By Kim Munch Michelsen.
"Christ will take the side of man and become his advisor. This is not meant only as an image, but people will actually receive the advice they need from the living Christ, who will become their advisor and friend, who will speak to human souls, like a person physically walking next to us." (R. Steiner GA 152)
Not much is written about the Norse god Vidar as Michael[Thor] was the driving force, but there is more information than we believe. As Michael is the Face of Christ is Vidar the body of Christ:
[The] Etheric form of Christ will embody in [the] etheric form of Vidar, who has all this time been silent, and he will overcome [the] Fenris Wolf. ~Steiner. See later at "Christ as the Cosmic Being and Vidar as the Microcosmic Being."
This is an important lead to understand who Vidar is, as we already know that the Jesus being is the body of Christ, who Steiner calls the Nathan Jesus, who have been the body of Christ from the start of earth, and even before that. Vidar is known as the silent one and Steiner has been very discrete about the Nathan Jesus' appearance up through our human development.
It was also explained that at that time in our Earth-evolution there took place the union of the Christ-Being with the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and that thereby a Being walked upon the Earth of whom it may be said: "By virtue of this Being moving on the physical plane the Cosmic Christ was present in our Earth-existence". Se Rudolf Steiner's "Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ," lecture 7, GA 152.
Christ work on the physical world through the Nathan Jesus:
The power of the Christ is working in them [our Luciferic teachers]; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings. Se Rudolf Steiner's " The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, Lecture 3, GA 15
I describe Vidar and his role, followed by Steiner’s text on Vidar, and lastly a short appendix, with known information about Vidar.
The Fenris Wolf is the Ahrimanic, dogs often symbolize the Ahrimanic in European esoteric paintings. It wants to keep the old Clairvoyance that is limited to the spiritual domains behind the physical world, the etheric and astral worlds, it fears the soul and sees it as an imposter and fights it ferociously. In past times, clairvoyance was normal as we lived in spiritual surroundings, but with time our astral body became incorporated into the physical body where clairvoyance disappeared.
For some people there is a crack between the etheric and astral body, and through this crack it's possible to look into the astral world. When we sleep the etheric and astral body separates, but when we go through the initiation, these two bodies are joined fully, and then the old clairvoyance is definitely ended. Clairvoyants who are on the initiation path often stop using their clairvoyant skills, often without knowing why, but every time they try to use their clirvoyance they counteract the work of their angel.
The new seership is different, here we open our chakras, and they are seeing and listening organs into the spiritual worlds. Steiner in the book “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment”:
Now when the student begins his exercises, the lotus flowers become brighter; later on they begin to revolve. When this occurs, clairvoyance begins. For these flowers are the sense organs of the soul, and their revolutions express the fact that the clairvoyant perceives supersensibly. No one can perceive the supersensible until he has developed his astral senses in this way.
When we were animal-like the Ahrimanic beings were the natural inhabitants of the body, the necessary feelings, like fear, anger and hatred, for a successful animal, but they are a liability for a human being. We have so to speak inherited them from our body's animal past, they become our deadly sins, our karma, but we are not personally responsible for them, we are only fully responsible for what we have created ourselves.
We know the story of Ragnarök from other cultures, like the Egyptians. Odin is the same as Osiris, the Fenris Wolf is Typhon, Grídr is Isis, and Vidar is Horus. They are the First, Third, and Second Logos. Christ the Father couldn't handle the Ahrimanic, Christ the Son was in a stalemate with the Ahrimanic, but Christ the Holy Spirit will end the Ahrimanic.
Today spiritual thinking has become a worldwide movement, we are not satisfied with the old clairvoyance, this is an expression of Vidar, he permeates most of humanity today.
Vidar’s world is described with forests and grassland, symbolizing the etheric. Same symbolic as when Cain was described as the tiller of the ground, he was the etheric body, the masculine. The Rosicrucian teacher in Denmark asked where he should live after his death and was shown such a place.
This is the etheric world where we will meet Christ, the seed of the new incarnation of earth, the new Jupiter. We know it also as the growing etheric body of Christian Rosenkreutz, the power behind all following the spiritual path. He is the Maitreya Bodhisattva who raises humanity at the end of Dvapara Yuga, making us true inhabitants of the etheric world, the coming new Jupiter.
The transformed etheric is the Second Logos, Vidar, the archangel of humanity. Every time Steiner mentions the etheric body of Christian Rosenkreutz, Christ, Krishna, or Zarathustra, it's the Second Logos, the archangel of humanity.
Vidar’s main purpose is to destroy the most dangerous evil of the old universe, Ahriman, and create the new, taking over the role of Thor (Michael). He is the deity of the inexhaustible forces of nature. He is the divine inhabitant of the property of the fathers. He is the Temple Builder, creating the New Temple of Jerusalem, New Jupiter.
Michael moved his responsibility away from the physical world to the soul world when he became an Archai, a spirit of time and personality, and became the soul of humanity. Our I AM was given to us by Michael, starting at the time of Thor. Vidar has taken over the responsibility of the physical world from Michael, they are two bodies with the same soul, as the Indians express it. We are as individuals created the same way, body and soul working together to have our I AM permeating both the physical body and the soul.
And from our view, Michael and Christ is one From Rudolf Steiner’s Last Address, our I AM is Christ in us.
The Michael Power and the Michael Will are none other than the Christ Will and the Christ Power, going before in order to implant in the right way into the Earth the Power of the Christ.
Christ is a cosmic being and Vidar is the microcosmic being Christ works through in the physical world.
From the Content of The Mission of Folk-Souls:
Etheric form of Christ will embody in etheric form of Vidar, who has all this time been silent, and he will overcome Fenris Wolf.
We know him also as Jesus, who Steiner calls the Nathan Jesus, the physical representation of Christ. He has always been part of the deeds of Christ/Michael when creating life on earth, especially the bodies of man, he is the human archetype.
From Rudolf Steiner's The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, Lecture 3, GA 15:
The power of the Christ is working in them [our Luciferic teachers]; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings.
Christ was at a stalemate with Ahriman at his trials, but at his return, through the twentieth century Ahriman have been defeated and we are seeing the last skirmishes today where the last powers of materialism are destroyed, Vidar is destroying the Fenris Wolf. This is the same role Hinduism describes with the Vishnu Avatar, Kalki.
With a special shoe holds Vidar the huge wolf’s lower jaw in place and he will not be able to move. Then Vidar will reach out and grab the wolf’s upper jaw and rip its mouth in two.
The shoe of Vidar has been fashioned since the dawn of time and the work humanity does increase its strength. The feet or heel is symbolically used in many myths, showing that we don't feel truly at home on the earth. A symbol often shown in our dreams when we have no shoes or even socks on, telling us that we have difficulties following our path.
The silent Vidar has been the folk-soul of Scandinavia and Middle Europe for the incarnated Aristotelians, preparing the environment for the Return of Christ, but is today responsible for the whole of humanity, together with Sophia, where both the Platonic and Aristotelian wave are incarnating all over the world. Both Vidar, also known as Anthropos, and Sophia have been kind of hidden from general knowledge, they awaited the current yuga, the raising of Michael with the Return of Christ.
This is also why Goethe and Steiner and their fellows was incarnated in Germany, preparing what happened in the last century, the maybe most dangerous century since Golgotha, and our current century, the maybe most important, where Anthropos meets Sophia on earth, becoming Anthroposophia, this is the meeting of the Platonic and Aristotelian wave. This is not only the most important century for humanity as such but especially for the individually pairs ready to find each other.
This is the most important in the understanding of Vidar! Vidar is the sum of the human development and our goal is to develop Love, and as Sophia is Wisdom is Vidar or Anthropos Love! The earth creation was wisdom filled, the new earth becomes love filled. Here some texts on the Cosmos of Love, what the Rosicrucians calls the Planet of Love.
From Steiner on The Mission of the Earth
▪️But what the human being will really give to the Earth is love, a love which will evolve from the most sensuous to the most spiritualized form of love. This is the mission of the Earth-evolution. The Earth is the cosmos of love.
From Steiner's The Apocalypse of John: Lecture VIII
▪️The mission of the earth itself is to bring love. Love is to be gloriously manifested as the result of the earth evolution. This is a very profound thought expressed by the writer of the Apocalypse. It is the profound thought underlying the whole of the earth evolution. …
▪️It is just this that is the mission of the earth, which is expressed in love, that the Egos learn to confront one another freely.
Love is not perfect if it proceeds from coercion, from people being chained together, but only when each “I” is so free and independent that it need not love, is its love an entirely free gift.
➣It is the divine plan to make this “I” so independent that as an individual being in all freedom it can offer love even to God.
It would amount to man being led by strings of dependence if he could in any way be forced to love, even if only in the slightest degree.
From Origin of Evil
▪️Nothing happens in the world twice; there was never the earthly existence that there is now. Earth-existence signifies the Cosmos of Love; existence on the previous planet signifies the Cosmos of Wisdom. We are to evolve love from its most elementary stage to its highest. …
The physical body had to evolve too; what is wise in it had to develop out of unwisdom and error. Evolution of wisdom preceded the evolution of love; love is not yet perfected. It is to be found in the whole of nature, in plant, animal and man from the lowest sex-love to the highest spiritualised love. …
▪️Conflict is active wherever love is, the entry of love brings conflict, necessary conflict. But love will also overcome it and change conflict into harmony.
The Indian texts from the time of Krishna are very concretely describing what should happen through Kali Yuga and how the alter-ego of Krishna would lead humanity through Kali Yuga, and this is the Human Archangel, Michaels representative on earth.
At the beginning of Kali Yuga Krishna/Vishnu gives Nara/Narada the task to lead humanity through the dark age together with Bakti as described in the wonderful text Srimad Bhagavatam. He is Anthropos or Vidar, she is Sophia. They have made a very precise description of who Narada is in Narada Muni. The indians describe Krishna and Arjuna/Nara as two bodies with one soul, as Michael and Vidar.
From The Mission of Folk-Souls, Lecture XI - GA 121
All these details which are set forth in the ‘Twilight of the Gods’, correspond with that which is to appear to mankind in a newer etheric vision, which in reality refers to the future. The Fenris Wolf will still remain.
Oh, there is a deep, deep truth concealed in this account of the Fenris Wolf remaining behind in conflict with Odin. In the near future of mankind there will be no danger so great as the tendency to remain satisfied with the old clairvoyance, — instead of developing the new by means of new forces — the danger that man might be tempted to remain satisfied with what the old astral clairvoyance of primal ages could give, namely, soul-pictures such as that of the Fenris Wolf.
It would also be a severe trial for that which has to grow up in the domain of Anthroposophy, if in that, the tendency towards all sorts of confused, chaotic clairvoyance should arise, and an inclination to value the clairvoyance illuminated by reason and science less highly than the old chaotic one which does not possess this prerogative. These remains of the old clairvoyance would wreak a fearful vengeance, by confusing the vision of men with all sorts of chaotic pictures. Such clairvoyance cannot be met by that which itself proceeded from old clairvoyant power, ‣but only by that which during the Kali Yuga has been developed as a healthy force into a new clairvoyance.
▪️The power given by the old Archangel Odin, the old clairvoyant powers, cannot save man; something very different must come in. And what that is, is, however, known to Germanic Norse mythology, — it is well aware of its existence. It knows, that there exists the etheric form in which will embody that which we shall once again see as the etheric form of Christ.
And this alone will succeed in driving out the confused clairvoyant power which would bewilder mankind, if Odin did not overcome the Fenris Wolf, which represents nothing but the backward clairvoyance.
▪️Vidar, who has kept silence all the time, will overcome the Fenris Wolf. That also is told us in the ‘Twilight of the Gods’.
▪️Anyone who recognizes the importance of Vidar and feels him in his soul, will find that in the twentieth century the capacity can again be given to man with which to see Christ.
▪️Vidar, who belongs to us all in Northern and Central Europe, will again stand before him. He was kept secret in the Mysteries and secret Schools as a god who would receive his mission only in the future. …
▪️All through the Kali Yuga the powers were acquired which will make the new men capable of seeing the new manifestation of Christ. Those who are destined to point out from the signs of the times that which is to come, know that the new spiritual investigation will re-establish the power of Vidar, who will drive out of the minds of men all the remnants of the old chaotic clairvoyant power which might act in a confusing way, and who will arouse the new gradually evolving clairvoyance in the human breast, in the human soul.
Thus we see, when the wonderful figure of Vidar shines forth to us out of the ‘Twilight of the Gods’, that a hope for the future shines towards us as it were out of the Germanic Norse mythology.
When we feel ourselves to be related to this figure of Vidar, of whom we are now trying to understand the deeper side, we hope that that which must be the central nerve and the vital essence of all Anthroposophy, will result from those forces which the ‣Archangel of the Germanic Scandinavian world can contribute to the evolution of modern times.
One part only of a greater whole has been accomplished for the fifth post-Atlantean civilization in the way of development of humanity and the spirit; another part has still to be accomplished. ‣Those Northern Germanic peoples will best be able to contribute to this who feel that they have within them fresh elemental nation-forces. …
▪️So you see, that when our Anthroposophy of to-day announces the knowledge of the Christ-Being, and when our hopes for the future are connected with that true knowledge of this ‣Being which we look for in the substance of the European people themselves, that there is then no question of any sort of predilection or temperamental predisposition.
‣It has sometimes been said that one might call what we may describe as the greatest Being in the evolution of humanity, by any name one likes. …
▪️What is given to all mankind, and must be given, can only spring up at a certain place; but it must be given to the whole of humanity.
We recognize no difference between the East and the West; we accept with great love that which we recognize as the overwhelming greatness of the primal culture of the Holy Rishis in its true form; we lovingly accept the Persian culture, and that which we know as the Egyptian-Chaldæan and the Græco-Latin cultures, ‣and with just the same objectivity we also accept what has grown up for us from the soil of Europe. …
That it is which we must bear in mind, particularly at such an important moment as this, when we have indicated the Folk-spirit who rules over all the Northern lands. ‣In these lands lives the Germanic Scandinavian mythological Spirit; and although at the present day he still lives below the surface, yet he is spread out much more widely in Europe than one might suppose. …
The Germanic Scandinavian Archangel will bring to the ‣collective human culture of the future, just what he is most fitted for according to the capacities he has acquired, as we have sufficiently described. …
He is, however, specially capable of bringing about that which could not yet be given in the first half of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization but which may still play its part in the second, viz., the spiritual element which we pointed out as being prophetically germinal in the Slav philosophy and national sentiment. … All that could be attained then to begin with was a very sublimated spiritual perception in the form of philosophy. This must then be grasped and permeated by the forces of the people, so that it may become the common possession of mankind, and become comprehensible in all parts of our earth-life.
▪️Let us … become aware that it is important for the whole of humanity that we should feel that the great peoples as well as the smaller subdivisions of peoples all have their mission, and have to contribute their part to the whole.
▪️Sometimes the smaller peoples that have been separated off, because they were to preserve either the old or the new characteristics of soul, have to contribute something most important. …
And if exalted forces are to be aroused in mankind in the future, if we would speak with the words of Vidar, the silent Asa, whom we shall most certainly see before us, he will then become the active friend of co-operative work, of cooperative industry, for which purpose we have all been assembled here.
Some of the following is from Gylfaginning, chapter 29.