The Great Hibernian Mysteries
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Eleanor Merry, in her informed and inspiring book The Flaming Door (1962),
shares with us how Ireland has been regarded as a remarkable country.
She shares a legend that tells about Paradise and how “Lucifer dwells
there, and man was driven out into the world which is to be populated
by only fallen human beings.” But Ireland is not part of this world,
because it is an image put here by God of the ancient Paradise before
Lucifer entered it. It was at that time when the “image” of Paradise
was separated from the rest of the world and became Ireland, the legend
tells us. At this time Lucifer could enter the real Paradise and
Ireland became the place on Earth free from the effects and influence
of Lucifer. It is for this reason that the Irish possess certain
qualities of temperament not found anywhere else due to the peculiar
influences of the Irish earth.
We have learned from the work of Merry that people who inhabited the
lost continent of Atlantis during the last great glacial meltdown,
12,000 years ago, later migrated all over the world after the Atlantean
continent sank into the Atlantic Ocean. One area of the world survived
the great flood was Ireland. Through special training passed from the
Atlanteans to the early Irish monks they retained the ability to
perceive the elementals that created the nature kingdoms on earth. The
Hiberian initiates learned to work with the elementals and angels to
harness spiritual forces.
The Hibernian Mysteries As The Foundation Of Biodynamics by L.A. Rotheraine describes
Oracle Sanctuaries where ancient wise women and men were instructed in
the mysteries of creation by angelic teachers. The highest was that of
the Sun Christ Oracle. Rotheraine references Rudolf Steiner’s writings
regarding the Sun Oracle as the most sublime of all the ancient
Oracles, encompassing the Christ Mystery and all other oracles. The
wisdom and mystery of the Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus and
Vulcan oracles were intact in the Christ (Sun/Son) Oracle. Mr.
Rotheraine describes the spiritual etheric force that permeated the
earth at the time of the last great mystery schools and Hibernia as
much more pure and alive than today. Alas, those forces were on the
wane. As the Mysteries declined, so did the life force of the planet.
It requires a spiritually conscious humanity dedicated to resurrecting
the aging earth to create a similar etheric force today. The angelic
hierarchies foresaw the consequences of the deterioration of the
etheric force and prepared a group of souls to work jointly to
co-create a new reality. Today we have organic farmers doing the work
of ancient angels of the Hibernian mysteries.
Rudolf Steiner, in his book, Christianity As A Mystical Fact: The Essence Of Christianity (1972)
writes that Christ and Jesus must be brought into relationship with
each other. Divinity was taken from the human personality by church
dogma and must be recovered in one way or another. “We must find it
again through Jesus within,” he encourages, explaining that the mystic
was experiencing divinity within and through his own human personality.
This “mystical attitude of soul” is only possible “when the soul finds
the higher spiritual element in itself and its spiritual eye is opened
so that the light issuing from the Christ in Jesus falls upon it.” This
union of the soul with its highest powers is also the union with the
historical Christ. Mysticism, he explains, is a direct feeling and
experience of the divine within the human soul. In reality it was only
possible for a man or woman to find his/her own divine part; but this is a human-divine part, that is, a divine part that is at a certain stage of development.
The ancient mystic, Steiner informs us, did not wish to recognize a
perfect God, but rather wished to experience the divine life. Wishing
to become divine within himself, he does not strive for an external
relationship to the Godhead. The Christian mystic rather seeks to
behold divinity within oneself, but they must look to the historical
Christ as his eyes do to the sun; just as the physical eye says to
itself, the sun allows me to see what I have power to see, so does the
Christian mystic say to himself, “I will intensify my innermost being
in the direction of divine vision, and the light which makes such
vision possible is given through the Christ who has appeared. He is,
and through this I am able to rise to the highest within myself.” In
this the Christian mystics of the ancient Mysteries were different from
future mystics to come.