In the Gardens of Asgard – Part V. the Vaenen, the Incorruptible Weavers and Stewards of the Threads of the Fate of Man

THE WAY OF THE GRAIL – SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS – August 31, 2020

Czech original: V Zahradách Ásgardu Část V. Vaéneové, Neúplatní Tkalci a Správci Vláken Osudu Člověka · cesta-gralu.cz

If we have already ascended through the several divisions of the gardens of the animistic circle of Asgard so high that we may behold the height of Valhalla, then we may now, as we look about us, recognise that in these highest gardens of Asgard, upon their very summit, there is no longer any ocean, but that here are gardens of surpassing beauty with snow-white temples of animistic austerity

These snow-white temples range themselves into circles which always spread out into distances beyond all seeing, while between these circles white clouds irradiated with light fill the space

There is here a circle where the exalted Aesir arise to their consciousness, who are the stewards of all the gardens of Asgard

The Aesir devote themselves with joyful devotion to all the activities which are connected with the administration of the gardens and of the happenings which take place within them

Of their most important activities, for the clarifying of the readers' conceptions of the greatness of the animistic working in the Subsequent Creation, we have already spoken in a basic survey in the preceding parts

To everyone who is inwardly a living thinker and works with sufficient mobility in his spirit there could come the recognition of pictures which link themselves one to another in the single descriptions and in the whole connections, so that they bring an ever more rounded survey of what the animistic circle in the Subsequent Creation really is

Whoever occupies himself but a little with the pictures mentioned may already behold before his gaze how this circle is filled with animistic life, how it is also spread out into the several planes, and how these planes work one with another for the quickening and the support of the ensuing parts of the materialities which join upon the circle of the animistic, which of itself is the connecting bridge between the Primordial Creation and the Subsequent Creation, which arose afterwards upon the entreaties of the primordially created spirits

The pictures are always chosen and set forth so that they lead only to a certain concentrated description of connections in which man can find his bearings and relate them in a certain measure to himself, for in the end the description is always so guided that the kind of working of the animistic servants which is described is finally directed down to this earth, which through his earthly body is now the most intelligible to man, and therefore it is needful that every picture should lead at last to those places in which man feels himself most at home, and he needs thus to comprehend the connections of the animistic working in relation to the earth

It is withal self-evident that in the planes described there is not only that working which is mentioned, but that every plane lives also for itself in happenings and rhythms which, however, would remain too far removed for earthman, so that he would not be able to lay hold upon the pictures of these happenings and to find in them the strengthening needful for him

The pictures would remain for him “hanging in space”, without comprehension of why the happening described in the animistic is mentioned at all, because for the world of men it is too strange and too far removed

Thus there run their course in the animistic happening many fulfilling activities and tasks which in their place are supremely important and needful, yet which for earthman are, and will still for a long time remain, beyond his grasp, because they do not fit into his manner of comprehension from the standpoint of a three-dimensional world and of his human earthly perceiving of time and space

The many-layeredness and the full value of the existence and the working of all the animistic beings in the gardens of Asgard is far more translucent, more mobile, more creative, and in experiencing incomparably richer, than that which earthly mankind calls life and experience here, in the erroneous supposition that there can be nothing more living than the life which this earthly world offers

It brings a smile, for even the ethereal worlds but a little lighter, where many human souls departed from this earth abide, are filled with a far higher degree of creative life of all who dwell and work in them

Against all the lighter happening in the Subsequent Creation earthly life appears dull and indolent, filled for the most part with struggle and exertion in things which from the animistic and the spiritual standpoint are not needful at all, but on the contrary are a hindrance to the development of the spirit, because they only draw off powers which, with the earnestness of the true knowledge of the meaning of human life, could be used manifold better

To this belong all kinds of sport, such as men pursue them today, most of the earthly endeavour which is called culture and art, and above all that which men call associational and party interests and political life, over all of which the media hold sway, determining the gravity of this or that event at any given time

These things are said to lead mankind to a more successful life and to help towards a more obliging mood in society, yet all this holds the inner being of man for the most part below, because the spirit does not find the right measure of personal responsibility and above all does not know the way which can be called right only when it follows harmony with the Laws of Creation, which contain within them the Will of God, knowable by man from the very beginning

Although this lies ever ready to man's hand, and it would suffice only that he should at last occupy himself with it in earnest, for the recognition of the right direction in life, yet man occupies himself rather with a thousand other trifles which he holds to be important and which he garlands with ribbons extolling their benefit to health, to culture and to the weight of the voice of the people

All this is seen from above as wholly superfluous and as poisoning the spirit, taking from him his powers upon his personal path of ascent, if he succumbs to it and lets himself be drawn down into these low material circles, beyond which in the end he does not see the true significance of his life

He is like a fly caught in an ingeniously woven spider's web, in which he thrashes about for the greater part of his life, which yet from his own standpoint he holds to be the full-valued experiencing of his earthly life

Withal he often does not realise at all that he is wholly deprived of freedom in his spiritual development, and that what he holds to be a full-valued earthly life is, from the standpoint of spiritual ripening, only a bare eking out of existence, indeed often a complete standstill upon the path

From early childhood, in his growing up and in adult maturity in earthly life, he is continually influenced and directed by influences which are bound only to this materiality, without granting the spirit room for that which is most precious, for the unfolding of a pure and harmonious mastery of the situations of life upon the personal plane, where all that is experienced is received and worked through so that through the intuitive perception of man it may become the radiant possession of his spirit

This unhappy condition prevailing upon the earth he realises only after he has stepped out of this earthly existence of his and, after a certain time spent in the new places of his existence, may call to mind the essence of his real path, which is always solely of the spiritual kind

Then he beholds in his earthly life many places which he looks back upon as wholly lost time, when in his former earthly present he convinced himself that this time was being lived in the best and rightest way, because the majority of the people around him did likewise

Only from a distance does he see what ignorance and spiritual indolence has become upon the earth the norm which determines the life of the majority of earthly men

But let us now return to those places which in their vibration afford great bliss, to the places where the animistic stands upon the boundary between Valhalla itself and the gardens of Asgard

Here are those circles mentioned, upon whose breadths beyond all seeing there arise to their consciousness animistic servants of the greatest importance for man

In the places of the snow-white buildings of the temples the Vaenen here come to their awakening, the direct servants of the Will of God, in the fulfilment of which they weave the threads of fate for all human spirits upon their path of development through the Subsequent Creation

Many of the readers know already that the human spirit comes to its consciousness upon the plane where the peace-filled animistic gardens, in which the feminine beings of the Alphar work, meet with the highest, most delicate gardens of the ethereal kind, which by their nature are the true soil for the rooting of the flower in which the unconscious germ of the human spirit lies wrapped in the primordial animistic cloak

In this place there comes about that point, so significant for the human spirit, in his own development

After the ripening of the bud of the flower of the spirit the blossom here unfolds, and in its lap there lies a child having a form close to that of an earthly new-born infant

The gloriously formed child, radiant with loveliness and beauty, is the manifestation of the awakening of the germ of the human spirit upon its path of development

After the opening of the bud such a spiritual child, in its animistic and also its most delicate ethereal covering, is carefully lifted out of the bud of the flower by the tender guardians of the Alphar

With the most fervent care it is borne into one of the gardens of the ethereal kind, and here it is laid in a cradle formed of a flower-cup, in one of the many gardens, of which there is here, in a land which is the complete likeness of a fairy tale, a great number

Lying here side by side with other spiritual children just awakened, the germ listens to the songs of the handmaidens of the Alphar, who pass among the tiny, charming souls and, amid glorious singing that grips the inmost being, watch over their development

When they see that one of the children is awakening more and more out of the sleep in which it still lay for some time, they take up the little soul and carry it a stretch further, where already from afar the joyful calling and laughter of children of the soul only a little larger may be heard

Here the tiny soul is provided with a little shift and is laid in the place prepared for it in one of the glorious arbours, in the gardens irradiated with light

Again the spiritual germ in the child is left for a time in blissful resting and ripening

Ripening, because it can already hear the voices and the merry calling of the other children

The sounds around the child are so alluring in their merry and joyful ringing that the young soul longs to know ever more of that which reaches it and which acquaints it with something as yet unknown to it, and which nevertheless in its content is supremely alluring to it

Ever more it longs to know, and to know more, of this merry ringing which streams towards it like a call to join in and to taste that which is the cause of so joyful a mood

It longs to be nearer and nearer to it

Then there awakens gradually in the soul an irresistible longing to share in this new and alluring thing which reaches it almost insistently and awakens in it with every further moment the appetite to know all of it

The laughter of souls only a very little older leads to a strengthening of the volition, and in its first volition the young soul becomes, out of an infant lying still, a child which longs for movement of its own

The little hands and feet move of themselves, driven by the longing to move to the place whence all this is sounding

But already there comes to this place one of the carers, man or woman, of whom there are here a great number, and in the flowing, harmonious movement with which they move in lightness among the arbours they are for the souls the helping mediators towards the fulfilment of the first longing

The young soul is lifted up and brought to the other souls dwelling here, who in joyful fellowship are playing upon a flowering meadow around one of the fully conscious animals dwelling here

These animals with kindliness let themselves be touched by the tiny hands of the children, and because they are truly mature they can tell, with a quiet voice, stories out of their long-past journeys and experiences

Scarcely, then, is the soul laid upon the soft carpet of flowers when after a while, urged on by its own inner volition, it raises itself, stands up and, trying small steps, walks at first slowly, only to run after a little while to the group of children nearest to it

As though it had always been able to run, it is at once able in joyful enthusiasm to join the other souls

Some souls carry within them a shyness and a certain bashfulness, others are ardently ready to discover and to try everything

Thus the souls divide into the more delicate ones, which from their beginning tended towards the kind of feminine working, and the more daring souls, which are enchanted by the stories telling of great heroic deeds, of courage and of the knightly protection of the weaker, and which bear within them the clear manifestations of masculine development

The soul which has just joined the others experiences in blissful joy so much that is new, which is for it at the same time the first tasting of its existence

Thus it goes on for a certain time, which here flows by as though it were not, for all is one great joyful game

Then from time to time there come to the little playing souls, who are ever tended by delicate women of youthful radiance and by men of fresh appearance, visitors who show themselves here in order to tell the little souls stories in which the ringing of the great spiritual life in Creation is contained

The pictures which are drawn in the enthralling narrations change themselves ever more into an urgent call to become such a one as the figures in the stories, or else to become such a one as those very ones who come to hand on these stories

The great virtues contained in these stories touch the vibration of the spiritual inner being of the listening souls and work upon them like an ever stronger call to further progress

In the young souls there ripens little by little a longing for those worlds which are first the place where their ever greater longing for the great experiences they beheld in the pictures of the stories can manifest itself

Thus the childlikeness of the souls forms itself ever more towards maturity, until at last it attains that form in which such a soul approaches in its appearance the earthly age of about ten years

Then there comes the important time of the transformation of the soul, which we wish here to describe, so that it may bring with it a greater recognition of connections the knowledge of which is needful for everyone

At this time there is born in the soul once more an irresistible volition to advance further

This inner tension is for the soul almost beyond controlling, and it would wish to hasten as swiftly as possible further into those places which offer the conditions of a more full-valued experiencing than the fairy-tale quality of the place in which it has hitherto spent its time of gradual ripening at the beginning of its existence

The joyfulness of the place, for all its glory and kindliness, is for the soul no longer sufficient, for in its gazing down into the worlds of the denser spheres it becomes ever more receptive to the vibration which rises to it from thence

It is the call of the distances of the gross material worlds, in which alone it is possible to experience the great stories of which it has hitherto heard the luminous spirits tell, who came among the young souls playing merrily upon the meadows of the friendly ethereal light

Thus the state of that soul ripens to the moment when it suddenly hears beside it the words: “Do you truly wish to step forth further upon your path?”

The soul looks upward

Then beside it it beholds the luminous figure of its spiritual guide, who is sent as a helper upon its paths

The mature spirit coming from the heights of paradise had in truth been bound with the soul already for a certain time, and in patience awaited this moment in order to appear at the right time beside the soul which by a wise volition had been entrusted to his care for loving guidance

The soul is enraptured by the greatness of this moment, and a vibration of whole-hearted trust towards this luminous protector standing at its side permeates it

It nods in assent and gives itself over wholly to the further development

At this moment, however, there is yet another happening of which the soul knows nothing, for its eyes cannot behold it

Beside its companion, helper and protector, who is of the spiritual kind and always comes from the planes of the luminous spiritual home, there stands yet another exalted and grave being, who belongs to the host of servants of a special mission

There stands here one of the Vaenen, an animistic servant who has received the task from the Light carefully to catch the threads of the volition of the young soul and to weave of them the yarn for the carpet of fate

He is the one who in incorruptibility, throughout the whole time of the wandering of the soul upon the paths of the Subsequent Creation, will be the mediator of the radiation of the Will of God towards its decisions

He is the mediator of the Holy Spirit, Who watches justly over all things and therefore also over the fate of this soul, and that upon all the steps of volition, down to the most delicate little step of radiation

For this purpose he bears within himself something added over and above the purely animistic radiation

His kind reaches with one part of itself higher, up into the Primordial Creation

To his animistic foundation in the temples of the animistic circle, upon the summit of the gardens of Asgard, there comes yet a radiation of a higher, angelically animistic kind, which springs from the stream that draws through the whole of Creation as the bearer of the Will of the Holy Spirit

This stream runs together in the hand of Parzival, Who sits upon the throne of judgment in the highest hall of the Castle of the Grail

Of this, however, there is no need to speak further here

It suffices us that this animistic servant belongs by his kind to the Vaenen, who are the weavers of the threads of fate of human volition upon all the paths through the Subsequent Creation

The original field of working of this exalted servant is above, at the flower which gave birth to the spiritual germ in its first covering of the ethereal kind

His radiation, however, accompanies the soul upon all its paths, and out of his great cloak there are born and separate themselves weavers who surround the soul everywhere upon all planes

Thus for every plane there is a sufficiency of weavers who work with exactitude and unswervingness for the fulfilment of fate, according to the kind of radiation reflecting the volition of man upon all his steps

The work of these small servants is therefore, with the highest consistency, to weave and to maintain the threads which are born of every, even the smallest, volition of the soul upon its paths

The consciousness of this animistic servant divides itself into the thousands of eyes and hands of the small weavers, who are born as they follow the soul into ever further steps of the materialities

They stand one beneath another like a whole army of workers, accompanying the soul watchfully on guard upon its path, and through their hands there passes the carpet of life which is woven out of the spiritual, the soul-like and the thought-volition, and also out of the earthly conduct of man

The Vaenen – that means, translated into earthly comprehension – the incorruptible weavers of all threads, whose work knows no halting for a single moment

They are always in the nearness of man and weave his smallest stirrings exactly as they weave the strongest and greatest decisions

They are with man in his outward glory and in his misery, in the moments when he works upon the widest field before other men, and in the moments when he is alone with himself

They work with the radiation around man, and their sight and their hands catch always solely that radiation which for them is decisive for the weaving of the further fate of man

Out of every outpouring of volition a yarn is woven into the whole carpet, and from it the Vaenen give directions to the Alphar, who thereafter guide the paths of the forms and happenings which await man upon his further way, whether this leads here upon the earth or in the further worlds of the more delicate planes

Only the most just perfection is contained in the work of the Vaenen and also of the Alphar, for nothing is woven in emptiness, but always and solely is everything prepared for the full value of experiencing

Whatever is still living in its radiation, that determines the path

But what has faded and died away in man vanishes from his path and is replaced by a new, strongest thread woven out of his volition, which at once determines a new direction

Thus there exists a countless number of kinds of spun threads and of forms fashioned from them, which one day await man

If he radiates out of himself a ray of new, strong volition, then his path changes at once, and all that was hitherto important moves into a secondary place, which must indeed be lived through, but which in its secondary rank is weakened, and the forms which take shape out of it are the weaker

All this holds good for the good as well as for the evil volition in man

Lukewarmness too is therein decisive, for in the end it lets experiences arise which often appear harsh to men, yet which in their rousing effect are blessed

The spiritual guide may behold in advance all that still awaits the one entrusted to his protection

Often he seeks to send to him, either directly or through mediators who in their maturity seem to be more intelligible to the soul, admonitions and warnings of that which draws near upon the path, which is woven with the highest justice by the Alphar under the direct pressure proceeding from the weavers, the Vaenen

Alas, the soul which long ago at the beginning of its path stood so strongly filled with the longing to walk the footpaths of great luminous stories often hangs entangled in the threads which it has formed through its ill volition, or even merely through a lukewarm living of life

Entangled, it does not hear the helping voices, nor does it observe in that which sets itself in its way, in the happenings which are brought to it, anything that would lead it to an earnest awakening, but on the contrary it only murmurs against its fate, which it looks upon as unjust and unkind

Far from the perceiving which could yet help it to recognise and to comprehend that in the great weaving of Creation it is precisely the Holy Spirit Who leads it to the comprehension that only good and pure volition and conduct is the way leading to the outcome of liberation and of ascent to the Light, it experiences all that comes to it as a great surprise for which it is almost never prepared, and therefore it laments and in anger sets itself against most of what befalls it

If, however, it were permitted but for a moment to behold the perfect, incorruptible work of the exalted animistic Vaenen, it would in that instant sink upon its knees and would beg forgiveness for all the moments in which it had cursed its fate

That is because it would be permitted to see how greatly it is helped upon its path, for the loving-kindness of God enables all that is heavy upon its path, if it be but in any way possible, to transform itself in its radiation into forms which can be redeemed symbolically

Thus the fervent will of man towards an enduring good volition transforms his further paths towards a lighter walking and a swifter hastening to the Light

The threads of the Vaenen do indeed remain made ready for experiencing, but the irradiation on the part of the enduring good volition of man makes their weakening possible, and thereby the Alphar can shape forms which are lived through only in a symbolic adjustment

The Vaenen are for man at first sight the stern, unyielding, incorruptible weavers of the Will of God in the Subsequent Creation

That is because their weaving is like the pillars which hold the whole edifice of Creation

Beside this there are the Alphar, who at an enduring volition of man may shape happenings and events for an experiencing which can be lightened to the joyful laying aside of all that still lies upon the path of man and does not permit him to ascend more freely to the Light

Everyone who occupies himself with this more deeply can find therein only the perfection of the Will of God, in which, beside Justice and Purity, there is also contained Love

Let it, however, be recalled here that what has just been mentioned holds good only for that man who has resolved to strive enduringly, with all his strength, towards the Light

That is, that he harbours within himself enduringly only pure, helping stirrings and thoughts towards other men and towards the whole world

Only in this attitude of the inner being can the helping principle of Love manifest itself in the threads of the supremely incorruptible Vaenen, servants of whom men have hitherto known almost nothing

Their service leads them to man, and they are, like a great army, around him upon all the steps of working, in order to weave and to work through all that arises in man in the small and in the great stirrings of his volition

However impersonal they are in their work, there is always awakened in them a certain joy at the knowledge that they may lead from man into the course of the great gearwork of justice threads which bear within them a pure and joyful radiance

Above all the smallest animistic weavers around man here upon the earth always have an unconcealed joy, which shows itself in the silvery gleam of their garments

In that moment their service is also accompanied by song and by the merry passing of the threads from one to another, upward into the heights of the Light

Would that men might at last find the true knowledge of their path through Creation