The three ghosts in “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens can be understood as mystical guides, leading the soul through three stages of inner awakening.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1) is a magical story that has enjoyed enduring popularity since its creation and has been translated and adapted countless times. Whether we pick up the book, watch the classic 1938 black-and-white film, the 1951 adaptation, the 1984 television version, or the animated film in which Jim Carrey voices Scrooge, this tale continues to move us. It awakens in us a longing for goodness and a desire to be better. Its power lies in presenting the meaning of human life from the perspective of the soul, concealing a spiritual depth far richer than one might notice at first glance.
Entering the world of this story, we see ourselves reflected in its main character as if in a mirror — though we are often unaware of it. We usually perceive A Christmas Carol as the story of someone else: an old, embittered miser who desperately requires transformation. Yet the true spiritual dimension of this tale only reveals itself when we realise that Scrooge, of whom Dickens wrote, “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” is, in fact, ourselves.
Indeed, our souls may have cultivated through many lifetimes more altruism, empathy, generosity, and warmth than Scrooge ever possessed. And yet, at the core of our being, we still remain in some sense closed—centered on our own egocentric “self”. Moreover, even the good qualities of our character are tinged with self-centeredness. For doing good is rarely a pure act of selflessness — it is more often the result of upbringing, childhood conditioning, fear of punishment or rejection, the need to appear good in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, and sometimes even the hope to create good karma.
Our consciousness still revolves around “I, me, mine.” The very vehicle of this consciousness is responsible for it: the fiery stream within the spinal cord which generates in us the illusion of separateness, of being cut off from the rest of creation. It is precisely this that Dickens — in a flash of brilliant intuition — referred to when he wrote that „he was hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever produced generous fire”.
The blatant greed and stinginess of Scrooge mirror the greed of our ego, which constantly craves to accumulate and seize as much as possible for itself — on the level of the body, the soul, and the spirit. The ego’s greed manifests itself in hoarding money beyond one’s needs, in an obsession with possession, in incessantly comparing oneself to others, and in the desire for superiority. It also shows up as the need to control loved ones, demand attention, or even to adopt spiritual practices to emphasise one’s own uniqueness. As Dickens insightfully observed: “Man’s offences carry their own punishment.” They carry a punishment because – through the workings of karmic law – they return to us in the form of consequences. They lead to loneliness, conflicts, and turn relationships with others and with reality into a battlefield. In this way, a person imprisons themselves in a world built from their own illusions, fears, and attachments.
Spiritual consciousness is an entirely different, higher dimension of goodness; it is the perspective of oneness, of deep connection with the whole of existence, and of compassion. A person with this awareness can never experience complete happiness while knowing that someone else suffers. Its essence lies in the insight that true value does not reside in the quantity of accumulated possessions, but in the quality of relationships and the capacity to love without expectations — which leads to inner freedom. The ego says, “this is for me,” while spiritual awareness whispers, “this is for us.” The ego feels fear of loss, whereas spiritual awareness experiences freedom in giving and in the flow.
Three Ghosts
Dickens — even if he was most probably not fully aware of it — introduced a threefold initiation into his story. The three ghosts that visit Scrooge can be understood as mystical guides, leading the soul through three stages of inner awakening.
They arrive as if from a space beyond time, from a dimension of eternity. Scrooge senses a disruption in the linear flow of hours — he senses that time is either moving backward or shifting in an unnatural way, ultimately stopping three times at midnight. This hour is a multifaceted symbol. On one hand, it points to the twelve zodiacal forces of our world — archetypal powers carrying the experiences that the soul must assimilate during its earthly journey. Midnight is also the moment of a cycle’s completion. Scrooge, standing at the end of his life, symbolically reaches the point where all the lessons of his fate converge. Twelve o’clock at night is a liminal hour — a threshold between two realities: the world of matter and the world of Spirit.
Before the ghosts appear, the clock strikes four quarters each time, forming the image of a cross – a primordial symbol of the Sun’s path across the sky and its four stations, marked by the two solstices and the two equinoxes. This cross serves as a reminder that life here is a cyclical journey through light and darkness, birth and death, forgetfulness and awakening. It also points to the roots of the Christian faith, whose deep foundation lies in the ancient solar mystery. It symbolises the descent of spiritual forces (the vertical beam of the cross) into the earthly world (the horizontal beam) and the union of these two dimensions at a single point — the human heart, where a portal to eternity resides.
The ancient initiates said that “God is like a sphere whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” Divinity is fullness — boundless, infinite, omnipresent, intense, and multifaceted consciousness. Man, on the other hand, when detached from the spiritual centre, becomes its opposite — a sphere whose circumference is everywhere and centre nowhere. He lives on the surface of himself, identifying with layers of roles, masks, and illusions, no longer in touch with his inner essence. This is the state of forgetfulness that emprisons Scrooge — a selfish, limited existence, devoid of an inner anchor of love of the Source.
Scrooge’s encounters with the three ghosts take place in the space between midnight and one o’clock at night. This symbolic time marks the moment when a person emerges from divine, boundless fullness into a separate, individual being – an ego. It is the passage from wholeness to division, from the original state of unity to the awareness of the self. In this context, Shakespeare’s words come to mind: “To be, or not to be — that is the question,” expressing the recurring human dilemma on the path of dissolving illusions tied to egocentric consciousness. It is the moment when the soul faces a choice: to persist in a false identity, or to become still and radiate the truth of the Source.
A false identity brings certain benefits: it offers the illusory comfort of remaining in the familiar and predictable, protects against the fear of stepping into the unknown, and allows one to remain trapped in the automatisms of daily life that require no effort.
A person, possessing certain talents or virtues, can easily take pride in them, failing to see that they are in fact the riches of God — something higher, beyond the individual self. Maintaining this illusion provides a temporary sense of superiority or uniqueness. Letting it go means relinquishing the appropriation of the riches of the Spirit and opening one to the discovery that there is a unique consciousness — boundless, imbued with supreme love, wisdom, and power. In this space, the boundaries of the individual “I” begin to dissolve, and the soul recognises itself as part of the indivisible whole, which constitutes the one true identity of all that exists.
The Ghost of Christmas Past
The first of the spirits — the Ghost of Christmas Past — leads Scrooge (and with him, ourselves) to anamnesis, a spiritual remembering of who we truly are and where we come from. Traveling back in time, Scrooge encounters moments from his past that had been long been buried under the dust of forgetfulness.
This ghost wears a great extinguisher (for a cap) — a symbol of the suppression of spiritual Light, which Scrooge cannot bear. He does not wish to look at the radiance emanating from the top of the ghost’s head, for it reveals a truth that Scrooge has spent his entire life trying to conceal beneath layers of selfishness. The ghost asks, “Is it not enough for you that you are one of those whose passions have contributed to the making of this cap?” — a bitter reminder of the state before immersion in matter, before the place in his heart belonging to love was taken over by another deity: the “golden calf,” as Bella calls it in A Christmas Carol.
The light radiating from the ghost’s head evokes the illumination of the higher mind that humanity once possessed. This mind is not a slave to instincts, but resonates with soul and heart. The ghost reveals the former state of the divine human — a being in whom mind and heart worked harmoniously, subordinated to God. When the ghost touches Scrooge’s heart, this symbolises the awakening of the true self – a return to the luminous centre that still lies beneath the layers of selfish choices and forgetfulness.
But the Ghost of Christmas Past is also a key to discovering ancient knowledge – an invitation to return to the times of the early initiates, who celebrated Christmas as a moment of mystical awakening.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
After the encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past, it is time for the Ghost of Christmas Present – a figure of colourful, joyful, radiating warmth and abundance. Dickens describes him as a giant surrounded by the glow of candles, the scent of festive foods, and green garlands, combining the traits of a pagan god of plenty with those of Christian love. This ghost shows Scrooge the present, which he has so far ignored. He takes him into the homes of ordinary people, revealing joy, community, and gratitude, even where poverty prevails. He reminds him that Christmas is not about material gifts, but a gift of the heart, kindness, and presence.
In this context, the book contains the important words: “It is the duty of every man that his soul be united with the souls of his fellow men and remain in fraternal connection with them throughout the whole course of his earthly journey.” This union of souls, however, should not be understood in terms of social obligation, but rather as a mystical ascent to a higher level of existence. At this level, everything that exists is immersed in one consciousness – in a single Will that has a plan for every manifestation of life. A deep understanding prevails there that material existence reflects divinity in an imperfect and impure way. On a higher plane, however, there is room for this imperfection — there is even for it acceptance, order, and purpose.
There are divine planes where eternal bliss and happiness prevail, but the earthly realm is different. Here, love is also expressed in the acceptance of shadow, in receiving calmly the “blows” of fate with awareness that they are part of the plan of our life — for our purification and ennoblement. Only when a true “yes” to suffering is born within us can we fully embody the Christian attitude that frees us from egocentrism, an attitude expressed in the words: “Not my will, but Your will be done, Lord.”
This does not mean, however, that surrendering to this Will inevitably leads to pain and suffering. Rather, it means that a person gradually stops identifying with their ego. They lose attachment to acquiring goods that are considered particularly valuable in this world. This attitude also involves relinquishing the need to control everything, a need rooted in fear and the desire to protect one’s “self.” When the overarching goal of a person becomes liberation from false consciousness, they then entrust themselves to guidance with confidence — and in this lies true freedom.
The gateway to this attitude lies in the human heart. In it exists a fragment of divine consciousness, which the ancient initiates called the Spark of the Spirit or the Rose. It is this that attunes us to generous love—love that embraces both perfection and imperfection, that accepts equally pleasure and difficulty, praise and insult. It is a love that honours all manifestations of existence as expressions of life, which is ultimately immersed in God.
The Ghost of Christmas Present urges us to reflect on our relationship with the present moment. Our minds are often so overloaded with the baggage of past experiences that we cannot perceive the present in a pure way – free from fear and prejudice.
Even our very cognitive apparatus limits the possibility of perceiving the world objectively. The philosopher Alan Watts noted that light would not be “bright” without the human eye; thorns would not be “sharp” if the skin were not delicate; rocks would not be “hard” or “heavy” if muscles did not exist. “Bright,” “sharp,” “hard,” and “heavy” exist only in relation to our senses. A hundred years earlier, Ralph Waldo Emerson had arrived at similar conclusions—we tend to attribute too many qualities to the world and too few to ourselves. The physicist P. W. Bridgman expressed it aptly: “In general, we should never think of the world around us without taking into account the nervous system in our heads through which we know the world.” (3)
The rose of the heart, and the hidden potential for growth within it, enables us to free ourselves from the limitations of our current cognitive apparatus. As spiritual maturity unfolds, subtle instruments of perception begin to develop—independent of our natural senses. With this process, we gradually release ourselves from the residues of the past, filters, programmes, and prejudices. Our nervous system undergoes a transformation – the role of the old system is taken over by a new one attuned to higher dimensions of perception. The karmic burden stored in the root chakra is burned away, freeing us from the habit of “being ourselves” in its limited, conditioned form.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is always the same – it offers itself unfailingly, yet our response to it changes with our state of consciousness. Too often during the holiday season we try to appease the “idol of abundance” — we cook, clean, decorate — until matter begins to overwhelm us. Form surpasses content, and meaning is lost under the weight of preparations. But it need not be so.
The message of the Ghost of Christmas Present is: be mindful. It is in this very moment that you decide whether you connect to the limited consciousness of Scrooge — the egocentric being of the masses — or open yourself to the stream of eternity. Even in the darkest moment of life, you can anchor yourself in the present and remember: here is the moment — a narrow gateway to eternity, here is the gift that allows me to choose.
On a mystical level, the Ghost of Christmas Present is a bridge between the past and the future — a reminder that it is in the present moment that we create our reality and shape our future destiny.
The Twelve Holy Nights
This is a special time of year — the difference between the twelve cycles of the Moon, symbolising natural human consciousness, and the twelve-month cycle of the Sun, which represents divine consciousness. Rudolf Steiner spoke of it as a “time outside of time” — a mystical space between the old and the new year, in which ordinary linear time comes to a halt, and in which a person can undergo spiritual purification and renewal, as the spiritual powers of the Zodiac work with particular intensity.
Each of the Twelve Holy Nights corresponds to one sign of the Zodiac, and thus to one aspect of the human soul. During this sacred period, we have the opportunity to reflect upon, purify, and prepare within ourselves twelve spiritual forces, in accordance with the influences of the zodiacal signs. Rudolf Steiner saw this time as the descent of the Christ Soul into the very core of the Earth and as the human being’s opening to a deeper communion with the spiritual hierarchies.
On an esoteric level, during the Twelve Holy Nights a subtle transformation may also take place in the human body; it is possible to receive more fully inspirations from the higher realms of consciousness. During this time, the Earth is as if “asleep” – the life of plants and nature withdraw, and so the human spirit can awaken. The twelve days of the Holy Nights form a spiritual calendar — each night is the “seed” of one month of the coming year.
- The night of December 25/26 corresponds to January,
- the night of December 26/27 to February,
- …
- the night of January 5/6 to December.
The culmination takes place on 6 January – the Feast of Epiphany – which Steiner called the day of the revelation of Christ as the Cosmic Sun and the beginning of the path toward inner initiation. In this way, the portal of the Twelve Holy Nights becomes a unique opportunity to act here and now – to use this mystical space for spiritual purification, renewal, and the conscious shaping of the future.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
After the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, comes the third — the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who, unlike the previous spirits, is dark, silent, and mysterious. Dickens depicts it as a faceless figure in a black robe, inspiring fear and unease. It represents the future, which has not yet arrived, full of uncertainty and the consequences of our choices.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the results of his present life and conduct — loneliness, oblivion, and finally, a death without dignity. This vision intends to frighten him and compel him to change. In this journey there is no joy or warmth, but rather the cold, relentless judgment of the future that awaits every human being — unless one changes one’s heart and attitude toward others.
It is the moment when Scrooge comes face to face with his own fate: an abandoned, nameless grave, symbolising spiritual and social exclusion. This spirit does not speak, yet its silence is eloquent — it is a warning that the future depends on what we do now.
On a deeper, mystical level, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a symbol of the need of transformation and the death of the ego — the old “self” that hinders spiritual growth and binds us to the cycle of birth and death. It heralds the inner death and rebirth that are essential to entering the path of true life and light.
In this confrontation, Scrooge begins to realise that change is inevitable, and that his future depends on whether he opens his heart to love, compassion, and community.
Conclusion
The Three Spirits of Christmas reveal the confrontation of our past — often heavy and burdened — and our tendency to project into the future, with the realm of divine eternity that both permeates and transcends time. During this special season of the year, it becomes easier to attune ourselves to the Holy Breath — the mysterious force permeating the earthly atmosphere, connecting us with the consciousness of all creation, and opening us to deep unity.
Under the influence of this force, Scrooge was transformed: “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
Let this time of the Solstice be for us a time of such change. May it open us to the Sun of New Consciousness — a love that permeates and embraces both light and shadow. May it attune us to Silence, to the symbolic hour zero, from which each of us may emerge as a New Human Being — aligned with the Fullness.
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(1) Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, Elegant Ebooks, https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Dickens/Carol/Dickens_Carol.pdf
(2) Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, GA 137, Lecture VII, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA137/English/RSP1964/19120609p01.html
(3) Larry Dossey, Healing Lords: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, HarperOne, January 19, 1995.
