We learn from Anthroposophy that at the moment when the blood of Christ left the body on the hill of Golgotha, it immediately became the purest redemptive power for mankind. In order to achieve this individually for himself, every person must inwardly find access to this Christ Mystery out of freedom and in a fully conscious way.
Rudolf Steiner refers to the blood of the Redeemer as ‘sublimated blood’ – the substance that transformed human beings and was of decisive significance for the entire Earth – the entire astral body of the Earth changed. In Rosicrucian alchemy, sublimation was understood as being the transition from a material to an etheric state – it’s etherization. This etherization of the blood of Golgotha has frequently been depicted imaginatively in countless pictures and icons as hovering Angels, who collect the blood from the wounds of the Crucified One in their chalices so as to bring it into connection with the ether and astral bodies of the Earth.
Raphael who, as we know from spiritual science, participated in these events from the spiritual world at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha in his incarnation as John the Baptist, painted an especially beautiful picture of this kind.
(Written by Helen Katsikas, sharing during Easter the connection she feels to one of Raphael’s paintings in terms of Steiner’s description of what it truly depicts.)