Winter Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse

Winter Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse - December 21, 2010

- by Debbie Allen

The Winter Solstice has, of late, become associated with the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012.  As if in anticipation of that event, the Spiritual Beings will be hosting a Total Eclipse of the Moon visible from North America in the midnight hours between December 20 and December 21, 2010.  This event has captured the interest of Astronomers.  The Nov/Dec 2010 issue of SkyNews contains an article titled “Eclipse at Solstice”:

“Five days before Christmas, the Moon turns red amid the brilliance of the winter Milky Way.  A total eclipse of the Moon is the highlight of any year of sky watching, and 2010 ends with a good one.  On the night of December 20/21, the full Moon turns rusty red as it glows high in the south in the middle of the star-rich winter Milky Way.  Its position in the sky couldn’t be better.  The Moon is as high as it can possibly be.  However, the price we pay is that the eclipse occurs in the middle of a long winter night; indeed, the longest night of the year – winter solstice….Because the full Moon, by definition, lies 180 degrees opposite the Sun, the Moon on eclipse night sits at the same spot in the sky where the Sun shines at the summer solstice, in Taurus but near the borders of Gemini and Orion…with the full Moon at that position, it climbs as high into the sky as it can for the year.  That, and the timing of the event in the middle of the night (at least for Western Canada), gives us an eclipse with the Moon at its maximum altitude above the horizon for the year.”

In back-to-back issues of SkyNews, the position of the Moon is discussed  to demonstrate where the Sun will be in the future: first at the Vernal Equinox point, and then at the Summer Solstice point.  Between those two forecasts, Jupiter and Saturn will reach their third and final point of opposition before Jupiter catches up with Saturn for another conjunction on the Winter Solstice 2020 (see separate article).  So, in addition to being a Herald to the end of the Mayan Calendar on the Winter Solstice 2012, the total eclipse of the Moon on this year’s Winter Solstice in 2010 is also a Herald to the next conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the Winter Solstice one Decade hence!

For an understanding of what lives in the Mystery of the Winter Solstice one might turn to what Rudolf Steiner revealed as the Mysteries of the North, the Hyperborean Mysteries as relayed by a significant student of Rudolf Steiner.  Those of us who attended the Whitehorse Conference in August 2009 heard again of these Northern Mysteries as Sergie Prokofieff brought them to life in his lecture titled “The Christ Mysteries of the North and the Coming Cultural Epoch”, (from the incomplete notes of Janet Goldammer, Christian and Karin Reuter, as kindly provided by C. Reuter; notes of D. Allen):

“In the Hyperborean times the mysteries came from the North.  The Celtic population was inspired by the Hyperboreic Order and led by them.  In the 8th century BC a great Initiate came from Hyperborea to Greece to bring the knowledge of the sun, the stars, and of agriculture, and inspired all of Greek culture.  Pythagoras experienced the Hyperboreic Initiation and the Hyperboreic Apollo was the esoteric name of Pythagorus, he was the God Apollo.  Apollo’s mother was born in Hyperborea.  Remarkably, there is among the Greek Islands an Island that is comprised of Granite from the North – the Island of Delos.  Apollo travelled to the Mystery Centre at Delos every spring, returning to Hyperborea in the fall.  There, a few days after the Winter Solstice the mystery students were invited to see the Sun at midnight – opposite to the physical Sun.  Then in spring the Initiate returned to Greece.  Easter and Ascension all belong to the special time of year when the Sun is going to the Hyperborean Mysteries in the North.”

The Cosmic Event coming before us in the total Lunar Eclipse on the day of the Winter Solstice, in the place in space occupied by the Sun at the Summer Solstice, offers an opportunity to “see the Sun at Midnight”.

In the Nov/Dec issue of SkyNews magazine, earlier referred to, there is a small insert into the discussion on the Total Lunar Eclipse where the author was inspired to show, through a computer generated image, what the eclipse will look like from the Moon’s View, or we might say from the viewpoint of the Angels:

“If you could stand on the reddened Moon on eclipse night, you would see a total eclipse of the Sun by the planet Earth, with the Earth located in the Milky Way in Sagittarius.  Earth would appear as a dark disc with a glowing red ring surrounded by the outer corona of the Sun.  That ring of red is our atmosphere being backlit by the hidden Sun.  It is this red filtering through our atmosphere that illuminates the Moon during a total lunar eclipse and turns it red.”

This brought to my mind the words of Rudolf Steiner from the Fifth Gospel, Lecture 2 given in Oslo on October 2, 1913:

“This, then, is what you read in the occult symbol of the Sun darkened by the Moon.

As a clairvoyant you feel that the higher, truly spiritual regions of the world are obscured by the knowledge of ancient times, for this has put itself in front of true perception just as the Moon goes in front of the Sun in an eclipse.  The outer event in nature gives expression to the fact that humanity had reached a level where knowledge that had come from humanity itself had obscured insight into higher things.  You feel that the darkening of the human soul in Earth evolution was written in the cosmos as a tremendous occult character at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha…We can do no other but stand before the darkening of the Sun as if we were reading what this natural event brought to expression: Moon Knowledge cast darkness on the higher message of the Sun.”

To those words of Rudolf Steiner I add the following from “How can the psychological distress of today be overcome” given in Zurich on October 10, 1916:

“For men who live here on earth, it is right to say: With the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ rightly entered earthly life and is since then present in earthly life.  From a certain point of view it can be felt as a source of happiness for earthly life that Christ has entered into it.  But if one puts oneself into the point of view of the Angels, (and this point of view is no invention of mine, for this point of view is found as something quite real by the true spiritual researcher), the Angels in their spiritual sphere experienced it differently; they experienced the opposite.  Christ had gone from their realm to men, He left their realm.  For themselves, they have to say: Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ has departed from our world.  They have reason to be as sad about this, as men can feel it as for their salvation that Christ has come to them, as dwellers in the physical body.

This sequence of thoughts is real; one who truly understands the spiritual world knows that there is only one Salvation for the Angels for whom what I have just expressed is correct, and that is, that men on earth in their physical bodies so live with the thought of Christ that the thought of Christ shines up as a light to the Angels, since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.  Men say: Christ has entered our being, and we can develop ourselves in such a way, that he lives within us: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”  But the Angels say: For our realm Christ has departed from our inner being, and shines up to us like many stars in the Christ-filled thought of individual men; there we recognize Him again, from thence He shines up to us since the Mystery of Golgotha.  It is a real relationship between the spiritual world and the human world.”

The Ursids meteor shower is scheduled by the Hierarchies to accompany the Lunar Eclipse so that if one can bundle up warm enough, and get out of the cities far enough, and if the Spiritual Beings will hold back the veil of the clouds long enough, then, just as in far off times, we may step out under the Heavens to see the Sun at Midnight!  Perhaps for the Angels they may see Christ-Thoughts flaring up from Human Beings permeated by Michaelic Iron!  

The great marker in time, as the Astronomer has claimed it, is Christmas.  This is the Celestial Scene the Hierarchies will inscribe in the Heavens as we enter into Christmas and the Holy Nights of 2010.

Merry Christmas to all