The New Mysteries: And the Wisdom of Christ

By Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant

"Christianity is not a matter of a religion or even a denomination; it is not a question of a particular culture. Christ is there for all humanity." (from the book)

In the old mystery cultures, individuals experienced themselves as "children" of the gods, or even as their instruments. According to Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, the birth of independent thinking did not arise until our present state of consciousness--the awareness of one's individual self. But who is this "I"?

Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant maintain that true self-knowledge is intimately related to knowledge of the central being of world evolution--Christ, the "I AM." Focusing on the being of Christ and on Christianity, the authors present a series of engaging lectures on the development of mystery wisdom today. Having given an overview of the history of the mysteries in their book Paths of the Christian Mysteries, the authors deepen and expand their study by drawing particular attention to the effect of the "Christ mysteries."

Some essential themes of this new volume include the transformation of conscience, the place of prayer and meditation, and the significance of sacrifice today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1902636740
• ISBN13: 9781902636740
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Temple Lodge Publishing
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 4.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Medieval and Modern Mysteries and the Spiritual Paths Connecting Them

This book is part of a trilogy by V. Sease and M. Schmidt-Brabant. I'm reviewing all three together here. The three titles are: 1--Paths of the Christian Mysteries: from Compostela to the New World; 2--The New Mysteries and the Wisdom of Christ; 3--Thinkers, Saints, Heretics: Spitirual Paths of the Middle Ages. The three books began as a sequence of three lecture courses given in Rome between 1997 and 2000 by the authors, two scholars from the Goetheanum in Switzerland who specialize in the spiritual research of Rudolf Steiner also known as "anthroposophy." The trilogy is rich in historical and esoteric insights. Complex and weighty in import, the lectures feel dramatic and inspiring to read. The authors' love for their topic and the respectful tone of their lecturing styles bind you to the historic moment being illuminated; you feel awakened to a certain intimacy with the events and relationships being presented. Ultimately you feel you are experiencing an imagination of the middle ages that has a karmic connection with your own era and perhaps your own biography. This is so whether you are sensing your own spiritual questing's relationship to the Compostela pilgrmages of Medieval times (in the first volume) or coming to an understanding--through the accounts of "the wisdom of Christ" in the middle book--that sacrifice is more truly related to love than to martyrdom. In the same updating spirit as the first two, the third volume offers arresting tales of "heretics" and "thinkers" who can now be seen, from a modern esoteric viewpoint, as the really "saintly" ones of earlier times, because now we are able to experience that the spiritual paths they were carving are the ones that today's esotericists are trying to find, walk, and extend. I think that the quiet confidence of the three books and the treasures of insight stored in each one of them will give readers, whether they are students of anthroposophy or not, profoundly valuable knowledge and support for understanding our own culture and living meaningfully in it. The masterly translation of the entire trilogy by Marguerite V. and Douglas E. Miller reads as though the books are in the language of the original.