The event
Time: During the night
Date: Sunday, 1 May 1983 (it was Walpurgis Night, provided the encounter happened before midnight)
Place: My flat at Praterstraße 47/3/3/12, Vienna
I was 26 years old. I was hiking on Saturday from Siegenfeld to Baden. My subconscious mind suddenly said to me dramatically, “Just wait until Sunday night.”
Sunday evening came. I thought, “What on earth is going to happen tonight?” I looked at my windows on the 3rd floor; I looked at my door. Will a burglar break in? I didn’t think so. I went to bed and to sleep.
At some point I woke up. I think I totally woke up, in body as well as in mind. I was lying on my back. There, standing at the foot of the bed, was a shining apparition. My head was at a certain angle on the pillow. At this angle, I found myself looking at the middle of the apparition, at its belly, so to speak. The apparition was clothed in a radiant silver robe.
I was fully conscious. I suffered the most terrible awe and dread, but I realised, for all my fear, that this was a very great spiritual moment. And then my eyes started travelling upwards, slowly moving up the form of the apparition toward its face. I didn’t want my eyes to move upwards, but I couldn’t stop them. I thought I was going to see the face of an angel. I was sure I wouldn’t survive it. My eyes moved up and up and finally, I reached its face. And then my awe and dread became the most terrible shock. It didn’t have a face. It had a fleshless skull, and the skull was looking at me out of empty eye sockets.
Well, at that point I almost did die. My heart hammered in my chest — wham! wham! If I would not have had a strong heart, I would not have survived that moment. And yet, for all my awe and dread, I realised that I was in no danger from the apparition. This is a very great spiritual entity standing before me, I thought. I must greet it. I must welcome it. I raised my right arm, or tried to — it was as heavy as a lump of wood — I managed only to raise it a little way. I tried to turn my hand palm-upwards and to uncurl my fingers. I managed it a little bit. It was my welcoming gesture.
Then the shining apparition slowly disintegrated, where it was standing, and there was nothing there anymore except for the dark room.
I lay in the bed. I was still very frightened. I didn’t have the presence of mind to get up and look at the time. I closed my eyes because, you know, it’s night-time and they should be closed. But my eyes kept opening again, time after time, to peer nervously at the spot where the apparition had stood. Eventually I went back to sleep.
For the next three days, I wondered if I was going to die — was that the reason for the visit of the “death’s head”? On the fourth day I accepted that I wasn’t going to die. The encounter clearly had a different reason. For the next five years, I went to bed scared every Walpurgis Night. But it has never happened again. I still acknowledge the encounter though, every Walpurgis Night, to this very day.
The literature
In the days that followed the 1st of May, I thought about the impossible task of finding any mention of this apparition in any book. But then I remembered that I’d bought a few Rudolf Steiner books that I hadn’t read yet.1 It suddenly struck me to look at these books. One in particular stood out:
Steiner, R. (1981) Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? Taschenbuchausgabe, ISBN 3‑7274-6000-8. Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag.
I instinctively went straight to the back of the book. Sure enough, I found Steiner’s description of my apparition. Steiner calls it the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. In fact, his last two chapters describe the two Guardians of the Threshold — the Lesser and the Greater. The two chapters are Der Hüter der Schwelle (starting on page 137) and Der grosse Hüter der Schwelle (starting on page 145). Today it’s even easier to find them. You can read on the Internet, in English, Steiner’s translated words about the two guardians:
https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/English/RSPC1947/GA010_c09.html
He wrote at length about them. His descriptions are very full with many details. My own encounter, in contrast, was simple and uneventful.
At one point Steiner writes, speaking on behalf of the Lesser Guardian, “My spectral form is woven out of your own life’s record … I am indeed the Angel of Death … I am your own creation.” That means the Lesser Guardian is ourselves. He’s a skeleton, with a skull — and it’s our own skull. It’s our own empty eye sockets that are looking at us. This really takes horror to the next level. Or would, if it wasn’t such a tremendous encounter.
The takeaways
You will need all your courage to face this apparition.
The apparition is with us at the moment of our death. Either we see it or we don’t, but it’s there. And this time we do cross the threshold, but it’s not a spiritual achievement; it’s our physical death.
Background
Did I provoke this encounter to happen? Yes, I did. Shortly before this encounter, I had made a great effort to forgive. I didn’t know what it was that I had to forgive; I theorized it was something from a past life. I was completely successful for a short while but couldn’t make the forgiveness stick. Do we forgive only after atonement has been done? Perhaps. This opens up a whole new topic: Forgiveness. I deal with it, as far as I’m able to, under “Part 4: Reflections”.
Anyway, that’s what I did to provoke the visit of the apparition.
Thoughts and theories
I read on the Internet that Walpurgis Night begins on the evening of 30 April and ends on the evening of 1 May. Other people will meet the guardians. Do all encounters happen on Walpurgis Night?
“Filled with awe and dread” — I remember this expression from the Bible. The shepherds on the hill at Bethlehem were “filled with awe and dread”. Those were exactly my own emotions.
According to Steiner, there is a threshold, but I didn’t see it and didn’t cross it. This suggests that I didn’t complete the exercise. This, in turn, suggests that I will have to meet the apparition again, either later in this lifetime or in my next lifetime.
Do I have more spiritual rights and responsibilities now, after meeting this apparition? If I do, I’m not clear about what they are. There is one thing I’ve noticed over the years: If I indulge in negative thoughts, giving rise to negative emotions, then quite suddenly I can’t breathe.
An historical mention: I’ve read that Beethoven, at the moment of death, raised his arm and shook his fist. Provided that’s true, I would say he was meeting the Lesser Guardian. He tried to raise his arm in a greeting and to uncurl his closed fingers, but he could hardly manage it. It looked like he was shaking his fist at heaven, but he wasn’t. He was trying to welcome the guardian, the Angel of Death. We don’t know if his apparition was dressed in a shining silver robe (like mine), or dressed otherwise.
Is this a common event? Everyone dies. If some people see the Angel of Death at the moment of dying, why doesn’t everyone? Certainly every old soul should be able to. Maybe the dying person can’t raise their arm, but they could react in some way. Do hospital staff see this happening from time to time?
Is the Angel of Death always a full-size spectre? According to Rudolf Steiner it’s our own spirit, so I would expect, when a child dies, that the spectre would be the same size as the child. But I’ve never heard of a child-size Angel of Death. I have no explanation for this, not even a theory.
Will I see it again at the moment of death? Probably. If that happens, I know how I’ll react: I’ll raise my arm in a greeting and try to uncurl my fingers to present an open hand.
And what about meeting the Greater Guardian? I don’t expect to meet it in this lifetime.
Afterword
Looking back now more than 40 years later, I can’t remember how I knew that April 30 is Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht). I must have come across that information somewhere. I was so deeply moved by the whole event and its connection to Saint Walburga that I resolved to visit her tomb in Eichstätt and duly did so.
In a later year, 1989, I also spent Walpurgisnacht on the Blocksberg. An adventure in itself! I was all wrapped up in my oversized jumper and blanket, trying to sleep on the top of the Blocksberg (also called Brocken). In the middle of the night a big animal came up to me, sniffing loudly. I supposed it to be a badger. I didn’t unwrap myself to look. It was only years later that I realised it had been a bear! I heard that same sniff on a documentary, and it was a bear sniffing!
I typed up this text in April 2024. In May 2024 I found this article, in which a hospice nurse speaks of witnessing exactly this kind of thing:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/otherworldly-experiences-die-according-hospice-060022001.html
- It was thanks to Mum that I had learned about Rudolf Steiner. On her trip to London she had visited the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop. She brought over his autobiography for me. I was so impressed by Steiner, whom I’d never heard of before, that I immediately ordered some of his books. That’s why I had them to hand. ↩︎
