The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preliminary Remarks by the Editor

[ 1 ] In his autobiography The Course of My Life, Rudolf Steiner describes how, at the turn of the century, he was asked to give theosophical lectures to a then very small theosophical circle in Berlin. He agreed to do so, but emphasized that he could only speak about what lived within him as spiritual science. At the request of the circle, his first series of lectures from the winter of 1900/01 was published in summary form as the book Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to Modern Worldviews. Since the results of his own spiritual knowledge contained therein were also accepted by the general Theosophical Society, there was "no longer any reason not to present this spiritual knowledge in my own way to the theosophical audience, which at that time was the only one that was completely receptive to spiritual knowledge. I did not subscribe to any sectarian dogma; I remained a person who expressed what he believed he could express, entirely in accordance with what he himself experienced as the spiritual world.”

[ 2 ] The following winter – 1901/02 – saw a second series of lectures, which were summarized in the publication Christianity as a Mystical Fact, which appeared in the summer of 1902. Immediately afterwards, the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded with Rudolf Steiner as its General Secretary. Here, “I was now able to develop my anthroposophical work before an ever-growing audience. No one was left in any doubt that I would only present the results of my own research and observations in the Theosophical Society.”

[ 3 ] This was the beginning of an increasingly intensive series of lectures on spiritual science. In June 1903, the first issue of Luzifer (later LuciferGnosis), Journal for Spiritual Life and Spiritual Culture – Theosophy, and in the spring of 1904, his fundamental work Theosophy – An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and Human Destiny. At the same time, Lucifer presented the path of training with the essays How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and the presentation of a spiritual scientific cosmology with the essays From the Akashic Records.

[ 4 ] Thus, the German Section of the Theosophical Society was gradually built up by Rudolf Steiner and his closest collaborator, Marie von Sivers, later Marie Steiner, into a far-reaching Central European spiritual scientific movement. From the outset, it was the anthroposophical section represented by Rudolf Steiner, which later became independent as the Anthroposophical Society due to internal difficulties.

[ 5 ] At the time when Rudolf Steiner gave the course on Fundamental Elements of Esotericism, which is now being published in book form for the first time, it was still in the early stages of its development. For this reason, Rudolf Steiner continues to use the terms “theosophy” and “theosophical” throughout, and to describe planetary development, the constitutional elements of the human being, and so on, he still uses the theosophical-Indian terminology customary in theosophical literature, to which his listeners at that time were accustomed. He speaks about the value of this terminology in particular in the 15th lecture of this course. However, in his essays at that time and in his work Theosophy, he already used terms which, as he said in 1903 in the magazine Luzifer, he “borrowed for certain reasons from an occult language, which differs somewhat in its terminology from that used in the widely read theosophical writings, but which of course agrees with them completely in substance.” Later, he increasingly replaced the Indian-theosophical expressions in his lectures with ones that are appropriate to our European culture. The explanations of words necessary for this course, using expressions that are common today, can be found at the end of the volume.

[ 6 ] The frequent references to the writings of H. P. Blavatsky in the lectures can be explained by the fact that the audience at that time was intensively engaged with the teachings of the founder of the Theosophical Society and often turned to Rudolf Steiner with questions because of the difficult-to-understand presentations. He therefore repeatedly explains Blavatsky's statements from her main work, The Secret Doctrine, especially the third volume, which deals with esotericism.

[ 7 ] The entire course was actually an internal oral instruction, i.e., it was neither public nor intended for the general membership, but only for a few active members who were personally invited to attend. The aim was to provide them with a certain foundation for their own branch work. For this reason, there is no complete stenographic transcript, but only notes that some listeners made for their personal use. These listener notes have a strongly aphoristic character, which must be taken into account when some trains of thought are not always entirely clear due to abridged summaries or gaps. Nevertheless, these notes are included in the complete edition today because, taken as a whole, they are certainly reliable and because they record valuable aspects of a spiritual scientific view of humanity and the world that are no longer found in this form in Rudolf Steiner's later lectures. For clarification and supplementation of some points, especially those of a cosmological nature, one should consult the works From the Akashic Records and Theosophy, which were written at about the same time.

H.W.