An Easter Saturday contemplation
This Easter motif (see the full image below) portrays an unusual scene in the Easter tableau: Christ in the Underworld, redeeming the souls of the dead on Black (Easter) Saturday.
This watercolour painting named Easter (Three Crosses) is one of Rudolf Steiner’s few watercolour paintings. It takes us beyond the Crucifixion into the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The motif leads us into a world of rainbow colours, an utter polarity to the sombre colours and muted tones in most traditional portrayals of the Easter event the Masters of Western art.
Rudolf Steiner, in one of his many lectures on the subject, sheds some light of what is being portrayed in this motif:
Even if today we cannot enter into all that the Mystery of Golgotha signifies, we can summarise it in a few words: it signifies the final and incontestable proof of the fact that life has conquered death. When upon Golgotha life conquered death, spirit laid down the germ of the final conquest of matter! That which is related in the Gospel regarding that visit which Christ made after the Event upon Golgotha to the dead in the underworld is not a legend or a symbol…
Just as truly as Christ wandered among humanity during the last three years of the life of Jesus, so did he cause the dead to rejoice by visiting them immediately after the Event of Golgotha. He appeared to the dead, to the souls of the deceased. This is an occult truth. He could then tell them that in the physical world spirit had incontestably gained the victory over matter. To the souls of the departed on the other side this was a flame of light which sprang up like spiritual electricity, and the dying consciousness of the Graeco-Latin age in the other world was stimulated, a completely new phase began for humanity between death and re-birth. And ever since that time, clearer and clearer has grown the consciousness of human beings between death and re-birth. (23 October 1908, Berlin GA 107)
The Redemption of Death
According to Emil Boch, the secret of the words by Jesus Christ on the cros,: ‘It is finished’ can be found in the understanding that Christ’s sacrificial deed does not reach its fulfilment on the Cross, but in Christ’s overcoming of Death by uniting his soul with the Earth after His crucifixion, a sacrifice he accomplishes for all earth existence. In the underworld of Death, on Holy Saturday, Christ walks amongst the souls of the Dead who are trapped in an increasing state of numbness that fear of Death had brought about in human beings and our increasingly materialistic conception of earthly life. But in the act of dying, Christ then takes a living light amongst the souls trapped in the Underworld. And so, in the realm of Death, the living Sun rises, even before He rises for those on Earth.
For more inspirations and readings for Holy Week and Easter, Rudolf Steiner Archive online has compiled a ‘Holy Week’ contemplation on the Calendar of the Soul. Although we are in the Southern Hemisphere, the polarity of Spring, nevertheless, these verses still resound in our souls at this time of year.
Christ in the Underworld, © Fiona Campbell April 2025
Readings
Emil Bock, Three Years: The Life of Christ between Baptism and Ascension
Rudolf Steiner, ‘The Baldor Myth and the Good Friday Mystery II’ in Festivals of the Seasons
Feature image: Easter (Three Crosses), © Rudolf Steiner April 2024