” So this lunar eclipse—which occurs during Holy Week this year—is A BIG FAT DEAL. And the Virgin, for those of you who might not know, is the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars” in Revelation 12.
In January, I posted about the movements of the planets over 2024-2025, but I wasn’t paying attention to eclipses. Now I am. But there I pointed to what will happen in exactly a year, as Neptune moves into Aries just after the Feast of the Annunciation in 2025, which could be the harbinger of a new age of spirituality.
It gets even spookier.
It just so happens that I have been reading—very slowly, I admit—Rudolf Steiner’s lectures to the priests of the Christian Community (a church Steiner helped get off the ground) in 1924. This was only months before Steiner died. Seriously, Steiner’s last year includes what could be considered his most important contributions to spiritual and practical life, with his courses like this one and the agriculture and curative education courses, among many others. Someone should do a full study of his work from just that year.
Anyway, I started reading these lectures, published as The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, last summer in hope I might gain some insight into doing house church. The lectures aren’t really about that, of course, but I figured a read-through couldn’t hurt. But I was stunned this week at how much of the material in the book resonates with what Robert was saying in his podcast and with the movements of the stars (and, in case you wanted to know, Steiner was a big Novalis guy).
One of the things Steiner covers in the book is the number 666, which he connects to the sun demon Sorat (which name, in Hebrew gematria, equals 666). Without getting too far into the esoteric weeds, he ties this number to calendar years: AD 666 coinciding with the rise of Islam; 666 x 2 =1332, roughly corresponding with the persecution of the Templars and the martyrdom of Jacques DeMolay; and 666 x 3 = 1998, with the Demon Sorat appearing. One aspect of the last, Steiner predicts, will be “the appearance in many humans as the being [Sorat] by whom they are possessed. Human beings will appear of whom it will be impossible to believe that they are real human beings…. Their faces will be like the faces of beasts. The Sorat human beings will be recognizable by their external appearance: in a terrible way they will not only scoff at everything but oppose and want to push into the pool of filth anything that is spiritual.” And he sees this as being the flowering of Bolshevism that, in his time, was but a small, if potent, movement confined to Russia.
Looking to our own age, Steiner writes, “The ahrimanic powers will interfere more and more, so that ahrimanic spirits will use human bodies for all kinds of actions. A time will come when Christians, on encountering some person or other, will seriously have to ask themselves: Is this a human being or is it a loose cloak for ahrimanic spirits?” Importantly, pointing to 1998, Steiner observes, “Sorath will one again raise his head most strongly out of the waves evolution to become the adversary of that appearance of Christ which those who have been prepared for it will already experience during the first half of the twentieth century when the Etheric Christ becomes visible.” Commenting on this, Robert names the usual suspects (whom I typically designate as the Archons): Soros, Trudeau, Gates and so forth. I think it’s more than interesting that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was founded in 2000 (right in the ballpark with Steiner’s prediction) and just a year before 9-11. 1997 was also the year Barack Obama started serving as a senator in the Illinois legislature. I wasn’t paying all that much attention, as I was too busy clinging to my bibles and guns. Ten years later was the financial crisis, which destroyed the fortunes of many among the working class. I’m not saying all these things are connected—but I’m also not saying these things are not connected. Please feel free to offer your opinions in the comments.
But, getting back to astrology…
This is really weird.
You might have heard that a comet is due to appear next month. The 12P-Pons/Brooks comet is due to appear—wait for it—on April 8, the same day as the solar eclipse. And, when the eclipse darkens the heavens, the comet will become visible. But wait! There’s more! The common name for 2P-Pons/Brooks is the “Devil Comet,” due to the two “horns” that adorn the comet (really tails). I know. It’s just a coincidence.
Here’s the mind-blowing part: Steiner interprets the “beasts” of the Apocalypse as comets: “Whenever the apocalyptist is speaking of the beast he is actually referring to the powers and effects of comets.” And then he says:
“Satan lies in wait for every comet that turns up. He wants to catch hold of it and use the direction of its movement to disrupt the orbits of the planets and thus also of the earth. This really is going on in the universe: the satanic forces are lying in wait with the intention of changing the whole planetary system.”
In a later lecture, he gets more explicit in connecting the comet to one one of the beasts of the Apocalypse: “Similarly the two-horned beast I mentioned is linked with a comet, a comet with two tails.” Another coincidence.
In Revelation, a beast with seven heads tries to devour the child delivered of the Woman Clothed with the Sun, but she and her child are taken into the wilderness (the Wild of God) for protection. But another beast appears, one with two horns:
“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13)
I won’t get into all the digital ID, CBDC stuff. But you can draw your own conclusions.
In addition, as I wrote in my January astrological predictions, next month a unique conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus will appear at 21 degrees of Taurus. This conjunction promises hope, freedom, and optimism—and it also coincides with Passover (which didn’t occur to me in January). I don’t think any of this is coincidence.
The heavens, as the saying goes, declare the glory of God.
I wish you a blessed Holy Week.
I'll stick with Catholicism. I, too, left the church because of corruption until I realized I was only hurting myself. Popes come and go, but our faith should not. Our church is God's house, no matter who sits in the Vatican.
All these 'signs in the heavens' considered, it seems somewhat auspicious (or at least, significant) to me that according to the Chinese zodiac we are currently in "The Year of The Dragon". I would be interested to know your thoughts on that.