Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
10. First Study: At the Gates of the Consciousness-Soul: How Michael in the Spiritual World is Preparing for His Earth-Mission through the Conquest of Lucifer
[ 3 ] Before this time a complete change is taking place in the spiritual life of mankind. It is evident on looking back, that Imaginations still play a large part in human perception. Single individuals, it is true, have already associated themselves in their soul-life with pure ‘concepts’; but the soul-life of the greater number of people consists in a struggle between Imaginations on the one hand, and ideas born from the purely physical world on the other. This is true, not only as regards ideas concerning events in the world of Nature, but also those concerning the developments of history.
[ 4 ] What spiritual observation is able to discover in this direction is confirmed throughout by external evidence. Let us now look at some instances of this.
[ 5 ] The way in which people in previous centuries had thought and spoken about historical events had found its way into writing just before the age of the Spiritual Soul set in. Thus we have preserved to us out of this time ‘sagas’ and the like, in which a true picture is given of how ‘history’ was represented in past times.
[ 6 ] A fine example is the story of ‘Gerhard the Good,’ contained in a poem by Rudolf of Ems, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. ‘Gerhard the Good’ is a rich merchant of Cologne. He undertakes a journey to Russia, Livonia and Prussia, to buy sables, and then travels farther to Damascus and Nineveh to get silk-stuffs and similar merchandise.
[ 7 ] On the homeward journey he is driven out of his course by a storm. In the strange country in which he finds himself he becomes acquainted with a man, who is keeping a number of English knights, and the betrothed of the King of England, in captivity. Gerhard sacrifices all that he has acquired on his journey by trading, and receives the prisoners in exchange. When the ships arrive at the point where the ways of the travellers part, Gerhard sends the knights home, but the King's betrothed he detains, in the hope that the bridegroom, King William, will come to fetch her himself, as soon as he receives news of her release, and of the place of her abode. The King's bride and the maidens who accompany her are entertained by Gerhard in the best way imaginable. She lives, like a much loved daughter, in the house of her deliverer from captivity. A long time passes without the King coming to take her away. Then, in order to ensure his foster daughter's future, Gerhard decides to marry her to his son. For the supposition is possible that William is dead. The wedding of Gerhard's son is being celebrated, when an unknown pilgrim arrives. It is William. He has wandered about for a long time, searching for his betrothed. Gerhard's son unselfishly resigns her and she is given back to William. Both remain for a time with Gerhard; then the latter fits out a ship to convey them to England. When Gerhard's prisoners—who have been restored to honour—are first able to greet him in England they wish to make him king. But he is able to reply that he is bringing to them their lawful king and queen. They, too, had thought William dead and wished to choose another king to rule their country, which during William's wanderings had fallen into a chaotic state. The Cologne merchant renounces all the honours and riches offered to him and returns to Cologne, there to be again the simple merchant he had been before. The story goes on to relate how Otto I, King of Saxony, journeys to Cologne to make the acquaintance of Gerhard the Good. For the powerful king has succumbed to the temptation to count upon ‘earthly recompense’ for much that he has done. Through becoming acquainted with Gerhard he learns from his example how a simple man does an unspeakable amount of good—sacrificing all the goods he had acquired in order to liberate captives; restoring to William his son's affianced bride; then taking the trouble to convey William to England again, etc.—without desiring any earthly reward whatever for it, but leaving all reward to the ruling of Divine Providence. The man is universally known as ‘Gerhard the Good’; the king feels that he himself receives a strong moral and religious impulse through becoming acquainted with Gerhard's mind and character.
[ 8 ] The story which I have briefly outlined above—in order not merely to indicate by name something that is little known—shows quite clearly from one aspect the mental attitude of the age before the coming of the Spiritual Soul in the evolution of humanity.
[ 9 ] Those who enter into the spirit of the story, as told by Rudolf of Ems, will be able to feel how the experience of the earthly world has changed since the time of King Otto (the tenth century).
[ 10 ] Notice how, during the age of the Spiritual Soul, the world has in a certain way become ‘clear’ to the mental eye of man, as regards the comprehension of physical existence and its development. Gerhard travels with his ships as if in a mist. He only knows the small portion of the world with which he wishes to come in contact. In Cologne you hear nothing of what is taking place in England, and you have to search for years for a person who is in Cologne. You get to know about the life and property of another man such as the one on whose shore Gerhard is cast on his homeward journey, only when you have been brought directly by destiny to the place. The present-day grasp of circumstances in the world is related to that of those earlier times as the looking into a broad, sunlit landscape is to the groping about in a dense fog.
[ 11 ] What is related in connection with Gerhard the Good has nothing to do with what we call ‘historical’ now-a-days, but it is all the more concerned with the character and mood of soul and with the whole spiritual situation of the time. It is these, and not the single events in the physical world, which are depicted in Imaginations.
[ 12 ] In the picture before us, we see a reflection of how man not only feels himself as a being who lives and is active as a member in the chain of events in the physical world, but also feels spiritual, supersensible Beings working into his earthly existence and having connection with his will.
[ 13 ] The tale of Gerhard the Good shows how the twilight dimness, which, in respect of the penetration of the physical world, preceded the period of the Spiritual Soul, turned man's gaze to the vision of the spiritual world. Man did not see the breadth of the physical world, but he saw all the more into the depth of the spiritual.
[ 14 ] Yet in the period that we describe, it was no longer the same as it once had been when a twilight clairvoyance showed to mankind the spiritual world. The Imaginations were there; but when they appeared within the human soul, it was already in its apprehension of things strongly disposed in the direction of thought. The result of this was that men no longer knew how the world that revealed itself in Imaginations was related to the world of physical existence. Hence, to people who were already holding more strongly to the thought element, these Imaginations seemed to be fictions, invented at will and having no reality.
[ 15 ] Men no longer knew that through the Imaginations they saw into a world in which man stands with a quite different part of his being than in the physical world. Thus in the picture before us, two worlds stand side by side; and in the way the story is told, both worlds bear a character that would make one believe the spiritual events to have taken place in among the physical events, and just as perceptibly as these.
[ 16 ] In addition to this, the physical events in many of these tales are in utter confusion. People whose lives are centuries apart appear as contemporaries; events are transferred to another place or period.
[ 17 ] Facts of the physical world are viewed by the human soul in such a way as one can really only view what is spiritual, for which Time and Space have a different significance. The physical world is depicted in Imaginations instead of in thoughts. On the other hand, the spiritual world is woven into the narrative as if one were dealing, not with a different form of existence, but with something that was a continuation of physical facts.
[ 18 ] A historical conception that keeps to the physical only, thinks that the old Imaginations of the East, of Greece, etc., have been taken over and interwoven poetically with the historical subjects that were occupying men's minds at the time. The writings of Isidor of Seville of the seventh century are said to contain a regular collection of old legendary ‘motifs.’
[ 19 ] Yet this is merely an external point of view, and has significance only for those who have no understanding of that condition of soul which still knows itself to be in direct connection with the spiritual world, and which feels itself impelled to express this knowledge in Imaginations. Whether a writer makes use of his own Imagination, or whether he applies, in an understanding and living way, one that has been handed down through history, is not the essential point. The essential point is that the soul is orientated towards the spiritual world and sees both its own actions and the events in the course of Nature as forming a part of that world.
[ 20 ] It is however true that in the way stories and legends were told in the time before the dawn of the epoch of the Spiritual Soul, a certain tendency to error is noticeable.
[ 21 ] Spiritual observation sees in this tendency the working of the Luciferic powers.
[ 22 ] That which urges the soul to receive the Imaginations into its experience is the result not so much of faculties possessed by the soul in ancient times—through a dreamlike clairvoyance—but rather of faculties present in the periods between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries AD. These faculties were already pressing more strongly towards an understanding, in terms of thought, of what was perceived by the senses. Both kinds of faculties were present simultaneously during the transition period. The soul was placed between the old orientation, which penetrates to the spiritual world and sees the physical only as in a mist, and the new orientation, which is centred on physical happenings and in which the spiritual vision fades.
[ 23 ] The Luciferic power works into this wavering balance of the human soul. It wants to prevent man from attaining to complete orientation in the physical world. It wants to keep him, with his consciousness, in spiritual realms that were adapted for him in ancient times. It wants to prevent pure thinking, directed towards the understanding of physical existence, from flowing into Ms dreamlike, imaginative conception of the world. It is able to hold back, in a wrong way, man's power of perception from the physical world. It is not however, able to maintain in the right way the experience of the old Imaginations, and so it makes man reflect imaginatively, and yet at the same time he is not able to transplant his soul completely into the world in which the Imaginations have their full value.
[ 24 ] At the dawn of the Spiritual Soul epoch, Lucifer is active in such a manner that, through him, man is transplanted to the supersensible region immediately bordering on the physical in a way not in keeping with his nature.
[ 25 ] We can see this quite clearly in the legend of Duke Ernst (Herzog Ernst), which was one of the favourite legends of the Middle Ages and was related in wide circles.
[ 26 ] Duke Ernst has a disagreement with the Emperor, who is determined to make war upon him unjustly and bring him to ruin. The Duke feels impelled to escape from this untenable relation with the head of the State by taking part in the Crusade to the East. In the experiences which he goes through before he reaches his destination, the physical and spiritual are woven together in saga form in the manner indicated. For instance, the Duke, in the course of his wanderings, encounters a people with heads shaped like those of cranes. He is driven ashore on the Magnet Mountain, which draws ships with magnetic power, so that people who come into the vicinity of the mountain cannot escape, but are doomed to a miserable end. Duke Ernst and his followers effect their escape by sewing themselves up in skins, and letting themselves be carried on to a hill by griffins, who are accustomed to capture those driven on to the Magnet Mountain; thence, after cutting the skins, they escape in the absence of the griffins. The continuation of the journey leads them to a people whose ears are so long that they can fling them round them like a cloak; and to yet another people whose feet are so large that when it rains, they can lie on the ground and spread their feet over them like umbrellas.
He comes from a race of dwarfs to a race of giants, etc. Many similar things are related in connection with the Duke Ernst's journey to the Crusades. The ‘Legend’ does not let one feel in the right way how, whenever Imaginations enter into the story, an orientation is set up towards a spiritual world, and how events are then related through pictures which are enacted in the astral world, and which are connected with the Will and Fate of earthly man.
[ 27 ] This is also the case with the beautiful ‘Story of Roland,’ in which Charles the Great's crusade against the heathen in Spain is commemorated. It is related there (as if in confirmation of the Bible) that in order that Charles the Great could attain the end he was striving for, the sun stopped in its course, so that one day became as long as two.
[ 28 ] In the case of the ‘Nibelung Saga,’ one can see how in, Northern lands it has kept a form that maintains more purely and directly the perception of the Spiritual, whereas in Central Europe the Imaginations are brought nearer to physical life. In the Northern form of the story the Imaginations are referred to an ‘astral world’; in the Central European form of the Lay of the Nibelungs, the Imaginations glide over into the perception of the physical world.
[ 29 ] The Imaginations appearing in the Legend of Duke Ernst refer in reality to what is experienced between the experiences in the physical sphere, in an ‘astral world,’ to which man belongs just as much as to the physical.
[ 30 ] If one applies spiritual vision to all this, then one sees how the entrance into the Age of Consciousness signifies outgrowing a phase of evolution in which the Luciferic powers would have prevailed over mankind, had not a new evolutionary impulse come into the human being through the Spiritual Soul with its force of intellectuality. That orientation towards the spiritual world which would lead into the paths of error is hindered through the Spiritual Soul; the gaze of man is drawn away and turned upon the physical world. Everything that happens in this direction withdraws humanity from the Luciferic powers that are misleading it.
[ 31 ] Michael is already at this time active for humanity from the spiritual world. He is preparing his later work from out of the supersensible. He is giving humanity impulses which preserve the former relation to the Divine-Spiritual world, without this preservation adopting a Luciferic character.
[ 32 ] Then in the last third of the nineteenth century Michael himself presses forward into the physical earthly world with the activities which he has exercised in preparation from out of the Supersensible, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.
[ 33 ] Humanity had to undergo a period of spiritual evolution for the purpose of freeing itself from that relation to the spiritual world which threatened to become an impossible one. Then the evolution was guided, through the Michael Mission, into paths which brought the progress of Earth humanity once more into a good and healthy relation to the spiritual world.
[ 34 ] Thus Michael stands in his activity between the Luciferic World-picture, and the Ahrimanic World-intellect. The World-picture becomes through him a World-revelation full of wisdom, which reveals the World-intellect as Divine World-activity. And in this World-activity lives the care of Christ for humanity—even in the World-activity which can thus reveal itself to the heart of man out of Michael's World-revelation.
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the above study of Michael's supersensible preparation for his earthly mission)
[ 35 ] 124. The dawn of the age of Consciousness (the age of the Spiritual Soul) in the fifteenth century was preceded, in the twilight of the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, by a heightened Luciferian activity, which continued for a certain time even into the new epoch.
[ 36 ] 125. This Luciferian influence tried to preserve ancient forms of pictorial conception of the world in a wrong way. Thus it tried to prevent man from understanding with Intellectuality and entering with fullness of life into the physical existence of the World.
[ 37 ] 126. Michael unites his being with the activity of mankind so that the independent Intellectuality may remain—not in a Luciferian, but in a righteous way—with the Divine and Spiritual from which it is inherited.
Erste Betrachtung:
Vor den Toren der Bewußtseinsseele. Wie Michael seine Erdenmission durch Besiegung Luzifers überirdisch vorbereitet
[ 1 ] Michaels Eingreifen in die Welt- und Menchheitsentwickelung am Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts erscheint in einer besonderen Beleuchtung, wenn man die Geistesgeschichte in den Jahrhunderten betrachtet, die ihm vorangegangen sind.
[ 2 ] Im Beginne des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts liegt der Zeitpunkt, in dem die Epoche der Bewußtseinsseele ihren Anfang nimmt.
[ 3 ] Vor diesem Zeitpunkt offenbart sich ein völliger Wandel in dem Geistesleben der Menschheit. Man kann verfolgen, wie vorher in das menschliche Anschauen überall noch Imaginationen hineingespielt haben. Einzelne Persönlichkeiten haben sich allerdings schon früher zu bloßen «Begriffen» in ihrem Seelenleben gefunden; allein die allgemeine Seelenverfassung der Mehrzahl der Menschen lebt in einem Sich-Durchdringen von Imaginationen mit Vorstellungen, die der rein physischen Welt entstammen. So ist es mit den Vorstellungen über Naturgeschehen, so aber auch mit denen über das geschichtliche Werden.
[ 4 ] Was die geistige Beobachtung nach dieser Richtung finden kann, wird durch die äußeren Zeugnisse durchaus bestätigt. Auf einige der letzteren sei hier gedeutet.
[ 5 ] Was in den vorangegangenen Jahrhunderten über geschichtliche Ereignisse gesonnen und gesprochen worden war, wird gerade vor dem Anbrach des Bewußtseinszeitalters vielfach niedergeschrieben. Und so haben wir aus dieser Zeit «Sagen» und dergleichen aufbewahrt, die ein getreues Bild davon geben, wie man vorher «Geschichte» vorgestellt hat.
[ 6 ] Ein schönes Beispiel ist die Erzählung von dem «guten Gerhard», die in einem Gedichte des Rudolf von Ems, der in der ersten Hälfte des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts lebte, erhalten ist. Der «gute Gerhard» ist ein reicher Kaufmann in Köln. Er unternimmt eine Handelsreise nach Rußland, Livland und Preußen, um Zobelfelle zu kaufen. Dann geht er nach Damaskus und Ninive, um Seidenstoffe und ähnliches zu erwerben.
[ 7 ] Auf der Heimreise wird er vom Sturm verschlagen. In dem fremden Gebiet, in das er kommt, lernt er einen Mann kennen, in dessen Gefangenschaft sich englische Ritter und auch die Verlobte des englischen Königs befinden. Gerhard gibt alles hin, was er auf der Reise erhandelt hatte, und erhält dafür die Gefangenen. Die nimmt er auf sein Schiff und tritt die Heimreise an. Als die Schiffe dahin kommen, wo die Wege nach der Heimat Gerhards und nach England sich trennen, entläßt Gerhard die männlichen Gefangenen nach ihrer Heimat; die Verlobte des Königs behält er bei sich, in der Hoffnung, daß ihr Bräutigam, der König Wilhelm, sie abholen werde, sobald er von ihrer Befreiung und ihrem Aufenthaltsorte Kunde erhält. In der denkbar besten Art werden die Königsbraut und ihre mitgekommenen Freundinnen von Gerhard gehalten. Sie lebt wie eine vielgeliebte Tochter in dem Hause ihres Erlösers aus der Gefangenschaft. Es vergeht die längste Zeit, ohne daß der König erscheint, sie abzuholen. Da entschließt sich Gerhard, um der Pflegetochter Zukunft zu sichern, sie mit seinem Sohne zu vermählen. Denn es kann geglaubt werden, daß Wilhelm tot sei. Schon ist das Hochzeitsfest für den Sohn Gerhards im Gange; da erscheint auf demselben als unbekannter Pilger - Wilhelm. Er war lange umhergeirrt, um seine Verlobte zu suchen. Ihm wird nach dem selbstlosen Verzicht von Gerhards Sohn seine Braut zurückgegeben. Einige Zeit bleiben beide noch bei Gerhard; dann rüstet dieser ein Schiff aus, um sie nach England zu bringen. Als die wieder zu Würden gekommenen Gefangenen Gerhard zunächst in England begrüßen können, wollen sie ihn zum König wählen. Er aber kann erwidern, daß er ihnen ihr rechtmäßiges Königspaar bringe. Auch sie hatten ja Wilhelm für tot gehalten und wollten einen ändern König für das Land wählen, in dem die Zustände während des Umherirrens Wilhelms chaotisch geworden waren. - Der Kölner Kaufmann schlägt alles, was man ihm an Würden und Reichtümern anbietet, aus und kehrt nach Köln zurück, um dort weiter der einfache Kaufmann zu sein, der er vorher gewesen. - Die Geschichte wird so eingekleidet, daß der sächsische Kaiser, Otto der Erste, nach Köln reist, um den «guten Gerhard» kennen zu lernen. Denn der mächtige Kaiser ist der Versuchung unterlegen, für manches, was er getan hat, auf «irdischen Lohn» zu rechnen. Dadurch, daß er Gerhard kennen lernt, wird ihm an einem Beispiel fühlbar, wie ein einfacher Mann unsägliches Gutes tut - Hingabe aller Waren, die er erstanden, um Gefangene zu befreien; Rückgabe der Braut des Sohnes an Wilhelm; dann alles, was er verrichtet, um diesen wieder nach England zu bringen und so weiter -, ohne irgendwelchen irdischen Lohn dafür zu begehren, sondern alle Belohnung allein von dem Walten der Gottheit zu erwarten. Der Mann heißt im Menschenmunde «der gute Gerhard»; der Kaiser fühlt, daß er einen mächtigen religiösmoralischen Ruck erhält durch die Bekanntschaft mit Gerhards Gesinnung.
[ 8 ] Die Erzählung, deren Gerüst ich hier gegeben habe, um nicht über etwas wenig Bekanntes bloß mit Namen zu deuten, zeigt nun von der einen Seite ganz deutlich die Seelenverfassung des Zeitalters vor dem Heraufkommen der Bewußtseinsseele in der Entwickelung der Menschheit.
[ 9 ] Wer nämlich die Erzählung, wie sie Rudolf von Ems gibt, auf sich wirken läßt, der kann fühlen, wie das Erleben der Erdenwelt seit jener Zeit, in der Kaiser Otto gelebt (im zehnten Jahrhundert), sich gewandelt hat.
[ 10 ] Man sehe hin, wie in dem Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele die Welt vor dem Seelenblicke des Menschen gewissermaßen «hell» für alles Erfassen des physischen Seins und Werdens geworden ist. Gerhard fährt mit seinen Schiffen gewissermaßen wie im Nebel. Er kennt nur immer ein Stückchen von der Welt, mit der er in Verbindung kommen will. Man erfährt in Köln nichts von dem, was in England vor sich geht, und muß jahrelang suchen nach einem Menschen, der in Köln ist. Man lernt Leben und Besitz eines solchen Menschen, wie der ist, zu dem Gerhard auf der Heimreise verschlagen wird, erst kennen, wenn man durch das Schicksal unmittelbar an den entsprechenden Ort herangebracht wird. Zu dem Durchschauen der Weltverhältnisse von heute verhält sich das damalige wie das Hineinblicken in eine sonnenerhellte weite Landschaft zu dem Sich-Hintasten im dichten Nebel.
[ 11 ] Mit dem, was man heute «geschichtlich» gelten läßt, hat das nichts zu tun, was in Verbindung mit dem «guten Gerhard» erzählt wird. Um so mehr aber mit der Gemütsstimmung und der ganzen geistigen Lage des Zeitalters. Diese, nicht die einzelnen Ereignisse der physischen Welt, werden in Imaginationen dargestellt.
[ 12 ] In dieser Darstellung spiegelt sich, wie der Mensch sich nicht nur als ein Wesen fühlt, das als ein Glied in der Kette der Ereignisse der physischen Welt lebt und tätig ist, sondern wie er in sein irdisches Dasein geistige, übersinnliche Wesen hineinwirken und mit ihnen seinen Willen in Zusammenhang fühlt.
[ 13 ] Die Erzählung vom «guten Gerhard» zeigt, wie das Dämmerdunkel, das in bezug auf das Durchschauen der physischen Welt dem Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele vorangegangen ist, den Blick in das Erschauen der geistigen Welt gewiesen hat. Man sah nicht in die Weiten des physischen Daseins, man sah um so mehr in die Tiefen des geistigen.
[ 14 ] Aber so, wie einst ein dämmerhaftes (traumhaftes) Hellsehen der Menschheit die geistige Welt gezeigt hatte, war es in dem gekennzeichneten Zeitalter nicht mehr. Die Imaginationen waren da; aber sie traten innerhalb einer Auffassung der Menschenseele auf, die schon stark nach dem Gedanklichen hindrängte. Das bewirkte, daß man nicht mehr wußte, wie die Welt, die sich in Imaginationen offenbarte, sich zu der des physischen Daseins verhält. Deshalb erschienen die Imaginationen Leuten, die schon eindringlicher sich an das Gedankliche hielten, als willkürliche «Erdichtungen» ohne Wirklichkeit.
[ 15 ] Man wußte nicht mehr, daß man durch die Imagination in eine Welt blickt, in der man mit einem ganz ändern Teile seines Menschenwesens steht als in der physischen. So standen in der Darstellung beide Welten nebeneinander; und beide trugen durch die Haltung der Erzählung einen Charakter, daß man meinen konnte, die geistigen Geschehnisse, die man erzählte, hätten sich so wahrnehmbar zwischen den physischen abgespielt, wie diese selbst wahrnehmbar sind.
[ 16 ] Dazu kam, daß man die physischen Ereignisse in vielen dieser Erzählungen durcheinander warf. Personen, deren Leben Jahrhunderte voneinander entfernt liegt, treten als Zeitgenossen auf; Geschehnisse werden an unrichtige Orte oder in unrichtige Zeitpunkte versetzt.
[ 17 ] Es werden Tatsachen der physischen Welt so von der menschlichen Seele angeschaut, wie man nur das Geistige anschauen kann, für das Zeit und Raum eine andere Bedeutung als für das Physische haben; die physische Welt wird in Imaginationen statt in Gedanken dargestellt; dafür wird die geistige Welt so in die Erzählung verwoben, wie wenn man es nicht mit einer anderen Daseinsform, sondern mit dem Fortgang physischer Tatsachen zu tun hätte.
[ 18 ] Eine nur an das Physische sich haltende Geschichts-Erfassung denkt, man habe die alten Imaginationen des Orients, Griechenlands und so weiter übernommen und dichterisch mit den geschichtlichen Stoffen verwoben, die die Menschen damals beschäftigten. Man hatte ja in den Schriften Isidors von Sevilla aus dem siebenten Jahrhundert eine förmliche Sammlung alter «Sagenmotive».
[ 19 ] Doch dies ist eine äußerliche Betrachtungsweise. Sie hat etwas Bedeutsames nur für denjenigen, der keinen Sinn für die menschliche Seelenverfassung hat, die sich mit ihrem Dasein noch im unmittelbaren Anschluß an die geistige Welt weiß und die dieses Wissen in Imaginationen auszudrücken sich gedrängt fühlt. Wird dann statt der eigenen Imagination eine geschichtlich überlieferte verwendet, in die man sich eingelebt hat, so ist das nicht das Wesentliche. Dieses liegt darin, daß die Seele nach der geistigen Welt hin orientiert ist, so daß sie ihr eigenes Tun und das Naturgeschehen in diese Welt eingegliedert sieht.
[ 20 ] Doch ist in der Erzählungsart der Zeit vor demAnbruch des Bewußtseinszeitalters Verirrung zu bemerken.
[ 21 ] In dieser Verirrung schaut die geistgemäße Beobachtung das Wirken der luziferischen Macht.
[ 22 ] Was die Seele drängt, Imaginationen in ihren Erlebnisgehalt aufzunehmen, das entspricht weniger den Fähigkeiten, die sie in der Vorzeit - durch ein traumhaftes Hellsehen - hatte, sondern schon mehr denjenigen, die im achten bis vierzehnten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert vorhanden waren. Diese Fähigkeiten drängten schon mehr nach einer gedanklichen Erfassung des sinnlich Wahrgenommenen hin. Beide Fähigkeiten sind in der Übergangszeit nebeneinander vorhanden. Die Seele ist hineingestellt zwischen die alte Orientierung, welche auf die Geisteswelt geht und die die physische nur wie im Nebel sieht, und die neue, die auf das physische Geschehen geht und in der das geistige Anschauen verblaßt.
[ 23 ] In dieses schwankende Gleichgewicht der Menschenseele wirkt die luziferische Macht hinein. Sie möchte den Menschen verhindern, die volle Orientierung in der physischen Welt zu finden. Sie möchte ihn in geistigen Regionen, die ihm in der Vorzeit angemessen waren, mit seinem Bewußtsein erhalten. Sie möchte in sein traumhaft imaginatives Weltanschauen nicht rein Gedankliches, das auf das Erfassen des physischen Daseins gerichtet ist, einfließen lassen. Sie kann sein Anschauungsvermögen in unrechter Art wohl von der physischen Welt zurückhalten. Sie kann aber das Erleben der alten Imaginationen nicht in der rechten Art aufrecht erhalten. So läßt sie ihn in Imaginationen sinnen, ohne ihn seelisch ganz in die Welt versetzen zu können, in denen Imaginationen vollgültig sind.
[ 24 ] Im Anbruche des Bewußtseinszeitalters waltet Luzifer so, daß durch ihn der Mensch in die an die physische zunächst angrenzende übersinnliche Region auf eine ihm nicht entsprechende Art versetzt wird.
[ 25 ] Man sehe dies ganz anschaulich an der «Sage» vom «Herzog Ernst», die zu den beliebtesten des Mittelalters gehörte und die im weiten Umkreise überall erzählt wurde.
[ 26 ] Der Herzog Ernst kommt in Zwiespalt mit dem Kaiser, der ihn ungerecht durch Krieg zugrunde richten will. Der Herzog fühlt sich gedrängt, dem unmöglichen Verhältnis mit dem Reichshaupte dadurch zu entgehen, daß er an der Kreuzzugsbewegung nach dem Orient teilnimmt. In den Erlebnissen, die er nun durchmacht, bis die Reise ihn nach dem Ziele führt, wird «sagenhaft» das Physische mit dem Geistigen in der angedeuteten Art verwoben. Der Herzog gelangt zum Beispiel auf seinem Wege zu einem Volke, das den Kopf gestaltet hat wie Kraniche; er wird an den «Magnetberg» mit den Schiffen verschlagen, von dem diese magnetisch angezogen werden, so daß Menschen, die in die Nähe des Berges kommen, nicht wieder zurück können, sondern elendig umkommen müssen. Der Herzog Ernst und sein Gefolge machen sich dadurch los, daß sie sich in Häute einnähen, von Greifen, die gewohnt sind, die nach dem Magnetberg verschlagenen Menschen zur Beute sich zu holen, auf einen Berg sich bringen lassen und dort nach dem Durchschneiden der Häute in Abwesenheit der Greife entkommen. Die weitere Wanderung führt dann zu einem Volke, dessen Ohren so lang sind, daß sie wie eine Kleidung um den ganzen Körper geschlagen werden können; zu einem ändern, dessen Füße so groß sind, daß sich die Leute, wenn es regnet, auf den Boden legen können und die Füße als Schirme über sich breiten können. Er kommt zu einem Zwergen-, einem Riesenvolke und so weiter. Dergleichen vieles wird in Verbindung mit der Kreuzzugsreise des Herzogs Ernst erzählt. Die «Sage» läßt nicht in der rechten Art fühlen, wie überall da, wo Imaginationen eintreten, die Hinorientierung auf eine geistige Welt stattfindet, wie da Dinge durch Bilder erzählt werden, die in der Astralwelt sich abspielen und die mit Wille und Schicksal der Erdenmenschen zusammenhängen.
[ 27 ] Und so ist es mit der schönen «Rolandsage», in der Karls des Großen Zug gegen die Heiden nach Spanien verherrlicht wird. Da wird sogar in Anlehnung an die Bibel gesagt, daß, damit Karl der Große ein von ihm erstrebtes Ziel erreichen könne, die Sonne sich in ihrem Laufe hemme, so daß ein Tag so lang werde wie sonst zwei.
[ 28 ] Und in der «Nibelungensage» sieht man, wie diejenige Form, die sich in nordischen Ländern erhalten hat, das Anschauen des Geistigen reiner aufrecht erhält, während in Mitteleuropa die Imaginationen an das physische Leben nahe herangebracht werden. An der nordischen Form der Erzählung ist ausgedrückt, daß sich die Imaginationen auf eine «astralische Welt» beziehen; in der mitteleuropäischen Gestalt des Nibelungenliedes gleiten die Imaginationen in das Anschauen der physischen Welt hinein.
[ 29 ] Auch die in der Herzog-Ernst-Sage auftretenden Imaginationen beziehen sich ja in Wirklichkeit auf das, was zwischen den Erfahrungen in der physischen Sphäre in einer «astralischen Welt» erlebt wird, der der Mensch ebenso angehört wie der physischen.
[ 30 ] Wendet man auf all das den Geistesblick, so schaut man, wie das Eintreten in das Bewußtseinszeitalter das Herauswachsen aus einer Entwickelungsphase bedeutet, in der die luziferischen Mächte über die Menschheit siegen würden, wenn nicht durch die Bewußtseinsseele mit ihrer Kraft der Intellektualität ein neuer Entwickelungseinschlag in das Menschenwesen käme. Die Hinorientierung auf die geistige Welt, die in die Bahnen der Verirrung einlenken will, wird durch die Bewußtseinsseele gehindert; der Menschenblick wird herausgeholt in die physische Welt. Alles, was nach dieser Richtung geschieht, entzieht die Menschheit der sie beirrenden luziferischen Macht.
[ 31 ] Da ist Michael schon von der geistigen Welt aus für die Menschheit tätig. Er bereitet vom Übersinnlichen aus sein späteres Werk vor. Er gibt der Menschheit Impulse, die das vorzeitige Verhältnis zur geistig-göttlichen Welt bewahren, ohne daß dieses Bewahren einen luziferischen Charakter annimmt.
[ 32 ] Dann, im letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, dringt Michael mit der Tätigkeit, die er vom fünfzehnten bis in das neunzehnte Jahrhundert vorbereitend vom Übersinnlichen aus geübt hat, in die physische Erdenwelt selbst vor.
[ 33 ] Die Menschheit mußte eine Zeitlang die geistige Entwickelung daraufhin durchmachen, daß sie sich von dem Verhältnisse zur geistigen Welt befreit, das ein unmögliches zu werden drohte. Darauf lenkte diese Entwickelung durch die Michael-Mission in Bahnen ein, die den Fortgang der Erdenmenschheit wieder in ein Verhältnis zur geistigen Welt bringen, das ihr heilsam ist.
[ 34 ] So steht Michael in seinem Wirken zwischen dem luziferischen Weltbild und dem ahrimanischen Weltverstand. Das Weltbild wird bei ihm weisheitsvolle Weltoffenbarung, die den Weltverstand als göttliches Weltenwirken enthüllt. In diesem Weltenwirken lebt des Christus Sorge für die Menschheit, das so aus Michaels Weltoffenbarung dem Menschenherzen sich enthüllen kann.
[ 35 ] (Die zweite und dritte Betrachtung folgen.)
Goetheanum, 23. November 1924.
Weitere Leitsätze, die für die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft vom Goetheanum ausgesendet werden
(Mit Bezug auf die vorangehende erste Betrachtung über Michaels übersinnliche Vorbereitung seiner Erden-Mission)[ 36 ] 124. Dem Aufgange des Bewußtseinszeitalters (fünfzehntes Jahrhundert) geht in der Abenddämmerung des Zeitalters der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele ein erhöhtes luziferisches Wirken voran, das auch noch in der neuen Epoche eine Zeitlang fortdauert.
[ 37 ] 125. Dieses luziferische Wirken möchte alte Formen des Bild-Vorstellens der Welt unrechtmäßig bewahren und den Menschen davon zurückhalten, das physische Weltdasein durch Intellektualität zu begreifen und sich in dieses hineinzuleben.
[ 38 ] 126. Michael verbindet sich mit dem Menschheits-Wirken, damit die selbständige Intellektualität bei dem angestammten Göttlich-Geistigen verbleibe, doch nicht in luziferischer, sondern in rechtmäßiger Art.
First contemplation:
At the gates of the soul of consciousness. How Michael prepares his earth mission by defeating Lucifer supernaturally
[ 1 ] Michael's intervention in the development of the world and humanity at the end of the nineteenth century appears in a special light when one considers the spiritual history of the centuries that preceded him.
[ 2 ] The beginning of the fifteenth century is the point in time when the epoch of the consciousness soul begins.
[ 3 ] Before this time, a complete change in the spiritual life of mankind is revealed. One can trace how previously imaginations still played a role in human perception everywhere. Individual personalities, however, had already found their way earlier to mere "concepts" in their soul life; only the general soul constitution of the majority of people lives in an interpenetration of imaginations with concepts that originate from the purely physical world. So it is with the ideas about natural events, but also with those about historical development.
[ 4 ] What spiritual observation can find in this direction is confirmed by external evidence. Some of the latter are indicated here.
[ 5 ] What had been thought and spoken about historical events in the preceding centuries is often written down just before the dawn of the age of consciousness. And so we have preserved "legends" and the like from this time, which give a true picture of how "history" was previously imagined.
[ 6 ] A fine example is the tale of "Good Gerhard", which is preserved in a poem by Rudolf von Ems, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. The 'good Gerhard' is a rich merchant in Cologne. He undertakes a trading trip to Russia, Livonia and Prussia to buy sable skins. He then goes to Damascus and Nineveh to buy silk fabrics and the like.
[ 7 ] On his journey home, he is caught up in a storm. In the foreign territory he arrives in, he meets a man in whose captivity there are English knights and also the fiancée of the English king. Gerhard gives up everything he had acquired on the journey and receives the prisoners in return. He takes them on board his ship and sets off on his journey home. When the ships arrive at the point where the paths to Gerhard's homeland and to England diverge, Gerhard releases the male prisoners to their homeland; he keeps the king's fiancée with him in the hope that her bridegroom, King William, will come for her as soon as he receives news of her liberation and whereabouts. Gerhard keeps the royal bride and her friends in the best possible way. She lives like a much-loved daughter in the house of her deliverer from captivity. The longest time passes without the king appearing to fetch her. Then Gerhard decides to marry her to his son in order to secure the future of his foster daughter. For it is believed that Wilhelm is dead. The wedding feast for Gerhard's son is already underway when an unknown pilgrim - Wilhelm - appears at it. He had wandered around for a long time looking for his fiancée. After the selfless renunciation of Gerhard's son, his bride is returned to him. They both stay with Gerhard for a while; then he prepares a ship to take them to England. When the restored prisoners are able to welcome Gerhard back to England, they want to elect him as king. But he is able to reply that he is bringing them their rightful king and queen. They, too, had believed William to be dead and wanted to elect a new king for the country, where conditions had become chaotic during William's wanderings. - The Cologne merchant turns down all the dignities and riches offered to him and returns to Cologne to continue being the simple merchant he was before. - The story is framed in such a way that the Saxon Emperor, Otto the First, travels to Cologne to get to know the "good Gerhard". The powerful emperor is tempted to count on "earthly reward" for some of the things he has done. By getting to know Gerhard, he becomes aware of an example of how a simple man does unspeakable good - giving all the goods he has bought to free prisoners; returning his son's bride to William; then everything he does to bring him back to England and so on - without desiring any earthly reward for it, but expecting all reward solely from the rule of God. The man is called "the good Gerhard" by the people; the emperor feels that he receives a powerful religious and moral jolt through his acquaintance with Gerhard's attitude.
[ 8 ] The narrative, the framework of which I have given here so as not to merely interpret something little known by name, now shows from one side quite clearly the state of the soul of the age before the emergence of the consciousness soul in the development of mankind.
[ 9 ] For anyone who allows the narrative as given by Rudolf von Ems to sink in can feel how the experience of the earthly world has changed since the time in which Emperor Otto lived (in the tenth century).
[ 10 ] Look at how, in the age of the consciousness soul, the world before the human soul's gaze has become, so to speak, "bright" for all comprehension of physical being and becoming. Gerhard sails with his ships as if in a fog. He only ever knows a little bit of the world with which he wants to come into contact. In Cologne one learns nothing of what is going on in England and has to search for years for a person who is in Cologne. You only get to know the life and possessions of a person like the one Gerhard is taken to on his journey home when fate brings you directly to the place in question. Looking through the world conditions of today is like looking into a sunlit, wide landscape and feeling your way through thick fog.
[ 11 ] What is told in connection with the "good Gerhard" has nothing to do with what is considered "historical" today. All the more so, however, with the mood and the whole spiritual situation of the age. These, not the individual events of the physical world, are depicted in imaginations.
[ 12 ] This representation reflects how man feels himself not only as a being who lives and is active as a link in the chain of events of the physical world, but how he feels spiritual, supersensible beings working into his earthly existence and his will in connection with them.
[ 13 ] The story of the "good Gerhard" shows how the twilight darkness that preceded the age of the conscious soul with regard to seeing through the physical world pointed the way to seeing the spiritual world. One did not see into the vastness of physical existence, one saw all the more into the depths of the spiritual.
[ 14 ] But just as a dim (dreamlike) clairvoyance had once shown mankind the spiritual world, it was no longer so in the marked age. The imaginations were there; but they occurred within a conception of the human soul that was already pushing strongly towards the mental. As a result, people no longer knew how the world that revealed itself in imaginations related to the world of physical existence. For this reason, the imaginations appeared to people who were already more insistently attached to the mental as arbitrary "fictions" without reality.
[ 15 ] They no longer knew that they were looking through the imagination into a world in which they stood with a completely different part of their human being than in the physical world. Thus both worlds stood side by side in the representation; and both bore a character through the attitude of the narrative that one could think that the spiritual events that were told had taken place as perceptibly between the physical ones as these themselves are perceptible.
[ 16 ] In addition, the physical events in many of these narratives were mixed up. People whose lives are centuries apart appear as contemporaries; events are transposed to incorrect places or times.
[ 17 ] Facts of the physical world are viewed by the human soul as one can only view the spiritual, for which time and space have a different meaning than for the physical; the physical world is depicted in imaginations instead of in thoughts; instead, the spiritual world is interwoven into the narrative as if one were not dealing with another form of existence, but with the progress of physical facts.
[ 18 ] A historical narrative that focuses only on the physical thinks that the ancient imaginations of the Orient, Greece and so on have been adopted and poetically interwoven with the historical material that preoccupied people at the time. After all, the writings of Isidore of Seville from the seventh century contained a formal collection of old "legendary motifs".
[ 19 ] But this is an external view. It only has meaning for those who have no sense of the human soul condition, who know that their existence is still directly connected to the spiritual world and who feel compelled to express this knowledge in imaginations. If, instead of one's own imagination, a historically handed down one is used into which one has settled, then this is not the essential thing. This lies in the fact that the soul is oriented towards the spiritual world, so that it sees its own actions and natural events as being integrated into this world.
[ 20 ] However, there is an aberration in the narrative style of the time before the dawn of the age of consciousness.
[ 21 ] In this aberration, spiritual observation sees the workings of the Luciferic power.
[ 22 ] What urges the soul to include imaginations in its experiential content corresponds less to the abilities it had in prehistoric times - through a dreamlike clairvoyance - but already more to those that were present in the eighth to fourteenth centuries after Christ. These abilities were already pushing more towards a mental grasp of what was perceived by the senses. Both faculties exist side by side in the transitional period. The soul is placed between the old orientation, which focuses on the spiritual world and sees the physical world only as if in a fog, and the new orientation, which focuses on physical events and in which spiritual perception fades away.
[ 23 ] The Luciferic power works into this wavering balance of the human soul. It wants to prevent people from finding their full orientation in the physical world. It wants to keep him and his consciousness in spiritual regions that were appropriate for him in the past. It does not want to allow purely mental thoughts, which are directed towards grasping physical existence, to flow into his dreamlike, imaginative view of the world. It may well hold back his visual faculty from the physical world in the wrong way. But it cannot maintain the experience of the old imaginations in the right way. Thus it allows him to contemplate in imaginations without being able to transfer him mentally completely into the world in which imaginations are fully valid.
[ 24 ] In the dawning of the age of consciousness, Lucifer rules in such a way that through him man is transferred to the supersensible region, which is initially adjacent to the physical, in a way that does not correspond to him.
[ 25 ] This can be seen quite clearly in the "legend" of "Duke Ernst", which was one of the most popular of the Middle Ages and was told everywhere in a wide circle.
[ 26 ] Duke Ernest comes into conflict with the emperor, who wants to unjustly destroy him through war. The duke feels compelled to escape the impossible relationship with the head of the empire by taking part in the crusade to the Orient. In the experiences he now undergoes until the journey leads him to his destination, the physical and the spiritual are "fabulously" interwoven in the manner alluded to. On his way, for example, the Duke comes across a people with heads shaped like cranes; he is taken to the "magnetic mountain" with the ships, from which they are magnetically attracted, so that people who come near the mountain cannot return, but must perish miserably. Duke Ernst and his entourage make their escape by sewing themselves into skins, allowing themselves to be taken to a mountain by griffins who are accustomed to taking the people who have been taken to the magnetic mountain as prey, and escaping there after cutting through the skins in the absence of the griffins. The further journey then leads to a people whose ears are so long that they can be wrapped around the whole body like clothing; to a change whose feet are so large that when it rains, the people can lie down on the ground and spread their feet over themselves as umbrellas. He comes to a dwarf people, a giant people and so on. Much of this is told in connection with Duke Ernst's crusade. The "saga" does not allow us to feel in the right way how, wherever imaginations occur, the orientation towards a spiritual world takes place, how things are told through images that take place in the astral world and are connected with the will and fate of earthly people.
[ 27 ] And so it is with the beautiful "Rolandsage", in which Charlemagne's campaign against the pagans in Spain is glorified. It is even said, with reference to the Bible, that in order for Charlemagne to achieve the goal he was striving for, the sun was slowed in its course so that one day would be as long as two.
[ 28 ] And in the "Saga of the Nibelungs" we see how the form that has been preserved in Nordic countries maintains a purer view of the spiritual, while in Central Europe the imaginations are brought closer to physical life. The Nordic form of the tale expresses the fact that the imaginations relate to an "astral world"; in the Central European form of the Song of the Nibelungs, the imaginations glide into the contemplation of the physical world.
[ 29 ] The imaginations that appear in the Herzog-Ernst saga also refer in reality to what is experienced between the experiences in the physical sphere in an "astral world" to which the human being belongs just as much as to the physical world.
[ 30 ] If we look at all this with the spiritual eye, we see how entering the age of consciousness means growing out of a phase of development in which the Luciferic powers would triumph over humanity if a new developmental impact did not come into the human being through the consciousness soul with its power of intellectuality. The orientation towards the spiritual world, which wants to turn into the paths of aberration, is hindered by the consciousness soul; the human gaze is drawn out into the physical world. Everything that happens in this direction withdraws humanity from the Luciferic power that is obstructing it.
[ 31 ] There Michael is already working for humanity from the spiritual world. He prepares his later work from the supernatural. He gives humanity impulses that preserve the premature relationship to the spiritual-divine world without this preservation taking on a Luciferian character.
[ 32 ] Then, in the last third of the nineteenth century, Michael penetrates into the physical world on earth itself with the activity that he had practiced from the supersensible in preparation from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.
[ 33 ] Mankind had to undergo spiritual development for a time in order to free itself from the relationship to the spiritual world, which threatened to become an impossible one. Then, through the Michael mission, this development was steered into paths that bring the progress of earthly humanity back into a relationship with the spiritual world that is beneficial to it.
[ 34 ] So Michael stands in his work between the Luciferic worldview and the Ahrimanic worldmind. With him, the worldview becomes wisdom-filled world-revelation, which reveals the world-mind as divine world-working. In this worldly work lives the Christ's care for humanity, which can thus reveal itself to the human heart from Michael's worldly revelation.
(The second and third reflections follow.)
Goetheanum, November 23, 1924.
Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society
(With reference to the preceding first meditation on Michael's supersensible preparation for his earth mission)[ 35 ] 124 The advent of the Age of Consciousness (fifteenth century) is preceded in the twilight of the Age of the Mind or Spiritual Soul by a heightened Luciferic activity, which continues for a time into the new epoch.
[ 36 ] 125 This luciferic activity wants to unlawfully preserve old forms of imagining the world and hold man back from understanding the physical world existence through intellectuality and living into it.
[ 37 ] 126 Michael connects himself with the work of humanity so that independent intellectuality remains with the ancestral divine-spiritual, but not in a Luciferian, but in a lawful way.