The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] You know that, in the course of the development of our German Section over the years, we have spoken about the actual deeper foundations of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and much of what needs to be said about the mysteries of Christianity has also been expressed here in Hanover. You will have seen that each of the Gospels provides a special opportunity to delve into the Christian message. More so than with the other Gospels, it is necessary to establish a very specific premise if one wishes to approach an understanding of Christianity based on the Gospel of Mark. One must immerse oneself completely in the unique way in which human expression was handled in past eras of human development. It suffices to point out a few things: above all, the ancient Hebrew language opens up an infinitely broad horizon through its mode of expression. Anyone who attended the lecture series in Munich on the mysteries of the work of creation and saw how necessary it was to provide translations of individual words in order to understand the six- or seven-day work will have gained a sense of how essential it is, when dealing with these ancient texts, to recreate them, so to speak, from the very spirit and soul of the things themselves. That is what matters. In the Hebrew language, vowels and consonants were handled differently than is customary today. When the Hebrew language referred to what people saw around them, it expressed this through the consonants. The vowels are indicated by mere dots, since they were the expression of what lived in the soul, of everything inner. The Hebrew language had vowels for everything that was inner experience, and consonants for what was outer perception. And one felt this vividly. And in those ancient times, including in Greek, a word was associated with a kind of stirring toward a supersensory reference, and in such a clear way that everyone knew that when this or that word was spoken in these or those sounds, it had to stir up in their soul a whole range of ideas that were quite different for one word than for another. In just a few words, an immense amount could be said, because all of this was at work. And we must remember this especially in the Gospel of Mark. We must not cling to the word there; through the word alone we cannot enter into the mysteries and secrets of the Gospel of Mark.

[ 2 ] I would like to offer a few points here. In the past, language was a means of expressing the soul and spirit. In our time, it is a means of expression for abstract thinking, which is far removed from the living, pictorial thinking that alone can point upward toward the spiritual worlds. In order for us to return to such living thinking, the means of expression in our language must once again be brought to life. But language has become philistine and pedantic, serving only the abstract. Everything living that can lead upward through the words of language into higher regions and connect the soul with the mysteries of the universe—that has been completely lost. And here I would like to suggest how, in the Rosicrucian Mystery, the beginnings have been made of what aims to bring language to life. There, it sometimes comes down to small nuances in expression. Our language is, after all, coarse and clumsy, and one must wrestle with it to express the subtleties of spiritual life. That is why I sought to point toward the mysteries of existence through the use of language. In the Mystery Drama *The Portal of Initiation*, an attempt was made to express through other means much of what cannot be said with words. There, a human being strives upward toward the first steps of initiation. He strives for the resounding of spiritual tones within his own soul. What John goes through is depicted in this drama. He undergoes profound soul experiences in order to develop his soul. He has reached the point where, through the most bitter and at the same time greatest and most powerful soul experiences, he arrives at the spiritual world, in Devachan, and he is now to be introduced to the life and weaving of the elemental beings of Devachan. To express these mysteries of the life and weaving of the elemental beings in words always results in an abstract, crude meaning. And so I tried to have living persons express these mysteries through their own being, just as light and darkness weave together. Thus I sought to hint at the very weaving of words and sounds through the mysteries of the universe. In this way, one could make audible to the ear many things that, when expressed in today’s language, sound abstract. One must listen to the sound of the words, how the right sound is placed in the right spot. One must feel the place where it belongs and where it does not belong. This is something like a spiritual alchemy. And the intertwining and interplay of spiritual forces in the universe can be hinted at through such means.

[ 3 ] Maria welcomes John into the Devachan along with her companions Philia, Astrid, and Luna. Philia is the poetic representation of the feeling soul, which is why her name contains two I’s and one A. Luna is the expression of the conscious soul, which is why her name contains one U and one A. Astrid, the expression of the intellectual or emotional soul, has the A first and the I second in her name. This allows one to express a multitude of things better than words alone can. If one could awaken a feeling for this, I would no longer need to speak of many things. But one must grasp what it means: here stands a U—one must sense the dullness, the profundity of the U, just as one must sense the brightness of the I and the quiet hint of Ai or Ei that pours wonder into the soul. This provides a different kind of understanding than one can gain through words. Language is truly, in its sounds, an immensely wonderful instrument. It is far, far wiser than human beings, and we would do well to listen to its wisdom. But human beings are in the process of spoiling it. And if we want to understand earlier times in their peculiar mode of expression at all, we must put ourselves in the place of what lived in the souls of the people in question.

[ 4 ] And right from the start, when we simply open the Gospel of Mark to the first few lines, we can sense the need to think this way about language and its mysteries. In the Lutheran translation—which is still the best in most cases; Weizsäcker’s is much worse—the passage from Isaiah reads: “Behold, I send my angel before you, who will prepare your way before you. It is the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”

[ 5 ] One might think that anyone who reads this passage, if they are an honest person, would have to admit: I don’t know what to make of this passage. To understand what is actually written here, it is necessary to penetrate, through spiritual science, into what—in the sense of the prophet Isaiah, who was initiated into these matters—was to take place through the events in Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha. Our age, after all, finds it impossible to believe that there are truly people who can provide insight into the most significant impulses underlying world development. Our age does not admit this. Hence the grotesque interpretations of the Apocalypse, such that it is claimed that the writer of the Apocalypse had already experienced the events he describes there. People speak of objective research, but they make the assumption from the outset: No one is allowed to know anything that one does not know oneself. The prophet Isaiah, however, wants to express in these words something he knows through his initiation. He wants to say: Something will come in the development of humanity that is of eminent, fundamental significance for this entire development of humanity. - Why did he—and with him all the other initiates—regard this event, to which he wished to point, as so significant? He viewed human development correctly; he knew: People used to possess an elementary clairvoyance; they looked into the spiritual worlds; they could use their astral body for seeing. But this astral body then lost its power of vision and became darkened within itself. Yet the progress of humanity lay precisely in the fact that it lost this clairvoyant power of the astral body. Instead, it was to allow its ego to act more and more. Drawing on the knowledge of initiation, Isaiah could have said: But then people will speak only of their ego, and as long as this ego is not filled with the Christ, it is dependent on what the human being can perceive of the world solely through the physical plane, using the senses and the intellect alone. They will be forsaken by the world of the spirit. But then they will find comfort. The Christ will come, and these souls will become increasingly permeated by the Christ impulse, so that they may once again look up into the spiritual world. But they will experience that their astral body has first become darkened.

[ 6 ] Human beings received the first rudiments of their physical body on Saturn; on the ancient Sun, they received the rudiments of their etheric body; on the ancient Moon, those of their astral body; and the I develops on Earth. Until the point where the astral body has lost its clairvoyant power and become dark, this ego must first assert itself in the darkness. Before the actual development of the Earth began, there was a kind of repetition of the lunar development. There, human beings developed their astral bodies so that the activity of the entire world lived pictorially within their astral bodies. Up to that point, therefore, there was a repetition of the lunar development. The ego then forced its way in, and Isaiah says: The ego will take up more and more space on Earth.

[ 7 ] On the ancient Moon there were also beings with human nature, as well as on the Sun and Saturn. On Earth, the human being is human. The angel was human on the Moon, and the Earth human is the successor to the angels in humanity, so that the human’s predecessor on Earth must prepare what is to happen to the human. The angelic must work into the astral body before the ego can work into it. If the human’s earthly mission is to be prepared, this must be done by the human’s predecessor, the angel. Therefore, at a certain time, an angel intervened in a human nature. When this happens, the earthly human can be a maya. A higher being makes use of his soul. Human beings are, in truth, what they appear to be before us, and yet they can serve as a vessel for another being. And so it came to pass that the same individuality that once lived as Elijah and appeared as John upon reincarnation took into itself an angelic nature that expressed itself through him. In my mystery drama *The Portal of Initiation*, such a process takes place. There, another being works through Mary:

Here, within this circle,
A knot is forming from the threads
That Karma spins as the world comes into being.
O friend, your sufferings
Are links in a knot of fate,
In which the deeds of the gods intertwine with human lives.

[ 8 ] The deeds of the gods intertwine with human lives and shape human destiny.

[ 9 ] Thus was the heavenly deed linked to human destiny in John the Baptist. A divine being, an angelic being, worked through him. What he did could only happen because the human being John was a maya, because within him lived a being whose purpose was to foreshadow what was to become of humanity on Earth. And now, if we wish to translate accurately, we must do so by empathizing with what is truly meant to be expressed in these words: Take note: The I that is to appear in the human being sends the preparing angel before the I.

[ 10 ] This refers to the angel who lived within the personality of John the Baptist. That is what is meant, and the entire teaching we learn in theosophy about the angel is contained in this sentence: that lunar initiates must prepare the way for earthly initiations.

[ 11 ] Now we must take a brief look at human nature as it has gradually developed in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. Think about how people must have felt when they looked back to ancient times, when the astral body could see clearly into the spiritual world; how it then became darker and darker. People were able to perceive this from one incarnation to the next. They said to themselves: In the past, when they wanted to perceive something in the spiritual world, they began to shine and glow with the astral body. Then this had ceased more and more; it became ever darker. And then a dark loneliness had arisen within the human being, a desert, ἔρημος — even in Greek this finds its expression. And there, within the human soul, a voice awakens like a cry of longing for the Lord of the human being, for the I, so that it might truly take up residence in the human soul. This was felt in the word χὐριοç, which is translated with the flat word “Lord.” One sensed the soul as consisting of three powers: thinking, feeling, and willing. Then came the time when the “I,” the χὐριοç, was to be received. This is what John wanted to express when he said: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”

[ 12 ] There, in the words of Isaiah at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, you have the entire wise guidance of human development toward the Mystery of Golgotha. And at the same time, in this passage from Isaiah concerning John, we are told what we know about him. I have said what kind of person he had to be in order to receive an Angelos. This required a certain initiation. The initiation necessary for this also gave such a person the opportunity to show others: now the time has truly come—the time of the dawning of the I.

[ 13 ] The one who could say this must have been the initiate who, in the sense of the language of initiation, had been an Aquarian initiate since ancient times. The great mysteries of the spiritual world, into which human beings are woven through initiation, are described in the language of the heavens. One had to choose the script of the heavens if one wished to express what happens to the human soul when it is initiated into the great mysteries. This cannot be expressed in human words. And so it was said: High in the heavens, the stars stand in relation to one another. When we look at them and form expressions from these relationships of the stars to one another, then we can express the mysteries that take place within the human being during such an initiation.

[ 14 ] People have always looked up to the great Ahura Mazda—regardless of the name they gave him in their various cultures. They looked up to the divine being and his hierarchy within the sun. Christ is the great Spirit who is the essence underlying the sun. There are twelve different ways to be initiated into the sacred solar mysteries, and it is hardly possible to express this in earthly words. But when we consider how the sun stands before a constellation and sends its rays to the earth through it, and how it relates to the other stars in the heavens, we have a kind of script that can express this: This person is so initiated into the solar mysteries that we have before us an initiate of Aquarius.

[ 15 ] Let us consider the seven holy Rishis. They were so deeply initiated into the solar mysteries that the symbol of their initiation is the sun’s position in the constellation of Taurus; and what we can see in the firmament when the Sun is in the constellation of Taurus actually reveals the mystery of the Rishis’ unique initiation, and this initiation worked through the seven personalities who were the seven holy Rishis. This is expressed by the fact that the Seven Stars, the Pleiades, shine from the same place. This is the place where our entire solar system entered our universe. Thus, one can express the initiation into the various types of solar mysteries by taking the forms of expression derived from the Sun’s position in a constellation.

[ 16 ] John’s initiation had to be such that it was an Aquarian initiation, reflecting the Sun’s position in the constellation of Aquarius. To understand this a little, remember that on the light side of the zodiac lie: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then Libra. Then come the constellations that lie on the winter or night side of the zodiac: Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. Aquarius and Pisces lie on the winter or night side of the zodiac. What does that mean? Well, when the sun’s rays fall there, they must not merely pass through physical space, but in such a way that they send the spiritual light of the sun, which passes through the Earth, through spiritual space. The Aquarian Initiates were given the name Aquarian Initiates because those who were thus initiated were able to administer baptism by water, to bend down with the spiritual solar power that was given to them, and to submerge themselves beneath the water with it.

[ 17 ] The names of the zodiacal constellations were carried up to the heavens from the realities of spiritual life that took place here on Earth. Now these oddballs, our scientists, go about it in such a way that, to explain such things, they say that the names of the constellations were simply brought down and applied to certain personalities on Earth. The exact opposite is the case. Today, people say that John the Baptist was called Aquarius because the name of the constellation Aquarius was transferred to him. What the wise scholars do today is really the same as trying to harness a donkey with its head toward the cart. Well known, too, is a scholar’s ironic attempt to portray the person of Napoleon as non-historical. It is shown there how easy it is to derive the name Napoleon from Apollo; the prefixed N would merely signify a kind of comparative form of the name, as it were, a sort of “super-Apollo.” The number of siblings, six, matches for both, and the star Apollo is counted among the seven Pleiades. Napoleon’s twelve marshals are the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Apollo’s mother, Leto, Napoleon’s is Létitia, and so on.

[ 18 ] If we draw the arc of the sun across the sky, we discover that as the physical sun sets, its spiritual counterpart rises. Thus we must draw the diurnal or summer arc of the Sun, where the Sun moves from Taurus to Aries and so on, and the winter or nocturnal arc of the Sun, through which we can describe the mysteries of the initiation of Aquarius and Pisces. Physically, it moves from Virgo to Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, and Aries; spiritually, it moves from Virgo to Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The spiritual counterpart of the physical course of the sun is the sun’s path from Aquarius to Pisces.

[ 19 ] Thus John could say: He must increase, I must decrease. My mission is such that you will understand it when the Sun moves from the constellation of Aquarius to the constellation of Pisces. I am an initiate of Aquarius, and I am not worthy to give you the secret of the Sun-Fish. I am not worthy to untie the sandals of the one whom I am to announce to you.

[ 20 ] In these words of John, we have, so to speak, tangible proof of how he characterizes himself figuratively as an Aquarian initiate. The images in the old folk calendars express what John’s words mean: I am not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals. Look at the old zodiac images; there Aquarius is kneeling. There, in his gesture, he shows the reverence due to the one who, as the passing sun ascending the zodiac toward Pisces, heralds what is to come. This is an image of John the Baptist. — The sun moves on; he cannot hold it back; he can only herald its coming.

[ 21 ] The prophet Isaiah knew that when the sun moves into Pisces, something else will come. People or beings associated with the initiation of the Fish—that is the sun’s advance into Pisces. Hence the ancient symbol for Christ Jesus in the earliest post-Christian times: the fish. This symbol is still found frequently today in the catacombs of Rome—the two fish or a single fish. Why did Jesus say to the disciples, “I will make you fishers of men”? John prepares the Fish Initiation that the Nazarene must undergo so that he may receive the Christ within himself. What took place in Palestine as the greatest event in the entire development of the world is inscribed in the zodiac in wondrous signs. What truly took place step by step in Palestine is not explained in its depths by human scripture, but by a heavenly scripture that must be consulted if we wish to recognize it in reality, for it is so sublime that it stands in direct relation to the macrocosm. - Was everything that a physical eye saw walking in Palestine, in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth? That was, when everything I have indicated is taken together, an illusion, a Maya. In reality, the entire spiritual central force, the focal force of the Sun, lived in this form of Jesus of Nazareth, who walked about in Palestine. That force walked about in Palestine, and the outer physical appearance of Jesus was a Maya. Therefore, everything he did was connected to the great events of the macrocosm. Let us note the following: Throughout the Gospel of Mark, we find mention of the fact that Christ healed after the sun had set, or before the sun had risen. When it says in Mark 1:32: “But in the evening, after the sun had set, they brought to him all kinds of sick and possessed people”—why did they bring the sick and possessed then? Because the sun had set, because the power of the sun was no longer acting physically, because the power of the sun was acting spiritually within him, and because what he was to do was not connected with the physical power of the sun. The physically active sun had set, but the spiritual power of the sun was working through his heart, through his body. And if he wanted to develop his greatest and most powerful forces, he had to seek the impulse for this while the sun was not physically in the sky. And when it says: “Before the sun had risen”—this also has its special significance. Every word in the Gospel of Mark describes great cosmic connections between the events in the universe and every step, every deed of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth here on Earth. If one were to draw up a map, like a geographical map, of his paths and deeds and then study the celestial events, one would obtain the same picture. As it were, projected down onto the earth, the celestial events would appear.

[ 22 ] Where did a man like Kepler get the insights he was able to contribute to astronomy? Kepler did not draw the inspiration to summarize the foundations of this astronomy in his three great astronomical laws from what he initially was as Kepler. The three laws are expressions of the planets’ motion around their fixed stars. They could only be discovered through a certain enthusiasm within Kepler, through which certain memories surfaced in him. In a previous incarnation, he had been a student of the ancient Egyptian mysteries. This surfaced in him and in many other people as dark instincts. Such people had much in their inner lives that was an expression of something that is the harmony of the spheres itself. Throughout his life, Kepler sought out the wondrous constellations of the stars in the sky. He gazed upon the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon, and sought thereby to explain the star that shone for the three wise men from the East. People at that time had not yet thought to devise such dreadful abstractions as the Kant-Laplacean theory.

[ 23 ] In the Gospel of Mark, we find a wonderful harmony between what was to take place on our earth through the deeds of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha, and the great cosmos out there. And only if we can decipher the language of the stars can we understand the Gospel of Mark. To do this, we must penetrate the linguistic mysteries of heaven. And when the Gospel of Mark says, “The sun has set”—this does not merely mean that the sun is no longer shining, but it is meant to express the fact that all the spiritual beings of the solar hierarchy have entered a world of stronger spirit, because they must work through the earth, through physical substance. All the greatness that was meant to be expressed in this could be sensed when one said: Something happened through Christ Jesus when the sun had set or at sunset. A whole world lay within such words.

[ 24 ] Thus, these few pointers are meant to help us gradually delve ever deeper into the mysteries of the Gospels over time. And it is precisely through the Gospel of Mark that the wondrous mysteries of cosmic events can unfold before the human soul. Every word in the Gospel of Mark is of the utmost importance.

FAQ

What does the temptation of Jesus by Satan mean? Are Satan and Lucifer the same? And how can the Most High be tempted by one who is beneath him?

[ 25 ] Satan is Ahriman. In Luke and Matthew, the reference is to Lucifer; in Mark, to Ahriman. Only Mark speaks of Satan. Mark provides a magnificent description of how, through the appearance of hideous animal forms, human beings enter the spiritual world in a natural way. There are people who believe they can enter the spiritual world through certain diets and other material processes. But everything they then see—even if it is the most sublime beings of light, and however magnificent it may appear—is merely a reflection of their own self, an Ahrimanic delusion. Certainly, both Lucifer and Ahriman are a temptation for human beings, and Christ in human form had to show how to resist when one begins to enter the spiritual world.

Will we see our loved ones again in the higher realms?

[ 26 ] Spiritual vision must be understood differently from physical vision. In the spiritual sense, a reunion is certain. The fact that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognize Jesus indicates that the risen Christ cannot be recognized by everyone; one must have developed certain powers. Mary receives this special gift only through the call. Much of what spiritual science teaches is regarded as heretical, even though it can be proven precisely by the Gospels. Only with the clairvoyant eye could the Risen One be recognized.

Isn't the content of the Babylonian tablet almost the same as that of the Ten Commandments?

[ 27 ] People who talk about similarities don’t understand what really matters. This is best illustrated by the Sermon on the Mount. For example, the Bible does not say, “For the kingdom of heaven is theirs,” but rather, “For they will find within themselves the kingdoms of heaven.” - In this regard, the Ten Commandments are also fundamentally different from anything that came before. What Hebraism and Christianity add to what was already present in older religious systems is the “I am” impulse. When one delves into such matters, they are immensely instructive.

How does the doctrine of reincarnation align with the Bible?

[ 28 ] It is not yet possible today to fully understand the Bible. Every era has interpreted it in a way that suited its own needs. The Bible has nothing to fear from the doctrine of reincarnation. In the past, people also believed that the Bible was under threat whenever a new scientific truth was discovered.

What is the connection between Christ and Lucifer?

[ 29 ] It is not so easy to speak briefly about this. We have often spoken of how human beings have passed from one incarnation to the next, and how the Luciferic power became anchored in the astral body relatively early on, while Ahriman entered the etheric body later. With the coming of Christ Jesus, all these things take on a different meaning. We are only at the beginning of the Christ development. Christ had to deal with Lucifer and Ahriman; if one understands the Gospels, one will find this. But who today realizes that the accounts of the temptations in Matthew, Mark, and Luke differ? The occultist knows that there is not only a temptation by Lucifer through desires, but also one by Ahriman—namely, when one projects one’s own passions out into the macrocosm by seeing all manner of forms. The Gospel of Matthew describes a Luciferic temptation. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus dwells among the animals of human nature. — In all occult writings, Lucifer is depicted as a serpent, Ahriman as a dog.

[ 30 ] These stories of temptation point to profound mysteries. Just as these forces had to come in order to make human beings independent, so must they break free again through the Christ within their souls. Little by little, Lucifer and Ahriman will transform into their opposites. Humanity will take the Christ impulse into itself and have Ahriman outside; in the past and now, it is the other way around. Such things can be studied in the drama “The Portal of Initiation.” Pay attention to the harmony of the vowels. There is an inner necessity in these things. The verses in the first part transform into their opposites in the second part; this is intentional.

Question not recorded.

[ 31 ] It is a fact that Jesus wrote nothing. One theologian debates whether he was even capable of writing. — In four centuries’ time, people will speak of a modern mythology, just as they speak today of Copernicus and Galileo. For theosophists, it is inappropriate to speak of “Ptolemaic childishness.”

Questioning the authenticity of the Dionysian writings.

[ 32 ] It is common today to regard scribes as more important than the intellectual authors (in this context, Rudolf Steiner refers to his experience as a Goethe scholar with the prose hymn “On Nature,” whose authorship is regarded as questionable by philologists). The Apostle’s disciple Dionysius wrote nothing down, because that was considered frivolous at the time. But his successors, who were also named Dionysius according to the custom of the time, recorded his teachings in accordance with faithful tradition in the so-called Pseudo-Dionysian writings.

[ 33 ] It is not enough to act in good faith; one must convince oneself of the truth. Today, people have no idea what is possible and what is impossible. The situation becomes tragic in biblical scholarship when it is so fragmented. Scholarship and nonsense often go hand in hand.

Can Christ Jesus appear to people on earth?

[ 34 ] In the way it appeared to Paul, this is possible. It is then an initiation that can sometimes occur even without prior training. From the middle of the twentieth century onward, many people will have this experience.