#4.20 - Eleventh Holy Night

Holy Night 11

January 3-4 - Scorpio

The eleventh night: the struggle with the Guardian of the Threshold.

Mystery: building up the Grail Castle in ourselves. Confessing ourselves more and more in faithfulness to the highest!

Rudolf Steiner’s indications for the Holy Nights given to Herbert Hahn
Translation from German by Laura Zanutto 2015 and Mark Willan 2016

11. Heilige Nacht
3./4. Januar - Skorpion

Die elfte Nacht: Der Kampf mit dem Hüter der Schwelle.
Mysterium: Die Gralsburg in uns aufbauen. Sich immer mehr in Treue zum höchsten bekennen! R. Steiner

Eleventh Contemplation: Kristina Kaine 2020

In a lecture given on March 9, 1913 Rudolf Steiner speaks very directly about the ideas he presents about this Holy Night.

“At this point [the capacity to overcome this enhanced selfishness] we come across a deeply stirring phenomenon, which appears from the very outset. It may take on various forms, but it is justified to designate it as the approach to the threshold of death. We feel as if that part which we call our Ego or the soul were torn away from us as if by lightning, taken away from us. Everything which formerly appeared to be connected with us now seems to be severed from us. Our own self appears like a Being outside; we face it in the same way in which we confront an object of the external world.

Though it is easy to describe this in words, it is one of the most stirring experiences which we can have. The ground under our feet seems to vanish. Everything which constituted our thoughts and feelings is surrendered, given up. But if we succeed in remaining steadfast, we shall be borne over a kind of abyss. This experience awakens a feeling which lived in us in a dormant state and which must now rise to the surface: it is the fear of the unknown.

The spiritual world is always present, but we do not know it, and at this moment we confront it as if it were a void. This gives rise to a feeling of fear. But if we proceed regularly along the spiritual path, we should not think that we are in any way endangered by this experience. It forms part of self-education, for we must acquire the strength to bear the sight of the spiritual world — we develop the strength and steadfastness enabling us to bear its sight. In ordinary life we are protected against it and we speak of a guardian of the threshold.

The fact that ordinarily we are not conscious of such things does not prove that they do not exist within the soul. The soul is a twofold being: within its depths it often presents an entirely different aspect from the one which we know. We may, for instance, hate a person and be conscious of this feeling, yet our hate may simply be the cloak of love and we daze ourselves because this love cannot come to full expression. Not only Faust, but every human being, has two souls.

A soul investigator may come across the following: In ordinary life the human being finds support and strength by checking the fear that lives in his subconsciousness. But a spiritual investigator cannot fail to see the fear which always lives in the soul's depths. He enters the spiritual world by overcoming this fear. If this fear rises to the surface without entering human consciousness, if it knocks at the door, as it were, and a person ignores it in spite of all, what takes place and what enables that person to overlook this feeling? He pushes down fear, as it were, by denying the existence of the spiritual world.” How Can We Gain Knowledge of the Supersensible Worlds?
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The City between the Loughs

It was the light which made the place. Reflecting off Belfast, the sea lough which it nestled in the crook of, and Strangford that ran as an inlet all the way up its arse, the air above, around and within the city, was suffused with water. There was water everywhere. On the inside of windows, dripping down the barks of trees, clinging to the wintery palings and railings, puddling in potholes on the roads. At night it gleamed, like an otter stealing it way across the muddy banks, its street lamps giving an orange oily glow to the streets and red brick walls... it felt like she was living in the idea of a furnace - except, it was wet. A lake on fire.

She loved the place, had grown to love it. Over the years, the edged of danger were blunted by exhaustion and long, weary negotiations. At first, it was all high dudgeon and honour and debts of blood and history paid for in Semtex and kidnappings and punishment beatings and loud roaring voices. Then, as time wore on, it went the way all wars went. People got very tired, if they weren't tired, they were bored, then they were fed up, and they were frustrated, then they were impatient, and then everyone ran out of money and the whole enterprise ran out of meaning... and then after 40 years, people forgot why they were fighting and dying and if they hadn't they more or less realised it wasn't working. They were killing each other, literally, each other. Neighbours, kith, kin, lovers, politicians, musicians, housewives, policemen, engineers, shopkeepers, bookmakers, gun runners... and then, like any other war, they decided, this was not working and decided to fight each other by talking.

The streets of Belfast became safer - in that you could pass a few days, weeks, months even without someone being gunned down or having their knees done in for a cause. The cause. As they became safer, in fact, it didn't take very long before the safe began, life returned to the place. The people of Belfast are indestructible. They don't care. You cannot frighten them. They have had fear for breakfast for a very long time.

Today she was having a croissant and coffee for breakfast. Cafe Connor was the one place that used to be open on a Sunday. When they first moved to Belfast, she would drive around on a Sunday morning, homesick for Singapore, where any number of places would be open at any time of the say serving any type of food. But Belfast in 2001 was devoid of anything other than the regular newsagent selling fags and the Sunday papers to those who couldn't sleep. She had her first son with her. He would wake at 6 am and she would be delirious with exhaustion and demented with boredom. The father was asleep, as he always was, and the baby was bouncing. I miss my mother, she whimpered... if this was Singapore, I'd jump straight into the car and drive over to Ma's. They would be awake. I would be there, talking with them. She never missed Singapore so much as when she first moved to Belfast.

So one day, driven to desperation, she put the baby and herself into the car, and drove out to look for something, anything, in this godforsaken place. It is hard to remember Belfast as it was back then. People were still putting things together. Buildings lay derelict, boarded over, forgotten. On them pigeons would perch and gaze with their belligerent, beady eyes. There were no cars on its slippery, grey streets. Everything was asleep, except for her, driving around looking for something, anything.

Then, one day, one Sunday, she saw it. A man was standing at the top of red sandstone stairs just across the museum. He stood there with a steaming bucket of water. Then he threw the water over the stairs to wash away the night's leavings. She didn't want to think about what that could be. Is it open? she wondered. She pulled up, alongside the cafe and saw, miraculously, it was! It was open. It was open, this cafe... was open. She turned off the engine, extracted the baby and cuddling him, walked up the stairs, into the cafe. And that was her for the next two years. Cafe Connor on a Sunday morning.

Cinnamon bun or cherry scone, with an Americano. A paper. But mostly, the baby kept her occupied otherwise. Strapped into his high chair, fat and shiny, beaming and drooling, he took to Cafe Connor, oblivious of how special it was. The only cafe open in all of Belfast on a Sunday morning.

And what they served was not shabby either. Handmade sausages and black pudding. Belgian waffles with crystal sugar. Maples syrup - real maple syrup, that with crispy gouts of bacon, became Oisin's favourite breakfast. The clean wooden benches and trestle tables and whitewashed walls with huge canvases in bold colours were an anachronistic 21st century come early. Cafes like these were a dime a dozen in Dublin where the Celtic Tiger was (unknown to itself seeing out it last dying roars), but here, in Belfast, it was the sign of things to come.

She came here on bright sunny Sundays, when the sun would fall through the high windows across the tables and warm her face. She came here on those flat, grey days which made the inside of this place the centre of the world. She came here on days when Oisin was now able to feed himself and use the crayons and colouring sheets he was given. She came here on days when the mornings were hard and she had, once again, fought with Peter.

Those were the days she went there.

But then, bit by bit, shop by shop, more and more cafes and bistros opened and Cafe Connor was no longer the only place open on a Sunday. Now if you wanted real coffee - real coffee made from real beans - you could get it anywhere. Even a garage. You could now go into a garage and coffee would be ground right there and then for you - and brewed instantly. It usually tasted awful and why did they bother, but you know, the principle was there. So she didn't have to go to Cafe Connor anymore. But it was still there, still opening at 9 am on a Sunday, still serving exquisite food. Still washing their stairs first thing in the morning.

In some ways, it had come full circle. These days shops close because on-line shopping have devastated the high street. Everywhere, what the Troubles didn't touch, Amazon has finished off. Even the cafes are now slowly shutting as takeaways and backstreet kitchens arise. As life withdraws from the tideline of reality, there it still was. Nowadays when she went in, she did not have to carry children, nor think up clever ways of entertaining them. Now they ate three times as much and chatted to her about everything.

She was beginning to feel old. Her hair now streaked through with white, and her eyes needing reading glasses. She couldn't remember simple things, words which came to her now drifting, bobbing about, washed out to sea by the wind and waves.

'Let's go for a walk,' she requested.
'Where to?' he asked.
'What about Belfast Lough?'

It was a day of pale gold, the sun already dipping low to cast long, streaking shadows. The boats in the marina behind the Odyssey bobbed and chinked softly. The flags flapped, making that sharp, smart sound you associated with the cleanliness of scrubbed decks. She saw this place being built. One disconnected building being placed beside each other. She remembered when they would drive to the end of the road and be able to scramble into the dry dock and walk in the cavernous space which used to house the Titanic. Now there was a rail around it and you had to pay money to go in.

Away and away, and far away. Somewhere there was another memory waiting for her in the future. When I stand here in another twenty years, if I am standing here, what would have happened, what would have been? Above the skies said nothing, and the waves sighed, here we lived and here we died. Here we are, witnesses for the place, this place, the city between the two lough.