The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke about how the events that were to take place for the development of humanity on Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha were prepared. We spoke of the three interpenetrations of a being from the higher hierarchies with the Christ, and found in the wondrous Greek manifestation of Apollo an echo of what took place at the end of the Atlantean epoch—a distant foreshadowing of this Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 2 ] It is now up to us to investigate how what has thus entered into human development has taken effect. To do this, it will first be necessary to briefly characterize the fundamental nature of the worldviews that emerged in the post-Atlantean era as echoes and aftereffects of this threefold Christ event, which, according to our description yesterday, was in a sense concluded with the end of the Atlantean era.

[ 3 ] Let us try to delve into the fundamental nature of the worldviews that emerged in the post-Atlantean era. They arose in such a way that something of what I told you yesterday continues to resonate within what has since become the human soul. These post-Atlantean worldviews are, after all, like reflections of this threefold Christ event in the post-Atlantean human souls. From this perspective, we need say only a few words about the first post-Atlantean epoch. We have often characterized it from other perspectives. Here it suffices to say that, in terms of spirituality, it was the highest post-Atlantean cultural period to date, yet it still absorbed into the souls of the holy Rishis and their followers something that was, in a certain sense, less permeated by those mysteries of which I spoke yesterday.

[ 4 ] The first post-Atlantic worldview that confronts us as a direct consequence of this threefold Christ event is the worldview that arose under the influence of Zarathustra. Now I must interject here that I will have to use words that, due to the way they are used today, sound abstract and dry, even pedantic. But no matter how one searches through the language, there are no other words available at first. And so I would like to appeal to your souls to understand, in the words I am now going to use, something infinitely more spiritual than what dry science understands by these words today. From the perspective under consideration here, I would like to call the Zarathustra worldview a worldview of “chronology.” Above the two beings, Ahura Mazdao and Ahriman, the Zarathustra worldview looks upon Zaruana akarana—the workings of time. But not abstract time, as we understand it today, but time conceived as a living, transpersonal being. For the Zarathustrian view regards this being—which we must grasp in the word “time”—in such a way that the rulers of time emanate from this being: first, those spiritual beings symbolized in the cosmos by the signs of the zodiac, the Amshaspands. They govern through their number six, or, if we include their antipodes, through their number twelve. The Izeds, who stand below these Amshaspands, numbering 28 to 31, are spirits of a lower order, servants of the high being of time, who govern the days within the month. The Zarathustra consciousness gazed into that wondrous harmony, which works in the world through forces and is symbolized in number by all the relationships and combinations that arise from 28 to 31 in relation to 12. It gazed into all that which, as it were, flows and surges into the world through the fact that in the great world orchestra the instruments resonate together in these numerical ratios. The Zarathustra worldview regarded this as the ordering, as the harmonizing force of the world order. I would merely like to point to these ratios. And because this is so, because in that which creates and at the same time consumes in the act of creation, which takes in the world’s views, as it were spiritually digesting them and carrying them over to other levels, because the Zarathustra view sees in “time” something living, something supra-personal, we may, spiritualizing this word, call this worldview “Chronology,” while at the same time thinking of the god Chronos, the ruler of time.

[ 5 ] Then we come to the third post-Atlantean epoch, which we characterized yesterday as the one in which souls were inspired to their knowledge by the beings of power shining forth from the stars, where the mystery of the world was no longer seen merely in the supersensible relationships of the nature of time, but where one had already entered into the realm of the senses and, within that realm, in the course of the stars and in the script they inscribe into the cosmos, one saw the harmonizing, the melodizing of world events. I would like to call this worldview astrology. Chronology was followed by astrology. And all that which the genuine, true chronology of Zoroastrianism, and the genuine, true astrology of the Egyptian and Chaldean mysteries reveal—all of this was inspired by the mysteries that were active in the world through the threefold Christ event prior to the great Atlantean catastrophe.

[ 6 ] And what followed in the Greek era or the Greco-Roman period? What I am about to say applies not only to the Greek and Roman worlds, but also to the rest of Europe. I tried to illustrate this just yesterday using a single example, but it applies, so to speak, to the entire Western world. We can look back once more at how the Greeks worshipped Apollo, this reflection of the Nathanic Jesus-child, just as he still was at the end of the Atlantean epoch. We said: From the Hyperborean land, coming from the north, Apollo came to the Oracle of Delphi. Through the Pythia, he spoke the most important things the Greeks wanted to hear, during the summer season. In the autumn he returned to his Hyperborean land. We have related this course of Apollo to the course of the sun. But because it is the spiritual sun that speaks through Apollo, he takes his course northward while the physical sun moves southward. The myths reveal infinite wisdom when we view them in the light of true occultism. And yet it was not the act of looking up at the stars that symbolized Apollo for the Greeks: when the Greeks worshipped Apollo, they did not actually look to the sun as his external stellar symbol. Apollo is not a sun god in the sense that the outer sun would have symbolized him—for that, the Greeks had their Helios, who governed the sun’s course across the sky. For the sun does not act in this way upon our earthly existence, even when we speak of the physical realm, such that only what flows down directly through the sun’s rays has an effect on human beings; but rather the sun acts first in air and water, in the water vapors, and also in the vapors of which we have said that they rose from the mouth of the Castalian Spring and, like a dragon, transformed the neighboring mountains, and that this dragon was slain by the Greek Saint George. The sun acts in all the elements, and after it has already penetrated and permeated the earthly elements, it acts upon human beings from within them, as it were through the servants we call elemental spirits. The sun spirit acts within the elements, and the Greeks saw this activity in their Apollo.

[ 7 ] To him, Apollo was the sun god, but not the one who, as Helios, drove the sun chariot across the sky and governed the hours of the day. When the Greeks looked up to Apollo, they saw the sun’s effects on the atmosphere. What is the sun’s effect there, he addressed as Apollo by speaking to it spiritually. And so it was with many gods and spiritual beings that we find in the West. We need only point out—I could point out many other examples—Wotan, who races through the storm, and his wild army. — What had become of the worldview in this fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which stood under the influence of the threefold Christ event, as an echo of it? Once again I must use a pedantic word that has become dry: meteorology had followed astrology. Chronology—Astrology—Meteorology! We must, however, connect the “-logy” with Logos. — But while all this was descending upon the Western world, something else flowed into the entire post-Atlantean culture, which was an echo of the threefold Christ event from an entirely different angle. And this fourth element, which developed as if in parallel alongside the meteorology of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, was something I must again designate with a dry, pedantic word—but I ask once more that “-logy” be brought into connection with Logos—that is, it had become: geology. Geology, where does it meet us?

[ 8 ] One will never understand the true mysteries of ancient Hebrew cultural development unless one approaches it as geology, in the sense that we now wish to consider it as geology. How does the host of the Elohim first appear to us? How does the God of Yahweh appear to us? He appears to us as one who wishes to form into human beings that which is taken from the earth itself. He wishes to envelop with a new covering—the earth’s covering—that which has come over from earlier times, from Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. Yahweh is precisely the God who forms human beings from the earth, that is, from the forces, from the elements of the earth. Therefore, ancient Hebrew wisdom, as a professing faith in the God Yahweh, had to become geology. And the doctrine of the human being formed from the forces of the earth is geology. Is not the geological character of ancient Hebrew doctrine immediately presented to us when the name of the first human being is set before us: Adam—the one formed from the earth! This is the significant point that must be grasped: everything that the others—I would say the peoples with the meteorological worldview—conceived as the soul speaks differently about the formation of the human being. Let us look at the Greek worldview, where Prometheus sits and forms the human being. Pallas Athena comes to him and, from spiritual heights, brings about the union of the human being with the spark of spirit. Prometheus forms the soul in the symbol of the butterfly. The God Yahweh forms man from earth, and he, the God Yahweh, who in the course of his development had become the Lord of the Earth, breathes the living soul into man from his own substance. Thus Yahweh unites himself through his breath with that which he has formed from earth. And he wishes to dwell in his Son, in his living breath, in Adam and his descendants, the sons of the earth, those beings whose earthly form the God of Yahweh regarded as his task to shape. And as we proceed further: Let us try to bring before our soul all that we find handed down to us from ancient Hebrew times, even from the Bible itself.

[ 9 ] We know, as we have emphasized, that the Earth generates certain forces. Goethe, Giordano Bruno, and others compare these forces to the forces of inhalation and exhalation in humans. The Earth develops certain forces—exhalation and inhalation forces—which cause the tides, the rising and falling of the water; these are the Earth’s inner forces, but they are also the very forces that guide the Moon around the Earth. These are the Earth’s forces. In the effects of water, these Earth forces manifest themselves to us as the Earth’s activity. In the forces of water, the Bible records the Flood as another important event following the creation of Adam, the earthly human. And let us proceed further to the time of Moses: If we study correctly what is at work everywhere, it is Earth’s activity everywhere. Moses, with his staff, goes to the rock and causes water to gush forth from the earth. Moses ascends the mountain. That which is connected with the effects of the earth up on the mountain and what is happening specifically on this mountain is an earthly effect. For this mountain must be thought of only as a volcanic one, or at least as a volcano-like mountain. It is not the Sinai that one usually has in mind; it is an earthly effect. In the pillar of fire in which Moses stands, we see something similar to what happens when we burn a piece of paper in the sulfur hills of Italy and smoke comes out; so earth activity emerges from the mountain, fiery smoke. And the Jews always saw symbols in earth activity. The cloud of weather or pillar of fire went before them: earth activity! We could delve deeply into the details; everywhere we would find that the spirit of the earth reigns in what Moses speaks of as the revelation of the God of Yahweh. Geology is the proclamation of Moses. One will never understand the profound difference between the Hebrew and the Greek worldview unless one knows that the Greek worldview is meteorology and the Hebrew one is geology. Everything that the Greek feels unfolding around him, he conceives in connection with the forces poured out from the cosmos into the elements of the earth, into the earth’s surroundings in the air, into everything that is near the earth. Everything with which the Hebrew worldview feels surrounded is bound to the forces that unfold upward from the earth, that are bound to the earth. Yes, even the sufferings of the Hebrew people stem from the desert character, from that which is bound to the earth and its activity. Geology governs the destiny of the Hebrew people. It is geology, the fertility of the earth, that lures them into the Promised Land in the form of the scouts.

[ 10 ] And Paul is well aware that this sense of connection with the spirit of the earth is an aftereffect of the pre-earthly Christ event; for Paul points out that it was Christ who went before the Jews and caused water to flow from the rock in the desert. And if we were to turn from the Bible to the significant legends of the Hebrew people, we would find how these legends are permeated by the geology referred to here. There we are told how, when Yahweh formed man from the earth, he sent out the ministering angels to gather from all parts of the earth the various colors of the earth, earths of different colors, in order to mix all that belongs to the earth into the body of Adam. We would say today: Jehovah took it upon himself to place humanity on Earth in such a way that, in its true essence, humanity is the highest flowering, the crown of Earth’s creation. We can say: For the Chaldeans, for the Egyptians, for the Zoroastrians, for the Greeks, for the Romans, for the European peoples of central and northern Europe, the most important aspect of humanity was that which came from the spiritual world. For the Jews, the most important aspect of humanity is that which is connected to the Earth and its forces. Yahweh feels himself to be the God who spiritually governs the Earth.

[ 11 ] Thus we see that the most significant event in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is the emergence of geology alongside meteorology. And this is beautifully reflected in its spiritual counterpart, ancient Jewish prophecy.

[ 12 ] What, then, were these prophets actually striving for? Let us try, so to speak, to look into the very depths of these prophetic souls—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Jonah, and Zechariah: What were they striving for? Indeed, if one studies these prophetic souls with true impartiality, one finds that they are, in essence, striving to bring a particular human soul force to the forefront of the soul’s life and to push another force back, as it were, into the depths of the soul’s life. I have already drawn your attention to how, in the Michelangelo creations I have referred to, the prophets are always depicted sitting in deep contemplation, as if carried by an inner peace of mind, so that one sees: that to which their soul is devoted is connected in its deepest foundations with the Eternal. As a contrast, Michelangelo presents the Sibyls, upon whom the elements of the earth act—acting in such a way that, in one case, the wind blows her hair, and even draws into her bluish outer garment; under this influence of the wind, she makes her prophecy. We see the other one seized by an inner fervor: in the distinctive gesture of her hand, we see the fire, the earthly element. And so we could go through the Sibyls once more: They live with the soul forces that flow directly into the soul from the elemental environment of the earth. These Sibylline forces, which, so to speak, draw the spirit of the earth elements into the soul and express it, these Sibylline forces the prophets of ancient Judaism sought to repress. If you read the entire history of the prophets with a truly open mind, you will find: The prophet strives—this is the essence of his training—to suppress the Sibylline tendency within himself, to prevent it from arising.

[ 13 ] Apollo transforms the Pythian oracle by immersing himself in it and speaking through the Sibyl. The prophets also wish to suppress the Pythian aspect of their soul and cultivate solely that which operates in the clear power of the ego—that ego which is connected to the earth, which belongs to the earth, which is the spiritual counterpart of the geological element. Just as the eternal reveals itself in the ego in serene calm when the Sibylline elements are silent, when all inner agitation ceases, when all that is suppressed, when only serenity reigns and gazes into the depths of the eternal—this is what the Jewish prophetic natures sought to develop, and their proclamations were to spring from such a state of mind that seeks within the soul what corresponds most closely to geology. Thus, what is captivating in these prophets resounds to us like an outpouring of the geological element, and even that which subsequently came to pass differently than the prophets had foretold shows us precisely how the element of the prophets is the geological one. A future kingdom, which is to be bound to the earth through outward signs and is to replace the present kingdom—a heaven on earth—is what the prophets proclaim first and foremost; so closely are they connected to geology.

[ 14 ] And even in the early days of Christianity, this “geological” element of the prophets continued to flow in, as people awaited the return of the Messiah—but in such a way that he was to descend from the clouds and establish an earthly kingdom on earth. One can only understand what shines in Jewish culture if one understands it in this way as a geological phenomenon. That was the longing of the prophets; that was what they taught their disciples: to suppress the Sibylline element—all that which leads the soul into subconscious depths—and to develop what lives in the ego. All other peoples have different relationships with their gods than the Jews do with their Yahweh. The relationships of the other peoples to their gods were given, for they were the echoes of what had formed in the relationship of human beings to the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs. The Jewish people were to develop in particular what could evolve during the Earth era. But when the ego establishes a relationship with its God of its own accord, how does this express itself? Not as inspiration, so that even morality might have been a permeation of the soul by divine forces—not as inspiration, but as a commandment. The form of the commandment that we encounter in the Decalogue first appears to us among the Jewish people. Even if science rambles on about such strange things as the earlier existence of the commandments—Hammurabi and so on, I cannot now go into the follies of modern scholarship—what appears as commandments, where the ego stands directly before God and receives from God the norm, the precept, in such a way that this ego must follow it out of inner will, this first appears to us among the Jewish people. Likewise, it is only among the Jewish people that we encounter God entering into a covenant with the people. The other gods act through forces that always have something to do with the subconscious of the soul. Let us again compare how Apollo works through the Pythia, how the soul had to prepare itself as it journeyed to the Pythia so that the god could speak to her: Apollo spoke through the Pythia’s soul life, which plunged into the subconscious. In contrast to this stands the God of Yahweh, who speaks through his commandments, who makes a covenant, a contract, with his people, and who speaks directly to the “I” of the soul. And immediately these prophets become zealous when what often happened among the Jewish people occurs—when the influences of the pagan peoples gain sway over the Jewish people. Subconscious forces were not to enter the Jews; everything was to be based on the covenant with God, everything was to be based on the principle of the commandment. That is why the prophets are particularly concerned.

[ 15 ] And now let us try to take a brief look back, guided by what occult insights reveal to us—a look back at what we have, so to speak, attempted to illustrate through what has just been presented.

[ 16 ] Yesterday we learned about the threefold Christ event, which occurred during the Lemurian and Atlantean periods. We saw how Christ permeated the being three times—the being who later appeared as the Nathanic Jesus child—but permeated it in such a way that this being was not incarnated in an earthly body, but remained in the spiritual worlds. And when we turn our gaze to what happened there, we must say: What took place in Atlantis then flowed over to the East. Elijah, for example, was one of the prophets. How is Elijah a prophet? He serves the God Yahweh; he serves him in such a way that the echo of the threefold Christ-fact lives in his soul. In his soul lives the realization: I must, above all else as the prophet of Yahweh, proclaim Yahweh in such a way that within Yahweh lives the Christ who is later to accomplish the Mystery of Golgotha; that he lives with the forces he poured out into the cosmos during his third experience at the end of the Atlantean era. Elijah proclaimed the Christ-permeated Yahweh. Christ already lived in Yahweh, in the God Yahweh; but he lived as in his reflection. Just as moonlight reflects sunlight, so does Yahweh reflect the being who then lived in Christ. Christ reflected his essence from the God Yahweh or Jehovah. But in the spirit of the aftereffect of the threefold Christ event, a messenger such as Elijah acted, who, as it were, preceded the Nathanic Jesus being as it first moved spiritually from west to east to permeate the cultures, only to be born as one of the Jesus boys. All peoples perceived it as a kind of foreshadowing, which arose, as it were, in abundance from meteorology, particularly when this was touched by geology.

[ 17 ] We observe the remarkable fact that one of these foretold events took place at the very site that later became so significant for the development of Christianity. We see how, in various places throughout the Near East and even in Europe, festivals are celebrated that, as it were, foreshadow the Christ event, foreshadowing the Mystery of Golgotha. The cults of Adonis and Attis have rightly been interpreted as prophetic foreshadowings of the event of Golgotha. But when we look closely at all these festivals, we always see that they actually still depict the future as a meteorological phenomenon. The god who is killed there as Adonis and rises again is not conceived as incarnated in the flesh; rather, what one has as God is initially an image: the image of that angelic being who, at the end of the Atlantean epoch, was permeated by the Christ in the spiritual heights and who then became the Nathanic Jesus-child. The fate of the Nathanic Jesus-child was celebrated in the Adonis and Attis cults. And it was world-historical karma—you may seek even more behind this word—that at the site where the Bible, with a certain right, places the birth of the Jesus-child, an Adonis cult was previously practiced in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was one of the places where Adonis cults were practiced. There, the dying and rising Adonis was often celebrated, thus preparing the aura by evoking the memory: There once was, in spiritual heights, a being who at that time still belonged to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, a being who was later to come to Earth as the Nathanic Jesus Child, a being who, however, at the end of the Atlantean era was permeated by the Christ. What had happened back then for the harmonization of thinking, feeling, and willing was celebrated in the Adonis Festival. And at the site in Bethlehem where this Adonis Festival was celebrated, we also have the birthplace of the Nathanic Jesus child. And the words resonate strangely together, my dear friends. Do we not see, as we have traced the threefold Christ event—the super-earthly Christ event that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha three times—do we not see Christ moving from west to east toward the place where the Mystery of Golgotha was to be accomplished? Do we not see how he already sends Elijah ahead as his messenger, and do we not know how this messenger reappears in his next incarnation as John the Baptist? And is it not expressly told to us by him, with a wondrous harmony of words: “He sent his angel ahead to announce him”? This can be said of both John and Elijah. Even more so of Elijah—which those will understand who recall my description of Elijah, where I explained that Elijah remained in spiritual heights and had only a representative through whom he worked, so that he never walked the earth himself. If you take this into account, the expression “He sent his angel before him” fits Elijah even better than it does John. Such messengers were always messengers of Christ, who journeyed from the West to the East.

[ 18 ] And now what had been geology among the Jewish people was to be permeated by this spiritual being, whose actual activity on Earth we have been learning to observe since yesterday. Geology was to be, as it were, “Christianized.” One was to perceive the spirit of the Earth in a new way, to be able, so to speak, to detach it from the Earth. But this was only possible when a force came that detached this spirit of the Earth from the Earth’s forces. This happened because the Earth’s aura was permeated by the Christ forces, and the Earth itself thereby became something different. Christ entered into the forces that the God Yahweh had unleashed and transformed these forces into something else.

[ 19 ] When we take all this in, we understand one thing: we understand why the laurel was given to Apollo as a symbol. For those who approach botany with a measure of Spiritual Science, the laurel is a plant closely connected to meteorological conditions. The laurel is fully shaped and structured by what meteorology is. Another plant is much more closely bound to the earth; it is, so to speak, the expression of geological conditions. And if one truly feels the oil that characteristically permeates the olive tree in such a way that one feels the elemental forces within one’s own soul stirred by the fact that the olive tree is a plant onto which one can graft another shoot that thrives best on this plant, then one feels the olive tree’s intimate permeation by the oil of the earth. In the oil, one feels the pulsating essence of the earthly. And now let us recall something I touched upon in the second lecture; let us recall Paul, who was called to build the bridge between ancient Hebrew antiquity and Christianity, between geology and Christology. Paul’s influence unfolds, as we have said, in the sphere of the olive tree. And when we perceive Apollo in the vapors rising from mountain chasms, through which he inspires the Pythia and wisely pronounces human destinies, we can also feel the elemental forces that flow into the surroundings through the olive tree and in which Paul’s soul power is embedded. We can sense them in his words. He immerses himself, as it were, in the olive tree to feel it elementally in its aura and to be inspired by that aura, within whose geological realm his influence lies.

[ 20 ] People today tend to interpret things far, far too abstractly. They assume that even the ideas expressed by earlier authors are just as abstract and purely intellectual as what is often said by more recent authors. People do not consider how not only intellect and reason, but all the powers of the soul, can be intrinsically connected to what gives a certain region its character. The olive tree shaped the Paul region. And as if he wanted to elevate Jewish geology, he spoke—through what the olive tree inspired in him—of the most important things regarding the relationship of people filled with Christ to those who are far from Christ. Let us not hear the strange words of Paul, which we do not wish to take abstractly, but rather as something rooted elementally in his soul, as something he wishes to shape from this elemental aspect of his soul into the word through which he seeks to bring the Gentile Christians into relationship with the Jews—let us not hear these strange words: “I am speaking to you Gentiles; for since I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I want to extol my ministry, in the hope that I might provoke those who are my own flesh to jealousy and save some of them. For if their loss is the reconciliation of the world, what would that be other than taking life from the dead? If the firstfruits are holy, the dough is also holy; and if the root is holy, the branches are also holy. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though you were a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and have become a partaker of the root and the rich juice of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you boast against them, you should know that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. So you say, “The branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be proud, but fear. Did God not spare the natural branches, so that perhaps he might not spare you either? Therefore, consider the kindness and severity of God: the severity toward those who have fallen, but the kindness toward you—provided you remain in that kindness; otherwise, you too will be cut off. And those who do not remain in unbelief will be grafted in; God is able to graft them in again. For if you, being a wild olive tree by nature, were cut off and grafted contrary to nature into the cultivated olive tree, how much more will the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?”

[ 21 ] Thus spoke the one about whom we will elaborate further tomorrow, explaining how he drew from Jewish geology the ideas he wished to convey; how he used the elemental force that reigns from the earth up through the olive tree to create, in such a magnificent way, an image for what he had to say.