Synchronicity

The forging of ego consciousness is connected with movement toward the North. The perpetual warmth of southern climates where humans live in metabolic warmth changes to isolation and introspection with the coming of the cold North. Winter-North increases death consciousness and that gate may be entered by earthly humanity or by archetypical humanity as shown by this fragment from Blake's Book of Thel:

"The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen. "

(Blake, William. The Book of Thel, copy F, pl. 8. The William Blake Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 13 November 1997 <http://www.blakearchive.org/>)

In Novalis's Fairy Tale the iron rod points to this ego development. The fiery will energy seeks autonomy of the ego. Homer's Odyssey, Book XIII contains an account of a gate that faces North(so the mortals are facing South when they enter) and a gate that faces South(so the Gods face North when they enter.) So the Northern gate seems to lead to a borderland between life and death that may be entered by mortal thought or by spiritual beings. It's certainly a place where a living human may encounter a spiritual being. In Homer's account it is at the shore(a borderland). Notice the olive tree, the bees, the wine(blood), and the weaving images:

"At the head of this harbour there is a large olive tree, and at no distance a fine overarching cavern sacred to the nymphs who are called Naiads. There are mixing-bowls within it and wine-jars of stone, and the bees hive there. Moreover, there are great looms of stone on which the nymphs weave their robes of sea purple- very curious to see- and at all times there is water within it. It has two entrances, one facing North by which mortals can go down into the cave, while the other comes from the South and is more mysterious; mortals cannot possibly get in by it, it is the way taken by the gods"-Homer's Odyssey, Book XIII

Rudolf Steiner associates the North with memory and a certain aspect of will. Directions on Earth correspond to spiritual archetypes. The East-West solar path is a material veil of spiritual motions of actual beings. Steiner goes on to state:

".....we go forth in sleep in the spiritual world in a direct line, not in the direction that goes from West to East, nor in the direction that goes from East to West.(ie we move on the North-South line..ed.)

If we realize this, then, as I have told you, when we vividly recall some memory, we must place spacial winter before our souls."--(Steiner, Rudolf. Mystery Centers. Lecture 3. Foundation for the Advancement of Arts and Lectures. 1989. Page 30.)

Steiner relates our experiences of day to East-West movement and our experience of the year to North-South movement intersecting with the E-W line. In the same lecture he states:

"But one can also experience the year. This is done by paying attention to the way in which the will works in us, and observing that it is relatively easy to bring the will to expression when we are really warm, whereas it is difficult to let the will stream through the body if we are very cold. Anyone who can experience in this way the relation between the will and the fact of being warm or cold will gradually be able to speak of a winter-will and a summer-will.

We find that the best expression of this will comes from the seasons. Let us observe, for example, the will that carries our thoughts out to the cosmos. They escape, as it were, out of the finger tips, and we feel that it is easy to develop the will.

If we stand before a tree, something at the top of the tree may give us pleasure; and if the will becomes warm in us our thoughts are carried to the top of the tree. Indeed they often go even to the stars, if in summer nights we feel endowed with this warm will.

On the other hand, if the will has cooled within us it is as though all our thoughts were carried in our heads, as if they could not penetrate into the arms and the legs; everything goes into the head....the head becomes warm through its own inner reaction and then develops thoughts."(Steiner, Rudolf. Mystery Centers. Lecture 3. Foundation for the Advancement of Arts and Lectures. 1989. Page 31.)

So summer-will pushes thoughts out into the expanses of the universe while winter-will brings the thoughts into our head. Steiner then gives this verse to describe Winter-Will:

"O, Cosmic Pictures!

Ye float down to me

From cosmic distances,

Ye strive to reach me,

Ye penetrate into

The thinking forces

Of my head."

It is just this winter-will that our apocalyptic writers use to bring the cosmic pictures down into their heads. The frozen land of memory and stasis works with the iron will to bring revelation to mankind.

E.C. Merry, in an essay about King Arthur (from From: ANTHROPOSOPHY, A Quarterly Review of Spiritual Science, No. 4. Christmas 1930 / Vol. 5. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Company) discusses the occult significance of the North in relation to the Arthurian mysteries:

"The name ‘Arthur’ has been the centre of endless discussion. It is said to be derived from Arth-Uthyr, the Great Bear; and many sayings link Arthur with the sacred North. We feel a spiritual reality concealed here, and can find its deep connections with cosmic Mysteries in the following way.


Every great period of civilisation is connected with the currents of the magnetism of the Earth. In Atlantis these currents flowed in a North-South direction. Speaking in the sense of occultism, this North-South influence is connected with the forces that built the human body. Without going into this question we can say with truth, that, as in the ancient spiritual consciousness the ‘North’ was the birth place of Time (or Saturn) and was the source of Light, so the human head is the ‘North’ of the body; it is born first into the physical world and into time out of the womb; it is the place of Intelligence, or ‘Light.’ From this ‘North’ streams the spiritual substance of the bodily nature, which is then filled with the activity of the earthly forces. On the other hand the South (and this was so also in certain states of historical evolution in wars and conflicts), played its part in the slow upbuilding of man, but as the source of all darkness and opposition. The ‘South’ of the human body is all that is carried in the blood (not the blood itself) as passions and purely bodily impulses—the mythical ‘Dragon.’ The Great Bear with its seven stars is the Watcher of the North, and the guardian of the secrets of Cronos. And such a picture as that of the sleeping Cronos conceals the reality of the ‘sleeping’ cosmic Mysteries of the beginnings of Earth evolution, the knowledge of which had to be lost to humanity for a time.


One of the most beautiful and the truest of all the legends is exquisitely told in Fiona Macleod’s Beyond the Blue Septentrions. The boy Arthur, dreaming on the hills at twilight, watching the stars “climb out of shadowy abysses,” saw in vision the splendid figure of his father Pendragon (the Dragon’s Head) who pointed to the constellation of the Bear as the place to which he must soon return. Arthur, closing his eyes, felt himself “ascend the invisible stairways of the sky” until he stood on the verge of Arth-Uthyr, the Great Bear. There he saw with spiritual sight—the ‘Light of the North’—a company of majestic figures seated at a circular abyss of darkness. Each of the seven lordly Kings wore a star upon his forehead, and these were the stars of that great constellation. Among them all he recognised himself as King of the seven Kings. And then a voice that “rose and fell through the eternal silences,” like a mighty ocean, proclaimed: “Comrades in God, the time has come when that which is great shall become small.”--(E.C. Merry, in an essay about King Arthur (from From: ANTHROPOSOPHY, A Quarterly Review of Spiritual Science, No. 4. Christmas 1930 / Vol. 5. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Company.)

Merry shows that the "ancient spiritual consciousness" superimposed earthly directions on the human body. Our head is associated with the North. The writer of the Apocalypse, in the same manner, superimposed the human body on the planet Earth and the solar system in the vision of the glorified Christ in Chapter 1: " And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength"

The Greek word for "glorified"(doxa) also points to a consciouness that merges with the Earthly and Planetary essences. To be glorified is to bear the "brightness of the stars". Christ's voice is the center of a creative wave that radiates through the formative forces represented by the Earth's great seas. The Earth is clothed with the garment of atmosphere from head to foot(North to South). The "golden girdle" is the Sun's path throught the tropics and the white hairs the ice caps of the North Pole.