The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Myths are stories communicated to humans by the great initiates, behind which lie great truths. The Trojan War, for example, represents the battle between the third and fourth sub-races of the fifth root race. The former is represented by Laocoon, the priest from the ancient priestly state, who was also king, and the latter by Odysseus, the personification of cunning, the power of thought that was developing in that epoch. In the north, too, we find development guided by such initiates. In Wales, there was an association of initiates from the pagan era, the priestly rule, whose highest flowering appears in King Arthur and his Round Table. Opposed to them stood the League of the Holy Grail and its knights, who worked for the proclamation of Christianity.

[ 2 ] Art, political development, everything is connected with the great initiates of these two associations, the expression of pagan and Christian culture. The influence of the Grail community grew ever greater at the turn of the 13th century. That period of city founding marked a special turning point in European culture: the old peasant culture based on land ownership was replaced by bourgeois urban culture. This was a radical change in the whole way of life and thinking. It is therefore not without significance that at that time, at the time of the singers' contest at Wartburg Castle, we see the emergence of a legend, the legend of Lohengrin. What did this legend mean in the Middle Ages?

[ 3 ] Today, we have no idea of the medieval folk soul. It was particularly receptive to the spiritual currents that were going on beneath the surface of things. Today, we find that the Lohengrin legend strongly emphasizes the Catholic point of view. But we must remember that what disturbs us today was only effective at that time because it was cloaked in the garb of what really moved people's souls. The fervent piety had to give the legend its clothing so that it had something of what lived in the people. So what was the legend supposed to mean? An initiation, the initiation of a chela into an arhat, of a disciple into a master. Such a chela first becomes a homeless person, that is, he performs his duties like everyone else, but he must strive to look beyond himself and develop his higher self. What are the characteristics of the stages of initiation of a chela?

[ 4 ] Firstly: overcoming the personal, freeing the God within. Secondly: freedom from all doubt; all skepticism ceases. Spiritual things stand before his soul as facts. Freedom also from all superstition, for since he is able to test everything himself, he can no longer fall prey to deception. At an even higher stage, the key to knowledge is then handed over to him. It is said that he receives the gift of speech; he becomes a messenger of the supernatural world. The depths of the spiritual world are revealed to him. This is the second stage of chelaship. The third stage is where the person, who in ordinary life says “I” to himself, can now say “I” to all beings in the world, where he is elevated to encompass the whole universe. At this third stage, mysticism refers to the chela as a “swan”; he becomes a mediator between the arhat, the teacher, and human beings. Thus, the swan knight appears to us as a messenger of the great White Lodge; thus, Lohengrin is a messenger of the Grail community.

[ 5 ] A new impulse, a new cultural impact was to be initiated. You know that in mysticism the soul or consciousness is represented as something feminine. Here, too, the consciousness of the new, bourgeois culture is presented as something feminine. This penetration of a new culture is understood as an elevation of consciousness. Elsa von Brabant represents the medieval soul, and Lohengrin, the great initiate, the swan in the third degree of chelaship, brings the new culture over from the Grail community. It must not be asked. It is a profanation and a misunderstanding to ask the initiate about what must remain a secret.

[ 6 ] Thus, the advancement to new states of consciousness always happens through the influence of great initiates. As an example of how these initiates work, I would like to remind you of Jakob Böhme. You know that Jakob Böhme proclaimed profound truths. Where did he get this wisdom? He tells us that he was once left alone as an apprentice in his master's shop. A stranger came in and asked for a pair of shoes. The boy was not allowed to sell them to him in his master's absence; the stranger spoke a few words to him, then left, but after a while he called the young Böhme out and said to him: “Jakob, you are still small, but one day you will become a completely different person, and the world will be amazed.” What does that mean? This is an initiation; the moment of initiation is depicted. For the time being, the boy does not yet understand what has happened to him, but the impulse has been given.

[ 7 ] Such a moment is also depicted in the Lohengrin legend. Such legends are important clues, but they can only be understood by those who can see things in context. The Lohengrin legend appears, as already mentioned, in connection with the legend of the Singers' War. Richard Wagner used it for his Lohengrin poem. We can see from this how high Richard Wagner's inner calling was.

[ 8 ] Richard Wagner deals with another ancient legend in his “Ring of the Nibelung.” These are old Germanic legends in which the fate of the tribe that spread across Europe and Asia after the great Atlantean flood as remnants of the Atlantean population and ushered in the post-Atlantean era lived on. The legends contain a memory of the great initiate Wotan, the Aesir god. Wotan is an initiate from the Atlantean era, just as all the Norse gods are nothing more than ancient, great initiates.

[ 9 ] In Wagner's preoccupation with the Siegfried saga, we can clearly distinguish three stages. In the first stage, we find a consideration of modern culture. For Richard Wagner, people today have become day laborers of culture. He sees a great difference between people in modern times and those in medieval times. Today, most of the work done by people is machine work, whereas in medieval culture all work was an expression of the human soul. The house, the village, the city, everything that lived in them was meaningfully designed; people took pleasure in it. What are our magazines, our shops, our cities to us today? What relationship do they have to our soul? In those days, the house was the expression of an artistic idea. The entire street scene, with the market in the center of the city and the cathedral towering above everything, to which everything pointed, was an expression of the soul. Wagner felt this contrast. This is what he wanted to achieve in his art: to create something that, at least in one area, allowed people to appear whole. With his Siegfried, Wagner wanted to portray a whole, harmonious human being in contrast to the industrial day laborer. This is how our great minds have always felt, how Goethe felt, how Hölderlin felt, who put it this way: You see craftsmen, but no human beings; thinkers, but no human beings; priests, but no human beings; masters and servants, young people and old people, but no human beings. No reversal was possible externally; our entire development cannot be scaled back. That is why Wagner wanted a temple of art to be created in which the total work of art would elevate people above their ordinary lives. The new era needed such a place of elevation precisely because modern life was so fragmented. This was the first idea behind the Siegfried poem that Wagner worked on.

[ 10 ] But a second plan came to him when he delved even deeper into his feelings. In the early Middle Ages, an old legend found its way into German poetry: “Die Wibelungen” (The Wibelungs). Such legends reflected the deepest feelings of the people at that time. Only those who truly study the soul of the people can understand what lived in the hearts of the people back then. Such legends were the expression of deep, great truths. For example, the legends of Charlemagne. The emperor was not reported on in the historical sense of today; people looked deeper into the ancient connections. The Frankish royal family became the ancient ancestors of the later post-Atlantean root race. The Wibelungs were priest-kings who not only provided for their empires, but also gave them their spiritual impetus. These legends were a reminder of a great time that had passed. In this respect, the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome was seen as something particularly important. In ancient times, the Wibelungs had been the consecrated priest-kings; the memory of this was perpetuated in the German imperial legends. Wagner was led to these.

[ 11 ] One figure in particular seemed to him to represent the contrast between the new age of material possessions and the medieval era, which still had connections to that spiritual culture. It was the legend of Barbarossa that preoccupied him. In Barbarossa, too, we encounter a great initiate. We are told of his journey to the Orient, from where he is to bring back higher wisdom, knowledge, and the Holy Grail from the initiates there. The myth of the 12th and 13th centuries has the emperor sitting enchanted inside the mountain; his ravens bring him news of what is happening in the world. Ravens are an ancient symbol of mystery. In the Persian language of mystery, they express the lowest level of the initiates; they are therefore the messengers of the higher initiates. What was this initiate supposed to bring? Richard Wagner wanted to depict the replacement of the old era by the new with its new ownership structures. What had lived before had withdrawn like Barbarossa. The intervention of the initiates crystallized for him in Barbarossa.

[ 12 ] This idea still shines through in the “Nibelungen.” First conceived in an external form, now on a deeper basis, it becomes the expression of the profound view of the Middle Ages, in which the advent of a new culture is represented. But once again Wagner seeks an even deeper understanding of this idea; instead of Barbarossa, he finally chooses the figure of Wotan, with his infinitely deep, intuitive understanding of the ancient Germanic myths of the gods. They represent the replacement of the Atlantean culture, the emergence of the fifth root race from the fourth. This is at the same time the development of the intellect. The development of the human intellect, of self-consciousness, did not yet exist among the Atlanteans. They lived in a kind of clairvoyance. It was not until the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans, the Proto-Semites, that the first elements of the combinatory intellect emerged, which lived on in the fifth root race. With this, self-consciousness arose. The Atlanteans did not yet say “I” to themselves with the same intensity as the members of the following age. This ancient culture was brought over after the downfall of Atlantis; the Europeans are a later branch of the Atlanteans. A contrast now arises between the general spiritual culture and the initiates who work in secret and inspire the outer mind.

[ 13 ] The dwarves of Nibelheim are the bearers of ego-consciousness. Richard Wagner contrasts Wotan, the old Atlantean initiate, with Alberich, the bearer of egoism from the dwarf race of the Nibelungs, the initiates of the post-Atlantean age. Gold is deeply significant and meaningful in mysticism. Gold is light; the light that emanates from it becomes wisdom. Alberich retrieves gold, hardened wisdom, from the Rhine. Water always represents the soul, the astral. From the soul comes the ego, the gold, the wisdom of the I. The Rhine is the soul of the new age in which the intellect, the ego-consciousness, emerges. Alberich seizes the gold, snatching it from the Rhine maidens, the feminine element that characterizes the original state of consciousness.

[ 14 ] This connection lived deep in Wagner's soul. The emergence of ego-consciousness in this new age is felt powerfully, powerfully portrayed at the beginning of “Das Rheingold” in the chords in E-flat major. This also lives and weaves musically through Wagner's Rheingold. Wagner had poems before him that came from the primordial myths. Something lived in these legends that, filled with power and life, permeated the soul with spiritual rhythm. What one lives and is oneself awakens, resounds, and permeates human beings in these ancient legends.