The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation

The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation: Leading to an Experience of the Christ Being – An Esoteric Study of the Festivals

In ancient times, humanity possessed innate knowledge of the spiritual foundations of existence. Such knowledge could be acquired by inwardly following the cycle of the year and its great seasonal festivals. However, that instinctive knowledge had to be lost before human beings could discover real individual freedom. Today, as Sergei O. Prokofieff demonstrates in this comprehensive work, “this knowledge must be found anew through the free, light-filled consciousness of the fully developed human personality.”

Tracing the spiritual path of the yearly cycle, Prokofieff penetrates to the deeper esoteric realities of the seven Christian festivals of Michaelmas, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and St John’s Tide. Basing his research on the work of the twentieth-century initiate Rudolf Steiner, he reveals how those festivals are spiritual facts that exist independently of religious traditions and cultural customs.

Working with the festivals in an esoteric way can provide a true path of initiation, ultimately enabling an experience of the being of the Earth, Christ. The journey of study through this book can thus lead the reader to an experience of the modern Christian-Rosicrucian path, along which “it is possible to take the first steps toward life in partnership with the course of cosmic existence.”

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword
Introduction:  The Living Being of the Year and Its Principal Festivals

1. The Festival of Michael as a Gate of Modern Initiation
2. The Mystery of Advent as the Mystery of the Nathan Soul
3. The Mystery of Christmas
4. From Epiphany to Easter
5. The Path from Advent to Easter through the Seven Mystery Virtues
6. The Mystery of Easter
7. The Mystery of Ascension
8. The Mystery of Pentecost
9. Easter, Ascension, and Whitsun
10. St. John’s-tide
11. The Path of Christ and the Path of Michael in the Cycle of the Year
12. The Modern Mysteries of the Etheric Christ

Appendices

About the Author

Sergei O. Prokofieff (1954-2014) was born in Moscow, where he studied fine arts and painting at the Moscow School of Art. At an early age he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and quickly realized that his life would be dedicated to the Christian path of esoteric knowledge. He wrote his first book, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, while living in Soviet Russia, and it was published in English in 1994. After the fall of Communism, he helped establish the Anthroposophical Society in Russia. In 2001, he became a member of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. More than 30 of his books have been translated into English. Sergei Prokofieff passed away in Dornach, Switzerland.

Simon Blaxland de Lange has for many years worked as an educator for people with special needs. He is also a prolific writer and translator and an amateur musician and gardener. Blaxland de Lange helped establish Pericles Translations and Research, Pericles Training and Work (for adults with special needs), and the Pericles Theatre Company. Together with Dr Vivian Law, he cofounded the Humanities Research Group in 1997 and the British group of the Humanities Section of the School of Spiritual Science in 1998. He met Owen Barfield in 1979, and has been a student of his work for the past thirty years.