Kees Zoeteman

Seals play an important role in the Apocalypse. One manifestation of this is that the epoch that follows the current Post-Atlantean epoch is called the Seal epoch. In our daily lives, we know seals as stamp impressions in beeswax or sealing varnish. They are supposed to guarantee the authenticity of a document and provide proof that, for example, an envelope has not been opened and resealed unauthorized. A seal also shows by the image of the mark the person or authority which applied the seal. In the Apocalypse, the meaning of sealing is related to this habit, but at the same time different. It is not about tangible seals but about spiritual seals. Such seals carry a promise that something developed as a soul property at a particular time will come to fruition in the future. With this, the application of a seal has something magical. It is an ability to bring about something in the future, when opened.     

The Apocalypse presents essentially two situations in which sealing comes into play:

1.The book on the lap of the One seated on the throne, which is sealed with seven seals (fragment 12);

2.The seal of the living God pressed on the forehead of 144,000 servants by the angel of the rising sun, after the opening of the sixth seal of the book (fragment 19).

In addition, there is another, but corrupt, form of sealing of which the beast rising from the earth avails itself. This involves a mark that people themselves must place in their right hand or on their forehead in order to be entitled to trade (fragment 35). Clearly, this sealing is of a different order. We will explore these three forms of seals or marks in more detail below.

Finally, spiritually speaking, there are also so-called ‘great seals’ that summarize the Apocalypse as a whole, beginning with the vision of the Son of Man and ending with the New Jerusalem. These great seals will not be discussed here. See, for more details for example, the Blog ‘Who is the John who wrote the Apocalypse’.

The message of the sealed book

The book on the lap of the One seated on the throne is a scroll sealed with seven seals. The book contains God’s plan for world development and reveals the meaning of history. The book is a book of life in which the main events of the successive cultural periods in the next Seal epoch are described.

In ancient times, people often compared the heavens and the stars, the macrocosm, to an opened scroll. The book, rolled together and sealed, stood for the microcosm, man (Schult, p.103). Before the Fall, man rested in God and the cosmos rested in man. All the spheres of the cosmos were open to man. Then, man was still a heavenly man, an astral man: Adam Kadmon. The book was not yet sealed.

Androgynous Adam Kadmon (https://anthrowiki.at/Datei:Adam_Kadmon_-_Androgyne.jpg)

But because of the Fall, man lost his cosmic consciousness, upon which the book of heaven was rolled up and sealed sevenfold. All seven realms in heaven now became inaccessible to man. When man regains a lively connection with his true primal idea, man-in-God, man can return to the cosmos (Schult, p.103). However, the only one who can open these seals is the Lion of Judah, the Lamb, the Messiah. The promise is that he can open our eyes. By placing the acquired self-awareness in service of love-forces flowing from Christ, new spiritual organs of perception will be opened in us and we can regain access to the world of light as self-aware beings. It is up to us to connect with this Christ impulse, through which the book will open its content to us.

The seven seals of the book

Sealing must be read here as the imprinting during the present Post-Atlantean epoch in the astral body of man of a property of the soul, that will be imprinted in physical reality in the next Seal epoch. Each seal of the book shows which attribute is laid down in a cultural period of the Post-Atlantean epoch and how it becomes visible in the corresponding cultural period of the following Seal epoch.

In the explanation of the text fragments on the seven seals (nos. 13 to 21), it is indicated in more detail which characteristics of the Post-Atlantean epoch emerge in the Seal epoch. A summary is given in the table below for the first five seals.

The desire for unity with the spiritual world, dominant in the Old-Indian cultural period to which Ephesus refers, becomes visible, after opening of the first seal, in the rider on the white horse who, still untouched by evil, enters the world to overcome it. When the second seal, related to Smyrna, is opened, the struggle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, between light and darkness, dominating the Old-Persian cultural period, translates into the rider on the red horse with the sword, waging for war. With the rise of science and fair trade in the Egyptian-Babylonian cultural period, represented by Pergamon, the calculating mind, shown in the black horse with the scales, gains a place in society that becomes dominant in the third period of the Seal epoch. In the fourth period of the Seal epoch, the pale horse, followed by Death and Hell, is a sign of how our intelligence can become completely captive to materialism. The fifth seal shows the martyrs who then rise from the cultural period of Sardis and who receive the promise of a white garment, which is the result of a purified astral body. They are the forerunners who, together with those sealed at the forehead during the culture period of  Philadelphia, complete the number of the 144,000 in the sixth period of the Seal epoch. They will be the pillars of the temple that rises in heaven when physical earth is dissolving. When the sixth seal is opened, the Earth will reunite with the etheric Moon and humanity will transition from wearing a physical body, as his lowest form of manifestation, to an ether body. This ether body is referred to as the white robe of the 144,000 chosen ones. The reunion with the Moon coincides with the moment when evil reaches its peak on Earth (GA 94, p.125). The opening of the seventh seal leads to silence in heaven and the promise of sitting with Christ on the throne of the Father god.     

At the end of the Seal epoch, the physical world is dissolved, and for those wearing the white robe, reincarnation will also cease (GA 93, p.25), as will sexuality (GA 53, p.304). What began in the Lemurian epoch with man’s descent into a physical body and the separation of Earth and Moon, will come to an end. After the Seal epoch, the Trumpet epoch will commence and with it the symbolic entry into the sanctuary of the temple. At the end of the Trumpet epoch, Earth and Sun will unite again at the astral level. In the Seal epoch, imagination is developing in human consciousness and the Holy Spirit, the ability to find with our thinking the truth, is given to man. During the subsequent Trumpet epoch man will receive the faculty of inspiration, while learning to act based on individual moral choices as a result of the opening up to the love flowing from the Christ.

Sealing on the forehead

An important other meaning in the Apocalypse of sealing is the application of the seal of the living God on the forehead of those who have purified their astral bodies and wear a white garment in the sixth period of the Seal epoch. At the moment four luciferic angels stand ready on the four corners of the earth to damage the earth and the sea and the trees with storm winds, they are commanded by the angel of the rising sun to wait until the sealing of the 144,000 is completed.

The seal on the forehead means that they bear on their foreheads the name of Jesus Christ, because they look up to him. In the New Testament, sealing is often used in the sense of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as visible in the tongues of fire on the heads of the apostles at Pentecost. The sealed receive the seal of the Holy Spirit, which means that they take in Manas, the purified astral body. The transformed part of the astral body is also referred to as Holy Spirit, which parallels the term Manas (GA 96, p.250ff). The Holy Spirit was present in Lemurian times outside of humanity in the form of a bird, representing the common self-consciousness of mankind. From this the dove emerged as the symbol for the Holy Spirit (GA 100, p.249). When, at the end of the Seal epoch, human consciousnesses come together again and egos are cast off, the Holy Spirit will reappear as the commonality of the now conscious humanity (GA 96, p.230ff).

What was hidden in the heart of man becomes externally visible on their foreheads upon opening the sixth seal of the book. After the opening of the sixth seal, the number of 144,000, representing the whole of humanity, has become complete. The sealed ones are those in which the essence, Manas, is preserved. Manas is no longer personal. Those who have received the seal of the living God on their foreheads are immune to the wrath of the luciferic and ahrimanic demons. In fragment 36, these sealed ones reappear as the 144,000 who arrive at Mount Zion with the names of the Lamb and that of his Father written on their foreheads. They have been ransomed from earthbound bondage. ‘In their mouth is found no guile, and without blemish are they.’ They reign, as fragment 53 indicates, with the Christ for 1,000 years.

Incidentally, we must not take these numbers, such as 1,000 and 144,000, literally but symbolically. The number 1,000 indicates having gone through three great rounds of time. And 144,000 indicates that innumerable human souls have completed the ascent of their spiritual development and have overcome their separateness in individual bodies and groups (see also GA 104a: p.126).

The Bible book Acts of the Apostles describes how the outpouring of the Holy Spirit can also be the result of laying on of hands (Acts 19:6-7). This indicates that the sealing, the partaking of the Holy Spirit, can also take the form of a practical experience in our lives. 

Third Eye

In Hinduism, the dot on the forehead, the “bindi,” is a traditional decoration that symbolizes the third eye, the forehead chakra, or ajna, the two-leafed lotus flower. The bindi is still common among Hindu women and serves as protection for a woman and her husband from evil.

Hindu woman with bindi

The seal on the forehead is related to the third eye, that forms one of the seven chakras of the astral body.

The third eye is put into action in modern times when the consciousness soul is transformed into the imaginative consciousness, creating clairvoyance according to the modern Rosicrucian schooling path. The two wings or blades of the forehead chakra, when awakened, first probe the astral environment. When they imprint what they experience in the process into the ether body, conscious astral clairvoyance lights up (GA 115, p.49-54).      

Ureaus serpent on forehead of pharaoh Horemheb (Art History Museum, Vienna)

In Egyptian mythology, the third eye is symbolized by the ureaus serpent. The third eye coincides with the point where man’s I-consciousness is located.

In various Christian communities, a sign of the cross is given on the forehead at the time of baptism with consecrated oil as a sign that the person baptized is animated with the Holy Spirit.

The mark of the beast rising out of the earth

Not surprisingly, influences from the opposing forces of Lucifer, Ahriman and the Azuras are also exerted to negate what protects man from their influences. It is in this light that the marks on the right hand and forehead described in fragment 35 must be seen. The beast that rises from the earth makes man to apply this mark to himself in order to be allowed to trade. As mentioned earlier, in the Seal epoch it will be possible to read on each person’s forehead what his intentions are, whether he or she is loving or selfish. Those with selfish materialistic intentions will be empowered by the beast that rises from the earth when they want to participate in the economic system. We have no idea yet how this will take shape in practice, although it is already visible how in the financial system the exchange of tangible goods and coins is losing its significance and digital means of payment, up to Bitcoin, are taking over that role. In addition, it has become much easier for banks and governments to impose rules on customers to reinforce the monopolistic power of “the financial system”. The customer has to perform all kind of administrative actions in order to gain and maintain access to the system. In this, something of the apocalyptic image of the demonic marks becomes experiential. Having to comply with these kinds of system requirements is in itself a sucking effect that draws our consciousness away from opening the third eye. It is not easy in our society to withdraw from such administrative systems. The individual will have to be protected from the power of such systems, which are in the hands of powerful multinationals and governments.

Another tendency that develops to mitigate the overwhelming presence of social media is to go off-line periodically, that is, to make room for meditation and to stay in nature, so that we as a human being can regenerate and maintain ourselves as a spiritual being.

Comparison of the two seals on the forehead

If we compare the seal on the forehead affixed by the angel with that required by the beast rising from the earth, we see that they are opposites in many respects.

The angel’s seal brings the light of imaginative consciousness, while the beast that rises from the abyss of the earth causes man to close himself off from the spiritual realm. It is, as it were, a black seal that keeps man blind and therefore prevents spiritual perceptions. It keeps the spiritual world darkened.

The sign of the beast on the forehead should be seen as imposing an insensitivity to the spiritual, which arises because we surrender without restraint to all kinds of technical innovations. Subsequently, we can then become indifferent to and unreachable for spiritual perceptions of ourselves and others. The opened third eye is an inner gift to the person who pursues truth in thought and is awakend for the light of the spiritual world.