Occult History
GA 126
27 December 1910, Stuttgart
Lecture I
The character of Spiritual Science is such that the truths and data of knowledge contained in it increase in difficulty the farther we descend from universal principles to concrete details. You may already have noticed this when attempts have been made in different groups to speak about historical details, for example about the reincarnations of the great leader of the ancient Persian religion, Zarathustra, or about his connection with Moses, with Hermes, and also with Jesus of Nazareth.1See among other lectures by Rudolf Steiner: Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, lectures II and III; The Gospel of St. Matthew, notably lectures I, II, III; The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, lecture III; From Jesus to Christ, lecture VIII. On other occasions too, concrete questions of history have been touched upon. As soon as we descend from the great truths concerning the universe as pervaded and woven through by Spirit, from the great cosmic laws to the spiritual nature of a particular individuality, a particular personality, we pass from matters where the human heart will still accept, comparatively easily, this or that questionable point, into realms teeming with improbabilities. And, as a rule, those who are insufficiently prepared become incredulous when they confront this abyss between universal and specific truths.
Our study is intended to be an introduction to lectures which belong to the domain of occult history and will present historical facts and personalities in the light of Spiritual Science. In these lectures I shall have many things to say to you that will seem strange. You will hear many things that will have to reckon upon the will-for-understanding promoted by all the spiritual-scientific knowledge brought before you in the course of the years. For, after all, the finest, most significant fruit of the spiritual-scientific conception of the world is that, complicated and detailed as the knowledge is, we finally have before us not a collection of dogmas, but within us, in our hearts and feelings, we possess something that carries us beyond the standpoint we can reach through any other world-view. We do not imbibe so many dogmas, tenets, or mere information, but through our knowledge we become different human beings. In a certain respect, the aspects of Spiritual Science we shall now be considering call for more than a purely intellectual understanding—for an understanding by the soul, which at many points must be willing to listen to and accept intimations that would become crass and crude if pressed into too sharp outlines.
The picture I want to call up in your minds is that behind the whole evolutionary and historical process, through the millennia up to our own times, spiritual Beings, spiritual Individualities, stand as guides and leaders behind all human evolution and human happenings, and that in the greatest, most significant events in history, this or that human being appears with his whole soul, his whole being, as an instrument of spiritual Individualities standing and working with set purpose behind him. But we must familiarise ourselves with many a concept unknown in ordinary life if we are to gain insight into the strange and mysterious connections between earlier and later happenings in the course of history
If you will remind yourselves of many things that have been said through the years, you will be able to picture that in ancient times—and in Post-Atlantean times, too, if we go back only a few thousand years before what is usually called the historic era—men fell into more or less abnormal states of clairvoyance. Between our matter-of-fact waking consciousness, limited as it is entirely to the physical world, and the unconscious sleeping state, there was once a realm of consciousness through which man penetrated into spiritual reality. And we know that what is nowadays explained as poetic folk-fantasy by scholars who are themselves the originators of so many scientific myths and legends, is to be traced back to ancient clairvoyance, to clairvoyant states of the human soul which in those times gazed behind physical existence and expressed what it saw in the pictures contained in myths, fairy-tales and legends. So that in old, genuinely old myths, fairy-tales and legends, more knowledge, more wisdom and truth are to be found than in the abstract erudition and science of the present day. Therefore when we look back to very ancient times, we-find men who were clairvoyant; we know too that this clairvoyance faded away more and more among the various peoples in the different epochs. In the Christmas lecture to-day2The lecture, not yet printed in English, was entitled: Yuletide and the Christmas Symbols. Stuttgart, 27.12.1910. I told you how in Europe, at a comparatively very late time, abundant remains of this ancient clairvoyance still survived. The extinguishing of clairvoyance and the advent of consciousness limited to the physical plane occur at different times among the different peoples.
You can conceive that through the culture-epochs after the great Atlantean catastrophe—through the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin culture-epochs and an into our own—the effects produced in the plan of world-history by the activities of men have been very diverse—inevitably so, because the peoples all stood in different relationships to the spiritual world. In ancient Persian and also in ancient Egyptian times, what man inwardly felt and experienced extended upwards into the spiritual world, and spiritual Powers played into his very soul. Not until the Greco-Latin epoch did this living connection between the human soul and the spiritual world cease in essentials; nor did it disappear completely until our own times. As far as outer history is concerned, the connection exists in our time only when, with the means that are accessible to man to-day, the link between the human soul and the realities of the spiritual worlds is sought consciously. Thus in ancient times, when man looked into his own soul, this soul enshrined not only what it had learnt from the physical world, had pictured according to the pattern of the things of the physical world, but the spiritual Hierarchies ranging above man up into the spiritual worlds were experienced as immediate realities. All this worked down to the physical plane through the instrument of the human soul, and men knew themselves to be connected with these individual Beings of the higher Hierarchies. When we look back, let us say, into the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—but it must be the earlier periods of it—we find men who are, so to say, historical personalities; but we do not understand them if we think of them as historical personalities in the modern sense.
When as men of the materialistic age we speak of historical personalities, we are convinced that it is only the impulses, the intentions, of the actual personalities in question that take effect in the course of history. But with this conception we can in reality understand only the men of the last three thousand years: that is—approximately of course—the men of the millennium which ended with the birth of Christ Jesus, and those of the first and the second Christian millennia in which we ourselves are living. Plato, Socrates, possibly also Thales and Pericles, are men who can still be understood as having at any rate some resemblance to ourselves. But farther back than that it is not possible to understand human beings if we attempt to do so merely by analogy with those living to-day. This applies, shall we say, to Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptian epoch, also to Zarathustra, and even to Moses. When we go back before the thousand. years preceding the Christian era we must reckon with the fact that wherever we have to do with historical personalities, higher Individualities, higher Hierarchies stand behind and take possession of these personalities—in the best sense of the word, of course. And now a strange phenomenon comes to light, without knowledge of which the process of historical evolution cannot really be understood.
Five culture-epochs including our own, have been enumerated. Many, many thousands of years ago we come to the first Post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the ancient Indian; this was followed by the second, the ancient Persian; this by the third, the Egypto-Chaldean; this by the fourth, the Greco-Latin; and this by the fifth, our own epoch. When we go back from the Greco-Latin to the Egyptian epoch we must change our whole way of studying history: instead of looking at the purely human aspect—which it is still possible to do in connection with the figures of the Greek world as far back as the age of the Heroes—we must now apply a different criterion by looking behind the single personalities for the spiritual Powers which represent the super-personal and work through the personalities as their instruments. We must have These spiritual Individualities always in mind, so that working behind some human being an the physical plane we can discern discern a Being of the higher Hierarchies who, as it were, takes hold of him from behind and Sets him at the appropriate place in evolution.
From this point of view it is highly interesting to perceive the connections between the really significant happenings—those which were determinative factors in the course of history—in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch and in the Greco-Latin epoch. These two culture-epochs follow one another, and to begin with we go back, let us say to the years from 2800 to 3200–3500 B.C.—which comparatively speaking is not so very far. Nevertheless we shall not understand happenings then—of which ancient history is already able to tell something to-day—unless behind the historical personalities we discern the higher Individualities. But then it also becomes evident to us that in the fourth, the Greco-Latin epoch, there is a kind of repetition of the really important happenings of the third epoch. It is almost as if things that in the earlier epoch an be explained through higher laws, must be explained in the following age through laws of the physical world, as if everything had sunk down, had become a stage more material, more physical. There is a kind of reflection in the physical world of great events of the preceding period.
By way of introduction, I want to draw your attention to how one of the most important happenings of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch is presented to us in a significant myth, and how this event is reflected, but at a lower stage, in the Greco-Latin epoch. I shall therefore be speaking of two parallel happenings which in the occult sense belong together, the one taking place half a plane higher, as it were, and the other entirely on the physical earth but like a kind of shadow-image on the physical plane of a spiritual event of the earlier epoch. Outwardly, it is only in the form of myths that humanity has ever been able to tell of events behind which stand Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But we shall see what lies behind the myth which describes the most significant event of the Chaldean epoch.3See Rudolf Steiner, World-History in the light of Anthroposophy, notably lectures III, IV, V. We will look only at the main features of this myth.
There was once a great king, by name Gilgamesh. From the name itself, one who understands such matters will recognise that here we have to do not merely with a physical king, but with a divinity standing behind him, a spiritual Individuality by whom the king of Erech is inspired, who works and acts through him. Thus we have to do with one who in the real sense must be called a god-man.4See also: Jastrow (Mords), Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Chapter XXIII. (Boston, 1898.) Budge (E. A. Wallis), The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh. (London, 1920. Revised by C. J. Gadd, 1929.) Thompson (Reginald Campbell), The Epic of Gilgamesh (London, 1928.) Contains a fairly full text. The story narrates that he oppresses the city of Erech. The city turns to its deity, Aruru, and she causes a helper to arise out of the earth. These are pictures of the myth. We shall see what deeply significant historical events lie behind it. The Goddess of the City produces Eabani out of the earth. Eabani is a kind of human being who, in comparison with Gilgamesh, seems to be of an inferior nature, for we are told that he was clothed in the skins of animals, was covered with hair, was like a wild man. Nevertheless in his wild nature there was divine Inspiration, ancient clairvoyance, clairvoyant knowledge, clairvoyant perception.
Eabani comes to know a woman of Erech and is attracted by her into the City. He becomes the friend of Gilgamesh and this brings peace to the city. Gilgamesh and Eabani together are now the rulers. Then Ishtar, the Goddess of Erech, is stolen by a neighbouring city. There upon Eabani and Gilgamesh go to war with the marauding city, conquer the king and bring the Goddess back again to Erech. Gilgamesh lives near her, and here we come to the strange fact that he has no understanding of the essential nature of the Goddess. A scene takes place, directly reminiscent of a Biblical scene described in the Gospel of St. John. Gilgamesh confronts Ishtar, but his conduct is very different from that of Christ Jesus. He upbraids the Goddess for having loved many other men before she had encountered him, reproaching her particularly for her most recent attachment. Thereupon the Goddess carries her complaints to that deity, that Being of the higher Hierarchies, to whom she belongs. She goes to Anu. And now Anu sends a bull down to the earth; Gilgamesh has to engage in combat with it. Those who recall Mithras's fight with the bull will see a resemblance here. All these events—and when we come to explain the myth we shall see what depths it contains—have led meanwhile to the death of Eabani. Gilgamesh is now alone. A thought comes to him that gnaws at the very fibres of his soul. Under the impression of what he has experienced, he becomes conscious for the first time of the thought that man is mortal; a thought to which he had previously paid no heed comes before his soul in all its terror. And then he hears of the only man of earth who has remained immortal, whereas all other human beings in the Post-Atlantean epoch have become conscious of mortality: he hears of the immortal Xisuthros far away in the West. And because he is resolved to fathom the riddle of life and death, he sets out on the perilous journey to the West.5See Budge, op. cit., p. 50:
"I myself shall die, and shall not I then be as Enkidi (Eabani)
Sorrow hath entered into my soul,
Because of the fear of death which hach got hold of me do I wander over the country ..."
Xisuthros, said to mean "the exceedingly wise," is a Greek corruption of an earlier designation. He is the same being as Uta-Napishtim in the versions of the Epic mentioned abovc, and is the Babylonian Noah. He tells the story of the Deluge to Gilgamesh. Cp. Cory (Isaac Preston), Ancient Fragments, p. 49; also Enc. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI, pp. 642—3; and Budge, op. cit., PP. 25—40.—I can tell you at once that this journey to the West is nothing else than the search for the secrets of ancient Atlantis, for happenings prior to the great Atlantean catastrophe.
Gilgamesh sets out on his journey. The details are interesting. He has to pass through an entrance guarded by giant scorpions; the spirit leads him into the realm of death; he enters the kingdom of Xisuthros and there learns that in the Post-Atlantean epoch all men will inevitably be more and more penetrated with the consciousness of death. Gilgamesh now asks Xisuthros whence he has knowledge of his eternal being; how comes it that he is conscious of immortality? Thereupon Xisuthros says to him: “You too can have this consciousness, but you must undergo all that I had to experience in overcoming the terror, anxiety and loneliness through which it was my lot to pass. When the god Ea had resolved to let perish” (in what we call the Atlantean catastrophe) “that part of humanity which was to live no longer, he bade me to withdraw into a kind of ship. I was to take with me the animals that were to remain, and those Individualities who are truly to be called the Masters. By means of this ship I outlived the great catastrophe.” Xisuthros then tells Gilgamesh: “What was there undergone, you can experience only in your innermost being; but you can attain the consciousness of immortality if for seven nights and six days you refrain from sleep.” Gilgamesh wishes to submit to the test but soon falls asleep. Then the wife of Xisuthros baked seven mystic loaves which by being eaten are to be a substitute for what would have been attained in the seven nights and six days without sleep. With this “life-elixir” Gilgamesh continues his journeying, bathes as it were in a fountain of youth, and again reaches the borders of his own country in the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris. A serpent deprives him of the power of the life-elixir and so he reaches his country without it, but all the same with the consciousness that there is indeed immortality, and filled with longing to see the spirit at least, of Eabani. The spirit of Eabani appears to him, and from the discourse which then takes place we can glean how, for the culture of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, a consciousness of the link with the spiritual world could arise.—This relationship between Gilgamesh and Eabani is very significant. I have now outlined pictures from the significant myth of Gilgamesh which, as we shall see, will lead us into the spiritual depths lying behind the Chaldean-Babylonian culture-epoch. These pictures show that two individualities stand there: the individuality of one—Gilgamesh—into whom a divine-spiritual being has penetrated; and an individuality who is more of a human being, but of such a nature that he may be called a young soul, who has had few incarnations and for that reason has carried over ancient clairvoyance into later times—Eabani.
Eabani is depicted as being clothed in skins of animals. This is an indication of his wild nature; but because of this very wildness he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance an the one hand, and an the other hand he is a young soul who has lived through far, far fewer incarnations than other souls who have reached a high level of development. Thus Gilgamesh represents a being who was ready for initiation but was not able to attain it, for the journey to the West is the journey to an initiation that was not carried through to the end. On the one side we see in Gilgamesh the actual inaugurator of the Chaldean-Babylonian culture, and working behind him a divine-spiritual Being, a kind of Fire-Spirit.6See Langdon, op. cit., pp. 207—8. The name Gilgamesh is said to mean: " The Fire-god is a commander." And beside Gilgamesh there is another individuality—Eabani—a young soul who descended late to earthly incarnation. If you read the book Occult Science, you will find that the individualities returned only gradually from the planets.—The exchange of the knowledge possessed by these two is the root of the Babylonian-Chaldean culture, and we shall see that the whole of this culture is an outcome of what proceeds from Gilgamesh and Eabani. Clairvoyance from the divine man, Gilgamesh, and clairvoyance from the young soul, Eabani, penetrate into the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This process, enacted by two beings working side by side, each of whom is necessary to the other, is then reflected in the later, fourth culture-epoch, the Greco-Latin, and in fact reflected on the physical plane. We shall of course only very gradually reach complete understanding of such a process. A more spiritual process is thus reflected on the physical plane when humanity has descended very far, when men no longer feel the relation of human personality to the divine-spiritual world.
These secrets of the divine-spiritual world were preserved in the places of the Mysteries. So, for example, many of the ancient, holy secrets which proclaimed the connection of the human soul with the divine-spiritual worlds were preserved in the Mysteries of Diana of Ephesus and in the Ephesian temple. A great deal in these Mysteries was no longer comprehensible in an age when human personality had come into prominence. And like a token of how little the purely external personality understood what had remained spiritually, there stands the half-mystical figure of Herostratus, who has eyes only for the superficial aspect of personality—Herostratus who flings the burning torch into the temple of Ephesus. This deed is like a token of the clash between the personality and what had survived from ancient spirituality. And on the very same day when a man, merely in order that his name might go down to posterity, throws the burning brand into the sanctuary of Ephesus, there is born the man who has achieved more than all others for the culture of personality—and on the very soil where the culture of were personality was meant to be overcome. Herostratus flings the burning torch on the day when Alexander the Great is born—the man who is all personality! Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow-image of Gilgamesh.7Cp. Jastrow, op. cit., pp. 516–17 A profound truth lies behind this. In the Greco-Latin epoch, Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamesh, as a projection of the spiritual on to the physical plane. And Eabani, projected on to the physical plane, is Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great.
Here indeed is a strange circumstance: Alexander and Aristotle standing, like Gilgamesh and Eabani, side by side. And we see how in the first third of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch there is carried over, as it were, by Alexander the Great but transformed into the laws of the physical plane—that which had been imparted to the Babylonian-Chaldean culture by Gilgamesh. This comes to wonderful expression in the fact that, as a result of the deeds of Alexander, there was established an the scene of Egypto-Chaldean culture Alexandria itself, the city founded by Alexander in 332 B.C. in order that the great achievements of the Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean culture-epoch might be brought together in one centre. And gradually all the streams of Post-Atlantean culture that were intended to come together did indeed converge on Alexandria, the city established an the scene of the third culture-epoch but with the character of the fourth.
Alexandria outlasted the beginnings of Christianity. Indeed it was in Alexandria that the factors of greatest significance in the fourth culture-epoch developed, when Christianity was already in existence. There the great scholars were working; there the three most important streams of culture flowed together: the ancient Pagan-Grecian stream, the Christian stream and the Mosaic-Hebrew stream. They interpenetrated one another in Alexandria. And it is impossible to conceive that the culture of Alexandria which was built entirely on the foundation of personality—could have been inaugurated in any other way than through the being who was inspired by personality—Alexander the Great. For now, through the very existence of this centre of culture, everything that formerly was super-personal, extending from the human personality upwards into the spiritual world, assumed a personal character. The personalities we find in Alexandria have, as it were, everything within themselves; the Powers from higher Hierarchies who guide the personalities and set them in their allotted places, are very little in evidence. All the sages and philosophers working in Alexandria seem to be embodiments of ancient wisdom transformed into human personality; it is the personal element that speaks out of them. The singular fact is that everything in ancient Paganism that could be explained only by the teaching of how gods came down and united with daughters of men in order to bring forth heroes—all this is transformed into personal forcefulness in the men in Alexandria. And the forms which Judaism, the Mosaic culture, assumed in Alexandria can be described from what is in evidence precisely during the period when Christianity was already in existence. Nothing is to be found of those deep conceptions of a link between the world of men and the spiritual world which were present in the age of the prophets and are still to be found in the last two centuries before the beginning of our era. In Judaism too, everything has become personality. There are gifted, able men in Alexandria, men possessed of extraordinarily deep insight into the secrets of the ancient occult teachings ... but everything has become personal; personalities are working in Alexandria. And it is there that to begin with, Christianity appears, shall we say, in a distorted, debased state of infancy. Christianity, whose real function is to lead the personal element in man upwards into the impersonal, made its appearance in Alexandria in a very ruthless form. Christian personalities, in particular, acted in such a way that we often have the impression: their deeds are anticipations of later actions by bishops and archbishops working on a purely personal basis. This applies both to Archbishop Theophilus in the fourth century and to his kinsman and successor, St. Cyril.8Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, 385–412. Persecuted the followers of Origen. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria. Played a prominent patt at the Council of Ephesus in 431. We can judge them only an the basis of their human failings. Christianity, which was to give to mankind the greatest of all gifts, reveals itself to begin with in its greatest failings and from its personal side. But in Alexandria a sign and token was to stand before the whole evolution of humanity.
There again we have a projection on the physical plane of earlier, more spiritual conditions. In the Orphic Mysteries of ancient Greece there was a wonderful personality, one who was initiated in the Mystery-secrets and was among the most loveable, most interesting pupils of these Mysteries, well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought with deepest fervour for the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries. The pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. How, as the result of a certain path taken in the Mysteries, man's life is surrendered to the outer world, how his whole being is torn in pieces so that he can no longer find his bearings within himself—this was to become an actual, individual experience in the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries.
When in the ordinary way we study animals, plants and minerals, what we learn is merely abstract knowledge because we remain outside them; but anyone who wishes to obtain knowledge in the occult sense must train himself to feel as if he were actually within the animals, plants and minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and Stars, in other human beings—as if he were one with them. all. Nevertheless, a pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times.
Among the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the loveable personality of whom I am speaking, whose earthly name has not come down to posterity, but who stands out clearly as a pupil of these Mysteries. Already in youth and then for many years, this person was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy—a period of which no account is given in books an the history of philosophy. For what is recorded of Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the Mystery-pupils had accomplished in their way at an earlier period. And one of the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the individual of whom I have just spoken, whose pupil in turn was Pherecydes of Syros, referred to in the lecture-course given at Munich last year: The East in the light of the West9The passage on Pherecydes of Syros occurs in lecture 4 of the Course entitled The East in the Light of the West, pp. 67—71 in the English edition.
Investigation of the Akasha Chronicle reveals that the individuality of that pupil of the Orphic Mysteries was reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find this individuality amid the activity and life of those gathered together in Alexandria, the Orphic secrets now transformed into personal experiences of the loftiest kind. It is very remarkable how all the Orphic secrets were transformed into personal experiences in this new incarnation. At the end of the 4th century, A.D., we find this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon. We see how there flashes up in her soul all that could be experienced of the Orphic Mysteries through vision of the great mathematical, light-woven texture of the universe. All this was now personal talent, personal genius. These faculties had now to be of so personal a character that it was necessary even for this individuality to have a mathematician as father in order that something might be received from heredity.
Thus we look back to times when man was still in living connection with the spiritual worlds, as was this Orphic pupil; and we see the shadow-image of this pupil among those who taught in Alexandria at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century A.D. This individuality had as yet experienced nothing that enabled men at that time to see beyond the shadow-sides of Christianity at its beginning. For all that had remained in this soul as an echo of the Orphic Mysteries was still too powerful to enable any Illumination to be received from that other Light, the new Christ Event. What arose round about as Christianity, represented by men of the type of Theophilus and Cyril, was in truth of such a nature that this Orphic individuality, working now with personal faculties, had things far greater, far richer in wisdom to say and to give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.
Theophilus and Cyril were both filled with the deepest hatred of everything that was not Christian in the narrow ecclesiastical sense in which these two bishops, in particular, understood it. Christianity had assumed in them such an entirely personal character that these two patriarchs levied hirelings in their service; men were collected from far and near to form bodyguards for them. Their aim was power in its most personal sense. They were utterly obsessed by hatred of what originated in ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new that was appearing in caricatured shape. The deepest hatred was directed by the dignitaries of Christianity in Alexandria against the individuality of the reborn Orphic pupil. The fact that she was branded as a black magician will not therefore surprise us. But that was enough to incite the whole mob of hirelings against the noble, unique figure of the reborn pupil of the Orphic Mysteries. She was still young, but in spite of her youth, in spite of the fact that she was obliged to undergo much that in those days, too, imposed great hardships an a woman during a long period of study, she found her way upwards to the light that outshone all the wisdom, all the knowledge existing in those days. And it was wonderful how in the lecture halls of Hypatia—for such was the name of this reincarnated Orphic pupil—the purest, most luminous wisdom in Alexandria was presented to the enraptured listeners. She drew to her feet not only the Pagans, bat also Christians of deep and penetrating insight, such as Synesius. She was an influence of outstanding significance, and the revival of the old Pagan wisdom of Orpheus transformed into personality could be experienced in Alexandria in the figure of Hypatia.
World-karma was working in the truest sense symbolically. What had constituted the secret of her Initiation was now projected, mirrored, on the physical plane. And here we come to an event that is symbolically significant in the case of many things that have taken place in historical times. We come to one of those events that is seemingly only a martyrdom, but is in reality a symbol in which spiritual forces, spiritual intimations are coming to expression.
On a day in March in the year 415 A.D., Hypatia fell victim to the fury of these who formed the entourage of the patriarch of Alexandria. They resolved to rid themselves of her power, of her spiritual power. The utterly uncivilised, wild hordes were rushed in from the environs of Alexandria as well, and the chaste young sage was fetched away under false pretences. She mounted the chariot, and at a given sign the enflamed rabble fell upon her, tore off her clothing, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. The fragments of her body were then scattered around the city by these hordes, completely dehumanised by their rapacious passions. Such was the fate of the great woman philosopher, Hypatia.
Symbolically, so to say, there is indicated here something that is deeply connected with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great—although it happened a long time after the actual founding of the city. In this event, important secrets of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch are reflected. This epoch, destined as it was to represent the dissolution, the sweeping-away, of the old, contained so much that was great and significant, and with paradoxical grandeur placed before the world a most pregnant symbol in the slaughter—one can call it nothing else—of Hypatia, the outstanding woman at the turn of the 4th-5th centuries of our era.
Erster Vortrag
In der Geisteswissenschaft verhält es sich so, daß die Wahrheiten, die Erkenntnisse um so schwieriger werden, je weiter man von allgemeinen Verhältnissen heruntersteigt zu besonderen konkreten Einzelheiten. Es konnte von Ihnen dies schon bemerkt werden, als in verschiedenen Arbeitsgruppen versucht wurde, im einzelnen geschichtlich zu sprechen etwa über die Wiederverkörperungen des großen Führers der Perserreligion, des Zarathustra -— als gesprochen wurde über den Zusammenhang des Zarathustra mit Moses, mit Hermes und auch mit dem Jesus von Nazareth. Auch bei anderen Gelegenheiten sind ja konkrete geschichtliche Fragen bereits berührt worden. Man steigt von Dingen, über welche das menschliche Herz noch dies oder jenes Unwahrscheinliche verhältnismäßig leicht hinnimmt, in Gebiete hinab voll von Unwahrscheinlichkeiten, sobald man heruntersteigt von den großen Wahrheiten über das geistig Durchtränkt- und Durchwobensein der Welt, von den großen Weltgesetzen zur geistigen Natur einer einzelnen Individualität, einer einzelnen Persönlichkeit. Und bei noch nicht genügend vorbereiteten Menschen beginnt in der Regel an diesem Abgrund zwischen den allgemeinen und besonderen Wahrheiten die Ungläubigkeit.
Nun werde ich Ihnen in den Vorträgen - und zu denen die heutige Betrachtung eine Art von Einleitung geben soll —, die der okkulten Geschichte gewidmet sind und von historischen Tatsachen und geschichtlichen Persönlichkeiten im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaft handeln, manches Sonderbare zu sagen haben. Sie werden manches Sonderbare hören, das auf Ihren guten Willen wird rechnen müssen, auf jenen guten Willen, der herangeschult ist durch alles dasjenige, was im Laufe von Jahren an geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen durch Ihre Seele gezogen ist. Denn das ist ja die schönste, die bedeutsamste Frucht, die wir gewinnen aus der spirituellen Weltanschauung, daß, so kompliziert, so im einzelnen ausgebaut auch die Erkenntnisse sind, die wir gewinnen, wir zuletzt doch nicht vor uns haben bloß eine Summe von Dogmen, sondern daß wir in uns, in unseren Herzen, in unseren Gemütern durch diese geisteswissenschaftliche Betrachtungsweise etwas besitzen, was uns hinausrückt über den Standpunkt, den wir sonst durch irgendeine andere Weltbetrachtung gewinnen können. Nicht Dogmen, nicht Lehrsätze, nicht ein bloßes Wissen nehmen wir auf, sondern durch unsere Erkenntnisse werden wir andere Menschen. In gewisser Beziehung gehört zu solchen Partien geistiger Wissenschaft wie diejenigen, die wir jetzt betrachten werden, Seelenverständnis, nicht intellektuelles Verständnis, Seelenverständnis, das vielleicht an gar manchen Stellen auch geneigt sein muß, Andeutungen anzuhören und hinzunehmen, die grob, die brutal werden würden, wenn man sie in allzu scharfe Konturen hineinpressen wollte. Wovon ich Ihnen gerne Vorstellungen hervorrufen möchte, das ist, daß in dem ganzen auch geschichtlichen Werdeprozeßß der Menschheit durch die verschiedenen Jahrtausende hindurch bis in unsere Tage hinein hinter allem Menschenwerden und menschlichen Geschehen geistige Wesenheiten, geistige Individualitäten als Leiter, als Führer stehen, und daß für die größten, für die wichtigsten Tatsachen des historischen Verlaufes dieser oder jener Mensch mit seiner ganzen Seele, mit seinem ganzen Wesen wie ein Werkzeug von dahinterstehenden, planvoll wirkenden Individualitäten erscheint. Aber wir müssen uns mancherlei Begriffe aneignen, die man im gewöhnlichen Leben nicht hat, wenn wir die merkwürdigen, geheimnisvollen Zusammenhänge zwischen dem Früheren und Späteren des geschichtlichen Werdens einsehen wollen.
Wenn Sie sich erinnern an manches, was gesagt worden ist im Laufe der Jahre, so kann Ihnen vor die Seele treten, daß in alten Zeiten, in Zeiten auch der nachatlantischen Kulturentwickelung, wenn wir nur einige Jahrtausende vor unsere gewöhnlich historisch genannte Zeit zurückgehen, die Menschen mehr oder weniger abnorme hellseherische Zustände hatten; daß zwischen dem, was wir heute das nüchterne, nur auf die physische Welt beschränkte Wachen nennen, und dem bewußtlosen Schlafzustand mit seinem zweifelhaften Reich der Träume, ein Bewußtseinsreich war, durch welches der Mensch hineintauchte in eine geistige, in eine spirituelle Realität. Und dasjenige, was heute von gelehrten Leuten, die so viele Mythen und Sagen wissenschaftlich erdichten, als dichtende Volksphantasie ausgelegt wird, wir wissen, daß es in Wahrheit zurückführt auf altes Hellsehen, auf hellsichtige Zustände der Menschenseele, die in jenen Zeiten hinter das physische Dasein sah und das also Geschaute in den Bildern der Mythe und auch der Märchen und Legenden zum Ausdruck gebracht hat. So daß wirklich, wenn wir alte, und zwar richtige alte Mythen, Märchen und Sagen vor uns haben, wir mehr Erkenntnis, mehr Weisheit und Wahrheit in ihnen finden können als in unserer heutigen abstrakten Gelehrsamkeit und Wissenschaft. Also wir blicken sozusagen auf einen hellsichtigen Menschen zurück, wenn wir den Blick in sehr alte Zeiten lenken, und wir wissen, daß diese Hellsichtigkeit immer mehr und mehr abnimmt bei den verschiedenen Völkern verschiedener Zeiten. Heute, bei dem Vortrage in der Weihnachtsfeier, habe ich sogar darauf aufmerksam machen dürfen, wie in Europa verhältnismäßig sehr spät noch Reste des alten Hellsehens im weitesten Umfange vorhanden waren. Das Erlöschen des Hellsehens und das Auftreten des auf den physischen Plan beschränkten Bewußtseins vollzieht sich zu verschiedenen Zeiten bei den verschiedenen Völkern.
Sie können sich nun denken, daß durch die Kulturepochen, wie wir sie aufgezählt haben nach der großen atlantischen Katastrophe, durch die altindische, altpersische, ägyptisch-chaldäische, griechisch-lateinische und durch unsere Kulturepoche hindurch, die Menschen sozusagen in verschiedenster Art wirken mußten auf dem Plan der Weltgeschichte, weil sie in verschiedener Art verbunden waren mit der geistigen Welt. Wenn wir in die persische, auch noch in die ägyptischchaldäische Zeit zurückgehen, da ragt sozusagen das, was der Mensch in seiner Seele fühlte, erlebte, hinauf in geistige Welten, und geistige Mächte spielten in seine Seele herein. Was da eine lebendige Verbindung hatte zwischen der menschlichen Seele und den geistigen Welten, das hört im wesentlichen erst auf im vierten, im griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum, und ganz und gar verschwunden ist es erst in unserer Zeit. Für die äußere Geschichte ist es in unserer Zeit nur da vorhanden, wo mit den Mitteln, die den Menschen heute zugänglich sind, bewußt die Verbindung wiederum gesucht wird zwischen dem, was in der Menschenseele lebt, und den geistigen und spirituellen Welten. Also in alten Zeiten, wenn der Mensch hineinschaute in seine Seele, barg diese Seele nicht nur das in sich, was sie von der physischen Welt gelernt hatte, was sie erdacht hatte nach den Dingen der physischen Welt, sondern es lebte unmittelbar in ihr dasjenige, was wir zum Beispiel als geistige Hierarchien über den Menschen hinauf bis in die geistigen Welten hinein geschildert haben. Das wirkte durch das Instrument der Menschenseele herunter auf den physischen Plan, und die Menschen wußten sich in Verbindung mit diesen Individualitäten der höheren Hierarchien. Wenn wir zurückschauen meinetwillen noch in die ägyptisch-chaldäische Zeit — allerdings müssen wir da die älteren Perioden nehmen -, so haben wir Menschen, die sozusagen historische Persönlichkeiten sind; aber wir verstehen sie nicht, wenn wir sie in dem Sinn von heute als historische Persönlichkeiten auffassen.
Wenn wir heute von historischen Persönlichkeiten sprechen, sind wir als Menschen des materialistischen Zeitalters davon überzeugt, daß es nur die Impulse, die Intentionen der betreffenden Persönlichkeiten sind, die da wirken im Laufe der Geschichte. So können wir im Grunde genommen nur noch die Menschen von drei Jahrtausenden verstehen, das heißt allenfalls noch annähernd die Menschen desjenigen Jahrtausends, das mit der Geburt des Christus Jesus abschließt, und dann die Menschen des 1. und des 2. christlichen Jahrtausends, in dem wir ja selber stehen. Plato, Sokrates, vielleicht auch Thales und Perikles, das sind Menschen, die man allenfalls noch als uns ähnlich verstehen kann. Geht man aber weiter zurück, dann hört die Möglichkeit auf, Menschen zu verstehen, wenn man sie nur aus der Analogie mit den Menschen der Gegenwart verstehen will. So läßt sich etwa der ägyptische Hermes, der große Lehrer der ägyptischen Kultur, nicht mehr verstehen, auch nicht Zarathustra, und nicht einmal Moses. Wenn wir zurückgehen jenseits des Jahrtausends, das der christlichen Zeitrechnung vorangeht, dann müssen wir schon damit rechnen, daß überall, wo wir es mit historischen Persönlichkeiten zu tun haben, höhere Individualitäten, höhere Hierarchien hinter ihnen stehen, diese Persönlichkeiten gleichsam von sich besessen machen, im besten Sinne des Wortes allerdings. Nun zeigt sich eine eigentümliche Erscheinung, ohne deren Kenntnis wir nicht den historischen Werdegang verstehen können.
Wir haben unterschieden bis zu unserer Zeit fünf Zeiträume. Also wir haben den ersten nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraum weit zurückreichend in den Jahrtausenden, den indischen Zeitraum, wir haben den zweiten, den altpersischen, den dritten, den ägyptisch-chaldäischen, den vierten, den griechisch-lateinischen, und den fünften, unseren eigenen Zeitraum. Schon wenn wir von dem griechisch-lateinischen Charakter zurückgehen zu dem ägyptischen, da müssen wir diesen Übergang für die historische Betrachtungsweise machen, daß wir anstatt einer rein menschlichen Betrachtungsweise, wie sie uns allenfalls noch den Gestalten der griechischen Welt gegenüber bis ins Heroenzeitalter dienen kann, einen anderen Maßstab anlegen, daß wir anfangen, hinter den einzelnen Persönlichkeiten die geistigen Mächte zu suchen, die Überpersönliches darstellen, und die durch die Persönlichkeiten als ihre Instrumente wirken. Diese geistigen Individualitäten müssen wir dabei ins seelische Auge fassen, so daß wir also förmlich sehen könnten einen Menschen, der auf dem physischen Plan steht, und hinter ihm wirksam eine Wesenheit der höheren Hierarchien, die diesen Menschen gleichsam von hinten hält und ihn hinstellt auf den Platz, auf dem er zu stehen hat innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung.
Nun ist es gerade schon interessant genug, von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus die Beziehungen anzuschlagen zwischen den eigentlich wichtigen Vorgängen, den historisch bestimmenden Vorgängen der ägyptischchaldäischen Epoche und der griechisch-lateinischen Epoche. Das sind zwei aufeinanderfolgende Kulturepochen, und wir dringen zunächst, sagen wir, bis zum Jahre 2800, 3200 bis 3500 vor unserer Zeitrechnung, also verhältnismäßig gar nicht sehr weit. Dennoch werden wir nicht begreifen, was da geschehen ist, was ja auch heute schon die alte Geschichte etwas bloßlegt; wir werden es nur dann begreifen, wenn wir hinter den geschichtlichen Persönlichkeiten die höheren Individualitäten sehen. Dann aber zeigt sich uns weiter, daß wir von all den wichtigen Dingen, die da im dritten Zeitraum geschahen, eine Art Wiederholung haben in dem vierten, im griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum. Es ist fast so, wie wenn sozusagen das, was durch höhere Gesetze für den vorhergehenden Zeitraum erklärlich ist, durch Gesetze der physischen Welt erklärlich wird für den folgenden; wie wenn es heruntergestiegen wäre, sich um eine Stufe vergröbert hätte, physischer geworden wäre: eine Art von Spiegelung in der physischen Welt zeigt sich uns für große Ereignisse der vorhergehenden Zeiträume.
Ich will Ihnen eben heute eine Einleitung geben und möchte Sie deshalb hinweisen darauf, wie uns in einem bedeutsamen Mythos eine der wichtigsten Tatsachen des ägyptisch-chaldäischen Zeitraumes gegeben ist; wie sich dann dieses Ereignis widerspiegelt, aber um eine Stufe herunterversetzt, im griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum. Also zwei parallele Tatsachen möchte ich hinstellen, die zusammengehören in okkulter Beziehung; die eine dann gleichsam um einen halben Plan höher und die andere ganz auf der physischen Erde stehend, aber wie eine Art physisch gewordenen Schattenbildes eines geistigen Ereignisses der früheren Epoche. Außerlich hat die Menschheit solche Ereignisse, wo Mächte der höheren Hierarchien dahinterstehen, immer nur durch Mythen erzählen können. Aber wir werden sehen, was gerade hinter dem Mythos liegt, der uns als das bedeutsamste Ereignis schildert, was aus der chaldäischen Zeit hereinragt. Wir wollen uns nur die Hauptzüge des Mythos vor Augen stellen.
Dieser Mythos besagt das folgende: Da war einmal ein großer König, namens Gilgamesch. Aber schon aus dem Namen erkennt derjenige, der solche Namen zu beurteilen vermag, daß wir es nicht bloß mit einem physischen König zu tun haben, sondern mit einer dahinterstehenden Gottheit, mit einer dahinterstehenden geistigen Individualität, von der der König von Erek besessen war, die durch ihn wirkte. Also wir haben es zu tun mit dem, was wir im realen Sinne einen Gottmenschen zu nennen haben. Er bedrückt die Stadt Erek, so wird uns erzählt. Die Stadt Erek wendet sich an ihre Gottheit Aruru, und diese Gottheit läßt einen Helfer erstehen: aus der Erde heraus erwächst dieser Held. Das sind also die Bilder des Mythos; wir werden sehen, welche Tiefen von historischen Ereignissen hinter diesem Mythos liegen. Die Gottheit läßt erstehen aus der Erde heraus Eabani, eine Art von menschlicher Wesenheit, welche im Verhältnis zu Gilgamesch ausschaut wie eine niedere Wesenheit, denn es wird erzählt, daß er Tierfelle hatte, daß er mit Haaren bedeckt war, daß er wie ein Wilder war; aber in seiner Wildheit lebte Gottbeseeltheit, altes Hellsehen, Hellwissen, alte Hell-Erkenntnis.
Eabani lernt eine Frau aus Erek kennen, und er wird dadurch in die Stadt gezogen. Er wird der Freund des Gilgamesch und dadurch zieht Friede in die Stadt ein. Nun herrschen sie beide zusammen, Gilgamesch und Eabani. Da wird durch eine Nachbarstadt die Stadtgöttin Ischtar der Stadt des Eabani und des Gilgamesch geraubt. Sie unternehmen beide einen Kriegszug gegen die räuberische Stadt. Sie überwinden den König und gewinnen die Stadtgöttin zurück. Nun ist die Stadtgöttin wiederum in Erek eingezogen, Gilgamesch lebt ihr gegenüber, und da tritt uns das Eigentümliche entgegen, daß Gilgamesch kein Verständnis hat für die eigenartige Natur der Stadtgöttin. Eine Szene spielt sich nun ab, die einen unmittelbar erinnert an eine biblische Szene des JohannesEvangeliums. Gilgamesch steht Ischtar gegenüber. Er benimmt sich allerdings anders als der Christus Jesus; er wirft der Stadtgöttin vor, daß sie, bevor sie ihm gegenübergetreten sei, viele andere Männer geliebt habe. Namentlich die Bekanntschaft mit dem letzten wirft er ihr vor. Darauf geht sie beschwerdeführend zu derjenigen Gottheit, zu derjenigen Wesenheit der höheren Hierarchien, der gerade sie, die Stadtgöttin, zugeteilt ist: sie geht zu Anu. Und nun sendet Anu einen Stier auf die Erde herab, mit diesem Stier muß Gilgamesch kämpfen. Wer sich an den stierbekämpfenden Mithras erinnert, der findet einen Anklang daran an dieser Stelle, wo der von Anu heruntergesandte Stier bekämpft werden muß von Gilgamesch. Alle diese Ereignisse haben. — und wir werden sehen, wenn wir den Mythos erklären werden, welche Tiefen darin stecken — nun dahin geführt, daß Eabani mittlerweile gestorben ist. Gilgamesch ist jetzt allein. Ihm kommt ein Gedanke, der furchtbar an seiner Seele zehrt. Unter dem Eindruck dessen, was er da erlebt hat, wird ihm der Gedanke erst bewußt, daß der Mensch doch sterblich ist. Ein Gedanke, den er früher nicht berücksichtigt hatte, der tritt ihm in seiner ganzen Furchtbarkeit vor die Seele. Und da vernimmt er von dem einzigen Erdenmenschen, der unsterblich geblieben ist, während alle anderen Menschen in der nachatlantischen Zeit das Bewußtsein der Sterblichkeit erlangt haben: er hört von dem unsterblichen Xisuthros weit im Westen drüben. Nun unternimmt er, weil er erforschen will die Rätsel von Leben und Tod, den schweren Zug nach dem Westen. — Schon heute kann ich sagen: Dieser Zug nach dem Westen ist kein anderer als der Zug nach den Geheimnissen der alten Atlantis, nach den Ereignissen, die vor der großen atlantischen Katastrophe liegen.
Dahin unternimmt Gilgamesch den Wanderzug. Sehr interessant ist es, daß er vorbei muß an einer Pforte, die behütet ist von Skorpionenriesen, daß ihn der Geist einführt in das Reich des Todes, daß er eintritt in das Reich des Xisuthros und daß er in diesem Reich des Xisuthros erfährt, daß alle Menschen immer mehr von dem Bewußtsein des Todes durchdrungen werden müssen in der nachatlantischen Zeit. Nun fragt er Xisuthros, woher er denn ein Wissen habe von seinem ewigen Kern, warum er von dem Bewußtsein der Unsterblichkeit durchdrungen sei. Da sagt ihm Xisuthros: Du kannst es auch werden, aber du mußt nacherleben, was ich durchleben mußte durch all die Überwindungen von Furcht und Angst und Einsamkeit, die ich durchmachen mußte. Als der Gott Ea beschlossen hatte - in dem, was wir die atlantische Katastrophe nennen —, untergehen zu lassen, was von der Menschheit nicht weiter fortleben sollte, da trug er mir auf, mich zurückzuziehen in eine Art Schiff. Hineinnehmen sollte ich die Tiere, die übrigbleiben sollten, und diejenigen Individualitäten, die da in Wahrheit genannt werden die Meister. Mit diesem Schiff überdauerte ich die große Katastrophe. So erzählte Xisuthros dem Gilgamesch, und sagte: Was da durchgemacht worden ist, das kannst du nur im Inneren erleben. Dadurch aber kannst du zum Bewußtsein der Unsterblichkeit kommen, wenn du sieben Nächte und sechs Tage nicht schläfst. - Gilgamesch will sich dieser Probe unterziehen, schläft aber sehr bald ein. Da bäckt die Frau des Xisuthros sieben mystische Brote, die sollen ersetzen durch ihren Genuß das, was in den sieben Nächten und sechs Tagen hätte errungen werden sollen. Nun zieht Gilgamesch weiter mit dieser Art Lebenselixier und macht etwas durch wie ein Bad im Jungbrunnen und kommt wieder an die Küste seiner Heimat, die etwa am Euphrat und Tigris liegt. Da wird ihm die Kraft des Lebenselixiers durch eine Schlange genommen, und er kommt also wieder ohne das Lebenselixier in seinem Lande an, aber doch mit dem Bewußtsein, daß es eine Unsterblichkeit gibt und von Sehnsucht erfüllt, wenigstens noch den Geist des Eabani zu sehen. Der erscheint ihm nun wirklich, und aus dem Gespräch, das sich dann abspinnt, erfahren wir die Art, wie sozusagen für die Kultur der ägyptisch-chaldäischen Zeit das Bewußtsein des Zusammenhanges mit der geistigen Welt aufgehen konnte. Das ist wichtig, dieses Verhältnis von Gilgamesch und Eabani.
Nun habe ich sozusagen Ihnen die Bilder eines Mythos hingestellt, des bedeutenden Gilgamesch-Mythos, des Mythos, von dem wir sehen werden, daß er uns in die spirituellen Tiefen führen wird, die hinter dem chaldäisch-babylonischen Kulturzeitraum liegen. Ich wollte Ihnen diese Bilder vorführen, die Ihnen zeigen werden, daß sozusagen zwei Individualitäten dastehen: die Individualität einer Wesenheit, die in sich hereinragen hat eine göttlich-geistige Wesenheit: Gilgamesch — und eine, die mehr Mensch ist, aber so, daß wir sie nennen möchten eine junge Seele, die noch wenige Inkarnationen durchgemacht hat und daher noch altes Hellsehen in späte Zeiten hereingetragen hat: Eabani.
Außerlich ist uns dieser Eabani so dargestellt, daß er in Tierfelle gekleidet ist. Es wird uns damit seine Wildheit angedeutet; aber eben durch diese Wildheit ist er noch mit alter Hellsichtigkeit begabt einerserts, und auf der anderen Seite ist er eine junge Seele, die viel weniger Inkarnationen durchlebt hat als andere auf der Höhe der Entwickelung stehende Seelen. So stellt uns Gilgamesch dar eine Wesenheit, die zur Initiation reif war, die nur diese Initiation nicht mehr erreichen konnte, denn der Gang nach Westen ist der Gang zu einer Initiation, die nicht zu Ende geführt worden ist. Wir sehen auf der einen Seite den eigentlichen Inauguratur der chaldäisch-babylonischen Kultur in Gilgamesch und hinter ihm wirksam eine göttlich-geistige Wesenheit, eine Art Feuergeist, und dann neben ihm eine andere Individualität, eine junge Seele, den Eabani, eine Individualität, die spät erst zur Erdeninkarnation heruntergekommen ist. Wenn Sie die «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» lesen, so werden Sie sehen, daß die Individualitäten erst nach und nach von den Planeten wieder heruntergekommen sind. - Von dem Austausch dessen, was diese beiden wissen, hängt die babylonischchaldäische Kultur ab, und wir werden sehen, daß die ganze babylonisch-chaldäische Kultur ein Ergebnis dessen ist, was von Gilgamesch und Eabani herrührt. Da ragt Hellsichtigkeit von dem Gottmenschen Gilgamesch und Hellsichtigkeit von der jungen Seele Eabani in die chaldäisch-babylonische Kultur hinein. Dieser Prozeß von zweien, die nebeneinander wirken, von denen der eine dem anderen notwendig ist, das spiegelt sich nun ab im spätern vierten Kulturzeitraum, im griechisch-lateinischen, und zwar auf dem physischen Plan. Zum vollen Verständnis einer solchen Abspiegelung werden wir allerdings erst allmählich gelangen. Es spiegelt sich also ein mehr geistiger Vorgang auf dem physischen Plane ab, als die Menschheit sehr weit heruntergestiegen ist, als sie nicht mehr die Zusammengehörigkeit der menschlichen Persönlichkeit mit der geistig-göttlichen Welt fühlt.
Diese Geheimnisse der geistig-göttlichen Welt sind bewahrt worden in den Mysterienstätten. So zum Beispiel war vieles von den alten, heiligen Geheimnissen, die da kündeten den Zusammenhang der menschlichen Seele mit den göttlich-geistigen Welten, aufbewahrt worden in dem Mysterium der Diana von Ephesus und im ephesischen Tempel. Da war vieles darinnen, was einem Zeitalter, das herausgegangen war zur menschlichen Persönlichkeit, nicht mehr verständlich war. Und wie ein Wahrzeichen des geringen Verständnisses der bloß äußern Persönlichkeit für das, was spirituell geblieben ist, steht uns die halb mythische Figur des Herostrat da, die nur auf das Äußerlichste der Persönlichkeit sieht; Herostrat, der die Feuerfackel wirft in den Tempel des Heiligtums von Ephesus. Wie ein Wahrzeichen des Zusammenstoßes der Persönlichkeit mit dem, was von alten spirituellen Zeiten geblieben ist, erscheint uns diese Tat. Und an demselben Tage, wo ein Mensch, bloß um seinen Namen auf die Nachwelt zu bringen, die Feuerfackel wirft in den Tempel des Heiligtums von Ephesus, an dem gleichen Tage wird der Mensch geboren, der zur Persönlichkeitskultur das allermeiste getan hat auf demjenigen Grund und Boden, auf dem die bloße Persönlichkeitskultur überwunden werden soll: Herostrat wirft die Fackel an dem Tage, da Alexander der Große geboren wird, der Mensch, der ganz Persönlichkeit ist. So steht Alexander der Große da als das Schattenbild des Gilgamesch.
Dahinter steckt eine tiefe Wahrheit. Wie das Schattenbild des Gilgamesch steht Alexander der Große im vierten, im griechisch-lateinischen Zeitraum, wie die Projektion eines Geistigen auf den physischen Plan. Und der Eabani, der ist, projiziert auf den physischen Plan, Aristoteles, der Lehrer Alexanders des Großen. So sonderbar das ist: Alexander und Aristoteles stehen nebeneinander wie Gilgamesch und Eabani. Und wir sehen sozusagen, wie im ersten Drittel des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraumes von Alexander dem Großen herübergetragen wird — nur in die Gesetze des physischen Planes übersetzt — das, was von Gilgamesch der chaldäisch-babylonischen Kultur gegeben worden war. Das drückt sich wunderbar aus, indem als eine Nachwirkung der Taten Alexanders des Großen an der Stätte des ägyptisch-chaldäischen Kulturschauplatzes Alexandria gegründet wird, um es, wie in ein Zentrum, gerade dort hinzusetzen, wohin der dritte Zeitraum, der ägyptisch-babylonischchaldäische, so mächtig gereicht hatte. Und alles sollte sich zusammenfinden in diesem alexandrinischen Kulturzentrum. Da sind nach und nach wirklich zuammengekommen all die Kulturströmungen, die sich begegnen sollten aus der nachatlantischen Zeit. Wie in einem Zentrum trafen sie sich gerade in Alexandrien, an der Stätte, die hingestellt war auf den Schauplatz des dritten Kulturzeitraums, mit dem Charakter des vierten Zeitraums. Und Alexandria überdauerte die Entstehung des Christentums. Ja, in Alexandrien entwickelten sich erst die wichtigsten Dinge des vierten Kulturzeitraumes, als das Christentum schon da war. Da waren die großen Gelehrten tätig, da waren insbesondere die drei allerwesentlichsten Kulturströmungen zusammengeflossen: die alte heidnisch-griechische, die christliche und die mosaisch-hebräische. Die waren zusammen in Alexandria, die wirkten da durcheinander. Und es ist undenkbar, daß die Kultur Alexandriens, die ganz auf Persönlichkeit gebaut war, durch irgend etwas anderes hätte inauguriert werden können als durch das mit Persönlichkeit inspirierte Wesen, wie es Alexander der Große war. Denn jetzt nahm gerade durch Alexandrien, durch diesen Kulturmittelpunkt, alles das, was früher überpersönlich war, was früher überall hinaufgeragt hat von der menschlichen Persönlichkeit in die höheren geistigen Welten, einen persönlichen Charakter an. Die Persönlichkeiten, die da vor uns stehen, haben sozusagen alles in sich; wir sehen nurmehr ganz wenig die Mächte, die von höheren Hierarchien aus sie lenken und sie an ihren Platz stellen. All die verschiedenen Weisen und Philosophen, die in Alexandria gewirkt haben, sind ganz ins Menschlich-Persönliche umgesetzte alte Weisheit; überall spricht das Persönliche aus ihnen. Das ist das Eigenartige: Alles, was im alten Heidentum nur dadurch erklärlich war, daß immer darauf hingewiesen wurde, wie Götter heruntergestiegen sind und sich mit Menschentöchtern verbunden haben, um Helden zu erzeugen, all das wird umgesetzt in die persönliche Tatkraft der Menschen in Alexandria. Und was das Judentum, die mosaische Kultur in Alexandria für Formen angenommen hat, das können wir aus dem ersehen, was uns gerade die Zeiten, in denen das Christentum schon da war, zeigen. Da ist nichts mehr vorhanden von jenen tiefen Auffassungen eines Zusammenhanges der Menschenwelt mit der geistigen Welt, wie sie in der Prophetenzeit immerhin vorhanden war, wie sie selbst in den letzten zwei Jahrhunderten vor dem Beginne unserer Zeitrechnung noch zu finden ist: da ist auch im Judentum alles Persönlichkeit geworden. Tüchtige Menschen sind da, mit außerordentlicher Vertiefung in die Geheimnisse der alten Geheimlehren, aber persönlich ist alles geworden, Persönlichkeiten wirken in Alexandria. Und das Christentum tritt zuerst in Alexandria auf, man möchte sagen, wie in seiner entarteten Kindheitsstufe.
Das Christentum, das berufen ist, das Persönliche im Menschen immer weiter hinaufzuführen in das Unpersönliche, es trat gerade in Alexandria besonders stark auf. Namentlich wirkten die christlichen Persönlichkeiten so, daß wir oftmals den Eindruck haben: es sind in ihren Taten schon Vorwegnahmen späterer Handlungen rein persönlich wirkender Bischöfe und Erzbischöfe. So wirkte der Erzbischof Theophilos im 4. Jahrhundert, so wirkte sein Nachfolger und Verwandter, der heilige Kyrillos. Wir können sie sozusagen nur beurteilen von ihren menschlichen Schwächen aus. Das Christentum, das das Größte der Menschheit geben soll, zeigt sich zuerst in seinen allergrößten Schwächen und von seiner persönlichen Seite. Aber es sollte in Alexandria ein Wahrzeichen vor die ganze Entwickelung der Menschheit hingestellt werden.
Da haben wir wiederum eine solche Projektion von früherem Spirituellerem auf den äußeren physischen Plan. Es gab eine wunderbare Persönlichkeit in den alten orphischen Mysterien; sie machte die Geheimnisse dieser Mysterien durch; sie gehörte zu den allersympathischsten, zu den allerinteressantesten Schülern der alten griechischen orphischen Mysterien. Sie war gut vorbereitet, namentlich durch eine gewisse keltische Geheimschulung, die sie in früheren Inkarnationen durchgemacht hatte. Diese Individualität hat mit einer tiefen Inbrunst die Geheimnisse der orphischen Mysterien gesucht. Das sollte ja an der eigenen Seele durchlebt werden von den Schülern der orphischen Geheimnisse, was in dem Mythos enthalten ist von dem Dionysos Zagreus, der von den Titanen zerstückelt wird, dessen Leib aber Zeus zu einem höheren Leben emporführt. Als ein individuelles menschliches Erlebnis sollte es gerade von den Orphikern nacherlebt werden, wie der Mensch dadurch, daß er einen gewissen Mysterienweg durchmacht, sozusagen sich auslebt in der äußeren Welt, mit seinem ganzen Wesen zerstückelt wird, aufhört, sich in sich selber zu finden.
Während es sonst eine abstrakte Erkenntnis ist, wenn wir auf die gewöhnliche Art und Weise die Tiere, Pflanzen, Mineralien erkennen, weil wir außerhalb ihrer bleiben - so muß derjenige, der eine wirkliche Erkenntnis im okkulten Sinn erlangen will, sich so üben, wie wenn er in den Tieren, Pflanzen, Mineralien, in Luft und Wasser, in Quellen und Bergen, in den Steinen und Sternen, in den anderen Menschen darinnen wäre, wie wenn er eins wäre mit ihnen. Und dennoch muß er die starke innere Seelenkraft entwickeln als Orphiker, um wiederhergestellt als ganz in sich geschlossene Individualität zu triumphieren über die Zerstückelung in der äußeren Welt. Es gehörte in einer gewissen Weise zum Höchsten, was man an Einweihungsgeheimnissen hat erleben können, wenn dasjenige, was ich Ihnen eben angedeutet habe, menschliches Erlebnis geworden war. Und viele Schüler der orphischen Mysterien haben solche Erlebnisse durchgemacht, haben auf diese Weise ihre Zerstückelung in der Welt erlebt und haben damit das Höchste durchgemacht, was in vorchristlichen Zeiten als eine Art Vorbereitung für das Christentum hat erlebt werden können.
Zu den orphischen Mysterienschülern gehört unter anderen auch die sympathische Persönlichkeit, die nicht mit einem äußeren Namen auf die Nachwelt gekommen ist, die sich aber deutlich zeigt als ein Schüler der orphischen Mysterien, und auf die ich jetzt hindeute. Schon als Jüngling und dann viele Jahre hindurch war diese Persönlichkeit mit all den griechischen Orphien eng verbunden. Sie hat gewirkt in derjenigen Zeit, die der griechischen Philosophie vorangegangen ist und die nicht mehr in den Geschichtsbüchern der Philosophie aufgezeichnet ist; denn das, was mit Thales und Heraklit aufgezeichnet ist, das ist ein Nachklang von dem, was die Mysterienschüler früher in ihrer Art gewirkt haben. Und zu diesen Mysterienschülern gehört derjenige, von dem ich Ihnen jetzt eben spreche als einem Schüler der orphischen Mysterien, der dann wiederum zu seinem Schüler hatte jenen Pherekydes von Syros, der in dem Münchner Zyklus «Der Orient im Lichte des Okzidents» vom vorigen Jahre angeführt worden ist.
Sehen Sie, diese Individualität, die in jenem Schüler der orphischen Mysterien war, sie finden wir durch Forschung in der Akasha-Chronik wiederverkörpert im 4. Jahrhundert der nachchristlichen Zeit. Wir finden sie in ihrer Wiederverkörperung hineingestellt mitten in das Treiben der Kreise von Alexandria, wobei umgesetzt sind die orphischen Geheimnisse in persönliche Erlebnisse, freilich höchster Art. Es ist merkwürdig, wie das alles bei der Wiederverkörperung in persönliche Erlebnisse umgesetzt war. Am Ende des 4. Jahrhunderts der nachchristlichen Zeit als die Tochter eines großen Mathematikers, des T'heon, sehen wir diese Individualität wiedergeboren. Wir sehen, wie in ihrer Seele alles das auflebt, was man durchleben konnte von den orphischen Mysterien an der Anschauung der großen, mathematischen, lichtvollen Zusammenhänge der Welt. Das alles war jetzt persönliches Talent, persönliche Fähigkeit. Jetzt brauchte selbst diese Individualität einen Mathematiker zum Vater, um etwas vererbt zu erhalten; so persönlich mußten diese Fähigkeiten sein.
So blicken wir zurück auf Zeiten, wo der Mensch noch in Zusammenhang war mit den geistigen Welten wie bei jener orphischen Persönlichkeit, so sehen wir ihr Schattenbild unter denjenigen, die da lehrten in Alexandria an der Grenzscheide des 4. zum 5. Jahrhundert. Und noch nichts hatte diese Individualität aufgenommen von dem, was, man könnte sagen, die Menschen damals über die Schattenseiten des christlichen Anfangs hinwegsehen ließ; denn zu groß war noch in dieser Seele alles das, was ein Nachklang war aus den orphischen Mysterien, zu groß, als daß es von jenem anderen Licht, dem neuen ChristusEreignis, hätte erleuchtet werden können. Was als Christentum ringsherum auftrat, etwa in Theophilos und Kyrillos, das war wahrhaftig so, daß jene orphische Individualität, die jetzt einen persönlichen Charakter angenommen hatte, Größeres und Weisheitsvolleres zu sagen und zu geben hatte als diejenigen, die das Christentum in jener Zeit zu Alexandria vertraten.
Vom tiefsten Haß erfüllt waren Theophilos sowohl als auch Kyrillos gegen alles, was nicht christlich-kirchlich war in dem engen Sinn, wie es gerade diese beiden Erzbischöfe aufgefaßt haben. Ganz persönlichen Charakter hatte das Christentum da angenommen, so einen Persönlichkeitscharakter, daß diese beiden Erzbischöfe sich persönliche Söldlinge anwarben. Überall wurden die Menschen zusammengeholt, die sozusagen Schutztruppen der Erzbischöfe bilden sollten. Auf Macht im persönlichsten Sinn kam es ihnen an. Und was sie ganz beseelte, das war der Haß gegen das, was aus alten Zeiten herrührte und doch so viel größer war als das in einem Zerrbild erscheinende Neue. Der tiefste Haß lebte in den christlichen Würdenträgern Alexandriens namentlich gegen die Individualität des wiedergeborenen Orphikers. Und daher brauchen wir uns nicht zu verwundern, daß die wiederverkörperte Orphiker-Individualität angeschwärzt wurde als schwarze Magierin. Und das war genügend, um den ganzen Pöbel, der als Söldlinge angeworben war, aufzustacheln gegen die hehre, einzigartige Gestalt des wiederverkörperten Orpheus-Schülers. Und diese Gestalt war noch jung, und sie war trotz ihrer Jugend, trotzdem sie manches durchzumachen hatte, was auch in der damaligen Zeit einem Weibe durch lange Studien hindurch große Schwierigkeiten machte, sie war hinaufgestiegen zu dem Lichte, das leuchten konnte über alle Weisheit, über alle Erkenntnis der damaligen Zeiten. Und es war ein Wunderbares, wie in den Lehrsälen der Hypatia - denn so hieß der wiederverkörperte Orphiker -, wie da die reinste, lichtvollste Weisheit in Alexandrien zu den begeisterten Hörern drang. Sie hat zu ihren Füßen gezwungen nicht etwa nur die alten Heiden, sondern auch solche einsichtsvolle, tiefgehende Christen wie den Synesius. Sie war von einem bedeutsamen Einfluß und man konnte das in die Persönlichkeit umgesetzte Wiederaufleben der alten heidnischen Weisheit des Orpheus in Hypatia in Alexandria erleben.
Und wahrhaftig symbolisch wirkte das Weltenkarma. Was das Geheimnis ihrer Einweihung ausmachte, es erschien wirklich hineinprojiziert, abgeschattet, auf den physischen Plan. Und damit berühren wir ein Ereignis, das symbolisch wirksam und bedeutend ist für manches, was sich in historischen Zeiten abspielt. Wir berühren eines jener Ereignisse, das scheinbar nur ein Märtyrertod ist, das aber ein Symbolum ist, in dem sich spirituelle Kräfte und Bedeutungen aussprechen.
Der Wut derer, die um den Erzbischof von Alexandrien waren, verfiel an einem Märztage des Jahres 415 Hypatia. Ihrer Macht, ihrer geistigen Macht wollte man sich entledigen. Die ungebildetsten, wilden Horden waren hereingehetzt auch von der Umgebung Alexandriens, und unter Vorspiegelungen holte man die jungfräuliche Waise ab. Sie bestieg den Wagen und auf ein Zeichen machten sich die aufgehetzten Leute über sie her, rissen ihr die Kleider vom Leibe, schleppten sie in eine Kirche und rissen ihr buchstäblich das Fleisch von den Knochen. Sie zerfleischten und zerstückelten sie, und die Stücke ihres Leibes wurden von den durch ihre gierigen Leidenschaften völlig entmenschten Massen noch in der Stadt herumgeschleift. Das ist das Schicksal der großen Philosophin Hypatia.
Symbolisch, möchte ich sagen, ist da etwas angedeutet, das tief zusammenhängt mit der Gründung Alexanders des Großen, Alexandriens, wenn es auch spät erst nach der Begründung Alexandriens sich zuträgt. In diesem Ereignis sind abgespiegelt wichtige Geheimnisse des vierten nachatlantischen Zeitalters, das so Großes, Bedeutendes in sich hatte, und das auch dasjenige, was es zeigen mußte als Auflösung des Alten, als Hinwegfegung des Alten, in einer so paradox großartigen Weise vor die Welt hingestellt hat in einem so bedeutsamen Symbolum, wie es die Hinschlachtung — anders kann man es nicht nennen — der bedeutendsten Frau von der Wende des 4. zum 5. Jahrhundert, der Hypatia, war.
First Lecture
In the spiritual sciences, the further one descends from general conditions to specific concrete details, the more difficult truths and insights become. You may have already noticed this when various working groups attempted to speak in detail about history, for example, about the reincarnations of the great leader of the Persian religion, Zarathustra—when they spoke about the connection between Zarathustra and Moses, Hermes, and also Jesus of Nazareth. Concrete historical questions have already been touched upon on other occasions as well. One descends from things about which the human heart can still accept this or that improbability with relative ease into regions full of improbabilities as soon as one descends from the great truths about the spiritual saturation and interweaving of the world, from the great world laws to the spiritual nature of a single individuality, a single personality. And for people who are not yet sufficiently prepared, unbelief usually begins at this abyss between general and particular truths.
Now, in the lectures—to which today's consideration is intended as a kind of introduction—which are devoted to occult history and deal with historical facts and historical personalities in the light of spiritual science, I have many strange things to say. You will hear many strange things that will have to rely on your good will, on that good will that has been trained by all the spiritual scientific knowledge that has passed through your soul over the years. For this is the most beautiful and significant fruit that we gain from the spiritual worldview: that no matter how complicated and detailed the insights we gain are, we gain, we do not ultimately have before us merely a sum of dogmas, but that we possess within ourselves, in our hearts, in our minds, through this spiritual scientific way of looking at things, something that lifts us above the standpoint we could otherwise gain through any other view of the world. We do not take in dogmas, doctrines, or mere knowledge, but through our insights we become different human beings. In a certain sense, such branches of spiritual science as those we are now considering require an understanding of the soul, not intellectual understanding, but an understanding of the soul that in many places must perhaps be inclined to listen to and accept hints that would become crude and brutal if one tried to press them into overly sharp contours. What I would like to convey to you is that throughout the entire historical development of humanity, through the various millennia up to the present day, behind all human becoming and human events there are spiritual beings, spiritual individualities as guides and leaders, and that for the greatest most important facts of the historical course of this or that human being, with his whole soul, with his whole being, appear like a tool of the individualities behind them, working according to a plan. But we must acquire certain concepts that we do not have in ordinary life if we want to understand the strange, mysterious connections between the earlier and later stages of historical development.
If you remember some of what has been said over the years, it may occur to you that in ancient times, even in the post-Atlantean period of cultural development, if we go back only a few millennia before what we usually call historical time, people had more or less abnormal clairvoyant states; that between what what we today call sober, waking consciousness, limited to the physical world, and the unconscious state of sleep with its dubious realm of dreams, there was a realm of consciousness through which human beings could immerse themselves in a spiritual reality. And what is interpreted today by learned people, who scientifically invent so many myths and legends, as poetic folk fantasy, we know that in truth it goes back to ancient clairvoyance, to clairvoyant states of the human soul, which in those times saw beyond physical existence and expressed what it saw in the images of myths and also in fairy tales and legends. So that really, when we have old, and indeed truly old myths, fairy tales, and legends before us, we can find more knowledge, more wisdom, and more truth in them than in our present-day abstract scholarship and science. So when we look back to very ancient times, we are looking, as it were, at clairvoyant human beings, and we know that this clairvoyance has gradually diminished among different peoples at different times. Today, in my lecture at the Christmas celebration, I was even able to point out how, in Europe, remnants of the old clairvoyance were still present to a relatively large extent until relatively late. The extinction of clairvoyance and the emergence of consciousness limited to the physical plane took place at different times among different peoples.
You can now imagine that through the cultural epochs we have listed after the great Atlantean catastrophe, through the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Latin, and through our own cultural epoch, human beings had to work in the most diverse ways on the world stage because they were connected in different ways with the spiritual world. If we go back to the Persian and even the Egyptian-Chaldean periods, what people felt and experienced in their souls rose up into the spiritual worlds, and spiritual powers played upon their souls. What was a living connection between the human soul and the spiritual worlds essentially ceased in the fourth, the Greek-Latin period, and has only completely disappeared in our time. In our time, it is only present in external history where, with the means available to people today, a conscious effort is made to reestablish the connection between what lives in the human soul and the spiritual worlds. So in ancient times, when human beings looked into their souls, these souls not only contained what they had learned from the physical world, what they had conceived according to the things of the physical world, but what we have described, for example, as spiritual hierarchies above human beings and up into the spiritual worlds lived directly within them. This worked down through the instrument of the human soul onto the physical plane, and people knew themselves to be connected with these individualities of the higher hierarchies. If we look back, for my sake, to the Egyptian-Chaldean period — although we must take the earlier periods into account — we find human beings who are, so to speak, historical personalities; but we do not understand them if we take them in the modern sense as historical personalities.
When we speak of historical personalities today, we, as people of the materialistic age, are convinced that it is only the impulses, the intentions of the personalities in question that are at work in the course of history. Thus, we can basically only understand the people of three millennia, that is, at best, the people of the millennium that ended with the birth of Jesus Christ, and then the people of the first and second Christian millennia, in which we ourselves live. Plato, Socrates, perhaps also Thales and Pericles are people who can at best be understood as similar to us. But if we go further back, then the possibility of understanding people ceases if we want to understand them only by analogy with people of the present. For example, the Egyptian Hermes, the great teacher of Egyptian culture, can no longer be understood, nor can Zarathustra, nor even Moses. If we go back beyond the millennium that precedes the Christian era, we must expect that wherever we encounter historical figures, there are higher individualities, higher hierarchies behind them, which, in the best sense of the word, possess these figures. Now a peculiar phenomenon emerges, without knowledge of which we cannot understand historical development.
We have distinguished five periods up to our time. So we have the first post-Atlantean cultural period, reaching far back into the millennia, the Indian period; we have the second, the ancient Persian period; the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean period; the fourth, the Greek-Latin period; and the fifth, our own period. Even when we go back from the Greek-Latin character to the Egyptian, we have to make this transition in our historical view, so that instead of a purely human view, which can at best still serve us in relation to the figures of the Greek world up to the heroic age, we apply a different standard, so that we begin to look behind the individual personalities for the spiritual powers which represent the superpersonal and work through the personalities as their instruments. We must grasp these spiritual individualities with our soul's eye, so that we can literally see a human being standing on the physical plane, and behind him, working, a being from the higher hierarchies who, as it were, holds this human being from behind and places him in the position he has to occupy within human evolution.
Now it is interesting enough from this point of view to establish the relationships between the actually important events, the historically decisive events of the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch and the Greek-Latin epoch. These are two successive cultural epochs, and we will first go back, let us say, to the year 2800, 3200 to 3500 BC, which is not very far back in time. Nevertheless, we will not understand what happened there, which even today is somewhat revealed by ancient history; we will only understand it when we see the higher individualities behind the historical personalities. But then it becomes clear to us that we have a kind of repetition of all the important things that happened in the third period in the fourth, the Greek-Latin period. It is almost as if what can be explained by higher laws for the previous period can be explained by the laws of the physical world for the following period; as if it had descended, become coarser, more physical: a kind of reflection in the physical world reveals itself to us for the great events of the previous periods.
Today I would like to give you an introduction and therefore point out how one of the most important facts of the Egyptian-Chaldean period is given to us in a significant myth; how this event is then reflected, but one step lower, in the Greek-Latin period. So I would like to present two parallel facts that belong together in an occult relationship; one is, as it were, half a level higher, and the other stands entirely on the physical earth, but like a kind of physical shadow image of a spiritual event of an earlier epoch. Outwardly, humanity has always been able to tell of such events, behind which powers of higher hierarchies stand, only through myths. But we will see what lies behind the myth that describes to us the most significant event that stands out from the Chaldean period. Let us just consider the main features of the myth.
This myth tells us the following: Once upon a time there was a great king named Gilgamesh. But even from the name, those who are able to judge such names recognize that we are not dealing merely with a physical king, but with a deity behind him, with a spiritual individuality behind him, which possessed the king of Erek and worked through him. So we are dealing with what we must call, in the real sense, a god-man. He oppresses the city of Erech, we are told. The city of Erech turns to its deity Aruru, and this deity raises up a helper: this hero grows out of the earth. These are the images of the myth; we shall see what depths of historical events lie behind this myth. The deity causes Eabani to rise from the earth, a kind of human being who, in comparison to Gilgamesh, looks like a lower being, for it is said that he had animal skins, that he was covered with hair, that he was like a savage; but in his savagery there lived a divine spirit, ancient clairvoyance, clairvoyance, ancient clear knowledge.
Eabani meets a woman from Erek, and this draws him to the city. He becomes Gilgamesh's friend, and peace comes to the city. Now they both rule together, Gilgamesh and Eabani. Then the city goddess Ishtar is stolen from the city of Eabani and Gilgamesh by a neighboring city. They both go on a war campaign against the rapacious city. They defeat the king and win back the city goddess. Now the city goddess has moved back to Erek, Gilgamesh lives opposite her, and here we encounter the peculiarity that Gilgamesh has no understanding of the strange nature of the city goddess. A scene now unfolds that immediately brings to mind a biblical scene from the Gospel of John. Gilgamesh stands opposite Ishtar. However, he behaves differently from Jesus Christ; he reproaches the city goddess for having loved many other men before she came to him. In particular, he reproaches her for her acquaintance with the last one. She then goes to complain to the deity, the being of the higher hierarchies to whom she, the city goddess, is assigned: she goes to Anu. And now Anu sends a bull down to earth, and Gilgamesh must fight this bull. Those who remember Mithras fighting the bull will find an echo of this in the passage where Gilgamesh must fight the bull sent down by Anu. All these events—and we will see, when we explain the myth, what depths lie within it—have now led to Eabani's death. Gilgamesh is now alone. A thought comes to him that gnaws terribly at his soul. Under the impression of what he has experienced, he becomes aware of the thought that man is mortal after all. A thought that he had not considered before now confronts him in all its horror. And then he hears about the only human being on earth who has remained immortal, while all other humans in the post-Atlantean era have become aware of their mortality: he hears about the immortal Xisuthros far away in the west. Now, because he wants to explore the mysteries of life and death, he undertakes the difficult journey to the West. — Already today I can say: This journey to the West is none other than the journey to the secrets of ancient Atlantis, to the events that preceded the great Atlantean catastrophe.
Gilgamesh undertakes the pilgrimage there. It is very interesting that he must pass through a gate guarded by giant scorpions, that the spirit leads him into the realm of death, that he enters the realm of Xisuthros, and that in this realm of Xisuthros he learns that all people must become increasingly imbued with the consciousness of death in the post-Atlantean era. Now he asks Xisuthros where he got his knowledge of his eternal core, why he is imbued with the consciousness of immortality. Xisuthros tells him: You can become that too, but you must relive what I had to go through, all the overcoming of fear and anxiety and loneliness that I had to endure. When the god Ea decided—in what we call the Atlantean catastrophe—to destroy what was not to continue living among humanity, he instructed me to retreat into a kind of ship. I was to take with me the animals that were to remain and those individuals who are truly called the masters. With this ship, I survived the great catastrophe. Thus Xisuthros told Gilgamesh, saying: What has been experienced there can only be experienced within. But through this you can attain the consciousness of immortality if you do not sleep for seven nights and six days. Gilgamesh wants to undergo this test, but soon falls asleep. Then the wife of Xisuthros bakes seven mystical loaves of bread, which are to replace what should have been achieved during the seven nights and six days. Now Gilgamesh continues on his way with this kind of elixir of life and undergoes something like a bath in the fountain of youth and returns to the coast of his homeland, which lies somewhere near the Euphrates and Tigris. There, the power of the elixir of life is taken from him by a snake, and so he returns to his country without the elixir, but with the awareness that immortality exists and filled with longing to at least see the spirit of Eabani. He now appears to him in person, and from the conversation that ensues, we learn how, so to speak, the culture of the Egyptian-Chaldean period was able to develop an awareness of its connection with the spiritual world. This relationship between Gilgamesh and Eabani is important.
Now I have presented you, so to speak, with the images of a myth, the significant myth of Gilgamesh, the myth that we will see will lead us into the spiritual depths that lie behind the Chaldean-Babylonian cultural period. I wanted to present these images to you, which will show you that there are, so to speak, two individualities standing there: the individuality of a being who has a divine-spiritual being within himself: Gilgamesh — and one who is more human, but in such a way that we would like to call him a young soul who has undergone only a few incarnations and has therefore carried old clairvoyance into later times: Eabani.
Outwardly, this Eabani is depicted to us as being clothed in animal skins. This is meant to suggest his wildness; but it is precisely through this wildness that he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance, and on the other hand, he is a young soul who has undergone far fewer incarnations than other souls at the height of their development. Thus, Gilgamesh represents a being who was ready for initiation but could no longer achieve it, because the journey to the West is the journey to an initiation that has not been completed. On the one hand, we see in Gilgamesh the actual inaugurator of Chaldean-Babylonian culture, and behind him, a divine-spiritual being, a kind of fire spirit, and then beside him another individuality, a young soul, Eabani, an individuality that came down to Earth for incarnation only late in the process. If you read “An Outline of Esoteric Science,” you will see that the individualities only gradually descended from the planets. The Babylonian-Chaldean culture depends on the exchange of what these two know, and we will see that the entire Babylonian-Chaldean culture is a result of what originated with Gilgamesh and Eabani. Thus, the clairvoyance of the god-man Gilgamesh and the clairvoyance of the young soul Eabani protrude into the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This process of two beings working side by side, one of whom is necessary for the other, is now reflected in the later fourth cultural period, the Greek-Latin period, on the physical plane. However, we will only gradually come to fully understand such a reflection. Thus, a more spiritual process is reflected on the physical plane when humanity has descended very far and no longer feels the connection between the human personality and the spiritual-divine world.
These secrets of the spiritual-divine world have been preserved in the mystery centers. For example, much of the ancient sacred mysteries that proclaimed the connection between the human soul and the divine-spiritual worlds was preserved in the mystery of Diana of Ephesus and in the temple of Ephesus. There was much there that was no longer comprehensible to an age that had emerged into human personality. And as a symbol of the limited understanding of the purely external personality for what has remained spiritual, we have the semi-mythical figure of Herostratus, who sees only the most external aspects of the personality; Herostratus, who throws the torch into the temple of the sanctuary of Ephesus. This act appears to us as a symbol of the clash between personality and what remains of ancient spiritual times. And on the same day that a man throws a torch into the temple of the sanctuary of Ephesus, merely to make his name known to posterity, on that same day is born the man who has done the most for the culture of personality on the very soil where the mere culture of personality is to be overcome: Herostratus throws the torch on the day Alexander the Great is born, the man who is all personality. Thus Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamesh.
There is a profound truth behind this. Like the shadow image of Gilgamesh, Alexander the Great stands in the fourth, Greek-Latin period, like the projection of a spiritual being onto the physical plane. And Eabani, who is, is projected onto the physical plane as Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great. Strange as it may seem, Alexander and Aristotle stand side by side like Gilgamesh and Eabani. And we see, as it were, how in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantean period, Alexander the Great carried over—only translated into the laws of the physical plane—what had been given by Gilgamesh to the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This is wonderfully expressed in the fact that, as an aftereffect of the deeds of Alexander the Great, Alexandria was founded on the site of the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural center, in order to place it, as if in a center, precisely where the third period, the Egyptian-Babylonian-Chaldean period, had been so powerful. And everything was to come together in this Alexandrian cultural center. Gradually, all the cultural currents that were to meet from the post-Atlantean period really did come together there. As if in a center, they met in Alexandria, the place that had been set up on the stage of the third cultural epoch, with the character of the fourth epoch. And Alexandria outlived the emergence of Christianity. Yes, it was in Alexandria that the most important things of the fourth cultural period developed, when Christianity was already there. The great scholars were active there, and in particular the three most essential cultural currents converged there: the ancient pagan-Greek, the Christian, and the Mosaic-Hebrew. They were together in Alexandria, interacting with each other. And it is inconceivable that the culture of Alexandria, which was built entirely on personality, could have been inaugurated by anything other than a personality-inspired being such as Alexander the Great. For now, through Alexandria, through this cultural center, everything that had previously been superpersonal, everything that had previously towered above the human personality into the higher spiritual worlds, took on a personal character. The personalities standing before us have, so to speak, everything within themselves; we see very little of the powers that guide them from higher hierarchies and place them in their positions. All the various sages and philosophers who worked in Alexandria are ancient wisdom translated entirely into the human-personal realm; the personal speaks from them everywhere. That is what is so remarkable: everything in ancient paganism that could only be explained by pointing to how gods descended and united with human daughters to produce heroes, all of that is transformed into the personal energy of the people of Alexandria. And what Judaism, the Mosaic culture, took on in Alexandria, we can see from what the times in which Christianity was already present show us. Nothing remains of those deep understandings of the connection between the human world and the spiritual world that still existed in the time of the prophets and could still be found even in the last two centuries before the beginning of our calendar: in Judaism, too, everything has become personal. There are capable people there, with extraordinary insight into the mysteries of the ancient secret teachings, but everything has become personal; personalities are at work in Alexandria. And Christianity first appears in Alexandria, one might say, in its degenerate childhood stage.
Christianity, which is called upon to lead the personal in human beings ever higher into the impersonal, appeared particularly strongly in Alexandria. The Christian personalities in particular had such an effect that we often have the impression that their actions were anticipations of later actions of bishops and archbishops who acted purely personally. This was the case with Archbishop Theophilos in the 4th century and with his successor and relative, St. Cyril. We can only judge them, so to speak, from their human weaknesses. Christianity, which is supposed to be the greatest gift to humanity, first reveals itself in its greatest weaknesses and from its personal side. But in Alexandria, a landmark was to be set for the entire development of humanity.
Here again we have such a projection of earlier spiritual elements onto the outer physical plane. There was a wonderful personality in the ancient Orphic mysteries; she penetrated the secrets of these mysteries; she was one of the most sympathetic and interesting disciples of the ancient Greek Orphic mysteries. She was well prepared, particularly through a certain Celtic secret training she had undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought the secrets of the Orphic mysteries with deep fervor. What is contained in the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, who is dismembered by the Titans but whose body is raised to a higher life by Zeus, was to be lived through in the souls of the disciples of the Orphic mysteries. As an individual human experience, it was to be relived by the Orphics in particular, how man, by going through a certain mystery path, so to speak, lives himself out in the outer world, is dismembered with his whole being, ceases to find himself in himself.
Whereas it is otherwise an abstract knowledge when we recognize animals, plants, and minerals in the ordinary way, because we remain outside them, so must those who want to attain real knowledge in the occult sense practice as if they were in animals, plants, minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and stars, in other human beings, as if they were one with them. And yet they must develop the strong inner soul force of the Orphics in order to be restored as a completely self-contained individuality and triumph over the fragmentation of the outer world. In a certain sense, it belonged to the highest of the initiation secrets that could be experienced when what I have just indicated to you became human experience. Many students of the Orphic mysteries went through such experiences, experienced their fragmentation in the world in this way, and thus went through the highest experience that could be experienced in pre-Christian times as a kind of preparation for Christianity.
Among the students of the Orphic mysteries was also the sympathetic personality who did not come down to posterity with an external name, but who clearly shows himself to be a student of the Orphic mysteries, and to whom I now refer. Already as a young man and then for many years, this personality was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics. He was active in the period that preceded Greek philosophy and is no longer recorded in the history books of philosophy; for what is recorded with Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the mystery disciples had previously accomplished in their own way. And among these mystery students was the one I am now telling you about as a student of the Orphic mysteries, who in turn had as his student Pherekydes of Syros, who was mentioned in last year's Munich cycle “The Orient in the Light of the Occident.”
You see, this individuality that was present in that disciple of the Orphic mysteries, we find reincarnated in the 4th century AD through research in the Akashic Records. We find it reincarnated in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the circles of Alexandria, where the Orphic secrets have been transformed into personal experiences, albeit of the highest order. It is remarkable how all this was transformed into personal experiences during reincarnation. At the end of the 4th century AD, we see this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, T'heon. We see how everything that could be experienced through the Orphic mysteries, through the contemplation of the great, mathematical, luminous connections of the world, comes to life in her soul. All this was now personal talent, personal ability. Now even this individuality needed a mathematician for a father in order to inherit something; so personal must these abilities have been.
Thus, when we look back to times when human beings were still connected to the spiritual worlds, as in the case of that Orphic personality, we see her shadow image among those who taught in Alexandria at the turn of the 4th to the 5th century. And this individuality had not yet absorbed anything of what, one might say, allowed people at that time to overlook the dark side of the early Christian era; for everything that was an echo of the Orphic mysteries was still too great in these souls, too great to be illuminated by that other light, the new Christ event. What appeared as Christianity all around, for example in Theophilus and Cyril, was truly such that the Orphic individuality, which had now taken on a personal character, had greater and wiser things to say and give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.
Theophilus and Cyril were filled with the deepest hatred for everything that was not Christian-ecclesiastical in the narrow sense as understood by these two archbishops. Christianity had taken on a very personal character, such a personality that these two archbishops recruited personal mercenaries. People were gathered from everywhere to form, so to speak, the archbishops' protection forces. They were interested in power in the most personal sense. And what animated them was hatred of everything that came from ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new, which appeared as a distorted image. The deepest hatred lived in the Christian dignitaries of Alexandria, especially against the individuality of the reborn Orphic. And so we need not be surprised that the reincarnated Orphic individuality was denounced as a black magician. And that was enough to incite the whole mob, which had been recruited as mercenaries, against the noble, unique figure of the reincarnated disciple of Orpheus. And this figure was still young, and despite her youth, despite having to go through many things that would have caused great difficulties for a woman even in those days, she had risen to the light that could shine above all wisdom, above all knowledge of those times. And it was wonderful how, in the lecture halls of Hypatia – for that was the name of the reincarnated Orphic – the purest, most luminous wisdom penetrated the enthusiastic listeners in Alexandria. She compelled not only the old pagans to sit at her feet, but also such insightful, profound Christians as Synesius. She was a significant influence, and one could experience the revival of the ancient pagan wisdom of Orpheus in Hypatia in Alexandria, translated into personality.
And the karma of the world had a truly symbolic effect. What constituted the secret of her initiation appeared to be projected, shadowed, onto the physical plane. And with that we touch upon an event that is symbolically effective and significant for many things that take place in historical times. We touch upon one of those events that is apparently only a martyr's death, but which is a symbol in which spiritual forces and meanings express themselves.
On a day in March of the year 415, Hypatia fell victim to the fury of those who surrounded the Archbishop of Alexandria. They wanted to rid themselves of her power, her spiritual power. The most uneducated, wild hordes were also incited from the surrounding area of Alexandria, and under false pretenses, the virgin orphan was taken away. She climbed into the carriage and, at a signal, the incited crowd attacked her, tore her clothes from her body, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. They dismembered and dismembered her, and the pieces of her body were dragged around the city by the mob, completely dehumanized by their greedy passions. Such was the fate of the great philosopher Hypatia.
Symbolically, I would say, something is hinted at here that is deeply connected with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, even if it did not come to pass until long after Alexandria was founded. This event reflects important secrets of the fourth post-Atlantean age, which had so much greatness and significance in it, and which also had to show what it was as the dissolution of the old, as the sweeping away of the old, in such a paradoxically magnificent way before the world in such a significant symbol as the slaughter—there is no other way to describe it—of the most important woman at the turn of the 4th to the 5th century, Hypatia.