The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] 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.

[ 2 ] 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.

[ 3 ] 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.

[ 4 ] 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.

[ 5 ] 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.

[ 6 ] 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.

[ 7 ] 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.

[ 8 ] 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.

[ 9 ] 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.

[ 10 ] 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.

[ 11 ] 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.

[ 12 ] 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.

[ 13 ] 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.

[ 14 ] 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.

[ 15 ] 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.

[ 16 ] 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.

[ 17 ] 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.

[ 18 ] 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.

[ 19 ] 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.”

[ 20 ] 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.

[ 21 ] 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.

[ 22 ] 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.

[ 23 ] 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.

[ 24 ] 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.

[ 25 ] 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.