The Course on the Lord's Prayer by Valentin Tomberg (4 Vols.)

This Course on the Lord's Prayer of Valentin Tomberg came about in the Netherlands during the Second World War. It can be seen from the life-work of Tomberg that the content of the Bible as a whole—the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Revelation of St. John—provides the foundation for his spiritual work and research.

The Course on the Lord's Prayer was formed in such a way, that the address and the Petitions of this prayer communicated by Christ were studied and meditated in weekly rhythms. In this process, the Petitions determined in each case the course of the exercise, while the cor-responding days of the week were used for ongoing deepening in study and meditation.

The Course begins with an overview of the entire content. This overview included at the same time daily work involving a first reading through the whole Prayer. The pupil takes his orientation every time anew from this overview, when a further week's work is about to begin. It is also referred to as 'preparatory work'.

Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973), was born into a Lutheran family in St. Petersburg, Russia. As an adolescent, he was drawn to the hermetic Martinism of G.O. Mebes, as well as to Theosophy and the mysticism of Eastern Orthodoxy. Tomberg's mother was killed by looters during the Russian Revolution, after which Valentin and his father fled to Tallinn, Estonia, where Tomberg studied languages and comparative religion at the University of Tartu. As a young man, he was strongly influenced by Vladimir Soloviev and had a personal experience of the Sophia at a cathedral in Holland.

In 1925, he joined the Anthroposophical Society, under whose auspices he lectured in Holland and England and wrote on his understanding of the Bible, Anthroposophy, and esoteric Christianity. During World War II, he left the Anthroposophical Society and its internal struggles and converted to Catholicism.

In 1948, he moved to England, where he became a translator for the BBC and monitored Soviet broadcasts during the Cold War, while continuing his devotion to meditation practice and further writing on his esoteric insights. In 1960, he retired to Reading near the River Thames. He died while vacationing in Majorca. The best-known work of his later life is Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, written anonymously.