The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Christmas Contemplation: The Logos Mystery

[ 1 ] Into the contemplation of the mystery of Michael shone that of the mystery of Golgotha. This is given by the fact that Michael is the power that leads man to Christ in a way that is beneficial to him.

[ 2 ] But the Michael mission is one that is repeated in rhythmic succession in the cosmic development of mankind. It was repeated in its beneficial effect on earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha. There it was connected with all that the still extraterrestrial Christ-power had to actively reveal for the unfolding of humanity on earth. After the Mystery of Golgotha it becomes serviceable for what is to happen to earthly humanity through Christ. It appears in a modified and progressive form in its repetitions, but precisely in repetitions.

[ 3 ] In contrast, the Mystery of Golgotha is an all-encompassing cosmic event that takes place only once in the course of the entire cosmic development of humanity.

[ 4 ] When humanity progressed to the unfolding of the intellectual- or mind-soul, the continuing danger of the already primeval detachment of the human being from the essence of the divine-spiritual became fully apparent.

[ 5 ] And to the same extent that the human soul loses the co-experience with the divine-spiritual entities, that which today is called "nature" emerges around it.

[ 6 ] Man no longer sees the human entity in the divine-spiritual cosmos; he sees the work of the divine-spiritual in the earthly. At first he does not see it in the abstract form in which it is seen today: sensual-physical beings and events that are held together by those abstract idea-contents that are called "laws of nature". He sees it as a divine-spiritual being. This divine-spiritual being surges up and down in everything he sees in the emergence and decay of animal life, in the growth and sprouting of the plant world, in the activity of springs and rivers, in the formation of wind and clouds. All these beings and processes around him are for him the gestures, the actions, are for him the language of the divine being that underlies "nature".

[ 7 ] As once the deeds and gestures of the world gods were seen by man in the positions and movements of the stars, as their words were read therein, so now the "facts of nature" became the expression for the earth goddess. For the divine active in nature was presented as female.

[ 8 ] Remnants of this type of conception as an imaginative fulfillment of the intellectual or emotional soul were still active in human souls well into the Middle Ages.

[ 9 ] The cognizers spoke of the deeds of the "goddess" when they wanted to understand "natural events". It was only with the gradual emergence of the conscious soul that this living, inwardly animated contemplation of nature became incomprehensible to mankind.

[ 10 ] And the way in which people looked in this direction in the age of the intellectual or emotional soul is reminiscent of the Persephone myth with its underlying mystery.

[ 11 ] The daughter of Demeter, Persephone, is forced by the god of the underworld to follow him into his realm. This finally comes about in such a way that she only spends half the year in the underworld and the other half in the upper world.

[ 12 ] This myth is a powerful expression of how, in the distant past, dreamlike clairvoyance once saw through all the becoming of earthly things.

[ 13 ] In primeval times, all worldly activity emanated from the earthly environment. The earth itself was only just coming into being. It formed its being in the cosmic development out of the work of its environment. The divine-spiritual beings of the cosmos were the creators of its being. - When it was far enough along to become an independent world body, divine-spiritual beings descended upon it from the general cosmos and became earth deities. This cosmic fact was recognized by the dreamlike clairvoyance of ancient mankind; the Persephone myth has remained of this knowledge; but it has also remained how people sought to penetrate "nature" with knowledge until deep into the Middle Ages. For people did not yet look at sensory impressions, i.e. what appears on the surface of the earthly, as they did later, but at the forces that work their way up to the surface from the depths of the earth. - And these "deep forces", the "forces of the underworld", were seen to interact with the star and elemental effects of the earth's environment.

[ 14 ] There the plants grow in their manifold forms, there they reveal themselves in their colorful appearance. In them, the forces of the sun, moon and stars interact with the forces of the earth's depths. The basis for this is provided by the minerals, which already have their essence entirely through that which has become earthly from world beings. The rock sprouts up from the "underworld" solely through the heavenly forces that have become earthly. The animal world has not taken on the forces of the "depths of the earth". It arises solely through the world forces that are effective from the earth environment. It owes its becoming, growth, sprouting, its ability to nourish itself, its possibilities of movement to the solar forces flowing onto the earth. It can reproduce under the influence of the lunar forces flowing onto the earth. It appears in many forms and species, because from the universe the positions of the stars have a formative effect on animal life in the most varied ways. But the animals are only brought to earth from the universe. They only participate in the earthly with their dull life of consciousness; with their development, their growth, with everything that they are, so that they can perceive and move, they are not earthly beings.

[ 15 ] This large-scale idea of the becoming of the earth once lived in humanity. What remains of it in the Middle Ages can only be recognized to a limited extent. In order to arrive at this realization, one must go back to very ancient times with the gaze of observing knowledge. For even from the existing physical documents it is only possible to see what was present in the souls of men for those who can see through this in a spiritual way.

[ 16 ] Now man is not able to keep as far away from the earth as the animal kingdom. By expressing this, one approaches the mystery of humanity as well as that of animality. These mysteries are reflected in the animal cult of the ancient peoples, especially the Egyptians. Animals were seen as beings who were guests of the earth, in whom the nature and effectiveness of the spiritual world, which borders on the earthly world, could be seen. And in the connection of the human form with the animal form, which was depicted in pictures, one visualized the forms of those elementary intermediate beings who are certainly on the way to becoming human in the world, but who do not enter the earthly world in order not to become human. Such elementary intermediate beings exist. The Egyptians only reproduced their vision by depicting them. But such beings do not have the full self-consciousness of human beings. In order to attain this, man had to enter the earthly world in such a complete way that he absorbed something of the earthly being into his being.

[ 17 ] He had to be exposed to the fact that in this earthly world the work of the divine-spiritual beings connected to him is present, but only their work. And because only the work detached from the origin is present, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings have access to it. This makes it necessary for man to make the work interspersed with Lucifer and Ahriman the place of a part of his life - the earthly one.

[ 18 ] This is possible without the permanent detachment of the human from his original divine-spiritual, as long as man has not yet progressed to the unfolding of his intellectual or emotional soul. This is when the human being corrupts his physical, etheric and astral body. An older science recognizes this corruption as something that lives in the human being. It is known to be necessary in order that consciousness may advance to self-consciousness in man. In the cultivation of knowledge that took place in the places given to science by Alexander the Great, there lived an Aristotelianism which, correctly understood, carries this corruption within itself as a decisive element of its science of the soul. Such ideas were only later no longer penetrated in their inner essence.

[ 19 ] In the times before the development of the intellectual or emotional soul, man was nevertheless so interwoven with the forces of his divine-spiritual origin that these forces were able to keep the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers approaching him on earth in equilibrium from their cosmic place. From the human point of view, enough had been done to contribute to this equilibrium when the image of the divine-spiritual being immersed in Lucifer's and Ahriman's realm and emerging victorious again was unfolded in cult and mystery acts. Therefore, in the times that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, one sees in the cults of the nations pictorial representations of what then became a reality in the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 20 ] When the intellectual or emotional soul was unfolded, the human being could only be preserved from detachment from its divine-spiritual entities through reality. The divine as an entity had to enter into the organization of the intellectual or emotional soul, which lived during the earthly existence from the earthly, also in the earthly. This happened through the divine-spiritual Logos, Christ, connecting his cosmic destiny with the earth for mankind.

[ 21 ] Persephone submerged into the earthly in order to free the plant world from having to form itself merely from the earthly. This is the descent of a divine-spiritual being into the nature of the earth. Persephone also has a kind of "resurrection", but annually in rhythmic succession.

[ 22 ] This event, which occurs on earth as a cosmic event, is contrasted with the descent of the Logos for humanity. Persephone descends in order to bring nature back to its original orientation. There must be an underlying rhythm, for the events of nature take place in rhythm. The Logos descends into humanity. This happens once during the development of humanity. For this development is only a link in a gigantic world rhythm in which humanity was something quite different from humanity before its human existence and will be something quite different after it, while plant life repeats itself in short rhythms as such.

[ 23 ] To see the Mystery of Golgotha in this light is what humanity has needed from the age of consciousness onwards. For the detachment of man would already have been a danger in the age of the intellectual or emotional soul if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place. In the age of the consciousness soul a complete darkening of the spiritual world would have to occur for man in his consciousness if the consciousness soul could not strengthen itself to such an extent that it looked back to its divine-spiritual origin in insight. But if it can do so, it finds the World Logos as the entity that can lead it back. It penetrates itself with the mighty image that reveals what happened on Golgotha.

[ 24 ] And the beginning of this understanding is the loving apprehension of the World Consecration Night, which is festively commemorated every year. For the empowerment of the consciousness soul happens through the fact that it, which initially absorbs intellectuality, allows warm love to enter this coldest soul element. That warm love which flows most sublimely when it is directed towards the child Jesus who appears on earth on the night of the consecration of the world. Thus man has allowed the highest earthly spiritual fact, which was at the same time a physical one, to affect his soul; he has set out on the path to receive the Christ within himself.

[ 25 ] Nature must be recognized in such a way that it reveals in Persephone, or the being that was still looked upon in the early Middle Ages when one spoke of "nature", the divine-spiritual original and eternal power from which it arose and continues to arise as the basis of earthly human existence.

[ 26 ] The human world must be recognized in such a way that it reveals in Christ the original and eternal Logos, which works in the realm of the divine-spiritual entity originally connected with man for the unfolding of the spiritual entity of man.

[ 27 ] To direct the human heart in love to these great cosmic connections is the right content of that festive remembrance which approaches man every year in view of the Night of the Consecration of the World. If such love lives in the human heart, then it fires through the cold light element of the consciousness soul. If it had to remain without this firing, man would never reach spiritualization. He would die in the coldness of intellectual consciousness, or he would have to remain in a spiritual life that does not progress towards the unfolding of the consciousness soul. He would then remain in the unfolding of the intellectual or emotional soul.

[ 28 ] But by its nature the consciousness soul is not cold. It seems so only in the beginning of its unfolding, because only then can it reveal the light of its content, not yet the warmth of the world from which it originates.

[ 29 ] Feeling and experiencing Christmas in this way can make present in the soul: how the glory of the divine-spiritual beings revealing their images in starry expanses proclaims itself before man and how the liberation of man within the earthly place happens from the powers that want to remove him from his origins.

Goetheanum, Christmas 1924.
(December 28, 1924)

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Further guiding principles sent out to the Anthroposophical Society from the Goetheanum (with reference to the preceding Christmas reflection)

[ 30 ] 137. The activity in the development of the world and humanity, which comes about through the Michael forces, repeats rhythmically, albeit in a modified and progressive form before and after the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 31 ] 138. The Mystery of Golgotha is the unique greatest event within the development of mankind. There can be no question of a rhythmic repetition. For even if this development of humanity is part of a tremendous world rhythm, it is nevertheless the most extended one link in this rhythm. Before it became this one link, humanity was something essentially other than humanity; afterwards it will be something else again. So there are many Michael events during the development of mankind, but only one event of Golgotha.

[ 32 ] 139. In the rapid rhythmic repetition of the course of a year, the divine-spiritual being, which has descended into the depths of the earth for the spiritualization of nature, carries out this event. It represents the ensoulment of nature with the original and eternal forces, which must remain effective, just as the descended Christ represents the ensoulment of humanity with the original and eternal Logos, which should never cease its effectiveness for the salvation of humanity.