The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] If one wishes to study the development of Germanic-Nordic history and the spiritual impulses described therein, one must first consider the fundamental character of Germanic-Nordic mythology, and it has already been pointed out on previous occasions that this Germanic-Nordic mythology, despite certain similarities it shares with other mythologies and conceptions of the divine, is nevertheless something quite unique. It remains true, however, that a very extensive core of mythological belief extends across all Germanic peoples and tribes of Europe, so that even far to the south a unified mythological conception—essentially a similar understanding of those kinship relationships—is possible. Precisely because of the distinctiveness of Germanic-Norse mythology, there must once have been a shared understanding across all the regions where this mythology was widespread in one form or another; for what is common in the mythology of the Germanic-Nordic peoples differs enormously from the very essence of Greek mythology, not to mention Egyptian mythology, so that everything related in Germanic mythology is very close to one another and far removed from what constitutes the essence of Greek and Roman mythology. However, it is not very easy to understand this essence today, for the reason that—due to certain cognitive presuppositions, which would take us too far afield to discuss here—there is today a certain longing, a certain impulse to simply compare the religions of different peoples with one another. Comparative religious studies, comparative mythology—these are fields for which there is much enthusiasm today. This is a field in which it is possible to get up to the greatest nonsense. What usually happens when one compares the mythologies and religions of individual peoples? One compares the external features present in the stories of the gods, seeks to prove that a certain divine figure appears in one mythology and in a similar way in the other, and so on. This comparison of religions is, for those who truly know the facts involved, pretty much the most uncomfortable aspect of our current scientific approach, because in reality one compares only the external details everywhere. Such a comparison of religions makes roughly the same impression on those who know the facts as if someone were to say: “Thirty years ago I met a man. He wore a uniform that was of such and such a nature. The man had blue trousers, a red jacket, and this or that headgear, and so on,” and then quickly continues: “Then, twenty years ago, I met a person who wore the same uniform, and ten years ago, another who wore the same uniform again.” If the person in question were now to believe that he could compare the people he met thirty years ago, twenty years ago, and ten years ago—because they wore the same uniform—in terms of their inner nature as well, he could be very much mistaken; for a completely different person might be inside that uniform at different times, and what really matters is what kind of person is inside the uniform. The analogy seems far-fetched, and yet it amounts to the same thing in the comparison of religions when one takes Adonis and compares him to Christ. There, one compares only the outer uniform. The clothing and characteristics of the beings in the myths may be very similar or even identical, but what matters is what kind of spiritual-divine individualities are within them; and if the individualities within Adonis and Christ are entirely different, then this comparison has precisely the value of a comparison of uniforms. Nevertheless, this comparison is immensely popular today. What comparative religious studies can bring to light today in this field using its entirely external methods is therefore often of no significance at all. What matters far more is that one comes to know, as it were, through the differentiation of national spirits, the manner in which this or that people has arrived at its mythology, its other doctrines concerning the gods, or even its philosophy.

[ 2 ] We can therefore hardly understand the fundamental character of Germanic-Norse mythology without taking another look at the five successive cultural periods of the post-Atlantean era. These five cultural periods were brought about by migratory movements from west to east, such that, so to speak, the most mature and advanced people, after completing these migrations, advanced into the Indian region and then established the sacred, ancient Indian culture. Further on, approaching our own time, the Persian culture was established, then the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian culture, then the Greco-Latin culture, followed finally by our own. These five cultures can only be understood in their essential core by realizing that the human beings who participated in these cultures, as well as the angelic beings, the national souls, or archangels, and the spirits of the age in times past, were all quite distinct from one another. Today we wish to give greater consideration to how different the people were who participated in these cultures.

[ 3 ] The people who established the ancient -Indian culture, which then found its literary expression in the Vedas and in later Indian literature, were fundamentally different—fundamentally different, for example, from the Greco-Latin peoples, different even from the Persians, different from the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, and most different of all from the peoples in Europe who are growing up in preparation for the fifth cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era. But in what way were they different? The entire human constitution of the ancient Indian peoples was absolutely different from that of the peoples of all the regions further to the west. If we wish to form an idea of the difference that existed, we must say to ourselves: The peoples of ancient India had advanced very far in human development before they took on the ego. They had made great, immense progress in every other aspect of human development; they had a long, long history of human development behind them. But they had gone through this, so to speak, in a kind of dullness. Then the “I” entered, the consciousness of the I. This occurred relatively late among the Indian people; at a time when the Indian people were already, to a certain degree, very mature, when they had already gone through what the Germanic-Nordic peoples still had to go through, while they already possessed their I. — Do bear this in mind! The Germanic-Nordic peoples, with their fully developed “I,” had to be present during what the inhabitants of ancient India had gone through in a certain stupor—that is, without their “I” being present.

[ 4 ] What, then, was it that humanity went through during the post-Atlantean era? In the ancient Atlantean era, human beings were still endowed with a higher degree of the old, dull form of clairvoyance. Through this ancient, dim clairvoyance, one looked into the divine-spiritual world; one saw the events unfolding within that world. Now, for a moment, transport yourself back to the ancient Atlantean land, before the trains head east. The air was still permeated with water vapor and mist. But the human soul was different as well. People did not even distinguish the various external sensory perceptions from one another. It was the case back then that they found the spiritual content of the world spread out around them like a spiritual aroma, like a spiritual aura. A certain clairvoyance was thus present, and one had to emerge from this clairvoyance. This occurred through the influence of the forces into whose sphere people entered during the migrations from west to east. During these migrations, the most diverse stages of soul development were once again undergone. There were peoples who, as they migrated eastward, initially seemed to sleep through the process of emerging from the old clairvoyance and were already at a higher stage of development, even while their ego was still in a state of dullness. They passed through various stages of development, and their ego was still a dull, dreamy one. The Indians were the most advanced when their ego awoke with full self-awareness. By then they had already reached a state where they possessed a very rich inner spiritual life that no longer particularly reflected those conditions which the peoples of Europe were to experience for a long time to come. They had already passed through those stages. They awoke to self-consciousness when they were already endowed with spiritual powers and spiritual abilities through which they could penetrate deeply into the spiritual worlds. Therefore, as the more advanced members of the Indian population worked their way out of their old, twilight-like clairvoyant states, all the activity and work of the various angelic and archangelic beings regarding human souls had, in essence, become highly indifferent to them. They no longer directly observed the work of the archangels and angels, nor of those spiritual beings in general who worked particularly within the national spirit. This had been accomplished in their soul, in their astral and etheric bodies, when they were, so to speak, not even present yet. They awoke when their soul was already endowed with an immense degree of maturity; they awoke in such a way that the most advanced among them could, through a slight development, already read in the Akashic Records what had previously occurred in the course of human evolution, so that they looked out into their surroundings, into the world, and were thereby able to read in the Akashic Records what was taking place in the spiritual world, what they had gone through in a dull, twilight state of consciousness. They had been unconsciously guided into higher realms; before their sense of self had awakened, they had attained spiritual abilities far richer than the soul capacities of Western peoples. Thus, the spiritual world was a direct experience for these people. The most advanced among the Indian leaders had reached such a stage that, when their ego awakened, they were in fact no longer even dependent on observing how, so to speak, human development bubbled forth from the spirits of form or forces; rather, they were more familiar with what we call the spirits of movement, the powers, and that which stands above them, the spirits of wisdom. This interested them particularly. The spiritual beings standing below them, on the other hand, were beings in whose realm they had already been before, and who were therefore no longer of such special importance to them. Thus they looked up to what they later called the sum of all spirits of movement and all spirits of wisdom; to what was later designated by the Greek terms dynameis and kyriotetes. They looked up to these and said to them: Mula-Prakriti, that is the sum of the spirits of movement, and Maha-Purusha, the entire sum of the spirits of wisdom, which lives as in a spiritual unity. They were able to arrive at such views because the members of this people awakened to their “I” at such a late stage of development. They had already accomplished what later peoples would still have to experience with their “I.”

[ 5 ] The peoples of the Persian culture were less advanced. Due to their unique cognitive abilities and the awakening of their sense of self, they were at such a lower stage that they were able to engage with the entities of the forces or spirits of form. They became particularly familiar with these. In a certain sense, they saw through them, and they were also primarily interested in them. One level lower than the Indians, but still at a level to which the peoples of the West would later have to work their way up, the peoples of the Persian communities awakened. Thus they became acquainted with the powers or spirits of form, whom they grouped under the term “Amshaspands.” These are the emanations we know as the spirits of form or powers, and which, from their perspective, the peoples of Persian culture were particularly well able to observe.

[ 6 ] Then we come to the Chaldean peoples. They already had an awareness of what we know as primal forces, as guiding spirits of the age. They had an awareness of the beings that are to be understood as primal forces, as spirits of the personality. In a different way, the peoples of the Greco-Roman era also had a certain awareness of these very primal forces or spirits of personality. But they possessed something quite different as well, and that is what could lead us a step further in our understanding. The Greeks were even closer to the Germanic peoples. Yet the “I” awakened there at a higher level than among the Germanic-Nordic peoples. What was still experienced by the Nordic peoples as the work of angels and archangels was no longer experienced directly by the Greco-Latin peoples. They still had a clear memory of it, however. So imagine that the difference between the Germanic and the Greek-Latin peoples is that the Greek-Latin peoples still had a memory of how the angels and archangels had participated in the soul life they had developed within themselves. But they had not, strictly speaking, experienced this all too clearly. They were still in a dull state of consciousness at that time. Yet in their memory, it now stood out very clearly before their souls. The creation of this entire world, the way in which the angels and archangels—the abnormal and the normal ones—work into the human soul—the Greeks knew this. What they had experienced, they held in a powerful image of remembrance within their souls. Memory is what is more serene, has firmer contours than what one experiences. It is no longer so fresh and no longer so young, but it has sharper outlines, sharper contours, what appears as memory. The influence or impulse of the world of angels and archangels on the human soul was evoked by the Greeks from memory in fixed, sharp contours. That is Greek mythology. Whoever does not view it in this way, but merely compares the names with names that appear elsewhere—that is, does not take the special powers into account, does not grasp the figures that appear as Apollo, Minerva, and so on—engages in superficial religious comparison, merely comparing the uniforms. What matters is the way in which things were viewed back then.

[ 7 ] Having seen this, we must admit: The Greeks shaped their mythology out of memory. — The Egyptian-Chaldean era had only a dim, vague memory of the workings of the world of angels and archangels, but a glimpse into the world of primordial forces. It is as if they were beginning to forget something. In Persian mythology or the doctrine of the gods, we find a complete forgetting of the world of angels and archangels, but at the same time a glimpse into the world of the powers or spirits of form. What is found in Greek mythology has been forgotten by the Persian peoples and even more so by the Indians. They were already viewing the entire course of events anew from the Akashic Records and creating images of past events out of their own insight—an insight that was, however, already deified knowledge achieved through highly developed spiritual powers. From this, you will also recognize that it is precisely those peoples of the East who find it exceedingly difficult to understand Western spiritual life. Hence the reserve of the peoples of the East toward Western spiritual life. They will certainly adopt Western material culture; but the spiritual culture of the West remains more or less closed to them unless they approach it through the detour of spiritual science. They were already at a high level of human development at a time when there was still no Christ Jesus on Earth. He did not appear until the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This is an event that could no longer be grasped with the forces that had developed out of the Indian national character. For this, forces were needed that were related to a less advanced stage of the ego, to the ego’s standing within subordinate soul forces.

[ 8 ] In the Germanic-Nordic regions, the influence of the angels and archangels on the human soul was not merely present as a memory, but to such an extent that people, even at the time when Christ Jesus walked the earth, could still perceive that they were still immersed in it—that they were still participating in the activities of the angelic and archangelic beings as they continued to work within their souls. Through these soul experiences, the Greek-Latin peoples recalled something they had once experienced in the past.

[ 9 ] The Germanic peoples lived within it as if it were their own, immediate concern. Their sense of self had awakened at that stage of existence where the folk spirits and those spiritual beings who themselves still stand beneath the folk spirits were still working into the soul. Therefore, these peoples stood closest to what we know as the events in ancient Atlantis over there.

[ 10 ] In ancient Atlantis, people looked up to the spiritual powers and spoke of a kind of unified deity, because they were looking up, through direct perception, into the ancient, primeval stages of human development. At that time, one could still perceive, as it were, the working of the spirits of wisdom and the working of the spirits of movement, which the later Indians again observed from the Akashic Records. These peoples of the West had risen one step beyond this point of view, so that they experienced in the immediate present the transition from the old worldview into the new. They beheld the weaving and life of real spiritual powers at a time when the ego had not yet awakened. But they also saw how the ego gradually awakened, and how angelic and archangelic beings intervened in the soul. They perceived this immediate transition. They had a memory of an earlier weaving and life, when the view was still such that one saw everything, as it were, as in a sea of mist, and they watched as what we have come to know as the divine-spiritual beings standing immediately above humanity emerged from this sea of mist for them. But the ancient gods who were active before the gods now being seen—with whom one felt connected—intervened in human soul life; these divine beings, who were active in the distant, distant past, in the time of ancient Atlantis, were called the Vanir. Emerging from the ancient Atlantean era, humanity then observed the weaving of the angels and archangels; these were called the Aesir. These were the beings who, as angels and archangels, cared for the human ego, which was now awakening at the lowest level. They were placed in charge of those peoples. What the other peoples of the East had missed—namely, seeing how the soul works its way upward through the various forces bestowed by the normal and abnormal angelic and archangelic beings—the peoples of Europe had to go through from the very beginning; they had to be fully engaged in the process so that these soul forces could develop gradually.

[ 11 ] Thus, the divine figures who, so to speak, stood before the soul of the Germanic-Nordic people—the divine figures who worked directly upon his soul—and what he himself observed as the human soul struggling to emerge from the cosmic realm were direct perceptions; that was something they experienced directly. They did not look back in memory at the way in which souls had formed themselves within bodies; rather, they see what is happening there as present. It is his own development, and he is present with his ego in it. He has an understanding of this all the way back to the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries AD. He has retained an understanding of how the soul forces gradually form and crystallize into the body. First, he looks at the archangelic beings who worked in his soul by giving him what his soul forces were to become, and there he finds Wotan or Odin as the most outstanding of these archangels and sees him working on his soul, sees how he works into his soul. What does he see there? How does he perceive Wotan or Odin? As what does he recognize him, and as what does he learn to love him and, above all, to understand him? He learns to recognize him as one of those archangels who have come to renounce, for a time, the ascent to higher levels. He comes to know Odin as one of the exceptional archangels, as one of the great renunciants of antiquity who had taken on the role of archangel when they undertook the vital mission of working into the human soul. The Germanic-Nordic people still experience Odin in his activity during the time when he approaches the task of instilling language into the soul. In a wondrous way, it has been preserved how Odin himself works upon his peoples to make language possible for them. This is described as a divine initiation. How Odin came to acquire the power to bestow language upon the souls of the Germanic-Nordic peoples is depicted by the fact that, before he attained this ability, Odin underwent what is presented to us as the initiation through the mead of the gods—the mead that once existed in the distant past among the giants. This mead contained not merely abstract wisdom, but represents for us the wisdom that expresses itself directly in sound. Through the wisdom expressed in sound, Odin gains power during his initiation; he learns to wield it as he undergoes a long initiation, a nine-day initiation, from which he is then delivered by Mimir, the ancient bearer of wisdom. Thus Odin becomes the master of the power of speech. Hence, later legend traces the language of the poets, the language of the skalds, back to Odin. The study of runes is also traced back to Odin; in ancient times, it was thought to be much more closely related to language than later literature. Thus, the way the soul acquires language—by taking a detour through the etheric body and then living into the physical body through the corresponding archangel—is expressed in the wonderful stories told about Odin.

[ 12 ] We find similar archangelic beings among Odin’s companions: in Hönir, who bestows the power of imagination, and in Lodur, who bestows what is closest to the race itself—namely, skin color and blood character. In these two beings, we must therefore see archangelic beings who, so to speak, lean more toward the normal side. We then recognize the abnormal ones in the beings who appear as Wili and We. These are entities that work even more within, in the innermost depths of the soul, as I explained in the previous lecture. But such an ego, which itself stands at an abnormal stage of development, where it is already involved in the formation of the subordinate soul forces, feels a deep kinship precisely with an abnormal archangel. Such an ego feels a kinship with an abnormally developed archangelic being. Therefore, Odin is not perceived as an abnormal archangel, but rather as one who, in his backwardness, is akin to the backwardness of Western souls, who experience more consciously within their ego what has been left behind during their passage through those realms, whereas Eastern souls passed through certain stages of soul life until they resolved to awaken. Therefore, above all else, the soul of the Germanic-Nordic people is imbued with everything connected to these Archangelic forces of Odin, which delve and work in the elemental depths of the soul’s life.

[ 13 ] When we have said that it is the angels who convey down to individual human beings what the archangels bring about, then an “I” that awakens at such an early, elemental stage of soul life has, above all, an interest in having the affairs of the archangels, as it were, carried into that “I.” Hence, the Germanic-Nordic person has an interest in such an angelic figure, one who possesses special power but is at the same time intimately connected with the individual human being and their individuality. That is Thor. Thor is recognized only by knowing that one must see in him a being who, although he might have advanced very far had he developed normally, renounced this relatively early and remained at the level of the angels so that, at the time when the ego awoke in the soul’s development, he could be a guide in the soul world of the Germanic-Nordic regions. The fact that what was to be carried from the spiritual world into each individual ego could indeed be carried in—this is what is felt so immediately in Thor as being related to the individual human ego. If we take this into account, we will also better understand the details that have been handed down. For us, the task is to be able to understand these divine individualities in an appropriate way. But the Germanic-Nordic people experienced this imprinting of the soul into physicality firsthand. They were present when the ego integrated itself into physicality and took possession of every single human being.

[ 14 ] We now know that the Self pulsates in the blood of the physical body, and that every inner aspect has a corresponding outer aspect, every microcosmic aspect a macrocosmic one. The work of Odin, the giver of linguistic and runic wisdom, who worked through breathing via a long detour, corresponds in the outer macrocosm to the movement of the wind. The regular influx of air through our respiratory organs, which brings about the transformation of air into the word, into language, corresponds in the macrocosm to the movements and currents in the wind. Just as truly as we perceive Odin’s rule in the transformation of air into words within ourselves, so too must we see him ruling and working out there in the wind. But this is what those who still possessed the ancient Germanic-Nordic abilities—which included, in particular, a certain degree of clairvoyance—truly saw. They saw Odin ruling everywhere in the world wind; they saw him shaping language through his breath. The Nordic people saw this as a unity. Just as that which lives within us and organizes language—that is, just as language was in the Nordic organization—penetrates into the ego and causes the pulsation of the blood, so does that which organizes itself there as language correspond, out in the macrocosm, to lightning and thunder. Language is there before the ego is born. Therefore, the ego is perceived everywhere as the son of that being which gives language. Thor is particularly involved in the imprinting upon the individual ego, and what corresponds to this process in the macrocosm is, in the microcosm, the pulsation of the blood. What, then, corresponds in the macrocosm to the pulsation of blood in the human being is that which passes through the blowing winds and weaving clouds as lightning and thunder. But the Germanic-Nordic person, in his clairvoyance, sees this as a unity, and he perceives the blowing of the wind and the flashing of lightning outside as intimately connected with the weaving of the air he breathes in. He sees how it passes into the blood and causes the I to pulsate there. This is regarded today as a material process, but it was still an astral process for the Germanic-Nordic people. They saw the intimate kinship of fire and lightning with what passes through the blood. They felt the pulse in their blood and knew: This is the beat of the ego; he knew: What beats there, I feel, and I feel it again after some time. But he did not pay attention to the external, material process. All of this was clothed in clairvoyant perception. He perceived what causes the pulse and causes it to return again and again to the same place as Thor’s deed. As the ever-returning of Thor’s hammer to Thor’s hand, he felt within his ego the power of Thor, the power of one of the mightiest angels ever to have been worshipped, for he was a mighty being regarded as having remained at the stage of angelhood.

[ 15 ] The way in which spiritual power holds the physical body together is expressed in Germanic-Nordic mythology by the idea that the “I” is what holds the soul-body being together as it is woven into existence. From within, the Germanic-Nordic person perceives the weaving of the physical-psychic human being, and in later times he still has an understanding of how his inner self integrates from the astral realm, how, so to speak, the inner responds to the outer. He still had an understanding of this when initiates told him how the world takes shape for the human being. He had an understanding of returning to earlier stages, to what had been told to him about the events representing the relationship between angels and archangels, to the earlier stages where the human being was born out of the macrocosm in a physical-spiritual manner. He was able to see how the individual human being is formed out of the macrocosm, how he rests within the macrocosm. He sought out in the macrocosm those processes that play out microcosmically in such a way that human thoughts are woven from the human north, from the cool realm of the spirit, and that from there the human physical body is supplied with the twelve cranial nerves of the head. He sees this process, which has become the twelve cranial nerves in the microcosm. He sees the weaving spirit in what he calls “Nebelheim” or “Niflheim”; he sees the twelve streams that converge and become material in the twelve cranial nerves of the human being; he sees how, in counteraction to what comes down from above, there is that which comes from the heart, from the human south; he seeks it in the macrocosm outside and understands it when it is called “Muspelheim.” Thus, even in Christian centuries, he has an understanding of grasping the microcosm from within the entire macrocosm, and one can go back even further for him by allowing the human being to emerge gradually from the macrocosm, as an extract of the whole world. He is able to look back to this time and can understand that these processes have a past, which he himself still perceives as the angels and archangels working into his soul. He can see that these processes have a past, and what he acquires there as ideas is what confronts us, what is recognized as the Old Germanic-Nordic Genesis, as the emergence of humanity from the entire macrocosm.

[ 16 ] Starting with the Germanic-Norse chaos, the Ginnungagap, we find ourselves roughly at the point where the Earth is forming anew after having passed through the three earlier states, the Saturn, Sun, and Moon states, where the Earth is thus rising again out of Pralaya, where the realms of nature have not yet differentiated, where human beings are still entirely spiritual beings. There the Nordic person then understands how the later states take shape.

[ 17 ] And now it is interesting to see how, in Norse-Germanic mythology, the events that took place in those times are depicted in imaginative imagery—events for which we, in the teachings of spiritual science, use more mature expressions and concepts in place of the earlier images. It describes the events that took place when the sun and moon were still united. It describes to us the moon’s departure and how the development then transitions into what later becomes the “Home of the Giants.” We are told of everything that took place during the Atlantean era, as a continuation of what had happened earlier and which constituted the specific concerns of the Germanic-Nordic people.

[ 18 ] Today I simply wanted to give you a sense of how the Nordic “I” awoke when it was still at a lower stage of development, how the Nordic human being looked into the national soul, into the soul of Thor, and so on. I wanted to evoke a sense of how the ego was involved in this, how it was able to take a direct interest in the weaving in of higher beings as well, beings who, however, came from a completely different direction than the beings we find among the Eastern peoples.

[ 19 ] Tomorrow we will try to explore the more remote aspects of Germanic mythology. We will see how these remote aspects foreshadow what lives in the collective consciousness of the people, and we will examine the nature of this very collective consciousness of our Western peoples.