Parzival and the Sons of the Widow
The C4th Persian teacher, Mani made a profound plea to the human soul to bring light into the darkness of evil, and not avoid it His followers, the Manicheans spread this word abroad and still exist today. The call was taken up by the Cathars, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Mani became known as “The Son of the Widow.” Why was he given this title?
Isis and Osiris are the Egyptian mythological expressions of the human Soul and Spirit. In the myth, Seth killed his brother Osiris and threw his body into the Nile. This tells how the dark in the awakening self overcame the spiritual wisdom of mankind. The Cosmic Wisdom once husbanded the human soul, but was taken from us, leaving Isis alone, widowed.
“The revelation from above, the guidance of the soul from above, is gradually being withdrawn, so that man is left to go his own way and become his own leader.” Says Steiner, in The Temple Legend. “The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide.”
This ‘’Light of Truth within (our) own soul’’ is the true Son of the Widow.
Hermes Trismegistus, also known as Thoth, the Ancient Egyptian founder of all esoteric seeking, was the first to take this title.
Elijah, the spiritual leader of the Hebrews, ‘lived in the upper room of the house of the widow.’ When the widow’s son died, Elijah brought him back to life through three days of prayer and prostration – myth-imagery for the growing importance of personal truth within Judaic thinking.
“Son of the Widow,” as a tile for Mani, recognizes him as a spiritual leader for the awakening of the whole of mankind. He is the one who teaches us to learn through our own human understanding, how to bring our light into the darkness of this life and to seek, in our own souls, for the truth we can find here, the love we can grow here.
When Parzival failed to ask Anfortas why he was suffering, it was fear of not obeying the old ways that held him back. Parzival had lost his father – his mother was widowed when he was tiny. Gurnemanz had taught him his father’s traditions, remnants of the Cosmic Wisdom. Yet Gurnemanz had not taught him how to listen to his own soul. – That journey takes the rest of the Epic. Eventually, through finding his dark-brother, (Fierfiz, in the image above) the power of listening to his own heart brings Parzival back to where he can ask the question.
“What is hurting you?” is still the question that draws us together in Christ’s name. “Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” As Mary Oliver puts it, in Wild Geese. Asking this question, listening for the answer that arises in another soul, puts the human journey at the centre. The widowed human soul seeks every avenue to reconnect with the Father before turning her full love upon the Son, but, when all learning, all journeys are done, this question is the final deed.
We discover that place where we can truly take an interest in, find compassion for, each other. The wisdom in your experience, in your suffering, awakens the wisdom in my own reflective-awareness. “Practice Spirit-Recollection – Thine own I comes to being in the I of the Father-God.” Says Steiner in the Foundation Stone Meditation.
This, all, lays the ground for what Steiner later describes as the Saturn Path. The whole of his work leads this way. The years of teaching wisdom in the Theosophical Society, followed by the years of writing directing and building in the Arts sphere of life, lead to re-founding the society, as the New Mysteries. This is the true mystery wisdom, that we seek the Christ, who appears where two or more are gathered. Steiner’s closest circle all seem to have followed this Way in the last years, yet very little description of that has survived in writing.
The wisdom of Anthroposophy, and the call to action survived, even through divisions in the society, but the true question, the very heart of our spiritual presence, got lost. Today the practice is re-emerging in a few spots around the world. To approach this path, we have to set aside all we have ‘learned of the Father’ and turn to the Son of the Widow within us. The Father becomes the ground from which we begin rather than a goal of itself. The goal is not to regain the father, but to become one with Him.
Here, in Devon, the chance to work with this ‘Path of the Parzival Question’ is a tender shoot that several local people are working on. Rosemary Channin’s Thursday evening Soul Calendar group is open to all. There is a weekend Saturn Path workshop with Tobias is in September, near Stroud. There will be one in Ireland soon, possibly even near Cork, in October.
