The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Signs and Symbols of Christmas

[ 1 ] Christmas, which we are now preparing to celebrate, is regaining a profound meaning and a new spiritual life through the spiritual-scientific worldview. In a spiritual sense, Christmas is a festival of the sun, and it is as a festival of the sun that we want to get to know it today. To begin with, let us listen to the most beautiful apostrophe to the sun, the one that Goethe puts into the mouth of his Faust:

The pulse of life beats fresh and alive,
Gently greeting the ethereal twilight;
You, Earth, were also steadfast this night
And breathe anew, refreshed, at my feet,
Already beginning to surround me with joy,
You stir and move a powerful resolve,
To strive ever toward the highest existence. —

In twilight, the world already lies open,
The forest resounds with a thousand voices of life;
Out of the valley, into the valley, a strip of fog is poured,
But the clarity of the sky descends into the depths,
And twigs and branches, freshly refreshed, sprout
From the fragrant abyss where they slept submerged;
Color upon color also clears from the ground,
Where flowers and leaves drip with trembling pearls,
A paradise surrounds me all around.

Look up! — The mountain peaks
Already herald the most solemn hour;
They may enjoy the eternal light early,
Which later turns down toward us.
Now the green meadows of the Alps
Are given new splendor and clarity,
And step by step it has succeeded;
It emerges! — and, already blinded, alas,
I turn away, pierced by pain in my eyes.

So it is when a longing hope
Trustingly strives toward the highest desire,
It finds the gates of fulfillment open wide;
But now, from those eternal depths,
An excess of flame, we stand affected:
We wanted to light the torch of life,
A sea of fire surrounds us, what a fire!
Is it love? Is it hate? That envelops us gloriously,
Alternating tremendously between pain and joy,
So that we look back to the earth,
To shelter ourselves in the most youthful veil.

So let the sun remain behind me!
The waterfall, roaring through the rocky reef,
I look at it with growing delight.
From fall to fall it now rolls in a thousand,
Then pouring out in a thousand streams,
High into the air, foam upon foam rushing.
But how glorious, springing from this storm,
The colorful arch arches in alternating cycles,
Now clearly defined, now dissolving into the air,
Spreading cool, fragrant showers all around!
This reflects human endeavor.
Contemplate it, and you will understand more clearly:
We have life in the colorful reflection.

[ 2 ] Goethe puts these powerful words into the mouth of his representative of humanity as he faces the sun rising in the morning. — But it is not this sun, which awakens anew every morning, that is the subject of the festival we are discussing today. We want to let the essence of the sun affect us in a much deeper sense. And what this sun is supposed to be shall form the leitmotif of our contemplation today. We will now hear those words that reflect the deepest meaning of the Christmas mystery. These words resounded before the devoutly listening students of the mysteries of all times, before they were allowed to enter the mysteries themselves:

The sun looks
At midnight hour.
Builds with stones
In the lifeless ground.

So find in decline
And in the night of death
The new beginning of creation,
The young power of the morning.

Let the heights reveal
The eternal word of the gods,
The depths shall preserve
The peaceful refuge.

Living in darkness
Create a sun.
Weaving in matter
Recognize the joy of the spirit.

[ 3 ] Many who today only know the Christmas tree with its lights believe that the Christmas tree is a tradition handed down from ancient times. But that is not the case. The Christmas tree is in fact one of the most recent European traditions. Even the oldest Christmas tree is barely more than a hundred years old. But as young as the tree is, the Christmas celebration is just as old.

[ 4 ] The Christmas celebration is a festival that was known everywhere in the oldest mysteries of all religions and was always celebrated. It is not merely an outward celebration of the sun, but a festival that leads humanity to a vision or at least an inkling of the sources of existence. It is a festival that was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the mysteries when the sun sent its least power to the earth, gave its least warmth. But it was also celebrated by those who could not yet participate in the entire celebration, who were only allowed to experience the outer, pictorial expression of the highest mysteries. And these mystery secrets have been preserved throughout the ages and have taken on different forms among all peoples, depending on their various creeds. Christmas celebration is called the festival of the night of consecration, this night of consecration that was celebrated in the great mysteries. These were events where the initiator, in personalities who were sufficiently prepared for this, allowed the higher human being to rise within; or, if we want to use a modern term: in which the living Christ was born within.

[ 5 ] Only those who know nothing of the fact that spiritual forces are at work alongside chemical and physical forces, and that just as chemical and physical forces have their specific times in the cosmos, so do spiritual forces — only these can believe that it is irrelevant when the awakening of the higher self takes place. The great mysteries consisted in the fact that human beings experienced that event where they were allowed to see the active forces in colorful splendor, in bright light, where they were allowed to see the world around them filled with spiritual qualities, with spiritual beings, where they were allowed to see the spirit world around them, where they experienced the greatest thing a human being can experience. For everyone, this moment will come! Everyone will experience it, even if perhaps only after many incarnations, but the moment will come for everyone when Christ will rise within them, when new seeing and new hearing will awaken within them.

[ 6 ] Those who were prepared for the awakening as mystery students were first taught what this awakening means in the great universe. Only then were the final acts of awakening performed. And these actions were taken when the darkness is at its greatest, when the outer sun is at its lowest: at Christmas time, because those who know spiritual facts know that at this time forces pass through the universe that are favorable to such an awakening. In preparation, the student was told that those who truly want to know must not only know what has happened on Earth for thousands of years, but must also learn to survey the entire course of humanity. And they must also know that the great festivals in the course of the year are arranged by the leading personalities, and that they must be dedicated to looking up to the eternal great truths.

[ 7 ] Over millions of years, the gaze was directed on such occasions. Look back to that time, the student was told, when our Earth was not yet as it is now, when there was no sun, no moon, but both were still united with the Earth, when the Earth still formed one body with the sun and the moon. Even then, human beings already existed, but they did not yet have bodies; they were spiritual beings, and no sunlight shone on these spiritual-soul human beings from outside. The sunlight was within the Earth itself. It was not like today's sunlight, which falls on beings and things from outside, but it was a light that had spiritual power within it, which at the same time shone within every human being. Then came the moment when the sun emerged from the earth. It separated from it, and its light fell from outside onto the earth. The sun had withdrawn from the earth. It had now become dark inside human beings.

[ 8 ] That was the beginning of their development toward that future moment when they would rediscover the inner light shining within. Human beings had to learn to recognize the things of the earth with their outer senses. They develop to the point where the higher human being, the spiritual human being, glows and shines again within. From light through darkness to light — that is the course of human development.

[ 9 ] After the disciples had been prepared in this way, they were led to awakening at that moment when, as a select group, they were to experience inwardly what the rest of humanity would only experience in the distant future: when they saw the spiritual light through their opened spiritual eyes. And this sacred moment was to be when the outer light was at its weakest, on the day when the outer sun shines least. Then, on that day, the disciples of the mysteries were united, and the inner light opened up to them. And those who could not yet participate in this celebration were to experience at least an outer image that would tell them: The great moment will come for you too. Today you see an image. Later you will experience what you now see in the picture.

[ 10 ] These were the lesser mysteries. They showed in images what the initiate would later experience. And today we want to witness what took place in the lesser mysteries at the midnight hour. It was the same everywhere: in the Egyptian mysteries, in the Eleusinian mysteries, in the mysteries of the Near East, in the Babylonian-Chaldean mysteries, as well as in the mysteries of the Persian Mithras cult and the Indian Brahman mysteries. Everywhere, the disciples of these mystery schools experienced the same thing at midnight on the night of initiation.

[ 11 ] They gathered early on the evening before. In silent reflection, they had to realize what this most important event meant. They sat together in deep silence in the dark. When midnight approached, they had already been sitting like this for hours in the dark room. Thoughts of eternity filled their inner beings. Then, around midnight, mysterious sounds arose, flooding the room, swelling and subsiding. The students who heard these sounds knew: this is the music of the spheres. Deep, solemn devotion filled their hearts. Then a faint light appeared. The light came from a dimly lit disc. Those who saw it knew that this disc represented the earth. The illuminated disc then became darker and darker until it was finally completely black. At the same time, the room around them became brighter. Those who saw this knew that the black circle represented the Earth. The sun, which normally shines through the Earth, is veiled. The Earth can no longer see the sun. Then, circle after circle in rainbow colors formed around the Earth's disc, extending outward. Those who saw this knew that it was the iris. Then, at midnight, a violet-reddish glowing circle gradually rose in place of the black circle of the Earth; on it was written a word. This word differed depending on the peoples whose members were allowed to experience this mystery. In our language today, the word would be “Christos.” Those who saw this knew: this is the sun. It appeared to them at the midnight hour, when the world around them was resting in deepest darkness. It was made clear to the disciples that they had now experienced in images what is called in the mysteries: seeing the sun at midnight.

[ 12 ] Those who are truly initiated learn to truly see the sun at midnight, for the material has been extinguished within them. Only the sun of the spirit lives within them and outshines all the darkness of matter.

[ 13 ] The most blessed moment is that moment in human development when human beings experience that they live detached from darkness in eternal light. And this moment was depicted in images in the mysteries, year after year, at midnight on the night of consecration. This image represented that, alongside the physical sun, there is a spiritual sun which, like the physical sun, must be born out of darkness. To make this even clearer to the disciples, after they had experienced the rising of the sun, the Christ, they were led into a cave where there seemed to be nothing but stone, dead, lifeless matter. There they saw ears of corn springing from the stones as a sign of life, a symbolic hint that life arises from apparent death, that life is born in dead rock. They were then told: Just as the power of the sun rises anew from this day on, after it seemed to have died, so too does new life always arise from dying life.

[ 14 ] It is the same event that is hinted at in the Gospel of John in the words: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John, the forerunner of the coming Christ, the spiritual light, whose high day in the course of the year falls in the middle of summer, this John must decrease, and as he diminishes, the power of the coming light grows, becoming stronger and stronger the more John diminishes. Thus the new, coming life prepares itself in the seed, which must rot and decay in order for the new plant to arise. — The disciples should feel that life rests in death, that new, glorious blossoms and fruits arise from the rotten and decaying, that the earth is full of the power of birth. They should learn to believe that at this time something is happening inside the earth: the overcoming of death by life. The life that is present in death was shown to them in the overcoming light. They felt this, they experienced it when they saw the light arise and shine in the darkness. Now they saw in the stone cave the sprouting life that arises in splendor and abundance from what appears to be dead.

[ 15 ] In this way, the pupils were taught to believe in life, and what may be called the greatest human ideal was allowed to sprout within them. Thus they learned to look up to this highest ideal of humanity, to that point in time when the earth will have completed its development, when light will shine throughout all of humanity. The earth itself will then crumble to dust, but a spiritual essence of the earth will remain with all people who have become luminous within through the spiritual light. And the earth and humanity will then awaken to a higher existence, to a new phase of existence.

[ 16 ] When Christianity arose in the course of development, it carried this ideal in the highest sense. It was felt that Christ, as the immortal spirit of the earth, as the bearer not only of material, sprouting life, but also of spiritual rebirth, should appear as the great ideal of all people, that he was born around Christmas, in the time of greatest darkness, as a sign that a higher human being can be born in the human soul out of the darkness of matter. Before people spoke of Christ, they spoke in the ancient mysteries of a sun hero; they associated with him the same ideal as Christianity associated with Christ. The sun hero was called the bearer of the ideal. Just as the sun completes its course throughout the year, just as it waxes and wanes in its light, just as its warmth seems to withdraw from the earth and then shine forth anew, just as it contains life in its death and flows forth anew, so the sun hero, through the power of his spiritual life, has become lord over death and night and darkness.

[ 17 ] In the Persian Mithras mysteries, a distinction was made between seven degrees of initiation. First was the degree of the “ravens,” who could only advance to the gate of the initiation temple. They become the mediators between the outer world of material life and the inner world of spiritual life; they no longer belong to the material world and not yet to the spiritual world. We find these ravens everywhere; they play the same role everywhere as messengers who go back and forth between the two worlds and convey messages. We also find them in our German legends and myths: the ravens of Wotan, the ravens that fly around the Kyffhäuser. — The second degree, the degree of the “occult,” led the disciple away from the gate into the interior of the initiation temple. There he matured towards the third degree, that of the “warrior,” who went out into the world to proclaim the occult truths he had been allowed to experience inside the temple. The fourth degree, the degree of the “lion,” was attained by the person whose consciousness extended not to a single human being but to an entire tribe. Thus, Christ was called “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” — The fifth degree is attained by the person whose consciousness expands even further, encompassing an entire people in their consciousness. This person no longer had their own name. They were referred to by the name of the people to whom they belonged. Thus, people spoke of “the Persian” or “the Israelite.” We understand, for example, that Nathanael was called a “true Israelite” because he had attained the fifth degree of initiation. —- The sixth degree was the degree of the “sun hero,” and we must realize what this name means. We will then come to understand that a shiver of awe must have passed through the soul of a student of the mysteries who knew something about a sun hero and who could experience the birth of a sun hero in the Christmas festival.

[ 18 ] Everything in the cosmos follows its rhythmic course. All the stars, like the sun, follow a great rhythm. If the sun were to depart from this rhythm for just a moment, to stray from its course for just a moment, it would result in a revolution of unprecedented significance throughout the universe. Rhythm governs all of nature, from the inanimate to human beings. It is present in the plant world: violets and lilies bloom at the same time. Animals have their mating season at certain times of the year. Only with humans is the situation different: the rhythm that prevails in animals through the course of the seasons in the forces of growth, reproduction, and so on—in humans, it ceases!

[ 19 ] Human beings should be embedded in freedom, and the more civilized they are, the more this rhythm diminishes. Just as the light disappears at Christmas time, so the rhythm eventually seems to have disappeared completely from human life, and chaos reigns. But then human beings should give birth to this rhythm from within themselves on their own initiative. They should shape their lives of their own free will so that they proceed within rhythmic boundaries. The events of their lives should unfold with regularity, as firmly and reliably as the course of the sun. And just as it is unthinkable that the course of the sun could change, so too should it be unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life could be interrupted.

[ 20 ] The sun hero was seen as the embodiment of such a rhythm of life. Through the power of the higher human being born within him, he gained the power to control the rhythm of his own life. This sun hero was also Christ Jesus for the first two centuries. Therefore, his birthday was moved to the time when the birthday of the sun hero had been celebrated since ancient times. Hence everything that was linked to the life story of Christ Jesus, including the midnight mass, which the first Christians celebrated in caves in memory of the sun festival. In this mass, a sea of light shone out of the darkness at midnight as a reminder of the rising of the spiritual sun in the mysteries. That is why the story has Jesus being born in a stable, as a reminder of the stone cave from which life was born in the growing ears of corn, the symbols of life.

[ 21 ] Just as earthly life was born from dead rock, so the highest, Christ Jesus, was born from the lowest. The legend of the three wise priests, the three kings from the East, was linked to his birthday. They brought the child gold, the symbol of outer, wise power; myrrh, the symbol of the victory of life over death; and finally frankincense, the symbol of the world ether in which the spirit lives.

[ 22 ] Thus, in the spirit of Christmas, we sense something echoing from the earliest times of humanity. And this has come down to us in the special coloring of Christianity. In its symbols we find allegories for the oldest symbols of humanity. The tree of lights is also such a symbol. It is an allegory for the tree of paradise. This tree of paradise represents the animating and cognizing force within paradise. Paradise itself represents the whole of material nature. The representation of spiritual nature is the tree in the midst of it, which encompasses knowledge, and the tree of life. Knowledge can only be attained at the expense of life.

[ 23 ] There is a story that explains the meaning of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life: Seth stood at the gates of paradise and asked to be let in. The cherub who guarded the entrance let him in. This means that Seth became an initiate. Once Seth was in paradise, he found that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were firmly intertwined. The archangel Michael—who stands before God—allowed him to take three seeds from this intertwined tree.

[ 24 ] This tree stands there as a prophetic indication of the future of humanity: when all of humanity has found knowledge and will be initiated, then it will carry not only the tree of knowledge within itself, but also the other tree, that of life. Death will then no longer exist. For the time being, however, only the initiated may take the three seeds from this tree, these three seeds, which signify the three higher members of the human being.

[ 25 ] When Adam died, Seth placed these three seeds in his mouth, and a flaming bush grew out of Adam's grave, which had the property that new shoots and leaves always developed from the wood that was cut from it. But within the circle of flames of the bush it is written: “Ehjeh asher ehjeh,” which means: I am who was, who is, who will be. This signifies that which passes through all incarnations: the power of the ever-renewing, becoming human being who descends from light into darkness and ascends from darkness into light.

[ 26 ] The staff with which Moses performed his miracles was cut from the wood of this bush. The gate of Solomon's Temple was made from it. This wood was carried out to the pool of Bethesda, and the pool received from it the power that is told to us. And from the same wood is formed the cross of Christ Jesus, the wood of the cross, which shows us the dying life that passes away in death, but which has the power to bring forth new life. The great symbol of the world stands before us: life overcoming death. The wood of this cross grew from the three seeds of the tree of paradise.

[ 27 ] This symbol is also expressed in the Rosicrucian symbol, the death of the lower, and from it sprouting the resurrection of the higher, in the red roses, which Goethe expressed in the words:

And as long as you do not have this,
This: Die and become!
You are but a gloomy guest
On the dark earth.

[ 28 ] What a wonderful connection between the tree of paradise and the wood of the cross! If the cross is also a symbol of Easter, we also receive a deepening of the Christmas spirit from it. In it, we feel what flows toward us in the idea of Christ on this night of the birth of Christ Jesus in new, springing life. We see this idea hinted at in the living roses that adorn this tree here. They tell us: the tree of the night of consecration has not yet become the wood of the cross, but the power to become this wood is beginning to rise within it. The roses growing out of the greenery are a symbol of the victory of the eternal over the temporal.

[ 29 ] In the Pythagorean square we find the symbol that interprets the fourfold nature of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I.

[ 30 ] For the higher trinity of the human being, the triangle stands as a symbol for the spirit self, the life spirit, and the spirit man.

[ 31 ] The symbol above it is the symbol for Tarok. Those who were initiated into the Egyptian mysteries understood how to read the sign. They also understood how to read the Book of Thoth, which consisted of seventy-eight cards depicting all world events from beginning to end, from Alpha to Omega, and which could be read by connecting and assembling them in the correct order. It contained images of life dying and sprouting again into new life. Those who could combine the right numbers and the right images could read it. And this wisdom of numbers, this wisdom of images, has been taught since ancient times. It still played an important role in the Middle Ages, for example with Raimundus Lullus, but today not much of it remains.

[ 32 ] Above it is the Tao symbol, the symbol that reminds us of the name our ancient ancestors gave to God. Before Europe, Asia, and Africa were cultivated lands, these ancient ancestors lived in Atlantis, which was submerged by floods. In Germanic legends, the memory of Atlantis lives on in the legends of Niflheim, the misty realm. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Large, powerful masses of mist enveloped the land, similar to what we see today when we travel through clouds and fog in the high mountains. The sun and moon did not stand clearly in the sky; for the Atlanteans, they were surrounded by rainbow tinges – by the sacred iris. At that time, humans understood the language of nature much better. What speaks to humans today in the lapping of the waves, the rustling of the wind, the whispering of the leaves, the rumbling of thunder, but is no longer understood by them, was understandable to the ancient Atlanteans at that time. They sensed a divine presence in everything that spoke to them. Within all these speaking clouds and waters and leaves and winds, a sound resounded to the Atlanteans: Tao — that is me. — In this sound lived the very essence that permeates all of nature. Atlantis heard it. This Tao was later expressed in the letter T. Above it is a circle, the sign of the all-encompassing divine father nature.

[ 33 ] Finally, everything that permeates the universe and exists as human beings is represented in the symbol of the pentagram, which greets us from the top of the tree. The deepest meaning of the pentagram cannot be discussed now. It shows us the star of developing humanity. It is the star, the symbol of man, which all wise men follow, just as the priest-wise men followed it in ancient times. It is the meaning of the earth, the great sun hero who is born on the night of consecration, because the highest light shines out of the deepest darkness.

[ 34 ] Humanity lives in a future where the light is to be born within it, where one meaningful word is to be replaced by another, where it will no longer be said that darkness cannot comprehend light, but where truth will resound throughout the universe and where darkness will comprehend the light that shines upon us in the star of humanity. where the darkness will recede and comprehend the light, that is, be seized by it. And this should resound from within us during the Christmas celebration. Then Christmas will be truly celebrated by us in its deep, ancient meaning, for then it will point out to us that the spiritual light will shine forth from within the human being and radiate out into the whole world. And we will be able to celebrate Christmas as a festival of humanity's highest ideal. It will then have meaning for us again, it will come alive again in our souls, and even the Christmas tree will then have a more appropriate meaning as a symbol of the tree of paradise than is given to it today in the most meaningful way. But in our souls, the celebration of Christmas Eve will give rise to the joyful confidence: Yes, I too will experience within myself what must be called the birth of the higher human being; the birth of the Savior, the birth of Christ, will also take place within me.