The Rudolf Steiner Archive

History of the heavens. Mythological history. Earth history Mystery of Golgotha

[ 1 ] In the spatial cosmos there are opposites: World's expanse and earth's center. The stars are to a certain extent "scattered" in the universe. Forces radiate from the center of the earth in all directions of the world's expanse.

[ 2 ] As man stands in the world in the present cosmic epoch, the starry shining and earthly forces can only appear to him as the total work of the divine-spiritual beings with whom he is connected in his inner being.

[ 3 ] But there was a cosmic time epoch when this shining and these earth forces were still the direct spiritual revelation of the divine-spiritual beings. Man in his dull consciousness felt the divine-spiritual beings effectively in his being.

[ 4 ] Then came another epoch of time. The starry sky detached itself as a physical being from the divine-spiritual work. What can be called world spirit and world body emerged. The world spirit is a multiplicity of divine-spiritual entities. In the older epoch they work into the earth from the starry places. What shone from the expanses of the worlds, what radiated from the center of the earth as forces, was in reality the intelligence and will of the divine-spiritual beings who created the earth and its humanity.

[ 5 ] In the later cosmic epoch - after the evolution of Saturn and the sun - the work of intelligence and will of the divine-spiritual beings became more and more spiritually internalized. What they were originally active and present in became the "world body", the harmonious arrangement of the stars in world space. If one looks back on these things in a spiritually appropriate world view, one can say: world spirit and world body arose from the original spirit body of the world-creating beings. And the world body shows in the arrangement and movement of the stars how once the intelligent and willful work of the gods was. But for the cosmic present, what was once free-moving divine intelligence and divine will in the stars has become lawful and fixed in them.

[ 6 ] So what shines in today from the starry worlds to man on earth is not a direct expression of the will of the gods and the intelligence of the gods, but a sign that has remained standing of what they once were in the stars. In the celestial star design that releases admiration from the human soul, one can therefore see a past, but not the present revelation of the gods.

[ 7 ] But that which is "past" in the starlight is "present" in the spirit world. And man lives with his being in this "present" world spirit.

[ 8 ] In the shaping of the world, one must look back to an old cosmic epoch in which world spirit and world body function as a unity. We must consider the middle epoch in which they unfold as a duality. And one must think into the future, the third epoch, in which the world spirit will again take over the world body into its activity.

[ 9 ] For the old epoch, the constellation and course of the stars could not have been "calculated" because they were an expression of the free intelligence and free will of divine-spiritual beings. In the future, they will again be impossible to calculate.

[ 10 ] "Calculation" only has a meaning for the middle cosmic epoch.

[ 11 ] And as for the constellation and course of the stars, this also applies to the effectiveness of the forces radiating from the center of the earth into the world. That which works "from the depths" becomes "calculable".

[ 12 ] But everything strives from the older cosmic epoch towards the middle, in which the spatial and temporal becomes "calculable" and the divine-spiritual must be sought "behind" the "calculable" as a revelation of intelligence and will.

[ 13 ] Only in this middle epoch are the conditions given in which humanity can progress from a dull consciousness to a bright, free self-consciousness, to its own free intelligence and its own free will.

[ 14 ] The time had to come when Copernicus and Kepler "calculated" the body of the world. For human self-consciousness had to be formed from the cosmic forces connected with the bringing about of this moment. In older times, this self-consciousness was predisposed; then came the time when it was ready to "calculate" the world.

[ 15 ] The "story" takes place on Earth. It would never have come about if the expanse of the world had not become "fixed" star constellations and star courses. In the "historical becoming" on earth, there is an image - but a thoroughly changed one - of what was once "celestial history".

[ 16 ] Older peoples still have this "heavenly history" in their consciousness, and they look to it much more than to "earthly history".

[ 17 ] In the "history of the earth" lives the intelligence and will of men, first in connection with the cosmic will of the gods and the intelligence of the gods, then independently.

[ 18 ] In the "history of the heavens" lived the intelligence and will of the divine-spiritual beings connected with humanity.

[ 19 ] Looking back at the spiritual life of the peoples, in the distant past there is a consciousness of being together and wanting to be together with the divine-spiritual beings in such a way that their history is the history of heaven. By talking about "origins", man does not recount earthly but cosmic processes. Indeed, even for his present, what goes on in his earthly environment seems so insignificant to him compared to the cosmic processes that he only pays attention to these, not to that.

[ 20 ] There was an epoch in which mankind had the consciousness to see the history of heaven in mighty impressions, in which the divine-spiritual beings themselves stood before the soul of man. They spoke; and man heard the speech in dream-inspiration; they revealed their forms; and man beheld them in dream-imagination.

[ 21 ] This "heavenly story", which filled the souls of men for a long time, was followed by the mythical story, which today is often thought to be ancient poetry. It combines heavenly events with earthly events. For example, "heroes" appear, superhuman beings. These are beings who are higher in development than humans. At a certain time, for example, these beings have only developed the human being limbs to the level of the sentient soul. The "Heros", however, has already developed what will one day appear in the human being as the spirit self. The "Heros" cannot embody itself directly within earthly relationships; but it can do so by immersing itself in the body of a human being and thus making itself capable of working as a human being among human beings. Such beings can be seen in the "initiates" of older times.

[ 22 ] The facts of world events in all this are such that mankind did not "imagine" events in this way in successive epochs; rather, what took place between the more spiritual "incalculable" and the physical "calculable" world changed. It is only that long after world conditions had already changed, the human consciousness of this or that people still clung to a "world view" that corresponded to a much earlier reality. At first this happened in such a way that human consciousness, which does not keep pace with cosmic events, really still saw the old. Then came a time when vision faded and the old was only held on to through tradition. Thus, in the Middle Ages, traditionally, the heavenly world is still imagined to play into the earthly world, which is no longer seen because the power of seeing is no longer there.

[ 23 ] And in the terrestrial realm the peoples develop in such a way that they hold one or the other worldview content in different lengths of time, so that next to each other worldviews live, which according to their nature lie one after the other. - But the different world-views of the peoples do not stem from this fact alone, but also from the fact that the different peoples saw different things according to their dispositions. Thus the Egyptians saw the world in which there were beings who had stopped prematurely on the way to becoming man and had not become earth-men; and they saw man after his life on earth in all that he had to do with such beings. The Chaldean peoples saw more how extraterrestrial spiritual beings - good and evil - entered earthly life in order to work there.

[ 24 ] The ancient "celestial history" proper, which belongs to a very long epoch, is followed by the "mythological" history, which is shorter, but still long in relation to the later "history" proper.

[ 25 ] As I have already characterized, it is difficult for people to abandon in their consciousness the old views in which gods and humans are presented as interacting. - Thus "actual earth history" has long been present - since the development of the intellectual or emotional soul. Man still "thinks" in terms of what has been. Only when the first germs of the consciousness soul develop does one begin to look at the "actual history".

[ 26 ] And in that which, detached from the divine-spiritual, becomes history as the human-spiritual, free intelligence and free will can be experienced by human beings.

[ 27 ] In this way, world events, in which man is interwoven, run between the fully calculable and the workings of free intelligence and free will. World events are revealed in all the nuances of the interaction between the two.

[ 28 ] Man accomplishes his life between birth and death in such a way that the bodily basis for the unfolding of the inner spiritual-soul free unpredictable is created for him in the calculable. He passes through his life between death and a new birth in the incalculable, but in such a way that the calculable unfolds mentally as in the "inner" of the spiritual-soul being. He thus becomes - out of this calculable - the builder of his coming life on earth.

[ 29 ] In "history" the incalculable lives itself out on earth, into which, however, the calculable integrates itself, albeit to a weak degree.

[ 30 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings oppose the order that has been established between the incalculable and the calculable by the divine-spiritual beings connected with man since the beginning - against their harmonization of the cosmos through "measure, number and weight". Lucifer cannot unite anything calculable with the nature he has given to his being. His ideal is cosmic unconditional intelligence and will.

[ 31 ] This Luciferian tendency is appropriate to the world order in those areas in which free events are to prevail. And there Lucifer is the legitimate spiritual helper of the unfolding of humanity. Without his help freedom could not enter into the spiritual-soul of man, which is built up on the basis of the calculable physical - but Lucifer wants to extend this tendency to the whole cosmos. And then his activity becomes a battle against the divine-spiritual order to which man originally belongs.

[ 32 ] Then Michael enters. He stands with his own being in the unpredictable; but he brings about the balance between the unpredictable and the predictable, which he carries within himself as a world-thought that he has received from his gods.

[ 33 ] The ahrimanic powers in the world are different. They are the complete opposite of the divine-spiritual beings with whom man is originally connected. These are at present purely spiritual powers, which carry within themselves completely free intelligence and completely free will, but which create in this intelligence and this will the wise insight of the necessity of the calculable, unfree as world thoughts, from whose wings man is to unfold as a free being. And they are connected in love with everything calculable, with the world-thought, in the cosmos. This love flows from them through the universe.

[ 34 ] In complete contrast to this lives in the greedy desire of the Ahrimanic powers the cold hatred of everything that unfolds in freedom. Ahriman strives to make a cosmic machine out of what he lets flow from the earth into the universe. His ideal is "only and solely" "measure, number and weight". He was called into the cosmos, which serves human development, because "measure, number and weight", his field, had to be developed.

[ 35 ] Only he who grasps the world spiritually and physically everywhere truly grasps it. This must be observed right into nature with reference to such powers as the divine-spiritual ones working in love and the ahrimanic ones working in hate. One must perceive the natural love of the divine-spiritual beings in the natural warmth of the world, which begins with spring and works towards summer; one must become aware of the effect of Ahriman in the blowing frost of winter.

[ 36 ] In midsummer, Lucifer's power weaves itself into the natural love, the warmth. At Christmas time, the power of the divine-spiritual beings, to whom man is originally connected, turns against the frost-hatred of Ahriman. And as spring approaches, natural divine love continues to soften the natural hatred of Ahriman.

[ 37 ] The appearance of this annually occurring divine love is the time of remembrance, when the free God-element has entered into the calculable earth-element with the Christ. Christ works in complete freedom in the calculable; thus he renders harmless what only the calculable desires, the ahrimanic.

[ 38 ] The event of Golgotha is the free cosmic act of love within the history of the earth; it is also only comprehensible for the love that man brings to this comprehension.

Goetheanum, around Christmas 1924
(January 4, 1925)

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Further guiding principles issued by the Anthroposophical Society from the Goetheanum (With reference to the preceding: History of Heaven, Mythological History, Earth History, Mystery of Golgotha)

[ 39 ] 140. The cosmic event, in which the development of mankind is interwoven, and which is reflected in human consciousness as "history" - in the most comprehensive sense, is divided: into the long-lasting history of heaven, the shorter mythological history and the relatively very short history of the earth.

[ 40 ] 141. This cosmic event currently breaks down into the "incalculable" work of divine-spiritual beings, who create in free intelligence and free will, and into the "calculable" event of the world body.

[ 41 ] 142. The Luciferic powers oppose the calculable of the world body, the Ahrimanic powers oppose that which creates in free intelligence and free will.

[ 42 ] 143. The event of Golgotha is a free cosmic deed that originates from world-love and can only be grasped through human-love.