The Advent of Christ in the Ethereal World
GA 118
At the time when Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures, he was still part of the Theosophical Society, and he always used the words “Theosophy” and “theosophical” in the sense of his spiritual science, which was anthroposophically oriented from the very beginning. According to a later statement by Rudolf Steiner, these terms are generally replaced with “spiritual science”, “anthroposophy” or "anthroposophical".
Rudolf Steiner spoke about the event of the appearance of Christ in the etheric world in Stockholm for the first time on January 12, 1910. However, there is no transcript of this lecture. Since that day, Rudolf Steiner never ceased to refer to this great event again and again. After Sweden, the next lecture for members was the inauguration of the Novalis branch in Strasbourg on January 23, 1910, where the event is also referred to at the end. This lecture is found in GA 125. In the following lectures for members in the first half of 1910, this theme is treated almost exclusively. They are summarized in the present volume, insofar as transcripts have been preserved. For the public, Rudolf Steiner presented this research result in two ways at that time. The first was artistic, through the figure of Shearer Theodora in the first scene of his first mystery drama, The Portal of Initiation (GA 14), written in August 1910. The second was in the essay The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity (GA 15), written in August 1911.