Easter & the Resurrection of the Soul
"Christ is everywhere crucified in the lower nature. Where the lower nature conquers, all remains dead. The dead bodies of men lie about in the public places of cities. Those who overcome the lower nature and awaken the crucified Christ hear the trumpet of the seventh angel: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation XI, 15). “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament” (Revelation XI, 19). In the vision of these events the initiate sees renewed the old struggle between the lower and the higher natures. For everything the former neophyte had to go through must be repeated in one who follows the Christian path. Just as Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon, so now “the great dragon, that old serpent” (Revelation XII, 9) must be overcome. Woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it is not raised to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. In the Apocalypse it appears as the “old serpent”. From the remotest times the serpent had been the symbol of knowledge in all mystic wisdom. Man may be led astray by this serpent—knowledge—if he does not bring to life in himself the Son of God, who crushes the serpent’s head. “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation XII, 9). These words disclose the purpose of Christianity: a new kind of initiation. What had been attained in the Mysteries was to be attained in a new form. For in them, too, the serpent had to be overcome, but this was no longer to take place in the old way. The one primary Mystery, the Christian Mystery, was to replace the many Mysteries of antiquity. Jesus, in whom the Logos had been made flesh, was to become the initiator of the whole of humanity, and humanity was to be His own community of initiates. What was to take place was not a segregation of the elect but a linking together of all. As each grows up to it so does he become an initiate. The good tidings are announced to all, and he who has an ear to hear hastens to learn the secrets. The voice of the heart is to decide in each individual case. Not this person or that is to be introduced into the Mystery temples, but the word is to be spoken to all; and to one it will then appeal more strongly than to another."
Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact, IX. The Apocalypse of St. John, GA 8.