The following is the text of a talk I gave as part of the Anthroposophical Society in Sussex’s celebration of the St John Festival, held at Emerson College on Sunday 21st June 2026.
We are now at the Summer Solstice, that time of the year when in the Northern Hemisphere we have our longest day and shortest night, and when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky. This is also the time when people around the world celebrate the birthday of John the Baptist. The festival of John the Baptist is held approximately six months before Christmas, since John, the Herald of Christ, was born about six months before Jesus.
In this talk, we will be looking together at the Mystery of John, a wisdom impulse which has been with us since before recorded history and which has continued to evolve right up into our present momentous times. Throughout it all, the John presence has accompanied us and is still with us today. Later on, I’d like to look at how that may be manifesting in our world right now.
The festival we are celebrating today is dedicated to one particular aspect of John, the life of John the Baptist. And I’m particularly struck by contrasts and similarities between the birth circumstances of John the Baptist and those of Jesus of Nazareth, as for example they were described in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
John’s parents were both aged, certainly older than is usual for first-time parents. John’s mother was Elizabeth, who had been unable to have children; and his father was Zechariah, an elderly priest. Luke tells us that “they were both upright people in the sight of God, not failing to keep all the commandments and regulations of the Lord; but they had no children because Elizabeth was barren and they were both advanced in age.”
One day while Zechariah was performing his priestly duties within the temple, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and said: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your request has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall give him the name John. You will have joy and great happiness and many will rejoice at his birth, as he will be great in the sight of the Lord.”
Zechariah was amazed by this, saying to the angel: “How can this be, as I myself am an old man and my wife is advanced in age?” But this was not well received by the angel, who said: “I am Gabriel who stand in the presence of God. I was sent out to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But see – now you will be silenced and not have the power to speak until this happens, because you did not believe my words – which will be fulfilled in their season.”
And that is what happened. Elizabeth did indeed become pregnant and Zechariah remained unable to speak until the birth of their child. Then in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel went to the town of Nazareth in Galilee and spoke with a young woman, Mary, who was promised in marriage to a man whose name was Joseph. He said: “Do not be afraid, Mary, because you have found favour with God – and see, you will conceive and bear a son to whom you should give the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Unsurprisingly, Mary was perturbed by this and said to the angel: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” She meant by this, of course, that she was still a virgin.
Unlike in the case of poor Zechariah, who had been punished for disbelieving the angel’s word, Gabriel reassured Mary by saying: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you. Therefore, the child who will be born will be called holy Son of God. And see, your cousin Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age and this is her sixth month, although she was considered barren; because nothing which he says will be impossible for God.”
A little while later, Mary, who was by now newly pregnant, visited her cousin Elizabeth in Judea, who had been pregnant for six months. When Mary greeted her, the unborn baby made tremendous movements in Elizabeth’s womb and Elizabeth said: “When the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” It was as though John in Elizabeth’s womb was overjoyed by proximity to the Jesus embryo within Mary.
Mary then stayed with Elizabeth and Zechariah for three months before returning home. Whether this was before or after the birth of John is not clear, but one would like to think that Mary was present at the birth in order to help her cousin. But Luke does make it clear that all the neighbours and family members expected the baby boy, in accordance with tradition, to be named Zechariah after his father. Elizabeth, however, said: “No – he must be called John.” And so they then asked the mute Zechariah about the name of his son. Zechariah called for a writing tablet and to everyone’s astonishment, wrote: “His name is John.” And Luke says: “Instantly, Zechariah’s mouth was opened and when his tongue was set free, he spoke in praise of God.”
From Luke’s account, one can begin to see the deep connections between John and Jesus and the divine forces already at work in them. But inevitably, questions arise. For example, was the birth of John also miraculous, arising in this case from divinely ordained ‘immaculate conception’ rather than normal sexual procreation? And what should we understand by the terms ‘immaculate conception’ and ‘virgin birth’ anyway? Rudolf Steiner spoke about the virgin birth, which he interpreted not as a physical, biological event, but as a profound spiritual, esoteric reality. He taught that it represents the purification of the human soul and the preparation of a specialized physical vessel for the incarnation of the Christ Being. The focus in anthroposophy is less on the apparent biological impossibility of virgin birth and more on the descent of the Divine Word, the Logos, into the purified vessel, representing a new type of birth into the human sphere.
More questions arise: did Joseph and Mary make love and conceive a child before Mary set off to visit her cousin; or did Zechariah and Elizabeth, aged though they both were, still maintain a sexual relationship, which led through divine grace to the conception of John? I don’t think so. Like much else in the Mystery of John, these are matters which are not easy to explain with our everyday understanding. They require us to open ourselves to new concepts of what might be possible. When discussing this with a dear friend in the Christian Community, she said that we are all born of the spirit and each of us has a star. For most of us, that star is an individuality, moving from life to life. For a few people, especially those who have a special destiny within a particular nation, such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa or Winston Churchill in this country, this star might also be the folk spirit of that nation. For Jesus of Nazareth, the star was the Holy Spirit, because his destiny was for the whole of mankind. And as the angel Gabriel told Mary, with God nothing shall be impossible.
Not only were Mary and Elizabeth cousins but Rudolf Steiner has set out the extraordinary spiritual relationship between Jesus and John. John was an old soul who carried the power and spirit of the prophet Elijah of the Old Testament, he who preached the Law of Moses. Steiner points out that: “We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah.” This is confirmed in the Gospel of Luke (1.17) and is also found in the Gospel of Matthew (11.11-14) where Jesus says: “Certainly I say to you there has not risen up among those born of women anyone greater than John the Baptist (…) because all the prophets and the Law prophesied the coming of John – and if you are willing to receive him, he is Elijah who is about to come.”
With this spirit and power of Elijah as part of his soul lineage, John was well-equipped not only to preach about the old Law of Moses but also to renew old teachings so as to prepare a new path of human evolution. And Steiner indicates that John even carried the message of the Buddha, which had originally streamed forth through Elijah. In Lecture 6 of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture cycle (GA 114) on The Gospel of St Luke, he says: “From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body.”
And Steiner goes on to say: “There we have a real indication of the unity of religions! We must look for each religion at the right point in the evolution of humanity and seek for what is truly alive in it, not what is dead—for everything continues to develop.”
So we can begin to see that the St John festival commemorates not only the Baptist but also a powerful Being with a long history through all ages of influencing human evolution and of restating spiritual truths to meet the changing needs of humanity.
John baptised with water, the water which purifies and cleanses the psyche, the soul, with its accumulation of karma. He said that he was the forerunner of Christ, who would baptise with fire, the fire of divine love and with the Holy Spirit. And it was of course John the Baptist who facilitated the descent of the Christ into Jesus through his baptism at the river Jordan. Baptism at that time was not a gentle sprinkling of water on the baby’s head but was instead a full immersion under water for a period long enough to provoke a near-death experience in some of those undergoing it. For the person who was baptised, being submerged and held under water by John could result in a separation of the etheric from the physical body. Rudolf Steiner described it:
“The disciple was submerged in water, resulting in a certain separation of the etheric from the physical body; (…) Even in everyday existence it may happen that when a man is in danger of drowning, or sustains a violent shock, a tableau of his life hitherto appears before him. This is because something that otherwise takes place only after death, occurs momentarily: the etheric body is lifted out of the physical body and is freed from its power. This happened to most of those who were baptized by John, and in a very special way to (…) Jesus. His etheric body was drawn out—and during that moment the sublime Being we call the Christ descended into his body.” (GA 114, lecture 7)
Here Steiner makes a clear distinction between the Christ Being, a cosmic divinity from the spiritual Sun, and Jesus of Nazareth, a human being. The Christ Being had always existed in the highest spiritual spheres and had not previously been physically connected with the Earth’s evolution, though Steiner has said in various lectures there had been what he calls ‘ensoulment’ of the Christ in earlier stages of the Earth. But in this one stupendous event of two thousand years ago, the Christ Being descended to Earth and, at the baptism in the river Jordan, united with the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. This incorporation lasted for three years, culminating in Christ’s death on the cross, which anthroposophy calls the “turning point of time”. Steiner’s spiritual research had led him into the conviction that this was the most significant and important event that has ever happened in the whole history of humanity.
Why had it been necessary for this to happen? In the times before the incorporation of Christ into the being of Jesus of Nazareth, human consciousness had been falling too deeply into material, physical reality, losing its connection to the spirit. Is that not similar to the situation in our own times? And as an aside, do you not sense that an equally significant change is on its way to meet our own overwhelming need? Back then, Christ brought the impulse of unconditional, all-pervasive cosmic love down to Earth, together with the force that allowed humanity to develop individual “I” or ego-consciousness, giving human beings the power of free will. Ever since the crucifixion on the hill of Golgotha, this Christ force of love has united with the Earth and is today present in the spiritual environment of every human being, regardless of religion or non-belief.
But contrary to the expectations of many Christians, Jesus Christ will not be returning in a physical body – because He is already here. Rudolf Steiner tells us that the incorporation of Christ into the human body of Jesus was a once and forever event and will not happen again. Instead, the Christ, since the 1930s, has been present in the etheric realm of the Earth, and people will increasingly be able to experience the living presence of Christ through a new kind of spiritual clairvoyance. In a gathering like this one, I think it possible, even likely, that there are several people who have already had a meeting with Christ in the etheric. I would love to hear at some stage from anyone who has had such an experience. Steiner compared this phenomenon to the vision of Paul on the road to Damascus. He stated that more people will naturally develop the inner faculties required to perceive Christ etherically without needing physical proof. This was possible from 1930 onwards and will remain so for the next three millennia, until about the year 5,000 A.D. by which time a sufficient number of people will no longer need the Gospels, because they will have met the Christ in their own souls. So for those of us, like me, who have not yet had this experience, we only have up to 3000 years and several lifetimes to wait!
When we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist at the Summer solstice, one of the things we are doing is recognising the beginning of the descent of Christ from the Sun to the Earth. After the Summer solstice, the Sun’s light begins to decrease and the days slowly become shorter, until we reach the shortest day at the Winter solstice. As a reflection of this process, John the Baptist says in the Gospel of John (3.30), speaking about Jesus Christ: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” As the Christ entered the 30-year old physical form of Jesus of Nazareth at the baptism in the Jordan, there were just three years to go before his crucifixion on Golgotha – but John the Baptist was not present to witness that event, because in the meantime (probably in the years 28-29 AD) he had been arrested and sentenced to death by beheading. John’s head was then served on a silver platter to Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee under the Roman Empire.
And this is where the Mystery of John becomes deeper. There is a constant evolution in the Mystery of John in the direction of universal love. This was pointed out by Rudolf Steiner, in that extraordinarily moving final lecture that he was able to give on 28th September 1924 before being overwhelmed by the illness that was to lead to his death the following year.
Steiner’s illness prevented him from completing what he had intended to say in that lecture. As Marie Steiner put it, “He did not get as far as he had originally intended with the lecture. He gave us the first part of the Mystery of Lazarus; at the time he not only told me but later wrote on the cover of the first postscript: ‘Do not pass this on until I have given the second part.’ It was then wrested from him anyway, like so many things. Now he will no longer give us this second part. It will be left to our powers of understanding to distinguish the right thing between the secrets of incarnation and incorporation, the crossings of the lines of individuality.”
What Marie Steiner was referring to here were the evolutionary links, what one might call the lineage of John, which was traced by Rudolf Steiner from Elijah right back to Adam Kadmon (the primordial thought of God in terms of the human being) and then forward to John the Baptist; and after the death of John the Baptist it passed to Lazarus who, after he is raised from the dead by Christ, became John, ‘the disciple whom Christ loved,’ and subsequently John the Evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John, the three epistles and the Book of Revelation. Steiner then brings the story further forward, linking the John being to incarnations of the artist Raphael and the poet Novalis. These are difficult ideas to get our heads around, and to help with this, we should try to remember the words of Marie Steiner, just quoted: “It will be left to our powers of understanding to distinguish the right thing between the secrets of incarnation and incorporation, the crossings of the lines of individuality.”
This is part of the Mystery of John, which as we have seen, requires us to expand our understanding. But there is a universality about this mystery, recognised through many spiritual streams. We know, for example, that John the Baptist is revered within Islam, where he is known as Prophet Yahya ibn Zakariya, who heralded the coming of Isa (Jesus). John is also recognised as a prophet within the Baha’i faith and the Druze faith, as well as within Mandaeism, which is a baptismal faith practised in southern Iran and Iraq; for Mandaeans, he is considered the final and most vital prophet. Within more recent spiritual streams, such as White Eagle Lodge, John is a towering figure whose emblem is the white eagle; and in the Findhorn Foundation, their joint leader David Spangler wrote a book called Conversations with John, a being whom he also knew as Limitless Love and Truth.
We have seen that John is a powerful Being with a long history of influencing human evolution. How do we see the Mystery of John manifesting in our present time? I would like here to quote from a talk I gave at last year’s MysTech online conference, which was on the theme of ‘Facing the Incarnation of Ahriman’. It seems to me that in our time there are three processes going on simultaneously, which in my mind I associate with the evolving John and Michael impulses.
The first process is that we are coming to the end of the old path of development which, in the West at least, brought widespread prosperity and progress; but which also increasingly led us to materialism, selfishness, greed and disconnection from the environment and the spiritual world, and hence to the multiple crises facing us. It is the breaking-down of this first process which we tend to see reflected in our news media. This old developmental stage made us become who we are today: independent personalities with an I and self-consciousness. But now that humanity has accomplished this developmental stage, the old path is breaking up and is slowly coming to an end amidst chaos and confusion, which increases the fear and uncertainty felt by so many people.
The second process is that a new way of being human is seeking to be born, as the old is breaking down all around us. This is occurring as people ask themselves questions on their life paths, search for answers, go through processes of change and, as a result, perceive, think, and do things differently. This new kind of consciousness, arising as it does from inner transformation, is happening everywhere and can be recognised worldwide. It is leading to the emergence of a new culture in which people connect to their feelings, think about what they believe, make conscious choices, know what values they stand for, and consciously interact and cooperate with other people and with nature.
The third process is about building these new ways of being human. Instead of an attitude of competition and rivalry, opposing and fighting each other, people are increasingly seeking connection and cooperation. Instead of blindly obeying an authority outside our self, we would rather trust our own authority, our own inner knowing. This is accompanied by a shift of perception from separateness to wholeness – the recognition that we are connected to the greater whole in all aspects of life and reality, our humanity, the earth, the cosmos, everything that lives. There is an increasing realisation that we are one – and that everyone and everything is dependent on everyone and everything else.
One could regard these three processes as symptomatic of a much bigger change in human evolution, a change which seems to me to be a result of the working together of the John and Michael impulses.
One might also say that nations, governments and individuals, who are still stuck on the old path of development, are now beginning to reap their karma, which after years of cruelty, injustice, selfishness and greed leads inevitably to their destruction. As Rudolf Steiner told us in a lecture given in Dornach on 19th November 1917, “it is humanity’s task in this period to come to grips with evil as an impulse in the evolution of the world”. And we have certainly had all-too-frequent opportunities in this present age to observe the operation of evil in our world: the last 150 years have been in many ways the worst period for human beings in the whole of history; and my own sense is that this will come to a culmination between the years 2030 to 2033.
But we can also see that, underneath all the chaos and confusion, the evolutionary John process is in operation. During our time it is not taking place through the actions and teachings of singular inspired leaders but instead it shows itself through countless acts of inspired collaboration, kindness and community building, involving millions of people. This reminds me of what the Bible calls, in one of the parables of Jesus, the separation of the sheep and the goats. This takes place through a mysterious process of grace, in which the souls of those who are attuned to what is seeking to be born are overshadowed and filled by angelic forces, whose mission it is to bring together the human souls who are united with Christ; while the more goatlike among us are oblivious to this and carry on with bombing, wars and torture, abuse, greed, selfishness, corruption and power games.
The effect of this renewed John impulse is seen in the myriad initiatives of many inspirational people who are manifesting newer and kinder ways of being for how we live on Earth together. We are fortunate to see several examples of this in our own locality, such as here on the Emerson campus with the creation of the Ashdown Garden School for children with learning disabilities; or again, the emphasis on biodynamics and care for the soil, plants and animals both here and in our neighbouring farms; or again, the Christ-filled loving care given to vulnerable people at Nutley Hall; or slightly further afield, the healthcare given to a severely deprived community in East Brighton by the Wellsbourne Healthcare initiative. As it happens, these are all inspired by anthroposophy but I don’t single them out because of that, but because they are part of that much wider phenomenon I’ve just described.
What lies behind this phenomenon is surely the same impulse that Rudolf Steiner referred to in his final lecture as the Michael Thought bearing the Christ-word to human beings. If you look carefully and closely, particularly beyond our normal news media, you will find many, many inspiring shoots of new growth. There are what one might call Michaelic and John-inspired initiatives and projects emerging all over the world, most of them not arising out of anthroposophy. Our new world is being born, quietly and without fanfare, but it is on its way. It will be messy and confusing for quite a while yet as those unable or unwilling to leave the old path will rage, fight and storm against what is coming – but the final outcome is assured.
I’d like to finish with a prayer:
May all those souls being forced out of incarnation by man’s inhumanity to man find true peace and healing in the spiritual world; may their persecutors find access within their hearts to the compassionate love of Christ; and may we all find the strength and courage to take up the renewed John and Michael impulses which are flooding in; so that, as a world community, we can love one another and all life on Earth as fully as possible.
And so be it; and so be it; and so be it.
Thank you for listening.
anthropopper 