The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Old Norse Myths and Legends

[ 1 ] In this and the following hours, we want to look at what could be called occult or mystical symbols in their relationship to the astral and spiritual world. Again and again, these and those signs, symbols, and stories appear before you; and now those who are materialistic-minded come and say that it is all fiction. It is assumed to be somehow borrowed from popular fantasy and regarded only as an empty fantasy. Or the well-meaning come and speculate about what the pentagram and other symbols mean. At our congress in Munich, we even used signs and symbols to decorate our hall, thus indicating that we attach a certain importance to occult signs. But the true occultist does not speculate about this, but seeks the real facts. You can never arrive at the meaning of an occult sign through philosophical speculation, and much of what is said and written about occult signs and their meaning is written in vain because it is based only on speculation, on more or less ingenious reflection. But these occult signs are important to us because they are something like instruments through which we can ascend into the higher worlds.

[ 2 ] We have already heard a great deal about the meaning of important symbols, for example about the symbolic that refers to the number 666, and we have been able to delve deeply into the religious document of the Apocalypse. Today we will deal with something completely different from the symbolism. These are symbols that have often come before your soul, which we now want to get to know in terms of their origin and their real value. Before we move on to discussing these symbols, we need to do a preliminary examination of the human being. You will soon see why something seemingly completely unrelated is cited to explain certain signs and symbols.

[ 3 ] We go back to the time of our human development, which you all know from previous lectures. You know that our present time was preceded by a time that we call the Atlantic time. Where the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is now, between America and Europe, was land in primeval times, while our areas were largely covered by water masses. Our ancestors lived in this country. In truth, most of the European population does not come from the east, but from the west, and are the descendants of the Atlantic population. From that land, the ancient Atlantis, where our ancestors and we ourselves lived in previous incarnations, they migrated far eastward when the floods that now form the Atlantic Ocean engulfed this former continent.

[ 4 ] During the last third of the Atlantean era, a small group of people in the northeast - in the area of present-day Ireland - stood out from the population as the most advanced at the time. The entire Atlantic land was covered with heavy, dense fog masses and is therefore called “Niflheim” in the memory of the Germanic peoples. In these ancient times, when the air was constantly impregnated with dense masses of water, the soul life was also quite different. There was still an old clairvoyance; people at that time looked into the spiritual world. When they approached a person, they saw certain color phenomena arise before their soul that told them whether they liked this person or not. It was the same with animals; when they approached an animal, they could see whether it would harm them or not. So primitive clairvoyance was present to a certain extent in the Atlantic period.

[ 5 ] Mankind now passed through various stages of development; it could not remain with that old dull clairvoyance; today's way of perceiving through the senses had to emerge. For a time, clairvoyance had to take a back seat, but in the future it will be reclaimed and added to the present-day clear consciousness. What people have today as the basis of our external culture, the use of reason, the intellect, was not inherent in the ancient Atlantean clairvoyants; it had to be conquered first. Man had to turn his eyes and ears, his sense organs, outwards; the inner spiritual eye receded for a time. When our ancestors from ancient Atlantis migrated eastwards, this event was simultaneously associated with the loss of the old clairvoyance and with the attainment of external sensory perception, with the attainment of abilities such as counting, calculating and judging.

[ 6 ] The ability to count, calculate and so on was first developed by that small group near present-day Ireland. These people first migrated eastward, and other peoples followed them, drawn by the incoming ocean tides; they populated the Thus there was a twofold way of looking at things in these peoples: the external observation of the world of the senses, counting, calculating, combining, which led to the fact that today's technical advances, machines, means of transport and so on, could be achieved. But in their hearts these peoples still carried something else: the memory of those worlds of the spirit into which they had glimpsed, and the longing to conquer these spiritual worlds again by some means.

[ 7 ] Now let us vividly imagine these ancestors in ancient Europe. They did not all lose the gift of ancient clairvoyance at the same time as migrating. Many, indeed numerous people who had migrated over had also brought full remnants of the old clairvoyance with them to Europe. There were many among these ancestors who, when they sat down quietly in the twilight of the evening or at night, sank into a vivid dreaming that meant more than today's dreaming; they still saw into the spiritual world.

[ 8 ] Innumerable people had not only retained the memory of it, but even the ability to look into the spiritual worlds in certain exceptional circumstances in life. And those who had lost this ability had instead a quality that has been lost much more in the course of evolution than one usually thinks: In ancient times, especially among the population of Central and Eastern Europe, there was a quality that was widespread to an intensity that one cannot imagine today, and that was trust, faithful belief. Those who knew something about the spiritual worlds were listened to, they were believed, because love and trust had a great, significant power in those European countries. The kind of criticizing and insisting on one's own conviction that is found today was something that no one thought of at all back then. But these are the things that make it necessary today for everyone to be guided to the spiritual world themselves. Because of their great and strong trust, this was not necessary at that time. If we look at the old inhabitants of Europe, we see that at the bottom of their souls they had a full consciousness of the spiritual worlds behind the material world.

[ 9 ] And now let us try to understand how the new view of the world came about in people who were now looking at objects through their senses. I have already indicated that an event occurred among that small group in the north, near present-day Ireland, as a result of which calculating, counting and combining became abilities of man. I have already indicated that in those days man's etheric head entered into his physical head. Whereas formerly the part of the etheric head near the eyebrows was outside the physical brain, it now entered into it, and the two became a

[ 10 ] single unit. Thereby man acquired the faculty of self-consciousness, of ego-consciousness; he acquired the faculty of judging and of looking at objects. The etheric head, which today coincides with the form of the physical head, was far in front of the forehead in the ancient Atlanteans, hence their insight into the spiritual world, their clairvoyance. Now let us put ourselves in the shoes of the Atlantean population, let us imagine the old days when people still had their ether head far outside their physical head, and then let us imagine the times towards the end of Atlantis, when the two had already merged. The Atlantean could see how the etheric head gradually moved in; he was still clairvoyant, he saw that. How did he see this moving of the etheric head into the physical head? The Atlantean experienced this moving of the etheric head as something very special. Let us visualize this; I will describe it to you.

[ 11 ] Where, the Atlantean wondered, do the powers that are now being bestowed upon me come from? Before, the human being had seen a spiritual world around him. What did this spiritual world around him show him? Think about that very clearly. If you were suddenly able to see clairvoyantly, to the same degree as the Atlanteans, what would happen in your soul? You would see spiritual beings around you. The physical world would be populated with beings from the astral and spiritual planes, and they would see you. Where would that come from? Through your own abilities, which are now dormant in your soul but which you would then have developed. It would appear to you as if something were radiating out of yourself. What radiates out of you into the world today was only radiated into you at the time of ancient Atlantis. All the views that man can form today in mere concepts of the spiritual world were living entities for him at that time, and the Atlantean saw how something moved into him and stimulated abilities in him. He said to himself: “I am beginning to see things with my eyes, to hear sounds and tones with my ears; I am beginning to see what is perceptible to the senses outside.” Where do these abilities come from? They radiated into man from the outside.

[ 12 ] Let us take another good look at ancient Atlantis. The land was covered with vast watery mists; these watery mists were of varying density in the first and last Atlantean periods, namely, they were different near present-day Ireland than in the other areas. The water and fog masses were warm and hot at first. In the southern part of Atlantis they were still warm, partly hot, like warm, hot smoke masses; towards the north they were colder. Particularly towards the end of the Atlantic period, a mighty cooling occurred. Now it was precisely this cooling of the fog masses, this Nordic cold, which conjured the new view, the new soul life out of people. Under the blazing heat of the south, the intellect and the power of judgment could never have developed first in humanity. The Atlanteans near Ireland felt abilities flowing into them that permeated them so that they became able to see and hear things outside with their sense organs and so on. They felt that they had the cooling of the air masses to thank for this.

[ 13 ] Nerves are needed for the sensory organs to perceive external objects. Nerves extend from the brain to each of our sensory organs. We have eye nerves, olfactory nerves, auditory nerves, and so on. These nerves, which today enable people to bring sensory impressions to consciousness, were inactive before the external sensory perception of things existed. They did not mediate external perception; they had an inner task. The Atlantean human being saw the forces approaching, which transformed these nerves into sensory organs. He felt this whole situation as if currents were flowing into his head from the outside, which then permeated his nerves in the head.

[ 14 ] Now, among the nerves in the head that were active at that time and that we can still prove anatomically today, there are twelve pairs, ten pairs that branch out from the head to set the individual sensory organs in motion. For example, when you move your eyes, it is the eye muscle nerves that do so, not the optic nerve. So there are ten pairs that go to the individual sensory organs, and two pairs that go deeper and mediate the traffic between sensory perception and brain activity. The Atlantean felt twelve currents going into him, into his brain and down into his body. That is what he saw. What you now have in you as nerves was created for his perception by twelve currents going into him. If the fact that the air cooled down and the whole Niflheim became a cold land is due to the twelve nerve cords, something else was needed to form the human sensory organs. Before the human sensory organs were formed, the heart also had a completely different task. The blood circulation must have been different in a being who conjures up the colors and sounds of the environment in front of his soul through clairvoyance than in the Atlantean human, for whom the external world gradually emerged perceptibly for the external senses. This transformation of the heart could never have come from the cold parts of Atlantis. It had to come about through the human organization being kindled from elsewhere. The transformation of the heart was brought about by the warmer, southern clime of Atlantis.

[ 15 ] You have to imagine it so that both currents have affected the Atlanteans, the cold currents of the north and the warm currents of the south. The warm currents have let fire come into the heart, they have made it flare up into enthusiasm, while the other part of the human nature was fanned by the cold north. The currents coming from the north reshaped man's forehead [other postscript: brain] to such an extent that man could become a thinker, a contemplative. The head of the Atlantean was formed quite differently than the head of man today. It is precisely what these forces of the twelve currents of the north have brought about that has made man a thinker. And the warm current of the south gave him his feeling, his way of feeling and also his present sensuality. What the blood received as a result flowed into the heart, which thereby became a completely different organ. The fact that the blood, the juice that nourishes the human being, the whole blood circulation, has changed, meant that the body's external nutrition also had to change. Thus we can say: During that time, man was worked on from two sides. His physical body was so transformed that on the one hand it could become the carrier of the brain, and on the other hand, so that the body was supplied with the blood that this transformed human being needed.

[ 16 ] These processes presented themselves to the Atlantean's view in the form of an image. In the astral vision, everything presents itself in the form of an image. The inflow of spiritual currents that trained our nerves presented itself to him as twelve streams coming down from the cold north; and that which transformed the heart presented itself to him as the fire that came up from the south. That which remodeled the physical head into that of today's contemplative man presented itself to him as the image of the primeval man, and the nourishing in man presented itself to him as another image, as the image of the feeding animal.

[ 17 ] How did he who had seen all this appear before the people? How did he express himself? He expressed himself in images. For what we have said here would not have been understood by the people of that time. But they had still retained an ancient clairvoyance; if one spoke to them in images, they could understand the great and significant truths. This method was also practiced in the Druidic schools. The ancient wise priests spoke to the people in the following way:

[ 18 ] Before you could see into this world, which is full of plants and animals, of all the objects that you can now distinguish outside, there was nothing but a dark, yawning space, like an abyss. You saw the images in the space. But everything that is there now emerged from this abyss, from Ginnungagap, - that is the old Germanic chaos. Now it was told: From the north flowed twelve streams, and from the south came the sparks of fire. When the sparks of fire from the south combined with the twelve streams from the north, two beings were created: the giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla.

[ 19 ] What then is the giant Ymir? Ymir is the thinking human being who has emerged, who has formed out of chaos - out of Ginnungagap; and the cow Audhumbla is the new nourishment and the new heart. In the human form, the giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla are united.

[ 20 ] How should we imagine the ancient Druid, the priest-sage, speaking to people? He had the wisdom, he knew about what had happened. He spoke to people who either still had an ancient clairvoyance in exceptional moments or to those who had trust. He knew he would be understood if he told the story of the process of human evolution as it presents itself to astral vision. The twelve currents that come from the north and form the twelve pairs of nerves connect with the sparks of fire that spurt out of the south, forming the heart and the nutritional system. These are the two forces that present themselves as the giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla. How beautifully this is told in the Germanic Genesis! Two worlds came into being, we hear: the cold Niflheim and the hot, flame-spraying Muspelheim. Niflheim releases the twelve currents, Muspelheim releases the sparks of fire.

[ 21 ] And now let us go a little further. We know that at that time, at that moment when the etheric body of the head united with the physical head, the I arose as a clear, self-conscious I. Before that, the human being could not say “I” to himself. The human being already felt himself to be an I-being, but I-consciousness had not yet dawned on him. Together with this becoming I, the human being had to recognize what had been transformed and formed. He had become an I in the higher sense.

[ 22 ] Now let us consider what had emerged in the human being. What had come from the twelve currents had emerged, that is, that which permeated his head with the brain nerves. But what had also emerged was that which, by its nature, is not connected to the head, that which, by its nature, descends from the cow Audhumbla. These two natures joined together at that time; you can literally see that. Try to realize how everything that came from the twelve currents of the north is enclosed in the skull and spinal cord. Everything else is added on; the ribs and the organs underneath them are what came from the south, from the fire sparks, the cow Audhumbla; it has developed from a completely different state of humanity and has been added to what came earlier. What has developed there? The first thing that was formed out of a completely different state of humanity is the sexual principle. Although the sexual principle was already formed in ancient Lemuria, it was only with the appearance of I-consciousness that man became aware of it. Before that point, man was more or less unconscious; the sexual act took place as if in a dream, a twilight state. The second thing that was given to man was the shape of the heart itself. And a third thing that was given to him, which gradually developed during this time, was language. Language is also a creature of Atlantis. Without language, you cannot imagine the development of thinking, of higher spirituality. And you cannot imagine this either without the transformed heart and without the changed, conscious sexual principle. Thus man appears strangely structured. His thinking and his outer vision have been incorporated into his head. This is accompanied by a threefold consciousness: the conscious sexual principle, the conscious heart principle and the conscious language, which is the expression of his inner being.

[ 23 ] Let us now consider how this presents itself to the astral view. The astral seer sees this again in an image, like a tree it presents itself to him, a tree that has three roots. The one root is sexuality, the second is the heart and the third is language. These three roots are in correspondence with the spiritual, the head. Nerve currents are constantly going back and forth. The clairvoyant can see this as if a being were constantly running from bottom to top and from top to bottom. It appears as if the upper, the spiritual, is constantly being fought by what comes from below. These two currents are in conflict with each other. Man would never be able to live in his lower limbs without being stimulated by the twelve nerve currents coming from the head. In the blood the spiritual nourishing juices drip from top to bottom. Thus the clairvoyant sees in pictures the becoming of the new man, as it has been preparing in the last days of the Atlantean epoch for the post-Atlantean time.

[ 24 ] The old Druid sage had to speak in such a way that he told people: This is how you see things. After all, people still had astral clairvoyance, and so he was still able to describe to them what he saw on the astral plane. Therefore, he taught: What has arisen in man and lives in him today - the ego-personality - arises from three sources. The I, which was there earlier but has only now come to consciousness, comes from Niflheim. But there is a snake that continually gnaws at the root that comes from this source; Niddhögr is its name. Clairvoyantly, one can actually see this snake gnawing. The excesses of the sexual principle, if not kept in check, gnaw at this root of man.

[ 25 ] The second root is the heart. From it comes the new life of man. Everything man does, he does under the impulse of the heart. He feels what makes him happy or unhappy. He feels the present, but he also feels that with which he grows into the future; man's actual destiny is felt by the heart. That is why the priestly sages said: At the source from which this root originates, three Norns sit and spin the threads of fate. The Norns are Urd, the mistress of the past, Verdhandi, who knows about the present, about that which exists and comes into being, and Skuld, who knows what is to be in the future. “Skuld“ is the same word as ‘guilt’. The future comes about through something emerging from the present that must be borne.

[ 26 ] The third root is Mimir's source, Mimir, who drinks the potion of wisdom. This is that which expresses itself as language. And above, the treetops of the tree reach into the spirit world, and from the spiritual world, drops of fertilizing nerve fluid come down. The priest-sages expressed this by saying: Up there in the treetops of the world ash, a goat grazes, from whose antlers it constantly drips down. - Thus the lower is constantly fertilized by the upper. And a squirrel runs from top to bottom and from bottom to top, carrying words of discord back and forth: the struggle of the lower nature against the higher.

[ 27 ] This is how the Germanic saga presents it. It says: The new man in the new world resembles a tree, an ash tree that has three roots. The first root goes to Niflheim, the ice-cold, gloomy primeval land. In the middle of Niflheim was the bottomless well Hwergelmir; twelve streams sprang from it, flowing through the whole world. The second root went to the well of the Norns Urd, Verdhandi and Skuld; they sat on its banks and spun the threads of fate. The third root went to Mimir's well. Yggdrasil was the name given to the world ash tree, in which the world forces had been drawn together. A person is depicted at the moment when he is to become aware of himself, when the word “I” is to sound from within him. “Yggdrasil” means “I-bearer”. This tree is the carrier of the ego. “Ygg” is “I” and “drasil” is the same root as “to bear”.

[ 28 ] Now try to imagine all the learned and unlearned, the witty and unwittery explanations that have been given to this Germanic myth. All these explanations are of no value for occultism. For the occultist, the sentence applies that everything that is a sign – and a narrative is also a sign – has a real reality in the spiritual world; and only when we know what corresponds to such a sign in the spiritual world do we recognize the true meaning of the signs and myths. No one can grasp and apply the forces for human development that lie in the old Nordic myths without approaching the deeper meaning of these myths in this way. It is through occultism that we gain the knowledge of the world and of man that the ancient Druids placed in the images of Germanic myth, not because they wanted to invent images out of a fertile imagination, but because they beheld these images. No symbol has a right to exist in occultism that cannot be seen in the higher worlds. The old legends and myths are symbols in the physical world for a higher reality. They are a script that wonderfully records the times gone by. When we can read this script, we can look deep into the past, and at the same time the myths themselves inspire us.

[ 29 ] If we recognize myths in this way, we recognize much more deeply than abstract science. Science can show us the twelve pairs of nerve cords; the occultist makes the origin and the whole world context recognizable. What is man? A symbol of the spirit, for he is born out of the spiritual world. He is a composition of spiritual forces. If a person recognizes himself correctly, he recognizes himself as a symbol for the eternal within him. Let us take this with us and continue our reflections in a week's time. We want to reflect on it in the sense of Goethe's words “Everything that is transitory is only a parable”. Man himself is a parable for the immortal spiritual within the perishable. When man recognizes this, he comes to understand his own spiritual, immortal, eternal essence.